1792 - Anckarström shoots the king

Gustav III was murdered by a borrower who had made large losses due to the king’s manipulation of the value of money.

The murder of Gustav III was partly linked to the fact that Sweden had ended up with two currencies: the riksdaler riksgälds, issued by the Swedish National Debt Office, and the riksdaler banco, issued by the Riksbank. The riksdaler banco could be redeemed for silver. The riksdaler riksgälds was just a piece of paper with very little value.

To bring up the value of the riksgälds banknotes, the king pushed the Riksdag of the Estates to agree that everybody who had lent in banco would be paid in riksgälds banknotes. This meant that those who had lent in banco suddenly lost large amounts of money. One of them was the former military captain Johan Anckarström. He was so angered by this decision that, a few weeks later, he took his pistols, entered a masquerade ball at the Royal Opera in Stockholm and shot the king in the back. At his trial at the Svea Court of Appeal, Anckarström said that the king's decision to de