Sweden's 1792 Masked Ball Assassination of Gustav III

In 1792, King Gustav III of Sweden was shot at a masked ball at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm, an assassination that stunned Europe. This episode explores the conspiracy behind the gunshot — why Swedish nobles, led by Jacob Johan Anckarström and the nobleman Carl Fredrik Pechlin, plotted against their own king. We trace Gustav III's controversial reign: his coup in 1772 that ended the Age of Liberty, his extravagant tastes that fuelled a fiscal crisis, and his disastrous war with Russia that soured the nobility. We walk through the fateful night of March 16, 1792: the masquerade, the shot, the king's thirteen-day death agony, and the conspirators' trial. Anckarström was flogged, beheaded, and quartered; others were exiled. The assassination plunged Sweden into a regency under the king's brother, Duke Charles, and a period of reaction that stifled Gustav's Enlightenment reforms. The episode also touches on the king's cultural legacy — he founded the Swedish Academy and the Royal Opera — and how his death marked the end of enlightened absolutism in Sweden.

#GustavIII #AssassinationOfGustavIII #MaskedBall #Stockholm #1792 #Anckarström #Pechlin #SwedishHistory #EnlightenedAbsolutism #RoyalOpera #AgeOfLiberty #CoupOf1772 #SwedishNobility #FexingoHistory #History #NorthernEurope #18thCentury #Sweden

Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo