It was not ideal to have two ‘Your Majesties’ in the land, and some felt that it might endanger the country’s political stability. But there was far greater opposition to the financial settlement. Some of the lands to be ceded to the Queen had already been given away. They would have to be formally repossessed by the crown – a clear precedent for further expropriations and a subject of furious controversy throughout the country. Public opinion swayed against the Queen: the settlement was felt to be too much. But by playing a double game with the Senate and the Estate of the nobles, Christina was able to conclude the business to her complete satisfaction. She managed to persuade each party that the other had agreed to sign, and thus both parties resumed negotiations accepting the settlement as a fait accompli. The senators tried to add a stipulation that she remain in Sweden after the abdication, and ‘spend all the money in this country’, but Christina flatly refused. So, after three weeks of haggling and grumbling, the agreement was signed.
There was no real guarantee, however, that it would be honoured. Nothing could compel the Swedes to pay – nothing apart from national pride, perhaps, and respect for the memory of her father, and either one might persuade them to abandon her completely once she had been received into the Catholic Church. As the weeks passed, and no news arrived from the Spanish King, doubts rose once again in Christina’s mind, and her actions began to take on a desperate colour. Out of hand, she dismissed the Portuguese Ambassador, declaring that his King was a usurper, and that his country rightfully belonged to Spain. As a ‘symbolic gesture’, she sent out roughnecks to pounce on the Ambassador’s servants in the streets and give them a good beating; for a time she even planned an invasion of Portugal. The senators drew the obvious conclusion: the Queen must have some ulterior, pro-Spanish design. Spain was still at war with France, and France was Sweden’s ally. The Queen’s actions, sighed the exasperated Chancellor, were ‘the most grave assault on Sweden in the last forty years’, but Christina would not be bridled. Not content with harassing the Portuguese, she demanded that the war subsidies owing from France to Sweden should be paid to her personally. When it was pointed out to Her Majesty that there was in fact no money owing from France, she tried to sell the French a fleet of warships ‘to meet immediate expenses’ following her abdication.
Christina sent for Ambassador Whitelocke, and announced that she wanted the English to buy Sweden’s colonies in West Africa, the profits to accrue to her own purse. Whitelocke, taken aback, made a diplomatic reply, and began to take his leave, but the Queen detained him. She wanted someone to confide in, and she liked the steady old Englishman; to his surprise, she now began to talk about the matter of her apanage. What if the Swedes should fail to honour the terms of her agreement? Who could say how trustworthy the new King might be? Whitelocke advised the Queen to employ a worthy counsellor to manage these matters for her. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, ‘being of a royal and bountiful spirit, cannot look into such matters so much beneath you as expenses or accounts’, and he encouraged her to settle quickly in her Pomeranian lands, ‘lest any designs should be against your liberty, Madam, for in this age there be few persons to be trusted’.1
Sadly, the Queen herself was not among them. Not daring to mention her intention to convert, she gave the Ambassador to believe that Protestant Pomerania was indeed her chosen place of exile, and went so far as to invite him to visit her there – he would be ‘as welcome,’ she said, ‘as any man living’, and they would be ‘merry together’. Whitelocke conveyed his most humble thanks. He had a wife and ‘children enough,’ he said, ‘to people a province in Pomerland’, and he would be happy to bring them all there ‘to do Her Majesty service’. The Ambassador took his leave, but on the following day, he was summoned again. The Queen had been considering her abdication agreement. She had decided that a clause must be added to it, a secret clause, known only to herself and the Ambassador and his master, ‘that gallant man’, Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, who had cut the head off her ‘dear cousin’ Charles not so long before. The clause would guarantee her apanage: if the Swedes failed to pay it, Cromwell was to nullify the trade agreements between England and Sweden.
The Ambassador was not normally permitted to sit in Her Majesty’s presence, but perhaps, on this occasion, he sat her down, metaphorically at least, and proceeded to explain to the girl a thing or two about international relations.
England was at war with the Dutch. Baltic trade was a matter of huge contention between them. The trade agreements with Sweden had been a painstaking and important victory for the English. They were not going to be jeopardized by any clause, secret or otherwise, with a powerless former queen with no connection whatsoever to England. Christina had not told the Ambassador about her plan to convert to Catholicism. It is hard to imagine what he might have said about the secret clause, or what Cromwell might have said, had she done so. Only desperation, or an impossibly inflated sense of her own personal importance, could have prompted Christina to think of it in the first place. Whitelocke extracted himself as diplomatically as he could, and took his leave again, with a sigh of relief, or exasperation, or disbelief.
None of this, needless to say, not the sale of the warships or the African colonies nor any of Christina’s other wild schemes, was approved or even discussed by the Senate or the Riksdag. Now, as so often before and afterwards, she refused to distinguish between the assets of the state and her own personal property. In the ship that had carried away Cardinal Mazarin’s books, she had already smuggled out a hoard of paintings and manuscripts and other valuables that the Jesuits had promised to keep for her in Rome, all valued, it is said, at some half a million livres – the price of a good fleet of warships – and she had coerced the Emperor’s Ambassador, the unwilling Conte Montecuccoli, to take medals and jewels for her out of the country as well. The income agreed for her would be enough to keep her more than comfortably for the rest of her days, provided it was paid. But she was not dealing honestly with her countrymen, and she feared that, in return, they would not deal honestly with her.
