In the 17th century, under a succession of outstandingly able soldier kings, Sweden had been a great power but after the end of the reign of Karl XII ,the country had become a by-word for weak government, corruption and impotence.
Gustav III, was a vocal opponent of what he saw as the abuse of political privileges ,seized by the nobility as a result.
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In many ways, while others in the age of Enlightenment were trying to push the clock forward, Gustav III was struggling to force it back.
Yet, he was the first formally neutral head of state in the world to recognize the United States, during its war for independence from Great Britain.
Sweden established colonies in the Americas in the mid-17th century, including the colony of New Sweden (1638–1655)
On the Delaware River in what is now Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, as well as two possessions in the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th centuries.
Swedish military forces were also engaged in the thousand, on the side of the colonists, largely through the French expedition force, a contribution which earned the establishment of the Swedish West Indies.
Gustav III was the oldest son of Adolf Frederick
The king was regarded, both during his time and even today , as dependent on others, a weak ruler and lacking of any talents.
The king most known for eating himself to death after having consumed a meal consisting of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, kippers and champagne, which was topped off with 14 servings of his favourite dessert: semla served in a bowl of hot milk (known as “hetvägg”).
But he was allegedly also a good husband, a caring father, and a gentle master to his servants.
His favorite pastime was to make snuffboxes, which he allegedly spent a great deal of time doing.
State interference with Gustav’s education, as a young child caused significant political disruptions within the royal family.
Gustav’s parents taught him to despise the governors imposed upon him by the Swedish Riksdag (parliament), and the atmosphere of intrigue and duplicity, in which he grew up, made him precociously experienced, in the art of dissimulation.
Moreover, he already possessed, as a young boy, the charm of manner that was to make him so fascinating and so dangerous and in later life, coupled with a strong dramatic instinct which won him an honorable place in Swedish literature.
On the whole, Gustav cannot be said to have been well educated, but he read widely;
There was scarcely a French author of his day, with whose works he was not intimately acquainted.
An admirer of Voltaire, Gustav legalized Catholic and Jewish presence,
in Sweden and enacted wide-ranging reforms aimed at economic liberalism,
social reform and the restriction, in many cases, of torture and capital punishment.
His enthusiasm for the ideas of the French enlightenment was as sincere as that of his mother, though more critical.
Gustav first intervened actively in politics, during the December Crisis (1768), when he compelled the dominant faction, which mainly represented the interests of the peasantry and clergy, to summon an extraordinary diet
(In politics, a diet is a formal deliberative assembly)
1768 Sweeden
from which he hoped for the reform of the constitution in way that would increase the power of the crown, however it was not successful.
“That we should have lost the constitutional battle does not distress us so much”, wrote Gustav, in the bitterness of his heart; “but what does dismay me is to see my poor nation so sunk in corruption as to place its own felicity in absolute anarchy.”
Gustav found greater success abroad.
In 1771, Gustav was in Paris, and he carried both the court and the city by storm.
Poets and the philosophers paid him enthusiastic homage, and distinguished women testified to his superlative merits.
With many of them he maintained a lifelong correspondence.
His visit to the French capital was, however, no mere pleasure trip; it was also a political mission.
Confidential agents from the Swedish court had already prepared the way for him, and the Duke of Choiseul, the retired Chief Minister, resolved to discuss with him the best method of bringing about a revolution in France’s ally, Sweden.
Before he departed, the French government undertook to pay the outstanding subsidies to Sweden unconditionally, at the rate of one and a half million livres annually.
Count de Vergennes, one of the most prominent French diplomats, was transferred from Constantinople to Stockholm.
On his way home, Gustav paid a short visit to his uncle, Frederick the Great.
Frederick, bluntly informed his nephew that, in concert with Russia and Denmark, he guaranteed the integrity of the existing Swedish constitution; and advised the young monarch to play the part of mediator and abstain from violence.
On his return to Sweden, Gustav III tried to mediate between the bitterly divided parties.
On 21 June 1771, he opened his first parliament with a speech that aroused powerful emotions.
It was the first time in more than a century that a Swedish king, had addressed a Swedish Riksdag, in its native tongue.
