The Count's Feud (Danish: Grevens Fejde), sometimes referred to as the Count's War, was a Danish war of succession occurring from 1534 to 1536, which gave rise to the Reformation in Denmark. In the broader international context, it was a part of the European wars of religion. The Count's Feud derives its name from the Protestant Count, Christopher of Oldenburg, who championed the claim to the throne of the deposed Catholic King, Christian II (who was forced from power in 1523), rejecting Christian III's election.[4][5] Christian III was a devoted Protestant who had already established Lutheranism as the state religion in Schleswig and Holstein by 1528.[6][7][8]
After Frederick I's death in 1533, the Jutland nobility proclaimed his son, then Duke Christian of Gottorp, as king under the name Christian III. Meanwhile, Count Christopher, or Christoffer, organized an uprising against the new king, demanding that Christian II be set free. Supported by Lübeck and troops from Oldenburg and Mecklenburg, parts of the Zealand and Skåne nobilities rose up, together with cities such as Copenhagen and Malmø.[9]
The violence began in 1534, when a privateer captain who had earlier been in Christian II's service, Klemen Andersen, called Skipper Clement, at Count Christoffer's request instigated the peasants of Vendsyssel and North Jutland to rise up against the nobles. The headquarters for the revolt came to be in Aalborg. A large number of manors were burned down in northern and western Jutland. On 10 August 1534, Count Christoffer accepted Skåne for Christian II's rule. The month before, Christoffer was heralded as regent on Christian II's behalf by the Zealand Council in Ringsted.[10]
The battles of Svenstrup and Aalborg
Johan Rantzau
An army of nobles under the leadership of Niels Brock and Holger Rosenkrantz was defeated at the Battle of Svenstrup on 16 October 1534. Christian III, in the meantime, forced a peace with Lübeck, from which great reinforcements could be freed up to fight against the rebels. Under the leadership of Johan Rantzau, the royal troops pursued the peasants all the way to Aalborg, where the peasants, under the leadership of Skipper Clement, had taken refuge behind the city's fortifications.
On 18 December, Rantzau's troops stormed the city, and it fell. At least 2,000 people are thought to have lost their lives in the storming of the city and in the plundering of the following days. For his part, Skipper Clement, badly wounded, managed to escape. A few days later he was recognized by a peasant in Storvorde east of Aalborg and handed over to Rantzau. Skipper Clement was later sentenced to death by the judicial council in Viborg and executed in 1536.[11]
The battles of Helsingborg and Øksnebjerg
Fortune did not fare well for the rebelling supporters of the Catholic faith, nor for the farmers on the Swedish front. The Swedish King Gustav Vasa sent a Swedish army to the aid of Christian III, which invaded Skåne at Loshult and plundered, burned, and murdered their way throughout the Gønge[sv] area as it advanced toward the town of Væ. Later, a Swedish army invaded Halland, which was destroyed by fire and sword. Some of the Scanian nobles sided with the Swedes, but Tyge Krabbe in Helsingborg Castle supported Count Christoffer.
In January 1535, the Swedes and the army of nobles advanced on Helsingborg. An army consisting of residents of Lübeck and Malmø under Jørgen Kock was entrenched outside of the castle. In a decisive moment, Tyge Krabbe suddenly had the castle's cannons open fire against its defenders, after which he opened the castle to the Swedes, who set fire to Helsingborg and reduced the town to ashes. With that, Denmark east of the Sound was lost for Count Christoffer.
After the victory at Aalborg, Rantzau brought his troops to Funen. On 11 June 1535, they fought the Battle of Øksnebjerg, where the rest of Count Christoffer's army was decisively defeated. Both Copenhagen and Malmø were able to hold out until 1536, when they were forced to capitulate after several months' siege. With this, the Count's Feud was officially over.[12]
The aftermath
In the aftermath of the feud, the nobles regrouped and healed the rifts the usual way, through inter-marriage. One of the most powerful among the Danish nobility in Skåne at this time was the Bille family, who were tied through blood relations to seven of the eight Catholic bishops of Denmark. The Billes also had six family members on the Council of the Realm, and owned castles throughout Denmark and Norway.
