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

by Buckley, Veronica

  The unhappy priest returned to the gallery. In tears, he embraced Monaldeschi, charging him to prepare for death, and to think of his eternal salvation. At this, Monaldeschi shrieked, then sank to the floor, and began his last confession. So distraught was he that his sins emerged in indiscriminate pieces of Latin, French, and Italian, and twice he got up, crying out in desperation. Père Le Bel nonetheless did his duty with care, and had just begun to question the Marchese ‘to clear up a doubtful point’ when the Queen’s own chaplain came in. Seeing him, Monaldeschi got up once again, ‘without waiting for absolution’, and went over to him. Hand in hand, the two withdrew to a corner, where they spoke together at some length. The chaplain then left the room, taking Ludovico Santinelli with him, but Santinelli quickly returned. He raised his sword and said, ‘Pray for forgiveness, Marchese! You are about to die!’

  He pushed Monaldeschi to one end of the gallery, ‘right beneath a painting of the Château de Saint-Germain’. Père Le Bel turned away, but not before he had seen Santinelli thrust his sword into Monaldeschi’s stomach. Monaldeschi grabbed at the sword, but Santinelli pulled it back, and in doing so cut off three of the Marchese’s fingers. Santinelli saw that his sword had been bent, and called to the other two that the Marchese must be wearing chain mail under his clothing. He struck at his face, and Monaldeschi cried out to Père Le Bel. Santinelli ‘considerately withdrew a pace or two’, allowing the priest to go to him. The Marchese knelt down, and asked for absolution. It was granted, and ‘as penance’ Père Le Bel instructed him to endure his death patiently and forgive ‘all those who had caused it’.

  Monaldeschi threw himself onto his stomach on the floor, inviting the final blow. The second man came forward and struck him on the head, knocking out a piece of his skull. Monaldeschi pointed to his neck, and the man struck at it ‘two or three times, but without doing much damage’, as the coat of mail had slipped up over it. Père Le Bel exhorted Monaldeschi to remember God, and bear it all patiently, ‘and other things like that’.

  Santinelli then asked Père Le Bel whether or not he should continue the execution. The priest replied indignantly that he could not advise him, and Santinelli apologized for having asked such a question. Hearing the door open, the wounded Marchese turned to see the chaplain standing at the end of the gallery. The chaplain did not move, and Monaldeschi dragged himself along the panelled wall towards him. Père Le Bel approached, but Monaldeschi seized the chaplain’s two hands and began a second confession. The chaplain told him to ask God’s forgiveness, then asked Père Le Bel if he might grant the Marchese a further absolution. This done, he asked the priest to remain with the Marchese, and said that he himself was going to speak to the Queen.

  The second man at once came forward, and, with his long, narrow sword, ran Monaldeschi through the throat. Monaldeschi fell towards Père Le Bel, and lay in final agony another fifteen minutes, while the priest exclaimed ‘Jesus! Mary! and other holy words’. At a quarter to four, Monaldeschi breathed his last. Père Le Bel began to pray, while Santinelli seized the body and shook the dead man’s arms and legs, unbuttoned his breeches and underpants, and felt in all his pockets. He found only a small knife, and a prayer book.

  The three men, now disarmed, went into the Queen’s room, where Père Le Bel followed them. Santinelli announced the Marchese’s death. Her Majesty expressed regret, but added that justice had been done. She prayed that God would forgive him, and promised to have many masses said for the repose of his soul. Père Le Bel was charged with disposal of the body. He sent for a bier, and, though the corpse was heavy and the road bad, Monaldeschi was in his grave by a quarter to six.

  Two days later, Christina sent a hundred pounds to the monastery to pay for 30 masses to be offered for Monaldeschi. She duly received a receipt.

  If Monaldeschi had intended to betray Christina and Mazarin to the Spaniards, the secret was already out. Even in August, there had been rumours of a possible invasion. Spanish spies had been observing the training manoeuvres and other preparations of the French fleet. From Naples itself, the Papal Nuncio had reported details of the plan to Rome, and from Paris had come the same reports, with the additional information of Christina’s involvement. The Viceroy in Naples, sighing at the old news of one more supposedly imminent invasion, had set about strengthening the town’s defences, anyway.

