Gustavus showed his lack of political sagacity in estranging the very element upon which he had founded his autocratic power,--the great mass of the people. Their devotion had made it possible for him, not only to continue the war against Russia, but also to be more than a mere figure-head in the government of his kingdom. The support of the nobility he had lost beyond redemption. They hated him, and only hoped for opportunities to humiliate him. All efforts on his part to reconcile them failed. His true policy should have been to ingratiate himself still more with the people, relieve their burdens, make the laws and institutions more liberal, and carry out the promise he had made to them, that he wanted to be clothed with supreme power in order to make the nation more happy and the country more prosperous. But his character did not permit him to pursue this policy dictated by common-sense. The French Revolution had broken out, and the misfortunes of the French King and Queen enlisted his profound sympathy. He watched the progress of the revolution with eager interest, and when it became apparent that Louis could not master it, he formed the adventurous and fantastic plan of placing himself at the head of a large army, composed of contingents of all the European powers, and restoring absolute monarchy in France, as he had restored absolute monarchy in Sweden. In order to realize that dream which corresponded so well to his visionary, chivalrous, poetical temperament, he opened negotiations with Russia, Prussia, Austria, and especially with the French _émigrés_. These men had assembled in Germany and other countries waiting for an opportunity to return to France under the standards of some friendly power coming to the rescue of Louis the Sixteenth and monarchical institutions. Gustavus had tried his best to assist the French King in his flight from Paris. It was a Swedish carriage, with Swedish attendants, which was to convey Louis the Sixteenth and the royal family beyond the borders of France, and which was so abruptly stopped at Varennes. After this attempt at flight had failed, Gustavus saw no other means of saving the monarchy--not only in France, but throughout Europe--than by making war upon the Jacobins, stamping out the Revolution in the blood of its adherents, and seating Louis the Sixteenth in the full glory of absolutism once more on the throne. The execution of this plan, he imagined, would immortalize him, and would make him in effect the dictator of Europe.