Source:
Queen Christina of Sweden: Lothian Prize Essay for 1880, pages 46 to 51, by Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge, 1880; original at the University of Michigan
The essay:
CHAPTER IV.
CHRISTINA'S LIFE AFTER HER ABDICATION.
IMMEDIATELY after her abdication and the coronation of her successor, Christina left Upsala. "She could not remain", she told Count Brahé, "in a land where she had once been queen, but where she would now be forced to see another reigning in her stead." She feared, moreover, that she might be detained by force, for the clergy, who had long suspected her religious tendencies, declared that she ought not to be allowed to quit the kingdom, and the peasants murmured bitterly at her carrying the money of the Swedish people out of the country, to squander it in foreign courts. A slight incident related by Chanut serves to shew the depth of the distrust with which (in spite of loyal manifestations on a great occasion like that of her resigning the Crown) she was regarded by the mass of her subjects. A fleet of twelve ships had been equipped by the new king to convey her to Wismar; she refused, however, to avail himself of them, and preferred to take the route through Denmark; and the people, whilst they complained of the useless expense incurred in fitting out the fleet, yet felt relieved after all that she should not have accepted it, as she would probably, they said, on arriving in Germany have sold it to the King of Spain.
The queen, meanwhile (for, by special agreement with the Estates, she still retained the rank and privileges of a crowned head), hurried on through Göta-Rike, passed Halmsted, the capital of the province of Halland, the last of the conquests wrested from the Danes, during the glorious early period of her reign, and arrived at Collen, on the confines of Sweden and Denmark. In this town she cut her hair short, and disguised herself as a man, with a plumed hat and sword, in order to travel more freely, and to avoid the inconveniences which might result from her passing through Denmark in her real character, without having given notice of her coming to the king (An absurd story is told of the Queen of Denmark's having disguised herself as a maid-servant in one of the inns where Christina was to pass, and even of her having waited at table, where, to her great disgust, she heard the Swedish queen indulge in violent and sarcastic invectives against the King of Denmark. Sophia Amelia was a bold, enterprising woman, as she proved in 1660; but though the story is generally received, there is an air of improbability about it, which requires better proof than the scandals current at the time. Galeazzo Gualdo denies it, and says that neither the king nor queen of Denmark could possibly have been at the time at the inn, when the meeting was said to have occurred.). Before long, the frontier was reached. A small brook divided the kingdom of Sweden from that of Denmark. Once more, Herr Linde, who had been appointed by the king as her escort, renewed, in his master's name, the oft-made offer of marriage. Christina's mind had, however, long been made up. Quietly, and without emotions, she declined what must have been felt to be a mere formal proposal; and, leaping from her carriage, sprang across the little border-stream. "At last", she cried, as she stood on the opposite bank, "I am free, and out of Sweden, whither I hope I may never return." Crossing the Sound at Elsinore, and, still in male disguise, Christina hurried through the Islands and the Danish mainland; and on the 10th of July, she reached Hamburg, where she lodged in the house of a wealthy Jewish merchant, named Manuel Texeira. In this town she shocked strict Lutherans, by leaving in her pew at church a richly-bound copy of Virgil, which she appears ostentatiously to have studied whilst the preacher, who knew her real character, was dilating on the Queen of Sheba, and her wisdom in leaving her throne to learn true knowledge from Solomon. This story, and that of her masculine disguise, soon spread to Sweden; the clergy thought that they saw their worst fears realised, and insisted that if she abjured her religion, she should forfeit all the lands secured to her on her abdication; whilst the Senate, foreseeing that in such a case troubles and difficulties must arise, and suspecting something from the peculiar tone of a letter written by her to the king, in which she seemed to imply that she would never return to her country, suggested that a deputation should be sent to dissuade her from any step, such as a change of faith, which might imperil her position at home.
In the meantime, Christina had left Hamburg, passing Bremen, at that time at war with Sweden, and crossing the territories of the Dukes of Brunswick-Luneburg, and of the Bishop of Munster, in whose capital she paid a visit to the Jesuits' college, she reached the frontier of the Republic of Holland. The Dutch magistrates had ordered all honours to be shewn to her, but she preferred to retain her incognito, and without visiting any of their principal cities, such as Amsterdam, Leyden, or the Hague, she took the road through Deventer, Utrecht, and the Eastern Provinces, into the Spanish Netherlands, where, on her arrival at Antwerp, she again resumed female attire.
