We have repeatedly observed, that the high spirit and intrepid enterprise of Gustavus IV., unsupported as they were either by distinguished military abilities, or by effectual power, seemed as if he aped the parts of Gustavus Adolphus or Charles XII., without considering the declined condition of the country he governed, or the inferiority of his own talents. Sweden had suffered great losses by the daring manner in which this prince maintained the ancient principles of aristocracy against the overwhelming power of France.
Pomerania, being the only dominion belonging to Sweden on the south side of the Baltic, had been taken possession of by France in the war of 1806-7; and Russia, who had been a party to that war, and who had encouraged Gustavus to maintain it, had, since changing her politics at the treaty of Tilsit, herself declared war against Sweden, for the sole and undisguised purpose of possessing herself of Finland, which she had succeeded in appropriating. Sweden had, therefore, lost, under this ill-fated monarch, above one-third of her territories, and the inhabitants became anxious to secure, even were it by desperate measures, the independence of that which remained. There were fears lest Russia should aspire to the conquest of the rest of the ancient kingdom – fears that France might reward the adhesion and the sufferings of Denmark, by uniting the crown of Sweden with that of Denmark and Norway, and aiding the subjugation of the country with an auxiliary army. While these calamities impended over their ancient state, the Swedes felt confident that Gustavus was too rash to avert the storm by submission, too weak, and perhaps too unlucky, to resist its violence. This conviction led to a conspiracy, perhaps one of the most universally known in history.
The unfortunate king was seized upon and made prisoner in March, 1809, without any other resistance than his own unassisted sword could maintain; and so little were the conspirators afraid of his being able to find a party in the state desirous of replacing him in the government, that they were content he should have his liberty and a suitable pension on his agreeing to consider himself as an exile from Sweden;72 in which sentence of banishment, with little pretence to justice, his wife, sister of the Empress of Russia, and his children, comprehending the heir of his crown, were also included.73
The Duke of Sudermania, uncle of the dethroned prince, was called to the throne, and the succession of the kingdom was destined to Christian of Augustenberg, a prince of the house of Holstein. Peace was made by the new King with Russia, at the expense of ceding Finland and the isle of Aland to that power. Soon afterwards a treaty was signed at Paris, by which Charles XIII. promised to adhere to the Continental System, and to shut his ports against all British commerce, with certain indulgences on the articles of salt and colonial produce. In requital, Napoleon restored to Sweden her continental province of Pomerania, with the isle of Rugen, reserving, however, such dotations or pensions as he had assigned to his soldiers or followers, upon those territories. But though the politics of Sweden were thus entirely changed, its revolution was destined to proceed.
The King being aged, the eyes of the people were much fixed on the successor, or Crown Prince, who took upon himself the chief labour of the government, and appears to have given satisfaction to the nation. But his government was of short duration. On the 28th of May, 1810, while reviewing some troops, he suddenly fell from his horse, and expired on the spot, leaving Sweden again without any head excepting the old King. This event agitated the whole nation, and various candidates were proposed for the succession of the kingdom.
Among these was the King of Denmark, who, after the sacrifices he had made for Buonaparte, had some right to expect his support. The son of the late unfortunate monarch, rightful heir of the crown, and named like him Gustavus, was also proposed as a candidate. The Duke of Oldenburg, brother-in-law of the Emperor of Russia, had partisans. To each of these candidates there lay practical objections. To have followed the line of lawful succession, and called Gustavus to the throne (which could not be forfeited by his father's infirmity, so far as he was concerned,) would have been to place a child at the head of the state, and must have inferred, amid this most arduous crisis, all the doubts and difficulties of choosing a regent. Such choice might, too, be the means, at a future time, of reviving his father's claim to the crown. The countries of Denmark and Sweden had been too long rivals for the Swedes to subject themselves to the yoke of the King of Denmark; and to choose the Duke of Oldenburg would have been, in effect, to submit themselves to Russia, of whose last behaviour towards her Sweden had considerable reason to complain.
In this embarrassment they were thought to start a happy idea, who proposed to conciliate Napoleon by bestowing the ancient crown of the Goths upon one of his own field-marshals, and a high noble of his empire, namely, John Baptiste Julian Bernadotte, Prince of Ponte Corvo. This distinguished officer was married to a sister of Joseph Buonaparte's wife (daughter of a wealthy and respectable individual, named Cléry,) through whom he had the advantage of an alliance with the Imperial family of Napoleon, and he had acquired a high reputation in the north of Europe, both when governor of Hanover, and administrator of Swedish Pomerania. On the latter occasion, Bernadotte was said to have shown himself in a particular manner the friend and protector of the Swedish nation; and it was even insinuated, that he would not be averse to exchange the errors of Popery for the reformed tenets of Luther. The Swedish nation fell very generally into the line of policy which prompted this choice. Humiliating as it might, at another period, have been to a people proud of their ancient renown, to choose for their master a foreign soldier, differing from them in birth and religious faith, such an election yet promised to place at the head of the nation a person admirably qualified to comprehend and encounter the difficulties of the time; and it was a choice, sure, as they thought, to be agreeable to him upon whose nod the world seemed to depend.
Yet, there is the best reason to doubt, whether, in preferring Bernadotte to their vacant throne, the Swedes did a thing which was gratifying to Napoleon. The name of the Crown Prince of Sweden elect, had been known in the wars of the Revolution, before that of Buonaparte had been heard of. Bernadotte had been the older, though certainly not therefore the better soldier. On the 18th Brumaire, he was so far from joining Buonaparte in his enterprise against the Council of Five Hundred, notwithstanding all advances made to him, that he was on the spot at St. Cloud armed and prepared, had circumstances permitted, to place himself at the head of any part of the military, who might be brought to declare for the Directory. And although, like every one else, Bernadotte submitted to the Consular system, and held the government of Holland under Buonaparte, yet then, as well as under the empire, he was always understood to belong to a class of officers, whom Napoleon employed indeed, and rewarded, but without loving them, or perhaps relying on them, more than he was compelled to do, although their character was in most instances a warrant for their fidelity.
These officers formed a comparatively small class yet comprehending some of the most distinguished names in the French army, who, in seeing the visionary Republic glide from their grasp, had been, nevertheless, unable to forget the promises held out to them by the earlier dawn of the Revolution. Reconciled by necessity to a state of servitude which they could not avoid, this party considered themselves as the soldiers of France, not of Napoleon, and followed the banner of their country rather than the fortunes of the Emperor. Without being personally Napoleon's enemies, they were not the friends of his despotic power; and it was to be expected, should any opportunity occur, that men so thinking would make a stand, for the purpose of introducing some modifications into the arbitrary system which the Emperor had established.
Napoleon, always deeply politic, unless when carried off by sudden bursts of temperament, took, as already mentioned, great care, in his distribution of duties and honours, at once to conceal from the public the existence of a difference in opinion among his general officers, and also to arm the interests of those patriots themselves against their own speculative opinions, by rendering the present state of things too beneficial to them for their being easily induced to attempt any change. Still it may nevertheless be conceived, that it was not out of this class of lukewarm adherents he would have voluntarily selected a candidate for a kingdom, which, being removed at some distance from the influence of France, he would more willingly have