Henry Woodhead on Kristina's jealousy and resentment toward Axel Oxenstierna and his family and on their differing political opinions

Source:

Memoirs of Christina, Queen of Sweden, volume 1, pages 191 to 192, by Henry Woodhead, 1863; original at the University of Michigan

https://books.google.com/books?id=XI02AAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=maria+euphrosyne&source=gbs_navlinks_s

The account:

One reason that she showed so much favour to Magnus de la Gardie may have been the desire to raise some counterpoise to the power and influence of the Oxenstierns.

The old Chancellor had so long been used to take the first place in the Council, that he was not easily reconciled to take the second place. Christina was not inclined to brook a rival, and although she always treated him with great respect, she would no longer consent to appear as his pupil. During the negotiations at Brömsebro she had been much annoyed because, when Oxenstiern sent her the Danish proposition, he at the same time took on himself to send a draft of the answer which he considered as a matter of course would be adopted.

After his return, the Queen and her minister had some struggles for mastery. On one occasion, Matthiæ's book, "Idea Boni Ordinis in Ecclesiâ Christi", was brought before the Council, and was condemned by Oxenstiern. Christina defended it, and the dispute became so warm that she burst into tears. ...

Above: Kristina.

Above: Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie.

Above: Axel Oxenstierna.

Above: Johannes Matthiæ.

Knut Hagberg's biography of Kristina, part 2

Source:

Av Vasarnas ätt, pages 128 to 131, by Knut Hagberg, 1929; original at the University of Wisconsin - Madison

https://books.google.com/books?id=s1DTAAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=drottning+christina+brev&source=gbs_navlinks_s

The biography:

Kristinas lärare, Johannes Matthiæ, var det dåtida Sveriges mest vidsynte och personligt frommaste teolog. Han tillhörde en teologisk rättning, som om Johan III fått genomdriva sin vilja hade givit vårt religiösa liv ett både innerligare och tolerantare lynne än vad som utmärkte den onekligen något trånga och grälsjuka lutherska 1600-talsortodoxien. Kristinas lärare hyllade en ekumenisk, filosofisk kristendom, som kunde tillfredsställa både förnuftet och hjärtat; lika litet som de andra Vasarna kom Kristina någonsin i kontakt med konkordiebokens lutherdom. Hon höll mycket av Johannes Matthiæ, det var väl den enda människa i Sverige, som hon höll av, men hon kunde förbrylla honom med besynnerliga frågor; hon har berättat, att när hon för tredje gången åhört en predikan över domedagen, på vars ankomst hon väntat sedan hon först hörde dess fasor skildras från predikstolen, hon riktade dessa häpnadsväckande ord till sin lärare: »Säg mig en gång sanningen! Är inte allt, vad man berättar oss om religionen, fabler likaväl som den yttersta domen?» Hon var då en tio år; men det låg mycket brådmoget grubbel bakom frågan.

Johannes Matthiæ övertygade henne därom, att kristendomen var sanningen. Det var vad religionen betydde för Kristina; den hade hos henne intet att göra med stämningar eller vanor; den var rätt och slätt sanningen eller också intet. Den franske diplomaten Chanut har i sin bekanta karakteristik av Kristina anfört som något för henne särskilt utmärkande, att hon »icke gillar, att man i vanliga vetenskapliga samtal överger den heliga uppenbarelsens sanningar för att filosofera på hedniskt sätt; allt som icke överensstämmer med evangeliet är för henne drömbilder». Hon var icke någon from natur; hon kunde gyckla på ett stötande sätt med religionens vördnadsvärda yttre attribut. Men hon trodde, trodde med hela sin intellektuella kraft och intensitet. Sådan var hon, redan innan hon kom i beröring med den man, som väl betytt mer för hennes utveckling än någon annan, med samtidens störste tänkare, René Descartes.

Kristina har själv betygat och all sannolikhet talar för, att det var Descartes som gjorde Sveriges drottning till konvertit. Han gav henne mycket. Han hade icke endast svar på alla hennes frågor, han kunde icke endast stilla hennes undran; hans etik, hans människouppfattning gav i förädlad form uttryck åt tidevarvets djupaste tendenser och var helt igenom ägnad att entusiasmera och intaga Kristina. Descartes' moral var halvt stoisk, halvt kristen; den förhärligade de ädla passionerna, högsinnet, generositeten, frihetskärleken, den förhärligade viljan, som av ingen yttre makt låter sig övervinnas. Och denne man, som både intellektuellt och moraliskt måste synas Kristina överlägsen varje annan, var varm katolik. Det enda eftersträvansvärda, den filosofiska sanningen och den filosofiska dygden, var, det visade Descartes' exempel, en planta på den romerska kyrkans mark. För Kristina kunde det då ej längre bliva någon tvekan om vad hennes plikt och kallelse bjödo. Chanut har anmärkt om henne, att det var genom egen utomordentlig förtjänst, ej genom erövringar, hon ville göra sitt namn lysande, att hon ville hava sig själv, ej sina undersåtars tapperhet att tacka för sitt rykte. Vad betydde Sverige mot sanningen, vad voro krona och spira emot visdom? Med de lärda och fromma jesuiter, som sänts till Stockholm för att verka för hennes omvändelse, talade hon mest i filosofiska frågor; hon dryftade med dem etikens och metafysikens avgörande problem. När hon fann, att deras tro tillfredställde hennes intellekt, var hennes väg given. Vad hon gjorde var intet så enastående. Sigismund hade offrat en tron för sin tros skull; Filip II och Ferdinand II tvekade icke att riskera sina kronor, om så syntes dem kunna befordra kyrkans intressen. Ännu i Kristinas tidevarv hade motreformationens mäktiga strömning icke hunnit ebba ut. Vad som skiljer Kristina från andra är endast, att hennes tro var så rent intellektuell, att hennes tronavsägelse så uteslutande förorsakades av vad en långt senare tid skulle ha kallat sanningskrav och ärlighet.

English translation (my own):

Kristina's teacher, Johannes Matthiæ, was the most broad-minded and personally pious theologian in Sweden at the time. He belonged to a theological school of thought that, if Johan III had gotten his way, would have given our religious life a more sincere and tolerant disposition than that which distinguished the undeniably somewhat narrow and quarrelsome Lutheran orthodoxy of the 17th century. Kristina's teacher praised an ecumenical, philosophical Christianity that could satisfy both reason and heart; just as little as the other Vasas did Kristina ever come into contact with the Lutheranism of the Book of Concord.

She was very fond of Johannes Matthiæ, he was probably the only person in Sweden she liked, but she could puzzle him with strange questions; she has told that when she had listened for the third time to a sermon on the Day of Judgement, the arrival of which she had been waiting for since she first heard its horrors described from the pulpit, she addressed these astonishing words to her teacher: "Tell me the truth for once! Is not everything that they tell us about religion fables as well as the Last Judgement?"

She was then about ten years old; but there was a very precocious brooding behind the question.

Johannes Matthiæ convinced her that Christianity was the truth. That was what religion meant to Kristina; for her it had nothing to do with moods or habits; it was simply the truth or nothing. The French diplomat Chanut, in his well-known characterisation of Kristina, stated as something particularly distinctive about her that she "does not like it when in ordinary scientific discussions one abandons the truths of holy revelation in order to philosophise in a heathen way; everything that does not agree with the Gospel is to her a dream."

She was not a pious nature; she could poke fun in an offensive way at the venerable external attributes of religion. But she did believe, she believed with all her intellectual power and intensity. She was like that even before she came into contact with the man who probably meant more to her development than anyone else, with the greatest thinker of her time, René Descartes.

Kristina herself has testified, and all probability suggests, that it was Descartes who converted the Queen of Sweden. He gave her a lot. He not only had answers to all her questions, he could not only satisfy her curiosity; his ethics, his view of humanity, gave expression in refined form to the deepest tendencies of the times and was entirely suited to enthuse and win over Kristina.

Descartes' morality was half Stoic, half Christian; it glorified the noble passions, the lofty spirit, generosity, the love of freedom, the glorified will, which cannot be overcome by any external power. And this man, who both intellectually and morally must have seemed to Kristina superior to every other, was a fervent Catholic. The only thing worth striving for, philosophical truth and philosophical virtue, was, as Descartes' example showed, a plant on the soil of the Roman Church.

For Kristina there could then no longer be any doubt about what her duty and calling demanded. Chanut has remarked about her that it was through her own extraordinary merit, not through conquests, that she wanted to make her name illustrious, that she wanted to have herself, not the bravery of her subjects, to thank for her reputation. What was Sweden compared to truth, what were crown and scepter compared to wisdom?

With the learned and pious Jesuits, who were sent to Stockholm to work for her conversion, she spoke mostly on philosophical questions; she discussed with them the crucial problems of ethics and metaphysics. When she found that their faith satisfied her intellect, her path was given.

What she did was nothing so extraordinary. Sigismund had sacrificed a throne for the sake of his faith; Philip II and Ferdinand II did not hesitate to risk their crowns if it seemed to them that they could advance the interests of the church. Even in Kristina's time the powerful current of the Counter-Reformation had not had time to ebb. What distinguishes Kristina from others is only that her faith was so purely intellectual that her abdication was so exclusively caused by what a much later time would have called the demand for truth and honesty.

Above: Kristina.

"Carl X Gustaf och drottning Christina" ("Karl X Gustav and Queen Kristina"), story by Carl Georg Starbäck in "Historiska bilder", published posthumously in 1892

Source:

Historiska bilder tecknade af C. Georg Starbäck, volume 2, pages 309 to 318, by Carl Georg Starbäck and illustrated by Jenny Nyström-Stoopendaal, 1892; original at the University of Michigan

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015030069721&seq=316

Above: Kristina and Karl Gustav.

Above: Carl Georg Starbäck.

Above: Jenny Nyström-Stoopendaal.

The story:

39.

Carl X Gustaf och drottning Christina.

