Source:
Queen Christina of Sweden: Lothian Prize Essay for 1880, pages 1 to 5, by Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge, 1880; original at the University of Michigan
The essay:
ESSAY ON QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN.
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INTRODUCTION.
THERE are few countries which can boast a more brilliant history than Sweden, or whose annals can shew a closer succession of grand and striking pictures. Doomed, to all appearance, by nature to play but a small and secondary part in the affairs of Europe, and buried during the Middle Ages in barbarism and darkness, it suddenly rose, under the impulse of the Reformation, and of awakening national life, to the position of a leading power. The ability of its kings, the military exploits of its warriors, the wisdom of its statesmen, combined to make it, in the seventeenth century, one of the greatest and mightiest of nations, and enabled it to acquire the more lasting glory of having saved Protestantism, and all that was meant by Protestantism, when it seemed upon the eve of perishing. But the flash of Swedish power, though brilliant, was of short duration; and the decline of its European influence and greatness was almost as swift as its rise. By the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century it had sunk into a position of comparative obscurity; and though the constitutional struggles of its subsequent history are not without interest, and though its present state is one of fair prosperity, it is by looking back to the past, and particularly to the seventeenth century, that its people can best gratify their feelings of national pride.
One of the chief causes which make the history of Sweden attractive, and to which its rise and greatness was mainly due, is the character of its individual kings. It is rare to find, in the history of any country, a succession of sovereigns who possessed such startling deeds, as the Houses of Vasa and Zweibrücken. The names of Gustavus Vasa, Gustavus Adolphus, Charles X., and Charles XII., at once call up a crowd of vivid and romantic associations; and those who remember that the Swedes were almost always a free people, and were moreover very jealous of their freedom, will be all the more ready to recognise the merits of princes of whom the national historian could say, "the history of Sweden's greatness is in truth the history of her kings."
The reign of Queen Christina is the period during which the Swedish power attained its highest pitch; but her history possesses an additional, and perhaps a deeper interest. She is not only the queen under whom the Swedish nation stood at the head of Protestant Europe in a position of proud equality with Austria, France, and Spain; she is also a woman of such extraordinary powers of mind, and of qualities and abilities of so high an order, combined with the most glaring faults and follies, that her history becomes even more interesting when, after abandoning the throne, she is able to give full play to her natural disposition, unchecked by political circumstances, or the necessities of state.
Before entering directly into the history of her reign, it may be well to trace shortly the rise of the Swedish power, which, as has been said, reached under her its highest point; and to touch lightly on some of the causes which produced the mutual relations of classes and parties, during the period of her administration.
Up to the sixteenth century, Sweden was almost unknown to Europe. A hundred years before, by the treaty of Calmar, it had become a part of the great Scandinavian monarchy established by Queen Margaret of Denmark, the Semiramis, as she was called, of the North. But during the reign of Margaret herself, and still more during those of her successors, the authority of the kings of Denmark was more nominal than real in Sweden. The government of the country was conducted mainly by officers, who, under the name of administrators, possessed a power as nearly kingly as the turbulent aristocracy would allow. Such was the condition of Sweden on the accession of Christian II. to the throne of Denmark. This prince, the "Northern Hero", who, like his Roman antitype, has found historians in the present day to represent him as the champion of popular freedom against aristocratic tyranny, formed the design of doing in Scandinavia what Louis XI. had done in France, and what the Yorkists and Tudors were doing in England. He aimed at establishing a centralised despotism on the ruins of baronial and provincial independence. Such a despotism Sweden would not endure; and when, after a long civil war, Christian gained for a time the upper hand, and signalised his victory by a treacherous massacre of the principal nobles of the country at Stockholm, it needed but a leader to organize the resistance of the indignant nation. They found one in the person of Gustav Ericson, a noble of the house of Vasa. The son of the state councillor Eric Vasa, he had early been regarded with suspicion by the king, and had only just escaped from a prison in Denmark, when the news reached him of his father's murder at Stockholm. He fled to Dalecarlia, roused the peasants of that wild country, and aided by support from Lübeck, which feared the establishment of a powerful Baltic monarchy, and by a rebellion of the nobles of Jutland, succeeded in driving out the Danes from the greater part of Sweden. The deposition of Christian by his own subjects, and the elevation to the Danish throne of his uncle, Frederick of Holstein, by the triumphant aristocracy, put an end to the war with Denmark, and Gustavus Vasa was raised to the throne by his grateful countrymen, the succession being declared, a few years later, hereditary in his descendants. His reign is the beginning of the real history of Sweden. He introduced the Reformation into his kingdom; and in an alliance which he made with Francis I. against the emperor, who supported Christian II., laid down the lines of that system of foreign policy which was to work itself out under the guidance, in later years, of Richelieu and Oxenstyerna.
