1792, Sweden, Gustav III. Bronze "Assasination / Memorial" Medal. PCGS SP-63!
Mint Year: 1792
Medallsit: C.H.Küchler
References: Hild. 98, Pollard 3.
Condition: Certified and graded by PCGS as SP-63!
Mint Marker/Mint Place: Matthew Boulton/Soho, Birmingham.
Denomination: Medal - Assasination & Memorial of G ustav III of Sweden.
Weight: ca. 82gm
Diameter: 56mm
Material: Bronze
Obverse: Armored and draped bust of Gustav III of Sweden right.
Legend: GUSTAVUS III . D : G . REX SVECIAE .
Reverse: Figure holds wreath over a tomb bedecked with military trophies. A nude cupid to leaning to the left side of the tomb and is pointing at a cemeo-like medallion (with an insribed banner - "HEU MALE PEREMPTUS"), which is placed on the front panel, and depicts the scenery of the assasination of the King.
Legend:
TAM MARTE - QUAM MERCURIO
Exergue: NATUS D · XXIIII JAN · MDCCXXXXVI. SUCC · D · XII FEB · MDCCLXXI. TRUCID : D · XVI MART · MDCCXCII. OB · D · XXIX SUP · MENS · ET AN.
Conrad Heinrich Küchler (active 1763-1821) worked for Matthew Boulton (1728-1807), the Birmingham industrialist and entrepreneur. Küchler was Belgian by birth, but settled in Britain in about 1790, and worked for Boulton at the Soho Mint until about 1806.
Gustav III's war against Russia and his implementation of the Union and Security Act of 1789 helped increase hatred against the king which had been growing among the nobility ever since the coup d'état of 1772. A conspiracy to have the king assassinated and reform the constitution was created within the nobility in the winter of 1791–92. Among those involved were Jacob Johan Anckarström, Adolph Ribbing, Claes Fredrik Horn, Carl Pontus Lilliehorn and Carl Fredrik Pechlin. Anckarström was chosen to carry out the murder with pistols and knives, but there has also been evidence suggesting that Ribbing was the one who actually shot Gustav.
The assassination of the king was enacted at a masked ball at the Royal Opera House in Stockholm at midnight on 16 March 1792. Gustav had arrived earlier that evening to enjoy a dinner in the company of friends. During dinner, he received an anonymous letter that described a threat to his life (written by the colonel of the Life guards Carl Pontus Lilliehorn), but, as the king had received numerous threatening letters in the past, he chose to ignore it. The letter was written in French, and in translation it stated:
To the King — with the greatest humility.
Pray, allow an unknown whose pen is guided by tactfulness and the voice of conscience, dare take the liberty to inform You, with all possible sincerity, that certain individuals exist, both in the Provinces and here in the City, that only breathe hatred and revenge against You; indeed to the extreme of wanting to shorten Your days, through murder.
They are greatly upset to see this not happening at the last masquerade but they rejoice at the tidings of seeing that there will be a new one today. Bandits do not like lanterns; there is nothing more serviceable for an assassination than darkness and disguise. I dare, then, to appeal to You, by everything that is holy in this world, to postpone this damnable ball, to such times as are more positive for Your present as well as coming benefit...
To dare any possible assassins, the King went out into an open box facing the opera stage. And after roughly ten minutes he said "this would have been an opportunity to shoot. Come, let us go down. The ball seems to be merry and bright." The King with Baron Hans Henrik von Essen by his right arm went around the theatre once and then into the foyer where they met Captain Carl Fredrik Pollet.
The King, von Essen and Pollet continued through a corridor leading from the foyer towards the opera stage where the dancing took place. On the stage several masked men – some witnesses talked of 20 or 30 men – made it impossible for the king to proceed. Due to the crowd, Pollet receded behind the King, who bent backwards to talk to Pollet.
Anckarström stood with Ribbing next to him at the entrance to the corridor holding a knife in his left hand and carrying one pistol in his left inner pocket and another pistol in his right back pocket. They edged themselves behind the King, Anckarström took out the pistol from his left inner pocket and Ribbing or he pulled the trigger with the gun in Anckarström's hand. Because of the King turning backwards the shot went in at an angle from the third lumbar vertebra towards the hip region.
