In his youth Johan Christopher served during the Seven Years' War, and then, exchanging the military for civil service, became head ranger of Kristianstad County.

[1] During the Riksdag of 1771–1772, the "Cap" faction, which were the dominant one at the time, deprived him of his position as ranger, and Toll, guessing that the king was preparing a revolution, almost forced his services on the conspirators.

Toll arrested the few officers who proved recalcitrant; taking possession of the records and military chest, and then closing the gates to the "Cap" high commissioner who had been warned by the English minister, John Gooderich, that something was afoot in the south.

Nevertheless, when the inevitable first disasters happened, Toll was, most unjustly, made a scapegoat, but the later successes of the war were largely due to his care and diligence as commissary-general.

On this occasion he forced the mutinous nobility or riddarhuset to accept the detested Act of Union and Security by threatening to reveal the names of all the persons suspected of complicity in the murder of the late king.

It was saved by Toll, who cajoled the French marshal into a convention whereby the Swedish army, with all its munitions of war, was permitted to return unmolested to Sweden on 7 September 1807.

It was in the camp of Toll, then acting commander-in-chief in Scania, that Gustavus IV was about to take refuge when the western army rebelled against him, but he was arrested in the capital before he could do so.