page_title: Axel von Fersen the Younger
section_title: Later years  (1793–1810)
hierarchical_section_title: Axel von Fersen the Younger / Life / Later years  (1793–1810)
caption_attribution_description: Svenska: Axel von Fersen den yngre Svärdsordens ordensdräkt i samma snitt som Nationella dräkten, samt över axeln Svärdsordens band, samt dess kraschan på bröstet. Miniatyr av Niklas Lafrensen 1798.
context_page_description: Hans Axel von Fersen, known as Axel de Fersen in France, was a Swedish count, Marshal of the Realm of Sweden, a General of Horse in the Royal Swedish Army, one of the Lords of the Realm, aide-de-camp to Rochambeau in the American Revolutionary War, diplomat and statesman, and a friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette of France. He died at the hands of a Stockholm lynch mob.
context_section_description: Von Fersen returned to Sweden, from where he was forced to watch the ever-increasing expansion of the French revolutionary empire, and in late December 1793, he was suspected of possible complicity in Baron Armfeldt's conspiracy to deprive the Duke of Södermanland of the regency. As a result, von Fersen was deprived of his diplomatic appointments and his post as ambassador. In November 1796, Prince Gustav was declared of age and become King Gustav IV Adolf. His accession restored von Fersen, and other supporters of Gustav III's, back to favor at court. Von Fersen and his best friend, Baron Taube, became two of the most influential advisors to the young king, inculcating in him a "steadfast opposition to Revolutionary France, close relations with Russia, and hostility to Denmark, with the ultimate objective of acquiring Norway".
  In November 1797, von Fersen attended the Second Congress of Rastatt and met general Napoleon Bonaparte:
  When I called at his hotel to pay my compliments he asked would I be kind enough to tell him what minister from Sweden is now in Paris. As you know, there is none. My reply was necessarily vague. Then he said that it was astounding that the Court of Sweden should behave in such a manner towards a nation, with which it had been on more or less friendly terms for a long while. Before I had time to respond, he remarked that the Court of Sweden seemed to take a pleasure in sending agents and ambassadors who were personally disagreeable to every French citizen.
  "No doubt," said he, "the king of Sweden would regard with disfavor a French minister who had attempted to raise the people of Stockholm against him. On the same principle, the French Republic ought not to allow men too well known for their connection with the late King and Queen of France to be sent to mock the minister of the first nation on earth."
  
  It was impossible not to understand this. I felt somewhat as I had felt the day we interviewed Drouet, and I preserved the same apparent indifference. I looked down serenely at M. le Général and merely said that I would make known to my Court what I had just heard; and I left him. 
  While in Germany, von Fersen made a trip to Karlsruhe to secure, for Gustav IV Adolf, the hand of the Princess Friederike of Baden's, whom Gustav IV Adolf married in October. In 1799, following von Fersen's return to Sweden from Germany, he was appointed as one of the Lords of the Realm.
  In the fall of that year, Gustav IV Adolf was concerned about the level of sympathy for the French Revolution in the city of Uppsala. After students at Uppsala University celebrated Bonaparte's return to France from his Italian campaigns, Gustav IV Adolf appointed von Fersen as Chancellor of Uppsala. According to Adlerbeth, this amounted to "a declared French royalist being made the Swedish Jacobins' schoolmaster". That winter a wave of rioting occurred in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Norrköping, Linköping, Malmö, and other Swedish towns following the onset of a severe winter and famine. Von Fersen wrote: "Who, given the spirit that now prevails, can guarantee that there will not be a general upheaval."
  In April, an attempt to trick the Uppsala orchestra into performing a composition containing an excerpt from the "La Marseillaise" led to the trial and punishment of four known radicals of the university, one of whom was dismissed. The "Music Trial" proved the deathblow to Uppsala radicalism.
  With the state bordering on financial bankruptcy, and poor harvests and declining trade undermining his efforts to resolve the issue without recourse to parliament, Gustav IV Adolf reluctantly announced the first assembly of the Riksdag. The Riksdag, dissolved in mid-June but not before several prominent aristocrats walked out and renounced their noble status. Though creating a much-talked about sensation, they had virtually left a vacuum in the political field which their rivals filled.
  In 1801, von Fersen was appointed Marshal of the Realm. He was now the highest official in the court of Sweden. Around this time, von Fersen's sister, Sophie, returned
caption: Axel von Fersen in the robes of the Royal Order of the Sword, miniature from 1798 by Niklas Lafrensen.
exif: {"Image ExifOffset": "26", "EXIF ColorSpace": "'1'"}