abandon them, they took refuge in Norway, were friendly received by Hako, and enabled, from their new fiefs of Nydborg and Konghella, to lay waste the neighbouring provinces with fire and sword. A body of troops sent by Birger to repulse them, was defeated. A second army was raised; and the king marched in person to chastise his brothers. They were, however, at the head of a large force, not of their own partisans merely, but of the Norwegians; and to avoid the effusion of blood, a pacification was recommended. They were received into favour on the condition of their swearing obedience to the king: in return he conferred on duke Eric the fief of Varberg. The next feature of this transaction was the sacrifice of the able and patriotic Thorkil. The brothers could not forgive him for thwarting them in their rebellion; and Birger was made to believe the vilest calumnies respecting him. The aged minister was sent to Stockholm and beheaded. At the same time his daughter, the wife of Valdemar, was repudiated. Thus was a long course of public service rewarded! [Sidenote: 1305 to 1319.] By this criminal weakness, Birger was righteously left to the intrigues of his brothers. By them he was surprised and made prisoner, together with his wife and children, and forced to resign the crown in favour of Eric. His eldest son, Magnus, escaped, and fled to Denmark, the king of which armed for the restoration of his sister’s husband. From this period to the close of Birger’s reign there was war, alternated by hollow peace. In 1307, he obtained his liberty, on the condition of his kingdom being dismembered in favour of his brother. To revoke this dangerous act he renewed his alliance with Denmark, and again obtained help; but his proceedings were not decisive, and a new pacification followed, on conditions similar to the preceding, except that Birger was now regarded as the liege superior of his brothers, who did homage to him for their fiefs. Unable to reduce them by force, he had recourse to the usual acts of the base. He pretended great affection for them, and sent them many presents. At length alluring them to his court at Nykoping, he arrested them in bed, and consigned them to dungeons with expression of triumphant insult more galling than the perfidy itself. One died of the wounds which he had received in the effort to escape: the other was starved to death. But from this deed of blood the king derived no advantage. The bodies of the murdered princes being exposed to the public, roused the wrath of the very numerous party hostile to his government. The civil war was now renewed by Matthias Kettlemundson in behalf of duke Eric’s son. Since the death of Thorkil, the king had become rapacious, tyrannical, and consequently unpopular. The people, who lamented the fate of the murdered princes, favoured the cause which Kettlemundson had espoused; the fortresses that still held for the king were soon reduced: Magnus, his son, was made prisoner; and he himself