Ronneby Bloodbath ( Swedish: ''Ronneby blodbad'') was a massacre conducted by the Swedish army in the then-Danish city of

Ronneby Ronneby is a locality and the seat of Ronneby Municipality in Blekinge County, Sweden with 12,029 inhabitants in 2010. Ronneby is regarded as the heart of "the Garden of Sweden", and in 2005 the park "Brunnsparken" in Ronneby was voted Sweden's m ...

Blekinge Blekinge (, old da, Bleking) is one of the traditional Swedish provinces (), situated in the southern coast of the geographic region of Götaland, in southern Sweden. It borders Småland, Scania and the Baltic Sea. It is the country's second ...

during the Northern Seven Years' War on Monday, 4 September 1564.

Campaign

During the Swedish invasion of the Danish province of Blekinge, the soldiers in the far back of the marching Swedish army were taken captive by the locals and hanged from the trees in the country side. In retaliation, King

Eric XIV of Sweden Eric XIV ( sv, Erik XIV; 13 December 153326 February 1577) was King of Sweden from 1560 until he was deposed in 1569. Eric XIV was the eldest son of Gustav I (1496–1560) and Catherine of Saxe-Lauenburg (1513–1535). He was also ruler of Es ...

gave the order that all lands between Lyckeby and Ronneby were free to pillage, killing and burning by the army. On 3 September 1564, the Swedish army reached the Danish city of Ronneby, which was at that point a flourishing and wealthy merchant city. The city lacked proper defense fortifications or a garrison, but likely expected to be given assistance from the Danish troops, which were positioned some miles away. The city refused to surrender to the Swedes despite been given two opportunities to do so. When the Swedish army stormed the city early on the morning of 4 September, they quickly pulled down the temporary palisade which was its only defense and, with no soldiers defending it, pillaged the city and massacred its inhabitants in accordance with the order of

scorched earth A scorched-earth policy is a military strategy that aims to destroy anything that might be useful to the enemy. Any assets that could be used by the enemy may be targeted, which usually includes obvious weapons, transport vehicles, communi ...

issued by Eric XIV. Eric XIV wrote of the storming of the city: "The water in the

iverwas red by the blood from dead bodies. And were the enemies so meek, that one did not bother much with them, but cut them down as a horde of

wild boar The wild boar (''Sus scrofa''), also known as the wild swine, common wild pig, Eurasian wild pig, or simply wild pig, is a suid native to much of Eurasia and North Africa, and has been introduced to the Americas and Oceania. The species is ...

s, and spared no one but killed all that was there, so that in the city there were more than two thousand men killed by their throats aside for some women and children, whom the miserable Finns beat to death".Albert Vejde: "Erik XIV och ödeläggelsen av Ronneby 1564" (Scandia, bind 2 (1929), nr 1; s. 54-64) A great fortune was taken as war price including silver and gold, household goods, wine and salt and many more goods stored by the city merchants, and much of the city was burned down during the pillage.

Aftermath

When the pillage was over, Eric XIV gave the order that the surviving inhabitants were to be gathered and resettled in Sweden proper. This has been interpreted that he intended to keep the province of Blekinge, and populate it with loyal Swedish and Finnish colonists. This plan, however, was never put in action because of the swift change of the war situation shortly after. Whether Eric XIV was actually present in Ronneby during the bloodbath is unknown; the day after, he is known to have been in Lyckå, and the day after that, he was already on his way back to Kalmar. The Ronneby Bloodbath was frequently used as propaganda by both Sweden and Denmark-Norway during the war: the Swedes to demonstrate a well deserved victory by Eric XIV, and the Danes to gather more resistance toward the Swedes among by pointing to the cruelty during the Ronneby Bloodbath. In practice, the bloodbath in Ronneby was not unusual in accordance with contemporary war custom, where a city taken by storm was left to be pillaged by the conquerors. Many leading citizens of the city are known to have survived, among them its mayor, Birger Jonsson.

Campaign

Aftermath

References

Further reading