Her ebullient spirits did not last. Crossing into the Papal States, she was startled to hear talk of a peace between France and Spain, and she wrote at once to Mazarin, asking him to deny ‘this news which threatens the world with a great calm. I love the storm,’ she said, ‘and fear the calm.’ A peace would sweep away her chance for Naples, a chance which, until now, she had viewed as an absolute certainty. Mazarin did not reply, but the talk of peace subsided. Christina arrived at the little papal town of Pesaro, where the once humble Santinelli brothers had entertained her the previous November – Francesco’s rise in particular had been swift, from acrobat to Lord Chamberlain in less than a twelvemonth. They were all now installed at the Pope’s expense in the Palazzo Della Rovere, and here Christina made the acquaintance of an old friend of Cardinal Azzolino, the cultured and worldly papal vice-legate, Monsignor Luigi Gasparo Lascaris. He began to send regular letters to his friend, informing him of all the daily comings and goings, and he did not exclude his own concern at the Queen’s extravagance and the ‘band of ruffians’ who surrounded her. Lascaris knew about Azzolino’s relationship with the Queen, and he teased him about it with a rather rude joke that he had made to Christina herself. Her love of bawdy talk was infamous; she is even reputed to have told the devout Queen Mother of France, in precisely so many words, that ‘fucking is what pretty girls are for’ – the Queen Mother had apparently written this off as a Gothic aberration. But despite Christina’s promiscuous tongue, Lascaris’ playful tone, in his letter to Azzolino, suggests that he did not believe she had been involved in a real love affair with the Queen. It is almost as if the Cardinal might have been a little embarrassed about her attentions to him:
Her Majesty is more beautiful than ever, and more devout – and more devoted to you – as well. Last night she was dressed in black velvet and blue ribbons, and a very fine man’s collar. It was enough to drive a man to distraction to see her reading from a French play by candlelight. She was playing the lovesick Diana, and she read the part so well that I said to her, Madam, they say I’m a wily old bird, but really this evening you make me feel more like a young cock.2
French plays at the Pope’s expense were all very amusing. She was well accommodated, but Christina did not feel comfortable. The plague was abating in Rome at last, but poverty now prevented her return, for Mazarin’s money was spent, and she could go no further. There was nothing to do in Pesaro. It was small and dull, and she was bored. She had not come all the way from Stockholm to sit in a crumbling old castle waiting for news from Paris. The only business here was the business of the Church, and no amount of ecclesiastical coming and going was likely to distract her while there were dreams of Naples whirling in her head. She penned a disheartened letter to her friend Holstenius at the Vatican Library, bewailing the lack of intellectual stimulation in the little town. ‘Platonic works are as rare here as the unicorn,’ she sighed. Mazarin himself received dozens of letters from her, urging action, asking for money, demanding a response. He sent just two replies, both cool, both telling her expressly not to come back to France.
Christina sat in Pesaro for seven languishing months. She dispatched Monaldeschi to Paris to rouse the Cardinal to action, then dispatched Santinelli to rouse Monaldeschi to action, with no result in either case. She had asked the Cardinal to send her some money, in fact the very large sum of 300,000 scudi. He sent her 15,000, or rather, Santinelli delivered 15,000 to her. She sent him off to Rome to settle some business matters for her. She had still a few things worth pawning or selling, and she wanted to go back to the Palazzo Farnese; Santinelli was to establish whether or not she might do so. He did – she might not, but he sent her a letter of enthusiastic lies, anyway. Her Majesty would be most welcome, he wrote, and he had managed to raise some money for her out of the things she had left there. This at least was true, though he did not say that he had raised much more for himself. In fact, he was living exceedingly well on the proceeds of Christina’s diamonds and silver. The plague was in abeyance, and he was in no hurry to return to provincial Pesaro. Monaldeschi returned from Paris towards the end of the winter to find the Queen unhappy and restless.
