Revolution of 1772 in the context of "Instrument of Government (1809)"

In Swedish history, the Age of Liberty (Swedish: Frihetstiden) was a period that saw parliamentary governance, increasing civil rights, and the decline of the Swedish Empire that began with the adoption of the Instrument of Government in 1719 and ended with the Revolution of 1772, Gustav III's self-coup. This shift of power from the monarch to parliament was a direct effect of the Great Northern War.

Suffrage under the parliamentary government was not universal. Although the taxed peasantry was represented in the Parliament, its influence was disproportionately small, and commoners without taxed property had no suffrage at all.

Gustav III (24 January [O.S. 13 January] 1746 – 29 March 1792), also called Gustavus III, was King of Sweden from 1771 until his assassination in 1792. He was the eldest son of King Adolf Frederick and Queen Louisa Ulrika of Sweden.

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 in the Great Northern War. 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. This was completed by the Union and Security Act of 1789, which swept away most of the powers exercised by the Swedish Riksdag of the Estates 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.