Jacob Magnus Sprengtporten

Baron Jacob Magnus Sprengtporten (1727, in Finland – 2 April 1786, in Biskopsudden, ) was a Swedish and Finnish officer and politician, and half-brother of Georg Magnus Sprengtporten.

In his twelfth year Sprengtporten chose the profession of arms, and served his country with distinction. The few and miserable triumphs of Sweden during the Seven Years' War were due almost entirely to young Sprengtporten, and he emerged from it with a lieutenant-colonelcy, a pension and the reputation of being the smartest officer in the service.

Sprengtporten had too hearty a contempt for "Hats" and "Caps", the two main political factions during the Age of Liberty (1719–1772) in Sweden, to belong to either. He made no secret of his sentiments, and soon gathered round him a band of young officers of strong royalist proclivities, whom he formed into a club, the so-called Svenska Botten (Sweden's groundwork). The club was suppressed by the dominant "Caps" who also sought to ruin Sprengtporten financially by inciting his tenants in Finland to bring actions against him for alleged extortion, not in the ordinary courts but in the Riksdag itself, where Sprengtporten's political adversaries would be his judges. The enraged Finnish colonel thereupon approached Gustav III of Sweden with the project of a revolution against the "Caps". It was to begin in Finland where Sprengtporten's regiment the Nylandia dragoons, was stationed. He undertook to seize the impregnable fortress of Sveaborg by a coup de main. The submission of the whole grand duchy would be the natural consequence of such a success, and, Finland once secured, Sprengtporten proposed at the head of his Finns to embark for Sweden, meet the king and his friends near Stockholm, and surprise the capital by a night attack. This plan, subsequently enlarged by a suggestion of a fellow plotter, Johan Christopher Toll, was warmly approved of by the king.

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