Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric

by Buckley, Veronica

  In the event, three triumphal arches were deemed to be necessary, all huge, all magnificent, all in the ancient Roman style. The city magistrates agreed to pay for two of them out of the public funds – in fact the public deficit – and the senators met the cost of the principal arch by raising a special tax on every horse, or rather horse-owner, in the kingdom. In the autumn of 1649, with time now pressing, Christina recalled her architect, Jean De la Vallée, who had passed the previous few years amassing artistry and debts in equal measure in the richly cultured cities of the south. Now he was needed in the north, but it was not until the following spring that he arrived in Stockholm with the sculptor Nicolas Cordier, son of the great ‘Franciosino’; together they were to decide the structure and decoration of the great arch.

  Until now, it had been assumed that the coronation would be held in the cathedral church at Uppsala, where, by tradition, Sweden’s kings had always been crowned. But the affair this time was on too grand a scale, too many people had been invited, and the little cathedral was too small. Worse, Uppsala had not lodging enough, or not lodging good enough, for the hundreds of expected grandees. Stockholm would have been easier for the master-builders and their men: their workshops were there, and their families, too. But most of the materials were already by now in Uppsala, and the work had already started. The astrologers muttered that tradition must be observed, that it would be courting disaster to change the time-honoured ritual. Christina professed herself indifferent, with an aside that she would prefer all the same to be crowned in Stockholm, if only to prove that she was not superstitious. In April, with only months to go, it was still assumed that the celebrations would be held in Uppsala. In May, a final decision was made; the work was stopped, and men and materials were transferred back to Stockholm. The search for lodgings was abandoned, and the builders, newly unpacked, began to pack up again, and then again to unpack.

  The shortage of time was now acute, and it was clear that it would be impossible to complete the three arches by October. The first was simply left unfinished. The second was built, not in stone but out of wood, and painted by a fluid French hand.11 Efforts were now concentrated on the principal arch. It was to stand near the water, at an elegant angle to the bridge at Malmtorget, but even at this eleventh hour, the proposed site was not quickly approved. General Lennart Torstensson, ferocious, gouty hero of the Thirty Years War, had already started work on his own new town palace in the same corner of the square; it was to balance, or outclass, the just completed palace of Field Marshal Lillie, in the opposite corner. Torstensson was not about to change his plans now for any cardboard arch, no matter what the occasion. In consequence, a huddle of little stalls and lean-tos was swept away to make room for it, and in early June 1650, with less than five months remaining, the work began in earnest.

  It seems that Jean De la Vallée had been working on the design of the arch while still in Rome. On arrival in Stockholm, he was certainly able to produce it with amazing rapidity, and it bore a strong resemblance to the great arch erected for the Emperor Constantine near the Coliseum in the Eternal City. The beautiful marble of the Roman arch, however, was not to be matched in Stockholm. Despite Axel Oxenstierna’s enthusiasm for a permanent monument, Christina had to be content with a wooden structure draped with painted canvas, and decorated in stucco and wax. Shortage of time permitted no other solution, though the senators managed to delay things further by entrusting the work first to the court’s old master-joiner, and then to their master-carpenter. A predictable furore ensued, but the two eventually set to work together on the vast pile of materials: out of hundreds of dozens of wooden planks, 5,000 yards of canvas, 800 pounds of wax, 3,000 pounds of various resins, a ton of linseed oil and half a ton of olive oil (inferior grade), 60 barrels of plaster, and assorted bits of iron and stone, they and the artists constructed a magnificent edifice some 80 feet wide and a hundred feet high, with twelve columns, and so cleverly painted that from a distance ‘it looked as though it was made of stone’.12 Even the painted flags of the German armies captured in the recent war seemed to be fluttering in the wind. It was topped by twenty-four monumental statues, allegories in wood, the work of the old Swedish master-carver Jost Schutze; though in the classical style, it seems they were not without traces of ‘Germanic exuberance’. Among those who painted the arch was Christina’s old drawing-master, Jakob Elbfas; in gold letters fifteen feet high, he proclaimed the Queen’s virtues, but most of his skill went into twenty huge tableaux, depicting, at Axel Oxenstierna’s command, Sweden’s military victories during the years of the regency. Not only a homage to the young Queen, the great arch was also a monument to the Chancellor’s own achievements.

