Politics
Gustav Adolf's prompt dismissal of the generally detested Gustaf Adolf Reuterholm, the duke-regent's leading advisor, added still further to his popularity. On 31 October 1797 Gustav married Friederike Dorothea, granddaughter of Karl Friedrich, Margrave of Baden, a marriage which seemed to threaten war with Russia but for the fanatical hatred of the French republic shared by the Emperor Paul of Russia and Gustav IV Adolf, which served as a bond of union between them. Indeed the king's horror of Jacobinism was morbid in its intensity, and drove him to become increasingly reactionary and to postpone his coronation for some years, so as to avoid calling together a diet. Nonetheless, the disorder of the state finances, largely inherited from Gustav III's Russian war of 1788–90, as well as widespread crop failures in 1798 and 1799, compelled him to summon the estates to Norrköping in March 1800 and on 3 April the same year. When the king encountered serious opposition at the Riksdag, he resolved never to call another.
Read more about this topic: Gustav IV Adolf Of Sweden
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Our family talked a lot at table, and only two subjects were taboo: politics and personal troubles. The first was sternly avoided because Father ran a nonpartisan daily in a small town, with some success, and did not wish to express his own opinions in public, even when in private.”
—M.F.K. Fisher (1908–1992)
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“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.”
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