Source:
Extraordinary Women: Their Girlhood and Early Life, pages 61 to 66, by William Russell, 1857; original at the New York Public Library; original of scan with page 64 intact at Harvard University
Russell wrote a further biography of Kristina in 1864 (please excuse the month in the permalinks, I have been posting for previous dates to catch up on everything and didn't yet think to set the intended date before posting!):
The biography:
... One may have doubts of the "grace" and the "courtesy", but not of the "influence;" — the young lady having reached the age when, to adopt her own illustration, the offspring of the Lion of the North could, if she so willed it, tear and devour, and required constantly more delicate, respectful handling than ever. On the 18th of December, 1644, Christina attained her legal majority, — that is, eighteen years of age, — and thenceforth governed without the nominal check of a regency, and with a naked despotism which Gustavus-Adolphus himself would not have ventured to exercise; but it is a remarkable fact that nations have always more patiently endured the autocracy of a woman, especially of a youthful one, than of a man, — possibly because the better half of creation naturally sympathize with a queen or empress, and even in constitutional England, as every candidate for a borough perfectly well knows, it is Mary that in nine cases out of ten decides how John is to act in a crisis of political difficulty. Certainly, the girl-Queen of Sweden was scarcely less popular than imperious, arbitrary, self-willed, and whilst the novelty of governing retained its charm, indefatigably absolute in all matters, great and small, that came within the range of or could be reached by her sceptre, regulating by the simple magic of Sic volo, sic jubeo [Thus I will, thus I command], all questions of taxation, revenue, commerce, peace and war; and having a distaste for the elegance of dress herself, dictated a law forbidding the Swedish ladies to wear lace; interdicted the festal celebration of betrothals, bridals, christenings, and other family festivals, forasmuch that people often drank to excess at such meetings — a vice which Christina's preferential taste for water could not tolerate. These and many other similar vagaries of irresponsible power, it is not uninstructive to observe, because marking the relative progress of nations in the knowledge of what is due to themselves, took place in the same year that absolute sovereignty received its death-blow at Naseby, in a country not many hours' sail from the Swedish shores.
Christina's successful persistence, in opposition to the counsel of Oxensteirn, in putting an end to the thirty years' war, amidst the palms and laurels whereof she boasted to have been born, deserves honourable recognition; and in 1650, the year following that which witnessed the rejoicings for the Peace of Westphalia, she was crowned King of Sweden, with great pomp and splendour. By that time, the anxiety of the Swedish nation that their sovereign should marry, lest peradventure they should be left in a state of orphanage, — destitute of even a girl six years of age capable of saving Sweden, — had become intense, and suitors for her hand (the Crown, as she pleasantly remarked, being a very pretty girl), were numerous and ardent; — amongst others of less note, the Prince of Denmark, the Elector of Brandenburgh, the Elector Palatine, the King of Spain, King of the Romans, King of Poland, and Duke Charles-Augustus [sic], her first cousin and son of her father's sister.
Christina would have none of them. As with Hamlet, women delighted her not, nor men either, — no particular individual more than another amongst them, at all events: neither earth nor heaven should, she declared to her suppliant councillors, force her will; and she remained to the last inexorable in her aversion to marriage, which, she declared, "required more courage than to fight a battle." Graciously, however, yielding so far to the solicitude of her people as to provide them with an heir-apparent, she suddenly nominated her cousin, Charles-Augustus, Crown-Prince of Sweden, and the general anxiety and alarm subsided.
