Source:
Romances of Swedish Queens: Kristina, Daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, article written by Carl Grimberg for The American-Scandinavian Review, volume 15, pages 523/525 to 535 (Number 9, September, 1927), published by the American-Scandinavian Foundation, 1927; original at the University of Michigan
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Above: Carl Grimberg.
"There are few characters in history more fascinating than Queen Kristina, Gustavus Adolphus's daughter who renounced her father's crown and his faith. Her story is the second in four "Romances of Swedish Queens" which the distinguished Swedish historian, CARL GRIMBERG, is writing for the REVIEW."
The account:
Romances of Swedish Queens:
Kristina, Daughter of Gustavus Adolphus
By CARL GRIMBERG
NEVER has a man been more profoundly worshipped by a woman than was the great hero-king Gustavus II Adolphus by his beautiful spouse, Maria Eleonora of Brandenburg. It was ardent love at first sight. The very first time the two young people saw each other, according to a spectator, "the princess could never take her eyes from His Majesty." Nay, not even death seemed capable of separating Maria Eleonora from her beloved Gustav. On receiving the sorrowful message that he had offered up his life on the battlefield of Lützen for the cause of Protestantism, she hurried to his bier; and day and night she could not be separated from his remains. In fact, two days after his body had been deposited in Riddarholmskyrkan, she wanted to descend into the vault and have the coffin opened.
It is indeed a heartrending thing to see a love so all-devouring, a passion so blind, that it cannot be checked even by the dread hand of death. And yet this woman, who lived and breathed only by the memory of her happy love, was no withered old woman, but young and radiantly beautiful still. At the death of Gustavus Adolphus she was not quite thirty-three years old. In a dark, shut-in chamber, lighted only by the dull gleam of funeral candles, she sat day in and day out, clad in deepest mourning, with her only child, little Kristina, who later, on becoming of age, was to succeed her great father on the throne. The little girl was now Maria Eleonora's only comfort, for she seemed to see in her daughter the image of her departed mate. But what a life for the lively little seven-year-old with the big questioning eyes to sit closeted thus with the hysterical woman who only wept and mourned!
If the little girl who later was to govern the realm of Sweden — then one of the great powers of Europe — was not to be entirely ruined, she must be separated in time from her mother, who moreover did all she could to arouse in the child antipathy toward Sweden. The separation was effected, in spite of the violent protests of the mother, who in her desperation even contemplated suicide. Finally she fled the country.
Little Kristina came under the guidance of her sensible and very excellent aunt.
It was no easy task to take charge of this child prodigy — for a prodigy she was already. At her very arrival to this earth she came as a surprise. The astrologists had prophesied that the ardent desire of Gustavus Adolphus and Maria Eleonora for a son would be fulfilled. When a swarthy little brat came to the world — "brown as a Moor", in Kristina's own words — and greeted those standing by with an uncommonly vigorous cry, a real boy's howl, everybody thought at first that the soothsayers had spoken the truth.
Then came the disappointment! But papa laughed it off. "She is going to be very clever", he remarked, "for she fooled us all." For that matter, it soon became evident that the little one was a regular tomboy. In her autobiography, written in her later years, she says that she had always harbored "an invincible dislike for all that was feminine in word and action"; and that dislike lasted all her life. As often as possible she sought masculine company; but what attracted her to men was, according to her own explanation, not so much that they were men as that they were — not women.
Gustavus Adolphus was delighted with every indication of boyishness in his little girl. After all, he said, she was a warrior's daughter and ought to show it. That she had inherited her father's intelligence as well as courage soon became evident. With her large, eager eyes she literally drank in knowledge of every kind. Learning a new language like Greek she called a diversion for idle moments, about like playing chess, and never could her appetite for history, and politics be sated. For hours she could sit and discuss them with her teachers. A precocious and unusually gifted child who knew what she wanted — such is the impression one receives of the future regent of Sweden.
Kristina, however, was not only the highly gifted and strong-willed daughter of Gustavus Adolphus; she possessed also a heritage from her poor mother, so capricious and eccentric.
