The hostility of the nobles and their rebellious spirit, which had been overawed and silenced for some years by the great personal popularity of the King, reappeared and gained ground with the disaffection of the people, and especially of the rural population. For a King like Gustavus the Third, ambitious and high-spirited, military glory had a tempting attraction, and he had commenced soon after his successful _coup d’état_ to prepare for winning it. The army was in a really deplorable condition at the time of his accession to the throne, being entirely without artillery and deficient in equipment. Gustavus lost no time in remedying these defects. He modelled the Swedish army after the Prussian army as reorganized by Frederick the Great, which was then considered the finest and best equipped in Europe, and within two years he had made it, with its splendid personnel and its modern material, a formidable machine of war, which, under the leadership of a military genius, might have renewed the great days of Gustavus Adolphus or Charles the Twelfth. But it was the ambition of Gustavus the Third to command the army himself, and he was not a military genius. He declared war upon Russia, with the intention of recovering the lost provinces of Finland, and proceeded to Finland himself in order to take command of the invading army.
It was there that the first misfortune overtook him. After a few engagements,--rather skirmishes than battles,--in which the Swedes were victorious, the King decided to invest or take by assault the small fortress of Frederickshamm. It would have been better for him if he had marched directly upon Petersburg, which was not in a condition to resist an immediate attack of a superior army. If he had done so, very likely the Esths, first cousins of the Finns, and anxious to shake off the yoke of Russia, would have joined him and would have placed him in possession of the Russian borderland; but Gustavus frittered away the time and by his inactivity enabled the commanders of his own regiments (generally appointed from the ranks of the high nobility) to organize a conspiracy against him and virtually drive him from the field. Very likely bribed with Russian gold, they jointly issued a manifesto that Gustavus had violated the constitution of Sweden by declaring war upon Russia without the consent of the Reichsrath, and they were therefore not bound to obey him in this criminal undertaking. They also used their influence on the other officers and on the soldiers of their regiments, and made them rebellious against the King’s commands. In vain Gustavus implored them not to abandon him and the cause of their country; but they were deaf to his prayers and to his threats, and he left the army as a humiliated and disgraced commander.