After this, Christina rapidly exhausted all the resources of practically-unlimited sway to supply her volatile willfulness with occupation or amusement. She endowed universities and academies, patronised literature and men of letters; then suddenly, on the persuasion of Bourdelot, a French charlatan, forswore books, and grossly insulted the native and foreign savans with whom she had surrounded herself. Two grave philosophers she compelled to play at shuttlecock with her; two eminent polyglot scholars she made pirouette before her in a Greek dance; and poor Descartes, her once favourite philosopher and parasite, she in a few months literally worried and worked into a consumption, by refusing him the quiet, harmless delight of occasionally sunning himself in the beauty of Elizabeth, Princess Palatine, and sister of Prince Rupert [sic], and by insisting, in that rigorous climate, upon his attendance in her library every morning exactly at five o'clock. Wearied at length with her agreeable quacks, and the round of luxurious dissipations into which she had plunged, her Majesty betook herself to the society and conversation of certain Jesuits; and finally, on the 6th of June, 1654, formally abdicated the throne in favour of Charles-Augustus, the Crown-Prince, at an extraordinary convocation of the States, and in defiance of the remonstrances of her wisest councillors, amongst whom the Marshal of the Boors — a rude, coarsely-attired country fellow, according to Whitelock, Cromwell's envoy, who was present [sic] — was not the least forcible and earnest. "O Lord God, madam", he exclaimed, "what are you about to do? It humbles us to hear you speak of forsaking those who love you as well as we do. Can you be better than you are? You are queen of all these countries; and if you leave this large kingdom, where will you get such another? If you should do it — as I hope you won't, for all this — both you and we shall have cause, when it is too late, to be sorry for it. Therefore, my fellows and I pray you to think better on't, and keep your crown on your head; then you will keep your own honour and our peace: but if you lay it down, in my conscience you will endanger all. Continue in your gears, good madam, and be the fore-horse as long as you live, and we will help you the best we can to bear your burden. Your father was an honest gentleman and a good king, and very shining in the world, and we obeyed and loved him as long as he lived; and you are his child, and have governed us very well, and we love you with all our hearts; and the Prince is an honest gentleman, and when the time comes we shall be ready to do our duties to him as we do to you. But, as long as you live, we are unwilling to part with you; and therefore I pray, madam, do not part with us."
The unadorned eloquence of the Marshal of the Boors was expended in vain; the ceremony of abdication was gone through with; self-discrowned Christina hurried out of the kingdom with an immense treasure in gold, silver, and jewels, and upon arriving at Brussels solemnly recanted the Reformed Faith, and was received into the fold of Rome — an event which was celebrated by balls, concerts, masquerades, and the performance of French and Italian plays, the Cardinal Mazarin having despatched a troupe of comedians from Paris for the express purpose of doing honour to an illustrious convert, the sincerity of whose ostensible convictions may be judged of by the remark she made after her first mockery of confession — "If there is a God, I shall be prettily caught", — and the following extract from a letter addressed at the time to the Countess Ebba Sparre: "My chief employments are to eat well and sleep well, to study a little, chat, laugh, see French and Italian plays, and pass my time in an agreeable dissipation. In conclusion, I hear no more sermons, and utterly despise all orators. As Solomon says, all wisdom is vanity: every one ought to live contentedly; eat, drink, and be merry."
Here we part company with this remarkable woman; and were it my purpose in these pages to accompany her to the end of her long[,] disjointed life — marked and stained by capricious contradictions, vain regrets for a lost crown, and puerile efforts to regain it — the boldly-avowed murder of her chamberlain, Monaldeschi, by the authority of her divine right over the lives of her subjects and servants — which life terminated at Rome, in April, 1689, I could scarcely hope to carry the reader with me. "E donna", was the charitable exclamation of the Pope, with whom she had quarrelled almost every day till her last, when she applied to him and obtained plenary absolution for all her sins, — and one, we may add, who, had she been the child of a less glorious, and, as regarded herself, fatally mistaken father, and nurtured in the atmosphere of a less servile Court, might have been a truly royal woman and great queen.
In proof that Christina's eccentricities were not the promptings of a lofty, erratic genius, that, with its head amidst the stars, not unfrequently stumbles helplessly upon the plain beaten paths of life, I subjoin a few of the carefully-elaborated maxims, after Rochefoucauld, which she bequeathed to posterity: —
"The great resemble perfumes: those who wear [them] are scarcely conscious of them."
"There are moments when great men weep without peril to their dignity: Cæsar wept, and the tears were worthy of him."
"All passes like a flash of lightning: good and evil are of such brief duration, that it is hardly worth while to rejoice or grieve."
"The art of vengeance is little known."
"The money of the rich is due to the poor, and the labour of the poor is due to the rich."
"There is a star which unites souls of a superior order, though worlds and ages divide them."
Note: The famous speech by the peasant to Kristina is a fabrication by Whitelocke.
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