Anna Brownell Jameson's biography of Kristina, part 1

Source:

Memoirs of celebrated female sovereigns, volume 1, pages 1 to 25, by Anna Brownell Jameson, 1831

https://archive.org/details/memoirsofcelebra02jameuoft/page/n7/mode/2up

The biography:

CHRISTINA,

QUEEN OF SWEDEN.

ALTHOUGH the arts which she patronized threw a factitious and a temporary splendour round the character of Christina, it has proved too superficial and unfounded to dazzle or deceive posterity. The contemporaries of this queen appear at a loss what to say or think of a woman whose life "was one contradiction;" whose intellectual powers and exalted station procured her no respect; who gave away a throne from an excess of selfishness, and divested herself of power from a love of independence; whose passion for glory ended in abasement and self-degradation, and whose ambition stooped to a mean dependence upon those whom she despised. Had Christina moved in a private station, she had been merely regarded as a vain, clever, and very eccentric woman, and might have found many a parallel among her own sex; but being placed upon a throne, she appeared extraordinary, and even sometimes great; — and was certainly one of the most remarkable women who ever existed. She seems to have been endued by Nature with talents and dispositions which ought to have rendered her life happy, her reign glorious, and her memory illustrious; but ill-educated — at least ill-educated for the station for which she was destined — and destitute of virtue or common sense, her sex, her learning, and her splendid situation only served to render her more conspicuously wretched, ridiculous, and pitiable. As a woman, she passed through life without loving or being loved; and, as a queen, she sank into the grave uncrowned, unhonoured, and unlamented.

Christina of Sweden was the only daughter of the celebrated Gustavus Adolphus King of Sweden, surnamed the "Lion of the North", from his conquests and military achievements; her mother was Maria-Eleonora of Brandenburgh, daughter of the Elector John Sigismond. It is asserted that Gustavus married this princess from political motives, and contrary to his own inclinations, being at that time deeply in love with a young Swedish girl named Christina, who afterwards died. It is also said that it was from affection to her memory that he bestowed the name of Christina on his daughter and heiress. It is not, however, the less certain that Eleonora of Brandenburgh succeeded in gaining the entire affections of her husband. She is described by contemporary writers as a fair-complexioned and handsome woman, with a fine figure and soft, graceful manners; endued with a disposition for the tender and romantic, and some taste for the fine arts; but deficient in judgment, and weak in character, with all that paltry jealousy of power and turn for intrigue which is one of the signs of a little mind. She was passionately attached to her husband, who loved her for her beauty and gentleness, but took care to exclude her from all political influence, both during his life, and afterwards, by his last will.

Christina was born at Stockholm, December 18, 1626. Her parents, who ardently desired a son to inherit the throne, were considerably disappointed at her birth: her father, however, soon reconciled himself to the will of Providence, and caused the same rejoicings to be made as are usual at the birth of an heir-apparent. Not so her mother. The queen had listened to the assurances of some pretended astrologers, who, after consulting the stars, had promised that she should be the mother of a son; and she was the more inconsolable because Christina, far from displaying any of the graces of her sex, was in her childhood singularly ugly. She appears to have treated her in early infancy with a degree of indifference which the young queen never forgot, and in after-times repaid by a neglect which shortened the life of her parent.

Her father, however, loved her with a fond affection; and it is related that when she was attacked by a dangerous illness at a time when he was distant several hundred miles from the capital, he instantly set off to see her, and travelled night and day without repose till he reached Stockholm. Her restoration to health was celebrated by a solemn and public festival; and after this period she generally accompanied her father in all his journeys. On one occasion, when they entered the fortress of Calmar, the governor did not venture to salute the King with the usual discharge of artillery, fearing lest the thunder of the cannon should terrify the young princess into convulsions: she was then about two years old. Her father hesitated; but after a moment's silence, he exclaimed — "Fire! — she is a soldier's daughter, and must learn to bear it!" The child, far from being startled or discomposed by these warlike sounds, laughed and clapped her hands, and her father gloried in her intrepidity. He conceived thus early the idea of giving his daughter the education and sentiments which belong to the other sex; and it is certain that Christina so far forgot her own, as to regret, to the last moment of her life, that she had never headed an army in the field of battle, nor seen the blood of men flow in mortal strife!