  It may be that Monaldeschi was acting not for the Spaniards, but for the French, or at least, for one Frenchman. He had certainly opposed Spanish rule in Naples, and was a known local patriot, by convenience if not by birth. He was an adventurer and a conspirator, and penniless to boot. Mazarin would have had no need of him, but he would have appealed to that other noble adventurer and conspirator, the Duc de Guise, who had ambitions of his own for the crown of Naples.

  When Monaldeschi arrived in Lyon with Christina in the summer of 1656, he would undoubtedly have renewed his acquaintance with the Duc, who had arrived to accompany the Queen to Paris. The Duc remained with Christina’s entourage for some two months. Perhaps, during this time, an alternative Naples plot was hatched to the satisfaction of both men, and to the exclusion of the Queen. The discovery of such a plot would have been a bitter humiliation to Christina. It would have meant more than the treachery of intimates, more than command of an army, more than the loss of the crown. It would have meant that, throughout the summer weeks; through all the compliments and lively conversations and rumours of love, it had been the Duc, not she, who had had the upper hand. While she had allowed herself to be flattered by his attentions to her, by his fulsome praise of her intellect and her languages and her beautiful, fiery eyes, she had been all the time his dupe. With Monaldeschi, or in the privacy of his room, he had not been admiring her. Instead, he had been laughing at her.

  A humiliation of this kind would explain the ferocity of Christina’s response. It would have struck at her constant and greatest resource – her sense of personal greatness. The exact nature of Monaldeschi’s treachery cannot now be determined, as the intercepted letters, and their copies, have never been found. But it is assumed that Christina herself destroyed them, and indeed, after the Marchese’s death, servants saw her leaving his room, with burnt papers smouldering behind her in the grate.

  Aftermath

  The story of the gradual, gruesome killing of Monaldeschi is beyond tragedy, bordering on horror. Not the least horrifying aspect is Christina’s own pitiless part in it, her calm and collected determination from start to dreadful end. On strictly legal grounds, she had acted within her rights. By her decree of abdication, she retained the privileges of an absolute ruler over her immediate household, and in a subsequent letter, she referred to herself, significantly, as Monaldeschi’s ‘sovereign’. It was of course not the first execution she had ordered; she herself had declaimed to Père Le Bel that she had had men ‘broken on the wheel’ for lesser offences. But these had all followed due legal process; there had been trials, and judges, and state executioners. By contrast, Monaldeschi’s death seemed brutal and arbitrary.

  Even among the cynical courtiers of a violent age, the news fell like a thunderbolt. Already outrageous, it grew ever worse as the gossip spread: Christina had watched the whole thing, laughing at Monaldeschi, mocking his fear, chatting to the killers as the deed was done. At first no motive was sought, for none was felt to be needed. Christina herself had displayed too often her crude and wilful nature. Her learning, her culture, all was as nothing. Now, it seemed, she had revealed herself to be a true barbarian, naturally capable of barbaric cruelty. At the French court, Madame de Motteville, who had earlier ‘praised the Queen’ herself, recorded the reaction: ‘Our most Christian Queen Mother is scandalized. Everyone at court is horrified by such a hideous revenge, and those who praised the Queen before are now ashamed of it. The King and his brother hold her responsible, and the Cardinal, who is not at all a harsh man, is astounded. Really, we are all horrified.’1

  Madame did add, however, that ‘everyone at court’ was no
w making fun of the wretched Marchese, who had had foresight enough to protect himself with a nine-pound coat of chain mail, but neither courage to defend himself, nor wit to run away.

  From Rome, the Pope denounced Christina as ‘a barbarian, brought up barbarously and living barbarously’, and declared that he would take legal action against the killers – Monaldeschi had after all been one of his own subjects. He informed the Queen that she should not return to Rome, but instead move to the town of Avignon, within the Papal States but at a safe distance from the Holy City. Christina disregarded this warning, but was sufficiently shaken by it to attempt to placate the Pope in a subsequent public letter to him.

