Home > Frederick I of Sweden

Frederick was the son of the great Hessian ruler Karl I von Hessen-Kassel . He married his first wife, Luise Dorothee Sophie of Prussia (1680-1705), on May 31, 1700. His second wife, whom he married in 1715, was Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden (1688-1741), daughter of Charles XI of Sweden (1655-1697) and of Ulrika Eleonore of Denmark (1656-1693). Some historians have suggested that Frederick fired the shot, generally claimed to have been a stray bullet, that caused the death of his brother-in-law Charles XII of Sweden in 1718. After his authoritarian brother-in-law, one of the reason the Swedish Estates elected Frederick was because he was taken to be fairly weak, which indeed he turned out to be. He also had to oversee the loss of Sweden's position as a European power as a result of the wars Charles XII had started; in the Treaty of Uusikaupunki, he was forced to cede Estonia and Livonia to Russia, in 1721. He is also considered a very weak Hessian monarch, as he only visited his German country a few times and behaved like an absentee landowner , using the Hessian tax revenues to finance his court in Stockholm.

Frederick I had three illegitimate children: Friedrich Wilhelm ( 1735- 1808), Karl ( 1737- 1769), and Hedwig Amalia ( 1743- 1752). Thus, the Hessian line in Sweden ended with him and was followed by that of Holstein-Gottorp. In Hesse-Cassel, he was succeeded by his much abler younger brother William VIII , a famous general.