Christina confessed that, in her search for the truth, she had been examining each of the tenets of religion in the light of natural reason – a Catholic practice which she may have learned from Descartes. She had concluded, however, that the mysteries of faith were not susceptible to investigation in this way. She assured them that she had not lost her belief in the existence of God, though she had to say that the various religions seemed to her to be no more than a political invention designed to keep the common people in their place. She had investigated them all, Christianity and Judaism and Islam, and had at first decided that a simple acquiescence in the forms of her local religion was the wisest and easiest course of action. But it was hard, she said, to live without some real personal faith, for what other foundation could there be for life? A true religion must exist somewhere, she felt, and that must surely be Rome.
‘Free will is in itself the noblest thing that we can have. In a sense, it makes us equal to God.’3 So had the great philosopher once written to the searching young Queen. Five years later, she had found her reply. ‘The use of our own free will,’ she wrote, ‘is the noblest sacrifice we can offer to God. Reason will not persuade us of the truth of Christianity. We must submit blindly to the Roman Church. It is God’s only oracle. To believe in more is superstition. To believe in less is infidelity.’4
The two Jesuits had no need to press their case further. Casati departed to oversee the arrangements for the Queen’s reception in Rome; Malines remained as a moral support. Christina’s conversion was now only a question of time.
The religious question was thus settled. All that remained were the practical arrangements, and these, for the present at least, depended on the Spanish. Late in the summer of 1652, a special envoy from His Most Catholic Majesty, King Felipe IV of Spain, presented his credentials to Her Majesty the Queen of Sweden. In marked contrast to the sombre, stately costume of the Spanish court, she was dressed simply in a grey skirt, a man’s jacket, and a black velvet cap, with no jewel or lace about her, but only a black ribbon around her neck in the fashion of the Swedish sailors. Had the envoy known it, she was very relieved to see him. Ambassador Rebolledo had clearly done his work. Her passport to freedom had been delivered at last.
The special envoy was Don Antonio Pimentel de Prado – General Pimentel, in fact, a tall and handsome soldier of commanding, though hairless, disposition – he was apparently quite bald. Christina was delighted with him, anyway, and only disappointed that the King had not sent him with full ambassadorial rank; the matter of her conversion might have merited that much, she felt. Pimentel made his bows and his addresses in the elaborate manner of his countrymen. He had come, he said, to return the courtesies which Her Majesty’s own envoy had recently paid in Spain, and to negotiate a commercial treaty between their two noble nations. His stay would be brief, he said, for the treaty was largely a matter of formalities, and there was little to be discussed.
The Queen replied that the envoy of His Most Catholic Majesty was welcome to her court, indeed very welcome. The treaty would no doubt be swiftly signed. This she would leave to her ministers. In the meantime, did Don Antonio have no other message for her? There was something else, perhaps, which might be discussed later, between the two of them, in private? The Spaniard demurred. Her Majesty was mistaken. Don Antonio had relayed everything just as he had been instructed.
It was the truth, but not the whole truth. Pimentel did have a secret mission, but it would not have pleased Christina had she known of it. He was to assess Sweden’s military strength, and to determine whether the Queen had any plans to marry. A new Swedish alliance could tip the balance of power adversely for Spain; the forces, military and otherwise, of His Most Catholic Majesty were well to be prepared. As far as the Queen’s conversion was concerned, Pimentel had no instructions at all, nor did he have the least idea of the plan that was afoot. Christina found this hard to believe, and for some weeks did her utmost to spirit him away alone with her at every opportunity. Accepting at last that he knew nothing of the plan, she realized the implications with alarm: the Spanish King was sceptical of her sincerity; he had made no arrangements for her; the practical work was still to be done. She decided that Pimentel must not leave Stockholm until her material support was assured. She must have a direct and constant link to Felipe. Pimentel must succeed where Rebolledo had failed.