Man lyssnar i våra dagar med spänd uppmärksamhet till de underrättelser, som komma från »Sfinxen» i Paris, från Ryssland, från England samt från Bismarck i Preussen och från Österrike. Dessa underrättelser äro af vikt för hela världsdelen, emedan de innebära rådssluten af dem, som i våra dagar makten hafva. De nämnda fem rikena utgöra de så kallade »makterna« med företräde, stormakterna, förutan hvilkas medelbara eller omedelbara tillstädjelse intet i vår världsdel får göras eller låtas. — En sådan stormakt har äfven Sverige varit. Det var genom den siste konungen af Vasahuset, Gustaf Adolf, och under hans dotter Christina genom männen ur hans skola, som Sverige blef det. Det är näst reformationen den viktigaste punkten i det kungliga Vasahusets historia. Den storhet, som Sverige då vann, förde dock med sig i kölvattnet en sak, som sedermera blef den viktigaste tilldragelsen i den tidrymd, som följde näst efter, då Sveriges öde låg i de pfalziske konungarnes hand; — vi mena adelns öfvermakt inom samhället och den däraf följande reduktionen. Omkring denna klippa bröt sig Sveriges öde, hvars nya skepnad så småningom mognar under den glänsande ytan af Carl XII:s segrar och efter hans olyckor och död framträder under formen af en folksuveränitet, som i vår historia spökar med det vackra namnet »frihetstiden».

Med blicken fäst på den rad af händelser, hvilka förde Sverige från höjden af sin storhet till djupet af ej blott förminskad yttre makt, utan rent af moralisk förnedring, kan det vara af vikt att stanna en stund vid själfva öfvergångspunkten, där statsvagnen liksom länkades in på ett nytt spår. Denna öfvergångspunkt ligger i förhållandet mellan drottning Christina och hennes syskonbarn, Carl Gustaf. Denne hade från barndomen fäst sig vid sin kungliga frände, och äfven hon hade, när hon blef jungfru, fällt yttranden, som visade, att Carl Gustaf icke var henne likgiltig. I afseende på denna sin ungdoms kärlek svekos dock Carl Gustafs förhoppningar, men då Christina af sin inneboende ovilja att genom äktenskapets band begränsa sin frihet vägrade honom sin hand, gaf hon honom i ersättning därför sin krona. Sådan är lifvets gång. Hvad menniskan högst eftersträfvar, hvad hon ifrigast efterlängtar, får hon icke, men vinner därunder något, som hon aldrig åsyftat, men som just ställer henne på sin rätta plats i lifvet.

Det är denna kärlekshandel mellan Carl Gustaf, den fattige grefvesonen, och den mäktiga, lysande drottningen, denna kärlekshandel, hvarur han steg upp till Sveriges konungatron, som vi här vilja skildra efter en berättelse, nedskrifven af Carl Gustaf själf. Han var 16 år gammal, när han lämnade Upsala akademi och begaf sig på utländska resor, och två år därefter, eller år 1640, återkom han till hofvet i Stockholm, där hans ställning dock var föga angenäm, dels därigenom, att hans fattigdom gjorde honom beroende, under det å andra sidan hans börd, hans personliga egenskaper och hans släktskap med drottningen skänkte honom stor betydelse. Det dröjde länge, innan han vann någon anställning i rikets tjenst. Själf brann han af begär att blifva anställd vid krigshären. Kriget hade skapat Sveriges storhet, och för kriget bildades allt hvad Sverige egde förnämt och rikt den tiden. Hans fader, den gamle pfalzgrefven Johan Casimir, anhöll om en tjenst för sin son, men det vägrades af förmyndarregeringen, tills slutligen riksdrotsen, grefve Per Brahe, framställde det förslaget, att den unge pfalzgrefven borde lära kriget vid hären i Tyskland, och i juli 1642 kom Carl Gustaf till Torstensson och svenska hären, dock icke i verklig tjenst, utan såsom frivillig. »Jag vill söka min lycka med svärdet», skref han till sin fader, som i det längsta motsatte sig hans önskan, »och jag önskar att söka henne, förr än jag finner henne», och han vägrade flera gånger att på Torstenssons anmodan mottaga ett befäl, sägande, »att han ville först lära tjensten». När Torstensson nedlade sitt befäl, återvände Carl Gustaf till Sverige såsom öfverste öfver ett kurländskt hästregemente.

Nu förde Christina själf styrelsen såsom myndig drottning, och hon öfverhopade sin återkomne frände med hedersbetygelser, och från denna tid blef Carls förhållande till drottningen den tråd, omkring hvilken hofvets intriger och de politiska partiernas rörelser spunnos. Carl Gustaf återsåg Christina i hela glansen af den storhet, hvars rykte uppfyllde världen, och hans böjelse för henne mognade till en djup och allvarlig kärlek. Han hyste i detta afseende förhoppningar, hvilka närdes af drottningen själf, och denna omständighet var det, som qvarhöll honom hemma under de nästföljande åren. Men under det Carl Gustaf öfverlämnade sig åt sina ljufva drömmar om att en gång uppnå sitt mål, tändes i drottningens själ en annan låga, — för hans svåger, den lysande grefven Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, och i sammanhang därmed en ovilja för en äktenskaplig förening, som blef allt mera afgjord och bestämd.

Den långa ovissheten bragte slutligen Carl i en ställning, hvarur han, kosta hvad det ville, måste lösgöra sig, och han beslöt därför att af drottningen begära en bestämd förklaring. Det var om hösten 1647. Hertigen lät först genom den milde biskop Johannes Mathiæ i Strengnäs, som varit drottningens lärare, höra sig före hos drottningen, och denne återförde till honom det svar, att drottningen nu som tillförene i afseende på giftermålet sade hvarken ja eller nej, men att hon tänkt till våren utsända hertigen som generalissimus till hären för att undvika de svårigheter, hvilka mötte i afseende på hertigens närvaro vid den då ifrågasatta kröningen.

Om det sistnämnda hade svågern grefve Magnus redan förut på Stegeborg talat med Carl, och han bad därför biskopen säga drottningen, det han vore villig att redan i höst draga ut till hären, om det så vore drottningens önskan. Detta svar föranledde ett personligt möte mellan Carl och Christina. Det var om aftonen den 10 augusti 1647.

»Jag hörer, att I gärna viljen draga ut?» sporde drottningen, sedan Carl på sedöfligt sätt helsat henne. Carl hänvisade till hvad han bedt biskopen framföra, hvarpå drottningen fortsatte: »därmed är jag ock tillfreds och kan icke annat än råda eder taga saken väl i betänkande och öfverlägga med edra vänner. Känner eder herr fader denna eder åstundan och har han tillstyrkt?»

»Min herr fader», svarade Carl, »har därom noga vetskap. Jag brinner af lust att komma ut i kriget och icke sålunda lättjas, utan blifva använd i eders majestäts tjenst, och talade min fader därom på Stegeborg med gref Magnus. Mina vänner känna därför lika nogsamt min åstundan, som eders majestät vet, för hvad orsak skull jag här uppehållit mig under dessa åren!»

»Det vet jag väl», svarade drottningen, »och är därom nu intet att tala. Jag vill icke vara eder lycka till hinders, och har jag endast därför så länge uppehållit eder här hemma, emedan intet tillfälle yppat sig att utskicka eder med den anställning, som eder vederbör. Huru snart förmenen I eder blifva färdig till utresan?»

»Hade jag förmodat», sade då hertigen, »att inga andra skäl föranledt mitt qvarhållande, så hade jag icke beredt mig den smärtan att således hafva förspillt min tid! Nu är jag resolverad att fortsätta min resa till hären.»

»Det står eder fritt», inföll drottningen något kallt, »att göra och låta, som eder bäst tyckes; jag vill hvarken råda eder till eller ifrån. Dragen I bort, så önskar jag eder lycka på resan!»

Därmed skildes de höga fränderna den gången, Carl med förtviflan i hjärtat. Och denna ökades ännu mera, när han fick höra, att drottningen på en jakt följande dagen endast talat om jämförelsevis likgiltiga saker angående honom, och när han dagen därefter fick ett besök af riksmarskalken grefve Jakob De la Gardie. Denne omtalade, att drottningen beklagade sig öfver hertigens allt för stora hetta i afseende på eftersträfvandet af hennes hand, äfvensom öfver hans envishet rörande utresan till hären. Hon hade ofta förklarat, att hon, om hertigen reste ut, icke vidare ville vara till något förbunden och att hon då skulle hålla den bekända saken (om giftermålet) för död. Nu droge hon i betänkande att gifva något råd af fruktan, att hon skulle beskyllas för att stå hertigens lycka i vägen.

Dessa underrättelser visade, att drottningen var uppenbart missnöjd, och Carl vände sig åter till biskop Johannes, för att genom honom söka blidka Christina och framställa saken i sin rätta färg. Hon förblef dock lika kall och obeveklig. »Quilibet suæ fortunæ faber» (En hvar är sin egen lyckas smed), sade hon den välmenande biskopen, för hvilken det snart syntes alldeles klart, både att drottningen afskydde giftermålet, och att det var henne likgiltigt, om hertigen reste ut eller stannade hemma. Biskopen omtalade detta för Carl, »hvilket mig mäkta perplext gjorde», skrifver han, och han beslöt att ännu en gång själf tala med drottningen uti biskopens närvaro mellan båda predikningarna på den då infallande böndagen. Vid detta tillfälle ställdes väl saken någorlunda till rätta. Hertigen beslöt att afstå från resan, och drottningen mildrade något sina hårda ord, men i hufvudsaken blef allt detsamma.

I slutet af december 1647 och de första dagarne i januari 1648 sammanträffade åter Christina och Carl, och giftermålsärendet kom åter på tal, men hertigen fann därutinnan ingenting annat, än att drottningen på det lifligaste försäkrade honom, att hon icke skulle gifta sig med någon annan, utan att först meddela sig med honom. Däremot blef han i januari utnämnd till högste befälhafvare öfver de svenska krigshärarne i Tyskland, en befattning, som han mottog med mycken motvilja, seende däruti en källa till stora obehag för sig. Innan han drog ut till Tyskland, egde ett märkligt samtal rum mellan honom och Christina. Det var om aftonen den 15 juni 1648, i närvaro af biskop Johannes och grefve Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie.

»Jag hafver låtit kalla eder till mig», sade drottningen, »för att i dessa herrars närvaro och i Guds åsyn betyga min afsikt och vilja med eder, och hvad jag nu vill säga, är icke noget fagert snack eller kompliment, utan allvar, och tager jag därtill Gud till vittne: till det första, att jag icke betager eder något hopp att taga eder till äkta, men att jag icke heller gifver eder något hopp därtill; till det andra lofvar jag, att jag icke vill taga någon annan i denna världen till äkta än eder, om jag kommer att träda i gifte; och till det tredje, att om jag icke kommer att gifta mig, vill jag till riksens säkerhet och bästa deklarera eder till min efterträdare och arffurste till riket. Något mera», tillade hon, »kan jag icke lofva eder, och ären I icke därmed tillfreds, har jag ingen annan resolution att gifva.»

