Several big naval battles were fought, and in all of them the King, who personally commanded his fleet, performed wonders of valor. The last of these battles was that of Swenskasund on the ninth of July, 1790; and the King, who fought with the bravery of despair because the fleet of the Russians was considerably superior in numbers to his own, won a brilliant victory. No less than fifty-nine Russian warships, carrying altogether six hundred and forty-three guns, fell into the hands of the Swedes. But even more than this great material success was the prestige which Gustavus derived from the victory. He was tired of the war, and he could now as a victorious hero offer terms of peace, honorable and advantageous to his country, instead of humbly accepting terms from Russia. On the fourteenth of August, 1790, a treaty of peace was concluded by which, while Sweden did not receive any territorial indemnity, she secured rights and trade privileges in the Baltic Sea which Russia until then had denied her. The honors of the war were therefore on Sweden’s side, and the King personally, for his unquestioned heroism, was entitled to a liberal share of them.
On the other hand, the results of the war were disastrous for the country, and the King was by his enemies, the nobility (who were more bitterly opposed to him than ever), held responsible for these disasters. The heavy expenditures for the war had necessitated extraordinary tax levies which were burdensome to the whole people, rich as well as poor, and these could not be abolished immediately on the termination of the war. The brilliant festivities, balls and entertainments, which greeted the King on his return to his capital, could not fully conceal the great distress and poverty of the people; but with that levity which was a conspicuous feature of his character and which gave him such a mental resemblance to Marie Antoinette, whom he greatly admired, he tried to forget in the intoxication of incessant amusements and pleasures the personal privations he had suffered during the war and the sorrows and wants of the nation. That this conduct, which he did not care to conceal from the public eye, irritated the people and filled many of those who had been his admirers with disgust and hatred may easily be imagined. But that by which he gave the greatest blow to his popularity was his active and over-zealous sympathy in the misfortunes of Louis the Sixteenth and his Queen, Marie Antoinette, and his efforts to release them from captivity and save them from death.