Gustav, the son of Swedish King Adolf Frederick, is in Paris, where he carries both the court and the city by storm, from February 4 to March 25, 1771.

The poets and the philosophers pay him enthusiastic homage, and distinguished women testify to his superlative merits.

With many of them he will maintain a lifelong correspondence.

His visit to the French capital is, however, no mere pleasure trip; it is also a political mission.

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

Before he departs, the French government undertakes to pay the outstanding subsidies to Sweden unconditionally, at the rate of one and a half million livres annually.

Count de Vergennes, one of the most prominent French diplomats, is transferred from Constantinople to Stockholm.

On his way home, Gustav pays a short visit to his uncle, Frederick the Great, at Potsdam.

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

Gustav had first intervened actively in politics during the December Crisis (1768), when he compelled the dominant Cap faction, which mainly represents the interests of the peasantry and clergy, to summon an extraordinary diet from which he hoped for the reform of the constitution in way that would increase the power of the crown, but the victorious Hat party, which mainly represents the interests of the aristocracy and military establishment, refuses to redeem the pledges that they had given before the previous elections.  

Gustav has found greater success abroad.

Gustav III, on his return to Sweden, tries to mediate between the bitterly divided Hat and Cap parties.

On June 21, 1771, he opens his first Riksdag with a speech that arouses powerful emotions.

It is the first time in more than a century that a Swedish king addresses a Swedish Riksdag in its native tongue.

He stresses the need for all parties to sacrifice their animosities for the common good, and volunteers, as "the first citizen of a free people," to be the mediator between the contending factions.

A composition committee is actually formed, but it proves illusory from the first: the patriotism of neither Hat nor Cap faction is sufficient for the smallest act of self-denial.

The subsequent attempts of the dominant Caps to reduce him to a roi fainéant (a powerless king), encourages him to consider a coup d'état.

Sweden, under the sway of the Cap faction, seems in danger of falling prey to the political ambitions of Russia.

It appears on the point of being absorbed into the Northern Accord sought by the Russian vice-chancellor, Count Nikita Panin.

It seems to many that only a swift and sudden coup d'état can preserve Sweden's independence.

At this juncture Gustav III is approached by Jacob Magnus Sprengtporten, a Finnish nobleman, who has incurred the enmity of the Caps, with the prospect of a revolution.

He undertakes to seize the fortress of Sveaborg in Finland by a coup de main.

Once Finland is secured, he intends to embark for Sweden, join up with the king and his friends near Stockholm, and force the estates to accept a new constitution dictated by the king.

The plotters are reinforced by Johan Christopher Toll, another victim of Cap oppression.

Toll proposes to raise a second revolt in the province of Scania, and to secure the southern fortress of Kristianstad.

After some debate, it is agreed that Kristianstad should openly declare against the government a few days after the Finnish revolt had begun.

Duke Charles (Karl), the eldest of the king's brothers, will thereupon be forced to mobilize the garrisons of all the southern fortresses hastily, ostensibly to crush the revolt at Kristianstad, but on arriving in front of the fortress, he is to make common cause with the rebels and march upon the capital from the south while Sprengtporten attacks it simultaneously from the east.

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

Sprengtporten succeeds in surprising Sveaborg on August 16, but contrary winds prevents him from crossing to Stockholm.

Events will soon occur there that make his presence unnecessary in any case.

The Cap leader, Ture Rudbeck, arrives at Stockholm on August 16 with news of the insurrection in the south, and Gustav finds himself isolated in the midst of enemies.

Sprengtporten lies weather-bound in Finland, Toll is five hundred miles away, and the Hat leaders are in hiding.

Gustav hereupon resolves to strike the decisive blow without waiting for Sprengtporten's arrival.
He acts promptly.

On the evening of  August 18, all the officers whom he thinks he can trust receive secret instructions to assemble in the great square facing the arsenal on the following morning.

At ten o'clock on August 19, Gustav mounts his horse and rides to the arsenal.

On the way, his adherents join him in little groups, as if by accident, so that by the time he reaches his destination he had about two hundred officers in his suite.

After parade he reconducts them to the guard-room in the north western wing of the palace, where the Guard of Honor has its headquarters, and unfolds his plans to them.

Gustav now dictates a new oath of allegiance, and everyone signs it without hesitation.

It absolves them from their allegiance to the estates, and binds them solely to obey "their lawful king, Gustav III".

