Clashes with Monarchy 75
at best it had nothing better than enlightened despotism to offer—reform without
consultation of anyone outside the bureaucracy, reform at the cost of the suppres-
sion of liberty.
When Louis XV died in 1774, Maupeou and Terray were dismissed. There had
been a quasi- revolution in France, but only a quasi- revolution. The nobility,
through the parlements and a lesser extent the Provincial Estates, had led an at-
tack on the monarchy. The monarchy had replied with a counterattack on the aris-
tocracy entrenched in these constituted bodies. The parlements had laid down a
broad program of constitutional liberalism. The King and Maupeou had led an
assault upon privilege. But no power had changed hands. The old parlements, re-
stored by Louis XVI, led a kind of quasi- counterrevolution, an “aristocratic resur-
gence,” after 1774. But the last word was not spoken. Maupeou’s aide, the young
Lebrun, who is said to have written Maupeou’s speeches to the Parlement of Paris,
became a busy man in the committees of the Revolutionary assemblies, turned up
as Third Consul in 1799, and was one of the chief reorganizers of France under
Napoleon.
THE MONARCHIST COUP D’ETAT OF 1772 IN SWEDENEvents in Sweden were not unrelated to those in France.^14 The young Swedish
crown prince, Gustavus, arrived on a visit to Paris in 1770, just as Louis XV and
Maupeou were mounting their attack on the parlements. He had come, indeed, to
seek political backing and advice. The Swedish and French crowns had long been
allies, having similar interests against the German powers and Russia; and from his
French mentors Gustavus heard a great deal about the advantages of asserting
royal authority. He heard the same from Voltaire, whose acquaintance he sought
out at Ferney. At the opera in Paris he received the news of the death of his father.
He rushed immediately back to Sweden, with promises of support from France for
restoration of the power of the Swedish throne. The count de Vergennes, who a
few years later was to be the chief figure in the French government in assisting
American republicans against Great Britain, was sent as ambassador to Stockholm
to aid the new King Gustavus III in his monarchist designs.
For half a century affairs in Sweden had been conducted by the four- chamber
diet, largely dominated by the nobility, which had made the King a nonentity.
14 For this account of Sweden I have drawn on B. J. Hovde, The Scandinavian Countries, 1720–
1865: The Rise of the Middle Classes, 2 vols. (Boston, 1943), esp. I, 177–93; R. Svanstrom and C. F.
Palmstierna, A Short History of Sweden, trans. from the Swedish (Oxford, 1934); D. Aimé, “La révolu-
tion suédoise de 1772,” in the periodical La Revolution française, 1937, 144–54; and R. Nisbet Bain,
Gustavus III and His Contemporaries, 2 vols. (London, 1894). There is a recent work by Per Erik Brolin,
Hattar och Mösser: I Borgarståndet 1760–1766 (Upsala, 1953), with a summary in English, 418–22.
Brolin finds in Sweden at this time “a local manifestation of the popular forces and political ideas
which made the great American and French revolutions” (422). He emphasizes the beginning of sig-
nificant party politics in these years, and, as the basis of the Cap party, the dissatisfaction of merchants
and craftsmen with the ruling magistracies and with “aristocracy,” and the resistance of the newly
developed North to the commercial regulations favoring privileged staple towns in central and south-
ern Sweden. I am indebted to Dr. Dankwart A. Rustow of Princeton for assistance in Swedish.