The duke of Sudermania, the king's brother, was to be sacrificed.

The young monarch, handed over to the conspirators, was to serve as a passive instrument to re-establish the ancient constitution, and legitimate their crime.

The principal conspirators belonged to the first families in Sweden; the shame of their lost power had debased their ambition, even to crime.

They were the Count de Bibbing, Count de Horn, Baron d'Erensward, and Colonel Lilienhorn.

Lilienhorn, commandant of the guards, drawn from misery and obscurity by the king's favour, promoted to the first rank in the army, and admitted to closest intimacy in the palace, confessed his ingratitude and his crime; seduced, he declared, by the ambition of commanding, during the trouble, the national guard of Stockholm.