Source:
Notable Women in History: The Lives of Women Who in All Ages, All Lands and in All Womanly Occupations Have Won Fame and Put Their Imprint on the World's History, pages 118 to 126, by Willis John Abbot, 1913; original at Cornell University
Above: Kristina.
The biography:
QUEEN CHRISTINA OF SWEDEN
(1626-1689)
A ROYAL WANDERER IN EUROPE
IN the first half of the seventeenth century Sweden was esteemed one of the great powers of Europe. Her armies under the leadership of King Gustavus Adolphus were invincible in the field, and after his lamentable death on the hard-fought field of Lutzen, the record of success was continued throughout the Thirty Years' War by the able generals he had trained. "The Lion of the North" was the proud title won by Gustavus Adolphus in his campaigns, and in history he ranks with such great captains as Napoleon and Frederick the Great. But the full fruits of his valor and victories were not reaped by his country, but were largely dissipated by the eccentric daughter he left to inherit his throne.
The daughter of the Lion might herself have been a lioness, for she had many qualities of greatness, had not some queer [strange] and unexplained quirk in her brain made her later career futile and even contemptible.
Her sex was a sore disappointment to her mother, who had been assured by all the soothsayers and wise women about the court that the child would be a boy. The father, however, was more philosophical. "She will be a clever girl", said he. "She has already deceived all of us." Of her mother Christina wrote: "She could not bear to see me, because she said I was a girl and ugly to boot[,] and rightly enough[,] for I was tawny as a little Moor."
In the Queen Christina of later days the dominant characteristic was her extreme masculinity. Perhaps the harsh welcome to this world that her sex wrung from her mother had something to do with this. More probably, however, it resulted from the studied effort of her father to give her the education of a prince rather than a princess. When only an infant, accompanying her father as usual on one of his journeys, they came to a fortress. The governor hesitated to fire the customary salute to the king lest the thunder of the cannon should frighten the child into convulsions. After a moment's hesitation Gustavus cried out: "Fire! She is a soldier's daughter and must learn to bear it." To his great delight the baby[,] instead of showing fear, laughed and leaped in his arms[,] clapping her hands. Thereafter his determination to give her a masculine education was fixed. He succeeded so well that toward the end of her life she said that her one regret was never to have witnessed a battle, nor seen human blood flow. She did, however, see it flow once when one of her lovers [sic] was foully murdered by her own commands in her presence [sic].
When the child was four years old [sic] the king took the field at the head of the allied armies against Ferdinand, Emperor of Austria. Before going[,] he made every provision for the stability of his kingdom and the future of his daughter. Christina was acknowledged as his successor by the states general and the army. A regency headed by the famous Chancellor Oxenstiern was created to govern the kingdom should the king die while his daughter was still a minor, and a body of distinguished scholars were chosen to be her tutors. Two years later the king fell, fighting bravely, and in the very moment of victory at Lutzen.
The Princess Christina was, at the time of her father's death, about seven years old [sic]. Straightaway the machinery which Gustavus had created for the preservation of order in Sweden began to work. The young queen was crowned before a diet, or council, called by the regents. With all her excessive masculinity in later days, she did not lack a certain feminine love of adulation. "I still remember", she said, "how enchanted I was to see all these men at my feet kissing my hand."
During the period of her education[,] the industry and concentration of Christina challenge belief. She worked with her tutors twelve hours daily; learned to read and even speak colloquially Greek, Latin and the principal modern languages. She rode and shot. Everything that a man could do in the field of learning or of sport she mastered. Loving men, as she said, "not because they were men, but because they were not women", she grew up without feminine graces or charm; self-willed, impatient and arrogant.
Of her mother she saw practically nothing [sic]. That lady was engrossed in mourning her husband in a most remarkable way. His heart she had taken from his body and placed in a golden receptacle which she ever kept by her. Her days were spent in a room ceiled, walled and hung in black, with the light shut out by like sombre drapings at the windows. In this cave of gloom she was supposed to meditate on her loss — though chroniclers of the time aver that she kept the apartment crowded with jesters, buffoons and dwarves, whose fool play kept her in a gale of merriment.