The most famous delineation of Kristina's appearance and manner is by the French envoy Chanut, who describes, in a letter to his government early in 1648, the impression made by the twenty-one-year-old queen on an observer who was both penetrating and enthusiastic. He says[,] among other things: "The first time you see her she does not awaken the same admiration as on closer observation. A single portrait is not sufficient to give an idea of her appearance; her face changes with her thoughts and emotions so that you scarcely recognize her from one moment to the other. But usually she appears thoughtful, and however her expression varies, she always retains a trace of the sunny and agreeable. At times her voice becomes more powerful than is characteristic of her sex. She attaches no importance to dress: in fifteen minutes she is dressed, and for everyday a comb and a bit of ribbon constitute her only head-dress. Yet her carelessly hanging hair is not unbecoming to her face, which she does not trouble to shield against rain or wind. While hunting she can sit on horseback for ten hours at a stretch; and there is no one in Sweden who can fell a leaping hare more surely. Neither cold nor heat bother her. Her food is simple and lacking in delicacies. She is chary of time and sleeps only five hours. She takes great pleasure in seeing learned men around her and hearing them treat difficult scientific problems. On such occasions she never expresses her opinion until all others have spoken, and then she does it well, with few words."
In our day, with the freer manners for women which have accompanied sports and comradeship between the sexes, Kristina would surely not have created such a sensation as in her own time. She would simply have been classified as a "modern sportswoman." But the thing which would have distinguished her in any age was her brilliant mind. Now, as in the age when she lived, the world would surely have reëchoed with admiration for the young girl who from 1644 governed independently that Northern land which her father had made a great power. Kristina herself enjoyed being famous, and her unusual endowment and thirst for knowledge showed her a way. Through valor at arms the Swedish nation had made itself a name in the world. Yet one thing remained; in the barren Swedish soil the finer flower of culture had not yet taken root. But why shouldn't it? Did it not seem as though Providence had appointed the great warrior's daughter as the guardian of science and art in the Northlands? A court in which the queen shone like a star in a constellation of European savants — that was an ambition worthy of the daughter of Gustavus Adolphus.
Scores of scientists, especially Frenchmen, accepted Kristina's invitation to Stockholm. They had left home and wife and child in order to behold the new goddess of wisdom on Sweden's throne, "the northern Minerva." For her sake they had been tossed about for weeks on a stormy sea in frail little ships, or shaken till they were bruised and tender on ungodly country roads. Indeed these children of the South even braved the dreaded cold of the Northlands in the blissful certainty that the queen of Sweden would richly reward all their trouble.
Towering above them all was the Frenchman Descartes, one of the greatest philosophers who have ever lived. After a long period of correspondence and persistent exhortation[,] Kristina succeeded in getting him to Stockholm, in the fall of 1649. He was no mouldy bookworm, this penetrating thinker with whom the queen of Sweden now found opportunity to discuss life's deepest problems. Descartes was an aristocrat, an experienced man of the world. He had been an officer, and enjoyed a reputation not only as a philosopher but also as a gallant. But surely no woman had so selfishly monopolized him as his royal admirer in Stockholm. At five o'clock in the morning he had to report in her library to instruct her and argue with her. Alas for him, who had assumed the comfortable habits of the man of the world! In the dark and chilly rooms of the Stockholm palace he shook with cold, and after four months he contracted pneumonia and died.
The young queen, however, had an eye not only for learning and genius in the opposite sex[,] but also for superficial excellencies. She had by nature a keen esthetic sense and loved to feast her eyes on what was beautiful and brilliant. Around her was a swarm of young nobles who had won her favor. The most celebrated was Count Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, the son of General Jacob De la Gardie and beautiful Ebba Brahe, the first love of Gustavus Adolphus. He was beyond comparison the most handsome and cultured of the Swedish noblemen. Queen Kristina was overcome by his charm, and she made no secret of her liking; she showered him with unmerited distinctions. At the age of twenty-two he became Colonel of the Guards, and at the same time she placed him at the head of a brilliant embassage to Paris, which cost the poor Swedish nation a tidy sum of money.
It was even rumored that the queen contemplated the pampered favorite as her consort. Indeed[,] her very frank autobiography conveys the impression that the rumor was not without foundation, but pride restrained her from devoting herself to any man and subordinating herself to a husband. During the regency, when one of her guardians put the question of matrimony to her, the fifteen-year-old Kristina gave the cutting reply: "The person who can belong to herself should not belong to any one else." As for De la Gardie, his star was destined soon to pale. When the queen found that he was too cowardly to fight a duel, her admiration suddenly turned to disdain. In vain the pampered favorite sought to win back the heart of his queen. "Do not believe that I am angry with you", she wrote to him. "I assure you that I am not. The only feeling I can have for you henceforth is pity."
