CHAPTER XVII
ASSASSINATION OF GUSTAVUS THE THIRD OF SWEDEN
(March 17, 1792)
ON the seventeenth of March, 1792, Gustavus the Third, King of Sweden, was assassinated by Ankarström, a Swedish nobleman, and this crime caused a sensation throughout Europe, although the horrors of the French Revolution and the wholesale executions by the guillotine had made the world familiar with murder and bloodshed. This assassination was of a political character, and private revenge or other considerations had nothing whatever to do with it. But in order to understand fully the causes leading up to the tragedy, it will be necessary to refer to the condition of public affairs in Sweden during the period preceding the reign of Gustavus.
The continuous and costly wars of Charles the Twelfth had left Sweden in a terrible state of exhaustion and misery. A number of her most valuable provinces had been taken by Russia, and the domestic affairs of the country, its finances, industry and commerce were utterly ruined. Charles died during his invasion of Norway; it would really be more proper to say “was assassinated”; for, on the evening of the eleventh of December, 1718, while leaning against a parapet and looking at the soldiers throwing up the breastworks, he was struck down by a bullet, which could not have come from the enemy, in front of the fortress of Frederickshall. In spite of the very severe winter weather, Charles had insisted on laying siege to the strong fortress, and he paid for his obstinacy with his life.
When the news of his death reached Sweden, the nobility took advantage of it and of the unsettled question of the succession to the throne in order to recover those privileges and rights which it had lost through the genius and statesmanship of Charles the Eleventh, and which had not been restored to it during the reign of Charles the Twelfth. The Reichsrath was immediately reinstated in its old rights, and arrogated to itself the power of deciding the succession according to its own will and advantage. It coolly passed by the lawful heir, Charles Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, the son of Charles the Twelfth’s elder sister, and elected Frederick of Hesse-Cassel, who had married Charles the Twelfth’s younger sister; not, however, without having compelled the royal couple to renounce, both for themselves and for their heirs, all absolute power, and also to make a solemn promise that the Reichsrath should be reinstated in all its former rights and prerogatives, which made that Assembly actually co-regent of the kingdom. The Reichsrath was declared sovereign; it had seventeen members, and each member had, in the decision of public questions, one vote, and the King only two. It decided all questions of domestic and foreign policy arbitrarily, and controlled not only the legislative, but also the executive action of the government. The King was a mere figure-head, poorly salaried and of little influence. But this degradation of the crown was only one feature of the oligarchy established by the Reichsrath. It restored to the nobility all the domains and landed estates which had been appropriated by the crown during the preceding century, exempted them from taxation, conferred upon them the exclusive right of holding all the higher offices in the army, navy and civil service, and heaped all public burdens upon the lower classes of the people. The King, shorn of all power, was utterly helpless to prevent these wrongs. His timid protests were always met with a reminder that he had been elected to the throne only after having promised to reinstate and not to disturb the nobility in the enjoyment of their ancient rights. The Reichsrath also concluded treaties of peace with the powers upon which Charles the Twelfth had made war, and as the members negotiating these treaties looked out much more for their own advantage than for that of their country, Sweden was so badly crippled that it ceased being a great European power. That honor passed from Sweden to two other countries which up to that time had been considered Sweden’s inferiors in power and influence,—Russia and Prussia.
It was not long before the Reichsrath, whose members sold themselves to foreign rulers, was split up into different factions which fought bitterly for supremacy. One of these factions favored France and was regularly subsidized with French money, while the other faction was equally well subsidized with Russian money and followed blindly the dictates of the Czar and Czarina of Russia. The French faction was called “the party of the hats,” and the Russian faction was known as “the party of the caps.” These two factions fought each other most bitterly, each charging the other with almost any crime committed against divine and human law; and both were right in the charge, because both were equally guilty. At the beginning of the war of the Austrian succession, France wanted to prevent Russia from siding with Austria, and thought a war between Sweden and Russia would be the right thing to accomplish that object. The French Ambassador at Stockholm therefore ordered the “party of the hats” in the Reichsrath to declare war upon Russia, and a resolution to that effect prevailed against the violent and menacing protests of the “party of the caps.” In great haste a Swedish army was recruited to take the field against the Russians in Finland; but since all the money sent by the French government for the proper equipment of that army had disappeared in the pockets of the members of the Reichsrath, the army was so poorly equipped and its war-material was of such inferior quality that it could not hold the field against the well-armed and well-equipped Russians, and suffered defeat after defeat at their hands. The “caps” were jubilant over this discomfiture and humiliation of the “hats” and forced them into a treaty of peace with Russia, which was disgraceful to Sweden, but which would have been even more hurtful if the Russian Empress had not for personal reasons offered very mild terms of peace. But one of these terms was that Adolphus Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, whose father had been so shamefully cheated out of the Swedish succession in 1718, should be declared heir to the Swedish throne. The Reichsrath cheerfully accepted this condition, made all other concessions which the Russian Empress demanded, and ceded a part of Finland to the Russian crown. Peace between the two countries was restored by the treaty of Abo in 1743.
