originally a grand council representative of the semi-feudal landed
aristocracy, but which by the seventeenth century had come to be
essentially a bureaucracy occupying the chief offices of state at the
pleasure of the crown. Under Gustavus Adolphus and his earlier
successors, especially Charles XI. (1660-1697), however, the
government took on the character of at least a semi-absolutism. The
Rigsdag retained the right to be consulted upon important foreign and
legislative questions, but the power of initiative was exercised by
the sovereign alone. The Riksdag of 1680 admitted that the king was
responsible for his acts only to God, and that between him and his
people no intermediary was needed; and in 1682 the same body
recognized as vested in the crown the right freely to interpret and
amend the law.[802]

[Footnote 802: Bain, Scandinavia, Chaps. 8, 11;
Cambridge Modern History, IV. Chaps. 5, 20; Lavisse
et Rambaud, Histoire Generale, III., Chap. 14; IV.;
Chap. 15.]

*629. Weakness of the Monarchy in the Eighteenth Century.*--A new (p. 571)
chapter in Swedish constitutional history was inaugurated by the
calamities incident to the turbulent reign of the Mad King of the
North, Charles XII. (1697-1718), and the Great Northern War, brought
to a culmination by the cession to Russia in the Peace of Nystad,
August 30, 1721, of all the Baltic provinces which Sweden had
possessed. Early in the reign of Frederick I. (1720-1751), chiefly by
laws of 1720-1723, the government was converted into one of the most
limited of monarchies in Europe. The sovereign was reduced, indeed, to
a mere puppet, his principal function being that of presiding over the
deliberations of the Rigsrad. Virtually all power was vested in the
Riksdag. A secret committee representative of the four estates
prepared all measures, controlled foreign relations, and appointed all
ministers, and laws of every kind were enacted by the affirmative vote
of three of the four orders. The constitutional system, while
nominally monarchical, became essentially republican. In operation,
however, it was hopelessly cumbersome, and throughout half a century
the political activities of the kingdom comprised little more than a
wearisome struggle of rival factions.[803]

[Footnote 803: Bain, Scandinavia, Chaps. 12-13;
Cambridge Modern History, V., Chaps. 18-19;