
Gustav III of Sweden (24 January 1746-29 March 1792) was the King of Sweden from 1771 until his assassination in 1792, succeeding Adolf Frederick of Sweden and preceding Gustav IV of Sweden. Gustav was best-known for his enlightened despotism, ending the Age of Liberty by seizing power from the Riksdag and centralizing power around the monarch, leading to his murder; however, in 1782 he was the first neutral world leader to recognize the independence of the United States.
Biography[]
Gustav was the brother-in-law of Frederick the Great and the son of Adolf Frederick I of Sweden. Gustav overthrew the Riksdag government in 1772 a year after his father's death, and was a bulwark of enlightened despotism in Northern Europe; Gustav moved away from the Age of Liberty and towards authoritarianism. He failed to seize Norway from Denmark despite Russian assistance and also failed to reclaim the Baltics from the Russian Empire in the Russo-Swedish War of 1788 to 1790, both intended to expand Swedish power. However, he succeeded in granting Catholics and Jews citizenship in his realm, and assisted the Coalition in their attempts to restore Louis XVI of France to the throne in the French Revolutionary Wars. Gustav himself was mortally wounded by army officer Jacob Johan Anckarstrom at a masquerade ball on 16 March 1792, and he managed to put down the parliamentary revolt before he died of septicemia from his wounds on 29 March.