the dreadful convulsions which alike in England and France followed the dethronement of the reigning monarch, and the hideous royal murders by which they were both consummated. See Bignon, viii. 164. Montgaillard, vi. 397, 398."*

Now this is one of the most shallow pieces of magniloquent commonplace that an historian of Europe ever penned. Be it Alison, or be it Bignon, or Montgaillard, the only excuse for them is, that looking upon Sweden altogether as a secondary matter in the history of the French revolutionary wars, they did not think it worth their while to be over curious in their investigations. And yet a chapter containing an account of an eventful change of dynasty in one of the most famous states of Europe, and also of a war which ended by the cession of Finland substantially in making Russia queen of the Baltic Sea, ought to have been seriously pondered by a historian of Mr. Alison's pretence before it was penned. The error which the learned writer has here made is a very simple but a very serious one. The deposition of the king of Sweden was not a national movement in any sense, much less a great national movement. What was it then? It was the mere bold stroke of a party:-" der Gewaltstreich einer Parthei," says Arndt: a mere aristocratic "nothing out of which no great something was likely to proceed." How and why was it this? Do we depend merely upon M. Arndt's authority or Mr. Laing's? Let him who doubts it in the first place take any most concise view of Swedish history that he can lay his hands on, and considering the course of public affairs and the state of public parties, say how it could be otherwise? To talk of a great national movement in Sweden in the same sense that the phrase might be applied to the religious revolution of England, or the political revolution of France, is merely to talk: for as M. Arndt puts it in the passage which we first quoted, where was the people, where was the nation? There is no history in modern Europe so full of depositions, resignations, and revolutions, as the Swedish, and many of these, as if by frequent practice they had become expert, the parties seem to have managed in a most peaceful and proper style comparatively. But were these changes of dynasty and revolutions the less an evil for their being so frequent? and because they were often bloodless, a matter therefore on which Professor Geijer and other Swedish historians have reason to look back with peculiar satisfaction? Shallow!-They were so frequent because there was an utter want of stability, mass, and gravitating power in the nation: because, in the perfect sense of the word, it was not yet a nation at all: and they

were so bloodless, because they were not a public struggle between the government and the people, but a mere matter of political sword-play between the king and the aristocracy. Gustavus III. in 1772, from the side of the throne, effected a bloodless revolution as nimbly, and as much to the admiration of Europe, as Adlerkreutz in 1809 on the part of the aristocracy. There was also another "revolution," though not so great a one, effected by the same monarch in 1789, on that notable occasion commonly called the league of Anjala, when the Swedish nobility (since 1772 nursing celestial wrath in their bosoms) took occasion to lay down their arms in the very critical moment of the Finnish war, and cooly refused to fight? These revolutions, indeed, were things quite understood in Sweden, and practised as a regular game by either party, so often as opportunity was or seemed to be favourable. All that was required was strength, decision, and a little violence on the one side, with weakness, wavering, and confusion on the other; and then the "revolution," or, more properly speaking, the conspiracy, was sure to succeed. Blood was merely an accident; not at all necessary. One bold stroke with or without blood, as the case might be, did the business. The king or the nobility came off victorious and held the reins tightly a little longer than an English ministry, and then were driven out in their turn by a new revolution. Meanwhile the people, that is to say, not the people of Sweden (for the far-scattered colonies of peasants that stood for that designation could not see what was going on), but the population of Stockholmstood passively by and applauded as a mob will when they see a gallant fight. They were indeed interested in the matter always more or less; but they had no means of making their interest be felt; and the main feeling with them generally was (as it often is with English electors), that a change might probably do them some good, at least could not possibly do them much harm. They therefore cried Hurrah! to the victorious party; took their dinner in the afternoon, and went to the theatre in the evening of "a revolution;" quietly, as if nothing had taken place.

So much for the character of Swedish revolutions generally. As to the political merits of this particular one, allowing it to have been, not in any sense a national, but altogether an aristocratic movement, was it a good and praiseworthy movement on the whole, or was it a bad and shameful one? Are we, with Mr. Alison, to say that "the Swedish malecontents acted the part of good patriots" in deposing their king; or shall we take up Mr. Laing's note, and talk of the "faction who sold Finland to Russia, who sold his crown to his uncle Charles XIII., and the reversion

of

of it to the present dynasty. Money or safety for themselves might be the price; still it was a foul transaction. Sweden lost Finland and Pomerania during Gustavus's reign: but was the loss from misgovernment on the part of the king, or from the most unblushing perfidy of Swedish nobles, who sold the fortresses and frontiers intrusted to them, without even the pretext of principle, for money? Was it possible to govern well with servants so corrupt? Was not the loss of these provinces similar to the loss, without any treachery in his servants, of the United States of North America, by our George III.? Did ever man dream that George III. and his dynasty ought to be deposed for the loss America?"-Strange!-here again the English Conservative identifies himself with the revolutionary party in Sweden, applauding them as "good patriots;" while the Scotch Radical becomes a sort of Swedish Jacobite and Royalist, to plead valiantly for the ancient Wasa dynasty on the throne! The causes of this change of sides, so to speak, and reverted position of literary parties, are to be found in the doings of Bernadotte, after his dynasty was identified with the revolutionary party in Sweden; in the ratification of these doings by the congress of Vienna; and in the state of parties in Sweden when Mr. Laing wrote his book. As to the real merits of the question, the causes of the deposition of Gustavus were something more powerful than mere faction, and less pure than good patriotism. Arndt (p. 252) states three: the impracticable character of the king; the worthlessness and incapacity of his ministers; the entire want of sympathy between him and his people. These are the true causes: not one of them only, but all the three: and by the first one alone, so far as the king himself and not his race was concerned, those who study the history of the times carefully, will admit that the deposition was fully justified. On the one hand, however, Mr. Alison shows a want of historical perception when he talks only generally of "good patriots" in a country so long subject to aristocratic clique and cabal as Sweden: while, on the other hand, Mr. Laing fulminates wholesale anathemas like a mere partisan, and from his hatred to the men who govern Sweden now, does not hesitate to identify the whole body to which they belong with the base deed of Cronstadt, in surrendering Sweaborg, "the Gibraltar of the north," and with it South Finland, to the Russians in 1808.