Conditions were not improved under the rule of the next King,—the said Adolphus Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, who ascended the throne in 1751. The new King had married the younger sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia, but he had so little influence on the direction of the public policy of Sweden, both at home and abroad, that in the great European war which Frederick had to wage against the other powers, Sweden took sides against him by the dictation of the Reichsrath. In fact, the Reichsrath became more aggressive and arrogant from year to year. It interfered in the education of the royal princes. It presumed to attach the King’s signature to public documents after he had refused twice to sign them. The “caps” made an effort to strengthen the King’s authority by amending the constitution, but it failed, and resulted in a complete victory for the “hats.” The “hats” had it all their own way for a while. Under orders from the French government, and also out of hatred and contempt for the King, they declared war on the King of Prussia, and Sweden was, without any cause or provocation, drawn into the terrible Seven Years’ War, which resulted in the victory of Frederick the Great over all his enemies.
This disastrous result of the war caused the temporary overthrow of the “hats.” But the Russian faction, as soon as they had got control of the government, established a tyranny worse than that of their predecessors, so that the King, provoked to the utmost, threatened to resign and appeal to the people, unless a popular Diet should be called to establish the rights of the crown on a firm and more dignified basis. Under the strong pressure of public indignation the Diet was called; it restored to the crown part of the rights and prerogatives annulled by the Reichsrath and dismissed a number of those officials most hostile and objectionable to the King; but a proposition of the young, ingenious and ambitious Crown Prince—to change the constitution thoroughly, to reëstablish autocratic government in Sweden in order to renew an era of glory and prosperity for the unfortunate country—failed through the irresoluteness of the King. In 1771 the King died, and the Crown Prince ascended the throne under the name of Gustavus the Third.
The Crown Prince was at Paris, where he was paying the court a visit, when his father died. His presence in the French capital and his conversations with Choiseul, the able prime minister of Louis the Fifteenth, had strengthened and confirmed his own personal views about the necessity for a change in the government of Sweden and for a return to an absolutistic régime. He formally renewed the secret alliance between Sweden and France, receiving the promise of liberal subsidies from the French treasury in order to enable him to carry out his plans. He took with him to Sweden a large sum of money, which was, so to speak, the first instalment of the new subsidy. Moreover, Choiseul gave the young King, on his return trip to Sweden, an experienced and sagacious companion and adviser in the person of Count de Vergennes, who nominally was to take charge of the French embassy at Stockholm, but who in reality was to guide and assist Gustavus in his attempt to overthrow the constitution of the monarchy and to restore the absolute régime of former days. The personality of Gustavus the Third was peculiarly fitted for the rôle which he was to play in the great drama of a political revolution. He was young, enthusiastic, talented, eloquent, bold and chivalrous; he was a poet of considerable ability, and his political ideal was Louis the Fourteenth of France, whose majestic declaration: “The state? I am the state!” struck a sympathetic chord in his heart. Choiseul had found it an easy task to change the vague aspirations and dreams in the young King’s mind into a fixed determination to put an end to the oligarchic régime of the nobility and to reëstablish absolute monarchy in its pristine glory. The art of dissimulation, of which he was a consummate master, and which he had practised with great success as Crown Prince in order to throw his instructors, who were mere tools of the Reichsrath, off their guard, served him admirably in perfecting the initiatory steps, and finally, when the proper time had come, for the successful execution of his coup d’état.
When Gustavus arrived at Stockholm, he found the Swedish Reichstag (the Diet) in session. It had recognized him, during his absence, as King, but the members were busily engaged in the discussion of a new constitution, which they insisted would be necessary for protecting the rights of the nobility against the usurpation of the King. The rights of the people and the prerogatives of the King were hardly thought of in this discussion, and the people were disgusted with the whole proceeding. So was the King, but he had shrewdness and self-control enough not to interfere with the work of the Diet; and when, after a hard-fought battle of eight months’ duration between the contending factions of the “hats” and the “caps,” the new constitution was finally completed and submitted to him for his signature, he readily signed it, without reading it, explaining his extraordinary readiness with the words “I have confidence enough in the patriotism and wisdom of the Reichstag to believe that they all have worked for the welfare of the state, and that my own rights were safe in their hands.”