Linköping

The bishops of Linköping ruled from a castle beside the cathedral, enlarged with a ring wall in the 1470s, and the last Catholic bishop left it only when the Reformation came. The town then became a stage for the kingdom's quarrels. In 1598 Duke Charles defeated his nephew King Sigismund in a battle at the bridge over the Stång just outside the town, a victory that opened the long Polish–Swedish war, and after a trial in 1600 five of the king's councillors were executed in Linköping, a reckoning remembered as the Linköping Bloodbath. A fire on 29 January 1700 destroyed almost the whole town, leaving standing only the castle, the cathedral and a few stone buildings.