History of Finland III: The legal and economic weakening of the position of the people

This is the third part of a blog series in which I go through the significant phases of Finnish history. In the second post, I described how Finland became a part of an early modern state, where the power was concentrated in the hands of the king, who also had the means to use it.

After Gustav Vasa, there was a long power struggle in Sweden. First, the throne was inherited by Eric XIV, then John III, and his son Sigismund. Finally, after various twists and turns, Dude Charles, i.e., Charles IX, came to power. During this power struggle, the Swedish nobility tactfully maneuvered between the different parties and thus managed to improve its position, which was also strengthened by the wars that Sweden was fighting at the same time - after all, the nobility was ultimately a military class.

The longest of the Swedish wars was the war between Sweden and Russia at the end of the 16th century, which was preceded by a heated exchange of words. This 25-year-long conflict, known as the "Long Wrath," ended with the Treaty of Tyavzino in 1595, in which victorious Sweden's power expanded to include areas from the depths of the Gulf of Finland to the desolate borders of Lapland.

Sweden fought the war using a mercenary army, as was customary at the time, and the maintenance of this so-called castle camp was a burden on the peasants. There were widespread abuses associated with this, resulting in people having to sell their valuables and even their land due to financial difficulties. Thus, the wealth gap between the estates grew rapidly.

After the Treaty of Tyavzino, the peasants assumed that their burdens would end, but this did not happen. Instead, Klaus Fleming, the governor appointed by King Sigismund Vasa - who was staying in Poland - and effectively the dictator of Finland, kept his army ready. This provided the nobility and the wealthiest segment of the peasant population, the cavalry farmers, the opportunity to continue to increase their profits during peacetime as they had done during wartime by equipping the cavalry.

Since the maintenance of garrisons had severely impoverished ordinary peasants during the long war, the future seemed extremely bleak for them. This created a tremendous fear among the people of becoming tied to their estates as serfs, as had happened earlier in Central Europe.

As a result, Finland's first civil war, known as the "Cudgel War" erupted, and Fleming's cavalry brutally defeated the peasant armies: nearly 3,000 peasants were killed, a remarkably high number considering that there were less than 30,000 farms in Finland at the end of the 16th century. The outcome of the lost war was the formation of a class society, in which the legal and economic status of the common people was weak, and the position of the nobility was even stronger than before.

The original blog post in Finnish:
Kansan aseman oikeudellinen ja taloudellinen heikentyminen

All the blog posts in this series:
History of Finland I: How did Finland become culturally part of the West?
History of Finland II: From a hinterland of the Union into a modern state
History of Finland III: The legal and economic weakening of the position of the people
History of Finland IV: The bleakest time in Finnish history
History of Finland V: The pursuit of economic profit saved the country
History of Finland VI: Age of freedom and utility
History of Finland VII: The dictator of the era of Enlightenment promoted capitalist economy
History of Finland VIII: Joining of Finland to Russia led to an increase in crime
History of Finland IX: Enlightended dictator initiated economic growth
History of Finland X: The birth of Finnish identity
History of Finland XI: Finnish democracy and gender equality for women
History of Finland XII: Bloody civil war
History of Finland XIII: The far-right's rebellion
History of Finland XIV: The end of the first Finnish Republic
History of Finland XV: Paasikivi-Kekkonen doctrine
History of Finland XVI: Through rise and fall to a new kind of future