Source:
Love Intrigues of Royal Courts, pages 307 to 323, by Thornton Hall (William de Redman Greenwood), 1912; original at the University of Wisconsin - Madison
WARNING: GRAPHIC VIOLENCE.
The biography:
A ROYAL MOUNTEBANK
CAPTIVATING and cruel, supreme scholar and abject slave to the senses, stateswoman and buffoon — such was Christina, Queen of Sweden, the "Sybil" and "Semiramis of the North", whose career alternately dazzled and disgusted Europe in the seventeenth century and whose life story, surely the strangest that has ever been told of a sovereign lady, still fills its readers with mingled fascination and loathing.
Christina's entry on the stage of life, on which she was destined to play such strange and varied rôles, was a disappointment. Her august parents and all Sweden had confidently anticipated a male heir to the throne, for his coming had been heralded by many a prophetic dream and by the voice of the stars; and, when, in place of the jubilantly expected heir there came a puny, swarthy, ill-favoured girl-child, there was lamentation alike in Court and cottage. The Queen-Mother, it is said, never recovered from her disappointment, and for years could not look on her unwelcome daughter without aversion.
The child of such strangely contrasted parents could scarcely fail to be remarkable. Her father was Gustavus Adolphus, a fair-haired Scandinavian giant, a man of strong arm and lion heart, terrible in war as he was gentle in peace. His passion for fighting was allied to a taste for letters. He was soldier and student, dreamer and destroyer; and this diverse qualities were strangely reproduced in the child who was not wanted.
From her mother Christina undoubtedly inherited many weaknesses, and probably not one virtue. Queen Mary indeed seems to have been little removed from the imbecile. She had a mania for gorgeous raiment, revelled in the company of persons of low degree, and surrounded herself with dwarfs and buffoons, while such time as she could spare from these allurements she spent in fits of weeping. Vanity and tears, superstitious observances and imbecile pleasures — of such ingredients was Gustavus' queen composed.
Christina, the child of these oddly contrasted parents, was but six years old when her father died fighting gallantly at Lutzen, in 1632, thus furnishing an occasion for grief which was not lost on his lachrymose queen. Shrouding her rooms in black draperies her Majesty wept day and night, her groans and lamentations echoing through the palace; and her child, who was her unwilling companion, she compelled to weep and moan with her. Happily for Christina's sanity[,] the Chancellor Oxenstiern came to her rescue. He packed the Queen off to a distant castle to weep alone, and took the girl under his care.
Christina spent the next ten years of her life surrounded by learned professors, whose duty it was to educate her for her exalted position; and seldom have teachers had so eager and apt a pupil. In her anxiety to learn she would scarcely allow herself time to eat or sleep, and soon her learning was the talk and wonder of Sweden. Before she had long entered her teens she had mastered eight languages; she could quote Greek by the hour; and her Latin and French compositions were published for the admiration of the world. She discussed theology with bishops, confounded philosophers with her arguments, and ministers with her knowledge of statecraft. Nor was this the sum of her accomplishments; for she could swear like a trooper, bring down a running hare with a bullet, and was the most skilful and daring horsewoman in the kingdom.
For dress this odd and gifted princess had a profound contempt, and she was equally indifferent to cleanliness; but her greatest scorn was reserved for her own sex and all that concerned it. She wanted to be a man — and to her last day she was a man, in all but sex.
Though she was small and ill-shapen (one shoulder was higher than its fellow) Christina did not lack personal attractiveness; and she never looked better than when, with her hair flying in the wind, with flushed cheeks and sparkling blue eyes, she was racing madly on horseback across the country. The Swedes were proud of their Christina to a man, and, in her youth at least, not without reason.
That she had many faults, even in girlhood, she herself frankly confesses. She admits that she has a vile temper, is imperious and impatient, sarcastic and contemptuous. She pleads guilty, too, thus early to a "disregard for the proprieties which ought to be observed by her sex." And herein lay her gravest fault. She had no sense of morality, and revelled in the knowledge.
