Everything about Gustav Iii Of Sweden totally explained
Gustav III (–
29 March 1792) was
King of Sweden from 1771 until his death. He was the eldest son of King
Adolf Frederick of Sweden and
Louisa Ulrika of Prussia, sister of
Frederick the Great.
As he opposed the
parliamentarian reforms that had been worked out before his reign, in the
Age of Liberty, and as he spent high amounts on things that pleased him, he was controversial. To distract attention from this, he tried to expand Sweden's borders through a
war against Russia, but the attempt was unsuccessful. In the end, Gustav was assassinated by a conspiracy of noblemen.
Gustav III was a benefactor of arts and literature. He founded several academies, among them the
Swedish Academy, and had the
Royal Swedish Opera built.
Royal title
Gustav III was known in Sweden and abroad by his Royal Titles, or styles. These were;
We Gustav by the Grace of God of the Swedes, the Goths and the Vends King, Grand Duke of Finland, Duke of Pomerania, Prince of Rügen and Lord of Wismar, Heir to Norway and Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, Stormarn and Ditmarsken, Count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, etc. etc.
Education
Gustav was educated under the care of two governors who were amongst the most eminent Swedish statesmen of the day,
Carl Gustaf Tessin and
Carl Fredrik Scheffer; but he owed most perhaps to the poet and historian
Olof von Dalin.
The interference of the state with his education, when he was quite a child was however doubly harmful, as his parents taught him to despise the preceptors imposed upon him by the
Estates of the Realm, and the atmosphere of intrigue and duplicity in which he grew up made him precociously experienced in the art of dissimulation.
But even his most hostile teachers were amazed by the alliance of his natural gifts, and, while still a boy, he possessed that charm of manner which was to make him so fascinating and so dangerous in later life, coupled with the strong dramatic instinct which won for him his honourable place in Swedish literature.
On the whole, Gustav can't be said to have been well educated, but he read very widely; there was scarcely a
French author of his day with whose works he wasn't intimately acquainted; while his enthusiasm for the new French ideas of
enlightenment was as sincere as, if more critical than, his mother's.
Marriage
On
November 4,
1766, Gustav married
Sophia Magdalena, daughter of
Frederick V of Denmark. The match was an unhappy one, owing partly to incompatibility of temper; but still more to the mischievous interference of the jealous queen-mother. The marriage produced two children: Crown Prince
Gustav Adolf (1778-1837), and Prince
Carl Gustav, Duke of Småland (1782-1783). The conception of the children was difficult, and his own mother claimed that he wasn't the father of his son and heir. It was rumored that he was homosexual. Evidence of this is found in the close personal relationships he formed with two of his courtiers,
Count Axel von Fersen and
Baron Gustav Armfelt.
Politics of an Heir Apparent
Gustav first intervened actively in politics in 1768, when he compelled the dominant
Cap faction to summon an extraordinary
diet from which he hoped for the reform of the
constitution in a monarchical direction. But the victorious
Hat party refused to redeem the pledges which they'd given before the elections. "That we should have lost the constitutional battle doesn't 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."
He was an enthusiast of Sweden's national history, and proudly held in memory that he descended, through his paternal grandmother, from the
House of Vasa: from king
Gustav I of Sweden and from a sister of
Charles X Gustav of Sweden.
From
4 February to
25 March 1771, Gustav was in
Paris, where he carried both the court and the city by storm. The 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
duc de Choiseul, had 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; and the
comte de Vergennes, one of the great names of French diplomacy, was transferred from
Constantinople to
Stockholm.
On his way home Gustav paid a short visit to his uncle,
Frederick the Great, at
Potsdam. Frederick bluntly informed his nephew that, in concert with
Russia and
Denmark, he'd guaranteed the integrity of the existing Swedish constitution, and significantly advised the young monarch to play the part of mediator and abstain from violence.
Revolution
On his return to Sweden Gustav III tried to mediate between the bitterly divided Hats and Caps.
On
21 June 1771, he opened his first
Riksdag of the Estates (parliament) with a speech which aroused powerful emotions. It was the first time for 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 of the factions being equal to the puniest act of self-denial.
The subsequent attempts of the dominant Caps to reduce him to a
roi fainéant (a powerless king), encouraged him to consider a revolution.
Under the sway of the Cap faction, Sweden seemed threatened with falling prey to Russia. It appeared on the point of being absorbed in that "Northern System" which the Russian vice-chancellor, Count
Nikita Panin, strove to bring about. It seemed that only a swift and sudden
coup d'état could preserve Sweden's independence.
At this juncture Gustav III was approached by
Jacob Magnus Sprengtporten, a Finnish nobleman, who had incurred the enmity of the Caps, with the project of a revolution. He undertook to seize the fortress of
Sveaborg by a
coup de main, and once Finland was secured, to embark for Sweden, join up with the king and his friends near
Stockholm, and force the
estates to accept a new constitution from the untrammelled king.
The plotters were at this juncture reinforced by
Johan Christopher Toll, also a victim of Cap oppression. Toll proposed to raise a second revolt in the province of
Scania, and to secure the southern fortress of
Kristianstad. After some debate, it was finally arranged that, a few days after the Finnish revolt had begun, Kristianstad should openly declare against the government.
Duke Charles (Karl), the eldest of the king's brothers, would thereupon be forced to hastily mobilize the garrisons of all the southern fortresses, for the ostensible purpose of crushing the revolt at Kristianstad; but on arriving before the fortress he was to make common cause with the rebels, and march upon the capital from the south, while Sprengtporten attacked it simultaneously from the east.
On
6 August 1772 Toll succeeded, by sheer bluff, in winning the fortress of Kristianstad. On
August 16 Sprengtporten succeeded in surprising Sveaborg. But contrary winds prevented him from crossing to Stockholm, and in the meanwhile events had occurred which made his presence there unnecessary.
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