When the tyrant, Christian II. of Denmark, sought to make himself master of the throne of Sweden, Gustavus resolved to save his country from the oppressor; but the execution of his plans was interrupted, as Christian seized his person and kept him prisoner at Copenhagen, as a hostage, with five other heroic Swedes. When at last, in 1519, he heard of the success of Christian, who had nearly completed the subjugation of Sweden, he resolved, although still immured in a loathsome dungeon, to deliver his country. Gustavus escaped to Lubeck, but soon found that the Danes were after him, which obliged him to assume the habit and manners of a peasant. In this disguise he travelled on foot among the plains and mountains as a fugitive, and frequently walked fifty miles in a day, from place to place, to elude his pursuers. When he became familiar with his disguise, and the rude language of the peasantry, he became very bold. He passed several times through the Danish army; when that army was looking out for him, by its scouts, in every direction, he passed through the midst of it in a waggon of hay, and proceeded to an old family castle at Sudermania. He dispatched letters to his friends in the hope of arousing them to the recovery of their liberties; but, meeting with little success among the great, he next tried the peasantry. He visited their villages by night, harangued them at their festive assemblies, but without effect—as they uniformly told him it was in vain for them to attempt to better their condition, for peasants they were and peasants they must remain. Gustavus next determined to try the miners of Delacarlia. He penetrated the mountains of that remote province, and was obliged, for a scanty subsistence, to enter himself as a common labourer at a mine. Here he worked within the dark caverns of the earth; but the fineness of his linen soon led some of his fellow labourers to suspect that he was more than what he seemed.