Duke Magnus of Holstein (26 August 1540 – 18 March 1583) was a Prince of Denmark, the son of King Christian III of Denmark and Queen Dorothea of Saxe-Lauenburg, brother of Frederick II of Denmark. Magnus was born in Christiansborg Palace in Copenhagen to the House of Oldenburg.
In 1559 the Bishop of Ösel-Wiek in Old Livonia sold his lands to King Frederick II of Denmark for 30,000 thalers. The Danish king gave the territory to his younger brother Magnus who landed on Saaremaa with an army in 1560 [1]
During the Livonian war on June 10 1570 Duke Magnus of Holstein arrived in Moscow where he was crowned as King of Livonia by Ivan IV. Magnus took the oath of allegiance to Ivan as his overlord and received from the corresponding charter for the vassal kingdom of Livonia in what Ivan termed his patrimony. The treaty between Magnus and Ivan IV was signed by an oprichnik and by a member of the zemskii administration, the diak V. Shchelkalov.The territories of the new kingdom still had to be conquered. The new king Magnus of Livonia left Moscow with 20000 Russian soldiers on the conquest of Swedish controlled Reval. Ivan’s hope of the support of Frederick II of Denmark, the older brother of Magnus, failed. By the end of March 1571 Magnus gave up the struggle for Reval and abandoned the siege.[2]
In 1577 having lost Ivan’s favor and getting no support from his brother, Magnus called on the Livonian nobility to rally to him in a struggle against foreign occupation. He was attacked by Ivan’s forces and taken prisoner. On his release he renounced his royal title. [3] Magnus spent the last six years of his life at the castle of Pliten in Courland where he died as a pensioner of the Polish crown.[4]
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