By the middle of June, she had had enough. With no invitation from the French, and without even permission to travel through the country, she left Pesaro and set out for Paris with a small entourage. Though unimpeded by any lengthy formalities, her journey this time was slow. Lack of money and lack of proper arrangements delayed her, and it was the tenth of October when she arrived at last at the château of Fontainebleau, where she was to await her invitation to court. A suite of modest rooms had been set aside for her in the château’s conciergerie, adjacent to the famous Galerie des Cerfs with its walls lined with stags’ heads, the hunting trophies of generations of princes. The magnificent forest surrounding the château was in its richest autumn glory, but, despite the season and the silent promptings of the Galerie, Christina was not in the mood for hunting. She spent most of her time instead writing urgent notes to Mazarin, but the Cardinal was suffering from a tactical case of the gout; he could not come to see her, and he could not receive her, either. She paced and fumed, and in her calmer moments thought up wild schemes to raise money from the Swedes and from the Emperor, and wilder schemes to spend it on trumpets and drums and helmets for her future Neapolitan guard.
But if too little was happening in Paris, too much appeared to be happening nearer at hand. It was not Christina herself but Monsignor Lascaris who first realized that something was amiss. As early as July he had begun to suspect that his letters to the Queen were being tampered with. She had told him that some of their seals had been broken, and he began to take the precaution of binding the packets with fine wire. He urged the Queen to be cautious, and he wrote as well to Azzolino, asking him to come to Pesaro for a few days. There was ‘something serious’, he said, that he needed to talk to him about. It seems that Lascaris had got wind of the Naples plan, which Azzolino still knew nothing about.
Lascaris’ warning had alerted Christina, but she took no sudden action, biding her time and quietly gathering evidence. Soon after her arrival at Fontainebleau, she wrote to the postmaster at Lyon asking him to take particular care of the post addressed to her. Ordinarily, a letter would be sent in a sealed box; but at various points along the journey, the box would be opened to admit new letters or remove others for local delivery. Christina now asked that every letter addressed to her or to any member of her household be delivered into her own hands by personal courier. Monaldeschi, meanwhile, had noticed that letters for himself were arriving less and less frequently. He made his own enquiries of the postmaster in Lyon, but nothing had been misdirected, and nothing was waiting. His own post, it seemed, was being intercepted. Had he known it, not only letters addressed to him but also many written by him were now in Christina’s hands; indeed, she herself had made copies of them. There is little doubt that some of them, at least, concerned the Naples plan.
From Christina’s point of view, the plan had reached a crisis point. It was now a year and a half since her first agreement with Mazarin. She had spent months in France, yet they had scarcely met, and they had never managed to discuss the plan in detail. ‘The treaty we made at Compiègne’ had as yet led nowhere. The attack had been postponed, the troops had been diverted, the Cardinal was unwell, and now there were rumours of peace. Christina had spent a lot of money on the strength of Mazarin’s promise, and above all, she needed a crown of her own, a real crown, with a court, and lands, and subjects. She felt frustrated and humiliated by the Cardinal’s dismissive response to her. She wanted to show him, and show the world, that she was a force to be reckoned with. She wanted to be taken seriously as a sovereign, as a Queen, and he was not taking her seriously at all. He was keeping her hands tied, while she wanted to strike out, and in the end, she did so, though it was not Mazarin who endured the blow, but her Grand Écuyer, the Marchese Monaldeschi.
The prior of the monastery at Fontainebleau was a certain
Père Le Bel, and it was he who later recorded the details of the dreadful day of the tenth of November 1657, the blackest day of Christina’s life. Her servant, Cesare Capitone, also gave evidence at an inquiry held later in Monaldeschi’s native town of Orvieto. Both testimonies condemn Christina, if not in point of law, in terms of the simpler dictates of humanity.
