During the last years of his reign, Charles XII. took no advice of Swedish men. Foreign adventurers and schemers were in charge of the affairs of state, principal among whom was Baron George Henric Gœrtz. This man was a minister of state of the young duke of Holstein-Gottorp, in whose service he remained, and in whose interests, as a successor to Charles XII. on the throne of Sweden, he zealously worked, while developing into the all-powerful minister of the Swedish king. Charles granted him authority to act in his name in almost every branch of the government, interior as well as foreign. Gœrtz was a genius, but utterly reckless. For his acts the king was responsible, not he. Gœrtz was a foreigner and working for the cause of a foreign master. He tried to obtain loans abroad, made compulsory loans within the country, placed a tax on articles of luxury, and put in circulation coins of copper which were a kind of “promissory notes,” worthless in themselves, but each representing a Swedish dollar. At first these “coins of need” were issued to the amount of a sensible sum, but were soon increased in number at the command of Charles XII. himself, so that they represented higher sums than the crown could redeem, and thus lost their value. The people refused to take them, while the prices of everything in the market rose to an astounding height. The government, in order to save itself from this difficulty, took possession of all coined money and uncoined silver, and gave the “coins of need” in exchange, perpetrating several other scandalous acts of violence against the rights of private property.
The situation grew almost insupportable. Commerce and industry, injured by the war, ceased entirely because nobody was inclined to sell, only to receive in exchange worthless coins. Wars and hard years combined in creating misery and distress everywhere. The peasants were recklessly treated, and a disregard for moral obligations grew out of the bad examples set by the government. The students and scientists had in great numbers been carried away by the bloody wars, and the interest in the fields of culture was slackened by the power of financial depression. The wealthy and well-to-do saw their means daily diminish, and, losing their interest in public welfare, they tried to save the remnants of their own property. The members of the state council were threatened by investigations which Gœrtz and his friends were scheming to institute against them. In the nobility, the plans for a change of the constitution matured, the leaders in this movement being Count Per Ribbing and the old Gyllencreutz, who had prophesied the outcome of an absolute monarchial government.