Carl Gustaf Tessin (5 September 1695 – 7 January 1770) was a Swedish Count and politician and son of architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger and Hedvig Eleonora Stenbock. He was one of the most brilliant personages of his day, and the most prominent representative of French culture in Sweden. He was also a fine orator. He began his public career in 1723, at which time he was a member of the Holstein faction, which promoted the claims of the young Duke Carl Frederick of Holstein to the Swedish throne. In 1725 Tessin was appointed ambassador at Vienna, and in that capacity counteracted the plans of the Swedish chancellor, Count Arvid Horn, for joining the anti-Russian Hanoverian Alliance. During the riksdags of 1726–27 and 1731, Tessin fiercely opposed the government, and his wit, eloquence, and imposing presence made him one of the foremost protagonists of the party subsequently known as "The Hats". From 1735 to 1736 he was again Swedish ambassador at Vienna. During the riksdag of 1738 he was elected marshal of the Riksdag of the Estates and contributed more than anyone else to the overthrow of the Horn administration the same year. Tessin chose for himself the post of ambassador extraordinary at Paris and from 1739 to 1742 delighted Versailles with his brilliant qualities of grand seigneur, at the same time renewing the traditional alliance between France and Sweden which had been interrupted for more than sixty years. From 1746 to 1752 Tessin was president of the chancellery, as the Swedish prime minister was called in those days. His system aimed at a rapprochement with Denmark with the view of counterbalancing the influence of Russia in the north. It was a dignified and prudent policy, but his endeavour to consolidate it by promoting a matrimonial alliance between the two courts alienated the Swedish crown prince, who, as a Holsteiner, nourished an ineradicable hatred of everything Danish. As, moreover, on the accession of Adolphus Frederick in 1751, Tessin refused to countenance any extension of the royal prerogative, the rupture between him and the court became final. On the occasion of the coronation (1752) he resigned the premiership.

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