  Christina spent the days before her coronation at the De la Gardies’ grand new country house of Jakobsdal,13 and from here she made her formal entrance into the city, wearing a magnificent gown embroidered all over with gold thread and pearls and precious stones. Like her other coronation garments, it was a Paris creation in the latest style, and like them, it had had to be remade for her in Stockholm – the French tailor had not made allowance for Christina’s uneven shoulders. She drove back into the city in an open carriage upholstered in red velvet and silk with silver and gold embroidery, a gift from Karl Gustav. It was drawn by six white horses, and beside it walked 60 young noblemen, all dressed in yellow. Her own horse, unridden, trotted along with them sporting a beautiful pearl-encrusted side-saddle of purple velvet, and a bridle, reins and stirrups of enamel and silver gilt, studded with diamonds.

  Christina was followed by Maria Eleonora, who was herself followed by six camels, complete with howdahs, a team of reindeer from Lapland, and twelve extravagantly saddled mules. Enthusiastic nobles trailed behind, one in a festive carriage pulled by two brightly caparisoned cardboard elephants. Townsfolk and diplomats watched from the windows en route – unresolved disputes about precedence had forced the removal of the diplomats altogether from the proceedings, though a special place was kept in the church for Chanut. Every detail was noted by a special French correspondent, invited by the Swedes with a view to impressing all the fashionable readers in Paris.

  On the twentieth of October, a day of rare autumnal beauty, Christina stepped once again into her gold and velvet coach. From the Tre Kronor Castle, she drove in grand procession to the Storkyrka, to be met at the great portals by the Archbishop of Uppsala, champion of the commoners’ Estates, with her grandfather’s gold anointing horn in his hands. The church was hung with the bright new tapestries of landscapes and hunting scenes and classical myths, and through these they now processed, Christina in a simple dress of white silk beneath her fabulous robe, and her acknowledged heir, Karl Gustav, walking after her, in a crimson cap with a tall spiked crown on top of it. Magnus carried the royal standard of blue silk; his father, the great general, now blind, was led behind him, and a vast train of Oxenstiernas and Brahes and Sparres and other De la Gardies followed, all the prominent men of state, and all the favoured scholars and artists of Christina’s court, and Maria Eleonora, unforgiven and unrepentant.

  Before the altar stood a throne of chased silver, a coronation gift from Magnus.14 More a beautiful armchair than a throne, it was small and elegant, with a wooden frame. Despite his earlier ungallant remarks about his manly Queen, Magnus’ gift was decidedly feminine, with slender, curving arms and legs, and backed by two proud and pretty little figures, Justice with her sword and Prudence with her mirror. Here Christina now seated herself for her formal consecration as Sweden’s Queen. The Archbishop presided, while five other bishops uttered prayers alongside him. After anointing her with holy oils, the Archbishop placed the crown upon her head, and invested her with the royal regalia: the ornamented sword, the gold sceptre and key, and the golden orb, which must have challenged many a royal geographer – the northern countries had all been engraved back to front by mistake. At the end of the ceremony, as if there might have been a doubt of it, a herald proclaimed, ‘Queen Christina has been crowne
d, and no other person!’

  They processed grandly out of the church, into the fading day, and Christina stepped into a second carriage, draped in silver cloth, while medals of gold and silver were thrown to the crowd around her. She arrived at the castle as night was falling, saluted by 1,800 guns; it took a deafening two hours to fire them all off. For the guests, a vast banquet followed. Too large for any of the castle’s halls, it spread to a bevy of smaller rooms, while out in the streets, the townsfolk feasted on roast oxen stuffed with turkeys and geese, and public fountains flowed with wine. Fireworks burst above the lovely waters of Stockholm, and many a noble glove took many a roughened peasant hand to dance in the torchlight through the autumn night.

