The respite thus gained from foreign war was occupied by all the powers concerned in altering their domestic institutions. The first to move was Denmark. In that country as in Poland the authority of the elected king was completely overshadowed by that of the nobility. They were in possession of political power as well as of social privilege. They owned most of the wealth of the country, paid no taxes, and held all the chief posts in the kingdom. Consequently at each election of a king they were able not only to decide the election, but to make bargains with the elected candidate exceedingly profitable to themselves and burdensome to the rest of the people. There was no country in Europe where the nobles had made themselves so justly hated by all the other classes of the community. National misfortune led naturally to the desire for national revenge. Frederick III. put himself at the head of the movement, and at a meeting of the diet in 1661 successfully carried out a _coup d’état_, with the applause of the clergy, the burghers, and the peasantry. The revolution was entirely in favour of the king. The Crown was made hereditary and transmissible to females as well as to males. The privileges of the nobles were abolished, the capitulation signed by the king on election annulled, and the government vested in the Crown. At one blow and without bloodshed the monarchy in Denmark was remodelled on the pattern of that of France, and Frederick III. became an absolute king with all the powers of government centralised in himself, and his throne secured by a professional army. [Sidenote: =Misgovernment of the nobles in Sweden.=] In Sweden matters took a different turn. During the minority of Charles XI., as during the minority of Christina, the administration fell wholly into the hands of the great aristocratic families. Unfortunately there was no Oxenstjerna at their head. The council of regency, under the nominal leadership of the queen-mother, found it necessary to propitiate the nobles in everything. The suicidal policy of making grants of the crown lands to them was again weakly adopted, and the Crown was impoverished while its most dangerous rivals were enriched. The itching palms of the great nobles found in the gold of Louis XIV. the loadstone of their country’s policy, and as long as the French supplies lasted Sweden remained true to the French alliance. Once only, like Charles II., in the hope of greater spoils she showed a momentary independence, when she yielded to the persuasions of de Witt, and joined the Triple Alliance. In a few months she returned in penitence to her old allegiance, and when the young king took the reins of government into his own hands in 1672, he found that if eleven years of aristocratical rule had secured for him abroad the friendship and support of the greatest prince in Europe, it had made him the heir at home to an empty treasury and a discredited administration.