FERSEN, HANS AXEL, COUNT VON (1755-1810), Swe dish statesman, was educated at home, and at the military schools of Brunswick, Turin and Strasbourg. In r 779 he entered the French military service (Royal-Baviere), accompanied General Rochambeau to America as his adjutant, distinguished himself during the war with England, notably at the siege of Yorktown, 1781, and in 1785 was promoted to be colonel proprietaire of the regiment Royal-Suedois. The queen, Marie Antoinette, was es pecially attracted by his grace and wit and it is possible that he would have passed his life at Versailles, but for a hint from his own sovereign, then at Pisa, that he desired him to join his suite. He accompanied Gustavus III. in his Italian tour and returned home with him in 1784. Fersen went with his regiment to Finland in 1788, but in the autumn of the same year returned to France, where Gustavus required an agent thoroughly in the confidence of the French royal family, and sufficiently able and audacious to help them in their desperate straits. Before the end of r 790 Fersen had to admit that the cause of the French monarchy was hopeless so long as the king and queen of France were captives in their own capital. Finding the requisite funds he made the arrangements for their flight to Varennes, and was the coachman of the fiacre which drove the royal family from the Carrousel to the Porte Saint-Martin.
In 1791, Fersen was sent to Vienna to induce the emperor Leopold to accede to a new coalition against revolutionary France, but he soon realized that the Austrian court meant to do nothing, and was transferred to Brussels, where he could be of more service. In Feb. 1792, he reached Paris with counterfeit creden tials as minister plenipotentiary to Portugal. On Feb. 13, he had three interviews with the royal family, but returned to Brussels on the 27th, having accomplished nothing. In Fersen was sent to the congress of Rastatt as the Swedish delegate, but in consequence of a protest from the French government, was not permitted to take part in it.
During the regency of the duke of Sudermania (1792-96) Fersen, like all the other Gustavians, was in disgrace; but, on Gustavus IV. attaining his majority in 1796, he was reinstated in all his offices and dignities. In 18o1 he was appointed Rik smarskalk (=earl-marshal). On the outbreak of the war with Napoleon, Fersen accompanied Gustavus IV. to Germany to assist him in gaining fresh allies. He prevented Gustavus from invading Prussia in revenge for the refusal of the king of Prussia to declare war against France, and during the rest of the reign was in semi disgrace, though generally a member of the government when the king was abroad.
Fersen stood aloof from the revolution of 1809. (See SWEDEN: History.) His sympathies were entirely with Prince Gustavus, son of the unfortunate Gustavus IV., and when the newly elected successor to the throne, prince Christian Augustus of Augusten burg, died suddenly in Skane in May 181o, the report spread that he had been poisoned, and that Fersen and his sister, the countess Piper, were accessories. When the prince's body was conveyed to Stockholm on June 20, 1810, and Fersen, in his official capacity as Riksmarskalk, received it at the barrier and led the funeral cortege into the city, he was attacked by the mob. In order to save him, two officers volunteered to conduct him to the senate house and there place him in arrest. But when he appeared on the steps, the crowd rushed on him and kicked and trampled him to death, while the troops, drawn up in the Riddarhus Square, made no effort to rescue the Riksmarskalk.
See R. M. Klinckowstrom, Le Comte de Fersen et la cour de France (1877 ; Eng. ed. entitled, Diary and Correspondence of Count Axel Fersen, 1902) ; R. N. Bain, Gustavus III., vol. ii. (1895) ; P. Gaulot, Un Ami de la reine (1892) ; F. F. Flach, Grefve Hans Axel von Fersen (Stockholm, 1896) ; E. Tegner, Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt, vol. iii. (Stockholm, 1883-87) ; 0. G. de Heidenstam, Marie-Antoinette, Fersen et Barnave; leur Correspondance (1913, Eng. trs., 1926) .