The King twitched and said "aee" without falling. Anckarström then lost courage, dropped the pistol and knife and shouted fire. People from the King's lifeguard stood some meters away. When they reached the King, they heard him say in French "Aï, je suis blessé" (Ouch, I am wounded).
The king was carried back to his quarters, and the exits of the Opera were sealed. Anckarström was arrested the following morning and immediately confessed to the murder, although he denied a conspiracy until informed that Horn and Ribbing had also been arrested and had confessed in full.
The king had not been shot dead; he was alive and continued to function as head of state. The coup was a failure in the short run. However, the wound became infected, and on 29 March, the king finally died with these last words:
Gustav's gunshot wound was not initially considered life-threatening; reexamined evidence allows that the sudden serious infection that killed him almost immediately, 13 days into his convalescence, may have been caused chemically by attending surgeon Daniel Théel who was his known adversary.
Ulrica Arfvidsson, the famous medium of the Gustavian era, had told him something that could be interpreted as a prediction of his assassination in 1786, when he visited her anonymously – a coincidence – but she was known to have a large network of informers all over town to help her with her predictions, and she was in fact interrogated about the murder.
Gustav III (24 January [O.S. 13 January] 1746 – 29 March 1792),note on dates also called Gustavus III, was King of Sweden from 1771 until his assassination in 1792. He was the eldest son of Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden[1] and Queen Louise Ulrika (a sister of King Frederick the Great of Prussia), and a first cousin of Empress Catherine the Great of Russia by reason of their common descent from Christian August of Holstein-Gottorp, Prince of Eutin, and his wife Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach.
Gustav was a vocal opponent of what he saw as the abuse of political privileges seized by the nobility since the death of King Charles XII. Seizing power from the government in a coup d'état, called the Swedish Revolution, in 1772 that ended the Age of Liberty, he initiated a campaign to restore a measure of Royal autocracy, which was completed by the Union and Security Act of 1789, which swept away most of the powers exercised by the Swedish Riksdag (parliament) during the Age of Liberty, but at the same time it opened up the government for all citizens, thereby breaking the privileges of the nobility.
A bulwark of enlightened despotism, Gustav spent considerable public funds on cultural ventures, which were controversial among his critics, as well as military attempts to seize Norway with Russian aid, then a series of attempts to re-capture the Swedish Baltic dominions lost during the Great Northern War through the failed war with Russia. Nonetheless, his successful leadership in the Battle of Svensksund averted a complete military defeat and signified that Swedish military might was to be countenanced.
An admirer of Voltaire, Gustav legalized Catholic and Jewish presence in Sweden, and enacted wide-ranging reforms aimed at economic liberalism, social reform and the restriction, in many cases, of torture and capital punishment. The much-praised Freedom of the Press Act of 1766 was severely curtailed, however, by amendments in 1774 and 1792, effectively extinguishing independent media.
Following the uprising against the French monarchy in 1789, Gustav pursued an alliance of princes aimed at crushing the insurrection and re-instating his French counterpart, King Louis XVI, offering Swedish military assistance as well as his leadership. In 1792 he was mortally wounded by a gunshot in the lower back during a masquerade ball as part of an aristocratic-parliamentary coup attempt, but managed to assume command and quell the uprising before succumbing to sepsis 13 days later, a period during which he received apologies from many of his political enemies. Gustav's immense powers were placed in the hands of a regency under his brother Prince Carl and Gustaf Adolf Reuterholm until his son and successor Gustav IV Adolf reached adulthood in 1796. The Gustavian autocracy thus survived until 1809, when his son was ousted in another coup d'état, which definitively established parliament as the dominant political power.
A patron of the arts and benefactor of arts and literature, Gustav founded the Swedish Academy, created a national costume and had the Royal Swedish Opera built. In 1772 he founded the Royal Order of Vasa to acknowledge and reward those Swedes who had contributed to advances in the fields of agriculture, mining and commerce.
In 1777, Gustav III was the first formally neutral head of state in the world to recognize the United States during its war for independence from Great Britain. Swedish military forces were engaged by the thousands on the side of the colonists, largely through the French expedition force. Through the acquisition of Saint Barthélemy in 1784, Gustav enabled the restoration, if symbolic, of Swedish overseas colonies in America, as well as great personal profits from the transatlantic slave trade.