Christina’s hinting, her conspicuous inclusion of Pimentel at every last court occasion, and her myriad attempts to arrange personal meetings with him, led many people to believe that the two were lovers. The scandalous little flames were fanned above all by Peder Juel, the Danish Resident in Stockholm. Juel was generally known as a reliable man, not given to embellishing his reports; moreover, his principal correspondent, the deeply religious Danish Chancellor, was a very model of piety and probity. In consequence, Juel’s sober reports were assumed to be true. Within a month of Pimentel’s arrival, he was writing in disgust that the Queen of Sweden was a thoroughly debauched woman, and her court ‘an assembly of dissolute and profligate nonetities’.5
Pimentel, at least, was probably perfectly innocent. For six months Christina kept him in the dark about her plans, hinting at him, closeting him away, until he must have begun to wonder himself whether her intentions towards him were entirely honourable. Certainly he made several attempts to get away, without waiting for permission from Spain. His first ship outward was blown back to Sweden by a fierce contrary wind. He returned to the court, where tongues wagged that he had made the whole thing up in order to return to his royal mistress. Deeply embarrassed, he prepared to depart by an overland route. Christina herself assisted his preparations, which no doubt reassured him in one respect at least. But his departure was prevented by a direct order from Spain; the envoy was obliged to remain in Stockholm ‘until further notice’. Frustrated, Christina seized on a Dominican friar, happily to hand – one Father Güemes, not long arrived from Rebolledo in Copenhagen. She sent him off to Spain instead, and a downcast Pimentel settled in to await his orders.
His chaplain Manderscheydt, at least, was busy. Now that Her Majesty’s intentions were clear, he had plenty to do through the long summer days, and set about with a will to instruct her in the many articles of Catholic faith. Christina was a readier pupil than most, though in other respects quite typical: apparently her clothes were sometimes splashed with ink and her linen often torn. The chaplain also recorded a telling description of her, once away from her theology books. ‘There is nothing feminine about her except her sex,’ he wrote. ‘Her voice and manner of speaking, her style, her ways are all quite masculine. I see her on horseback nearly every day. Though she rides side-saddle, she holds herself so well and is so light in her movements that, unless one were quite close to her, one would take her for a man.’6
Manderscheydt, another Jesuit, was as indiscreet as his fellow Fathers had been cautious, and throughout Stockholm it was soon generally accepted that the Queen was receiving instruction from the Spanish papists. Alarmed Lutheran dignitaries complained of the subversive religious activities that were ‘almost out of hand in the city’. As usual, Christina herself did nothing to stem the tide. She spent countless hours in Manderscheydt’s company, addressing him always, with great respect, as mon père. It was not at all to her advantage to do so. She had as yet nothing to live upon after her abdication, though a goodly number of valuables had by now been spirited away to Antwerp. Perhaps, with Pimentel and his chaplain nearby, and Güemes on his way to Spain, she was feeling more confident about her future life. She enjoyed, too, the chance to provoke the stolid old pastors who had wielded such bleak authority in her youth. She was acting rashly, and against her own interests, but if she did stop to think about it, she carried on regardless.
The Swedish pastors were not the only ones to feel the effects of Christina’s loosening ties to her homeland. The influence of old friends was waning, too, and none more so than that of Magnus. Though Bourdelot had long ago replaced him at the cen
tre of the Queen’s affections, Magnus’ luck had still been running high. He was a lively young man, and now very rich, and at court he had his enthusiasts, among them the famed lyric poet, Marc-Antoine de Gérard Saint-Amant, known to all since his sojourn in stodgy Poland as ‘Big Saint-Amansky’ – Magnus had introduced him to a local hostelry of doubtful repute, and had kept him company through many a long northern night, and many a long northern drinking bout. The attention of Saint-Amant and of his Stockholm friends seems to have blinded Magnus to Christina’s own declining interest in him. At any rate, his effrontery remained undimmed as his star began to wane. He picked frequent quarrels with Bourdelot, who was quick to reciprocate. Christina’s patience was far from inexhaustible, but for many months she allowed her favourites to carry on bickering, until at last she had had enough. She reprimanded Magnus sharply, but she also let Bourdelot go.
The good doctor was in fact more than ready to take his leave. He had been in Stockholm for almost three years, and, though the Queen had treated him wonderfully well, he was in need of a wider world. Saumaise was long gone, and there was scarcely anyone now at court who did not hold some kind of grudge against him. Besides, the Fronde had run its course. Paris was safe again, and much might be extracted from the newly reinstated Cardinal Mazarin, for the French were eager to remove Bourdelot from Christina’s circle of influence. He had too many enemies in Stockholm. The Swedes were turning against France, and France had her hands more than full already with the Spanish war.7 Bourdelot’s continued presence could only push them further along that unwelcome path. He must be persuaded to leave.
