Ingria, 1520

Shortly after their victory against Muscovy, large swathes of Ingria and land around lake Ladoga was annexed to the Livonian Confederation and the Kingdom of Sweden. While establishing their rule over the annexed areas, both sovereigns decreed that land should be stripped from the Muscovite Estates and Orthodox Churches should be immediately repurposed into Catholic Churches. At least the King of Sweden abolished serfdom while he was at it.

Regardless, the peasants of the region had overlooked that kindness now that Orthodox communion had been denied to them. The Livonians and Swedish had given them the option to convert, but this was taken up by precious few (<5%) of the estates and population. They had decided that harsher measures would need to be taken against their new overlords. The Orthodox in Swedish Ingria quietly but efficiently gathered and organized support, launching a rebellion in late February. The rebellion spread far beyond the wildest Swedish nightmares (100) and quickly drove the Swedish out of nearly all of their annexations. The Livonian portion of the rebellion did not manage the same success on their own, but the Swedish rebellion did manage to spread over the border. To the dismay of the Mayor of Riga, even the fledgling settlement of Sankt Rolandsburg, where the Orthodox were treated with tolerance, was swept up in this wave of rebellion by the emboldened rebels.

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