It would, perhaps, be too much to assert that she inherited these dispositions from her warlike father. Gustavus was regarded as the greatest general, and the greatest conqueror, of modern times, until the rise of Napoleon: but his pursuit of military glory, had, at least, a higher and more generous motive. He took arms for the preservation of the Protestant faith in Germany, and to maintain the independence of the lesser states and princes of the empire against the overwhelming power of the house of Austria. Of all those monarchs whose fame rests chiefly upon their military prowess, Gustavus appears to have been the most amiable and magnanimous, and his conduct the most pure from overweening pride and personal ambition. When, in 1632, he entered Saxony victorious and was received by the people as their saviour; — when they hailed him with acclamations of gratitude and admiration, a sad presentiment came over his mind, in which the chivalrous spirit of a royal hero mingled with that deep enthusiastic piety which distinguished some of the old Scottish Covenanters. On this occasion he appeared oppressed and shocked by the excess of the homage paid to him. "I am afraid", said he, "that God will punish me for the folly of this people. He who has called himself a jealous God, will show them, — ay, and me too, that I am but a weak, mortal man. Great God! bear witness that this is against my will! to thy providence I commit myself!"

Another of his speeches places him even in a more amiable light, and is worth recording, were it only to show what a hero and a conqueror thought of that glory which usually dazzles the multitude. The deputies of some German city appeared before him, to compliment him on his victories, and express their gratitude for his protection. They assured him, that but for him, the Austrians would have founded a universal monarchy on the ruin of the peace and liberties of Europe; that God had raised him up to be the deliverer of Germany, and the guardian of his own country; and that his invincible courage was a special effect of the Divine goodness. "Say, rather", said Gustavus, interrupting him, "an effect of the Divine wrath. The war which we carry on as a remedy is the most insupportable of all earthly evils; worse than any of the evils it proposes to avert. Be assured that Providence never deviates from the usual course of things, without chastising some one; and when He bestows on a monarch extraordinary talents or ambitions, it is not as a favour, but a scourge and a punishment to the nations." "A conqueror", he added, "is one who in his passion for glory deprives himself and his subjects of all repose. He rushes forward like a torrent, carrying desolation in his path, and filling the world with terror, misery, and confusion."

Such was the father of Christina. She was not more than four years old when he was called upon to take the command of the Confederated armies in Germany. The Emperor, Ferdinand II., had placed at the head of his forces two of his bravest generals, Count Tilly and the celebrated Wallenstein, and prepared to carry on the contest with vigour.

On leaving Stockholm for the theatre of war, Gustavus made the best possible arrangements for the government of his kingdom during his absence, and in case of his death. He caused the states-general and the army to acknowledge Christina as heiress to his throne; he named a council of regency to exercise the supreme power during her minority, and placed the famous Chancellor Oxenstiern at the head of affairs. In an assembly of the senate, he solemnly confided his daughter to their loyalty and protection; and having thus disposed all things for the administration of his government, he prepared to set off for the seat of war, accompanied by the queen. The young princess being brought to take leave of her father, began to recite a little speech she had been taught for the occasion; but occupied by his own reflections, he turned away absently, without listening to her: the child immediately stopped short, and pulling him by the coat, called his attention to herself; the king snatched her up in his arms, and kissed her repeatedly, mingling tears with his caresses, and when at last he resigned her to her attendants, she wept so violently for several hours as to endanger her health. To these circumstances, natural enough in themselves, the populace attached a superstitious importance, when, two years afterwards, Gustavus perished at the battle of Lutzen, in the prime of his life, and at the moment when all Europe rang with the fame of his successes. This celebrated battle was fought on the 16th of November 1633 [sic]; and though victory remained with the Swedes, they esteemed it dearly purchased by the death of a sovereign who possessed so many great and good qualities, and was among the least criminal and selfish of those monarchs who have sacrificed the welfare of their subjects to false ideas of glory.

The queen-mother returned to Sweden with the body of her husband, which she never quitted from the day of his death to that of his internment — a period of two years. His heart, which had been embalmed and enclosed in a casket of gold, decorated with jewels, was suspended to her bed, and every day "she wept over it with great lamentation, giving other tokens of extreme love and grief; which, (her daughter remarks,) were more easily excused than justified." After her return to Sweden, the senate and the clergy prevailed upon her to resign this precious casket, that it might be interred with the remains of the king; but with that fanciful turn of mind for which she was remarkable, she perpetuated, at least, the recollection of her sorrow, by instituting the order of the "Golden Heart", and distributing the badge (a heart-shaped medal) among the ladies and officers of her court.

