On the 16th of March 1792, the ball was given: the king appeared among the maskers: he was evidently careless of all hazard, and was conversing with a group, when, Ankerstrom, the intended assassin, entered the Salle. This traitor had been a captain in the service, but had been dismissed, or had conceived himself to be insulted by the king. Gustavus was pointed out to him by one of the conspirators: he stole behind the king, and fired at his back a pistol loaded with slugs and nails. Gustavus fell mortally wounded, and was carried to his chamber in agony. The assassin coolly walked out of the Salle, unobserved in the confusion, but was arrested next day. He was brought to trial, and died the death of a regicide. The chief conspirators were banished. The king languished until the end of the month, when he died, with great firmness and resignation.
On the pistol of Ankerstrom may have turned the fortunes of the French Revolution. Gustavus, a king, a man of military genius, and ardent in all that he undertook, would have escaped all the errors of the Duke of Brunswick. His personal rank would have rendered him independent of the wavering politics of the allies; his talent would have rectified the obsolete notions of their statesmen; and his spirit of enterprise would have rescued his army from the most fatal of all dangers to an invader--delay. He would have overruled the prejudices of the Aulic Council, and the artifices of the Prussian cabinet; and hoisted the allied flag in Paris, before the first levy of the Republic could have taken the field.
France can scarcely be regarded as having an army until 1795. The old royal army, though consisting of 180,000 men, was scattered in position and doubtful in principle. The Republican levies were yet but peasantry. The King of Sweden, at the head of 150,000 Prussians and Austrians, then the first troops in Europe in point of equipment and discipline, would have walked over all resistance; and France would have been spared the most miserable, and Europe the bloodiest, page of its annals.
The fall of Gustavus was also fatal to his dynasty. His son, Gustavus IV., inheriting his passions without his talents, and quarrelling with his allies without being able to repel his enemies, was expelled from the throne, after a series of eccentricities almost amounting to frenzy. He was arrested in the streets by General Alderkreutz, by order of the Diet. His uncle, the Duke of Sudermania, was appointed regent; and, on the king's subsequent abdication, was proclaimed king, by the title of Charles XIII.