Gustav IV Adolf

Biography

Gustav IV Adolf was born at Stockholm Palace in 1778, the son of King Gustav III and Queen Sophia Magdalena. He succeeded to the throne at thirteen when his father was assassinated in March 1792, and his uncle Charles, Duke of Södermanland, ruled as regent until he came of age in 1796.

A visit to Saint Petersburg to arrange a marriage with a granddaughter of Catherine the Great failed over religion, and in 1797 he married Frederica of Baden. Deeply hostile to revolutionary France, he postponed his coronation to avoid calling a diet, until financial trouble forced him to summon the estates to Norrköping and be crowned there in 1800.

In 1805 he joined the Third Coalition against Napoleon; the French occupied Swedish Pomerania, and after Russia allied with France at Tilsit, Russia invaded Finland in 1808 and overran it within months. Army officers rose against him in March 1809, arrested him in the palace and imprisoned him at Gripsholm. He abdicated on 29 March 1809 and the Riksdag excluded his whole family from the throne in favour of his uncle, Charles XIII.

Gustav Adolf went into exile in Germany, divorced in 1812, and ended his life in poverty in St. Gallen, Switzerland, living as 'Colonel Gustafsson'. He died there in 1837 and was later reburied in Stockholm's Riddarholm Church.