Source:
Christina of Sweden, pages 74 to 78, by Ada Harrison, 1929
The biography:
The Polish scheme was marvellous, even for Christina. We can only conclude that Hamburg had driven her to it. The year 1666, which she passed at Hamburg, might have driven her to anything. She met only one congenial soul in the city, and that was the aged general Wrangel, a survivor from the days of Gustavus Adolphus, who loved a battlefield better than anything on earth, and treated the Lion's daughter as the most royal of queens. Otherwise she had only the Germans. Christina was driven to giving them and their still duller ladies a banquet, but they did not brighten. To add to her sense of isolation and impotence, she learned that Alexander VII was dangerously ill at Rome. There was a likelihood of a conclave, in which Azzolino would have a vote, and would badly need her assistance. It was unthinkable that a Pope could be made without Christina.
She participated feverishly by post, and as a result of her renewed intimacies with Louis XIV, fell into worse odour than ever with the regents of Sweden. In any case[,] her affairs at home went badly. The Senate refused to recognise her religion, which was one of her chief points, and on top of that news she learnt that Stropp, her agent, had lent two thousand écus of her precarious money to Magnus de la Gardie. She was helplessly furious. To repair her finances she sold her three islands, Gothold [sic], Ösel, and Öland, to two speculators. She implored her agent to get more money than was offered, but in the end was compelled to give in about the price, so imperative was it for her to have a solid sum under her hand. All the time she wrote letters indefatigably, having to use for almost all of them a laborious figure-cipher and for those to Azzolino a special cipher which for secrecy's sake she had to transcribe herself. It was no wonder that with it all, and with Azzolino's coldness[,] she fell ill. By August, 1666, she is complaining, in the midst of her close work, of migraine and fever, of mal de tête and mal de l'estomac, and is submitting unhopefully to being bled.
It was at this moment, and in this frame of mind and body, that Christina took up her pen to write her Memoirs. 'Ce que Vous êtes et ce que je suis m'y oblige', she begins, companionably addressing God. God occurs plentifully in the preface, but chiefly to demonstrate that to no one of lower rank could Christina make her dedication and give her confidence. She casts herself upon God's bosom, but in her own peculiarly unreligious way. It is to be a matter of mutual deference. And as usual the banner of her own glory is kept floating high. 'Permettez-moi, Seigneur', she astonishingly remarks, 'd'admirer toutes Vos dispositions sur moi!' There is something heroic about it. God's dispositions over her were at that moment so peculiarly wretched. But it was always by this fallacy that Christina pulled through.
This Memoir, which also was begun at Azzolino's instance, did not get very far. It takes Christina to the end of her childhood; then, after a preliminary dissertation on the inability of women (in general) to govern, it breaks off. It is unfortunate, for it would be fascinating to have Christina's account, made in the conviction of unbiassed [sic] honesty, of her mature and responsible self.
From Hamburg she resumed relations with two of her early friends, Vossius the scholar, and Bourdelot. Vossius was commanded to write the history of her reign.
'I have remarked', she wrote to him, 'that either ignorance or envy has taken the pleasure to conceal or obscure the greatest and most splendid actions of my reign. You have been an ocular witness of its unparalleled felicity; of you therefore I require reparation in the name of truth, to which every historian ought to render homage. I request only a simple detail of facts. This cannot be suspected of partiality, because all the world knows that the present calamities of Sweden have reduced me to a situation in which I am incapable of paying the price of incense.'
She wrote to Bourdelot thanking him for sending her books:
'The perplexity of my affairs confines me here at Hamburg, this winter; the only consolation to be expected is letters from Rome and books from France. The transfusion of the blood seems a wonderfully ingenious hypothesis; but I should not care to try the experiment, for fear of degenerating into a mere animal; in case of such a metamorphosis a lion would be my choice. ... I am pretty well in health, and make a jest of physic and physicians, but to enjoy it in a state of perfection my sovereign remedy is to breath[e] the air of Rome.'
Yet in Spring, 1667, writing to thank Azzolino for his kind expressions, 'si je les pouvais croire!' she offers to please him by staying out of his sight in Sweden, when she gets there, for three years.
In May, after exchanging some bitter letters with her 'brother and nephew', the little King, and refusing a handsome annuity from the Senate in the justifiable belief that it would not be paid, she did actually arrive in Sweden. As soon as she crossed the frontier[,] she was ordered to dismiss her chaplain. She wrote a furious letter and was for leaving at once, but was persuaded to wait for an answer, which[,] when it arrived[,] was an uncompromising negative. If she wished to worship, she could go to the French Embassy, but as a simple visit. Christina go to the Embassy! 'If Pomponne [French Ambassador in her time] had proposed such a thing, I would have had him beaten.' But there was no help for her. Stung by her unsuccess, she pursued her usual course of threatening and insulting all round. She told de la Gardie 'all she thought worthy of herself and her spirit', and having remarked, as a final shaft, that if the King should die[,] she would have a word to say about the succession, she left on June 4th. 'I thank God', she observed on her retreat while her vituperations still echoed over Sweden, 'that I have not allowed myself to be carried away by anger, and have done myself no wrong.'
This visit finally ruined her country in her eyes. When years later she sent her gentleman, Del Monte, into Sweden on her business, she warned him what he might expect.
'You are going into a country where you must trust neither what you see with your eyes nor touch with your hands. To everything that you hear, good or evil, praise or scorn, give no heed. Be on your guard in everything, and never enter into other folks' affairs. If you do[,] you will fling yourself into an abyss from which there is no escape, and where they will let you die like a dog.'
Back in Hamburg she received one good piece of news. This was that Clement IX, her candidate and Azzolino's, had been elected Pope in place of Alexander VII. She celebrated the occasion, before the eyes of Protestant Hamburg, by illuminations, rockets, and a tasteful set-piece of fireworks depicting the Church trampling heresy underfoot. There was a pontifical mass, punctuated by cannon, a banquet and free wine. The Hamburgers bore it all with ominous quietness. Finally, having nursed their wrath for hours under Christina's windows, they let it explode. There was riot and bloodshed, and the festive cannon were used as instruments of death. Of this affair she wrote: 'It is only in the holy city that decent people can pass their lives. ... Is it not strange that the queen cannot give a party without running the risk of being murdered in her own house?'[,] a passage which shows that her adopted religion was one of the few subjects which moved her to open dishonesty.
Above: Kristina.
Above: Cardinal Decio Azzolino.
Note: The autobiography quoted here is Kristina's most well-known attempt, written in 1681; the version she wrote in the late 1660s is sadly not known to still exist.
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