337 



ARMFELT, GUSTAF JIAURITZ. 



ARMIN, ROBERT. 



333 



the Swedish army, who sent to the king a letter, in which they 

 announced that they had dispatched Major Jagerhom to the Empress 

 Catherine with proposals for an armistice, and instructions to request 

 the empress to restore the Swedish constitution of 1720, which had 

 been overthrown by Gustavus in 1772. Two or three days after, the 

 news of a Danish war arrived, and before the confederates had time 

 to seize his person the king returned to the capital. To Armfelt was 

 committed the task of arousing the Dalecarlians, who in all the revo- 

 lutions of Sweden have taken such a distinguished part ; and he had 

 raised the country against the Danes, who after a few successes had 

 advanced considerably into the interior, when, much to his disappoint- 

 ment, an armistice was concluded between the two countries by the 

 mediation of England and Prussia. He soon after succeeded in 

 bringing a large body of the Dalecarlians to perform military duty 

 near the capital, ostensibly to supply the want of regular troops near 

 Stockholm, but in reality to overawe the states whom the king had 

 convoked, and in which he was apprehensive that his opponents would 

 have the upper hand. Armfelt'a peasant allies were so unruly that he 

 describes his joy at getting rid of them as almost equal to that he 

 felt at seeing the states break up without having done anything 

 against the king. The war with Russia was resumed with vigour in 

 the campaign of 1789, when Armfelt surprised the pass of Karnakoski 

 in Finland, and defeated the Russians in an attempt to recover it. In 

 the next year he was severely wounded in an attack on Savitaipal, and 

 the Empress Catherine ordered the Russian general Igelstrom to send 

 and offer him whatever might be useful for his recovery. This offer 

 led to an exchange of letters, in which Armfelt, who knew that the 

 empress would see the correspondence, opened the way to negociations, 

 and his design succeeded. The recent successes of the Swedes, and in 

 particular their victory at Svensksund, enabled them to obtain more 

 favourable terms than would otherwise have been practicable, and the 

 treaty of Verela, signed by Armfelt and Igelstrom on the 14th of 

 August, 1790, was on the basis of restoring affairs to the same state as 

 before the war. The peace was no sooner made than the English 

 regretted to have made no better use of so favourable an opportunity 

 of diminishing the power of Uu-sla, and proposed an offensive and 

 defensive alliance with Sweden for a fresh war, which was only broken 

 off by Gustavus demanding more than Pitt was willing to concede. 

 A treaty of alliance between Russia and Sweden was signed by Armfelt 

 at Drottningholm in August, 1791, during the absence of Gustavus, 

 who had gone to Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa to concert measures for 

 opposing the French revolution, against which this alliance was prin- 

 cipally directed. Affairs after these events were going on more 

 prosperously than for a long time before, when on the 16th of March, 

 1792, Gustavus was mortally wounded by the hand of an assassin. 



Armfelt was named Governor of Stockholm, and was also one of the 

 provisional government nominated on the morning after by the king, 

 who was with the utmost difficulty prevailed upon to include in the 

 number his brother, the Duke of Sudermania. On the morning of his 

 death, the king having learned that he only had six hours to live, drew 

 up a codicil to his will, in which he directed that all affairs during the 

 minority of his son, then a boy of twelve, should be carried on by a 

 council, whose opinion the regent, his brother, should on every 

 occasion be bound to ask in the presence of the young king himself, 

 and that all the transactions of this council should be placed on 

 record for the inspection of the young king when he had attained his 

 majority. In a final interview with Armfelt, after signing the codicil, 

 the king made him promise to be the friend of the son as he had been 

 of the father. On the same afternoon, when the will was opened, the 

 Duke of Sudermania expressed his surprise and dissatisfaction at the 

 want of confidence in him shown by Gustavus, and talked of declining 

 altogether in consequence the post assigned him. It was only after a 

 long conversation, in which Armfelt dissuaded him from taking this 

 step, that he agreed to accept the regency with all the obligations 

 attached to it, on the condition that the codicil should not be made 

 public. The document was handed over to Lagerbring, a secretary of 

 state, who was afterwards gained over to the duke's interest, and it 

 disappeared. Armfelt was treated with apparent friendliness; but the 

 conditions of the will were ill-observed, and he was allowed few inter- 

 views with the young king. He solicited permission to travel to 

 Aix-la-C'hapelle for the recovery of his health, which was still suffering 

 from the wound received in Finland, and he was afterwards named 

 Swedish ambassador to Naples. Before his departure, on the 15th of 

 July, 1792, he had a secret interview with the young king by night, in 

 which he cau'ioued him against the supposed designs of his uncle, and 

 they both parted with tears. 



While in Italy, Armfelt, who found that immediately after the day 

 of his leaving Stockholm a considerable alteration had been made in 

 the ministry, and that Reuterbolm, a friend of the French Jacobins 

 and a declared enemy of the late king, was now all-powerful with 

 Duke Charles, heard that a scheme was on foot for declaring the young 

 king unfit to reign from mental incapacity, and began to concert a 

 counter-scheme for shortening the regency of the duke, by inducing 

 the states to declare Gustavus of age to govern. With this view he 

 entered into correspondence with the Empress Catherine, as well as 

 with the Countess Rudenskold in Stockholm, and Ehrenstrom, one of 

 the royal secretaries. The whole was discovered by Duke Charles, 

 who in 1794 dispatched a vessel to Naples, to demand that his am lias - 



1)100. I>IV. VOL. I. 