The reign of the immediate successors of Gustavus was a period of anarchy and internal troubles. Eric XIV., his eldest son, was a gloomy madman, whose violence was aggravated by the opposition of his two brothers, John and Charles. The former, having dethroned and murdered him, succeeded to the throne as John III. In his reign the great Catholic reaction began to assert its influence over Sweden; and John, a secret Catholic, endeavoured to facilitate its work in Sweden by bringing the formulæ of the Swedish Church into closer harmony with those of Rome. His marriage with Catherine, the heiress of the Jagellons, united the reigning houses of Poland and Sweden; but this union did not last long, for Sigismund, the son and successor of John, had been educated by his mother in her own Church, and was Polish rather than Swedish in feeling. His attempts to restore Catholicism, and to govern Sweden from Poland, were strongly opposed by his uncle, Charles Gustavsson, the youngest son of Gustavus Vasa. Civil troubles were the result, during which many of the nobles, long accustomed to independence, and anxious to weaken the growing power of the Crown, took the side of Sigismund. The mass of the nation, however, hating the Polish connexion, and thoroughly loyal to Protestantism, gave their hearty support to Charles; and that prince, who, during the king's absence, had long practically governed Sweden, was now raised to the throne as Charles IX. The descendants of Sigismund were declared incapable of succeeding to the Crown, and the religious question was at the same time finally settled by the adoption of the Augsburg Confession as the national creed, to which all must conform.
The reign and character of Charles IX. remind one of the English Tudors. An almost absolute monarch, resting his power upon popular support, the "Peasants'-king" (Bondarkonung) made it his object to crush the power of the nobles, and to create an official aristocracy dependent on the Crown, like the "new nobility of the sixteenth century." A thorough Protestant in his religious views, and suspected indeed of Calvinism, he laboured to unite the whole Protestant world into a great defensive league against the rising tide of the Catholic reaction. The marriage of his daughter, the Princess Catherine Vasa, to the Calvinist Palsgrave, John Casimir of Zweibrücken, was an earnest of his desire to obtain a footing amongst the Protestant princes of Germany. There is reason to believe that his far-seeing mind had already conceived those great schemes of foreign policy, which his more fortunate successor was to carry out. His own reign was troubled by long, weary wars with Poland, and with the old enemy, Denmark; but he found consolation for defeats and baffled plans as he looked at his son, the young Gustavus Adolphus, and told the courtiers around him that some day the boy would do it (ille faciet). His last words were an exhortation to those around him to seek a close union with the Evangelic princes, and to beware of the designs of the Papacy and of the Austrian House.
Of his successor, Gustavus Adolphus, it is hardly necessary to speak. His history is European rather than Swedish. At home, his work was chiefly to reconcile to the Crown that nobility on which his father had trampled, but which in less than a generation rose again in a new form to power. His most intimate adviser and associate was Axel Oxenstyerna, a noble of Södermanland, who, originally destined for the Church, had abandoned theology for diplomacy, and who shared to the full his master's vast political designs. The author of Whitelocke's Embassy has given us a graphic sketch of him as he appeared in his old age: a grave old silver-haired statesman, with black velvet gown and skull-cap, conversing from preference in Latin, and interlarding his speech with Scripture phrases and quotations from the ancient philosophers, he is a characteristic type of the great ministers of that age, of the men who had learned their statecraft and views of life in the school of Cecil, and Sully, and Bacon.
In 1620, Gustavus, who had on a previous visit to Berlin already fallen in love with her, obtained from the Elector, George William of Brandenburg, the hand of his sister, Maria Eleanora, a princess attractive for her beauty and good-nature, but devoid of any real capacity, and utterly without force of character. About six years after this marriage, a daughter was born to them, to whom the name of Christina was given, and who, as the king had no male children, would become after his death heiress to the Crown. In order to fit her for rule over a military nation, he wished her to have a masculine education. He often kept her by him; and it would seem that, from her earliest years the child conceived a warm affection for him. Her first letters are to him; and though they are merely short childish expressions of affection, couched in the somewhat formal style of the time, they are not without interest, as shewing that, at the early age of three or four, the little princess had already learnt to write. Before starting for the German war, the king took her with him to the Diet, and placing her in the midst of the assembled estates, asked them to take the oath of allegiance to her, and recognise her as their queen, in case he should not return. The duty of protecting the persecuted Church of Christ, he said, and the defence of Sweden against the Poles and their ally, the emperor, had forced him to take up arms. He trusted them to second his endeavours, and committed to their care his daughter, and the heiress of his crown. The whole assembly was much moved, for Gustavus was justly beloved by his subjects, and all swore that, if he should not come back, they would receive Christina as their queen.
Above: Kristina.
Above: Gustav Adolf and Maria Eleonora.
Above: Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge.
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