Age of Liberty

In Swedish and Finnish history, the Age of Liberty was a period that saw parliamentary governance, increasing civil rights, and the decline of the Swedish Empire that began with Charles XII's death in 1718 and ended with Gustav III's self-coup in 1772. 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. Great Northern War Following the death of Charles XI of Sweden, his young son Charles XII became king, and in 1697, when he was only 15 years old, he was proclaimed to be of age and took over the rule from the provisional government. The states in which Sweden's expansion into a great power had primarily been at the expense of Denmark and Russia, formed a coalition with Saxony two years later with the aim of partitioning Sweden. After initial successes, Sweden's army was eventually reduced while the list of enemies grew. In a Swedish siege of Fredriksten Fortress in Norway in 1718, Charles XII was killed, after which most hostilities in the West ended. At the beginning of 1719, peace overtures were made to Britain, Hanover, Prussia, and Denmark.