In the midst of Christina’s growing anxiety came news from Leiden of the death of Claude Saumaise. At 65, he had been older by far than any of her other friends, but he had been dear to her, and she had fully expected to see him again. Saumaise, an unbeliever to the core, had refused the last rites, but had left instructions for his widow to destroy a number of his no doubt heretical writings, and she had duly done so. Hearing of this, Christina dispatched a furious letter to Madame Saumaise. It cannot have comforted her much:
Saumaise’s death is a grievous blow to all rational minds, but can you imagine how I feel about the irreparable loss of his papers? You know how highly I valued his genius. You know I loved him as a father. Do not look to me for consolation. It is right that you should grieve. You should spend the rest of your days bewailing his death and the crime of homicide you have yourself committed by destroying his work. You have killed him a second time over, and I will never forgive you for it.2
Though Christina did not relent, she did offer, with typical generosity, to pay for the education of Saumaise’s young son. At the same time, with typical avarice, she did what she could to claim his well-stocked scholar’s library.
On a bright spring day in the middle of May 1654, five mounted soldiers rode through the royal town of Uppsala, with kettledrums and trumpets beating and blaring before them. They were sent to proclaim an extraordinary meeting of the Riksdag in the great hall of the castle on the following day. All the Riksdag men were to appear by eight o’clock in the morning, ‘upon pain of half-a-dollar mulcted for every default’.
It would be an early start for the nobles among them, at least, for the night before they were to attend a wedding at the castle, and the ceremonies were not to start until midnight. The Baron Horn, ‘of ancient and noble family’, was to marry the Lady Sparre, a kinswoman of Christina’s Belle, and one of the Queen’s own servants. The bride came decked in diamonds, and the
bridegroom with gold and silver lace on his suit of white silk. They made their vows by torchlight, then marched a solemn round with trumpets sounding, and then they set to dancing.
Christina, loving to dance, got up at once from her chair of state, and approached the English Ambassador. ‘I make choice of you,’ she said, ‘to dance with me.’ The Ambassador, well past his youth, begged leave to excuse himself, but Christina insisted, and so they began, with a sigh from Whitelocke. ‘I shall obey,’ he said, ‘but I wish I could remember as much of this as when I was a young man.’ The Queen danced badly, as she always did, but Whitelocke did better, and when he had seen her back to her place, she declared her satisfaction with a round oath. ‘By God!’ she said. ‘These Hollanders are lying fellows.’ The Ambassador was puzzled. Why should Her Majesty be talking of Hollanders, who were after all ‘not much thought upon’ at Swedish weddings. It appeared that the Queen had heard from some Dutchmen that Oliver Cromwell’s party were ‘none but mechanics, and not a gentleman among them’. ‘I thought to try you,’ she said, ‘and to shame you if you could not dance, but I see that you are a gentleman and have been bred a gentleman.’ The disconcerted Ambassador confirmed that, indeed, he could claim ‘an ancient pedigree’, and the Queen blessed him with a final compliment: she believed he must have been an excellent dancer ‘in your younger days’.3
Whitelocke was no doubt feeling the loss of them later in the morning, after hardly any sleep, when he took his place in an upper gallery in the great hall of the castle. It was a large assembly, with the whole Riksdag in attendance. One after another they filed in to the great hall: 60 peasants, led by ‘a plain, lusty man in his boor’s habit’, twice as many burghers, 200 nobles, and 60 members of the clergy, ‘grave men, in their long cassocks and canonical habits, and most with long beards’. They were followed by the guardsmen, and the gentlemen of the court, two by two, and then the senators, from humblest to highest. Finally came the Queen, with her yellow-liveried pages in attendance. She made her way to the front of the hall, and sat down, whereupon all the many soldiers and servants who had trooped in so solemnly, only minutes before, now trooped out, leaving only the men of the Riksdag, with the great doors closed behind them.
The Queen stood up, and beckoned to Chancellor Oxenstierna, who approached her ‘with great ceremony and respect’. They spoke a few moments together, the Chancellor returned to his place, and the Queen sat down again. The Chancellor had been expected to address the assembly, and announce the formal purpose of its meeting, but it seems that in this brief conference he had begged Her Majesty to be excused, ‘by reason of an oath I had taken to my king, to endeavour to keep the crown on his daughter’s head’.4 Christina was thus obliged to make the introduction herself, and so she did. She rose up ‘with mettle’, and stepped to the front of the dais, and ‘with a good grace and confidence spake to the Assembly’.