In order to keep the family's powerful position, in spite of the religious affiliation with the Catholic faith, Claus Bille, of Stockholm Bloodbath fame, second cousin to Gustav Vasa, protected the family by forming a political alliance through marriage with the Brahe family, another powerful Scanian family among the Danish nobility at this time. The Brahe family was one of the first among the nobility to convert to Lutheranism.
Claus Bille gave his 18-year-old daughter Beate in marriage to Otte Brahe, and became a grandfather in 1546 to the perhaps most famous Scanian of the era, the astronomer Tyge Brahe, better known as Tycho Brahe. Tycho Brahe's paternal grandfather, who he was named after, Tyge Brahe of Tosterup in eastern Skåne, was killed 7 September 1523 during the siege of Malmø, fighting for Frederick I. Axel Brahe, the brother of the older Tyge Brahe, served as governor of Scania for a long period, and was one of the first to convert to Lutheranism.
In contrast, the consequences of the peasant uprising cost all parties dearly. Many were forced to purchase their lives with great gifts both to the king and to the nobles. The dissatisfactions of the peasants, which had culminated in the uprising of the Count's Feud, were only made worse, as the nobility began to stick together even more after this incident. Christian III's rule, ushered in by this war, saw the rise of royal absolutism in Denmark, and, with it, greater repression of the peasant classes.
Another consequence of the feud was that Christian III successfully orchestrated an invasion of Norway in 1537, and incorporated the country as a puppet kingdomunder Denmark, instead of an equal kingdom as it was in the Kalmar Union. The Catholic clergy in Norway, which was mainly Norwegian, were replaced by priests under Christian III organization and control.
An important consequence not sufficiently appreciated by Danes at the time was the introduction of a Swedish army into Skåne. Though in this case the Swedes came at the invitation of a Danish king to help subdue his rebellious subjects and duly handed over to the king the territory which they conquered, it had a clear effect of whetting Swedish appetite to gain the territory for themselves, which was manifested in a long series of subsequent wars culminating with the ultimate cessation to Sweden in 1658.
List of battles
Battle of Svenstrup – 16 October 1534
Storming of Aalborg – 18 December 1534
Battle of Helsingborg (Kernen) – 12 January 1535
Battle of Øksnebjerg – 11 June 1535
Siege of Copenhagen (1535-1535) — 29 July 1535- 14 February 1536
The science fiction novel The Corridors of Time by Poul Anderson— an American of Danish origin, whose work often includes themes from Danish and Scandinavian history— includes a vivid description of Jutland in the immediate aftermath of the Count's Feud and the continuing struggle by hunted diehard rebels, as seen by a time-traveller from the 20th century.
Christian II was a Scandinavian monarch under the Kalmar Union who reigned as King of Denmark and Norway, from 1513 until 1523, and Sweden from 1520 until 1521. From 1513 to 1523, he was concurrently Duke of Schleswig and Holstein in joint rule with his uncle Frederick.
Christian III reigned as King of Denmark from 1534 and King of Norway from 1537 until his death in 1559. During his reign, Christian formed close ties between the church and the crown. He established Lutheranism as the state religion within his realms as part of the Protestant Reformation, and was the first King of Denmark-Norway.
Frederick I was King of Denmark and Norway. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over Denmark and Norway, when subsequent monarchs embraced Lutheranism after the Protestant Reformation. As king of Norway, Frederick is most remarkable in never having visited the country and was never crowned as such. Therefore, he was styled King of Denmark, the Vends and the Goths, elected King of Norway. Frederick's reign began the enduring tradition of calling kings of Denmark alternatively by the names Christian and Frederick.
