Source:
Christina, Queen of Sweden, pages 242 to 244, by Francis William Bain, 1890; original at the University of Connecticut Library
The account:
CHAPTER VII.
PAGES might be filled with the opinions expressed in Europe upon the extraordinary spectacle of a young woman in her twenty-eighth year [sic] voluntarily throwing away a crown; but they would add nothing to our knowledge. The onlookers of the time had less means of getting at the truth than we have, and the various judgments, ranging from the most extravagant panegyric to equally extravagant invective, were only dictated by personal feeling or party interests; very few were there who considered it impartially. The King of Spain, dubious at first, afterwards gave it his warmest approval. "Where", exclaimed Condé, "is this Queen who has cast off what we are all hunting for?" "It is well", wrote Bochart, "to despise the world, but with the crown she has lost the power of doing good." "You have cast away your shield", wrote Heinsius to Christina; "of your flatterers but few praised Christina, most the Queen." Here and there she found an isolated admirer, such as Gassendi or Milton, in those who could take a philosophic view. The suddenness of so startling a course at first took the world by surprise and merely perplexed it; but no sooner had Christina capped her abdication by her profession of her new faith than all doubt vanished. From that hour the Catholics extolled her to the skies, and the Protestants, especially in Sweden, with the large contingent of disappointed French and learned parasites, became her bitter enemies. Calumny and abuse, however, are always stronger than praise, and her vilipenders have won the day up to the present time. A sound historical criticism will dismiss both these special pleaders. The politician and the man of the world will perhaps side with the Swedes, and pronounce it to be a desertion of duty, if not an act of complete folly; but in that case he must accept the logical consequences of his position, and regard it as reductio ad absurdum of religion, for there is not the shadow of a doubt that she herself considered she was sacrificing her crown to her convictions. The religious motive was her starting-point, nor would the attraction of brighter skies and more congenial surroundings, even aided by her native restlessness, even have been strong enough to draw her away from the throne without it. The more plausible assertion that she was driven away by her difficulties is completely refuted by a fact admitted even by those who make it, that she had determined to resign as early as, and even earlier than, 1648.
Those who have of their own free will abandoned the supreme power — Sulla, Diocletian, Charles V. — had not long to live after it; their private life has added to, instead of damaging, the general effect of the whole. But Christina lived thirty-two years after she abdicated [sic], and hence there is a sort of dramatic impropriety in the second and longer half of her career, which in itself has detracted from her fame. There is a great drop from a public to a private stage; the brilliancy of her ten years' reign — ten years of absolute rule — during which the young Queen, as she said herself, donnait tout et pourvoyait à tout [gave everything and provided for everything], is sadly dulled against the subsequent period nearly four times as long, when she had only her own peculiar character to depend on. From the point of view of art and her own fame, it is a very great pity she did not die immediately after her abdication. The remainder of her life produces the same effect as the third rhyme in a heroic couplet; intrinsically good though it be, it mars the general effect.
Above: Kristina.
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