According to Capitone, the Marchese had nursed a bitter hatred for Francesco Santinelli, and had determined to turn the Queen against him during his absence. From Rome, his friend Peruzzi had been keeping him informed of Santinelli’s roguery, and Monaldeschi had intended to make use of this information in due course. But the Queen’s evident suspicion had presented him with an apparently quicker way of undermining his rival. Realizing that she was inspecting the post, he had forged several letters prejudicial to her, and signed them with Santinelli’s name. They included scurrilous details of the Queen’s supposed private life. They were intended, says Capitone, to ‘spark off an explosion that would destroy all Santinelli’s plans’.
The forged letters, and others, came into the hands of Père Le Bel on the morning of the sixth of November. The priest was standing at the door of the monastery, watching the labourers working in the fields, when he was approached by a servant who said that the Swedish Queen wished to speak with him. He followed the servant back to the château, and went with the Queen into the Galerie des Cerfs, where, she said, they could speak without interruption. They had met only once before, and very formally, but the Queen now told Père Le Bel that she had something confidential to say, and asked him to regard their present meeting as if under the seal of the confessional. The priest acquiesced. Even with ordinary people, he said, with regard to confidential matters he was as if ‘blind and mute’; with those of royal blood even more so. At this the Queen handed him a small packet of papers, three times sealed, but unaddressed. This he was to return to her when she demanded it, no matter who was present at the time, and she asked him to note precisely the date and hour that he had received it. The priest vowed secrecy once more, and returned to the monastery. The whole episode had lasted little more than half an hour.
On the tenth of November, in the early afternoon, a servant arrived at the monastery. Once again the Queen had asked to see the priest. Taking the packet with him, Père Le Bel followed the servant across the courtyard to the Galerie des Cerfs. Once inside, he found the door shut, and locked, behind him. ‘I was rather taken aback,’ he writes.
In the middle of the gallery stood ‘Her Swedish Majesty’. She was speaking to a man whom the priest did not know, addressing him as ‘Marchese’. Three other men were present, one of whom was Francesco Santinelli’s brother, Ludovico. The Queen then turned to Père Le Bel, and, ‘in a rather loud voice’, asked him to return the packet of papers to her. She examined the seals carefully, then broke them open, and handed the papers to the Marchese. Gravely, she asked him whether he recognized them. Monaldeschi denied it, ‘but his voice trembled’. The packet, it seemed, had contained only copies of documents. The Queen then produced the originals and showed them to the Marchese, denouncing him as a traitor, calling on him to admit that the handwriting and signatures were his own. He did so, but immediately began to insist that he had meant no harm. Challenged with the forged letters, he replied that Santinelli’s originals had been so shocking and so damaging to the Queen that he had decided to copy and circulate only the less offensive sections; had he suppressed them completely, Santinelli would have discovered that they had been intercepted. Unpersuaded, the Queen put further questions to him, and he protested his innocence, excusing his own actions and casting the blame elsewhere. Seeing the Queen unmoved, he then threw himself at her feet, begging her pardon. At this, the three other men drew their swords.
The Marchese got up, and drew the Queen aside, and for the next two hours walked up and down the gallery with her, putting his case, insisting on his loyalty, imploring her to believe him. She listened to him ‘very patiently, with no sign of emotion or anger’, while the three men stood by, their swords unsheathed. At length, leaning on her little ebony cane, the Queen turned to Père Le Bel. ‘Reverend Father,’ she began, ‘you are my witness that I am not acting in haste or without good reason. I have allowed this faithless man more time and more opportunity than he has any right to ask, to justify his actions to me.’ She pressed the Marchese further, and he took from his pocket a few papers and two or three little keys tied together; these he handed to her. At the same time, some silver coins fell out of his pocket. ‘I do not remember,’ writes the priest, ‘which one of us picked them up.’
The Queen then spoke again, quietly and gravely, though her voice betrayed some tension. ‘Reverend Father,’ she said, ‘I shall now withdraw. I leave this man to you. Prepare him for death, and take his soul under your protection.’