Discussing science and art and following up one brilliant court festivity with another are not the chief mission of a ruler, however, though Kristina seemed to think so. She soon turned a deaf ear to her more serious and tedious duties to the government. Yet this was a time of great opportunity in Sweden: difficult social problems craved solution, and only from the throne could help come. The nobility, the upper class of the realm, had become so powerful that it threatened to destroy the time-honored freedom of the Swedish peasantry. Sweden's constant quarrels with her neighbors had given caste to the warrior, and the deeds of prowess accomplished by leading men on the battlefields were rewarded, in accordance with the custom of the time, with investiture of lands. Year by year the earldoms and baronies and other tax-free estates increased, so that they finally embraced half the territory of the realm. When the land came into the possession of a nobleman, it became entirely or at least partially free from taxation to the Crown. The small farms were in danger of being swallowed up by manors, and the freedom of the peasantry was threatened. "We have heard", grumbled the peasantry at the Rigsdag [sic] of 1650, which was called to witness the queen's coronation, "that in other lands the peasant is a slave, and we fear that the same may befall us." The situation was aggravated by dearth and famine. Even in the most fertile provinces the people had to resort to bark bread. Many starved to death, and the roads were full of beggars.
To those who understood the lay of the land[,] it was very evident that the demands of the commoners could not long be ignored by the government. Kristina too realized it; but it is one thing to realize, and another to act. Far from trying to ameliorate conditions, Kristina made them worse from year to year. She created, on an average, one new nobleman each week, and in many cases the actual worth of the new-baked nobleman was highly disputable. The royal tailor may have been a very clever fellow in his trade, but it is doubtful whether his spirit had the heroic trend which would justify Her Majesty's cutting him a lion's shield with her own fair hand.
All the new earls and barone created by Kristina had to be provided with earldoms and baronies. The result was such a giving of lands that the queen finally could not keep track of which estates had been given away and which still belonged to the Crown.
At the same time[,] Kristina wasted quantities of money on court festivities, one more lavish than the other. Never before had Sweden seen anything to equal the splendor with which she celebrated her coronation. It was a dazzling spectacle to behold — all the land could offer of splendor and magnificence started in procession from the Stockholm palace toward Storkyrkan. But all the rest was eclipsed by the Queen of Sweden in her carriage de luxe, drawn by six snow-white steeds, silvershod, caparisoned with red velvet embroidered in gold and wearing tufts of pure white plumes on their heads. She was resplendent in a gown almost totally covered with gold, pearls, and jewels. Behind her carriage came her favorite white horse, whose mane and tail almost swept the ground. He wore a saddle richly embroidered in silver and gold, and about his silvershod hoofs was a rattling of gold chains.
After the coronation came a series of banquets and other diversions for the poor people. On the main market-place an ox roasted whole, a "coronation" ox, as it was called, was served to the people, and wine flowed from several fountains.
In the course of these festivities, the queen had found it necessary to order that the beggars who, because of the famine, had swarmed into Stockholm be led away, so that they would not "fill up the streets, to our dishonor and that of the Crown, especially considering the foreigners who have come to the city."
And now for some statistics! On Kristina's ascending the throne, three percent of the total income of the realm was consumed by court expenses. During her last year the figure had risen to twenty percent! In our day the Swedish court requires about one-third of one percent of the state revenues.
Kristina realized fully that in the long run the state finances of Sweden could not be handled in this way; but it was too tedious a task to start economic and social reforms. Her capricious and impulsive nature had long since tired of the daily grind of government worries. Once[,] when two secretaries came in with a pile of government negotiations to be signed by the queen, she greeted them with the kind words that it was "just as much fun for her to see them enter as if the devil himself had come for a visit." With the ruthless determination characteristic of Kristina, she soon found a way out of the difficulty: she would renounce the crown and leave Sweden forever. Free! She wished to be free, free from all duties, free from all bonds! She had never harbored any warm sentiments for her fatherland, and as little had she ever felt any obligation to work for the welfare of the loyal though poverty-stricken people of Gustavus Adolphus [sic], for her insight into the popular character had never penetrated beneath the rather rough surface.
