300 Chapter XII
nation with an enlightened absolutism which was more favorable to the non-
noble classes, and which won the praises even of the Genevese democrat turned
constitutionalist, J. L. Delolme.^26 Gustavus proved, however, to be a fantastic mon-
arch. Much enamored of France, both of the court life and the men of letters
whom he had seen there in his youth, he spent large sums to adorn his nothern
Versailles, wrote poems and dramas, sponsored the arts, and indulged in an array
of extravagant pleasures, which included an unnatural predilection for the numer-
ous page boys in his entourage. He also entertained military ambitions, laying
plans to conquer Norway from Denmark, and avenge Sweden on Russia. Mem-
bers of the nobility continued to resist him, looking back with regret on their era
of freedom, and now aroused by the spectacle of America. Sixty- four Swedish
officers had served in America in the French forces, of whom the most famous
was Axel de Fersen, Marie Antoinette’s admirer. In Finland, which belonged to
the Swedish crown, and where the nobility were Swedish, there were noblemen
who dreamed of a war of independence in which one of them would be the
George Washington. At the diet of 1786 the King asked for a modern army, to
be paid for from taxes, in place of the levies of peasants supplied locally by the
lords. Led by the nobility, all four estates in the diet—nobles, clergy, townsmen,
and peasants—expressed opposition to this project. The King, nevertheless, when
Russia became involved in a war with Turkey, seized the opportunity to launch an
attack on St. Petersburg.
Some of the nobles in both Sweden and Finland, disapproving of this adven-
ture, and regarding Gustavus III as their main adversary, made collusive arrange-
ments with the Russians. To Gustavus this was of course treason in wartime. It
revealed the old habit of disunion, by which parties within Sweden had long
brought in rival foreign powers against each other; and it threatened Sweden with
the fate of Poland, from which Gustavus claimed to have saved it in 1772. In fact
a group of Swedish officers and noblemen appealed to the tsarina to make peace,
and signed an agreement with each other in 1788 at Anjala near the border, very
much like one of the “confederations” of Polish nobles, and in particular the con-
federation of Targovica of 1792, which led to the second partition of Poland.
The Swedish diet met again in February 1789. Like the French Estates General
of that year, it fell into a schism between the nobility and the other orders. The dif-
ference is that Gustavus III did what some have wished Louis XVI had done. He
took the side of the commons against the nobles—and confirmed the nobles in
their inveterate hostility to himself. Ordering the nobles out of the hall, he carried
on the proceedings without them—“a strange sight,” said an observer, “a king with
nothing but commoners around him... but not an unpleasant one.” He put nine-
teen noblemen under arrest, including Axel de Fersen’s father. In a speech to the
three non- noble orders he called for unity against foreigners and equality of rights
26 See above, pp. 76–78 and 109; for the present paragraphs R. Svanstrom and C. F. Palmstierna,
Short History of Sweden (Oxford, 1934), 264–94; R. N. Bain, Gustavus III and His Contemporaries, 2
vols. (London, 1894); B. J. Hovde, The Scandinavian Countries, 1720–1865: the Rise of the Middle
Classes, 2 vols. (Boston, 1943), I, 191–94, 207–19; Sveriges historia till våra dagar, Vol. X. Den Gustavi-
anska Tiden 1722–1809, by Ludwig Stavenow (Stockholm, 1925), 207–39, for knowledge of whose
contents I am indebted to Professor Arne Odd Johnsen of Oslo.