Robert Nisbet Bain on Kristina as a person and as a ruler

Source:

Scandinavia: A Political History of Denmark, Norway and Sweden from 1513 to 1900, pages 218 to 227, by Robert Nisbet Bain, 1905

https://books.google.com/books?id=magCAAAAYAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=pierre+michon+bourdelot+christine&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Above: Kristina.

The account:

Christina, who inherited her father's sceptre in her eighteenth year (Dec. 8, 1644), seemed born to rule a great Empire. From the moment when she took her seat at the head of the council-board she impressed her veteran counsellors with the conviction of her superior genius. In many things she resembled her still revered father. She possessed his blonde hair, ample forehead, hooked nose, and large, blue eyes. Like him she was naturally eloquent, acute, provident, courageous, energetic, equally devoted to art and science, and infinitely more learned. With an astounding memory, a lively curiosity, and a quick apprehension, her love of knowledge knew no bounds. She would rise at five in the morning, to converse for a couple of hours with Descartes in her library; and she delighted to listen to the disputations of Vossius, Salmasius, and Schefferus, all of them her protégés and pensioners. Her collection of books was renowned throughout Europe. Latin she had thoroughly mastered; the Greek classics she could read in the original; French and Italian she spoke better than her mother-tongue; while astronomy and mathematics were her favourite recreations. Yet she was much more of an Amazon than a pedant. Athletic exercises irresistibly appealed to her. In all Sweden there was not a more skilful hunter or a more daring rider; she could remain in the saddle for ten hours at a time without fatigue. Indeed her whole temperament was masculine rather than feminine. Axel Oxenstjerna himself said of her when she was only fifteen, "Her Majesty is not like women-folk, but is stout-hearted and of a good understanding, so that if her Majesty be not corrupted we have good hopes of her."

Unfortunately these brilliant and commanding qualities were vitiated by a strange combination of defects generally considered incompatible: a cold callousness and a hot, imperious temper. It is hardly too much to say that Christina was, perhaps, the most heartless sovereign who ever sat upon a throne. Other monarchs have been as selfish, but the most egotistical of them have at least loved someone or something. Christina seems to have cared for absolutely nobody but herself. Her own sex she hated and despised with an intensity which was scarcely sane; yet her pride — pride of intellect even more than pride of station — revolted at the idea of affectionate submission to any member of the opposite sex. Marriage she regarded as an insupportable yoke; and, though her hand was sought for by almost every important prince in Europe, she resolutely remained single to the last. Favourites she had in abundance, and she sometimes permitted herself a freedom of intercourse with them which the French ambassador, Chanut, considered highly indecorous; but her habitual aloofness was an insuperable barrier to the least attempt at familiarity on their part; never, for a moment, was the most highly favoured of them permitted to forget that, after all, he was only a subject. On the other hand she dispensed her largess with a prodigality utterly regardless of the necessities of the State. Indeed contempt for public opinion was perhaps the most salient, as it was the most offensive form which her pride and egoism assumed. She seemed to consider Swedish affairs as far too petty to occupy her full attention; while her unworthy treatment of the great chancellor, Axel Oxenstjerna, was mainly due to her jealousy of his extraordinary reputation, and to the uneasy conviction that, so long as he was alive, his influence must be at least equal to her own. Hence her growing dislike of the aged statesmen, a dislike which she gradually extended to every member of his numerous family. Recognising that he would be indispensable so long as the war lasted, she used every effort to bring it to an end; and her impulsive interference seriously hampered the diplomacy of the chancellor, and materially reduced the ultimate gains of Sweden.