  The festivities continued through the late dawn; in fact they went on for weeks, with masques and ballets and feasting and jousting. Magnus, taking his turn among the young blades to tilt a lance at the ‘Turk’s head’, fell heavily from his horse, but by evening he had recovered sufficiently to preside at another huge banquet. Through the shortening days of November, a series of animal combats was staged, in gladiatorial style. The most dramatic, at which Christina herself was present, featured a bear and a lion – not, apparently, the one from Prague – a calf (which did not last long), a horse, and a buffalo. The camels, the reindeer, and the cardboard elephants were apparently exempt from the fight. An excited crowd assembled, and the coliseum atmosphere intensified as the animals were released. The lion chased the calf, the bear chased the lion, the buffalo butted the bear, and the horse kicked it. The calf fled, the lion turned on the bear, and a satisfying struggle ensued. The bear’s roars were louder than the lion’s, so the lion was recaged, and the horse and the buffalo rounded up. The bear, which had certainly had the worst of it, salvaged its dignity by washing itself off in a pool in the middle of the arena. It was agreed that the lion had put up a very poor show.

  When the noise had died down in Stockholm, echoes of it could be heard for months as nobles across the country vied with one another to produce the grandest dinner or the brightest fireworks. Like their new-crowned Queen, most of them paid on credit.

  The coronation had been a gigantic diversion, welcome even to the Chancellor, but in November 1650 the Riksdag reassembled, with the business of the country’s finances still before them. The nobles were anxious and the commoners eager, both expecting that the resumptions of crown lands were about to begin. But Christina had achieved what she had set out to achieve; Karl Gustav was Sweden’s hereditary prince, and she had no need now to inveigle the different parties of the Riksdag, or to keep her promises to any of them. To the nobles’ relief, she announced there would be no resumptions after all, nor would she accept any limit to further alienations of land or other assets if that should be her pleasure; the Queen’s royal prerogative was not to be infringed. The dismayed commoners were obliged to abandon the focal point of their joint efforts, and they quickly fell back into their three separate Estates, leaving the nobles triumphant by the grace of the Queen’s duplicity. She threw them little titbits of consolation: a few long-sought privileges were awarded to the clergy, the peasants’ labour service was decreased, and the burghers gained a few solid provincial posts, as far as possible from Stockholm.

  There was no real reassurance for the nobles. They had retained their exalted place at the nation’s table, but they had had to eat from the Queen’s own hand. Thenceforth the Senate and the great families would have to defer to her. It was not a question of procedure or of statute; there had been no constitutional change. Christina’s splendid, public coronation had increased her prestige and her confidence, but her triumph was above all a question of will, and it was now clear that, when required, she could summon it in abundance. She had recovered all the personal authority that she had lost by nominating a successor, and more importantly, she had greatly strengthened the power of the crown in its longstanding feud with the great noble families. It was a remarkable achievement, and she was very proud of it. And in her victory, she decided to be magnanimous; quite suddenly, she became much friendlier to the Chancellor. For a time, he was content to bite his tongue and return an occasional, unsettled smile to the Queen’s own satisfied beams, but early in the new year of 1651 he betook himself, glowering, to his country house. Enjoying another crack of the whip, Christina responded by demoting him from his leadership of the Riksdag, but by the early spring, the resilient Chancellor had caught his second wind. In the Senate, he began to criticize her loudly; she snapped back by recalling his son Bengt from his diplomatic post in Germany. Her anger did not last, however. Within a few weeks, she was courting the Chancellor again; his influence was still great, and now she had need of his support for a new, incredible plan.