Carl Gustaf stod i förstone stum vid detta Christinas tal. »Häruppå tystnade jag», skrifver han, »och kunde icke komma till något egentligt tal.» Först sedan drottningen ytterligare utvecklat sin mening, kom han sig för med att tacka för den nåd, som skedde honom. »Dock eftersträfvar jag», sade han, »intet annat än eder hand, och är detta hopp ute, så må allt annat fara!»

Nu utspann sig ett långt samtal, hvarunder drottningen icke utan häftighet upprepade hvad hon sagt och bland annat äfven yttrade, att hon offentligen ville hafva saken så framställd, som om hon ännu icke beslutit sig för giftermålets fullbordan, men ville afbida kröningen och sitt 25:te år; gifte hon sig icke innan den tiden, skulle allt hopp i den vägen vara ute. »Och menar jag», sade hon, »att ingen annan piga kan utlofva och tillförsäkra eder mera, än hvad jag nu gjort. Förliten eder därför på Guds nåd och på mig och mitt gjorda löfte och beder Gud gifva sin välsignelse och medverkan därtill, att han beveker bägges våra hjärtan till en god ända.» Allt dystrare blef härunder hertigen till sinnes, aktande föga kronans glans, när han icke fick njuta den tillsammans med Christina. »Då må jag nöja mig med ett stycke bröd hvar som helst», utbrast han, »och aldrig mera återse Sverige.»

Ännu häftigare utfor då drottningen: »I ären ovärdig den nåd, som skett eder! Hvad I där sägen, är en fanfaronad, ett stycke ur en roman. När I råken i nöd, skolen I sådant ångra. Vår herre har icke skapat eder till en privat person eller att sköta hushållet och sitta på eder herr faders gods därute, utan Gud har bestämt eder till något högre, och I skolen icke sträfva mot Guds vilja. Jag känner eder väl, att I icke ären nöjd med litet.»

Härpå svarade Carl med saktmod, påminnande drottningen hennes forna löften. »Med största sorg har jag erfarit», sade han med rörelse, »huru eders majestät upptagit min affektion och huru jag därmed ådragit mig eders majestäts onåd, och därför hafver jag ofta bedt Gud att vända mitt sinne och hjärta från detta uppsåt, eftersom det varit eders majestät så alldeles emot; men allt sådant har varit mig omöjligt, jag har qvalts dagligen, och min kärlek har dagligen vuxit jämte min ängslan, så att jag icke varit mig själf mäktig.»

Denna bekännelse af Carl gjorde intryck på Christina. Hon tackade honom för hans uppriktighet och tillade, att om icke ständerna utnämnde honom till hennes efterträdare, så skulle hon räcka honom sin hand och fullborda giftermålet. »Ettdera skall ske», sade hon, »och kanske bäggedera.»

Så skildes de. Carl Gustaf for ut i kriget följande månaden. I början af år 1649 förmådde Christina ständerna att förklara honom för hennes efterträdare, och året därpå, när han kom hem, förklarade Christina offentligen för ständerna sitt beslut att aldrig ingå i äktenskap, på samma gång som hon förmådde ständerna att förklara Carl för hennes efterträdare med arfsrätt. Ettdera skedde — Carl fick Christinas krona, men hennes hand fick ingen.

English translation (my own):

39.

Karl X Gustav and Queen Kristina.

In our days people listen with rapt attention to the intelligence that comes from the "Sphinx" in Paris, from Russia, from England, and from Bismarck in Prussia and from Austria. This intelligence is of importance for the entire continent, because it involves the decisions of those who in our days have power. The five kingdoms mentioned constitute the so-called "powers" with precedence, the great powers, without whose direct or immediate consent nothing may be done or permitted in our continent. — Sweden has also been such a great power. It was through the last king of the House of Vasa, Gustav Adolf, and under his daughter Kristina through the men of his school, that Sweden became so. It is, after the Reformation, the most important point in the history of the royal House of Vasa.

The greatness that Sweden then won, however, brought with it in its wake a thing that later became the most important event in the period that followed, when Sweden's fate lay in the hands of the Palatine kings; — we mean the supremacy of the nobility within society and the consequent reduction. Around this rock broke the fate of Sweden, whose new form gradually matures under the shining surface of Karl XII's victories and after his misfortunes and death appears in the form of a popular sovereignty, which in our history haunts with the beautiful name "the age of liberty".

With our eyes fixed on the series of events which brought Sweden from the height of its greatness to the depths not only of diminished external power, but of downright moral degradation, it may be of importance to pause for a moment at the very point of transition, where the state carriage was, as it were, linked onto a new track. This point of transition lies in the relationship between Queen Kristina and her cousin, Karl Gustav. The latter had been attached to his royal relative since childhood, and she too had, when she became a young maiden, made statements which showed that Karl Gustav was not indifferent to her.

In regard to this love of his youth, however, Karl Gustav's hopes were disappointed, but when Kristina, out of her inherent unwillingness to limit her freedom through the bonds of marriage, refused him her hand, she gave him her crown in return. Such is the course of life. What man most strives for, what he most eagerly longs for, he does not get, but in the process he gains something that he never intended, but which precisely places him in his rightful place in life.

It is this love affair between Karl Gustav, the poor son of a count, and the powerful, illustrious Queen, this love affair, from which he rose to the throne of Sweden, that we wish to describe here, according to an account written down by Karl Gustav himself. He was 16 years old when he left the Uppsala Academy and set out on foreign travels, and two years later, or in 1640, he returned to the court in Stockholm, where his position was not very pleasant, partly because his poverty made him dependent, while on the other hand his birth, his personal qualities and his kinship with the Queen gave him great importance.

It was a long time before he won any employment in the royal service. He himself burned with desire to be employed in the army. The war had created Sweden's greatness, and for the war everything that Sweden possessed that was noble and rich at that time was formed. His father, the old Count Palatine Johan Kasimir, applied for a service for his son, but it was refused by the guardian government, until finally the regent, Count Per Brahe, proposed that the young Count Palatine should learn war in the army in Germany, and in July 1642 Karl Gustav joined Torstensson and the Swedish army, not in actual service, but as a volunteer.

"I want to seek my fortune with the sword", he wrote to his father, who for the longest time opposed his wish, "and I wish to seek it before I find it"; and he refused several times to accept a command at Torstensson's request, saying, "that he wanted to learn the service first". When Torstensson resigned his command, Karl Gustav returned to Sweden as colonel of a Courlandic horse regiment.

Now Kristina herself conducted the government as an queen who had come of age, and she showered her returned kinsman with honours, and from this time Karl's relationship with the Queen became the thread around which the intrigues of the court and the movements of the political parties were spun. Karl Gustav saw Kristina again in all the splendour of the greatness whose reputation filled the world, and his affection for her matured into a deep and serious love. He entertained hopes in this respect, which were nourished by the Queen herself, and this circumstance was what kept him at home during the following years. But while Karl Gustav gave himself up to his sweet dreams of one day achieving his goal, another flame was lit in the Queen's soul, — for his brother-in-law, the brilliant Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, and in connection with this a reluctance towards a marital union, which became more and more decided and determined.

The long uncertainty finally brought Karl into a position from which he had to extricate himself at all costs, and he therefore decided to demand a definite explanation from the Queen. This was about the autumn of 1647. The Duke first had the Queen consult him through the kind bishop Johannes Matthiæ of Strängnäs, who had been the Queen's teacher, and she returned to him the answer that the Queen now, as before, said neither yes nor no to the marriage, but that she intended to send the Duke as generalissimo to the army in the spring in order to avoid the difficulties which were encountered in regard to the Duke's presence at the then questioned coronation.

His brother-in-law, Count Magnus, had already spoken to Karl about the latter at Stegeborg, and he therefore asked the Bishop to tell the Queen that he would be willing to go out to the army already this autumn, if that were the Queen's wish. This answer prompted a personal meeting between Karl and Kristina. It was on the evening of August 10, 1647.

"I hear that you are wanting to go out?" asked the Queen, after Karl had greeted her in the customary manner. Karl referred to what he had asked the Bishop to say, whereupon the Queen continued: "I am also satisfied with it and can do nothing other than advise you to take the matter well into consideration and discuss it with your friends. Does your lord Father know of this your desire, and has he encouraged you to it?"

"My lord Father", answered Karl, "has sufficient knowledge of it. I am burning with desire to go out to war and not be idle, but to be used in Your Majesty's service, and my Father spoke of it at Stegeborg with Count Magnus. My friends therefore know about my desire as well, as Your Majesty knows, and that is why I have stayed here during these years!"

"I know that well", answered the Queen, "and there is nothing to say about it now. I do not wish to hinder your happiness, and I have only kept you here at home so long because no opportunity has presented itself to send you out with the employment that suits you. How soon do you mean to be ready for your departure?"

"Had I supposed", said the Duke, "that no other reasons had occasioned my delay, I would not have prepared myself for the pain of having wasted my time thus! Now I am resolved to continue my journey to the army."

"You are free", the Queen interjected, somewhat coldly, "to do as you please; I will neither advise you to or from it. If you go away, I wish you good luck on your journey!"

Thus the high cousins parted that time, Karl with despair in his heart. And it was increased still more when he heard that the Queen, on a hunt the following day, had only spoken of comparatively indifferent matters concerning him, and when the day after he received a visit from the Grand Marshal, Count Jakob de la Gardie. He mentioned that the Queen complained of the Duke's excessive ardour in seeking her hand, also of his insistence on going out to the army. She had often declared that if the Duke went out, she would no longer be associated with him and that she would then consider the known matter (of marriage) dead. Now she would go into a consideration to give some advice, for fear that she would be accused of standing in the way of the Duke's fortune.

These reports showed that the Queen was clearly discontent, and Karl turned again to Bishop Johannes, to try through him to appease Kristina and present the matter in its true light. She, however, remained just as cold and implacable. "Quilibet suæ fortunæ faber" (Every man is the smith of his own fortune), she said to the well-meaning Bishop, to whom it soon became quite clear both that the Queen detested marriage and that it was indifferent to her whether the Duke went out or stayed home. The Bishop mentioned this to Karl, "which greatly perplexed me", he writes, and he decided to speak to the Queen himself once more in the Bishop's presence between the two sermons on the day of prayer that came then. On this occasion the matter was somewhat put right. The Duke decided to forgo the journey, and the Queen softened her harsh words somewhat, but in the main everything remained the same.

