76 Chapter IV
Conditions in Sweden had come to have a strong resemblance to those in Poland.
In both countries parties within the diet looked to foreign aid. In both countries
outside powers spent money freely to bribe members of the diet in their own inter-
est; influential Swedes and Poles regarded such gratuities as normal income conse-
quent upon their position. The French spent 1,648,000 livres on the Swedish diet
in 1769, and 1,400,000 in 1770; the British, about ,£42,000 (1,000,000 livres) in
- The French favored the party known as Hats, which, being more aggressive
and military, served the purposes of French diplomacy against the expansion of
Prussia and Russia. These latter powers, along with Denmark and England, spon-
sored the opposite party of the Caps, conceiving it to be best for government in
Sweden to be more passive in the foreign field. The King of Sweden, Gustavus’
father, Adolf Fredrik, was a relative of a Russian tsarina, and had received his
throne in 1742 through her influence, like the King of Poland who acceded in - The Swedish Queen was the sister of the King of Prussia. Both Russia and
Prussia harbored designs on the territory of Sweden, especially since this still in-
cluded Finland and a small area on the Pomeranian coast. A secret treaty of 1764
between Catherine and Frederick mentioned Sweden along with Poland as likely
for partition. It noted also the common interest of the two rulers in preservation of
the “Swedish liberties,” which gave opportunities for intervention.
If Poland was partitioned in 1773, whereas Sweden escaped this fate, the main
reason was doubtless the greater accessibility of Poland to the armies of the two
eastern powers. But there was another reason in the social difference between the
two. In Poland only the nobility counted, and it brought the country to ruin. In
Sweden, with its more varied social classes, there were people who could signifi-
cantly object to the rule of nobility, and from whom Gustavus III could draw
support.
In Sweden the peasantry, through their village assemblies, and through repre-
sentation in their own chamber in the diet, had maintained a sort of political
awareness which, however rudimentary, was wholly unknown to the mute peas-
antry of Poland. The Swedish peasantry had been passively royalist throughout the
Freedom Era. In Sweden, too, more than in Poland, a native office- holding, profes-
sional, mercantile middle class had been growing up in the eighteenth century. For
a time these people mixed satisfactorily with nobles, and felt no obstruction to
their ambitions. On the other hand, the fact that year after year nobleman and
burgher each went apart to sit in his own house in the diet kept alive more of a
sense of difference than in Denmark- Norway, where diets no longer met, and class
separation was made less conspicuous by the ascendancy of the King.
Noble- vs.- burgher tensions began to mount. In 1762, in keeping with the rise
of aristocratic exclusiveness that we have noted in other parts of Europe, the
Swedish nobility managed to block the access of burghers to high office through
further limitations on their becoming ennobled. In Sweden, as in France, though
in lesser degree, the army was becoming more of an aristocratic preserve. For the
Swedish officer corps we have detailed statistics, and they show that where only a
third of the officers were nobles in 1719, two- thirds were nobles in 1760. It is to be
observed that the year 1719, toward the close of the Northern War, was a time of
full mobilization, in which more than the usual number of burghers were drawn