The Absolutism

Absolutism in Denmark was a result of the lengthy political crisis and the acute state of emergency which resulted from the last of the Karl Gustav wars against Sweden in 1657-60. Despite his weak position when elected king in 1648, Frederik III's political skill allowed him to succeed in ousting two of his main adversaries in the Rigsråd as early as the 1650s. The two were the seneschal Corfitz Ulfeldt and the governor of Norway Hannibal Sehested, who were both married to Frederik's half-sisters. The king's heroic conduct during the siege of Copenhagen in the winter of 1659 had, in addition, made him widely popular at a time when the nobility and the Rigsråd were increasingly being discredited. In October 1660, these events led the estates - the nobility only reluctantly - to create a hereditary monarchy. The new system meant that the king was no longer dependent on the Rigsråd, and he immediately used his new power to introduce absolutism, which was temporarily established on 10 January 1661 in the Hereditary Monarchy Act before being fully set out in Kongeloven (the King's Law) of 1665, the basic law of Danish absolutism.