Source:
Christina, Queen of Sweden, pages 172 to 187, by Francis William Bain, 1890; original at the University of Connecticut Library
The account:
CHAPTER V.
WHILE the rumour of Christina's strange character and political genius, her profuse liberalities and patronage of learning and art, her power in the Senate, and her prospective resignation of her crown at so early an age, was turning the eyes of Europe curiously towards this "tenth Muse" and "Sibyl of the North", she was herself a prey to profound dissatisfaction. She began to find that her position involved too great a strain upon her. It is not wonderful [surprising] that under such a weight of cares and occupations she should be on the point of breaking down. Frederick the Great was not more anxious to do everything in person than Christina; she felt with her favourite historian that the necessities of empire demanded that all affairs should be referred to one head. But already in 1648 she had written to Salvius, reminding him "how arduous and subject to fortune was the burden of ruling all." The entire business of State passed through her hands; ambassadors transacted their affairs with her personally; internal discords and domestic affairs demanded her continual attention, and she would master all the smallest details; yet for all this she studied hard in private, and kept up her intercourse with the philosophers and men of learning at her court; for this purpose she hardly allowed herself sufficient sleep. In addition to actual business[,] the care of providing for the succession weighed upon her mind. The burden of affairs, in itself too great, was increased tenfold by her growing dislike to them; she felt herself to be on a treadmill; she had nothing to satisfy the longings of her soul; only by the severest sense of duty could she bring herself to perform her task. "She found no pleasure in it, neither did she love her country: she had no sympathies with its customs, its pleasures, its constitution, whether civil or ecclesiastical, or even its past history. The ceremonies of State, the long harangues to which she was bound to listen, the official duties which compelled her to take personal share in some great ceremonial observance were abhorrent to her: the range of cultivation and learning within which her countrymen were content to confine themselves, appeared to her contemptible." Financial difficulties were pressing; her continuous study had begun to arouse a natural reaction; the vanity and petty disputes of some of the pedants who surrounded her awoke her disgust; she was heartily tired of the throne; like Severus, she felt that she "had been all things, and all was of no avail;" yet she could look no higher, she had nothing further to hope; and, finally, she stood alone. The only man to whom in any degree she opened herself, Chanut, had been replaced by another.
To the disquiet of her soul met be added the dangerous state of her health, at once its cause and its effect. Christina had always been delicate from a child; she was often dangerously ill, as in 1642, 1645; in 1648, the year of the peace, she was three times seized with fever; in 1650, she had a violent fever, twice, with symptoms of inflammation of the lungs; in 1651, being on a visit to her mother at Nycöping, she was seized with a syncope at supper, and remained an hour unconscious; these fainting fits became frequent; on one occasion she remained unconscious for some hours, her pulses stopped; on reviving she told the physician that she had never expected to hear his voice again. Overwork and mental worry, aided by the ignorance of her doctors, who knew no remedy but bleeding, would soon have been fatal. But just at this moment she made the acquaintance of Bourdelot.
The importance of this man's subsequent relations with Christina makes it necessary to dwell upon them, all the more as they have been completely misrepresented and distorted by his enemies and Christina's biographers. His real name was Michon, the son of a barber at Sens, who became an apothecary. Young Michon adopted the name of his uncle, Bourdelot, as well as his profession, that of a doctor; he went to Italy, and on his return asserted that he had been physician to Urban VIII., who would have made him a cardinal if he had stayed in Italy. (We are not able to judge of the truth of this story, but it must be recollected that in the seventeenth century all things were possible to adventurers at Rome; and it is not intrinsically improbable, since Bourdelot was certainly a better doctor than most of those of his age, and, as will be seen, capable of gaining the good graces of princes.) He was introduced to the Queen by Salmasius, who, it is said, wished to have a friend at Court after he had gone. Bourdelot at once made many enemies the moment he arrived by banishing the former doctors and forbidding the Queen to have any further intercourse with the savans: to these beneficial preliminaries, he added a careful regulation of her diet and regimen. But he was not a mere curator of the body; he possessed the most invaluable quality of a doctor, tact; and he saw that Christina's temper and mind had given way under the strain of work and distasteful associations, and required tonics no less than her body; he accordingly applied himself to curing by amusing her, which he was well qualified to do, having a great command of the smaller social accomplishments; he had a very ready and satirical wit, could sing, play the guitar, was a connoisseur in perfumes (a neglected department of medicine); gifted, moreover, with a positive genius for investing amusements; fertile in expedients to make the time go; in short, exactly the man suited for rescuing Christina from her gloomy situation. And he succeeded so well in his treatment that Christina was soon restored to health; she frequently says in her letters that next to God she owed her life to Bourdelot; and she preserved a lifelong gratitude towards him.
