The Courtyard Crisis () was a constitutional conflict between the Swedish king and prime minister and significant event in Swedish 20th-century history, marking the last time the Monarch of Sweden directly intervened in a controversial partisan political issue, as was done by the

King King is the title given to a male monarch in a variety of contexts. The female equivalent is queen regnant, queen, which title is also given to the queen consort, consort of a king. *In the context of prehistory, antiquity and contempora ...

Gustaf V through the Courtyard Speech at the Royal Palace in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the capital and largest city of Sweden as well as the largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people live in the municipality, with 1.6 million in the urban area, and 2.4 million in the metropo ...

() on 6 February 1914, in front of 32 000 assembled farmers from all over the country, in which he argued for higher military spending. In early 1914, tensions ran high in Sweden over the issue of defence spending, with

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

looming over

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

. On 6 February 1914, Conservative opponents of the Liberal government of

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is ...

Karl Staaff summoned a 32 000-person demonstration of farmers demanding higher defence spending. Gustaf V, who was in continual conflict with his government, declared to the crowd gathered in the courtyard of Stockholm Palace that he shared their concerns. When Prime Minister Staaff reminded the King that a parliamentary system meant the latter's exclusion from partisan politics, the King refused and said he would "''not give up the right to communicate freely with the

Swedish people Swedes ( sv, svenskar) are a North Germanic ethnic group native to the Nordic region, primarily their nation state of Sweden, who share a common ancestry, culture, history and language. They mostly inhabit Sweden and the other Nordic countrie ...

''". The government promptly resigned, and 136 Liberal members from both chambers of the

Riksdag The Riksdag (, ; also sv, riksdagen or ''Sveriges riksdag'' ) is the legislature and the supreme decision-making body of Sweden. Since 1971, the Riksdag has been a unicameral legislature with 349 members (), elected proportionally and se ...

issued a statement saying the form of government was in jeopardy, and urging the Swedish people to defend its right to rule itself. Their opponents, the Conservatives and the

Farmers' League Farmers' League (german: Bund der Landwirte, BdL, cs, Německý svaz zemědělců) was an ethnic German agrarian political party in Czechoslovakia. Ideologically the party was moderately conservative, having its base in the Sudetenland countr ...

, in turn accused them of putting

parliamentarism A parliamentary system, or parliamentarian democracy, is a system of democratic governance of a state (or subordinate entity) where the executive derives its democratic legitimacy from its ability to command the support ("confidence") of t ...

over national security, and called on the people to put every effort into solving the defence issue. The King appointed a conservative government of high-ranking civil servants and businessmen led by

Hjalmar Hammarskjöld Knut Hjalmar Leonard Hammarskjöld (; 4 February 1862 – 12 October 1953) was a Swedish politician, scholar, cabinet minister, Member of Parliament from 1923 to 1938 ( first chamber), and Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914 to 1917. In 1890, he m ...

, but tensions continued in the debate on spending. The second chamber of the Riksdag was dissolved and new elections called for. The conflict abruptly ended that June with the imminent breakout of war in Europe, which in effect decided the argument in favour of the Conservatives; however, some reforms and budget amendments were implemented to appease the Liberals. In the end, only the Social Democrats voted against the defence programme, although 24 Liberal parliamentarians discarded their votes in protest.

References

1914 in Sweden Government crises Constitutional crises 1910s in Stockholm {{Sweden-hist-stub