At the end of December 1647 and in the first days of January 1648, Kristina and Karl met again, and the matter of marriage came up again, but the Duke found nothing in it except that the Queen assured him in the most lively way that she would not marry anyone else without first consulting him. On the other hand, in January he was appointed supreme commander of the Swedish armies in Germany, a position which he accepted with great reluctance, seeing in it a source of great discomfort for him.

Before he set out for Germany, a strange conversation took place between him and Kristina. It was on the evening of June 15, 1648, in the presence of Bishop Johannes and Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie.

"I have summoned you to me", said the Queen, "in order to declare my intention and will towards you in the presence of these gentlemen and in the sight of God, and what I now want to say is not some fine talk or compliment, but seriousness, and I take God as witness to this: firstly, that I do not take away from you any hope of taking you in marriage, but that I do not give you any hope of doing so either; secondly, I promise that I will not take anyone else in this world in marriage but you, if I do enter marriage; and thirdly, that if I am not to marry, I will, for the security and good of the realm, declare you to be my successor and heir to the kingdom."

"Anything more", she added, "I cannot promise you; and if you are not satisfied with that, I have no other resolution to give."

Karl Gustav was at first silent at Kristina's speech. "Hereupon I fell silent", he writes, "and could not come to any real speech."

Only after the Queen had further developed her meaning did he find the courage to thank her for the favour that had been bestowed upon him.

"However", he said, "I seek nothing else but your hand, and if this hope is gone, then may everything else go!"

Now a long conversation ensued, during which the Queen repeated what she had said, not without vehemence, and among other things also stated that she wanted to have the matter presented publicly as if she had not yet decided on going through with the marriage, but wished to wait for the coronation and her 25th year; if she did not marry before that time, all hope in that direction would be lost.

"And I mean", she said, "that no other maiden can promise and assure you more than what I have now done. Therefore, trust in the grace of God and in me and my made promise, and pray God to give His blessing and cooperation to move both our hearts to a good end."

The Duke's mind grew ever more gloomy, considering the glory of the crown so little if he was not allowed to enjoy it together with Kristina.

"Then I must content myself with a piece of bread anywhere," he exclaimed, "and never see Sweden again."

The Queen then exclaimed even more vehemently: "You are unworthy of the grace that has been bestowed upon you! What you are saying is a fanfaronade, a passage from a novel. When you fall into need, you will regret it. Our Lord has not created you to be a private person or to manage the household and sit out there at your lord Father's estate, but God has destined you for something higher, and you must not strive against God's will. I know you well, that you are not content with little."

To this Karl answered with meekness, reminding the Queen of her former promises.

"I have learned with the greatest sorrow", he said with emotion, "how Your Majesty has taken my affection, and how I have thereby incurred Your Majesty's disgrace, and therefore I have often prayed to God to turn my mind and heart away from this intention, since it has been so completely opposed by Your Majesty; but all such things have been impossible for me, I have been tormented daily, and my love has daily grown along with my anxiety, so that I have not been able to control myself."

This confession from Karl made an impression on Kristina. She thanked him for his sincerity and added that if the Estates did not appoint him as her successor, she would give him her hand and go through with the marriage. "One of these things shall happen", she said, "and perhaps both of them."

So they parted. Karl Gustav went off to the war the following month. Early in 1649 Kristina persuaded the Estates to declare him her successor, and the following year, when he returned home, Kristina publicly declared to the Estates her decision never to marry, at the same time as she persuaded the Estates to declare Karl her successor with the right of inheritance. The one thing happened — Karl received Kristina's crown, but no one received her hand.

Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge's essay on Kristina, year 1880, part 2

Source:

Queen Christina of Sweden: Lothian Prize Essay for 1880, pages 5 to 16, by Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge, 1880; original at the University of Michigan

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015012302041&seq=11

The essay:

CHAPTER I.

CHRISTINA'S MINORITY.

CHRISTINA was six years old when the death of her father at Lützen made her heir to the Swedish throne. Her age and sex might, perhaps, have been considered obstacles to her succession, but for the fear felt of the designs of the King of Poland, whose partisans in Sweden began to spread reports of his intended abjuration of Romanism; in which case, they said, it would be the clear duty of the nation to restore his family to the throne. All such schemes, however, were put an end to by the meeting of the Diet in 1633. That assembly, after reciting the decisions of the years 1604 and 1627, regulating the succession to the crown, solemnly proclaimed Christina "queen-elect, and hereditary princess of the Swedes, Goths, and Vandals", on condition of her confirming, on her majority, all the rights, liberties, and privileges guaranteed to the nation by former kings. It may, perhaps, be as well not to omit a well-known incident, which is said to have taken place on the occasion of this proclamation. The question of the succession was being debated in the Diet, when a peasant deputy, so the story goes, stepped forward from his place, "Who is this Christina", he asked, "of whom you speak? we do not know her; we have never seen her; let her be brought to us, that we may know what she is like." The child was brought down, and placed in the midst of the Diet, and after the man had looked attentively at her for a short time, he turned round to his comrades, and exclaimed, "Yes, she is in truth the daughter of Gustavus; she has the same eyes, the same features, the same expression of face; let her reign over us, we will have her to be our queen."

The question how the government should be administered during the minority had next to be decided. Oxenstyerna, at that time in Germany, produced a paper prescribing a "Form of Government", which he declared had been drawn up by the late king, but which was generally looked upon, at least to a great extent, as the work of the Chancellor himself. This document began by reciting the laws fixing the succession, and obliging the king and people to profess the Lutheran faith; it next provided that the king should rule according to the laws, and by the advice of a Senate, or Royal Council, of not less than twenty-five members, to be nominated by himself from amongst the nobility; of this Council, the five great officers of state, the Steward or Lord Chief Justice (Riks-Drotset), the High Constable or Marshal, the High Admiral, the Chancellor, and the Treasurer, who were, at the same time, heads of the five great boards or ministries of Justice, War, Admiralty, Chancery or Foreign Affairs, and Exchequer or Treasury, were to be ex officio members. The functions of the Senate were to be, in the main, administrative; but it was to possess, under certain circumstances, judicial powers. The ordinary justice of the kingdom was to be administered by four high courts, Jonköping for Gothland, Abo for Finland, Dorpat for Livonia and the remaining Trans-Baltic lands, and Stockholm for Sweden proper; the court at Stockholm being the Board of Justice, mentioned above, of which the Drotset, or Lord Steward, the first of the five great officers, was president, and which was the supreme court of the whole kingdom. The members of these five great courts, assisted by the burgomasters of the six chief cities of the kingdom, Stockholm, Upsala, Gothenburg, Norrköping, Abo, and Wiborg, were to form, conjointly with the Senate, a special judicial body, for the purpose of trying offenders whose rank, or the character of whose crimes, placed them beyond the reach of the common tribunals. Besides the four high courts, the country was divided for judicial purposes into fourteen circuits (lagsagor), and for administrative purposes into twenty-four governments (län), exclusive of the city of Stockholm, which retained its own local jurisdiction, and was governed by its own town-reeve. All the public officials, legal, military, naval, diplomatic, and exchequer, were to give an account of their administration, either in person or by deputy, every year, at the feast of Epiphany, to whichever of the five great boards had authority over them, and these boards [through their respective heads, the five great officers of state] were to present the accounts thus given, before the feast of Candlemas, for the sanction of the king.

The king was to command the army, and nominate to all the offices of state, on the understanding that such nomination should be made exclusively from the nobility. Before raising any tax, or altering any law, he was to obtain the consent of the Diet, or Four Estates; or if the case required prompt and secret action, of a body composed of twenty-eight nobles, two from each of the fourteen lagsagor, of the archbishop and bishops, and of six deputies, one from each of the six cities of Stockholm, Upsala, Gothenburg, Norrköping, Abo, and Wiborg. In case of the king's death without the succession being regulated, the government was to be in the hands of the Senate until the election of a successor; and the same rule was to hold ground if the lawfully-appointed successor was a minor, but all appointments or changes made during such a successor's minority were to be liable to be either sanctioned or cancelled, on his or her attaining the age of eighteen, at which the majority of a king was considered to have been reached.

Such were the main features of the "Form of Government" of 1634. In the immense power given to the Senate, as well as in the aristocratical composition of that body, it bears a striking resemblance to the famous constitution of 1720, which the Swedish nobles forced upon Queen Ulrica Eleonora, under circumstances not altogether unlike those attending the accession of Christina. It is chiefly interesting, however, as clearly marking, for the first time, the transition of the Swedish nobility from a turbulent military baronage to an official, senatorial class. Its centralising bureaucratic character is as different from the disintegrating feudalism which Richelieu was crushing in France, as from the wild licence which passed for government amongst the nobles of Poland. Indeed, the Swedish statesmen of that age seem to have looked rather to Venice for their model, than to the mediæval form of limited monarchy; imitating in this their English contemporaries, for whom Oxenstyerna, who made no secret of his republican opinions, professed on all occasions extreme admiration and sympathy. Of the five great offices of state, three were already filled: Axel Oxenstyerna himself was Chancellor; Gabriel Oxenstyerna, Gustavsson Drotset; and Baron Gyldenheim [sic], High Admiral. The vacant places of the Treasury and War-office were given to Gabriel Oxenstyerna (Axelson), and Count Jacob de la Gardie; the Palsgrave John Casimir of Zweibrücken, being refused the Treasury, which had been promised him by the late king, his brother-in-law, owing to the jealousy felt for him by the aristocracy. At the same time, Oxenstyerna (Axel) was appointed by the Diet "Supreme Administrator of the affairs of the Roman Empire", and to him was entrusted the carrying out of the work of Gustavus, and the successful termination of the Thirty Years' war.

