Hans 1483-1513
Hans 1483-1513
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Hans
was the son of Christian I and Dorothea. He was elected King of Denmark
in 1482 and King of Norway in 1483, after signing the union treaty that
was intended to guarantee equality between the two states. In this treaty,
the nobility had even managed to secure the inclusion of an "insurrection
paragraph" that gave the king's subjects the right to rise up against the
king and depose him if they judged his rule to be unjust.
In Sweden, Sten Sture succeeded in preventing Sweden from entering the proposed union. However, he was deposed by the Swedish National Council in 1497, and when Hans led an army into the country Hans was taken as king. Three years later, Hans suffered an unexpected defeat at the hands of the small peasant republic of Dithmarschen on the northern coast of Holstein, Germany. This defeat encouraged Hans's enemies in Sweden to renew their efforts, and in an uprising the following year, Hans lost Sweden. The war with Sweden continued, with occasional interludes, from the uprising in 1501 until 1512. Hans renewed the Hanseatic privileges for one year at a time only. Furthermore, he encouraged Dutch and English traders to compete with the Hanseatic merchants by granting them a similar freedom to sail to Norway and Denmark. The king had a good hand with the state finances, and established the Danish-Norwegian navy. This navy inflicted great losses on the Hanseatic merchants in a conflict that lasted from 1502 to 1512. The navy became an important force in northern Europe, strengthening the king's authority at the expense of the power of the nobility and the church. To ensure sovereignty in his territory, Hans sent his son, Christian, to Norway as governor in 1506. Hans died in 1513.
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