Sweden and the Great Northern War

Arvid Horn

See also: Arvid Horn

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It will be obvious that there was no room in this republican constitution for a constitutional monarch in the modern sense of the word.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Related Topics:
Hats - France - Great Britain

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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.

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A new race of politicians was springing up.

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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.

Related Topics:
1719 - Carl Gyllenborg - Carl Gustaf Tessin

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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.

Related Topics:
Caps - Hats - Three-cornered hat

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These epithets instantly caught the public fancy and had already become party badges when the estates met in 1738.

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This Riksdag was to mark another turning-point in Swedish history.

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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.

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