Source:
Twelve Royal Ladies, pages 155 to 164, by Sidney Dark, illustrations by Mabel Pugh, 1929; original at the University of California
The account:
QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN
THE Peace of Westphalia, which at long last brought the insensate folly of the Thirty Years' War to an end, was almost entirely due to the persistence and the statesmanship of a girl of twenty-two — Queen Christina of Sweden, who succeeded her father, the great Gustavus Adolphus, when she was six, and who, wearying of kingship and the folly of men, laid aside her sceptre and descended from her throne in a voluntary abdication when she was twenty-eight [sic].
Since the days of Diocletian, many monarchs have been killed and many have been assassinated, but few have voluntarily abdicated. Richard II of England read an act of resignation with, so it is said, "a complacent countenance", but he, poor weakling, was compelled to the act by the masterful Bolingbroke — perhaps in his halting, artist way half enjoying the dramatic ceremony of handing over his ring to his conqueror. And Richard is the only king of England who can even be pretended to have abdicated.
The sour, unhappy Louis Napoleon was glad enough to cease to be King of Holland, but his abdication would have been demanded if it had not been offered. His successor, William Frederick of Orange, abdicated at the age of sixty-eight because he had fallen in love with a lady who was a Roman Catholic and poor. But the poverty mattered very little to William Frederick, since he had amassed a considerable fortune, on which he and his wife lived in dignified retirement in Liège for three happy years. The world laughed at William Frederick, and perhaps it is true that les rois ne peuvent être longtemps amoureux sans faire beaucoup de sottises [kings cannot remain in love for long without committing many foolish acts]. But the elderly lover was far happier and more content in Liège than he would have been in Brussels or the Hague.
Charles V, German Emperor and King of Spain, one of the great figures of the sixteenth century, resigned the empire to his brother, and Spain, the Netherlands, and the South American colonies to his son Philip, the husband of Mary Tudor, after a reign of thirty-six years. Charles was weary, disappointed, and bewildered, and was glad enough to run away from problems which he could not solve. The many years after his abdication were mainly devoted to piety and over-eating. He was, it is said, an impetuous penitent, and he certainly was an insistent glutton.
Nearly three hundred years later, in 1848, the year of revolution, Ferdinand I of Austria, an ineffective and, indeed, a half-witted sovereign, was persuaded to make way for his nephew, Francis Joseph, who reigned till the Great War. He was persuaded with difficulty, but he nevertheless declared that he abdicated from "calm and sincere conviction, unswayed by any influence whatever." He went to live in Prague, where it is said "he has more money than he ever had before, invites many ladies to dinner, and is much happier than in the olden time."
Almost the only other notable abdication was that of Victor Amadeus I of Sardinia, who reigned at the beginning of the eighteenth century. When he had put off his crown, he soon wanted to put it on again, thanks to the complainings of his wife, with the result that his son and successor was obliged to subject his father to a not intolerable form of imprisonment.
Such of these abdications as were in any sense voluntary were those of old, worn-out men. But Christina of Sweden resigned in her youth, and when, in bringing the Thirty Years' War to an end, she had accomplished a great feat of statesmanship.
Nearly all wars have been foolish wickedness, but the Thirty Years' War was supremely foolish and supremely wicked. It is sometimes described as a war of religion, a struggle between Protestants and Catholics as to which should be dominant in Central Europe, but, as a matter of fact, religion had precious little to do with the long-drawn-out series of operations which reduced Germany to poverty and misery. Primarily the Thirty Years' War was caused by the jealousies and ambitions of the German princes, and, in its later stages, it became part of the ceaseless struggle between the Hapsburgs and the Bourbons.
In 1618, the Bohemians, rebelling against Austria's rule, chose the Elector Palatine, the son-in-law of King James I, as their king. That began the trouble. The Elector, the "Winter King", as he was called, had the shortest of stays in Prague. He was bundled out of Bohemia by the imperial troops, and as a result of his adventure he lost the Palatinate, and spent the rest of his life in exile. This was the prologue to a long-drawn-out tragedy. Armies of mercenaries, some of them recruited in England, were invited into Germany by one or other of the groups of princes, and lived on the country, with ruthless greed and cruelty. Great leaders occasionally played their part in the drama — Tilley [sic], the cautious Imperialist; the magnificent Wallenstein, with his dream of a united Germany, obedient to the Emperor, but with a large measure of political and religious freedom; Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the greatest soldier of them all; and[,] in the later years[,] Turenne and Condé. But these famous captains mattered less to the wretched people than the commanders of free companies who regularly ravaged and robbed. At the end of the thirty years, "famine and cannibalism, plague and pestilence, ruled over Germany; the initial stages of rage and despair had long passed away, and only apathy remained to the miserable remnant of the population."