When, her education finished, Christina took the reins of government into her own hands, her true character, which had hitherto been concealed under the veil of study, was quick to show itself. Like Catherine the Great, she chose her favourites from among the handsomest of her courtiers or from her subjects of whatever rank, and changed them as lightly as she changed her gowns. Count Magnus of Gardie [sic] was one of the first to take her fancy captive — a handsome youth barely out of man's estate. She showered dignities and presents on him, made him head of her household, grand treasurer, ambassador and what not, only to dismiss him and call him a "drunkard and a liar" to his face when the dark-eyed Spaniard Pimentelli came on the scene. Pimentelli, in turn, had to give place to a low-born successor in the royal favour; and so on, in bewildering sequence, the reign of each favourite being as supreme as it was short-lived. But such pleasures as these by no means filled Christina's days. She loved to surround herself with the most learned men in Europe — poets, scholars, philosophers — all of whom ministered to her vanity and afforded opportunities for the exercise of her clever brain and tongue. She killed poor Descartes by dragging him out of bed at five o'clock on winter mornings to talk philosophy with her; and scared Huet, later Bishop of Avranches, away by her crushing theological arguments.
And, Queen though she now was, she remained as indifferent to her personal appearance as when a child. "She never combs her hair but once a week", Manneschied [sic] reports; "and sometimes lets it go untouched for a fortnight. On Sundays her toilet takes about half-an-hour, but on other days it is despatched in a quarter. Her linen is ragged and much torn." When a bold courtier once ventures to hint at the virtue of cleanliness, her Majesty retorted, "Wash! that's all very well for people who have nothing else to do."
From a discussion on religion or philosophy she would turn to a conversation of a nature by no means delicate. She revelled in stories of a questionable character; and when the narrator, from a desire to avoid offending her, substituted allowable for objectionable words, she would, to quote one who knew her, "boldly speak out the words, though they were never so unseemly, which modesty forbids me to write her."
Such in early womanhood was Queen Christina before she gave full rein to those eccentricities and vices which, even then, were stirring into life, and which were, later, to obtain full mastery over her. The change began with the arrival of a Bourdelet [sic] at the Court of Sweden. The son of a French barber, Bourdelet had had a romantic career before he entered Christina's life. With a slight training as an apothecary he travelled through Europe posing as a doctor, the possessor of wonderful secrets for the cure of all ailments from a bad complexion to a malignant fever. He was gay [cheerful] and witty, could sing and play divinely, and was a past-master of the arts of pleasure. Ladies adored the clever and handsome adventurer: and the Pope himself fell under his spell and would have made a cardinal of him if some shady business in which he had engaged had not compelled a hasty retreat from Italy.
Shortly afterwards he was summoned to Sweden to practise his medical skill on Christina, who fancied she was at death's door. As a matter of fact[,] she was seriously ill — the result of her years of hard study and neglect of the most elementary rules of health. Bourdelet was quick to see the cause of his royal patient's indisposition. He bade her leave her books and studies and replace them with a life of gaiety; and Christina proved a docile patient. She went at a bound from one extreme to the other; turned her back on scholars, statesmen and study and flung herself into a whirlpool of wild dissipation. She spent her days and nights in dancing and revelry, and made her whole Court follow in her giddy wake. She made grave professors dance jigs, sing comic songs and play the clown, and laughed at their antics until the tears streamed down her cheeks. She laughed in the face of her ministers who wished to see her on affairs of state, and invited them to join in a minuet instead.
Sweden looked on aghast at these strange antics of its beloved Queen. She must be mad, was the general opinion. To Bourdelet she gave the highest offices in the state and the army [sic]. She lavished fortunes on the barber's son, the minister of her pleasures, whose impudent and arrogant airs soon became intolerable to the most long-suffering of her subjects; while the whole country groaned under the burden of the taxes which fed her prodigal extravagance. So strong and universal was the resentment against Bourdelet that it became no longer safe for him to walk abroad; and, when he had done all the damage he could, he disappeared, laden with gold and presents and with a recommendation to the favour of Mazarin, who made an abbé of him.
The loss of her favourite soon had a startling consequence. Christina was weary of her queendom and of her impoverished subjects. She yearned to go out into the world to win a wider homage, to dazzle the courts of the Continent; and, summoning her Senate one day in 1654, she announced her abdication of the crown in favour of her cousin, Charles Augustus [sic]. The Senate and all Sweden were struck with amazement. Christina, however, was inexorable. Her mind was fully and finally made up[,] and she turned a deaf ear to pleading and protests. She packed up her treasures, dismissed her retinue, had her hair cut short, put on man's clothes, and with a gun on her shoulder — she vowed she was going to fight in Flanders [sic] — disappeared.
