One is reminded by Valdemar’s conquest of the hard terms that Pizarro made when he conquered the Peruvians. You remember that for the ransom of King Atahualpa he went into a great room, and drawing a red mark on the wall as high as he could reach he told the Peruvians that they must fill that room with gold as high as the red mark if they would release their king from bondage and save him from death.
King Valdemar did something of the same sort to the Visbyites, for he took the three biggest ale vats that he found in the city and commanded the people to fill them with gold and silver within three hours. So frightened were the inhabitants by his bloodthirsty cruelty that they obeyed, stripping themselves of their golden ornaments, rifling their churches and their treasure-houses, until the big vats were full to the brim.
But even this did not avail to save them from further rapine, for Valdemar made a clean sweep of all that was left and poor Visby was plundered by the rapacious troops of all her riches.
I should like to be able to tell you that I saw the bones of Valdemar Attardag safely encoffined where he could do no more harm, but the next best thing was to see the _Jungfrutornet_, or the “Maiden’s Tower,” where, according to tradition, the noble maid who opened the gates of Visby to the Danish king, whom she loved, was walled up alive. You need not waste much sympathy on this maiden, however, for I am told on good authority that she is a strictly mythical girl, and that her story was invented by the people of Visby to account for what many believed was a somewhat cowardly capitulation of the city to the Danes.
King Valdemar, however, must have had one or two redeeming traits of character, for he erected a great stone cross on the battlefield to commemorate the death of the eighteen hundred citizens whom he slew. The cross can still be seen, scarcely marred by the passage of these five hundred years, and the inscription on it is not a record of triumph so much as a memorial to the dead.
You have noticed, perhaps, that this letter is dated “June 24.” This date may not have any great significance for you, but it is a high day in Sweden, perhaps the most joyous of all the year, for it is Midsummer’s Day, the day without a night in many parts of this northern land.