Bourdelot could afford to be demanding, and so he was. His price for leaving was high. There was to be no public dismissal; officially, he was to travel to Paris on a special mission for the Swedish Crown. Once in France, he was to take possession of either a valuable bishopric or a substantial abbey in Berry, with all its lands and rents – his pragmatic atheism was evidently not to be allowed to stand in the way. The ingenuous Chanut supported Bourdelot’s demands, declaring that many wicked tongues had spoken unjustly of him. For her part, Christina was happy with the pretence. It was not to be suspected that she had felt obliged to let him go. No one was to think she had consulted anyone’s wishes but her own. She ordered the usual formal leavetaking – a round of morning farewells accompanied by German wine and peppered toast soaked in vinegar, which cannot have encouraged Bourdelot to reconsider his decision. Magnus did his best to avoid his turn as host, but Christina obliged him to take part. The Chancellor capitulated without demur, and Karl Gustav’s family padded the pockets of the doctor’s travelling coat with diamond-framed portraits of themselves. Christina warmed his passage, too, with 30,000 écus, a table service in solid silver, an elaborate carriage with six fine horses, and, her frequent personal token, a heavy gold chain. He passed through Leiden on his way to Paris, and there a resentful Isaac Vossius caught sight of him, seated proudly in his new carriage, ‘laden with riches and curses’.
In Stockholm, flush with partial victory – Bourdelot had gone, at least – Magnus decided to press his luck. He had fabulous riches, it was true, and lands, and honours, and jewels galore, and a royal wife – all courtesy of the Queen, including his wife, or at least the Queen said so. But all those were old victories. Magnus needed a new token of affection. And he was young still, only 30 – a young man, he felt, must have some ambition. Magnus decided it was time he became a prince.
As it happened, there was a Swedish principality available, but it was in the gift of the Queen Mother, and the Queen Mother was not inclined to give it. Magnus began to look further afield, and soon saw a vacancy in the German lands. He had begun to make the arrangements, when Christina intervened. Creating princes was her prerogative, and hers exclusively. The Count’s station was already high; he was not to set himself above it.
Magnus suspected a different motive. Bourdelot had gone, but a new favourite was already emerging, the recently ennobled Count Klaes Tott, even younger than Magnus, and with nothing of his own, but handsome and soldierly, and very dependent on the Queen’s kindness. Tott must be eliminated if Magnus were to regain his premier place. Attack, he decided, would be the best form of defence – or rather, defence would be the best form of defence, or at least, a concealed attack that would look like defence, or anyway, an attack on Tott that would look like an attack on himself, which the Queen would have to defend. Thus, unsagaciously, Magnus approached Christina. There was an intrigue afoot, he declared, a conspiracy, against himself. Not daring to name Tott in person, he lighted upon two other courtiers at random, identifying them as the plotters. The charge could not be sustained for a moment.
Christina fell into a fury. She raged at Magnus for daring to try to trick her, and cursed his ingratitude and presumption. One of the accused courtiers challenged him to a duel, but he declined, supposedly disdaining to cross swords with a member of the lower nobility. It was the last straw for Christina. Laying great claim to physical courage herself, she was disgusted, she said, to find it lacking in her own cousin, whom she had so singularly honoured for so many long and loving years. Magnus had disgraced himself. Christina could not bear to have him in her sight. Let him betake himself to his country house, and stay there. He was not to return to the court again. She would hear no pleading. He was banished – and he could resign all his commissions before he left.
Magnus withdrew, only to renew his pleas in a grovelling letter, which elicited from Christina a swift and savage reply:
From now on I can feel nothing for you but pity. You have undone all the goodwill I had for you, and you have proved yourself completely unworthy of it. If I were able to repent at all, it would be only to regret that I had ever formed a friendship with so weak a person as yourself…You have made it obvious that I should never have done so, and that is a secret that I was resolved to keep all my life…If you are content to hear nothing but reproaches, you may return to court. On that condition I will allow it, but do not expect that tears and begging will move me to forgive you. I want only to forget you in my heart and in my words, and I will never speak of you at all except to reproach you.8
In a foretaste of a similar letter on another, grimmer occasion, Christina had the letter translated into Latin, and distributed to all the courts and cities of Europe. Everyone must see her strength. Everyone must know that she would brook no tricks and no treachery.
