of Finland independent, and they requested the Empress Catherine's military and material assistance. Russia, however, was having difficulties, too, in its foreign policies: since it feared the prospect of gaining Prussia as an additional enemy, it gradually veered toward a settlement with Sweden. To the Finns who appealed to her, Catherine appeared reserved, but to her secretary she confided: "Let them ask to be forgiven; why feed them with empty promises? I cannot help them."

In the armistice signed at Värälä the boundaries remained unchanged, but as an epilogue to the war there remained the handing out of sentences to the Anjala officers. Since Sprengtporten was not on hand to be arrested, he was sentenced to loss of his positions and his property, as well as to be hanged should he return to the country. Other officers who had fled to Russia were ordered to be shot on sight. Although the King had won, uncertainty continued, and the unrest did not end until a pistol shot aimed by a member of a secret league plotting revolution hit Gustav III at the Opera House in Stockholm in March 1792. The King died within a fortnight.

Just as Gustav III had idealized Gustavus II Adolphus, the great warrior king before whom Europe had trembled, so his son idolized the soldier hero Charles XII. The new king, Gustavus IV Adolphus, became quite popular in Finland, which he visited twice, and of which he saw much on his second, extensive trip in 1802. Finland's progress during this period was rapid, and the population increased rapidly, too, reaching the 900,000 mark before war broke out again.

Following the Peace of Nystadt, Finland had become increasingly more pro-Swedish. Everyone educated to be an official or administrator, or who had more than an elementary school education, learned to speak Swedish. It is difficult, therefore, to understand the awakening of a national Finnish spirit at the beginning of the 19th century without noting the groundwork which had been started at approximately that same period at the University of Turku. The emergence of several distinguished scholars all at more or less the same time, at the end of the 18th century, presents a splendid picture. Among them, even for his contemporaries, the many-sided scholar Henrik Gabriel Porthan was outstanding in this group. He was aware that the Finns had linguistic kin, and making a clear distinction between purely Finnish words and borrowed words, he formulated a picture of Finnish culture and the Finnish community. He prepared an outline of Finnish history, and in a memorial address at the university

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