sador should be delivered up to him as a traitor. The Neapolitan 

 government gave Armfelt warning in time, and he fled first to Poland, 

 and afterwards to Russia, where he lived under a feigned name at 

 Kaluga. Some papers which he had left at Naples in the charge of 

 his friend Lord Hervey, the English ambassador, were abstracted from 

 the chest without Lord Hervey's knowledge, and on the evidence 

 afforded by these and by some correspondence seized at Stockholm he 

 was tried during his absence for high treason. The Countess Ruden- 

 skold, who was brought to trial for the same offence, was one of the 

 most beautiful women in Sweden, and eighteen months before had 

 rejected the dishonourable offers of Duke Charles, who is reported 

 to have repeated them on the eve of her imprisonment, with a promise 

 of pardon if accepted, and of a terrible revenge if refused. The issue 

 of the proceedings, which were disgraceful to the duke and to the 

 nation, was that Armfelt was condemned to death as a traitor ; that 

 he was declared an outlaw, and that it was decreed that his name 

 should be inscribed on the pillar of infamy, which is set up in the 

 principal Swedish towns. The Countess Rudenskold was declared 

 infamous, and condemned to be publicly exposed on a scaffold sur- 

 rounded by four executioners, and imprisoned for life in the house of 

 chastisement or public bridewell. She sunk down after an hour's 

 exposure apparently dead from excessive agony, and the indignant 

 mob of Stockholm was only prevented from rescuing her by the strong 

 body of soldiers who guarded the scaffold. Ebrenstrom, who was 

 sentenced to death, received at the place of execution a commutation 

 of punishment into imprisonment for life. Armfelt, who appears to 

 have composed his memoirs shortly after these events had taken place, 

 concludes them by protesting, that "if righteous Heaven should ever 

 afford him the means of revenge, the author of these atrocities should 

 not die before he had tasted in this world the torments of hell." 



Armfelt left Russia, and resided in Germany till 1799, when 

 Gustavus IV., on attaining his majority at the age of 18, received 

 the crown from the hands of the regent, and immediately ordered a 

 revision of the trials for treason. The whole proceedings were 

 annulled, Armfelt restored to all his former dignities and his military 

 rank, and the countess and Ehrenstrom set at liberty. Armfelt was 

 afterwards appointed ambassador to Vienna, and in 1805 governor- 

 general of Finland. In 1807 he commanded a portion of the Swedish 

 army in Pomerania, and defended Stralsund against the French ; in 

 1808 he was appointed to the command of the western army of 

 Sweden, which was intended to conquer Norway. The attempt 

 entirely failed ; and Sweden was itself invaded by the Norwegians, 

 under the command of the Prince of Augustenburg. Armfelt was 

 recalled and deprived of his command, and appears to have been living 

 in private life when the revolution of 1809 took place, by which 

 Gustavus IV. lost the crown, and Duke Charles of Sudermauia 

 assumed it under the title of Charles XIII. No explanation seems to 

 be given of the fact, that from this prince, the very man whom Arm- 

 felt had sworn to pursue with the "torments of hell," he again 

 received the high command of which Gustavus IV. had deprived him, 

 and was also named President of the Military Council. Their friend- 

 ship however was not of long duration. The death of the Prince of 

 Augustenburg, who had been elected successor to the throne of 

 Sweden, was attributed by the populace to poison, and their suspicious 

 fixed upon the Countess Piper, Count Fersen, and Armfelt. Fersen, 

 as he followed in the funeral procession of the prince, was torn to 

 pieces by the mob, apparently with the connivance of Charles XIII., 

 whose soldiers did not attempt to defend him. An order was issued 

 for the arrest of Armfelt, who escaped by the back door of his house, 

 and fled to the residence of the Russian ambassador, whose protection 

 he claimed as a native of Finland, which had in the preceding year 

 been torn by Russia from the Swedish crown. The protection was 

 given, and Armfelt spent the rest of his life in the Russian service, in 

 which he was treated with distinguished honour. He was raised to 

 the dignity of count, made chancellor of the university of Abo, a 

 member of the Russian senate, and president of the Board of Finnish 

 Affairs at St. Petersburg, while his countess was appointed one of the 

 ladies of honour to the empress. After this life of strange vicissitudes 

 Armfelt died at Tzarskoe-Selo, on the 19th of August, 1814. 



Armfelt wrote some memoirs of himself, which were printed in 

 Swedish in 1830, in the ' Handlingar rorande Scandinaviens Historia," 

 and in a German translation in the fourth volume of the third series 

 of the * Zeitgeuossen.' The narrative supplies some explanation of 

 his course of action by the disclosures which it gives, but these dis- 

 closures only render more mysterious his subsequent career, some 

 parts of which will hardly admit of an explanation honourable to 

 Armfelt. Indeed he seems throughout the whole of his life to have 

 had a decided propensity to intrigue, and more than one circumstance 

 proves that he cannot have been a man of high principle. 



(Abridged from the liiographical Dictionary of the Society far the 

 Diffution of Useful Knowledge. ) 



ARMIN, ROBERT. The Bodleian Library contains the only known 

 copy of a tract entitled 'A Nest of Ninnies. Simply of themselves 

 without compound . Stultorum plena sunt omnia. By Robert Armin, 

 1608.' The Shakspere Society has reprinted this work, "unwilling 

 that any volume of this description, of which no other exemplar is 

 known, should be exposed to the slightest risk of loss, however remote 

 or improbable." The tract thus snatched from " Time's devouring 



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