Anjala conspiracy

Declaring Finland an independent state was not a part of the original plot, but one of the conspirators Johan Anders Jägerhorn, who handed the note to Empress Catherine the Great, made such claims in Saint Petersburg.

[2] The anger was fueled also by Cabinet members who felt duped to support the war plans by the king's selective quoting of diplomatic reports from Saint Petersburg.

The failed attempts to besiege and recapture Hamina and Savonlinna, both of which had been in Russian hands since 1743, ultimately ignited a vehement opposition among the officers, and it was said that even the king wished for peace.

The leaders of the Anjala conspiracy met on August 9, 1788 in Liikkala under the leadership of Swedish Major general Carl Gustaf Armfeldt the Younger [sv], together they wrote a diplomatic note to Tsarina Catherine the Great of Russia.

A few days later Catherine's answer came in writing, she reportedly appreciated the Finnish nation’s way of thinking, but it would require the presence of more people under a formal and legally representative form.

[6] From this one can draw the conclusion that there was a critique of Royal power, and that the conspirators wanted to revert to the form of government that had existed under Sweden's Age of Liberty.

It may be argued, that king Gustav used the Anjala conspiracy to win support for a revision of the Swedish Constitution in order to strengthen his own position and weaken the influence of his opponents.

But it may also be argued that this was what he had aimed at with the war itself; and that even after the unsuccessful attack on Russia he might indeed have been fully capable of achieving this, even without the boost in public opinion the Anjala conspiracy offered.

In Finland, it is often seen as an important phase of nation-building, and the separatist aspect may well be somewhat inflated, putting the conspirators' primary aim of striving for peace and restoration of political liberties in the background.

In Sweden, the conspiracy is typically either seen as an understandable opposition against an oppressive king, who was actually eventually assassinated in 1792, and whose son, Gustav IV Adolf, would be deposed in 1809, or alternatively as an omen of how treacherous Swedish civil servants in 1808/09 would facilitate Russia's acquisition of what became Finland.