His task was by no means an easy one. After Lützen, for a short while all was anarchy. The Protestant League seemed on the eve of dissolution. Freed from all fear about the northern bishoprics, the Lutheran princes of Lower Saxony were no longer eager to continue, in the interests of a foreign power, a destructive and useless war. Brandenburg was equally sluggish. The Elector had from the first joined Sweden with great reluctance, and not all the hopes held out by Oxenstyerna of a marriage between Christina and the Electoral prince, and a mighty Hohenzollern empire on both sides of the Baltic, could draw from him more than a faint and hesitating promise of possible support. Worst of all was the Elector of Saxony. John George had only under the most bitter provocation fallen away from the Austrian traditions of his house, and now that affairs had so completely changed, he began once more "to turn towards the Emperor." He was furious at the erection of the bishoprics of Bamberg and Wurzburg into a "duchy of Franconia", for his kinsman, Bernard of Weimar; a concession which Oxenstyerna had been unable to refuse, but which the Elector looked on as a lawless attack upon vested rights, and still worse, as a revival of the power of the old Ernestine line. Not only did he aim at himself leading the princely league, but he was personally jealous of Oxenstyerna, and spoke with angry bitterness of the foreign adventurer, who presumed to partition German lands amongst his followers, and to number German sovereigns amongst his lieutenants. In the face of this defection, swift action on the part of Sweden was necessary. Happily, the Protestant princes of Southern and Western Germany, surrounded on all sides by Catholic states, and themselves for the most part Calvinists, felt very differently from the apathetic Lutherans of the North. Deputies from the Rhenish circles, and from Suabia and Franconia, assembled in March, 1633, at Heilbronn, and concluded a new treaty with Oxenstyerna, which gave him the supreme management of the affairs of the German Protestants. He was, however, to act on the advice of a council of six appointed by the Union, a suggestion of the French ambassador, Feuquières. France had for some time watched with growing jealousy the victories of Gustavus Adolphus; and now that he was dead, it began to feel that the time was come to save its credit with the Protestant princes, and to acquire at the same time a real claim on the spoils of the empire by a "policy of active intervention." Accordingly, in 1634, Richelieu engaged to furnish Sweden with 12,000 men, and asked in return that Alsace, now occupied by Swedish troops, should be handed over to France. To this last proposal Oxenstyerna consented with great reluctance, nor could all the promises of Feuquières, who offered to make him Archbishop of Mayence, and even to bring about a marriage between his son and Christina, induce him ever to enter very heartily into the alliance with France. He seems always to have treated Feuquières with coldness, and to have felt that France's desire was to destroy the effect of Sweden's victories, and to supplant that power in the affections of the German princes. To gain these latter was still his aim, and after long and wearisome negotiations, it was at last partially successful, for before the end of 1634 he had persuaded the Northern Circles assembled at Halberstadt, and even the Elector of Brandenburg, to join the alliance of Heilbronn. Into the events which followed, — the treason and death of Wallenstein, the invasion of Germany by the French, the victories of Turenne and Torstenson, — it is hardly needful to enter. They belong chiefly to military history, and need only be quite lightly touched upon as forming part of the events of the reign, though not of the life, of Christina.

Oxenstyerna's absence in Germany left the management of affairs in Sweden entirely in the hands of the other four Regents. One of their first cares was the education of the young queen. In 1635, the matter had been brought before the Estates. They drew up a paper containing their recommendations as to the method to be adopted for her bringing up. "She ought", this paper says, "to learn the mutual duties of sovereign and of subject; to know something of the manners and laws of foreign countries, whilst giving special attention to those of her own kingdom; but, before anything else, she should be carefully taught the Word of God, and all those articles of faith and rules of morality which are based upon it." It goes on to advise a close study of history, "particularly that of the Bible, which is the foundation of all other history", and the keeping away from her of all useless or dangerous books, "that she may not be imbued with the errors of the Pope or of Calvinism", or learn ideas "incompatible with the laws and liberties of Sweden." This last clause was especially insisted upon, and every care was taken to impress Christina's youthful mind as strongly as possible with the limited and constitutional character, so to speak, of her royalty. "Novit dilectio vestra", she is made to write to the Elector of Brandenburg, "Regnum Sueciæ ab antiquo electivum fuisse; datum id vero meritis proavi nostri, ut suæ familiæ hæreditarium transcriberetur, non absolute, sed certis pactis inter regem et ordines, quibus servatis, subditi obsequio tenentur, solvuntur violatis et neglectis." The theory of original contract, and of the popular origin of monarchy, could not have been more clearly and shortly stated.

The tutor chosen for the queen was a court chaplain, Dr. Johannes Matthiæ by name. So early as 1630, Gustavus Adolphus had expressed a wish that he should, when the time came, undertake his daughter's education. He was a man of great learning, and of great liberality. The dream of his life was a re-union between the Lutheran and Reformed communions; but the readiness which he expressed to yield some minor points of difference in order to realize his favourite scheme, made the more rigid Churchmen accuse him of lax opinions; and he was obliged, in 1664, to resign his bishopric of Strengnäs. It is, perhaps, to the wide and unsectarian character of his teaching, and his contempt for what he looked upon as non-essentials, that is to be traced Christina's extreme indifference to the doctrinal disputes between the various Christian Churches, as compared with the great questions which divided them all alike, from "Jews, free-thinkers, and Atheists." His influence over her was considerable, and even after her change of religion, she continued to feel the strongest esteem and friendship for him. Meanwhile, her progress under his teaching was swift. By nature a clever and highly-imaginative girl, she took great interest in the study of the Classics, especially in ancient history; and before she reached the age of eighteen, she read Thucydides, Polybius, and Tacitus without difficulty, and discussed with pleasure the subject-matter of other great writers of antiquity. She also learned to speak several modern languages, and was well-informed about the history and internal affairs of the principal European states. Whitelocke was surprised, when he visited her court in 1653, to find how conversant she was with recent events in England; and those who saw her at the court of France were almost equally struck with the knowledge she shewed of the domestic concerns of their country.

Her training, however, was not purely intellectual; her father had wished it to be that of a man, and accordingly she was encouraged to take pleasure in field-sports. Her aptitude for them was indeed only surpassed by her incapacity for all womanly work. Chanut speaks with astonishment of her powers of bodily endurance. She would sit, for instance, ten hours in the saddle without being tired; and Whitelocke, after hearing her describe a journey she had just made into the country in the depth of winter, told her, to her evident pleasure, that she would be equal to commanding an army. In truth, she always loved martial sights and sounds, and often regretted that she had so little of them. She delighted in firing off pistols and listening to the roar of cannon; and in France she told Mdlle. de Montpensier that she would give anything to be present at a battle. These masculine tastes were encouraged rather than repressed by those who brought her up; and it is only fair to remember the character of her training in these respects, before passing too harsh a judgment on her strange behaviour, in courts in which stricter notions of female decorum prevailed. It is just, too, to add that, though she wanted many of the gentler virtues of her sex, she was free from some of the faults and weaknesses which are considered, though often wrongly, as especially belonging to it. Although not strikingly beautiful, she might fairly have been called a pretty woman; yet she was utterly devoid of all personal vanity. She made no attempt to hide the fact that one of her shoulders was slightly higher than the other, or to make up for the smallness of her stature by an ample train, or by the tight, high-heeled shoes which at that time were the fashion. Her dress, which was more like that of a man than of a woman, was, in fact, careless even to untidiness; her hands were coarse and brown, from exposure to the air; and her cuffs were often soiled with stains and spots of ink.

The home-training of Christina was entrusted, not to the queen-mother, Maria Eleonora, a sentimental and rather weak-minded woman, much under the influence of the clergy, but to her aunt, the Palsgravine Catherine of Zweibrücken. This princess, a sister of Gustavus Adolphus, had been married to the Prince Palatine, Johan Casimir; and it was hoped that her son, Prince Charles Gustavus (afterwards Charles X.) might some day become Christina's husband. The Palatine family were, however, looked on with great jealousy by the Swedish aristocracy, who feared their interference in the government; and when, after the death of one of the regents, the Drotset Gabriel Oxenstyerna, John Casimir proposed to give the vacant place to his son, Prince Charles, he was dissuaded from the scheme by a letter from the queen herself, which shews, for a girl of fifteen, considerable knowledge of the world, and which, from the character of its contents, can have been composed by Christina alone. In it she tells her uncle that, if the prince were to take the regency, all means (even those which cannot be expressed or hinted at in words) might be employed to get rid of him.

The slight put upon her by the Diet and Senate, in the withdrawal of her daughter from her care, increased the growing dislike of the queen-mother to Sweden to such a pitch, that she resolved to leave the country for ever. Accordingly, on pretence of spending a short time in religious exercises, she retired to her private domain of Gripsholm, an old castle situated amidst pine-woods on the Mälar Lake, and which had been the scene of the murder of the deposed Eric XIV. Stealing away from this castle one night with a few attendants, she crossed an arm of the Mälar in a little boat, and posted, with horses prepared to meet her on the other side, to the seaport-town of Nyköping. Here she found two of the King of Denmark's men-of-war, under the command of the Danish admiral Otteson, awaiting her by preconcerted arrangement. Embarking on one of these, which was fitted up on purpose to receive her, she was conveyed to the Danish island of Oeland, whence she proceeded first to Copenhagen, and then to Brandenburg, her native country. It was pretended by some, and notably by Count d'Avaux, French Ambassador at Stockholm, that the real cause of this flight was a love-affair between Maria Eleonora and the King of Denmark; and that, in order to meet her, Christian IV. had himself secretly repaired to Oeland. It need hardly be said that there is no reason for suspecting the old king (he was nearly eighty [sic]) of having lent himself to so culpable a farce; yet that he aided her flight, in order to create troubles in Sweden, is beyond doubt; and his conduct gave rise to bitter feelings between the two states. For some time past, indeed, they had been far from friendly. Denmark had watched with natural jealousy the victories of Gustavus Adolphus in Germany. Not only was it annoyed at seeing its old rival succeed where itself had failed, but it feared the establishment of Sweden on the southern coast of the Baltic. It therefore determined, under pretext of mediating, to interfere between that country and its enemies; and this interference, added to the affair of the queen-mother, produced the final rupture with Sweden. On the 25th of May, 1643, Oxenstyerna wrote to Torstenson, the Swedish commander in North Germany, that "the Emperor is seeking allies in Poland and Denmark, which latter country, under the semblance of a mediator, has intermeddled in the peace.... The King of Denmark is arming by land and sea, and is drawing his army together, under pretext of quieting Hamburg, but in reality for purposes of intimidation, and to appear as an armed negotiator..... We know that this Danish armament is intended to disturb our arms in Germany, and to attack us, if not in this, at any rate in the following year." He goes on to complain of the tolls levied by the Danes on Swedish ships in the Sound, and concludes by ordering Torstenson to forestall the Danish attack, by himself invading Holstein and Jutland. War began in the autumn of 1643. Torstenson marched rapidly into Jutland, took Kolding, the frontier fortress of that province, overran the whole country up to the Scaw, and prepared to cross the Little Belt into Fyen. Meanwhile, the Swedish fleet, supported by some ships manned by Dutch volunteers, completely defeated the Danes off the south coast of Laaland. Christian IV. behaved like a hero, and though over eighty [sic], led his men in person against the enemy; but he could get no help from the oligarchy which really ruled the country, and in the following year he was compelled to treat for peace. Negotiations were opened at Bromsebro, on the frontiers of the two kingdoms, under the mediation of France and Holland. The latter, however, as a Protestant and commercial power, was not disposed to do anything to help a state which had joined the enemies of the Reformation from selfish jealousy of Sweden, and which insisted on exacting the vexatious Sound-dues; its envoys were, on the contrary, instructed to use all their influence on the Swedish side, and to threaten Denmark with war, should it refuse the proposed terms of peace.

