The period from Charles XII's death in 1718 to Gustav III's coup d'etat in 1772 is mostly referred to as Frihetstiden (the "Age of Liberty"), representing a 50 year long experiment with Parliamentarism and increasing Civil Rights. The shift of power from the Monarch to the Parliament was a direct effect of the disastrous Great Northern War.

When using the term Parliamentarism it must however be noted that 18th century Sweden (with Finland) was in no way a democracy as known to the 20th century. Although the taxed peasantry was represented in the Parliament, their influence was disproportionately small indeed, while commoners without taxed property had no suffrage at all.

The Great Northern War

Charles XI of Sweden had carefully provided against the contingency of his successor's minority; and the five regents appointed by him, if not great statesmen, were at least practical politicians who had not been trained in his austere school in vain. At home the "Reduktion" was cautiously pursued, while abroad the successful conclusion of the great peace congress at Ryswick was justly regarded as a signal triumph of Sweden's pacific diplomacy. The young king was full of promise, and had he been permitted gradually to gain experience and develop his naturally great talents beneath the guidance of his guardians, as his father had intended, all might have been well for Sweden. Unfortunately, the sudden, noiseless revolution of the November 6, 1697 which made Charles XII of Sweden absolute master of his country's fate in his fifteenth year, and the league of Denmark, Saxony and Russia, formed two years later to partition Sweden, precipitated Sweden into a sea of troubles in which she was finally submerged.

From the very beginning of the Great Northern War Sweden suffered from the inability of Charles XII to view the situation from anything but a purely personal point of view. (This view is not shared by all historians. There are others who claim that the young king did what was best under the circumstances.) Great determination to avenge himself on enemies overpowered every other consideration. Again and again during these eighteen years of warfare it was in his power to dictate an advantageous peace. After the dissipation of the first coalition against him by the Treaty of Travendal on August 18, 1700 and the victory at the Battle of Narva on November 20, 1700 the Swedish Chancellor, Bengt Oxenstierna, rightly regarded the universal bidding for the favour of Sweden by France and the maritime powers, then on the eve of the War of the Spanish Succession, as a golden opportunity of "ending this present lean war and making his majesty the arbiter of Europe." But Charles, intent on dethroning Augustus II of Poland, held haughtily aloof. Subsequently in 1701 he rejected a personal appeal from William III of England to conclude peace on his own terms. Five years later on September 24, 1706 he did, indeed, conclude the Polish War by the Treaty of Altranstadt, but as this treaty brought no advantage to Sweden, not even compensation for the expenses of six years of warfare, it was politically condemnable.

Moreover, two of Sweden's Baltic provinces, Estonia and Ingria, had been seized by the tsar, and a third, Livonia, had been well-nigh ruined. Yet even now Charles, by a stroke of the pen, could have recovered nearly everything he had lost. In 1707 Peter was ready to retrocede everything except St. Petersburg and the line of the Neva, and again Charles preferred risking the whole to saving the greater part of his Baltic possessions. When at last, after the catastrophe of Poltava in June 1709 and the flight into Turkey, he condescended to use diplomatic methods, it was solely to prolong, not to terminate, the war. Even now he could have made honourable terms with his numerous enemies. The resources of Sweden were still very far from being exhausted, and during 1710 - 1711 the gallant Magnus Stenbock upheld her military supremacy in the north. But all the efforts of the Swedish government were wrecked on the determination of Charles XII to surrender nothing. Thus he rejected advantageous offers of mediation and alliance made to him, during 1712, by the maritime powers and by Prussia; and in 1714 he scouted the friendly overtures of Louis XIV of France and the emperor, so that when peace was finally concluded between France and the Empire, at the Congress of Baden, Swedish affairs were, by common consent, left out of consideration. When, on September 14, 1714, he suddenly returned to his dominions, Stralsund and Wismar were all that remained to him of his continental possessions; while by the end of 1715 Sweden, now fast approaching the last stage of exhaustion, was at open war with England, Hanover, Russia, Prussia, Saxony and Denmark, who had formed a coalition to partition her continental territory between them. Nevertheless, at this the eleventh hour of her opportunities, Sweden might still have saved something from the wreck of her empire if Charles had behaved like a reasonable being; but he would only consent to play off Russia against England, and his sudden death before Fredriksten, at Fredrikshald on December 11, 1718 left Sweden practically at the end of her resources and at the mercy of her enemies. At the beginning of 1719 pacific overtures were made to England, Hanover, Prussia and Denmark. By the treaties of Treaties of Stockholm on February 20, 1719 and February 1, 1720 Hanover and obtained the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden for herself and Stettin for her confederate Prussia.