  Soon enough, a motive was felt to be required, and rumours abounded. Monaldeschi had been Christina’s lover. He had spurned her, and she had responded with the extravagant fury of a woman scorned. Rumours closer to the truth also spread, at least in diplomatic circles: the Neapolitan patriot was in the pay of the Spaniards; the Queen had had her own plans for Naples; Monaldeschi had betrayed them. Cardinal Mazarin was concerned at all costs to prevent the truth of the invasion plan from leaking out. He himself concocted the story of a classic Italian vendetta between Monaldeschi and the Santinelli brothers. This, perversely, was believed by diplomats from Rome to Stockholm, who viewed the talk of political betrayal as a cover to salvage Christina’s reputation. In England it was said that the Pope, not the Cardinal, had offered her the Naples throne, but that she had been ‘cheated by his crafty Holiness’, and had killed Monaldeschi ‘for revealing that intrigue’.2 For Protestant Albion, one Catholic was evidently as good, or as bad, as the next.

  For her own part, Christina stubbornly refused to allow any pasting over. The background might be hazy, but the scene upstage would be visible to all. Her reputation was to stand or fall on what she had done, in cold blood, with absolute deliberation. To this end, she had herself sent a messenger immediately after the Marchese’s death to tell Mazarin what had happened. Appalled and anxious, the Cardinal had replied at once with a letter expressing his great surprise at ‘this curious accident’, which would certainly prejudice ‘our current project’. The letter was swiftly followed by the Cardinal’s own emissary, who delivered to Christina the following statement:

  The offence that Your Majesty has committed towards the King of France is so serious, and its consequences could be so shameful for you, that the Cardinal has not been willing to inform the King that such an attack has been made in one of his own châteaux. He therefore trusts that Your Majesty will deny any involvement in this distressing affair, leaving all responsibility for it to that unworthy servant who has clearly surpassed his orders, and request him to leave the country.3

  Christina dismissed this, and instead instructed the emissary to return to the Cardinal forthwith, insisting that she herself was wholly and solely responsible for what had happened, and adding: ‘I cannot believe that the King of France assumes any power over me. That would be incompatible with my birth and my standing, since in that respect I am the equal of any ruler on earth. I recognize no superior save God alone.’4

  Mazarin persisted. He dispatched the Queen’s old friend Chanut to try to bring her to reason. Chanut appears to have emphasized the scandal that the news had caused, and the harm that would be done to Her Majesty’s reputation if she did not issue some sort of statement denying her involvement in the affair. Christina would have none of it. She sent Chanut on his way, and on the fifteenth of November replied to the Cardinal in a letter of staggering defiance:

  Cousin

  Monsieur Chanut, whom I count among my best friends, will tell you that I welcome with respect all that comes from you. Although he has failed to make me panic, it is not owing to any lack of eloquence on his part; he has certainly painted my presumed atrocity in suitably vivid colours. However, we people of the North are rather wild and not very timorous by nature, and you must excuse him if his message from you has not been so successful as you had hoped. Please believe me when I say that I would do anything to accommodate you, except be afraid. Anyone who is past the age of thirty is hardly going to be worried about a little gossip, and as for me I find it much easier to strangle people than to be afraid of them. As to what I did with Monaldeschi, I can tell you that if I had not already done it, I would not go to bed tonight without doing it, and I have no reason to repent of it, but a hundred thousand reasons to feel satisfied. These are my feelings on the subject. If you accept them, I shall be pleased. If not, I shall continue to hold them anyway, and I shall remain all my life,

  Your affectionate friend, Christina.5

  Notwithstanding her ‘hundred thousand reasons to feel satisfied’, Christina appears to have written this with some feeling, for the handwriting is shaky, and the page is covered with ink blots. To Chanut himself, Christina sent a copy of it, with the following cover:

  I am sending you the letter that I have written to Monsieur the Cardinal. I have nothing to add except to ask you to assure him on my behalf that I am capable of doing anything for him and for his master the King, apart from being afraid or remorseful (or disowning anything that I have done). I know no one who is great enough or powerful enough to persuade me to deny my feelings or to disown what I have done. I am not telling you this as a secret, entrusted to you as a friend. I am telling it to you as a feeling that I am ready to declare to the whole world, and no one can stop me from having it or make me hide it unless they stop me from living.