Gradually Christina assumed the duties of a queen. At sixteen she presided over the senate with tact and decision. At eighteen she became of age and became queen in fact; the regency being dissolved. Her spirit was dominant. She would have no prime minister, and ruled as a personal sovereign. She read all of the despatches and dictated the replies to generals in the field and ambassadors at foreign courts. She attended all meetings of her council and ruled it by force of character and sheer resolution. She was esteemed the most autocratic sovereign Sweden had known in centuries.
The power she had was not always exerted wisely. She forced the cessation of the Thirty Years' War, not because her spirit revolted against the barbarity of that furious conflict, but because she thought the regent, Oxenstiern, was getting too much glory out of it. The Treaty of Westphalia was a good thing for humanity, but bad for Sweden, for it was dictated by Christina just in time to deprive her country of some of the richest fruits of victory.
Early in her reign pressure was brought to bear upon her to marry. She was obdurate. She who hated women would not marry a man. The danger to the succession, should she not provide an heir, was pointed out. She responded by designating her cousin, Charles Gustavus, as her heir. He being passionately in love with her, declared angrily that if he could not have her[,] he would not have her throne. Finally she pacified him with the promise that she would give him her answer in five years, and if she could not then marry him[,] she would never marry any one. Homely as she was, and notoriously of violent temper, the emperors and kings of Europe were at her feet, some pleading for themselves, others for their sons. To all she gave a decisive negative, not often trying to temper it with soft words. And when members of the council continued to preach to her about the need of an heir to the throne, she replied brusquely, "Do not", she cried, "compel me to make a choice. Should I bear a son[,] it is equally probable that he will prove a Nero as an Augustus."
Christina's stubborn refusal to make a royal match bred discontent both at the court and among the people. Her extravagance and wanton squandering of the property of the crown was another cause of growing popular dislike. She had a singular fancy for creating new nobles — a tribe without which any state could get along cheerfully. Within ten years she created 17 counts, 46 barons and 426 lesser nobles. Of course, each had to have an estate. There are plenty of penniless counts and barons now to supply the American marriage market, but Christina started her new peers well, whatever may be the condition of their descendants. The crown lands were sold or mortgaged to an amount exceeding an annual outlay of 1,200,000 rix dollars. The rix dollar is a silver coin of varying value, but usually equivalent to about $1.16 of our coinage. The higher purchasing power of money in Christina's time made this sum equal to almost double what it would be to-day. And as this generous monarch, who could read Thucydides in the original, had not acquired a habit of system, she so frequently gave away the same parcel of land several times that the authorities were sore to put to it to determine what was crown property and what belonged to the newest count.
No more uneasy head had ever worn a crown. By 1654 she had positively determined to abdicate. Poetry and romance had somehow made their way into that hard and virile mind. She dreamed of the soft skies of Italy. She pictured herself with the revenues and dignity of a queen, but without a queen's duties and vested with perfect liberty.
Accordingly, in 1654 she abdicated. To her cousin, heir and faithful lover, Charles Gustavus, fell the crown. But none of her adherents would lift it from her head, so she herself handed it to him as he knelt before her. Never would he wear it in her presence, though he was proclaimed King of Sweden with the title of Charles X, the same day.
Thus freed, Christina made haste to leave her native land. In abdicating she had not failed to drive a sharp bargain with the government. She was given for life an allowance of 240,000 rix dollars annually. She was permitted to take away all her personal treasures — she gave wide latitude to the word "personal" — and was to reside wherever she chose[,] with all the rights and powers of a queen over her own household. This latter guarantee she later construed as a right to murder a gentleman in waiting.