He speedily acquired a great influence at the Court, and at the same time a numerous band of enemies. Chief among these were the learned men. And it must certainly be admitted that he contributed not a little to this hatred by the tricks which he played to some of the fraternity. A certain Meibomius had written a treatise on the music of the ancients; and Naudé, one upon their art of dancing. Bourdelot persuaded the Queen to make them give practical illustrations of their theories: Naudé was to dance to the singing of Meibomius, who had no voice, and did not know a note of music; the scene was ludicrous in the extreme; those of the Court who were looking on were convulsed with laughter; so that Meibomius, losing his temper not unnaturally, struck Bourdelot in the face, for which he was banished from Court. Another time, when Bochart was to read his 'Phaleg', a work on sacred geography, and expecting the applause of the Queen, Bourdelot would not allow her to be present, saying that she had been bled, and must keep her room; the mortified author had to read his treatise to an audience ungraced by the presence of Christina. Certainly such jests as these prove Bourdelot to have had no special reverence for some of the learned pedants who bore him malice. But for all that the heavy accusations which have been brought against him can all be traced to jealousy and spite, and will not stand examination. It was asserted by the doctors that Bourdelot knew nothing of medicine, and that all the senators he had treated died. But not to mention that no instances are given, and that this statement was refuted by the case of Christina — not to mention the incompetence of those who brought the charge, and their envy — there is still extant a statement by Bourdelot of the Queen's case, and a prescription for its treatment, which has been pronounced by modern physicians to be not without merit. It may be added that another assertion, adduced as proof of his medical ignorance, namely, that he was of opinion that enthusiasts ought to be cured by exorcism, really establishes his insight into the nature of mental disease and its cure by the means of mental expectancy. It was asserted by the learned, that though he gave himself out for learned, he was very ignorant. This charge is completely refuted by the testimony of Naudé himself, who mentions Bourdelot with approval as taking part in studies with himself and other savans; by the fact that Salmasius had a high opinion of him; and by the fact that he was the means of introducing to Christina Pascal and Gassendi, although it is quite possible that he had not the same claims to the title of learned as such men as Vossius, Heinsius, and others, which is no disgrace. He was, moreover, much of the mind of Lord Bolingbroke, and considered it no sign of a contempt for true learning to despise those who spend their whole life in collecting all the learned lumber that fills the head of an antiquary. They further asserted that, for instance in the case of Bochart and his 'Phaleg', he tried to prevent Christina from showing favour to learned men. But so far was Bourdelot from cherishing a grudge against Bochart that he procured him some Arabic MSS. to assist him in composing the very book in question. And what would a modern doctor say if, when treating an analogous case of nervous exhaustion, he found his patient besieged by a crowd of pedants ready to bring on a relapse by plaguing her with inopportune treatises on sacred geography?
But these were not Bourdelot's only enemies. The Queen, having Chanut no longer by her, and not caring for the new resident, Picques, was now showing much favour to Pimentelli, the Spanish ambassador, a point to which we shall return; this aroused the keen jealousy of all the French at Court, who promptly accused her of deserting France and going over to Spain, a charge utterly without foundation; hinc illæ lacrimæ when they accused Bourdelot of intriguing against France. They further asserted that Bourdelot was the cause of the disgrace of Count Magnus de la Gardie; this is simply ridiculous, as will soon appear. The nobles, moreover, all hated him for his influence, as a foreigner and a Frenchman, and lent a ready ear to all accusations against him.