Sweden had played her part in making Germany a desert, and it was fitting that the Swedish Queen should have been the chief instrument in bringing the agony to an end. Her father, Gustavus Adolphus, fought in Germany from 1630 to 1632, when he was killed at the battle of Lutzen at the age of thirty-eight [sic]. His intervention was, he professed, occasioned by his devotion to the Protestant cause and his determination that religious freedom should not be destroyed. In his speech to the Swedish Estates before leaving the country, he said: "Seeing that many perchance may imagine that we charge ourselves with this war without cause given, so I take God the Most High to witness, in whose face I here sit, that I have undertaken it not out of my own pleasure, nor from the lust of war; but for many years have had most pressing motive thereto, mostly for that our oppressed brethren in religion may be freed from the papal yoke, which[,] by God's grace[,] we hope to effect."
This protestation was not altogether insincere, but the Swedish King was a nationalist and a dynast far more than a Protestant when he led his troops into Germany. He feared Russian aggression, and security could only be attained if he controlled the north German seaports, and if the Baltic became a Swedish lake.
Before he left Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus presented Christina, his little daughter of four [sic], to the Estates as his successor. She was his only living child, and, while she was neglected and disliked by her mother [sic] — Christina says in her memoirs that in her babyhood her mother used deliberately to drop her — her father loved her dearly, and she certainly inherited much of his great capacity.
She was six when her father died [sic]. Her minority came to an end when she was eighteen. Her father had left instructions that she was to be given the education of a man, and her training for the throne was hard and thorough. Christina never had any feminine tastes. "I had", she said, "an invincible antipathy to all that women do or say." She possessed uncanny energy and extraordinary intelligence. She spent six hours in the morning and six hours in the evening at her studies. She ate little and slept little. Her leisure was spent in violent physical exercise. She spoke German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish. She read Latin with ease. She was an acute student of politics. From the time that she was fifteen [sic] she regularly attended the meetings of the Senate, and when she began her reign, this self-willed, shrewd, and eccentric young woman was determined that, whatever else might or might not happen, war in Germany must be brought to an end.
She could only have had second-hand knowledge of what was the condition of affairs in that country, but there was sufficient reason in Sweden itself for believing that peace could not be brought at too high a price. The country was ruined by taxes and conscription. The nobles were growing more and more arrogant[,] and the peasants more and more discontented, and her political genius taught Christina that 1648 was the year in which peace at last was possible. The rebellion of the Fronde had broken out in Paris. Mazarin's hands were sufficiently full with internal trouble. France could not, at least for a time, send armies across the German frontier or afford to subsidise German Protestants. Peace could be brought about by co-operation between France and Sweden; but, although the two powers had fought as allies, official Sweden, and particularly the veteran chancellor, Oxenstiern, had not unnaturally grown suspicious of the statecraft of Richelieu and Mazarin. But Christina was as pro-French as Frederick the Great was a hundred years later. She invited French scholars to her Court. She sent a special embassy to Paris, lavishing money on its equipment. She corresponded personally with the young French King, Louis XIV. She was undeterred by difficulties and emphatic in her determination to have her will. She had decided that the war should cease, and her masterfulness found expression in the letter that she wrote to her ambassador in the French capital [sic]:
"Let not the phantasies of ambitious men turn you from your goal, unless you wish to incur my extreme disgrace and displeasure, and stand accountable to me blushing and blanching; you may be sure that in that case no authority nor the support of great Houses shall hinder me from showing all the world the displeasure I feel at insensate procedure."
At last the Treaty of Westphalia was signed, to Christina's immense relief. She ordered Te Deums to be sung in the churches and public rejoicings to be organised. The treaty was the one achievement of her reign. Sweden received parts of Pomerania, several German cities, including Stettin, and representation in the Imperial Diet, together with a large war indemnity, and for a time the ambition of Gustavus Adolphus was realised[,] and the Baltic became a Swedish inland lake. Far more important from the European point of view was the religious toleration which the treaty secured. Curiously enough, it was disliked by the very people who should have rejoiced. The Swedish Lutheran clergy denounced the treaty from their pulpits because it recognized Calvinism and was tolerant of Catholics, and Pope Innocent X issued a Bill of condemnation because certain ecclesiastical benefices had been ceded to heretics.
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Above: Kristina.
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Above: Sidney Dark.
Notes: This biography was written seven years before the infamous abdication of King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom (1894-1972), on December 11, 1936.
The Great War = World War One (1914-1918).
Stettin is the German name for the town of Szczecin in what is now the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in Poland.
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