Kristina's whim to leave Sweden had other reasons than those enumerated. The daughter of Gustavus Adolphus had secretly become a Catholic. In her heart of hearts she had never been a Lutheran — so she claimed. She found the Lutheran church service monotonous; she longed for the mystic ceremonies which gave atmosphere to the worship in the Catholic churches. Her independent nature from the beginning had resisted all attempts of well-meaning educators to implant in her a faith in the excellency of Protestantism. Yet her restless, doubting heart felt an actual need of making reason a captive to faith, faith in the infallibility of the pope and all the dogmas incidental to it. Irreconcilable elements united in one human soul!
Kristina awaited with impatience the time when she could resign her queenship in order to be a human being. In the lands of the South she would live as a queen in the realm of genius, surrounded by the creations of art and the foremost poets and scholars of the age. All the honor she could win as the queen of Sweden was already hers. Her life's greatest triumph would now be this: at the acme of her power and glory, still young and fêted, she would voluntarily lay down the crown.
One reason for Kristina's resolution to abdicate was her distaste for giving the world a successor of her own flesh and blood. Her feeling toward matrimony was, as we have seen, one of decided antipathy. Multitudes of princes sought her hand, but none succeeded in winning her. Of no avail were the pleas of her subjects that she should marry. And "woman's will is God's will."
When the Riksdag convened in Uppsala in 1654, Kristina set in motion her plans to abdicate. She appeared in person before her people and announced her decision. When she had assured herself of a very considerable annual maintenance, consisting of the revenues from several Swedish provinces, the formal abdication took place in the hall of state in Uppsala castle. In the presence of the councillors and Estates of the Realm she laid down the crown, the apple, and the sceptre, and thereupon spoke "so gently and freely to those assembled that she moved many an honest man to tears", says an eyewitness. "Beautiful as an angel she stood there in a white robe."
In an ecstasy of happiness and freedom she left Sweden. Her goal was Rome, the eternal city. On the way thither she met an envoy from the pope in Innsbruck in the Tyrol, and before him, in the castle chapel, she publicly foreswore the faith for which her father had died, and expressed her conviction that no one can achieve salvation outside the Catholic church. "All wept; she alone shed no tear", says a spectator. Everywhere the Catholics rejoiced that the daughter of the heretic king had come to a realization of the truth and become the obedient child of his holiness the pope; and[,] hailed as a victor, she made her entrance in Rome, mounted on a snow-white horse and escorted by a brilliant cortège.
Kristina's first weeks in Rome were a dance on roses. The pope, the cardinals, and the society people of Rome took pains to show their most agreeable side to this most recent acquisition of the Roman church. But the first intoxication passed, and Kristina was to learn that fortune is not constant, even under the sunny skies of Italy. First the pope showed that he was not entirely satisfied with her. He had expected to see a crowned saint with the fragrance of holiness about her — a convert who spent her time in long prayers and good works, and was an example to be followed. Instead he found a woman uncommonly free in speech and bearing, who smiled and jested during the church services and who — Oh, height of impropriety! — turned the heads of the cardinals.
It was not only the pope who showed a bit of acid in his sweetness; the respect for the queen began to decrease here and there when it became noticeable that she was sometimes short of cash. "The Italians do not like converts without money", as the English ambassador in Livorno once said.
In her difficulties, however, Kristina found a helper and friend, faithful unto death: Cardinal Azzolino, who became a profound influence in her life. Azzolino's appearance was both forceful and pleasing, and his quick intelligence and high culture were to Kristina's taste. A very interesting glimpse into the relations between him and the ex-queen is gained by a study of the still existing letters of Kristina and the cardinal. This woman, who pours out her soul to her friend in complete sincerity, was very different from the queen who with bold courage defied the whole world. In these letters, intended for no eye but his, her womanliness comes to light. The will of the beloved has become her law, and without him life holds no value. She, the proudest of women, exclaims: "In relation to me you are omnipotent, and however you choose to treat me, I shall never complain." It is certain that, if Kristina ever gave herself wholly to any man, it was to Azzolino.