The source of most of these accusations against him is the letters of the discarded savans, and the last part of Chanut's 'Mémoires', which are not to be ascribed to Chanut, but to the French, who were furious at being neglected, and caught at every scandal that might enable them to vent their malice. Certainly Bourdelot was not a man of solid character; on this point Christina's own judgment is final; she calls him a man consumed with vanity (a description which would suit also most of the learned men); though she never forgot he had saved her life, she did not admire his character; if she considered him a marvellously clever man, that was no more than the truth. But the baseless assertion that he had great influence over her mind — a thing quite absurd to any one who is familiar with her astonishing independence of spirit — renders it necessary to show the futility of the attacks upon him. The last charge is principally due to the worst of all his enemies, the bigoted Lutheran clergy. He was supposed to make a jest of all religion, and to have inspired Christina with his own sentiments. He was called by some an atheist, by others a deist — words in the mouth of a bigoted Protestant applied to all beliefs somewhat higher than his own. "They think a man believes not at all in God because he believes little in Luther", said a Catholic of that time. The chief authority for calling Bourdelot an atheist is Vossius, who was himself suspected of the very same thing; in a letter to Heinsius he says, "Ait enim nullos esse Deos, cælum inane, et mera esse verba virtutem, lucum ligna;" ["For he says that there are no gods, that Heaven is empty, and that virtue is mere words, and that the grove is wood"] a charge probably made in order to enable Vossius to quote Horace. How much the charge was worth is shown by this, that Christina herself was accused of atheism; and, finally, whatever Bourdelot's own religious views might be, it will be proved in a subsequent chapter that he had absolutely nothing to do with Christina's change of faith.
The true reason of the general hatred of Bourdelot is that, for the various reasons given above, he had enemies in all parties at the court: the doctors, the savans, the French, the nobles, and the clergy. When[,] after her abdication[,] their doubts were changed to violent animosity by her conversion, they were only too eager to try and fasten on some one whom they could accuse of "perverting the mind of their Queen, and all the good dispositions she had for the Protestant religion", and Bourdelot became their scapegoat. Among other things they abhorred were the festivals and masquerades, which Bourdelot was active in promoting, and it has been the traditional habit of biographers to frame their views of the sinful doings of her last years upon the accounts of the hostile French, the sour-visaged Swedes, and the Puritan Whitelocke, who[,] though an admirable witness in all other matters, is not to be trusted here. The simplest pleasures were a crime in their eyes, and evidence of a desperate downfall: Whitelocke expelled two young men from his suite, and would hardly be persuaded to take them back, because they would go "forth to take the air" on Sunday, instead of going to church.
The jealousy and hatred of Bourdelot took effect in repeated attempts to expel him. Count Magnus accused him to the Queen of trying to influence her against himself and other nobles: Bourdelot denied this to his face, and the affair dropped; but a similar mean trick against another honourable man ended, as will be seen, in Count Magnus being disgraced. The nobles laid their hands together with the French resident Picques, to contrive some way of getting rid of him. Meanwhile the clergy determined to act. They had observed signs on the part of the Queen, showing disapproval of the national religion. For the clergy Christina had always shown friendliness; Oxenstiern accused her of favouring them too much. But various circumstances had recently changed their attitude. They were mortally offended when the learned Jew before mentioned dedicated to her his work entitled "Conciliador", aimed at reconciling conflicting passages in the Bible. Further, Matthiæ had published his 'Idea Boni Ordinis', an exposition of his favourite scheme of reconciling differences in the churches, and Christina was not only very intimate with him, but it was even rumoured that she intended to establish a theological college in Germany to realize this ideal. "The bishops called on the Council of State to keep watch over the national religion; the Grand Chancellor repaired to the Queen with representations which drew tears into her eyes." Such criticism was not likely to improve her temper. Moreover, "the prolixity of those discourses, to which she was compelled by the national ordinances to listen, had long been most wearisome to her; they now became intolerable. She frequently betrayed her impatience by moving her chair, or playing with her little dog; but the merciless preachers were but the more firmly resolved to continue their lectures, and detain her all the longer for these marks of weariness."
