No one who looked attentively at Sweden at the beginning of the seventeenth century would for a moment have anticipated the fortune which in fact was about to attend her. Poor in material resources, sadly deficient in roads and means of communication, sparsely populated, frost-bound for half the year, cut off almost wholly by her old conqueror Denmark from the ocean, she seemed to be doomed to be pressed out of existence by her more fortunately placed neighbours. From this fate she was saved by one of the most remarkable races of kings of whom history makes mention. [Sidenote: =The monarchy.=] From Gustavus Vasa, the emancipator of Sweden from the tyranny of the Danes, who ascended the throne in 1523, to Charles XII., the terror and pride of Europe, who lost his life in 1718, there was not one sovereign of the House of Vasa who did not in some ways show the marks of fine and original genius. Well may the historian of Sweden exclaim, ‘The history of Sweden is the history of her kings,’ for in few countries have national characteristics and national development been so intimately bound up with the monarchy. [Sidenote: =The Lutheran Church.=] Gustavus Vasa achieved the independence of Sweden, and established his new monarchy on the ruins of the Church. Seizing with the eye of a statesman the close affinity between Lutheranism and state power, he introduced the Reformation into Sweden as a political measure, enriching the Crown and purchasing the support of the nobles by the confiscation of the Church lands. From that time Sweden had two enemies to contend against, the hostility of Denmark, and the power of the nobility; to which, under John III., the husband of Catherine Jagellon, the heiress of the Jagellon kings of Poland, a third was added, namely the Counter-Reformation. At the beginning of the seventeenth century this last was the most pressing danger, for Sigismund, the son of John III. and Catherine Jagellon, was an ardent Catholic. [Sidenote: =Attempt of Sigismund to restore Catholicism, 1592–1604.=] He had become king of Poland by election in 1587, and had done much to re-establish Catholicism in that country before he succeeded by inheritance to the crown of Sweden in 1592. On his attempting a similar policy in Sweden he found himself at once opposed by the self-interest of the nobility, who held so large a share of the Church lands, and by a spirit of nationality among the people, who resented the interference of Poles and Italians with a sturdy independence, which reminds us of the hatred of the medieval English for all ‘outlandish’ people. These feelings found a representative in Charles, the youngest son of Gustavus Vasa, and uncle of Sigismund, who after a brief contest expelled his nephew from Sweden and seated himself on the throne in his stead in 1604. [Sidenote: =Reign of Charles IX., 1604–1611.=]