Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
An assassination that inspired the world-famous Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi to write his legendary opera “Un ballo in maschera” took place on March 16, 1792, at the Stockholm Opera House. A masked ball was being held there, with King Gustav III of Sweden as the guest of honor. He had previously been warned in a letter from his old friend, the colonel of the Life Guards, Carl Pontus Lilliehorn, not to attend the masked ball, as he was the target of an assassination attempt. However, King Gustav III did not take the letter seriously, which in retrospect proved to be a fatal mistake. Gustav III, who ascended the Swedish throne on February 12, 1771, at the age of 25, succeeded in staging a brilliant coup d’état on August 19. To gain more power, he had the Imperial Council and the representatives of the noble party arrested. This ensured that the remaining members of the Estates General signed the new constitution. They did so on August 21, 1772, when they swore an oath of allegiance and signed the new constitution. Gustav III had deprived the estates of their power and became a popular ruler under whom trade and agriculture flourished. He implemented various reforms, including introducing freedom of the press, abolishing torture, establishing poorhouses and hospitals, and promoting the arts. Gustav III created an entire era known as the Gustavian Age. The initially popular monarch became increasingly unpopular due to costly construction projects that increased the tax burden, bans on private distilling, and, above all, his pursuit of absolutist rule. In 1788, he started a war with Russia because his cousin, the Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great, refused to support him in his conquest of Norway. The nobility did not want this war. Denmark, which had allied itself with Russia, declared war on Sweden in 1789. However, a few months later, Denmark agreed to a truce with Sweden. After Sweden-Finland had built a fleet in the winter of 1789 to 1790, a major naval battle took place on July 9, 1790, which was won by the Swedish fleet. Russia then agreed to the Swedish peace proposals and the war ended without any border changes. Gustav III then wanted to end the French Revolution with the support of the European great powers. He saw it as the seed for the abolition of the monarchy in Europe. The Swedish nobility wanted to prevent this and conspired against the king, led by Karl Frederick Pechlin. When the king entered the masked ball on the night of March 16-17, 1792, accompanied by his adjutant Hans Henrik Graf von Essen, he was surrounded by 16 men dressed in black. Count Horn then tapped him on the shoulder with the words, “Bon soir, beau masque!” (Good evening, handsome mask!), whereupon Johan Jacob Anckarström shot him in the back with his pistol and dropped the weapon. The masked group then dispersed. Gustav III died 13 days later, on March 29, 1792, from blood poisoning as a result of his gunshot wound. As he lay dying, he appointed his underage son Gustav IV Adolf as the new regent. The treacherous assassin Johan Jacob Anckarström was the son of a first lieutenant, born on May 11, 1762, in Roslagen. In 1777, he entered the Swedish court as a page and joined the army a year later, but left in 1783 with the rank of captain. Anckarström strongly sympathized with the revolutionary forces in France and gave rebellious speeches against the king’s autocratic rule, for which he was charged and briefly imprisoned in 1790. This fueled his hatred of the king even more. The king’s death was to lead to the introduction of a new constitution. Already in the winter of 1791, there had been a conspiracy by the nobility against the life of King Gustav III, but it had been thwarted in time. One day after the assassination, Johan Jacob Anckarström was arrested because a gunsmith had identified Anckarström as the owner of the pistol used to shoot the king. On April 16, 1792, Johan Jacob Anckarström was sentenced to death. He immediately confessed to the assassination, but despite being flogged with rods for three days in a row, he did not betray his accomplices. On April 27, 1792, he was beheaded in Stockholm. Beforehand, his right hand had been chopped off. His noble accomplices, against whom the police had no solid evidence, were banished into exile. The assassination of Swedish King Gustav III had been predicted four years earlier by Ulrica Arfvidsson, a well-known medium.