Hence the relations between Queen and Clergy became daily more strained. Not guessing what was passing in her mind, they ascribed all to the bad influence of Bourdelot. They therefore drew up a remonstrance against him; but now the question arose, who was to present it? None of them daring to approach the Queen with their instrument, the Queen-mother Maria Eleanora, undertook to do so. Under cover of asking permission to retire to Nyköping, she intimated to her daughter her distress at the complaints made by clergy and people against Bourdelot, and her apprehension of his bad influence on her; she took courage from Christina's silence, and was going on, when the Queen interrupted her by saying "she was much obliged for her good advice; but these matters were too hard for them, and must be left to the priests." Maria Eleanora attempting to reply, Christina answered sharply, that she knew well who had instigated her to this, and that she would teach them who she was, and cause them to repent their imprudence. She then quitted the room, and left her mother alone, who burst into tears as usual. Two hours afterwards Christina was informed that she would let no one come near her, and was still crying. "She brought this unpleasant satisfaction on herself", answered Christina, with a fine touch of criticism on Maria Eleanora's character. However, five or six hours afterwards, Christina went to see her, without talking afterwards of what had occurred: Maria Eleanora subsequently departed for Nyköping.
And this impertinent interference and small-minded criticism of her motives has often been quoted as an instance of Christina's want of filial respect!
Nevertheless[,] the odium against Bourdelot was so great that Christina found herself soon afterwards obliged to dismiss him, though he gave out that it was not a dismissal, but that he was sent on an embassy to the Court of France, to treat for Christina on a subject of great importance. And it is indeed stated by Gualdo that she sent him, being privy to her design of going over to Rome, and abdicating, to see whether she could come to France after resigning the crown. However that may be, Bourdelot departed, retaining to the last the confidence of Christina, who gave him letters of recommendation to the Court of France, as well as 10,000 rix dollars, and a draft for 20,000 more, payable in six months. Prince Charles Gustavus gave him likewise a gold chain and his portrait in a box covered with diamonds; and Prince Adolphus did the same to please the Queen, "though they both had a mortal aversion for him." Cardinal Mazarin preferred him afterwards to the Abbey of Massay in Berry, where he did not get on well with the monks. The foolish story that the Queen, shortly afterwards receiving a letter from him, threw it aside, exclaiming, "Ha! it smells of medicine", is sufficiently refuted by its authority, and by the fact that she continued to correspond with him for the rest of her life. But it is remarkable that Guy Patin, the scandal-monger to whom we are indebted to much that is said against him, makes the following statement about Bourdelot towards the end of his life: "He says that everybody is ignorant, that there never was a philosopher equal to Descartes, that all the doctors of to-day are pedants, with their Greek and Latin, and that they have not the insight to try and discover any remedies other than the popular ones." This is the secret of the abuse of Bourdelot; it is merely what Molière said in other words.
We have anticipated a little in order to clear up Bourdelot's affairs. In the meantime the state of Christina's health and her distaste of business, arising from over-application, led her to employ more of her time in relaxation than formerly, and to vary the monotony by balls, masquerades, and amusements of that kind. But the accusations made against her, that in this last period she completely neglected State affairs, wasted her time in frivolous amusements, and showed a complete change in her personal and political behaviour, due to the influence of Bourdelot, Pimentelli, and others, and still more scandalous charges than these, are not only untrue, but in such glaring contradiction with facts that it is hard to understand how they can ever have been made. Though Christina did not study so hard, for her health's sake, and avoided the gang of pedants, she did not break off her intercourse with learned men of real worth; she was moreover engaged in meditating over her change of faith, and the necessary negotiations with Rome; and the pages of Chanut, Whitelocke, and the historical annals of those years furnish ample evidence that[,] so far from neglecting business, she devoted long hours daily to the careful ordering of affairs, both foreign and domestic, and the consideration of necessary political questions with ambassadors. And even Whitelocke admits that her entertainments and amusements were altogether seemly and decorous, nor is there a particle of evidence to the contrary.
Above: Kristina.
Above: Pierre Bourdelot.
Above: Maria Eleonora.
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