A few weeks later Christina was travelling in Denmark as the son of the Count of Dolma [sic]; and there a curious adventure befell her. While she was staying at an inn she was visited by the Queen of Denmark, who, disguised as a servant, waited on her royal sister of Sweden. "So cleverly did she act her part that Christina had no suspicion and chattered intimately with the polite and attractive serving-maid, talking, among other things, in no complimentary way of his Majesty of Denmark. When Christina left the inn[,] the Danish Queen sent a page after her to inform her that the maid to whom she had spoken so disparagingly of the King of Denmark was none other than Denmark's Queen. On hearing this Christina laughed aloud and exclaimed, 'What! that servant girl who was standing there all dinnertime was the Queen of Denmark! Well, there has happened to her what often happens to curious people — they make discovery of more things than are agreeable to them. It is her own fault; for, as I have not the gift of divination, I did not look for her under such a dress as that.'"
From Denmark the errant Queen made her way to Hamburg with a small escort of men-in-waiting and a few valets, who officiated as her maids, and there she began perhaps the most remarkable royal progress in history. Into each large town on her route she made a state entry, in gorgeous uniform, riding with regal dignity through the principal streets and receiving the salutations of the onlooking crowds and the solemn addresses of the officials with a queenly graciousness; until at one proceedings into a grotesque farce. She would, for instance, make grimaces at the respectfully cheering spectators; interrupt a loyal address with a load oath or a questionable jest, or burst into a peal of laughter while some dignified personage was greeting her.
The reception over, she would vanish mysteriously, wander from inn to inn hobnobbing with peasants until she felt disposed to resume the splendours of her progress and startle another city with her gorgeous trappings and her mad escapades. At Brussels, where she was royally received, she announced her conversion to the Catholic faith, giving as her sole reason that she was sick to death of the length and prosiness of Protestant sermons! At Innsprück [sic] she shocked everyone present by her flippancy during the ceremony of abjuration; and when this was followed in the evening by a play given in honour of the royal convert, she exclaimed to her hosts, "Gentlemen, it is only fair that you should offer me a comedy, since I have just given you a farce."
At Rome, whither Christina now hastened to flaunt her new faith, she was received with ultra regal honours. Cardinals and bishops, great nobles and ambassadors, went in stately procession to meet her, in their gilded coaches drawn by six richly caparisoned horses, and with retinues decked out in their most splendid trappings; and with them went the fairest and most highly placed ladies of Rome, each with her suite of forty attendants. On this reception the Pope had lavished 1,250,000 crowns, and its preparation had kept hundreds of Roman hands busy for half a year.
Even more splendid was the occasion of Christina's visit to the Vatican to receive the Papal welcome and benediction. Rome gave up the day to high festival; the route was lined with thousands of troops and the Catholic Queen made her progress to the booming of cannon, the clashing of bells and the fanfare of trumpets. Astride of a white horse she pranced, with a cardinal at each side, at the head of a procession a mile long.
Christina took Rome by storm. She dazzled it by her wit and shocked it by her indiscretions. She laid down the law to the Pope, coquetted with cardinals, patronised the proudest nobles and inaugurated a reign of revelry which swept the Vatican off its feet. Infected by her example, the entire Sacred College flocked to the theatres nightly. "The balcony of her box", says Doran, "was every night crowded by cardinals who looked with edification on the ballerinas and listened with delight to the exquisitely dressed singing girls, who resorted to Rome at the invitation of Christina." The etiquette, when she was present, was of the very strictest, the noblest in Rome being compelled to remain uncovered as long as she was in the house. The gay [cheerful] cardinals, who lolled over the balcony in front of her box, alone wore their caps, in allusion to which privilege a paper was one night fixed beneath the balcony, on which was inscribed, "Plenary indulgence for the gentlemen in purple." Christina was equally zealous in her attendance at the services of her Church, during which she would laugh and joke with her attendants, or make loud comments[,] to the amazement of her fellow-worshippers.
Meanwhile she squandered her money with a lavish hand on a hundred follies and dissipation until, her exchequer exhausted, she was compelled to appeal to the Pope for a loan. And when his Holiness offered her 2000 crowns a month if she would only behave herself, she was furiously indignant, pawned her remaining jewels, and shook the dust of Rome, for the time, off her feet.
From Rome she drifted to France, to repeat her regal receptions and her follies. At every city on her triumphal journey she was greeted with fulsome addresses, and royally entertained. The Duke of Guise, who was sent by the King to act as her escort, describes the Queen at this time as "tall, but somewhat stout, with broad hips, a well-shaped arm, a white and pretty hand. Her bodice, laced behind, is not straight; her chemise shows above the skirt, which is ill-fastened and awry. She is much powdered and pomatumed; has men's boots, and in point of fact has almost a man's voice and quite a man's ways. Though she is proud and haughty[,] she can be polite, even caressing in manner. She speaks eight languages, and is as learned as our Academy and our Sorbonne put together. Indeed", he concludes, "she is a very extraordinary person."