As the letter itself reveals, Magnus’ real fault was to have made Christina look foolish by having favoured him in the first place. It was enough to turn her implacably against him. Despite submissions and remonstrations from family and friends, and even from the Chancellor himself, who had long despised Magnus, she would not relent. Her fury and pain are evident in the response she made to Karl Gustav’s personal appeal for his banished brother-in-law. Why was he pleading on that coward’s behalf? Did he not realize that it was Magnus who had turned her against him, that if it had not been for that fork-tongued villain, she would certainly have married him? She had several times been on the point of accepting him, she said, but Magnus had persuaded her against it. It was a remarkably cruel thing to say to a man still hopelessly in love, and it was a lie as well.
Karl Gustav retreated sadly. Magnus’ family gave up. In Paris, Bourdelot was heard to remark that if the Queen wanted a reign of peace, she was going the wrong way about it. Magnus did his best to turn his gaze away from the grand and glittering life that he had lost. For many months he was seen wandering about in town and country, sorrowful of mien and garbed in unwonted sobriety, conspicuously engrossed in The Consolation of Philosophy’, a famous tale of fortune’s ever-turning wheel. If he looked at it at all in private, it was only to copy out extracts for his unphilosophical friends. And if Magnus was consoled by the worthy tome, no one else was persuaded.
Abdication
Two years before, in the autumn of 1651, the Chancellor and senators and men of the Riksdag had been congratulating themselves on warding off
the abdication. They had recalled the young Queen to her senses, and to her sense of duty. The talk of laying aside her crown had ceased. Christina had warned them that, though she might postpone her plan, she had not abandoned it, but this they had chosen to ignore. In fact, with no clear response from the Jesuits or the Spanish King, she had had to make a tactical retreat. Now, with Güemes on his way to Spain, some guarantee of material support, she felt, would surely be soon forthcoming.
As the winter of 1653 set in, Christina made her final preparations. Pimentel found an agent to act for her in the Spanish Netherlands; here she would stay, after leaving Sweden, until all had been arranged for her in Rome. In Stockholm, she appointed a group of new senators, including Jakob De la Gardie, Magnus’ brother and husband of her own Belle. Swedish territories had expanded during the Thirty Years War, she declared; more senators were needed to administer and represent them. But she had chosen the new men with great care; all would be likely to support her plan.
Early in the new year, the senators were summoned to Uppsala Castle, and there Christina announced her intentions. The senators returned a formal refusal, but it seems that, by now, most of them had accepted that the Queen would not be dissuaded. Only the Chancellor persisted, drawing up a petition suggesting that she share the burdens of her great office with her acknowledged heir, Karl Gustav. But Christina wanted no compromise, and within days she had their agreement. She would make a formal act of abdication, she said, when the Riksdag met in the spring.
All that remained to be agreed was the size of her apanage. Christina stipulated the amount herself – 200,000 riksdaler per annum – a comfortably royal sum. It was to be drawn from a number of estates within Sweden itself, including the town of Norrköping and the two large islands of Gotland and Öland, the latter Karl Gustav’s favourite hunting retreat. She would have an Estonian island as well, and lands in Mecklenburg and Pomerania which her father had claimed as trophies of war. Hers, too, would be the Baltic town of Wolgast, where long ago Maria Eleonora had kept hysterical vigil over the King’s body, waiting for the frozen sea to thaw. It would be more than enough, provided it was paid, and for this her conversion plan must remain a secret, at least until the papers were signed and she was safely out of the country. Even more important to Christina herself, however, was her continued status as a sovereign. She was to remain a queen, though a queen without a realm, and on this she insisted. The members of her court were to be subject to her, and she herself was to be subject to no one, no matter where she should be. She would be answerable ‘only to God’. This was the first article of her abdication agreement, before any mention of her apanage, before any reference to her successor, and it was vital to her. Her sovereignty, her right to rule, she believed she carried within herself. For Christina, it was a personal quality. It had nothing to do with the state or the crown, and she could never be divested of it.
Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric Page 21