The priest and the Marchese fell at once on their knees before the Queen. ‘Had I myself been condemned,’ writes Père Le Bel, ‘I could not have been more terrified.’ He begged her to have mercy, but the Queen was unrelenting. She could not allow mercy to prevail, she said. The Marchese was a traitor and a criminal. She had given him her trust, in her business affairs and in her own most secret thoughts – more, she had regarded him as a brother, showering him with gifts and favours, which he had repaid with ingratitude and treachery. His conscience alone, she said, must be enough to cause him remorse, and with these words she withdrew to her room.
The Marchese threw himself at the feet of Père Le Bel, asking him to go after the Queen and plead for mercy. The priest exhorted him instead to plead for the mercy of God, but Ludovico Santinelli went to her, and soon returned in great distress; Her Majesty had told him to carry out the execution quickly. In tears, he exhorted the Marchese to make his confession. ‘At these words,’ writes Père Le Bel, ‘the Marchese was beside himself.’ He threw himself once more at the priest’s feet, imploring him to go to the Queen. This he did. He found her alone, her expression ‘perfectly calm, as though nothing was happening’. Once again he fell at her feet, weeping and begging her ‘by the wounds of Jesus Christ’ to have mercy on the Marchese. The Queen remained impassive. She was very sorry, she said, that she could not do so, but after Monaldeschi’s perfidy, and the cruelty that he had tried to inflict upon her personally, he could hope for neither pardon nor pity. For far lesser crimes, she added, she had sent men to be broken on the wheel.
The Queen then remarked that her decision was not without precedent; French kings, too, had resorted to summary executions. Père Le Bel conceded this, but ‘took the liberty of reminding her’ that the Kings of France had at least been in their own country, while Christina herself was a guest in the land. Would not such an act cause great offence to the present King? Would he not feel that his gracious hospitality had been terribly abused? Would Her Swedish Majesty not reconsider?
Her Swedish Majesty would not. She replied that she had not come to Fontainebleau as a prisoner or a refugee, and she owed no allegiance to the King of France. She maintained her right to judge her own subjects, whenever and wherever she chose. She was a ruler in her own right, and she would give account of herself to no one but God. Perhaps to justify the extremity of her response, she then inflated the Marchese’s crime to the level of abstraction. She was acting, she said, not against the Marchese in person, but against his unparalleled disloyalty and treachery, which were matters of universal importance. Such crimes deserved death; she would maintain the same verdict before the altar itself.
Père Le Bel persisted. Such an act would do lasting harm to Her Majesty’s reputation, until now so admirable, for ‘thought, word, and deed’. Her Majesty was respected and honoured throughout France, but, regardless of her reasons, such an act would undoubtedly be viewed as violent and unthinking. Again the priest pleaded for mercy, ‘noble mercy’. Or could not the Marchese be turned over to the law? Could not a formal writ be issued against him? This would give Her Majesty satisfaction, and it would be acceptable in the eyes of the
world.
This suggestion was dismissed indignantly. The Queen repeated her right to judge her own ‘subjects’. What need had she to bring a lawsuit against a member of her own household, with the evidence of his disloyalty, in his own handwriting, already brought to light? Père Le Bel objected that, though that was true, Her Majesty was herself ‘an interested party’. The Queen interrupted him, saying that she would inform the King and Cardinal Mazarin about the matter herself. She then ordered Père Le Bel to return to the Marchese, and attend to the saving of his soul. ‘On my honour and conscience,’ she said, ‘I cannot grant what you ask.’
At this point, Père Le Bel writes, the Queen’s voice faltered. The priest took this to mean that she would now have changed her mind, not about the execution itself, but about the time and place of it. But, he notes, delay might have allowed the Marchese to escape, and put the Queen’s own life at risk. He did not know what to do. ‘I could not simply go away,’ he writes, ‘and in any case I had to help the Marchese in the saving of his soul.’
Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric Page 32