The German war was gradually dying of exhaustion. Even the Emperor, with his superior resources, could barely defend his hereditary domains. In the spring of 1645, Torstensson, with an army of 15,000 men, invaded Bohemia, proposing, in conjunction with George Rakoczy, prince of Transylvania, to extort a peace at the gates of Vienna, whilst Turenne prevented the Bavarians from assisting the Emperor by crossing the Rhine. On March 6 Torstensson routed Hatzfeld at Jankovich, south-east of Prag, capturing Hatzfeld himself with six of his generals, all his artillery, and 4000 men — a crushing victory which opened the way to Vienna. Torstensson actually penetrated to the Danube, and captured the bridge-head facing the city; but the bridge had been burnt, and, with only 10,000 men, he was too weak to storm the place. In the summer he was joined by Rakoczy with 25,000 undisciplined Transylvanians; but that prince speedily made his own terms with the Emperor, after infecting the army of his Swedish ally with the plague, so that Torstensson was obliged to abandon his plans against Vienna, and go into winter quarters in Bohemia. In December, broken down with fatigue and racked with gout, he resigned his command to a younger colleague, Karl Gustaf Vrangel, who proceeded westwards, and, in August, 1646, united his forces with those of Turenne. Disagreements between the two commanders resulted in a barren campaign; and, in 1647, each of them went his own way with next to no result. Reuniting again in the spring of 1648, they ravaged Bavaria, defeated the Imperialists at Züsmarshausen, and pressed forward to the Inn; while another Swedish army, under Königsmark, invaded Bohemia and sacked Prag, on which occasion the famous Mæsogothic manuscript, Codex Argenteus, was sent to Upsala amongst the spoils of war. Shortly afterwards the Count Palatine, Charles Gustavus, superseded Königsmark, and was about to march westwards to join Vrangel when the tidings came that peace had at last been concluded.

The negotiations for terminating the Thirty Years' War had begun as far back as December, 1641, at Hamburg, when it was arranged that a general peace congress should meet, in March, 1642, at Osnabrück and Münster. Sweden was to negotiate with the Emperor at the former, and France to negotiate with him at the latter place, so as to avoid all disputes as to precedence between the representatives of the two confederate powers; while the little intermediate town of Lengerich was fixed upon as a place for mutual consultation. Venice and the Pope were the intermediaries between France and Germany, while Sweden negotiated with the Emperor direct. These preliminaries were not confirmed, however, till March, 1643; and the general congress was not opened till April, 1645, Torstensson's successes finally compelling the reluctant Emperor to treat. Representatives from every European state assembled at the congress, the Catholics frequenting Münster, the Protestants Osnabrück. The Swedish plenipotentiaries were senator Johan Oxenstjerna, the chancellor's son, and Adler Salvius. From the first the relations between them were strained. Young Oxenstjerna, haughty and violent, claimed, by right of birth and rank to be "caput legationis", and regarded the incomparably abler Salvius as a middle-class upstart. The chancellor at home naturally took his son's part, while Salvius was warmly supported by Christina, who privately assured him of her exclusive favour, and encouraged him to hold his own. So acute did the quarrel become that there was a violent scene in full Senate between the queen and the chancellor; and, though even Christina durst not proceed to extremities against the Oxenstjernas, she urged Salvius to accelerate the negotiations, against the judgment of the chancellor, who hoped to get more by holding out longer.

Sweden's original demands were Silesia (she held most of the fortresses there), Pomerania, which had been in her possession for nearly twenty years, and a war-indemnity of twenty millions of rix-dollars; but, after three years of negotiations, a compromise was arrived at, and on October 24, 1648, the treaty generally known as the Peace of Westphalia was signed simultaneously at Osnabrück and Münster. By this convention Sweden obtained (1) Upper Pomerania, with the islands of Rügen and Usedom, and a strip of Lower Pomerania on the right bank of the Oder, including the towns of Stettin, Garz, Damm, and Gollnow, and the isle of Wollin, with right of succession to the rest of Lower Pomerania in case of the extinction of the house of Brandenburg; (2) the town of Wismar with the districts of Poel and Neukloster; (3) the secularised bishoprics of Bremen and Verden; and (4) 5,000,000 rix-dollars. The German possessions were to be held as fiefs of the Empire; and in respect thereof Sweden was to have a vote in the Reichstag, and to "direct" the Lower Saxon Circle alternately with Brandenburg. Full civil and religious liberty was, at the same time, conceded to the German Protestants, the provisions of the Peace of Augsburg being now, for the first time, extended to the Calvinists. France and Sweden moreover became joint guarantors of the treaty with the Emperor, and were entrusted with the carrying out of its provisions, which was practically effected by the execution-congress of Nürnberg, June, 1650.

