Gustav I Vasa Research Paper

The Swedish King Gustav I Vasa was born around May 12, 1496 or 1497 in the Swedish province of Uppsala. His original name was Gustavus Eriksson Vasa. The Vasa family was a noble family in Sweden already at the time of his birth; Gustav's father was a senator in the Swedish politics and a member of the Aristocratic faction. Gustavs' family also had marriage ties with King Sten Sture, the king of Sweden at the time. At the age of 13, Gustav began studying the languages of German and Latin. When he finished his language studies, he began receiving fencing lessons from King Sten.
During the years of 1517 through 1518, there was a war between Sweden and Denmark. In 1518, Gustav was sent as a hostage to Denmark in hopes to form an armistice. King

In the province of Dalarna, there were many people who didn't quite like the idea of a single person ruling over the three major kingdoms of Scandinavia and Gustav seemed to be the best bet for a new king. Originally, the people of Dalarna weren't going to help Gustav, but when King Christian had majority of the ruling nobles executed, the farmers of the province rose up and stood with Gustav. Though Gustav was going to need more help then just some patriotic rebels, Lubeck would once again be of aid to Gustav. They were rich and there was a mutual demand for the downfall of Christian. Lubeck's merchants didn't like the harsh economic policies that were in play because of the Danish King. The war was going well in Gustav's favor; he captured Dalarna, Västamanland, Närke and Gästrikland by April, 1521. He slowly made his way to the province of Uppland and by June, he was outside of Stockholm. Though, he didn't attack the city; His army consisted of farmers and there was only about 1000 of them. Gustav couldn't do anything until ships from Lubeck arrived in August. With the help of the German ships, sieging the city sounded more realistic. On top of that much of King Christians soldiers in the Danish occupied city were of Swedish descent and saw the siege as a chance to ditch the Danish army and join Gustav's rebellion. This put a lot of pressure on the still standing Danish castles in the country and Stockholm. In June,1523,

The first thing Gustav did when the Danish were forced out was to impose taxes on the church. There were debts to Lubeck that needed to be paid and the Catholic church had the money to do it. This would later lead to the reformation in Sweden. Aside from having debts to pay off, Vasa didn't quite like the idea of a power that had just as much or more than what he had as king, though, he did sympathize with the need of church services. This led to the spread of Lutheranism throughout the country but Sweden didn't accept it as the national religion until 1544, because of the change to Lutheranism, there was a revolt from 1542 to 1543, started by Anti-Lutheran's. The main causes of the revolt was that Gustav had changed the national religion and was trying to become a member of the Schmalkaldic League, though his reason for joining was far from religious.
A war that Gustav would find himself fighting would be against the Hanseatic League and the Danish Counts that rebelled when King Christian regained the throne of Denmark after being exiled when he lost the war against Gustav from 1534 to 1536. In return for a mutual defense pact with Christian, Gustav had his armies aid in battles against the League. Gustav's navy was also what brought down the Hanseatic navy as well as give full control of the trade in the Baltics over