By the Treaty of Frederiksborg or Copenhagen on July 3, 1720 peace was also signed between Denmark and Sweden, Denmark retroceding Rugen, Further Pomerania as far as the Peene, and Wismar to Sweden, in exchange for an indemnity of 600,000 Riksdaler, while Sweden relinquished her exemption from the Sound tolls and her protectorate over Holstein-Gottorp. The prospect of coercing Russia by means of the British fleet had alone induced Sweden to consent to such sacrifices; but when the last demands of England and her allies had been complied with, Sweden was left to come to terms as best she could with the tsar. Negotiations were reopened with Russia at Nystad, in May 1720, but peace was not concluded till August 30, 1725, and then only under the direst pressure. By the Treaty of Nystad Sweden ceded to Russia Ingria and Estonia, Livonia, the Finnish province of Kexholm and Viborg Castle. Finland west of Viborg and north of Kakisalmi was restored to Sweden. She also received an indemnity of two million Riksdaler and a solemn undertaking of non-interference in her domestic affairs. It was not the least of Sweden's misfortunes after the Great Northern War that the new constitution, which was to compensate her for all her past sacrifices, should contain within it the elements of many of her future calamities.

The Age of Liberty

Early in 1720 Charles XII's sister, Ulrika Eleonora, who had been elected queen of Sweden immediately after his death, was permitted to abdicate in favour of her husband Frederick the prince of Hesse, who was elected king 1720 under the title of Frederick I of Sweden; and Sweden was, at the same time, converted into the most limited of monarchies. All power was vested in the people as represented by the Riksdag, consisting, as before, of four distinct estates, nobles, priests, burgesses and peasants, sitting and deliberating apart. The conflicting interests and mutual jealousies of these four independent assemblies made the work of legislation exceptionally difficult. No measure could now become law till it had obtained the assent of at least three of the four estates; but this provision, which seems to have been designed to protect the lower orders against the nobility, produced evils far greater than those which it professed to cure. Thus, measures might be passed by a bare majority in three estates, when a real and substantial majority of all four estates in congress might be actually against it. Or, again, a dominant action in any three of the estates might enact laws highly detrimental to the interests of the remaining estate - a danger the more to be apprehended as in no other country in Europe were class distinctions so sharply defined as in Sweden.

Each estate was ruled by its Talman, or speaker, who was now elected at the beginning of each Diet, but the archbishop was, ex officio, the talman of the clergy. The lantmarskalk, or speaker of the House of Nobles, presided when the estates met in congress and also, by virtue of his office, in the secret committee. This famous body, which consisted of 50 nobles, 25 priests, 25 burgesses, and, very exceptionally, 25 peasants, possessed during the session of the Riksdag not only the supreme executive but also the supreme judicial and legislative functions. It prepared all bills for the Riksdag, created and deposed all ministries, controlled the foreign policy of the nation, and claimed and often exercised the right of superseding the ordinary courts of justice. During the parliamentary recess, however, the executive remained in the hands of the Privy Council, which was responsible to the Riksdag alone.

