Читать книгу Knowledge for the Time - John Timbs - Страница 50

Table of Contents

In a paper contributed to the Royal Society of Literature, Dr. Hermann has traced the eventful history of the Swedish monarch with great skill, from the period when he ascended the throne, in 1771, to his assassination by Ankerström at the masked ball in 1792. Dr. Hermann shows that Gustavus united in his own person and character most of those qualities, intellectual and moral, which distinguished the latter half of the eighteenth century. Thus, like Catherine of Russia and Frederick the Great, though not to the same extent, he was a believer in those doctrines whose chief expositors were Voltaire and the Encyclopædists; while, in the government of his country, he was ever striving after a system of optimism, which, however beautiful in theory, is wholly impracticable. The reign of Gustavus is chiefly remarkable for the spirit with which he broke down a tyranny of certain noble families, which had long usurped nearly the whole of the royal prerogative, and had thrown the monarch into the background; for the zeal with which he carried out many reforms of the greatest benefit to the more indigent classes of his people; for the remarkable rashness with which, unsupported by a single other European power, he rushed madly into a war with the Russian Empress; and for the extraordinary victory in which, at the close of his second campaign, in July, 1791, he destroyed the entire Russian fleet, in the Bay of Swöborg, and captured no less than 1412 Russian cannon.

The assassin, Ankerström, was discovered and executed: in his character and in his last moments, a striking similarity may be traced to Bellingham, who assassinated Mr. Perceval in 1812: both expressed the same fanatical satisfaction at the perpetration of the crime, and the same presumptuous confidence of pardon from the Almighty.

Gustavus, in his parting moments, strictly forbad, for fifty years, the opening of the chests at Upsal, in which his papers were deposited; and the injunction was strictly obeyed. On March 30, 1842, the chests were opened, in the presence of many spectators; but in neither was found, as was expected, any clue to the conspiracy of which Ankerström was the agent; but the king’s autograph instructions do not refer to any papers later than 1788, when the bequest was made. The Swedish instructions, in Gustavus’s handwriting, prove that the king enjoyed the reputation of being a great author without even knowing how to spell.—See Curiosities of History, p. 107.