It is a pity that substantial men like Mr. Laing, trusting perhaps to the ignorance of the British reader in points of continental history (for unfortunately history is not taught in our universities), should pollute their valuable pages with wholesale calumnies of this kind. How unprincipled and how malicious to talk of the Swedish aristocracy having sold Finland to the Russians, because

one man was found among them who did a base thing! How little they had to do with the loss of Finland, the name of Adlerkreutz alone can testify. Finland was lost because Alexander of Russia was ambitious of territory, and could not resist a tempting opportunity to aggrandize himself at the expense of an ancient rival; because Gustavus IV. Adolphus was all his lifetime more ambitious of provoking a new than careful to suspect an old enemy, and generally also was deficient in military and political talent; because his ministers were scarcely more capable than himself, and wanted his principle; and, lastly, because the people in Stockholm generally, and the aristocracy in particular, were, from the beginning, opposed to a war that arose originally out of a Quixotic hostility to Napoleon, and were moreover French in their sympathies and neutral in their political principles. With regard to the German war of 1805-7 there cannot be the slightest doubt that the Swedish people were in the right. The French showed no wish to quarrel with them; and they ought, at least, to have remained neutral. The king who had not sense to sacrifice his own private feelings to this plain national interest, did not know the first duty of a ruler. With regard to Finland again, if the Swedish people in Stockholm did not support the sovereign, when once involved in a Russian war, "with mournful resolution," as Alison says; but if (as Arndt plainly proves) they despaired from the very beginning, and did every thing that they could by their vain French talk to dispirit the soldiery, and weaken the hands of the government; then let them share the blame of the loss of Finland justly with the impracticability of the monarch and the incapacity of his ministers. That Finland might have been saved, for that chance at least, had its brave native soldiers been duly supported, the general character of the people, as well as their admirable conduct on that occasion, renders undoubted. If Mr. Alison will reconsider the matter, he will find that he is quite wrong in the assertion he makes that the contest was hopeless from the beginning.

We have already said that by the obstinate and impracticable character of the king alone, we think the revolution was fully justified. From whatever cause, in the spring of 1809, things had actually been brought to such a pass-that with Barclay de Tolly and his Russian legions almost at their gates without, universal weakness, confusion and mistrust, prevailed within the walls of Stockholm. While the naked and starved militiamen were dying by thousands in the streets, the king shut himself up morosely in his palace, giving minute orders about the button-holes of their collars," shutting his eyes that he might not see the storm," and to all questions answered only-WAR. But war was,

under such a captain, in the circumstances of the case, ruin. The king, however, as he always did, remained immoveable. Having during his short reign of ten years shown a singular capacity to provoke new enemies, to insult his allies, to talk the greatest things and to do the smallest-having lost one of the fairest provinces of his kingdom, and being in the fair way to lose anotherbeing moreover since the constitutional changes of 1789 almost absolute, and not so manageable on a throne as an English George or William-his deposition seemed to offer, if not the only, at least the most obvious method of extricating affairs. To the aristocracy moreover he had just given mortal offence by dismissing them, in a moment of hasty and headstrong displeasure, from the honorable service of his body guard. They were eager to seize an occasion for resuming the power of which Gustavus III. had deprived them, and finding the humour of the people indifferent or rather inclined to favour their views, clubbed together in their old familiar ways, and arranged matters, not for an assassination this time, but for a plain deposition. A suitable occasion was easily found. A division of the western army was induced to leave the Norwegian frontier, and advance towards the city with sounding proclamations full of the misery of the times, and the dominant necessity of rightingthe wrong by a recurrence to the old principles of " Swedish liberty." An alarm was raised; the king at first did not know what to do; and then, to show his incapacity for meeting such an occasion, proposed to leave the city. To this of course the nobility objected. They came together and besieged the antechamber of the monarch. They entered. Baron Adlerkreutz laid violent hands on majesty from before, and Baron Silversparre from behind. With this, and with a single word-Your majesty will be pleased to deliver up your sword-the bloodless revolution of March, 1809, was

achieved.

The chief actor in this memorable scene, in this clever and politic "stroke of a party," was Major-General Charles Adlerkreutz, who had just returned, crowned with laurels, from the Finnish war,*

* Mr. Alison, in his account of this war, talks of "the brave Klingspor." A general historian, who may not have minutely mastered the personal details of every major and marshal that comes in his way, should avoid epithets of this kind, unless he is quite sure of their applicability. M. Arndt, who was in Stockholm at the time, and who knew the parties and the public opinion, says that this Klingspor, though nominally at the head of the Finnish army which did such marvels in driving back the Russians, in fact never had been any thing of a soldier, and "always kept at a respectable distance from powder and shot." So notorious was this at Stockholm, that, when the deposition had been effected, and the names of the conspirators were publicly known, the city wits passed their ready joke upon the whole affair thus: "It could have been no very dangerous achievement, otherwise Klingspor would have had nothing to do with it.” P. 447.