At Compiègne the "Grande Demoiselle" herself met Christina[,] and together they went to the theatre[,] where, the princess records, "the Queen swore like a trooper, threw her legs about, putting first one, then the other over the arms of her chair; she took attitudes such as I have only seen in the case of Trivelin and Jodelet, the buffoons. She would fall into deep reveries, sigh loudly and then, all at once, come to her senses as if she had awakened from a dream."
All Paris turned out to greet and stare open-mouthed at this remarkable Queen, as she made her entry astride of her enormous white horse. She wore, as we are told, a flaming scarlet doublet and a plumed hat, carried pistols at her holster and gaily twirled a light cane. When her Majesty had sufficiently startled Paris and drunk her fill of its doubtful homage[,] she went to visit the King and Queen at Compiègne. What Louis must have thought of his strange guest may be imagined, for at their meeting, Mademoiselle de Motteville [sic] says, "her wig was all uncurled and awry, her short skirt showed her man's boots; her complexion made her look like a bold and wild g*psy, and her hands were filthily dirty." And yet, in spite of these unattractive externals she quickly made a very favourable impression on her royal host, who found her "quite charming, if unconventional."
How unconventional she could be[,] Louis was not long in discovering. Even he was shocked when Christina, in the presence of the whole Court, "flung her legs up on a chair as high as that on which she was seated, and altogether exhibited them a little too freely"; and when she borrowed his valets to perform the most delicate offices for her. But in spite of these and similar unconventionalities, such as her exhibitions of rage, her volleys of oaths and the savage manner in which she attacked her meals, Christina might have long remained a guest at the Court of Louis had she not interfered with his love affairs and urged him to marry Marie Mancini, Cardinal Mazarin's lovely niece, against the strong wishes of his mother. Anne of Austria was the last woman in the world to tolerate such interference with her designs for her son, and Christina was politely but firmly told that her presence was no longer desirable.
Once more the Queen started on her travels. On her journey back to Italy she spent a night at Montarges, where the Grande Mademoiselle paid her a visit, of which she gives the following amusing account. "I was invited to go up alone and found her in bed. A tallow candle stood on the table; a towel twisted round her shaven head, served as a nightcap; her nightgown, which had no collar, was tied by a large knot of flaming yellow ribbon; her sheets only reached half way up the bed, over which an ugly green counterpane was thrown. In this state", adds Mademoiselle, "she was not beautiful."
At Rome [sic] Christina's reception was so chilling that she returned to Fontainebleau, where her presence was equally unwelcome, and, as the Court was not there, was allowed to stay for a time in the palace; and it was while at Fontainebleau that the tragic event occurred which has covered Christina's memory with obloquy as long as time shall last.
In her Majesty's retinue were two young Italian nobles, the Marquess Monaldeschi and Count Sentinelli [sic], who were rivals in her fickle affection. Sentinelli was the favourite of the moment; and in his jealous anger the Marquess wrote certain letters, in imitation of his successful rival's handwriting, which contained insulting references to her Majesty. When this act of treachery came to Christina's ears[,] she planned a terrible revenge. She summoned the two men to her presence, Sentinelli bringing two Italian soldiers with him; and, producing the insulting letters, asked Monaldeschi if he recognised them. The Marquess at first denied all knowledge of the letters, and then, pale and trembling, confessed his guilt and, flinging himself at the feet of his royal mistress, implored her pardon. Turning a deaf ear to his entreaties, Christina said to a monk, who had also been summoned to the meeting, "Father, I leave this man to you. Prepare him for death. Minister to his soul"; and[,] without another glance at the cowering Marquess[,] went to her room to gossip light-heartedly with her ladies [sic].
Then followed one of the most terrible tragedies in human history. The monk, as terrified as if he himself had been sentenced to death, went to Christina to plead for the wretched man's wife. She turned away with a laugh and continued her gossiping [sic]. Monaldeschi again dragged himself to her feet and besought her by the wounds of the Saviour to have mercy. "I am sorry", was her answer, "but I cannot grant your request." "Force him to make his confession[,] and then kill him", was the fiendish message she sent to Sentinelli [sic].
Then the butchery began, before the Marquess, in [a] choked and anguished voice, had well begun his last confession on earth. The Count pushed him against the wall of the gallery and struck the first blow. The Marquess, who was unarmed, seized the sword[,] and three of his fingers fell to the floor. The two soldiers then joined in the attack; blows rained on the unhappy man, whose shirt of mail but served to prolong the agony of death, until[,] bleeding from a score of wounds[,] he collapsed on the floor. A final thrust from the Count's sword, and the deed — one of the blackest in history — was accomplished. And while her former lover [sic] was being butchered, with his death cries in her ears, Christina discussed the latest scandal in the adjoining room, and her gay [cheerful] laughter was the only sound that mingled with the last moan of her victim [sic].