The extent of her appropriations of public property before leaving Sweden irritated the populace[,] and there was serious talk of using force to prevent her departure with her spoils. However, she got away safely, and[,] reaching a little brook which separated Sweden from territory then owned by Denmark, she leaped lightly across it crying, "At length I am free and out of Sweden, whither I hope never to return." Her first act was to send her waiting women back to the capital; her next to don men's clothes, in which apparel she proceeded to Brussels. Here she formally renounced the Protestant faith, of which Sweden had long been the great bulwark in Europe. Here, too, she was feted and herself entertained with prodigal expenditure. The great Cardinal Mazarin, exulting over this new recruit to Catholicism, sent a company of comedians to Brussels[,] who entertained the court with plays and operas. She herself lived with royal magnificence, giving huge sums to priests, poets, courtiers, mummers and parasites. When the money she had brought from Sweden was running low[,] she turned toward Italy with a train of more than two hundred people.
Her progress toward Italy was truly royal. Everywhere she was given the welcome befitting a queen. Now and again she took occasion to further abjure Protestantism and emphasize her faith in the Church of Rome. But occasionally she let some evidence of her callous insincerity slip, as when at Innsbruck[,] after professing faith at the cathedral, she was taken to a theatre. "'Tis but fair", she said, "that you should treat me to a comedy after I have treated you to a farce." [sic]
Rome marveled at her entree, clad in men's clothes and riding astride on a white charger at the head of her cavalcade. Festivities had been provided in her honor by the Pope, but it does not appear that that sagacious prelate was wholly enraptured by the appearance of this peculiar convert, who dressed, rode and swore like a trooper.
The Swedes were none too well pleased with her doings at Brussels and her repeated repudiations of the faith of her native land. There was talk of canceling her allowance, but in the end they merely delayed its payment that she might have a taste of what would happen if she persisted in her ways. The embarrassed queen had to disband her court, and[,] when she wanted to go to Paris[,] pawned her jewels to raise the needed funds.
Her reception at Paris was royal, though her male costume, her manner of riding and general uncouthness amused the populace and horrified the court. The Duke of Guise met her at Marseilles; Cardinal Mazarin and the king himself — the latter incog. — at Chantilly. Before reaching Paris[,] her cortege grew to regal proportions, and she rode in the midst on a white charger with pistols at her saddle bow and mightily pleased with herself. After weeks of festivity[,] she returned to Rome [sic] in less royal state, for she traveled in a hired carriage[,] and her expenses were paid by Louis XIV.
Christina now became a restless wanderer about Europe and a bit of an international nuisance as well. She had in her retinue a gentleman named Monaldeschi, reputed to be her lover. One day she summoned him. He found with her three armed men and a priest. Displaying a packet of letters[,] the nature of which has never been disclosed, she asked if he recognized them. Falling on his knees[,] he admitted their authorship, and[,] despite two hours of pleading[,] was put to death in her presence [sic]. Yet she was not without piety while superintending a murder. The priest was there to confess the victim, but the suppliant would not confess. "Give him a few stabs to bring him to his senses", said the queen [sic], and the poor wretch received several thrusts before the priest discharged the last office.
This ended Christina's standing at the French court. The king immediately wrote her not to come to Paris. Returning to Rome, she cajoled an allowance of 12,000 crowns from the Pope, then quarreled with him. She began again the dreary round of borrowing and pawning. With strange fatuousness she dreamed of regaining the crown of Sweden, and made two futile journeys to that country, being on the second occasion refused permission to enter Stockholm.
In 1689 she died, deserted by friends and surrounded only by dependents [sic]. One of her monuments is a medal she had struck showing a bird of paradise soaring above land, sea and clouds, with on the reverse in Italian: "I was born, have lived, and will die free."
Which would suggest that the worth of freedom rests with those who enjoy it.
Notes: Although the legend is famous and widespread, in reality Per Brahe did not refuse to take the crown off of Kristina's head, and Kristina did not take the crown off herself.
The story of her at the border brook or creek is likewise a myth, as is the creek itself, made up by Monsieur de Picques to denigrate her.
Kristina stayed in Hamburg before she stayed in Brussels.
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