Meanwhile, the Privy Council and its president, Rudbeck, have been arrested and the fleet secured.

Gustav makes a tour of the city and is everywhere received by enthusiastic crowds, who hail him as a deliverer.

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

On  August 21, the king appears in full regalia.

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

A new constitution, the Instrument of Government, is read to the estates and unanimously accepted by them.

The diet is now dissolved.

Toll succeeds in winning the fortress of Kristianstad on August 6, 1772, by sheer bluff, and ...

The year 1776 had seen delicate negotiations between American agents in Paris, including Silas Deane, and Louis XVI and his foreign minister, Comte Charles de Vergennes.

The king and his minister hope that by supplying the Americans with arms and officers, they might restore French influence in North America, and exact revenge against Britain for the loss in the Seven Years' War.

When the young Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette, heard that French officers were being sent to America, he had demanded to be among them.

He met Deane, and gained inclusion despite his youth.

On December 7, 1776, Deane had enlisted Lafayette as a major general.

The plan to send French officers (as well as other aid) to America comes to nothing when the British hear of it and threatened war.

Lafayette's father-in-law, de Noailles, had scolded the young man and told him to go to London and visit the Marquis de Noailles, the ambassador to Britain and Lafayette's uncle by marriage, which he did in February 1777.

In the interim, he did not abandon his plans to go to America.

Lafayette had been presented to George III, and spent three weeks in London society.

On his return to France, he goes into hiding from his father-in-law (and superior officer), writing to him that he is planning to go to America.

De Noailles is furious, and persuades Louis to issue a decree forbidding French officers from serving in America, specifically naming Lafayette.

Vergennes may have persuaded the king to order Lafayette's arrest, though this is uncertain.

France's foreign ministers, beginning with Choiseul, have followed the general idea since the Seven Years' War that the independence of Britain's North American colonies would be good for France and bad for Britain, and furthermore that French attempts to recover parts of New France would be detrimental to that cause.

When war broke out in 1775, the Comte de Vergennes, the current Foreign Minister, had outlined a series of proposals that led to secret French and also Spanish support of Congress, and some preparations for the possibility of war, including expansion of their navies.

Vergennes does not think open participation in the war is diplomatically or politically feasible until Washington's army demonstrates its strength and ability to gain military victories without significant assistance.

To further the aim of French participation in the war, Vergennes closely monitors news from North America and London, and works to remove impediments to Spanish participation in the war.

Vergennes had gone so far as to propose war to King Louis XVI in August 1776, but news of Howe's capture of New York City had scuttled that plan.

On December 4, 1777, word reaches Benjamin Franklin at Versailles that Philadelphia had fallen and that Burgoyne had surrendered.

Two days later, King Louis XVI assents to negotiations for an alliance.

The treaty will be signed on February 6, 1778, and France will declare war on Britain one month later, with hostilities beginning with naval skirmishes off Ushant in June.

Spain will not enter into the war until 1779, when it enters the war as an ally of France pursuant to the secret Treaty of Aranjuez.

Vergennes' diplomatic moves following the French entry into the war will also have material impact on the later entry of the Dutch Republic into the war, and declarations of neutrality on the part of other important geopolitical players like Russia.

France is interested as Britain in maintaining its influence among the German states, but it has a double problem.

As a supporter of the rebellious British colonies in North America, it is in France's interest to avoid a continental engagement.

France can do more damage to the British in North America than in Europe.

The diplomatic realignment in 1756 had overthrown two hundred years of French foreign policy that united the French Crown and the French populace against the House of Habsburg, bringing to France massive territorial gains in repeated wars with Habsburg Austria and Spain.

A reversal of this policy in 1756 had tied French foreign policy in Europe to Vienna.

Despite this restructuring, there exists in the French Court at Versailles, and in France generally, a strong anti-Austrian sentiment.

The diplomatic revolution of 1756, sealed in 1770 with the personal union (the diplomatic term for marriage) of Louis, the Dauphin of Viennois, and the Austrian Archduchess Marie Antoinette, is considered both a political and matrimonial mésalliance in the eyes of many Frenchmen.

It flies in the face of two hundred years of French foreign policy.

The French foreign minister, the Comte de Vergennes, maintains deep-seated hostility to the Austrians that pre-dates the alliance of 1756.

He had not approved of the shift of France's traditional bonds, and considers the Austrians untrustworthy.

He manages to extricate France from immediate military obligations to Austria by 1778.