Europe was struck with horror by this inhuman act. It had long shaken its sides with laughter at Christina's eccentricities, and professed to be shocked by her immoralities; but to order her lover's murder and to laugh wantonly while he was done to death [sic] was a very different matter. She was a monster, a ghoul, unfit to draw the breath of life. When Mazarin sent a messenger to warn her that it would not be safe to show her face in Paris[,] she sent back an impertinent answer, assuring him that if Monaldeschi were still alive "I should not sleep to-night before seeing that the deed was done. I have no reason to repent." And twenty-five years later [sic] she was just as impenitent. "I am in no humour", she wrote, "to justify myself of Monaldeschi's death. This fuss about him seems to me as absurd as it is insolent. Westphalia may think him innocent if it will; to me it is a matter of the utmost indifference."
It was equally a matter of indifference that the whole world now gave her the cold shoulder. "The shaven adventuress", as she was dubbed, treated the contemptuous world with scorn, and went her own erratic way to the end. When Sweden refused her permission to put foot on its shores[,] she turned her horse's head with a laugh and rode away. She intrigued to wrest Pomerania from Sweden by armed force, and to capture the throne of Poland; but all her scheming failed, for none would help her. When the long-suffering Pope withdrew her pension[,] she threatened to sack the Vatican and to depose him. Thus, shunned and execrated by all, Christina spent the last thirty years of her strange life an impoverished pariah; but defiant and impenitent to the last.
When she realised that her end was near[,] she determined to leave the stage of life, on which she had played so many remarkable parts, in a manner that should astonish and impress the world. She had a mortuary robe made "of white brocade, richly embroidered with flowers and gold ornamentation; with trimming and buttons of gold and with a fringe of the same around the bottom of the skirt"; and, thus prepared for the closing scene, she awaited with a light heart the signal for the dropping of the curtain.
The end came one April day in the year 1659 [sic]; and if she could have had a posthumous regret at leaving life[,] it must surely have been that she could not see her own obsequies. Now that her career was ended[,] all Rome conspired to send her to her grave under circumstances of ultra regal splendour. Clothed in her gorgeous costume of brocade and gold, with a crown on her head and a sceptre in her hand, her body was laid in state in the Church of Saint Dorothea[,] whose black draperies were illuminated by 300 tapers.
When dusk fell, her coffin, concealed by a violet mantle, edged with ermine, was carried in state to St Peter's. Five hundred monks with lighted tapers led the long procession, followed by artists and scholars and the members of a score of religious bodies, while, following the body, came cardinals and archbishops, lords and equerries, in gilded coaches, drawn by gaily caparisoned horses. And[,] thus brilliantly escorted[,] Christina was laid to rest under the stately dome of the world's greatest cathedral, to await the verdict of posterity.
More than two centuries have gone since Christina's crooked body was thus splendidly laid to rest[,] and her equally crooked soul appeared before its Creator, but historians still wrangle over her memory. Seldom have such great gifts and possibilities been allied to such deplorable defects and failure. Her cleverness, falling little short of genius, and her fascinations are forgotten in the contemplation of the vices which made her the byword of Europe in her day, and especially of that crowning act of treachery and cruelty which branded her for ever as infamous, a woman with the heart of a fiend.
"Princes", she herself once said, "resemble those tigers and lions whose keepers make them play a thousand tricks and turns. To look at them[,] you would fancy they were in complete subjection, but a blow from the paw, when least expected, shows that you can never tame that sort of animal." And Christina was an animal who could never have been tamed. She belonged to the "rabble of kings."
Above: Kristina.
Note: G*psy is a commonplace but derogatory term and exonym for the Roma or Romani people, an ethnic group of Rajasthani origin living mostly throughout Europe (particularly in the Balkan countries in the southeast of the continent) but also in the Middle East, the Americas, Africa and Australia, traditionally nomadic and itinerant with an endogamous clan-based society with different subgroups in different regions. They are unfortunately stereotyped as fortune-tellers, thieves, criminals and con artists even today and have suffered terrible persecutions throughout their history and are consequently and rightfully wary of non-Roma people, who they call gadji. The Europeans assumed they came from Egypt, which resulted in the word g*psy and its equivalent words in other languages commonly being used for the Roma.
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