Christina had been separated from her mother for nearly four years, and when they met for the first time after the death of Gustavus, she was about eight years old [sic]; the sight of her child, by recalling the image of a father, whom she greatly resembled, brought back the feelings of Nature to the mother's heart. "She caught me in her arms", says Christina, "half drowned me in her tears, and had nearly smothered me in her embraces." She refused to part with her daughter, and kept her with her in her retirement for nearly two years; a proof of affection which the young queen could have dispensed with. "A force de m'aimer", says Christina, with her usual naïveté, "elle me fit désespérer." The deep mourning of the queen-mother and her attendants, the melancholy and monotonous life they led, did not, however, damp the spirit or chill the mind of Christina; she confesses that the weakness of her mother so far turned to her advantage, that her excessive impatience of the dulness and restraint around her attached her to her studies; and her aversion for the gloomy apartment in which the queen-dowager mourned in state, made her employ many hours with her books and her preceptors, which, under other circumstances, had been spent in amusement.

The regency, from consideration for the feelings of the mother, left Christina for some time under her care: as she had been excluded from all share in the government, they thought some little amends were due to her; but weak in judgment, and uncertain in temper, she appears to have been ill calculated to manage the high spirit and gifted mind of her daughter. She would sometimes indulge her to excess, or weep over her in an agony of fondness; at another time, she would punish her for slight faults with capricious severity. Among the recollections of her childhood, Christina tells us that she had an extreme dislike to beer and wine, and that the queen-dowager would not suffer her to drink water; that she consequently suffered from excessive thirst for days together, and would some times steal the eau-de-rosée which stood on her mother's toilette; being detected in this very pardonable theft, her mother whipped her most severely, which had the effect of making her a confirmed water-drinker for the remainder of her life.

The number of fools and dwarfs which the queen-dowager kept about her person, according to the custom of the country, was another subject of disgust to her daughter; Christina, at a very early age, had sufficient sense and taste to abhor these courtly appendages, as the remains of barbarism and ignorance. The women who surrounded her mother were not of a high grade in point of mind or accomplishments, and it is not surprising that a girl of so much spirit, vivacity, and talent, as Christina early displayed, should fly from such society. At this time, that is, from her eighth to her tenth year, she studied regularly six hours in the morning and six hours in the evening, every day, except Saturday and Sunday; her progress, therefore, in every department of knowledge, was not so wonderful as her unwearied and voluntary application.

The members of the regency managed the public affairs with consummate prudence. It was their first care to secure the succession of the throne to Christina; for though, by the constitution of Sweden, the crown was not altogether elective, the sovereign was not legally in possession of the crown till the succession was approved by the general assembly of the states. A diet was summoned, therefore, soon after the death of Gustavus, with more than usual solemnity, and the president demanded of the four orders of the state — the nobles, the clergy, the Burghers, and the peasants, "whether they accepted the Princess Christina, the daughter of Gustavus, for their Queen?" One of the deputies of the peasantry, whose name was Lars Larsson, (or Laurence, the son of Laurence,) here rose in his place, and asked "Who is this daughter of Gustavus of whom you speak? we do not know her, we have never seen her; — set her before us!" The assembly at these words began to murmur among themselves, on which the president, or marshal of the diet, said, "I will present her to you if such is your will:" he then left the room, and returning with Christina in his arms, he placed her in the midst of them. Larsson going up to her, examined the child for some moments, and then exclaimed, "Yes — it is herself — those are the very features, the eyes, and the brow of our dead father and king, Gustavus. Let her be our queen!" At these words the whole assembly burst into acclamations, Christina was placed upon her father's throne, and the oaths of allegiance were taken with enthusiasm. Though too young to understand the nature of her situation, Christina was not too young to receive a strong impression of her own grandeur and power. She received the homage of her subjects with much infantine dignity and self-possession. "I still remember", she says, "how enchanted I was to see all these men at my feet, kissing my hand." Though she afterwards became so impatient of the trammels of court etiquette, yet as a child she was extremely fond of playing the queen, and when brought forward on state occasions, she acted her part with wonderful discretion. She was not more than seven years old when the Muscovite ambassadors were introduced to her; their grotesque manners, long beards, and singular dresses, had excited the ridicule and amazement of the whole court, and fears were entertained, lest Christina, by some act of childish folly, should give offence, or disturb the solemnity of the occasion. When her preceptor and her chamberlain endeavoured to prepare her for the interview, and exhorted her not to be afraid, she only laughed in their faces, saying resolutely, "Why should I fear? tell me only what I am to do, and I will do it." Accordingly, she ascended her throne, and not only received the ambassadors without the slightest discomposure, but replied to their speeches with a confidence and dignity which astonished the strangers, and delighted her own attendants.

