Note (Back) — Chapter XXX

609. Political Development: the Revolution of 1660.—The governmental system with which Denmark emerged from the era of Napoleon was essentially that which had been in operation in the kingdom since the second half of the seventeenth century. Prior to a remarkable revolution which, in 1660, followed the conclusion of a costly war with Sweden, monarchy in Denmark was limited and almost uniformly weak. Through three hundred years the kings were elected by the Rigsrad, or senate, and the conditions of their tenure were such as to preclude both the independence of action and the accumulation of resources which is essential to absolutism. As early as 1282 the nobles were able to extort from the crown a haandfaestning, or charter, and almost every sovereign after that date was compelled, once at least during his reign, to make a grant of chartered privileges. To the Danehof, or national assembly, fell at times a goodly measure of authority, although eventually it was the Rigsrad that procured the supreme control of the state. The national assembly comprised the three estates of the nobles, the clergy, and the burgesses;[778] the senate was a purely aristocratic body.