  Christina had so far used her power, paradoxically, to divest herself of it, pushing through Karl Gustav’s acceptance first as her successor, and then as hereditary prince. Now she wanted to push further still, to renounce the throne completely, not on behalf of her children or other possible heirs, but for herself, forever, and at once. To this end she now summoned all her determination, and in so doing revealed a tendency, not soon to diminish, to work stubbornly against her own apparent interests.

  In April, she confided to Magnus that she had made up her mind to abdicate, and towards the end of June, she wrote to her cousins with the same astonishing news. Appalled and disbelieving, Karl Gustav sent his brother off with a letter to Johann Kasimir; Adolf was to explain what Christina had said – it was ‘too horrifying,’ wrote Karl Gustav, to be repeated in writing. Christina had meanwhile sent her own emissary to her uncle, but the unhappy Magnus, who stood to lose more than anyone but the Queen herself, failed to reassure him. Christina then sent Johan Matthiae to Johann Kasimir, but being hardly more reconciled to the business than Magnus had been, he had no more success. All of them felt that the decision would surely rebound against them once their enemies at court got hold of it. They feared it would be seen as their own doing.

  Karl Gustav sagely decided to absent himself altogether. He made a brief sortie into Stockholm to attend the funeral of General Lennart Torstensson – who had had no time after all to enjoy his splendid new house near the coronation arch – then set off for his favourite retreat on the Baltic island of Öland. Christina used his few days in the capital to try to convince him to marry an unsuspecting German princess who was paying a visit there. She felt her decision would be more readily accepted by the Estates if Karl Gustav could be presented as already on the way to producing a new generation of Swedish royals, even if they were German.

  For six weeks or more, the news supposedly remained a secret within the two families, though the Chancellor certainly heard of it, and Chanut continued his reports to Cardinal Mazarin in Paris. Early in the August of 1651, Christina informed the Senate of her decision, which required, she told them, ‘not advice but assent’.15 They responded at once with an absolute refusal, and followed it with a collective letter, in fact written by the Chancellor, reminding Christina that it was her duty to remain as Queen, sacrificing her own interests if necessary for the good of her people. Though they did not draw attention to it, the good of the senators themselves was also at stake: a new king might change his mind about the resumptions, and retrieve the crown lands after all. They had agreed to accept Karl Gustav, but they could not afford to see him brought to the throne at such short notice; they would need time, Christina’s lifetime, to bring him around to their way of thinking. Besides, the Queen had only just been crowned – it would take years to pay for that coronation, let alone a second one. Perhaps it was all a ploy to conceal something else that she really wanted. Her grandfather, after all, had frequently used the threat of abdication to force agreement to some plan or other, and even the Chancellor had stooped to it once or twice.

  Christina could find no allies among her own people for her latest, most outrageous plan, and this surprised her. The proposed royal family themselves could not be enlisted; they feared a backlash that would put t
heir friends at risk and perhaps even make the land ungovernable. Puzzled, she wrote to Karl Gustav, her oldest ally and now, if she could manage it, her greatest beneficiary – would he not come to Stockholm and help her push the plan through? He would not. On the last day of September, the senators presented Christina with another firm letter, a petition, in fact, urging her to abandon all thought of abdication and offering her greater help if she should be finding the burden of government too heavy. Christina was impressed by their united stand and pleased by their apparent devotion to her rule, but she gave them no more than a temporizing answer: she was not well, she said, and anyway she could never marry; Karl Gustav would be a far more suitable monarch. The senators departed, unsatisfied, and in the middle of October she summoned them again, determined to gain their assent. The meeting this time lasted more than five hours, with both sides adamant until the very end, but the twenty senators eventually won the day. A few weeks later, Christina announced that she had reconsidered the matter: she would not abdicate, after all – at least not for the time being. The senators, jubilant to have retained their Queen and, in consequence, their lands, ignored or forgot her warning suffix: her plan to abdicate had not been abandoned, but only postponed.