Further resistance was therefore hopeless; and on the 13th of August, 1645, the Peace of Bromsebro gave Sweden full freedom from tolls in the Sound and Belts, besides the provinces of Jemteland and Herjedalen, and the islands of Oesel and Gothland, with Halland to be occupied for a period of thirty years. The town of Bremen, taken by Konigsmark from Prince Frederick of Denmark, was also secured to the Swedes. This treaty was the first of the many humiliating peaces which Sweden was to extort from Denmark, up to the time of Charles XII. Its gains by it were considerable. The acquisition of Halland protected Gothenburg from a Danish attack from the south; Oesel and Gothland supplied good harbours and convenient naval stations between Sweden and its Trans-Baltic provinces; whilst the possession of the great rugged regions of Jemteland, &c., gave the kingdom a good natural frontier in the shape of the Norwegian mountains, though, as afterwards appeared in Armfelt's invasion of Norway, without much facilitating the conquest of that country. With the exception of the provinces of Blekinge and Skaanen, Sweden had now reached what we are used to look on as its natural limits, and nothing but a small defenceless corner in the south remained to the Danes of the country over which, but a century before, they had held undivided sway. The Chancellor, Oxenstyerna, as the chief author of this peace, was rewarded with the title of Count of Sodermære [sic]; and the honour was heightened by the high terms of praise with which it was conferred on him by the queen.

Above: Kristina.

Above: Sir Arthur Henry Hardinge.

Notes: Åbo is the Swedish name for the Finnish city of Turku, in the Southwest Finland/Finland Proper region.

Dorpat is the old German and Swedish name for the Estonian city of Tartu.

Viborg (now spelled Vyborg) is now a town in the Vyborgsky District of Russia's Leningrad Oblast. It is located on the Karelian Isthmus, 81 miles northwest of St. Petersburg.

Ösel is the old German and Swedish name for the Estonian island of Saaremaa.

Henry Woodhead on Axel Oxenstierna's return to Sweden; Princess Katarina's character; Kristina's studies and physical education; Katarina's death; and Kristina's intellectual progress, initiation into public affairs, and her masculine propensities

Source:

Memoirs of Christina, Queen of Sweden, volume 1, pages 83 to 95, by Henry Woodhead, 1863; original at the University of Michigan

https://books.google.com/books?id=XI02AAAAMAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&dq=maria+euphrosyne&source=gbs_navlinks_s

The account:

OXENSTIERN arrived in Stockholm the 14th of July, 1636, and was received with the honours he had earned so well. He was met at the gates by the Senate and a deputation of the States, and was treated with almost as much respect as if he had been the sovereign. It has been already mentioned that one of his first acts was to remove Christina from her mother. Her tutors and governors were retained, and the love of study which had first been roused by the desire to escape from her mother's gloomy apartments, was now implanted firmly enough to flourish under the more genial care of her aunt.

This exemplary princess was always loved and respected by Christina, and perhaps the eccentricities which afterwards appeared in her character would never have been developed if it had not been for the premature death of her aunt.

Catharine was the only surviving child of Charles IX. by his first wife, and every account represents her as amiable and good. Her household was a pattern of correctness and good management; she ruled it mildly, yet firmly, and chiefly by her own good example. She comforted and attended the sick, with skill as well as with kindness; she assisted the poor systematically, and if they did not venture to come to the palace[,] she sought them in their cottages, "with gifts in her hands, and comfort on her lips."

Her piety kept pace with her charity; every day she read to her household, either from the Bible or from some devotional book.

Gustavus Adolphus had loved her tenderly, and she now repaid his affection by her care of his daughter.

The Regents, and the nobles in general, were not well disposed towards her husband's family; but no one had a word to say against Catharine, and it gave general satisfaction that she should have the charge of Christina.

Matthiæ now read with his pupil the works of Livy, Terence, Cicero, and Sallust. She entered into the spirit of these authors, and could write good Latin herself.

Theology had its full share in her education, and while under Matthiæ's charge she seems to have been sincerely and unaffectedly pious. Many of her letters written at this time display a strong religious feeling, and even at a later period Freinsheimius spoke of her veneration for religious subjects, and of the study she devoted to religion. Chanut said, in 1648, that "she was faithfully attached to Christianity, although she was not scrupulous, and did not affect a ceremonious devotion."

Oxenstiern also took his place among the tutors of the young Princess. He spent several hours a day with her, and taught her general politics, and the relations of Sweden to foreign states.

Few princes have had the advantage of such a master. She recorded years afterwards the profit and pleasure she had derived from these studies with the Chancellor, and said that all her knowledge of politics was derived from him. These hours appear to have been pleasant to them both, for Oxenstiern was delighted with his pupil's quick comprehension and sound understanding.

Christina is said to have first begun the study of French about this time; but it would seem she had some acquaintance with the language considerably earlier, because several French words are introduced in a short letter she wrote to her aunt in 1634. The French language was then very little known in Sweden, so that those words could not have been in general use. The way also in which they are employed is just that which might be expected from a child who was learning several languages at the same time.

Christina's physical education was not neglected on account of her studies. She followed the chase with the same energy which she displayed in every pursuit, and the accounts of her adroitness are almost too wonderful to be believed; for it is said that while on horseback, and at a gallop, she could shoot a hare with a single ball. When the rest of her attendants were thrown out, she frequently continued the pursuit, accompanied only by the strongest and most expert huntsmen. It is a fact little in accordance with the character generally given to Christina, that notwithstanding her love for the excitement of field-sports, she never witnessed the death of an animal without showing strong feelings of pity, sometimes even to the extent of being moved to tears.

Christina experienced an irreparable loss in the death of her aunt. This amiable Princess expired, after a short illness, in December, 1638, and left her charge not quite thirteen years old, and without any female about her who possessed her confidence.

Two days before her death[,] she called Christina to her bed-side, made her read the prayers for the day, and exhorted her to devotion towards God, and to obedience towards her tutors and governors. The dying woman next charged her to love Sweden, and to perform her high duties with diligence and zeal. Lastly, and not without tears, she begged the young Queen's favour and protection for the husband and children she was leaving behind.

Never was a dying injunction more faithfully observed than this last. Christina resigned her crown to Catharine's son, and resigned the man she loved to Catharine's daughter.

During this interview the attendants broke into lamentations for their beloved mistress. She endeavoured to console them, and said gently: "I leave here many friends, but many others have gone before me, and are now expecting me in the place to which I am hastening."

John Skytte said of her, "she was universally beloved, as a pattern of religion, patience, and all Christian virtues — yes, she was truly a pearl among Sweden's royal daughters."

Christina wrote a letter of condolence to her uncle, and promised to do all the good in her power to him and his children, in return for the truly maternal care she had experienced from the late Princess. Notwithstanding Christina's brilliant qualities[,] she seldom inspired much affection, nor can it be said that she possessed an affectionate disposition; but she met with sympathy and love from her aunt, and always cherished her memory with peculiar tenderness.

The Regents found considerable difficulty in supplying the place of the Princess Catharine. Anna Banér, the wife of Gabriel Oxenstiern, was invited to take charge of Christina, but she declined to undertake it, on the plea that she did not wish to leave her own children; but in fact, she, as well as Helena Bjelke, the wife of Klas Fleming, to whom it was next offered, did not wish to incur the responsibility. At last the Chancellor's sister [sic], Beata Oxenstiern, was chosen, but her office was hardly more than a nominal one, for Christina neither asked nor took advice from any one except Axel Oxenstiern, Axel Banér, and John Matthiæ.

The Chancellor had taught Christina about a year, when she discovered so much capacity, that[,] although she was only thirteen years old, he recommended she should be gradually initiated in public affairs. She entered into these matters with so much interest and intelligence, that by the time she was fourteen, it was decided she should be present at the deliberations of the Council on the most important occasions, "so that she might learn government was a heavy responsibility, and might not hereafter throw all the cares of it on her ministers, as the German Princes did."

The Council also wished her to take some part, as early as possible, in the conduct of affairs, because they anticipated that at a future time people would not be wanting to accuse their management. During the next few years[,] Christina's course of life was regular, and her efforts were unremitting in the acquisition of that vast stock of knowledge for which she afterwards became so famous. Her faults also continued to develop themselves. Her line of knowledge made her take a keen delight in the conversation of able men; but, unfortunately, her dislike increased for the habits and society of women. She felt no sympathy for the old Scandinavian doctrine, that there is something divine in the nature of women, independent of, and superior to, acuteness of reason. The philosophers of her court gladly encouraged a frame of mind in their queen which was so favourable to their own influence, a frame of mind which acknowledged only one form of excellence, and ignored the charms of grace and beauty.

The rudeness and coarseness of manner which men acquire when they have been long debarred from female society, has often been noticed, and it is frequently found that refinement of feeling is lost at the same time with elegance of manners.

It is still more injurious to a young woman to be separated from persons of her own sex; she then sees no example and can aim at no standard than a masculine one. She seldom reaches this, even to her own satisfaction, but she loses her own natural grace and dignity in the effort. She is ignorant of the amiable qualities which she does not see, and she this acquires a contempt for women which is never felt, and seldom pretended, except by the worst of men. There had not been many queens to serve as a model for Christina, but she had carefully studied the life of Elizabeth, and may have derived from her career the impression that vigour was inseparably connected with a rough and masculine manner. Had she lived to our own time, she might have learned from another English Queen [Victoria] how to combine every womanly virtue with a wise and active administration.

Christina carefully avoided the vices of men, although she acquired much of their hardness and coarseness. She always expressed great abhorrence of drunkenness, which was the besetting sin of the Swedes; in fact, she carried temperance to an extreme, for she drank nothing but water, and was so indifferent to the pleasures of the table, that she was never known to say a word either in praise or in blame of the repast that was set before her; but she indulged in another habit, which is now considered almost as shocking as that of drinking, viz., the habit of profane swearing.

