Unconquered nations

Originally posted by geomancer Here is an excerpt of the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_II_of_Denmark. It sounds like a conquest, but I would appreciate any correction of facts or interpretation:

Misinterpretation, Christian got himself made king of Sweden also, but Sweden wasn't in any way incorporated into Denmark. Everything has been said already. Nation-romantic history writing wants to have Gustav Vasa as a liberator who threw out the evil Danish persons. This myth was created initially by him though to cover the fact that he was the biggest oppressor of Swedish laws who faced more rebellions than any Union king. In reality it was yet another round in the pro-Union, anti-Union fight. For example, the government in Stockholm after Christian became king was entirely Swedish from the pro-Union party.

Originally posted by Omar al Hashim What about Russia? Has a non-Russian ever captured the Moscow-Novgorod region?

Russia, including Moscow, was conquered by the Mongols (or rather the Golden Horde, a blend of Mongol and Turkic peoples). One could argue that the Russians of Novgorod remained free during this time, but Novgorod was subsequently defeated by Ivan the Great and annexed to Moscow in 1478.

Nepal and Bhutan look like the strongest contenders to me.

Originally posted by Styrbiorn About as correct as saying Cromwell conquered England, or Franco conquered Spain, or Napoleon conquered France.

OK, I think I see your point: that Christian II was a descendant of Swedish kings as well as Danish kings, so he should not be considered a foreigner?

Again, from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_II_of_Denmark:

Christian descended, through both Valdemar I of Sweden and Magnus I of Sweden, from the Swedish Dynasty of Eric, and from Catherine, daughter of Inge I of Sweden, as well as from Ingrid Ylva, granddaughter of Sverker I of Sweden. His rival Gustav I of Sweden descended only from Sverker II of Sweden and the Dynasty of Sverker (who apparently did not descend from ancient Swedish kings). Christian's ancestry included almost all ancient Swedish kings.

Originally posted by geomancer OK, I think I see your point: that Christian II was a descendant of Swedish kings as well as Danish kings, so he should not be considered a foreigner?

More importantly there was no other king of Sweden than Christian at the time. He was forced to gather an army to go beat that faction of noblemen hostile to him, and who had taken controll of Sweden, into submission.

Sweden at the time was ruled by a string of Chancellors of the powerful Sture family. They didn't try to usurp royal power though, and the union king, Christian, was the only internationally recognised monarch of the place. Too bad for him it was a kingdom so unruly, he in fact had to invade it to assert his authority.

The invasion was also made in support of Christian's supporter, the Swedish Archbishop, who had been chucked out of the country and had one of his most important castles dismantled. That's part of the civil war bits of this conflict.

What might make this look like a honest conquest, is the fact that in order to pull it off Christian assembled what was an almost exclusively German mercenary army.

So you have a Dane for Union King, descended from various royal houses of Scandinavia, who simultaneously is the king of Denmark, Sweden-Finland and Norway. Only Sweden is in the hand of a bunch of great nobles opposing his authority, while others are his supporters, and he has to mount a full scale invasion to assert his rule over the place, to which end he hires German mercenaries.

So it was an invasion, but it wasn't a foreign conquest.

Edited by Joinville - 31-May-2007 at 02:21

vatican is not a nation....

Edited by the_oz - 31-May-2007 at 13:51

Originally posted by Jagiello The tatars ruled Moscow for e few centuries,the poles took it once(It's funny that Russia's national holiday is when the 300 starving and tired polish soldiers leaved Moscow ) and of course Napoleon took it....and burned it.

Edited by Sarmat12 - 01-Jun-2007 at 18:19

Originally posted by the_oz vatican is not a nation....

Originally posted by Henry_Ireton How about the Vatican. It's been blackmailed a couple of times and "moved" to Avignon but aside from that has done pretty well in the avoiding conquest stakes.

Err ... the Vatican was created by Mussolini, and has only been around a few decades.

You must be thinking of the Papal States, which are an entirely different beast altogether. They were conquered by the Lombards, made a pawn by their supposed liberators the Franks, declined even further into a state known as the pornocracy (no I'm not joking), collapsed, was conquered by Otto I, managed to reconstitute itself yet again, then was conquered once more by Napoleon, restored with the fall of Napoleon, collapsed again when Italian nationalism resulted in the declaration of a "Roman republic" in 1849, restored by the French, and then conquered again by the newly-constituted Kingdom of Italy in 1860. By the 1920s, when it was apparent that the Italians were never going to restore the Papal States, the Pope signed the Lateran Treaty with Mussolini's fascists, forever renouncing any claim to the Papal States but paving way for a concession in the form of the Vatican.

So yes, the papal territories you speak of have been conquered - countless times, in fact!

And before the humans around europe, there were neanderthals. There may of even been tribes that we are unaware in the other 'unconquered nations'. What Kurt is saying is that the TURKISH HEARTLAND OF ANATOLIA was never conquered.