On Spanish soil every mark of respect awaited her; for her intrigues with Piementelle, and the dislike she had shewn during the last years of her reign to France, were well known. She was visited by the Archduke Leopold of Austria, son of the Emperor Ferdinand III., whom he afterwards succeeded, and at that time Viceroy for the King of Spain in the Low Countries. Leopold, a reserved, punctilious little man, in appearance as well as in character, (if we except his passion for music,) more Spanish than German, was received by her with the ceremonious etiquette of which he was so fond; and shortly afterwards left Antwerp, to prepare a magnificent entry for her into Brussels. A very different character, the Prince de Condé, was also in Flanders at this time. Driven from his country by the troubles of the Fronde, he had resolved to re-enter it, like Coriolanus, at the head of a foreign army, and he was now engaged at Brussels in struggling against the hopeless stupidity and officialism of the Spanish authorities. Christina had always admired Condé; years before, whilst she was still a girl, and whilst the Thirty Years' War was still raging, she had written to him in praise of his "extraordinary virtue", and had assured him that her own successes had not given her more pleasure than his splendid victories: her first letter almost after her abdication had been one in which she informed him of that act, and hoped that it would meet his approval, "which she valued more than the crown, and the loss of which could alone make her regret having resigned it." Unfortunately, the pride of Condé prevented a meeting between himself and the queen, to which both had looked forward with impatience. He asked to be received by her with the same ceremonial as the archduke, an honour to which he was not entitled, and which might very likely have given offence to the Spaniards. The interview could not, therefore, take place, but it is said that later on Christina recognised the well-known features of the great general amidst a crowd of nobles at a court party of some kind, and broke the ice by addressing him in a free and familiar manner: "Well, cousin", she asked, "who would have guessed ten years ago that we should have met in two such positions?" A longer interview was afterwards arranged between the queen and Condé in the park at Brussels, but it was cold and formal, and Vossius, who was at the time in Flanders, informed Heinsius in a letter that "Christina had completely quarrelled with the prince." She was visited at the same time by Elizabeth Stuart, the high-spirited Queen of Bohemia, who lived in retirement at the Hague, and by some of the learned men and old acquaintances whom she had known in Sweden; amongst them, Chanut, now ambassador of France in Holland, who endeavoured in vain to alter the feelings of dislike with which she had learned, under Spanish influence, to regard her ancient allies.
The day after her arrival at Brussels, whither she removed from Antwerp, she gave a signal mark of her sympathy with Spain and Spanish ideas, by abjuring Protestantism in the private chapel of the Archduke Leopold. The ceremony was performed by a Spanish Dominican named Guemes, who had accompanied Piementelle into Sweden; and the only persons present, besides the Archduke and his secretary, were the Spanish generals, Fuensaldaña and Montecuculi. The event was, however, announced to the population of Brussels by repeated salvos of artillery.
The great and solemn act in which she had just taken the chief part, an act which would affect the whole of her subsequent life, and which had excluded her from all hope of regaining the crown should she feel so disposed, did not produce any visible effects upon Christina's conduct, or appear to make her think or act with greater seriousness and prudence. On the contrary, the months she spent in Brussels immediately after her abjuration, were passed in a continuous whirl of pleasures and amusements. Her free and careless manner of life, her aversion and contempt, which she took no pains to conceal, for the female sex, her neglect of religious observances, her coarse masculine language, and her uproarious gaiety, astonished a society accustomed to the grave piety and cumbrously formal etiquette which were fashionable at the Spanish court. Those who did not know of her abjuration, inquired why she had brought no Lutheran chaplains with her; and were startled at hearing her answer with a laugh, that before leaving Sweden she had got rid of all superfluous or useless baggage. Picture-galleries, balls, hunting-parties, and plays, occupied all her leisure; comedies and masques were daily performed before her by French, Italian, and Spanish actors; even Mazarin, though at war with the court of Brussels, sent over a troop of players, under a flag of truce, to amuse her. "My occupations", she writes to Countess Sparre, "are to eat and sleep well, read a little, talk, laugh, look at French, Spanish, and Italian comedies; in fine, to pass my time agreeably. I listen to no more sermons; I despise all orators; as Solomon says, all is vanity, let each man live happily, eating, drinking, and singing."
Christina's best friends beheld this behaviour with great misgivings. Nicholas Heinsius spoke with regret of her imprudence, and hoped that she would return to wiser courses before it was too late to mend her reputation. Chanut could only excuse it by comparing it to the wild gaiety of the Carnival, which precedes the austerities of Lent and which he trusted, in Christina's case, would soon give way to conduct more suited to her dignity as a queen. Nor, perhaps, was the idea which lay at the bottom of this parallel altogether a bad one. Much of the unrestrained frivolity of Christina's conduct at Brussels may be explained, by regarding it as a temporary reaction against her former life. Accustomed ever since she could remember to act as a queen, her gay [cheerful], impulsive nature had only been kept down by the consciousness of the high position which she filled. The masculine and almost Spartan training, which from state circumstances she had received, though it enabled her queenly pride to place checks upon her natural disposition, at the same time utterly unfitted her for all quiet womanly pursuits; and once the motives for such pride were removed, made her all the more ready to enjoy to the full, and without restraint, her new position of irresponsible freedom. There was good hope that when once this reaction had spent its force, she would see the folly of a complete indifference and disregard for public opinion, and for the conventionalities, however senseless in themselves, which regulate ordinary society.
It was not to be expected that so charitable a judgment would be passed upon her conduct in Sweden. She did not often hear from her former kingdom, for she tells Count Peter Brahé, that he was the only man in it who remembered her. The Chancellor Oxenstyerna had died a few months after her departure, in August, 1654. His last words were, it is said, about Christina; and with him, the old generation of statesmen who had grown up around Gustavus Adolphus, and who[,] in spite of strong oligarchical tendencies[,] had for his sake been generally loyal to his daughter, might be considered to have passed away. Brahé, to whom she wrote in March, 1655, and who had strongly protested against her resigning the crown, was almost its last survivor. But, though Christina heard little from Sweden, the reports about her life in Brussels had reached that country, and created a great sensation there; so much so, that she was obliged to write to King Charles, begging him to correct undeserved calumnies against her, and to secure her in the possession of the revenues fixed to her by the Recess of 1654, but of which the clergy might at any moment attempt to deprive her.
Above: Kristina.
Above: Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge.
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