Gustav III was King of
Sweden from 1771 until his death. He was the eldest son of King Adolph
Frederick and Louisa Ulrika of Prussia who was a sister of Frederick the Great
of Prussia.
A vocal
opponent of, as he saw it, abuses by the nobility of a permissiveness
established by parliamentarian reforms that had been worked out since
the death ofCharles XII, he seized power from the government in a coup
d'état in 1772, ending the Age of Liberty and venturing into a
campaign to restore royal autocracy which was completed by
the Union and Security Act in 1789, sweeping away most of the last
pretences of Riksdag rule.
As a bulwark of enlightened despotism, his expenditure of considerable
public funds on cultural ventures contributed to his controversial majesty.
Attempts to seize first Norway through Russian aid, then to recapture the
Baltic provinces through a war against Russia were unsuccessful,
although much of Sweden's former military might was restored. An admirer
of Voltaire, Gustav legalized Catholic and Jewish presence
in the realm and enacted wide-ranging reforms aimed at economic
liberalism, social reform and the abolishment, in many cases, of torture and capital
punishment, although the much-praised 1766 Freedom of Press Act was
severely curtailed through amendments in 1774 and 1792, all independent media
effectively extinguished.