It would not be fair, however, to take this habit as an indication of a depraved or irreligious disposition in the 17th century.

Oaths were commonly used in conversation at this time, not only in Sweden, but in the more civilized England. Our own Queen Elizabeth used to indulge in this sort of language, and more than a hundred years after her time[,] a lady was recognized at once as a woman of quality because she swore so horribly.

Christina confesses this fault in her Memoirs, and says that as soon as she became aware of it she endeavoured to correct it; but she adds that no one in Sweden of either sex used to speak without an oath.

Although swearing was not especially a masculine habit, yet in other respects she affected the manners of the male sex to an absurd degree. She wore a black handkerchief like the soldiers, she used to bow and salute as men did, and it was even said she carried the whim so far as to go through the form of twirling a moustache.

Christina was never diffident of her own powers, and must have felt that none of her ministers, except Oxenstiern, had abilities equal to her own; yet strangely enough she often dwelt on the unfitness of women for government, and this idea gives the clue to her apparently childish and silly imitation of men. She said in her Memoirs, "It is almost impossible that a woman should perform the duties required on the throne. The ignorance of women, their feebleness of mind, body, and understanding, makes them incapable of reigning."

Yet Christina must have felt her superiority to the ignorant soldiers about her, in everything but physical strength.

Above: Kristina.

Above: Princess Katarina.

Above: Axel Oxenstierna.

Anders Fryxell on the Messenian pamphlet

Source:

Berättelser ur svenska historien, nionde delen: Drottning Kristina, första afdelningen, pages 146 to 151, by Anders Fryxell, 1841

https://runeberg.org/svhistfry/9/0158.html

The account:

TJUGEFÖRSTA KAPITLET.

OM MESSENISKA SMÄDESKRIFTEN.

Uti föregående kapitel hafva vi omtalat det lefnads- och regeringssätt, som drottning Kristina år 1651 förde; likaså det allmänna missnöje, som deraf blef en följd. Detta sednare var ganska häftigt och hotande. Man hörde öfverallt bittra utlåtelser, än mot drottningen, än mot högadeln, hvilken ansågs vara hennes förledare. Allmänt kastade man blickarna på prins Karl Gustaf med önskan, att denne herre snart måtte komma till styrelsen för att skaffa hjelp mot det öfverhandtagande eländet. Nöd och otålighet ingåfvo våldsamma tankar. Några ville, att prinsen skulle i spetsen för en folkrörelse bemägtiga sig regeringen; man förklarade sig färdig att för sådant ändamål sadla upp och deltaga i försöket. Här och der i landsorterna spordes hotande rörelser.

När drottningen 1651 ville nedlägga regeringen, hoppades de missnöjda, att ofvannämnde deras önskan snart skulle gå i verkställighet. Så mycket bittrare blef harmen, då de funno sig bedragna. Man vredgades i synnerhet mot de rådsherrar, som öfvertalat Kristina att stanna qvar. Det hade skett, mente man, endast på det adeln måtte hinna så mycket mer utsuga kronan och underlägga sig landet; samt möjligtvis i framtiden stänga prinsen från tronen och sålunda sjelfva bemägtiga sig riks-styrelsen.

Messenius, fadern, uppbragt mot drottningen, ovän med de styrande och dessutom af ett oroligt och bittert lynne, kastade sig med häftighet in bland de missnöjda. Han sökte umgänge med de förnämsta ledarna för ofrälsestånden, med Terserus, borgmästaren Nils Nilsson, kyrkoherden Kristofer i Fors, äfven med Bengt Skytte. Genom förebärande af sjukdom undandrog han sig att vid kröningen 1650 aflägga trohetsed, och tycktes dessutom hafva under denna riksdag varit i beständig rörelse för att uppägga sinnena.

Sommaren 1651 kom unga Arnold Messenius hem till sin fader. Från tjenstgöringen hos Karl Gustaf, hade han bibehållit mycken tillgifvenhet för bemälde herre. Under den tid, han låg sjuk på Fors prestgård, hade han af kyrkoherden Kristofer hört många skarpa utlåtelser dels mot drottningen, dels mot herrarna, många halfva hotelser om uppror o. s. v. Af fadern hörde han beständigt samma tal och en mängd sanna, halfsanna eller falska anmärkningar. Allt detta tog sonen för sanning och med ungdomens oerfarenhet och lifliga inbillningskraft sammansatte han deraf en både ohygglig och vidunderlig bild af tillståndet i landet. Med slägtens häftiga blod i ådrorna, harmades han öfver de omtalda, förfärliga orättvisorna, öfver allt det förtryck, hans fädernesland hettes lida, öfver de försåt, som sades utställda för hans älskade furste och herre. Fadern, i stället för att lugna, retade och uppmanade honom att hålla sig, icke till drottningen, utan till ständerna och till den herre, han förut tjenat; d. v. s. Karl Gustaf. Detta råd, jemnte faderns undvikna trohetsed var tydligen ett bemödande att inför eget samvete sätta en laglig färg på upprorstankarna.

När Kristina ville nedlägga kronan, hade borgmästaren Nils Nilsson yttrat, det någon redlig svensk borde skrifva och bedja prinsen till landets fromma genast mottaga regeringen. Detta kom till unga Messenii öron. Han ansåg det vara en försynens kallelse att som redlig svensk uppträda till fäderneslandets räddning. Denna borde ske snart, men kunde, enligt hans tanke, icke ske på annat sätt än genom uppror och drottningens afsättande. Han beslöt underrätta prinsen om landets och dess egen fara, samt uppmana till bådas räddning. Genast grep han saken an, och uppsatte en lång och rimmad skrifvelse. Uti denna infördes allt, hvad han af de missnöjda och serdeles af fadern hört, sannt och falskt, bevist och gissadt, verkligt och orimligt om hvartannat; görande med liflig inbillningskraft en half mening till en hel. Förnämsta innehållet af skriften var följande. Drottning Kristina liknar Måns Smek och låter locka sig till egen skada. Hon är ett tok, som alldeles icke förstår att regera utan endast tänker på lekar, nöjen och förströelser. På sådana och på främlingar har hon i största onödighet förstört rikets alla tillgångar. Får hon längre hålla på, skall hon ofelbart förstöra hela riket sjelft. Hon ropar på sin dansmästare och frågar: "Beaulieu, huru mycket kostar en balett?" Denne svarar: "Omkring 30,000 plåtar, ers majestät!» "Hvad» säger drottningen, »icke mer? Hämta strax penningar i räknekammaren!" Någon tid derefter frågar hon sin kammartjenare Johan Holm, "hvad har folket att säga i staden?" Denne svarar: "de finna tiden ledsam och tråkig, sedan eders majestät ej mer dansar några baletter." "Hör hit Beaulieu,» ropar då drottningen, »man måste roa folket! Du får lof att ställa till en ballett; men hvad kostar den?» »Omkring 20,000 riksdaler.» «Godt» svarar drottningen, »gå till räknekammaren och hälsa, att du får penningarna!« — «Men,» invänder dansmästaren, »der finnas inga penningar» — «Gör, som jag säger!» svarar drottningen; »jag skall nog finna medel!» — Orsaken till detta och allt annat ondt är rikskansleren Oxenstjerna; han och riksmarsken Jakob De la Gardie. Redan från längre tid tillbaka hafva dessa herrar sökt inskränka konungamagten. Derföre och för att förslafva rikets allmoge hafva de afyttrat kronogodsen, derföre har Oxenstjerna skaffat Stockholm stora handelsfriheter neml. för att mot konungamagten erhålla hjelp af borgrarna; derföre hafva ock nämnde herrar ökat antalet af adelsmän, grefvar och baroner, för att i dem värfva anhängare. De vilja sjelfva draga till sig styrelsen och skilja Wasaätten derifrån; derföre borttogs det stora Wasavapnet från borggården; derföre har Johannes Matthiœ på deras befallning lärt drottningen endast fåfängliga ting, men icke det, som till regering hörer; derföre har samma man ingifvit hennes afsmak för giftermål, i hvilket tänkesätt hon sedermera blifvit styrkt af grefve Magnus och af dennes mor, grefvinnan Ebba Brahe; ty den sluge rikskansleren nyttjar det sätt, att då han vill drifva någonting igenom, så öfvertalar han dertill Jakob de la Gardie, denne sedermera sin son, hvilken sluteligen skaffar drottningens bifall. Hvad dessa herrar under förmyndaretiden gjort, det tvungo de drottningen att vid myndiga år godkänna, emedan de hotade henne med polska Wasarna. Dessa och de andra höga herrarna frukta serdeles för prins Karl Gustaf. Hans arfsrätt till kronan ämna de aldrig erkänna. Redan i ungdomen blottställde de honom för farorna af en utrikes resa och af krig, då han ej mindre än två serskilda gånger sändes likasom en Uria ut i den vådeliga tyska fejden, ty de hoppades, att han der skulle omkomma. Hans förmälning med drottningen motarbetades, och det mest genom Johannes Matthiœ, grefve Magnus och dess mor, grefvinnan Ebba. Hans antagande till tronföljare motarbetades äfven; och när det ej längre kunde undvikas, hafva herrarna föreskrifvit honom orimligt hårda villkor, och till yttermera visso beslutat taga honom afdaga. Riksmarskens fru, grefvinnan Ebba Brahe, hade på Jakobsdal redan gifvit i ordning, om han hommit [sic] dit. Nu har man tagit gevären från de hemkomna soldaterna; ty man vet, att de äro prinsen tillgifna. — I följe af allt detta råder brefskrifvaren, att prinsen aldrig bör resa till Jakobsdal för att ej utsätta sig för Måns Smeks förplägning (Detta afser troligen ryktet, att Magnus Smeks gemål, Blanca, med förgift dödade sin son, konung Erik.). Han bör till och med akta sig för Stockholm, utom under riksdagarna. Han bör äfven akta sig för första och andra klassen på riddarhuset; men deremot förlita sig på den tredje och på ofrälsestånden. Han bör förekomma fienderna och under sken af mönstring sammankalla troppar och med dem visa sig uti Stockholm; han skall der finna mer anhängare, än han väntat. Han bör följa Karl den niondes exempel och aflifva alla de förnäma; förr blifver han aldrig konung. Han bör låta döda både dem och drottning Kristina. Sedan skall han kunna utan hinder återtaga kronogodsen och i lugn regera till sin och Sverges ära. Underskriften bestod af följande två verser:

»Den, som detta hafver ställt,

Har följt ers kongliga höghet i fält.«

Hela innehållet är ett bevis på partisinnets och ungdomens hänförelse. Uppgifterna om drottningens slöseri, allmogens förtryck och ofrälseståndens tänkesätt voro sanna. Allt det andra består af dels öfverdrifna, dels alldeles osanna beskyllningar; till en del så orimliga, att forskaren förvånas, huru dylika någon gång kunnat erhålla trovärdighet och, som det synes, bland ett icke ringa antal menniskor. Lika orimligt var, att Messenius hoppades öfvertala prinsen till en sådan nedrighet, som att afsätta och mörda drottning Kristina, till hvilken dock prinsen sjelf nyligen friat och hvars ynnest han uteslutande hade att tacka för den just nu erhållna arfsrätten till svenska kronan. Lika orättvist, blodigt och tyranniskt var det andra rådet, nemligen att utan vidare omsvep mörda högadeln för att kunna återtaga kronogodsen. Detta allt undföll Messenius. Det sjelfförtroende, som stundom följer ynglingaåren och alltid följde Messeniska slägten, hindrade honom ifrån att inse sin oförmåga till bedömandet af dessa ämnen; och partisinnet hindrade honom ifrån att inse, hvad som var rimligt eller orimligt, ädelt eller nedrigt. Och likväl synes ynglingens hjerta hafva lifligt klappat för det, som han med sin inskränkning i kännedom, erfarenhet och omdöme ansåg vara rätt och godt.