Gustavus, before his departure, had appointed Axel Baner to be the governor of Christina, and John Mathias to be her preceptor: the first was a mere courtier; the latter was really a man of learning and virtue, whom Christina, in her after-life, never mentioned but with respect and affection. In the instructions which the king had left for the management of his daughter, he desired that she should be brought up with the modesty proper to her sex, but in every other respect should receive a masculine education. He was not aware that he required two things, which were, in fact, incompatible with each other; and that in surrounding his daughter almost exclusively with men, however learned and accomplished, and in cultivating only the sentiments and the acquirements proper to the other sex, he was depraving her manners, if not her mind, and striking at the very foundation of the only feminine virtue on which he insisted. Christina early displayed an "antipathy", to use her own expressions, "to all that women do and say:" but she became an excellent classical scholar, a great admirer of the Greeks and Romans, and all the heroes and poets of antiquity, particularly of Homer and Alexander the Great. At the age of fourteen she read Thucydides in the original; she rode and hunted, and managed a horse and a gun to admiration: she harangued her senate, and dictated to her ministers. Meantime the gentler graces and virtues of her own sex were neglected, and thus she forfeited all claim to the deference due to her as a woman, without having the strength, either of mind or body, which gives the dominion to man. She grew up self-willed, peremptory, arrogant, and impatient, to an inconceivable degree. Being early emancipated from the restraint and reserve in which females of every station are properly educated, she became, at length, quite incapable of submitting to any control whatever; the slightest opposition to her slightest caprice became insupportable; and not the less so, because the natural strength of her understanding allowed her to see and feel the full force of those obligations and duties which her wilful, impatient temper rendered burthensome and intolerable.

In the mean time her education processes under the guardianship of the five great officers of the crown, who honestly fulfilled their trust, according to the intentions of the late king. When she was about nine years old, they judged it necessary to remove her from her mother, (whose weakness of character and foreign prejudices had rendered her exceedingly unpopular in Sweden,) and she was placed under the immediate charge of her aunt, the Princess Catherine, wife of the Prince Palatine. But the education of the young queen was considered of too much importance to be entirely entrusted to her or to any single person. Certain instructions were drawn of by the council of regency, and approved by the diet, which were to serve as guide to the Princess Catherine, Axel Baner, Horn, and Mathias, in the direction and management of the queen. This document (which is dated March 24th, 1635,) insists chiefly on three principal points: —

First, That as her majesty, in virtue of her rank as sovereign, claims the obedience, the faithful service, and the entire and humble loyalty of her subjects; so she should be taught that these duties are reciprocal; she is to learn to love and esteem her people; to be gracious and affable in her deportment towards them; to consider their interest as inseparably her own; to speak well of her country, and to treat the senate and her guardians with particular respect.

Secondly, They desire that her majesty should be well instructed in the manners, customs, and laws, of foreign countries; but that she should be carefully brought up to prefer, and to reverence, and in all respects observe constantly the manners, customs, and laws of Sweden; that those who surrounded her should be Swedes by birth; that a certain number of young ladies of rank should be educated with her, as attendants and companions; and that in selecting these from the first families, particular attention should be had to the characters of their parents, and the manner in which they had been previously educated, in other that the young queen might not be exposed to the contagion of bad example; and the same scrupulous care was to extend to the choice of the women who waited on her person.

Thirdly, they remarked, that as she was destined to rule a great kingdom, it was important that she should be instructed in the duties of a Christian sovereign; but the science of government being one which depended on time and experience, and was scarcely to be taught by book or by rule, or inculcated in childhood; therefore they recommended that a foundation should be laid in the early study of the Scriptures, as the proper basis of all knowledge and all virtue. They also recommended a particular attention to history, as most necessary to a sovereign, and desired that she should be made a good accountant; they especially insisted that not only all pernicious books, but all trifling works and books of mere amusement should be carefully kept from her perusal; and that she should not be suffered to imbibe any ideas either of religion or policy, which should be contrary to the Lutheran Faith and to the liberties of her people.

There was much good sense in these instructions; but nothing was more easy and obvious than to draw up a plan upon such general principles; the difficulty consisted in applying them in detail; and this difficulty was increased by the extraordinary character and endowments of the pupil. The Princess Catherine was a woman of sense and spirit, and the preceptor Mathias had learning and integrity; but had the one been a saint and the other a stoic, Christina apparently would have tried the patience of both. In fact, she never seems to have been submitted to any thing like discipline of the mind or the will; her extraordinary quickness rendered all acquirements easy to which she chose to apply, and her "insurmountable" aversion to all the employments and recreations of her own sex, was indulged and encouraged. Like Tasso's Clorinda,

"Ai lavori d'Aracne, all'ago, ai fusi

Inchinar non degnò la man superba."

Dancing seems to have been the only feminine accomplishment to which she applied.

