Denmark's rigsraad (state council), dominated by the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nobility, decides to govern temporarily without a king following the death of King Frederick in 1533, rather than to accept a Lutheran partisan from the ranks of the burghers, who have the support of the Refprmist peasantry.

Danish rebels, allied with the aggressive Hanseatic mercantile city of Lübeck, seek to restore Christian II, the deposed and imprisoned Danish king, and to bring Danish Copenhagen and Swedish Malmö into the Hanseatic League.

Leading Jutland nobles and bishops support Frederick’ eldest son and designated successor, thirty-year-old Christian, the Lutheran-educated Duke of Holstein, in his military campaign against Count Christopher of Oldenburg, commander of the Lübeck and Danish forces that favor the restoration of Christian II.