Enligt någras uppgift har fadern sett denna skrifvelse och gifvit till dess bortsändande tystnadens bifall. Sjelf påstod han envist, det han om densamma icke ägt någon kunskap; och detta synes äfven hafva varit händelsen.

Emedan sonen icke visste, huru utanskriften till prinsen skulle ställas, vidtalade han en kansliskrifvare, hvilken påtecknade brefvet utan att likväl känna dess innehåll. Sedan gjorde Messenius ett annat omslag deröfver, skref derpå namnet af en borgare i Kalmar och afskickade så det olycksdigra paketet.

English translation (my own):

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.

ON THE MESSENIAN PAMPHLET.

In the preceding chapter we have spoken of the way of life and government which Queen Kristina led in 1651; likewise the general discontent which resulted from it. This latter was quite violent and threatening. Bitter statements were heard everywhere, both against the Queen and against the high nobility, who were considered to be her leaders. People generally cast their eyes on Prince Karl Gustav, with the wish that this gentleman might soon come to the government to obtain help against the prevailing misery.

Need and impatience gave rise to violent thoughts. Some wanted the Prince to seize the government at the head of a popular movement. They declared themselves ready to saddle up for such a purpose and participate in the attempt. Here and there in the country districts, threatening movements were heard.

When the Queen wanted to resign from the government in 1651, the malcontents hoped that their above-mentioned wish would soon be fulfilled. So much the more bitter was their anger when they found themselves deceived. They were particularly angry with the councilmen who had persuaded Kristina to stay. It had been done, they believed, only so that the nobility could have time to exploit the Crown even more and subjugate the country, and possibly in the future to remove the Prince from the throne and thus seize the government for themselves.

Messenius the father, enraged against the Queen, hostile to the rulers and also of a restless and bitter disposition, threw himself with vehemence among the malcontents. He sought association with the most prominent leaders of the commoner Estates, with Terserus, the mayor Nils Nilsson, the vicar Christoffer of Fors, and also with Bengt Skytte. By feigning illness he avoided taking the oath of fealty at the coronation in 1650, and he also seemed to have been in constant motion during this Riksdag to incite the minds.

In the summer of 1651, young Arnold Messenius came home to his father. From his service with Karl Gustav, he had retained much affection for his beloved lord. During the time he lay ill at Fors vicarage, he had heard from the vicar Christoffer many sharp statements partly against the Queen, partly against the lords, many half-hearted threats of rebellion, etc. From his father he constantly heard the same words and a multitude of true, half-true or false remarks.

The son took all this for truth and, with the inexperience of youth and with a lively imagination, he put together from it a both horrible and wonderful picture of the state of the country. With the fierce blood of his family in his veins, he was outraged by the mentioned terrible injustices, by all the oppression his Fatherland was said to suffer, by the plots that were said to be laid against his beloved prince and lord.

His father, instead of calming him, agitated him and urged him to stick not to the Queen, but to the Estates and to the master he had previously served — that is, Karl Gustav. This advice, as well as the father's avoided oath of allegiance, was apparently an effort to give his own conscience a lawful colour to the thoughts of rebellion.

When Kristina wanted to lay down the crown, the mayor Nils Nilsson had said that some honest Swede should write and ask the Prince to immediately accept the government of the country's pious people. This came to the ears of young Messenius. He considered it a call of Providence to act as an honest Swede to save the Fatherland. This should happen soon, but could, according to his thought, be done in no other way than through rebellion and the deposition of the Queen.

He decided to inform the Prince of the country's and his own danger and to urge the rescue of both. He immediately set about the matter and composed a long and rhymed letter. In this was included everything that he had heard from the discontents and especially from his father, true and false, proven and conjectured, real and unreasonable about each, making with lively imagination a half-sentence into a whole. The main content of the letter was as follows.

Queen Kristina is like Måns Smek and is allowing herself to be lured to her own harm. She is a fool who does not understand how to govern at all, but only thinks of games, pleasures and diversions. On such and on foreigners she has most needlessly destroyed all the resources of the kingdom. If she is allowed to continue any longer, she will infallibly destroy the whole kingdom herself.

She calls out to her dance master and asks: "Beaulieu, how much does a ballet cost?"

He replies: "About 30,000 francs, Your Majesty!"

"What?!", says the Queen; "No more? Get money from the treasury at once!"

Some time later, she asks her chamberlain Johan Holm: "What are the people saying in the city?"

He replies: "They find the times sad and boring, since Your Majesty no longer dances any ballets."

"Listen, Beaulieu", the Queen then calls out, "you must entertain the people! You are allowed to put on a ballet; but how much does it cost?"

"About 20,000 francs."

"Very well", replies the Queen; "go to the treasury and say that you will receive the money!" —

"But", objects the dance master, "there is no money." —

"Do as I say!" replies the Queen; "I will surely find the means!" —

The cause of this and all other evils is the Grand Chancellor Oxenstierna; he and the Grand Constable Jakob de la Gardie. For a long time now these lords have sought to limit the royal power. Therefore, and in order to enslave the common people of the kingdom, they have alienated the Crown estates; therefore Oxenstierna has provided Stockholm with great freedoms of trade, namely in order to obtain help from the citizens against the royal power.

Therefore the said lords have also increased the number of noblemen, counts and barons, in order to recruit supporters from them. They want to draw the government to themselves and separate the Vasa family from it; therefore the great Vasa coat of arms was removed from the castle; therefore Johannes Matthiæ has, at their command, taught the Queen only vain things, but not that which belongs to government.

Therefore, the same man has instilled in her a distaste for marriage, in which way of thinking she was later strengthened by Count Magnus and by his mother, Countess Ebba Brahe; for the cunning Grand Chancellor uses the method that when he wants to push something through, he persuades Jakob de la Gardie, later his son, who finally obtains the Queen's support.

What these gentlemen did during the regency, they forced the Queen to approve when she came of age, because they threatened her with the Polish Vasas. These and the other high lords greatly fear Prince Karl Gustav. They never intend to recognise his right of inheritance to the Crown. Already in his youth they exposed him to the dangers of a foreign journey and of war, when he was sent no less than twice separately like a Uriah out into the perilous German feud, for they hoped that he would perish there.

His marriage to the Queen was opposed, and most of all by Johannes Matthiæ, Count Magnus, and his mother, Countess Ebba. His acceptance as heir to the throne was also opposed; and when it could no longer be avoided, the lords have prescribed unreasonably harsh conditions for him, and moreover have decided to take him away. The Grand Constable's wife, Countess Ebba Brahe, had already arranged for him to arrive at Jakobsdal.

Now the weapons have been taken from the soldiers who have returned home, for it is known that they are devoted to the Prince. — In consequence of all this, the writer of this letter advises that the Prince should never travel to Jakobsdal, so as not to expose himself to food and drink from Måns Smek (This probably refers to the rumour that Magnus Smek's wife, Blanche, killed her son, King Erik, with poison.). He should even beware of Stockholm, except during the Riksdags.

He should also beware of the first and second classes of the House of Nobility, but on the other hand he should rely on the third class and the commoners. He should anticipate the enemies and, under the pretense of enlisting, call together troops and appear with them in Stockholm; he will find more supporters there than he expected. He should follow the example of Karl IX and put to death all the nobles; before that he will never become king. He should have both them and Queen Kristina killed. Then he will be able to take back the Crown estates without hindrance and will reign in peace, for his and Sweden's glory. The signature consisted of the following two verses:

"He who has written this

Has followed Your Royal Highness in the field."

The whole content is proof of the partisanship and the enthusiasm of youth. The information about the Queen's extravagance, the oppression of the common people and the mindset of the lower classes were true. All the rest consists of partly exaggerated, partly completely untrue accusations; partly so unreasonable that the researcher is surprised how such could ever gain credibility and, as it seems, among no small number of people.

Equally unreasonable was Messenius' hope of persuading the Prince to such a baseness as to depose and murder Queen Kristina, to whom, however, the Prince himself had recently courted and whose favour he had exclusively to thank for the right of inheritance to the Swedish crown he had just received.

Equally unjust, bloody and tyrannical was the other advice, namely to murder the high nobility without further ado in order to be able to regain the Crown estates. All this escaped Messenius. The self-confidence which sometimes accompanies the years of young manhood, and which always accompanied the Messenian family, prevented him from realising his inability to judge these subjects; and the mood of partisanship prevented him from recognising what was reasonable or unreasonable, noble or base. And yet the young man's heart seems to have throbbed eagerly for what he, with his limited knowledge, experience and judgement, considered to be right and good.

According to some, the father saw this letter and gave his silent approval to its sending. He himself stubbornly claimed that he had no knowledge of it; and this also seems to have been the case.

Because his son did not know how to address the letter to the Prince, he addressed a chancellery writer, who signed the letter without knowing its contents. Then Messenius made another envelope over it, wrote on it the name of a citizen of Kalmar, and so sent off the fatal package.

Above: Kristina.

Above: Karl Gustav.

Above: Anders Fryxell.

Note: Jakobsdal is the old name for Ulriksdal Castle.