Courtyard Crisis
The Courtyard Crisis (Swedish: Borggårdskrisen) was a constitutional conflict between Sweden's King Gustaf V and the Liberal Prime Minister Karl Staaff.
In 1909, universal and equal suffrage for men was introduced in the elections to the Andra kammaren[1] (The Second Chamber of Parliament), significantly increasing the number of eligible voters to 1 million.
[8] On December 21, 1913, Staaff relented and, against the background of increasing international tension, advocated in a speech the expansion of the navy and investments in the army.
The Social Democrats responded within a few days with a so-called workers' rally, with some 50,000 participants, in support of the Liberal government, under the slogan "The will of the people alone shall decide in the land of Sweden!"
[9] The Conservative Party leadership, on the other hand, focused its manifesto primarily on the threatening foreign policy situation, which had led other peoples to "submit to the greatest personal and economic sacrifices in order to increase still further their defensive power".
The manifesto continued: "Our people, faced with the gravity of the world situation, have no time to dwell on fruitless but grueling constitutional battles.
"[9] As for the substance of the constitutional conflict itself, the Conservatives took the King's position: that he could not agree to the government's demands because it "would deprive him of a right that every Swedish citizen possesses".
"A court camarilla", it said, "which counts among its ranks notorious agitators against the power of the Riksdag over state life, has pushed the King to the unconstitutional step of proclaiming a personal policy on the question of armaments.
"[9] This, according to the party, meant "a relapse into the position of royal autocracy" and was contrary to the deepest meaning of the advance of democracy in recent decades.
Instead, the emphasis was on social reforms that promoted the material and cultural development of the whole people as "indispensable elements of a capable defense for our independence and our future prospects".
[10] The King and his inner circle of advisers, including Queen Victoria, Marshal Ludvig Douglas, Ernst Trygger and Sven Hedin, had temporarily won, but it turned out that they had gone too far, even for the right-wing of the Riksdag.
[12] The government's program received unexpectedly large support, but although the opponents lost several seats in parliament, they still had the majority at their disposal.
As early as August 8, Staaff was able to inform Hammarskjöld that the government's proposal on infantry training time could now count on such support from the Liberal Party that it had the backing of a majority in the Riksdag.
Hedin revealed in his book Försvarsstriden 1912-14 ("The defense battle") (1951) that he and Bennedich (who died in 1939) were the authors, and this is considered to be true even if it is not directly confirmed by other sources.
Hedin, as Stenkvist points out, is not always credible, but he stated that he had learned this not from Heidenstam, a good friend since 1911, but from the parliamentarian and historian Karl Hildebrand, who in turn would have received the information from Gustaf V himself.
There are indications that both this chain of sources and the factual information itself are correct[14] and in that case it is the only occasion we know of when Heidenstam directly cooperated with the royal couple and a leading person in the right-wing radical group in the Riksdag on a political issue - Hedin was not a parliamentary politician.