But, on the other hand, she was so indefatigable in her studies as to fatigue all her tutors; so inexhaustible in her spirits, so restless, that her women and attendants had no repose day or night. Besides her usual lessons in history, philosophy, and the classics, she acquired the German, French, Italian, and Spanish languages, merely as an amusement, and without the assistance of any master. The people who surrounded her at this time appear to have been selected with as much impartiality and judgment as was consistent with all circumstances; but if we may trust her own account, Christina suffered the usual fate of princes, that of being spoiled in her childhood by the deference paid to her rank, even by those who instructed her. She observes very cleverly, with a reference to herself, that "men flatter princes even in their cradles, and fear their memory as well as their power; they handle them timidly as they do young lions, who can only scratch now, but may hereafter tear and devour."

During the minority of Christina, the foreign affairs of Sweden were conducted by the Chancellor Oxenstiern, a statesman celebrated for his loyalty and integrity, not less than for his great political sagacity. Under his direction the war was carried on in Germany with various success. Field-marshal Horn, and Generals Baner, Torstenson, and Wrangel, successively commanded the Swedes and their allies, and were opposed by Wallenstein, Count Tilly, Piccolomini, the Arch-Duke Ferdinand, and other famous military leaders. This was the terrible war called in history "the Thirty Years' War", during which the finest parts of Germany were desolate, social order almost annihilated, and the progress of the arts and general civilization greatly retarded; as to the amount of individual misery and crime, it is beyond all computation.

The domestic affairs of Sweden were, meantime, regulated by the council of regency, and under their administration the country flourished. To the Prince Palatine, the uncle of Christina, had been entrusted the department of the finances: but the States were so jealous of his influence over his niece, and of the hopes he was known to entertain of marrying her to his only son [sic] Charles Gustavus, that they deprived him of this important charge, and bestowed it upon Gabriel Oxenstiern, cousin of the chancellor.

The late king had expressly excluded his widow, the queen-dowager, from any share in the regency; and she was so highly offended at this arrangement, in which the ministers persisted, and so incensed at being deprived of all control over her daughter, that she secretly fled to Denmark, and thence to Brandenburgh, where she continued to reside till Christina was of age to take the government into her own hands.

In 1639, when Christina was in her fourteenth year [sic], her aunt, the Princess Catherine, died, and it does not appear that she had any successor as principal governess to the young queen; within two years afterwards, Christina, by the advice of the Chancellor Oxenstiern, was admitted to preside in the senate. She was extremely assiduous in her attendance, gave her opinion on matters of consequence with equal propriety and decision, and appears to have entered upon the duties of her high station with all the real enthusiasm of a young and ardent mind. As she approached the age of womanhood, her council were anxious that she should choose a consort among the princes of Europe who contended for the honour of her hand. During the first few years of her reign, proposals, embassies, negotiations, remonstrances on this subject, occupied her ministers, but to herself appear to have been more a source of momentary amusement, or irritation, than of serious thought. The young elector Frederick William of Brandenburgh, had been already selected by her father as her future husband; and this alliance was popular among the people and the soldiery; but the Chancellor Oxenstiern and others of the ministry dreaded the interference of Germany in the affairs of Sweden, and the introduction of Germans into offices of trust and power; in other words, they feared for themselves and their own places, and this alliance was declined.

It is said that Oxenstiern had early entertained the ambitious design of marrying Christina to his favourite son Count Eric Oxenstiern, and that this was the secret motive which induced him to throw such obstacles and difficulties into the negotiation with the house of Brandenburgh, as prolonged the treaty for several years, and at length rendered it abortive.

The two sons of the King of Denmark were also suitors for her hand: but Sweden remembered too well the evils of Danish ascendancy, and the tyranny from which the first Gustavus had delivered his country, to consent to see the two crowns again united. Don John of Austria and Philip IV. of Spain, were excluded by the difference of religion, and many other considerations, and their pretensions were merely a subject of mirth to the young queen. The Emperor Ferdinand would gladly have made peace on condition of obtaining her hand for his son, the King of the Romans; he believed that the idea of becoming Empress of Germany would have flattered the haughty temper and ambitious spirit of Christina, and she was heard to acknowledge that the temptation was strong, but she would not farther commit herself. Though such an alliance would have gratified her personal pride and her love of power, it would have been displeasing to her people, and would have reduced Sweden to the state of a province of the German empire. Ladislas King of Poland, and his brother and successor, John Casimir, were not more successful. Her ministry had objections against most of these princes; Christina apparently to all. She had early conceived an aversion to marriage, and was resolved to preserve her personal freedom at all hazards, both as a woman and as a queen.

Above: Kristina.

Above: Anna Brownell Jameson.