SWEDEN.[[35]]
"The nobles were discontented with the general conduct of the King; and a conspiracy was planned against him under his own roof. His wars had compelled him to negotiate large loans, and to impose upon his subjects heavy taxes. The nobles took advantage of that circumstance to prejudice the minds of many of the people against the sovereign who had laboured so long for their real good. On the 16th of March, 1792, he received an anonymous letter, warning him of his immediate danger from a plot that was laid to take away his life, requesting him to remain at home, and avoid balls for a year; and assuring him, that if he should go to the masquerade for which he was preparing, he would be assassinated that very night. The King read the note with contempt, and at a late hour entered the ball-room. After some time he sat down in a box with the Count of Essen, and observed he was not deceived in his contempt for the letter, since, had there been any design against his life, no time could be more favourable than that moment. He then mingled, without apprehension, among the crowd; and just as he was preparing to retire with the Prussian ambassador, he was surrounded by several persons in masks, one of whom fired a pistol at the back of the King, and lodged the contents in his body. A scene of dreadful confusion ensued. The conspirators, amidst the general tumult and alarm, had time to retire to other parts of the room; but one of them had previously dropped his pistols and a dagger close by the wounded King. A general order was given to all the company to unmask, and the doors were immediately closed; but no person appeared with any particular distinguishing marks of guilt. The King was immediately conveyed to his apartment; and the surgeon, after extracting a ball and some slugs, gave favourable hopes of his Majesty's recovery.
"Suspicions immediately fell upon such of the nobles as had been notorious for their opposition to the measures of the court. The anonymous letter was traced up to Colonel Liljehorn, Major in the King's Guards, and he was immediately apprehended. But the most successful clue that seemed to offer was in consequence of the weapons which had fallen from the assassin. An order was issued, directing all the armourers, gunsmiths, and cutlers, in Stockholm, to give every information in their power to the officers of justice, concerning the weapons. A gunsmith who had repaired the pistols readily recognised them to be the same which he had repaired some time since for a nobleman of the name of Ankarstrom, a captain in the army; and the cutler who had made the dagger, referred at once to the same person.
"The King languished from the 17th to the 29th of March. At first, the reports of his medical attendants were favourable; but on the 28th a mortification was found to have taken place, which terminated his existence in a few hours. On opening his body, a square piece of lead and two rusty nails were found unextracted within the ribs.
"During his illness, and particularly after he was made acquainted with the certainty of his approaching dissolution, Gustavus continued to display that unshaken courage which he had manifested on every occasion during his life. A few hours before his decease, he made some alterations in the arrangement of public affairs. He had before, by his will, appointed a council of regency, but convinced, by recent experience, how little he could depend on the attachment of his nobles, and being also aware of the necessity of a strong government in difficult times, he appointed his brother, the Duke of Sudermania, sole regent, till his son, who was then about fourteen, should have attained the age of eighteen years. His last words were a declaration of pardon to the conspirators against his life. The actual murderer alone was excepted; and he was excepted only at the strong instance of the regent, and those who surrounded his Majesty in his dying moments. Immediately on the death of the King, the young prince was proclaimed by the title of Gustavus IV.
"Ankarstrom was no sooner apprehended, than he confessed with an air of triumph, that he was the person 'who had endeavoured to liberate his country from a monster and a tyrant.' Suspicions at the same time fell on the Counts Horn and Ribbing, Baron Pechlin, Baron Ehrensvard, Baron Hartsmandorf, Von Engerstrom the Royal Secretary, and others; and these suspicions were confirmed by the confession of Ankarstrom. After a very fair and ample trial, this man was condemned to be publicly and severely whipped on three successive days, his right hand and his head to be cut off, and his body impaled: which sentence he suffered on the 17th of May. His property was given to his children, who, however, were compelled to change their name."
"Ankarstrom was a martyr—a hero!" exclaimed Holford, aloud; his imagination excited by the preceding narrative, and all the morbid feelings of his wrongly-biassed mind aroused at the idea of the terrible renown that attached itself to the name of a regicide.
Then,—although the garret in which he sate was so cold that ice floated on the water in the pitcher, and the nipping chill of a February night came through the cracked panes and ill-closed lattice, while the snow lay thick upon the slanting tiles immediately above his head,—that young man's entire frame glowed with a feverish heat, which shone with sinister lustre in his eyes, and appeared in the two deep-red hectic spots which marked his cheeks.
"Yes—Ankarstrom was a hero!" he exclaimed. "Oh! how he must have despised the efforts of the torturers to wring from him a groan:—how he must have scorned the array of penalties which were sought to be made so terrible! And Ravaillac—the regicide beneath whose hand fell Henry IV. of France—oh! how well is every word of his history treasured up in my mind. But Francis Damien—ah! his fate was terrible indeed! And yet I am not afraid to contemplate it—even though such a one should be in store for me."
Then hastily turning to the "History of France," in the volume which he was reading, he slowly and in measured terms repeated aloud the following passage:—