Gustav was a vocal opponent of what he saw as the abuse of political privileges seized by the nobility since the death of King Charles XII in the Great Northern War.

Seizing power from the government in a coup d'état, called the Swedish Revolution, in 1772, that ended the Age of Liberty, he initiated a campaign to restore a measure of royal autocracy.

This was completed by the Union and Security Act of 1789, which swept away most of the powers exercised by the Swedish Riksdag of the estates during the Age of Liberty, but at the same time it opened up the government for all citizens, thereby breaking the privileges of the nobility.

In 1792 he was mortally wounded by a gunshot in the lower back during a masquerade ball as part of an aristocratic-parliamentary coup attempt, but managed to assume command and quell the uprising before succumbing to sepsis 13 days later, a period during which he received apologies from many of his political enemies.

The Gustavian autocracy thus survived until 1809, when his son was ousted in another coup d'état, which definitively established parliament as the dominant political power; this has lasted until the modern day, where the Riksdag is Sweden's supreme legislature.

[9] Through the acquisition of Saint Barthélemy in 1784, Gustav enabled the restoration, if symbolic, of Swedish overseas colonies in America, as well as great personal profits from the transatlantic slave trade.

Gustav's parents taught him to despise the governors imposed upon him by the Riksdag, and the atmosphere of intrigue and duplicity in which he grew up made him precociously experienced in the art of dissimulation.

[12] Gustav married Princess Sophia Magdalena, daughter of King Frederick V of Denmark, by proxy in Christiansborg Palace, Copenhagen, on 1 October 1766 and in person in Stockholm on 4 November 1766.

[15] Professor Erik Lönnroth of the Swedish Academy, who described the assistance provided by Munck, asserted that there is no factual basis for the assumption that Gustav III was homosexual.

[18] Gustav first intervened actively in politics during the December Crisis (1768), when he compelled the dominant Cap faction, which mainly represented the interests of the peasantry and clergy, to summon an extraordinary diet from which he hoped for the reform of the constitution in a way that would increase the power of the crown.

"That we should have lost the constitutional battle does not distress us so much", wrote Gustav, in the bitterness of his heart; "but what does dismay me is to see my poor nation so sunk in corruption as to place its own felicity in absolute anarchy.

Confidential agents from the Swedish court had already prepared the way for him, and the Duke of Choiseul, the retired Chief Minister, resolved to discuss with him the best method of bringing about a revolution in France's ally, Sweden.

Frederick bluntly informed his nephew that, in concert with Russia and Denmark, he had guaranteed the integrity of the existing Swedish constitution; he advised the young monarch to play the part of mediator and abstain from violence.

[20] The entire revolutionary enterprise was underwritten with loans procured from the French financier Nicolas Beaujon, arranged by the Swedish ambassador to France, Count Creutz.

[20] On 16 August, the Cap leader, Ture Rudbeck, arrived at Stockholm with news of the insurrection in the south, and Gustav found himself isolated in the midst of enemies.

On the evening of 20 August, heralds roamed the streets proclaiming that the estates were to meet at the palace on the following day; every deputy absenting himself would be regarded as the enemy of his country and his king.

Taking his seat on the throne, he delivered his famous philippic, viewed as one of the masterpieces of Swedish oratory, in which he reproached the estates for their unpatriotic venality and license in the past.

The effort to remedy the widespread corruption that had flourished under the Hats and Caps engaged a considerable share of his time and he even found it necessary to put on trial the entire Göta Hovrätt,[20] the superior court of justice, in Jönköping.

Gustav even designed and popularized a Swedish national costume, which was in general use among the upper classes from 1778 until his death[20] (and it is still worn by the ladies of the court on state occasions).

The king's one great economic blunder was his attempt in 1775 to make the sale of alcoholic spirits a government monopoly, through the establishment of a network of crown distilleries.

In embarking on a war of aggression without the consent of the estates, Gustav violated his own constitution of 1772, which led to a serious mutiny, the Anjala Conspiracy, among his aristocratic officers in Finland.

Capitalizing on the powerful anti-aristocratic passions thus aroused, Gustav summoned a Riksdag early in 1789, at which he put through an Act of Union and Security on 17 February 1789 with the backing of the three lower estates.

The Treaty of Värälä spared Sweden from any such humiliating concession, and in October 1791, Gustav concluded an eight years' defensive alliance with the empress, who thereby bound herself to pay her new ally an annual subsidy of 300,000 rubles.

[1] Gustav III's war against Russia and his implementation of the Union and Security Act of 1789 helped increase hatred against the king which had been growing among the nobility ever since the coup d'état of 1772.

Pray, allow an unknown whose pen is guided by tactfulness and the voice of conscience, dare take the liberty to inform You, with all possible sincerity, that certain individuals exist, both in the Provinces and here in the City, that only breathe hatred and revenge against You; indeed to the extreme of wanting to shorten Your days, through murder.

The King with Baron Hans Henrik von Essen by his right arm went around the theatre once and then into the foyer where they met Captain Carl Fredrik Pollet.

[37] All of them succeeded in adapting their musical origins to Swedish national dramatic style, a process sometimes overseen by the king (notably in the layout of the libretto for the opera Gustav Wasa from 1786).

This incident became the basis of an opera libretto by Eugène Scribe set by Daniel Auber in 1833 under the title Gustave III, by Saverio Mercadante in 1843 as Il Reggente, and by Giuseppe Verdi in 1859 as Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball), with the specifics changed under the pressure of censorship.

It was under King Gustav III that Sweden gained the small Caribbean island of Saint-Barthélemy from France in 1785 (in exchange for French trading rights in Gothenburg).

When the British were preparing to establish a colony in Botany Bay, the Government of Gustav III agreed to sponsor William Bolts' proposal for an equivalent venture in Nuyts Land (the south-western coast of Australia).