Christopher of Bavaria was King of Denmark, Sweden (1441–48) and Norway (1442–48) during the era of the Kalmar Union.
Valdemar IV Atterdag, Valdemar Christoffersen or Waldemar was King of Denmark from 1340 to 1375. He is mostly known for his reunion of Denmark after the bankruptcy and mortgaging of the country to finance wars under previous rulers.
For hundreds of years up until the 18th century, the history of the province of Scania was marked by the struggle between the two Scandinavian kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden over the hegemony in the Baltic area.
The Swedish War of Liberation, also known as Gustav Vasa's Rebellion and the Swedish War of Secession, was a significant historical event in Sweden. Gustav Vasa, a nobleman, led a rebellion and civil war against King Christian II. The war resulted in the deposition of King Christian II from the throne of Sweden, effectively ending the Kalmar Union that had united Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. This conflict played a crucial role in shaping Sweden's national identity and history.
Peder Skram was a Danish Admiral who has been described as a naval hero.
Christopher, Count of Oldenburg was German count and regent in eastern Denmark between 1534–36 during the Count's Feud which was named after him.
Klemen Andersen "Skipper" Clement was a Danish merchant, captain, privateer who led a peasant rebellion against the Jutlandish gentry that was part of the Count's Feud civil war.
Johan Rantzau was a German-Danish field marshal and statesman known for his role in the Count's Feud. His military leadership ensured the succession of Christian III to the throne, which brought about the Reformation in Denmark.
The Military timeline of Denmark is centered around an involvement in wars in Northern Europe since 793 and, recently, elsewhere.
The Battle of Helsingborg was the last major engagement of the Great Northern War to take place on Swedish soil. It resulted in a decisive victory of a Swedish force of 14,000 men under the command of Magnus Stenbock against a Danish force of equal strength under the command of Jørgen Rantzau, ensuring that Denmark's final effort to regain the Scanian territories that it had lost to Sweden in 1658 failed. The battle was fought on 10 March 1710 in the province of Scania, just outside the city of Helsingborg, and directly on the Ringstorp heights just north-east of the city.
The election of Christian III as king of Denmark on 4 July 1534 was a landmark event for all of Denmark and also Norway. It took place in St. Søren's Church in the town of Rye in eastern Jutland, where the Jutlandic nobility elected Prince Christian, son of King Frederick I and Duke of Schleswig and Holsten, as king. This brought about the Count's Feud and later also led to the implementation of the Protestant Reformation in Denmark and Norway.
During the Reformation, the territories ruled by the Danish-based House of Oldenburg converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism. After the break-up of the Kalmar Union in 1521/1523, these realms included the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway and the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, whereby Denmark also extended over today's Gotland and Øsel in Estonia.
The Battle of Bornholm was a naval engagement that took place in June 1535. The conflict saw Lübeck and the Hanseatic League engaged against the forces of Sweden, Prussia, Holstein, and Denmark. The Battle of Bornholm was part of the larger Count's Feud.
Birgitte "Brita" Scheel (1638–1699), was a Danish noblewoman who married a Danish nobleman who became Swedish with the annexation of Denmark's eastern provinces. For that reason, Birgitte belongs both to Danish and Swedish history, and her family lives on in the now Swedish province of Scania (Skåne).
Görvel Fadersdotter (Sparre) was a Swedish noblewoman and county administrator. She was a major landowner in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
Events from the 1530s in Denmark.
The Swedification of Scania refers to the process in which the former Danish province of Scania was culturally and linguistically integrated and made into a part of the Swedish Empire, in the context of 17th century Swedish expansion within Scandinavia. Today, more than 300 years later, Scania is the southernmost part of Sweden.
References
↑ Norwegian Catholic nobles supported Christian II.
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Catholics under Christian II 
Protestants under Christian III 
Skipper Clement 
Christopher of Oldenburg 
Peder Skram 
Gustav I Vasa 
Måns Some 
Johan Pein 