He stressed the need for all parties to sacrifice their animosities for the common good, and volunteered, as “the first citizen of a free people,” to be the mediator between the contending factions.
A composition committee was actually formed, but it proved illusory from the first: the patriotism of neither faction was sufficient for the smallest act of self-denial.
The subsequent attempts of the dominant party, to reduce him to a roi fainéant (a powerless king),encouraged him to consider a coup d’état ( a sudden, violent overthrow of an existing government by a small group), which is how he came to power.
The entire revolutionary enterprise was underwritten with loans procured from the French financier Nicolas Beaujon, arranged by the Swedish ambassador to France, Count Creutz.
On an evening in August, all the officers he thought he could trust, received secret instructions to assemble in the great square facing the arsenal the following morning.
At ten o’clock on 19 August, Gustav mounted his horse and rode to the arsenal.
On the way, his adherents joined him in little groups, as if by accident, so that by the time he reached his destination he had about 200 officers in his suite.
After parade he re-conducted them to the guard-room in the north western wing of the palace, where the Guard of Honour had its headquarters, and unfolded his plans to them. He told the assembled officers,
- “If you follow me, just like your ancestors followed Gustav Vasa and Gustavus Adolphus, then I will risk my life and blood for you and the salvation of the fatherland!”
A young ensign then spoke up:
- “We are willing to sacrifice both blood and life in Your Majesty’s service!”
Gustav then dictated a new oath of allegiance, and everyone signed it without hesitation.
It absolved them from their allegiance to the estates, and bound them solely to obey “their lawful king, Gustav III“.
Meanwhile, the Privy Council and its president, Rudbeck, had been arrested and the fleet secured.
Then Gustav made a tour of the city and received by enthusiastic crowds, who hailed him as a deliverer, heralds proclaimed the estates were to meet at the palace on the following day; every deputy absenting himself would be regarded as the enemy of his country and his king -which ended the Age of Liberty.
A new constitution, the Instrument of Government, was read to the estates and unanimously accepted by them.
As the King of Sweden, Gustav III reinstated an absolute monarchy with himself as autocrat and spent considerable money on anything that pleased him.
Public funds were dished on controversial ventures, as well as military attempts to seize Norway with Russian aid, then a series of attempts to re-capture the Swedish Baltic dominions lost through a failed war.
The much-praised Freedom of the Press Act was severely curtailed, by amendments, and effectively extinguished independent media.
Gustav took an active part in every department of business, but relied heavily on extra-official counselors of his own choosing, rather than the Privy Council of Sweden.
The Riksdag of 1786 marks a turning-point in Gustav’s history.
Henceforth he showed a growing determination to rule without a parliament, a cautious and gradual passage from semi-constitutionalism to semi-absolutism.
At the same time, his foreign policy became more adventurous.
At first he sought to gain Russian support to acquire Norway from Denmark.
When Catherine the Great refused to abandon her ally Denmark, Gustav declared war on Russia in June 1788, while it was deeply engaged in a war with the Ottoman Empire to the south.
In embarking on a war of aggression without the consent of the estates, he violated his own constitution of 1772, which led to a serious mutiny, the Anjala Conspiracy, among aristocratic officers in Finland.
Denmark declared war in support of its Russian ally, but was soon neutralized through British and Prussian diplomacy.
After dining, he left his rooms to take part in the masquerade and went down to join the revellers.
Although everyone was supposed to be anonymous at the ball, Gustav gave himself away by making sure his outfit was nicer than everyone – a fatal error.
The king was easily spotted, mainly due to the star of the Royal Order of the Seraphim that glowed in silver on his cape.
Soon after entering, he surrounded by a party of men, who hid their identities behind black masks.
The conspirators accosted him in French with the words:
- Ah! Je suis blessé, tirez-moi d’ici et arrêtez-le (“Ah! I am wounded, take me away from here and arrest him!”)
that’s amazing! i did not know that
Giuseppe Verdi composed an opera about this assassination, “The Masked Ball”, but the only way he could get it past the censors was to change the setting from Stockholm to Boston (!) and change the king to a British colonial administrator. It was a no-no, at the time, to show a king (any king) being assassinated on stage.