Politics of An Heir Apparent
Gustav first intervened actively in politics in 1768, when he compelled the dominant Cap faction to summon an extraordinary diet from which he hoped for the reform of the constitution in a monarchical direction. But the victorious Hat party refused to redeem the pledges which they had given before the elections. "That we should have lost the constitutional battle does not distress us so much", wrote Gustav, in the bitterness of his heart; "but what does dismay me is to see my poor nation so sunk in corruption as to place its own felicity in absolute anarchy."
He was an enthusiast of Sweden's national history, and proudly held in memory that he descended, through his paternal grandmother, from the House of Vasa: from King Gustav I of Sweden and from a sister of Charles X Gustav of Sweden.
From 4 February to 25 March 1771, Gustav was in Paris, where he carried both the court and the city by storm. The poets and the philosophers paid him enthusiastic homage, and distinguished women testified to his superlative merits. With many of them he maintained a lifelong correspondence. His visit to the French capital was, however, no mere pleasure trip; it was also a political mission. Confidential agents from the Swedish court had already prepared the way for him, and the Duke of Choiseul had resolved to discuss with him the best method of bringing about a revolution in France's ally, Sweden. Before he departed, the French government undertook to pay the outstanding subsidies to Sweden unconditionally, at the rate of one and a half million livres annually; and Count de Vergennes, one of the great names of French diplomacy, was transferred from Constantinople to Stockholm.
On his way home Gustav paid a short visit to his uncle, Frederick the Great, at Potsdam. Frederick bluntly informed his nephew that, in concert with Russia and Denmark, he had guaranteed the integrity of the existing Swedish constitution, and significantly advised the young monarch to play the part of mediator and abstain from violence.
Read more about this topic: Gustav III Of Sweden
Famous quotes containing the words politics of, politics, heir and/or apparent:
“Of course, in the reality of history, the Machiavellian view which glorifies the principle of violence has been able to dominate. Not the compromising conciliatory politics of humaneness, not the Erasmian, but rather the politics of vested power which firmly exploits every opportunity, politics in the sense of the “Principe,” has determined the development of European history ever since.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“In politics if you want anything said, ask a man. If you want anything done, ask a woman.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)
“‘Tis the curse of service,
Preferment goes by letter and affection,
And not by old gradation, where each second
Stood heir to th’ first.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It’s apparent that we can’t proceed any further without a name for this institutionalized garrulousness, this psychological patter, this need to catalogue the ego’s condition. Let’s call it psychobabble, this spirit which now tyrannizes conversation in the seventies.”
—Richard Dean Rosen (b. 1949)