Kristina had expected to find in the eternal city the great peace and happiness. Now she had learned by experience that neither in the north nor in the south is peace to be found by a celebrity-hunter. Kristina wished to be independent of her fellow-men, but could not; but worse than that, she could not escape her own capricious self, which never allowed her a feeling of complete contentment; which drove her, throughout her whole life, to chase after phantoms. Hardly had she become settled in Rome when she appeared at the court in Paris. There she created a huge sensation, because of her eccentric appearance as well as her genius. People were amazed at her masculine way of flinging herself into chairs and throwing her legs over the arms of chairs in the presence of the king and the entire court. The French queen, Anne of Austria, vowed that she had never been so completely astonished. She had heard that "the travelling queen" was not like other people, but had never imagined anything quite so different. Yet for all her oddities, she could not help liking Kristina.
The following year [1657] she suddenly appeared again at the French court. While she was sojourning at the beautiful pleasure castle of Fontainebleau outside of Paris, there happened a sensational occurrence which has smirched her reputation. By order of the ex-queen her chief house-steward, the Italian Marquis of Monaldesco, was killed. Legend has spun around this deed the motive of love and jealousy, and Alexandre Dumas has built on this legend his treatment of the drama at Fontainebleau, however without any basis in reality. The true motive for the execution or the murder — whichever we should call it — was that Monaldesco for money had betrayed an important political confidence.
Her French visits were connected with plans, suddenly born in this restless head, to gain by intrigue the crown of the kingdom of Naples. In 1660, when her successor on Sweden's throne suddenly died, she could not forbear starting directly for Stockholm to try to obtain a new right to the crown; but her former subjects were now quite cool toward the adventuress from the pope's city.
One remark made by her during this visit deserves to be rescued from oblivion. When the eighty-seven-year-old archbishop, heading a delegation of ministers, came and admonished her to give up her erroneous religion and lamented "the pope's evil plots against our souls", Kristina retorted scornfully: "Good gentlemen, I know the pope better than you: he wouldn't give four dollars for all your souls together." Despite the failure of her trip to the homeland, however, Kristina visited it again in 1667, this time with still more ignominious results. The Swedish government gave her to understand plainly that the visit was not desired, and in her vexation she turned back when half-way to Stockholm. Shortly thereafter she took it into her head to seek the vacant throne of Poland. What attracted her was the suspense in playing for a throne rather than the throne itself — which she did not win in the end, for that matter.
La regina nomada, the travelling queen, had now become one of the curiosities of Rome. There she sat in Palazzo Riario, which she had changed to a museum of exquisite paintings, statues, books, and manuscripts, most of which she had brought with her from the royal palaces in her impoverished native land. With the years, she had become a fat little old woman with a double chin adorned with long, coarse hairs, an enormous eagle nose under bushy eyebrows, a protruding underlip and clipped hair, sprinkled with gray. But the big blue eyes still retained their fire. She was not forgotten by the good Romans in her old age; she saw to that by providing constant quarrels with the pope to liven up her existence. Once his holiness dismissed such a dispute with a shrug of the shoulders and the pertinent remark: "E donna"— she is a woman.
The only change in her life which she anticipated calmly and quietly was the greatest and last which awaits all. She had always declared that she did not fear death, and when she stood face to face with it, she showed that she had spoken the truth.
On the morning of April 19, 1689, she quietly drew her last breath, at the age of sixty-two. Her restless and storm-tossed life was ended. Her last hours were sweetened by the presence of Azzolino, who, though attacked by illness himself, watched day and night by her bedside. Under the crimson mantle of the cardinal beat a heart which mourned her, after all.
With great pomp and ceremony she was interred in St. Peter's cathedral, where her tomb constitutes a permanent reminder of the greatest triumph of Jesuitism, the conversion of the great heretic king's daughter.
"E donna" — those words which were received by Kristina as an unpardonable insult nevertheless explain better than anything else her restless, fluttering career. But what is the reason, we finally ask, for the depressing feeling of desolation, of meaningless emptiness, which results from a contemplation of Kristina's life and destiny? Why must we always see happiness just escaping this brilliant personality? The answer is that true happiness is absolutely unknown to the person who lives in constant concern for his own ego. All work for personal development becomes meaningless if the new powers developing within are not used in work for the happiness of others. Herein lies one of the great secrets of civilized community: no one may break the law of interdependence. Only by working at a life mission can any one find true happiness.
This life mission Kristina never found. Hence her great qualities never became the blessing which they might have become to her fellowmen; and consequently they never became a blessing to her.
Note: Palazzo Riario is the old name for the Palazzo Corsini alla Lungara.
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