A Letter from John III of Sweden to King Charles IX of France: A New Source for the History of the Baltic Wars

Abstract

The letter of King John III of Sweden to King Charles IX of France from October 13, 1568, covers several subjects of the history of Baltic wars in the second half of the sixteenth century. What is most noticeable among them is the reasons why John III’s brother King Eric XIV was overthrown in September 1568, the plot against John of Finland to hand over Catherine Jagiellon, his wife and sister of Sigismund II Augustus, the Polish king, and grand duke of Lithuania, to the Russian czar Ivan the Terrible, as well as the period when the Northern Seven Years’ War ended. After his accession to the throne, John III faced several problems, which he had to solve. Firstly, the second son of Gustav I of Sweden had to legitimise his ascension in the eyes of the European monarchs, then break the international isolation of the Swedish kingdom and protect himself from internal and external conspiracies. His main goal was to free the imprisoned Eric XIV. The solution to these problems depended directly on stabilising Sweden’s foreign policy position, achievable through reconciliation with a hostile coalition of Denmark, Lübeck, and Poland and building an alliance with the French royal court, which offered mediation to end the hostilities. In the text of the published letter, the Swedish king appeals to the feelings of the French monarch, trying to show the “baseness” and “wickedness” of his elder brother’s policy, but also assures him of sincere friendship, proving the long-standing allied nature of the Swedish-French relations. All this makes the letter of John III to Charles IX a valuable historical source, whose value is fully revealed in the context of Swedish-French, Russian-Swedish and Russian-French relations in the sixteenth century. Published for the first time, it comes from the collection of P. P. Dubrovsky (13, No. 9), Russian National Library (St Petersburg). The article publishes the text of the letter in Latin as well as a translation into Russian.