Clashes with Monarchy 77
into military service, and that the development of Swedish society during the
eighteenth century created alternative civilian occupations for men of the middle
class, so that the declining proportion of burgher officers cannot be wholly as-
cribed to the aristocratic revolution of 1719. More revealing in this connection is
the changing composition of the higher military ranks, for those burghers who did
adopt military careers found the higher positions more difficult to obtain. Of the
higher officers in the Swedish army 26 per cent were burghers in 1719, 16 per cent
in 1735, and only 11 per cent in 1760. And it was the highest nobility, not the
nobility as a whole, who increasingly occupied the highest military positions.^15
The Hat party in the mid- century became more of a noble party, while members
of the other three chambers in the diet increasingly supported the Caps. There was
also great dissatisfaction with the Hat policy of involvement in the Seven Years’
War, in which the Hats had been induced by France to go to war with Prussia,
with humiliating results. The Caps got control of the government in 1765, and
introduced various liberal reforms, including great freedom for the press, relaxation
of restraints on trade, and reduction of military expenditure. They relentlessly pur-
sued their Hat rivals, and showed an alarming willingness to accept dependence on
Russia. Hats then drove Caps from office in 1769, aided by French money; but the
British, as noted, spent £42,000 to prevent the Hats from supporting royal plans
for strengthening the state. The Freedom Era had thus eventuated in blind faction-
alism accentuated by class conflict, with the “Swedish liberties” upheld by foreign
interests, when Gustavus III arrived upon the scene.
Gustavus met the Riksdag in February 1771. “Born and bred among you,” he
proudly declared, though in unfilial reference to both his parents, “I hold it the
greatest honor to be the first citizen of a free people!”^16 The parties continued to
dispute. The Caps, now controlling the three “unredeemed” chambers, demanded
admission to office on grounds of “merit only.” But they showed little responsibil-
ity; they arraigned Hats for trial, and actually, in 1772, at the very moment when
the Polish partition was being carried out, sought closer ties with Great Britain
and Russia.
Gustavus III, pressed by France, and arranging for troops to come from Fin-
land, which, however, proved to be needless, executed an amazingly easy coup d ’état.
He rode into the streets with a white armband, which thousands of citizens of
Stockholm enthusiastically adopted. He read a speech to the diet, deploring fac-
tionalism, and alluding to the “insufferable aristocratic despotism” from which he
meant to deliver the country.^17 He proclaimed a new constitution which the diet
accepted. This document, in fifty- seven paragraphs, though derived primarily from
earlier Swedish sources, also showed the influences of Montesquieu. It was the first
written and consciously modern constitution in an era that was to produce many
such. It divided power over legislation and taxation between the King and the diet,
and it forbade extraordinary courts, while abolishing judicial torture, and assuring
15 See the tables in S. Carlsson, Ståndssamhälle och Ståndspersoner 1700–1865 (Lund, 1949), 71,- As late as 1865 the proportion of nobles among army officers was higher than in 1719.
16 Quoted by Bain, op. cit., I, 65.
17 Ibid., 128. A French text of the Swedish constitution of 1772 is printed in L. Léouzon Le Duc,
Gustave III roi de Suede (Paris, 1861), 347–66.