This was a strange meeting, she said, and the reason for it ‘astonishing to many’, but the step she was about to take had been long in her mind. She had but one purpose, which was ‘to give into the hands of my most dear cousin our most dear country and the royal seat, with the crown, the sceptre, and the government. And if in these ten years of my administration I have merited anything from you,’ she said, ‘it shall be this only which I desire, that you will consent to my resolution, since you may assure yourselves that none can dissuade me from my purpose.’5
Several good men tried to do so nonetheless. From each Estate in turn, the marshal spoke, asking Her Majesty to reconsider, to think of her people, of her duty, of her father, of the will of God. The Archbishop’ of Uppsala took first place with an elaborate oration, ‘which was somewhat long’, and concluded with ‘three congees’, some handkissing, and then three more congés. The marshal of the nobility and the burghers’ marshal did likewise, and spoke likewise, then did likewise again. The last place was left for the peasants’ marshal, ‘a plain country fellow, in his clouted shoon’, and he now stepped forward, ‘without any congees at all’, to add his forthright plea:
O Lord God, Madam, what do you mean to do? It troubles us to hear you speak of forsaking those that love you so well as we do. Can you be better than you are? You are Queen of all these countries, and if you leave this large kingdom, where will you get such another? If you should do it, as I hope you won’t for all this, both you and we shall have cause, when it is too late, to be sorry for it. Therefore my fellows and I pray you to think better on’t, and to keep your crown on your head, then you will keep your own honour and our peace. Continue in your gears, good Madam, and be the fore-horse as long as you live, and we will help you the best we can to bear your burden.6
When the marshal had concluded his speech, Whitelocke writes, he ‘waddled up to the Queen without any ceremony, took her by the hand and shook it heartily, and kissed it two or three times; then turning his back to her, he pulled out of his pocket a foul handkerchief and wiped the tears from his eyes’, before returning to his humble place.
It was all to no avail. Christina did not want to be Sweden’s fore-horse any longer. She was resolved to give up her crown, and she wanted only the Riksdag’s assent to retire ‘from so heavy a burden’. Her pages were called, and she withdrew from the hall, and all the men of the Riksdag, dismayed and disbelieving, withdrew after her.
Late in the evening, the wedding festivities were resumed. It was maytime in the north, and it would be light through half the night. At one in the morning, the dancing began, and Christina remained through it all, through the courtly pavanes and galliards of France, and the rowdy, swirling, vivid dances of Sweden’s own country folk. It was too much for Whitelocke, who had been up till all hours the previous night. He took himself quietly home, wondering, he said, ‘that the Queen, after so serious a work as she had been at in the morning, could be so pleased with this evening’s ceremonies’.7
The Ambassador did not attend the solemn ceremony of abdication, which took place in the great hall of the castle at Uppsala, a few weeks later, on the sixth of June. He was in Stockholm by then, preparing his journey home to his unanointed master, but late in the night he was visited by Karl Gustav Wrangel, Field-Marshal and senator, who had ridden the 40 miles down from Uppsala to relay the proceedings of the day.
They had begun early. At nine o’clock in the morning, the Queen walked into the great hall of the castle, with a train of servants in attendance, and draped in her velvet coronation robe, with her crown upon her head. At the front of the hall stood a long table with five velvet cushions laid on it, and on the first four of these lay the royal regalia that she had received at her coronation: the ornamented sword, the gold sceptre and key, and the golden orb with its back-to-front engravings. Reaching them, the Queen paused a moment, then turned to the assembled dignitaries, and spoke. It was a brief address: she was resolved, she said, to resign the throne and government of the Kingdom, and she had come now to execute this design. To her ‘most dear cousin’, she wished ‘all happiness and success’, then she requested that the crown be taken from her head. Presumably, no one had agreed to perform this fearful duty, for no one came forward now. She turned to the young Count Tott, a favourite among her courtiers, and to Baron Steinberg, and commanded them to remove the crown. They would not. She spoke again to them, in earnest tones, until the two consented to fulfil this last command. Together they took the crown from her head, and laid it on the fifth velvet cushion. This awful act accomplished, others now came forward to remove her royal robes, until she stood alone in a simple white dress, ‘as beautiful as an angel’, as old Per Brahe recorded tearfully. Christina made a curtsy to Karl Gustav, and another to the assembly, then retired to a private room, ‘without the least outward show of reluctancy for what she had done’.8
Karl Gustav’s coronation followed on that same morning. It took place in Uppsala’s Cathedral Church, tradition reinstated after the ill-fated rupture of Christina’s own ceremony in Stockholm. The Prince arrived ‘in his ordinary habit,
with a huge troop following him, and the windows and streets crowded with multitudes of people’. The Archbishop anointed him, and he accepted all the regalia so newly laid down, and with drums and trumpets and loud acclamations he was declared Sweden’s new King, Karl X Gustav. He had not wanted the crown, and there had been many who had not wanted him to have it. In Stockholm, Whitelocke commented ruefully: ‘Not many days past they laboured to hinder the doing of it; now they shout for joy that it is done. Thus are the minds and practice of the multitude, whom nothing pleaseth long – nothing more than novelty.’9
Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric Page 22