Christopher, Count of Oldenburg
Count of Oldenburg
1504 CE to 1566 CE
Christopher, Count of Oldenburg (Christoffer; c. 1504 – 4 August 1566) is German count and regent in Eastern Denmark during the Count's War (or The Count's Feud), 1534–36, which is named after him.
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The Great Crossroads
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The State Council (Danish: Rigsråd) on Zealand, led by the Catholic bishops, takes control of the country and refuses to recognize the election of Christian III, a staunch Lutheran.
The regents fear Christian's zeal for Luther's ideas will tip the balance and disenfranchise Catholics—both peasants and nobles.
The State Council encourages Count Christopher of Oldenburg to become Regent of Denmark.
Christian III quickly raises an army to enforce his election, including mercenary troops from Germany.
Count Christopher raises an army (including troops from Mecklenburg and Oldenburg and the Hanseatic League, especially Lűbeck) to restore his Catholic uncle King Christian II (deposed in 1523).
This results in a three-year civil war called the Count's Feud (Danish: Grevens Fejde)
Rebellion sweeps across Funen, Zealand and Skåne.
Christian III's army soundly defeats an army of Catholic nobles at Svenstrup on October 16, 1534.
Christian forces a truce with the Hanseatic League, which had sent troops to help Count Christopher.
Christian III's army, under Johan Rantzau, chases the rebels all the way back to Aalborg, then massacres over two thousand of them inside the city in December 1534.
The Protestants capture Skipper Clement (1534), and later execute him in 1536.
Christian III's mercenary troops put an end to Catholic hopes on Zealand, then Funen.
Skåne rebels go as far as proclaiming Christian II king again.
King Gustav Vasa of Sweden sends two separate armies to ravage Halland and Skåne into submission.
Besiegers finally starve the last hold-outs in the rebellion, Copenhagen and Malmø, into surrender in July 1536.
By the spring of 1536 Christian III has taken firm control.
Christian II, his reign in Denmark and Norway cut short in 1523 when his uncle deposed him and took the thrones as Frederick I, had then been exiled to the Netherlands, ruled by his brother-in-law, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.
After attempting to reclaim the thrones in 1531, he is arrested and held in captivity for the rest of his life, first in Sønderborg Castle on the island of Als in South Jutland, and afterwards at Kalundborg Castle.
Denmark's rigsraad (state council), dominated by the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nobility, decides to govern temporarily without a king following the death of King Frederick in 1533, rather than to accept a Lutheran partisan from the ranks of the burghers, who have the support of the Refprmist peasantry.
Danish rebels, allied with the aggressive Hanseatic mercantile city of Lübeck, seek to restore Christian II, the deposed and imprisoned Danish king, and to bring Danish Copenhagen and Swedish Malmö into the Hanseatic League.
Leading Jutland nobles and bishops support Frederick’ eldest son and designated successor, thirty-year-old Christian, the Lutheran-educated Duke of Holstein, in his military campaign against Count Christopher of Oldenburg, commander of the Lübeck and Danish forces that favor the restoration of Christian II.
Frederick I of Denmark, the younger son of Christian I, had in 1532 succeeded in capturing his deposed predecessor Christian II, who had tried to make a political comeback in Norway.
As King of Norway, Frederick is most remarkable in never having visited the country.
He has never been crowned King of Norway, and therefore styles himself King of Denmark, the Vends and the Goths, elected King of Norway.
Frederick dies at the age of sixty-one on April 10, 1533, in Gottorf Castle, Schleswig, and is buried in Schleswig Cathedral.
The Danish rigsraad, although dominated by Roman Catholic nobles, elects as their king Duke Christian of Holstein, a zealous Protestant and the eldest son of the late King Frederick of Denmark and Norway.
Christian, opposed by half of Denmark, takes the throne as King Christian III in 1534 .
The forces of Count Christopher of Oldenburg, from 15333 waging the the so-called Count’s War against Danish king Christian III, invade and plunder Holstein, blockade and capture Copenhagen, and later take Zealand …
…Malmö, and Skane.
Duke Christian of Gottorp, his father Frederick I having died the previous year, is in 1534 proclaimed King of the Kalmar Union under the name Christian III at an assembly in Rye, a town in eastern Jutland.
Christopher of Oldenburg organizes 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 rise up, together with cities such as Copenhagen and Malmø.
Count Christopher has the support of most of Zealand, Scania, the Hanseatic League, and the small farmers of northern Jutland and Funen.
Christian III finds his support among the nobles of Jutland.
The Danish State Council (rigsraad), dominated by the still Catholic bishops and nobles, refuses to accept Frederick’s son Duke Christian as king and turns to Count Christopher of Oldenburg in order to restore Christian II to the Danish throne (Christian II had supported both the New and Old Faiths at various times).
In opposition to King Christian III, Count Christopher is proclaimed regent at the Ringsted Assembly (landsting), and at …