It must be confessed that Sweden's reward for the exertions and sacrifices of eighteen years was meagre, nay almost paltry. Her newly won possessions were both small and scattered, though, on the other hand, she had now obtained the practical control of the three principal rivers of North Germany — the Oder, the Elbe and the Weser — and reaped the full advantage of the tolls levied on those great commercial arteries. The jealousy of France and the impatience of Christina were the chief causes of the inadequacy of her final recompense. Yet, though the immediate gain was small, she had not dissipated her blood and her treasure altogether in vain. Her vigorous intervention in the Thirty Years' War had saved the cause of religious liberty in Europe; and this remains, to all time, her greatest historical exploit. Henceforth, till her collapse, seventy years later, she was the recognised leader of continental Protestantism. A more questionable benefit was her rapid elevation to the rank of a great, an imperial power, an elevation which imposed the duty of remaining a military monarchy armed cap-à-pied for every possible emergency. Everyone recognises now that the poverty and the sparse population of Sweden unfitted her for such a tremendous destiny. It was like investing a dwarf in the armour of a giant. But in the middle of the seventeenth century the incompatibility was by no means so obvious; and besides, to extend the metaphor, if Sweden was politically a dwarf, she was at least a sturdy dwarf in the midst of cripples and paralytics. All her neighbours — Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Moscovy — were either decadent or exhausted states; and France, the most powerful of the western powers, was her firm ally.

For the moment Sweden held the lead. Everything depended on the policy of the next few years. Careful statesmanship might mean permanent dominion, but there was not much margin for blundering. Unfortunately, just at this crisis, her destiny was in the hands of the most capricious and incalculable of women. The longer Christina ruled, the more anxious for the future fate of her empire grew the men who had helped to build it up. It is true that her country owes her something. In the beginning of her reign she seems to have taken a lively interest in both the material and the spiritual prosperity of Sweden. She gave fresh privileges to the towns; she encouraged trade and manufactures, especially the mining industries of the Dales; in 1649 she issued the first school-ordinance for the whole kingdom; she erected new gymnasia at Hernösand and Gothenburg; she encouraged foreign scholars to settle in Sweden; and native science and literature, under her liberal encouragement, flourished as they never flourished before. In one respect, too, she showed herself wiser than her wisest counsellors. The Senate and the Estates, naturally anxious about the succession to the throne, had repeatedly urged her Majesty to marry, and had indicated her cousin, Charles Gustavus, as her most befitting consort. Wearied at last by their importunities, determined to put an end to them once and for all, and, at the same time, desirous to compensate her cousin for the loss of her half-promised hand, she resolved to have him proclaimed her successor. "After all, Krona is a pretty girl too", she said laughingly. Accordingly, when the Riksdag of 1649 renewed its matrimonial position, Christina surprised the Senate next day (Feb. 24) by announcing her decision. The senators protested warmly, but the queen persisted in her resolution and prevailed, though only with the utmost difficulty could Oxenstjerna, who distrusted Charles Gustavus, be persuaded to consent thereto. Christina was undoubtedly right in thus obviating the danger of a disputed succession in the near future; and her firmness claims both our admiration and respect. At the following Riksdag, 1650, the throne was declared hereditary in Charles Gustavus and his heirs male.

Christina's anxiety to settle the succession was intimately connected with a secret resolution to resign the crown. In the summer of 1651 a committee of the Riksdag was actually summoned to receive her abdication; but the urgent supplications of a deputation of the Senate and the Estates, headed by the aged chancellor, induced the queen to reconsider her resolution. Yet, though she yielded for a time to the entreaties of her subjects, she never really abandoned the idea of abdication. Many were the causes which predisposed her to what was after all anything but an act of self-renunciation. First, she could not fail to remark the increasing discontent with her arbitrary and wasteful ways. Upon her numerous favourites, especially upon the handsome and brilliant trifler, Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, and, after his disgrace in 1653, upon her French physician, Pierre Michon Bourdelot, and the Spanish ambassador, Antonio Pimentelli, who is supposed to have undermined her religious faith, she scattered gifts in money and land with such reckless prodigality that the revenue of the State was seriously impaired. Within ten years she created 17 Counts, 46 Barons, and 428 lesser nobles; and, to provide these new peers with adequate appanages, she sold or mortgaged crown property representing an annual income of 1,200,000 rix-dollars. Most of these beneficiaries, whom she also raised to the highest offices of the State, were insignificant and even worthless persons who had done nothing to deserve their emoluments. This extravagance was carried so far that at last it became difficult to decide what did and what did not belong to the Crown; and the queen had to make her donations of land subject to the proviso that she had not already bestowed them on someone else.