  Christina Alexandra.6

  Despite her defiance, Christina was sufficiently persuaded to dismiss two of the executioners from her service. But on the same day, she wrote to Francesco Santinelli, who was still in Rome, still living off the unauthorized sale of her possessions, still sending back lying missives of encouragement to her. The tone of the letter is mildly admonitory, but essentially reassuring:

  I am sending you news of the death of Monaldeschi. He betrayed me and tried to make me believe that you were the traitor. I had done all I could to prove the contrary, as I did not do you the injustice of believing the infamous things he said about you. I thought that only he was capable of doing such things. Now he is dead, after having confessed his guilt and your innocence, and assuring me that he had done his best to incriminate you. Take heed of his example and pray to God that you may keep your understanding and your honour. Always behave like a nobleman, and never commit an action unworthy of that rank. Do not try to justify my conduct to anyone. I am responsible only to God, who would have punished me if I had left the crime of treachery unpunished. Let that suffice. My conscience tells me that I acted in accordance with divine and human justice, and that I have only done my duty. That is all I need to say. Try to keep your spirits up. I will do my best to give you the consolation you wanted. Rest assured that I will protect your interests.7

  The ‘consolation’ that Santinelli had been wanting was no less than a French dukedom, and Christina evidently felt that, in preparing for this, he should at least try to maintain an outward show of dignity. Brazenly, she wrote to Mazarin, requesting Santinelli’s ennoblement. The incredulous Cardinal dismissed the letter indignantly, but Christina continued to support her rogue Lord Chamberlain. She was fully aware of his abuse of her trust. She had herself intercepted Peruzzi’s letters to Monaldeschi, and read of her jewels being pawned and her plate being sold. But Santinelli was her Scaramouche. He could play the wily servant with impunity, and she would watch, amused, ignoring her own role of foolish aristocrat, gullible and gulled. Santinelli had the upper hand, and Christina allowed him to thumb his nose in every direction, including her own. She could not bring herself to believe that both her favourites had been disloyal to her, and so, from the unreasonable execution of the one, she proceeded to an unreasonable defence of the other.

  Her talk was defiant, but she took the precaution of issuing a public defence of her actions as well, and saw that it was widely circulated. The story she told was broadly the same as that recorded by Père Le Bel, but in her o
wn tale Christina managed to deflect the blame from herself to Monaldeschi, and to include a tacit appeal to the sympathy of the Pope. Describing herself throughout as ‘the Queen’, she tells of how she had begun to suspect Monaldeschi, and how she had taken to watching him closely and reading all his letters:

  She watched his every step, and discovered that he was betraying her, and so despicably that he was casting the blame onto another of the Queen’s servants, who was then absent. The Queen pretended to be taken in by this, the better to uncover the Marchese’s plan. And one day he said to her, ‘Your Majesty, you are betrayed, and the traitor is your absent servant, as you will soon see. I beg Your Majesty not to pardon him.’ The Queen replied, ‘What does a man deserve who betrays me in this way?’ And the Marchese answered, ‘Your Majesty must have him executed at once, without mercy. I offer myself as your avenger, or as your victim, for justice is at stake!’ ‘Do not forget what you have said,’ replied the Queen, ‘for I assure you I shall not pardon the traitor.’

  …Then, noticing that he was not receiving any post, the Marchese began to have his own suspicions. It seemed that he was contemplating flight, which the Queen decided to forestall. She summoned him, and he arrived, trembling and pale…And once he was unmasked as the traitor, he threw himself at the Queen’s feet and admitted that, only a few days earlier, in that very room, he had pronounced his own death sentence. The Queen asked the prior to hear the traitor’s confession, and commanded the captain to carry out the sentence. The Marchese, panic-stricken, threw himself once more at her feet and begged her to turn the death sentence into lifelong banishment from Europe, but the Queen replied that it was better to die than to live on in dishonour. She then left the room with the words, ‘May God be merciful to you. I am doing you justice.’