Arvid Horn

It will be obvious that there was no room in this republican constitution for a constitutional monarch in the modern sense of the word. The crowned puppet who possessed two casting votes in the Privy Council, of which he was the nominal president, and who was allowed to create peers once in his life, at his coronation, was rather a state decoration than a sovereignty. At first this cumbrous and complicated instrument of government worked tolerably well under the firm but cautious control of the Chancery President, Count Arvid Horn. In his anxiety to avoid embroiling his country abroad, Horn reversed the traditional policy of Hats and Sweden by keeping France at a distance and drawing near to Great Britain, for whose liberal institutions he professed the highest admiration. Thus a twenty years' war was succeeded by a twenty years' peace, during which the nation recovered so rapidly from its wounds that it began to forget them. A new race of politicians was springing up. Since 1719, when the influence of the few great territorial families had been merged in a multitude of needy gentlemen, the first estate had become the nursery and afterwards the stronghold of an opposition at once noble and democratic which found its natural leaders in such men as Count Carl Gyllenborg and Count Carl Gustaf Tessin. These men and their followers were never weary of ridiculing the timid caution of the aged statesman who sacrificed everything to perpetuate an inglorious peace and derisively nicknamed his adherents "Night-caps" (a term subsequently softened into "Caps"), themselves adopting the sobriquet "Hats" from the three-cornered hat worn by officers and gentlemen, which was considered happily to hit off the manly self-assertion of the opposition. These epithets instantly caught the public fancy and had already become party badges when the estates met in 1738. This Riksdag was to mark another turning-point in Swedish history. In the War of the Polish Succession between 1733-1738 Sweden supported Stanislaus Leszczynski against August III of Poland. The Hats carried everything before them, and the aged Horn was finally compelled to retire from a scene where, for three and thirty years, he had played a leading part.

Hats and Caps

The policy of the Hats was a return to the traditional alliance between France and Sweden. When Sweden descended to a position of a second-rate power the French - alliance became too costly a luxury. Horn had clearly perceived this; and his cautious neutrality was therefore the soundest statesmanship. But the politicians who had ousted Horn thought differently. To them prosperity without glory was a worthless possession. They aimed at restoring Sweden to her former position as a great power. France, naturally, hailed with satisfaction the rise of a faction which was content to be her armourbearer in the north; and the golden streams which flowed from Versailles to Stockholm during the next two generations were the political life-blood of the Hat party. The first blunder of the Hats was the hasty and ill-advised war with Russia. The European complications consequent with upon the almost simultaneous deaths of Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor and Empress Anne of Russia, seemed to favour their adventurous schemes; and, despite the frantic protests of the Cap, a project for the invasion of Russian Finland was rushed through the premature Riksdag of 1740. On July 20, 1741 war was formally declared against Russia; a month later the Diet was dissolved and the lantmarskalk set off to Finland to take command of the army. The first blow was not struck till six months after the declaration of war; and it was struck by the enemy, who routed the Swedes at Lappeenranta and captured that frontier fortress. Nothing else was done on either side for six months more; and then the Swedish generals made a "tacit truce" with the Russians through the mediation of the French ambassador at St. Petersburg. By the time that the "tacit truce" had come to an end the Swedish forces were so demoralized that the mere rumour of a hostile attack made them retire panic-stricken to Helsinki; and before the end of the year all Finland was in the hands of the Russians. The fleet, disabled by an epidemic, was, throughout the war, little more than a floating hospital.

To face the Riksdag with such a war as this upon their consciences was a trial from which the Hats naturally shrank; but to do them justice, they showed themselves better parliamentary than military strategists. A motion for an inquiry into the conduct of the war was skilfully evaded by obtaining precedence for the succession question Queen Ulrike Eleonora of Sweden had lately died childless and King Frederick was old; and negotiations were thus opened with the new Russian empress, Elizabeth of Russia, who agreed to restore the greater part of Finland if her cousin, Adolph Frederick of Holstein, were elected successor to the Swedish crown. The Hats eagerly caught at the opportunity of recovering the grand duchy and their own prestige along with it. By the Treaty of Abo May 7, 1743 the terms of the empress were accepted; and only that small part of Finland which lay beyond the Kymi river was retained by Russia. In March 1751 the old King Frederick died. His slender prerogatives had gradually dwindled down to vanishing point.