Towards the end of her reign the general discontent with her government became loud and menacing; and in 1650 the storm burst. At the Riksdag held in that year a deputation from the lower Estates presented to the queen "a protestation for the restitution of crown property", in which the dilapidated state of the kingdom and the usurpations of the excessively privileged nobility were painted in the darkest colours. The queen received the deputation graciously, though she would not pledge herself to anything; but the question of the restitution of the alienated crown-lands had at least been raised, and was not allowed to fall out of sight again. Still more significant was the so-called Messenian conspiracy. In November, 1651, Arnold Messenius, a son of the recently ennobled royal historiographer, Arnold Johan Messenius, wrote a virulent squib against the queen and the nobility, and, in the frankest language invited the heir to the throne to place himself at the head of a rebellion. The Messenii, father and son (though the former protested his ignorance and innocence), were seized forthwith, tried, condemned, and executed two days after the passing of the sentence. The hasty process and the cruel judgment cast a dark shadow over Christina's memory, though she speedily repented of her harshness, and, for the sake of the implicated families, forbade any further investigations. But the whole affair was a blow to her vanity, showing her, as it did, that a large section of her subjects detested her. She might, indeed, have regained her popularity by taking the popular side and opposing the aggrandisement of the aristocracy; but this would have been a reversal of her previous policy, to which her pride would not submit.

Signs are also not wanting that Christina was growing weary of the cares of government; while the importunity of the Råd and the Riksdag on the question of her marriage was a constant source of irritation. In retirement she could devote herself exclusively to art and science; and the opportunity of astonishing the world by the unique spectacle of a great queen, in the prime of life, voluntarily resigning her crown, strongly appealed to her vivid imagination. Each of these motives may have contributed something to her otherwise inexplicable conduct; anyhow it is certain that towards the end of her reign she behaved as if she were determined to do everything in her power to make herself as little missed as possible. From 1651, when she first publicly announced her intention of resigning the crown, there was a noticeable change in her behaviour. Her prodigality knew no bounds. She cast away every regard for the feelings and the prejudices of her people. She ostentatiously exhibited her contempt for revealed religion, especially the Protestant form of it. Her foreign policy was flighty to the verge of foolishness. She contemplated an alliance with Spain, a state quite outside the orbit of Sweden's influence, the first fruits of which were to have been an invasion of Portugal. She openly snubbed the Senate by never attending its deliberations, and utterly neglected affairs in order to plunge into a whirl of costly dissipations with her foreign favourites.

At last, when the situation had become impossible, and even the chancellor admitted that if the step were to be taken at all it should be taken at once, a Riksdag was summoned to Upsala, in May, 1654, to receive the queen's abdication. The solemn act took place on June 6, 1654, at the castle of Upsala, in the presence of the Estates and the great dignitaries of the realm. After surrendering the regalia, and divesting herself of her royal robes, the queen slowly descended to the last step of the throne, and thence delivered a parting address to the Senate and the Estates, with that natural dignity which was always at her command. Both she and her hearers were deeply affected. On the afternoon of the same day her cousin was crowned king in the cathedral under the title of Charles X Gustavus. Shortly afterwards Christina quitted Sweden. She had forfeited the affection of her subjects long before she abandoned them.

Christina's departure from Sweden resembled a flight. She travelled in masculine attire, under the name of Count Dohna, to Brussels and thence to Italy. At Innsbruck she openly joined the Catholic Church, and was re-christened Alexandra. In 1656, and again in 1657, she visited France, on the second occasion ordering the assassination of her major-domo, Monaldischi, a mysterious crime still unexplained. Twice she returned to Sweden (in 1660 and 1667) in the vain hope of recovering the succession, finally settling at Rome, where she died, on April 19, 1689, poor, neglected, and forgotten.

Notes: Jankovich, Jankowitz or Jankau is the German name for what is now the town of Jankov in what is now the Central Bohemian region of the Czech Republic.

Usedom is the German name for the Polish island of Uznam in the Baltic Sea.

Stettin is the German name for the town of Szczecin in what is now the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland.

Gollnow is the German name for the town of Goleniów in what is now the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland.

Wollin is the German name for the Polish island of Wolin in the Baltic Sea.

Kristina was far from poor, neglected and forgotten by the time of the end of her life, a life that even after the abdication was very eventful and energetic.