As usual, the business was managed, or mismanaged, by Santinelli. Before long he had got hold of one of Christina’s last irreplaceable treasures, her wonderful, twelve-foot coronation robe, with its pearls and its circles of solid gold crowns. She had brought it with her out of Sweden, and for eight dramatic years it had lain in storage; now it was to be sold for bread and candles. Some of the proceeds did get back to her, for Santinelli by now had his eye on an alternative source of income. He wanted to marry the Duchessa di Ceri, a rich young woman recently widowed – thanks to Santinelli, or so it was believed; her husband appeared to have been poisoned, and Christina’s Lord Chamberlain was the prime suspect. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, the Duchessa had taken a liking to him, and the Pope, alarmed, had locked her away in the Castel Sant’Angelo. Christina was obliged to admit at last that her protégé was not destined for sainthood, but nonetheless she tried to arrange him an honourable discharge from her household. The Ottoman Sultan was besieging Crete, at the time Venetian territory, and the Queen decided that Santinelli would make a fine regimental commander on the southern shores of Christendom. Soldiering was not to the Lord Chamberlain’s taste, but Christina herself became so excited by the idea that she decided an entire league of Christian powers must be formed to combat the Turks. The danger had not appeared suddenly, as the siege had begun thirteen years before, nor would it soon be contained – the siege would continue for ten years more, and within Christina’s lifetime the Sultan would be encamped at the gates of Vienna. But for Christina personally, her realization of the threat from the east could not have been better timed. It turned her mind away from Naples and allowed her to be reconciled with the Pope. Where the Pope led, most others followed, and gradually she was accepted once more as a normal, if not ordinary, fixture of Roman society.
Loyalty from one quarter, at least, had never been in doubt. Cardinal Azzolino, appalled, embarrassed, exasperated, had stood by Christina, despite all, through the first shocked days, through the months of spurning and scorn, through the humiliating lack of money and all the foolish, noisy talk of Naples. As the scandal cooled he had done what he could to effect her quiet rehabilitation within the Vatican, and by Christmastime of 1658 the usual good wishes could be sent without disdain from the cardinals to the Queen. The Pope demanded a final concession from her: she was to vacate the Palazzo Mazarini, which was located, awkwardly enough, directly opposite the Pope’s own residence, and take with her the crowd of ruffians and ragamuffins that passed for her royal household. She could not have taken this step on her own, as her riotous days at the Palazzo Farnese had made her persona non grata with every noble Roman landlord, but Azzolino found a new home for her, and in the spring of the new year, 1659, she moved to the quiet Renaissance villa on the other side of the river that would be her own for the rest of her life. It was not free, as the Palazzo Mazarini had been, but it was cheap – just over a thousand scudi per year. It needed renovations, but its garden was beautiful. It was part of the lease that the tenant must maintain the garden properly, and it was one requirement at least which Christina was delighted to meet. The landlord did not know this, for the Queen’s name had not been mentioned – Azzolino himself had signed the documents on behalf of ‘a person yet to be named’.
Christina moved into her new Palazzo Riario1 in July, and along with her came a new household. Azzolino had taken the opportunity of dismissing most of her servants and installing in their place a capable, reliable, diligent staff of his own choosing. Some were his relatives and many were from his native region of Le Marche, but if this served the Cardinal’s interests, it served Christina’s better. From this point, her financial affairs began to settle somewhat, scandal receded – for a time – from her little court, and she began at last to live, in a modest way, the cultured life that she had dreamed of. While the renovations were being made, she installed herself in the grounds in a casino, a kind of grand summerhouse, surrounded by ilex and orange blossoms. It stood at the very top of the Gianicolo, the highest of Rome’s seven hills, and from it she looked down over her gardens and her own Riario, and over to the city’s stately Renaissance palazzi and the exuberant baroque buildings of her own day. Opposite her stood the little Palazzo Farnesina, and directly across the river she could see the great Palazzo Farnese which had been her first home in the Eternal City – Michelangelo himself had planned to link the two by a new Tiber bridge. It was the perfect place for a restless Queen to calm down, and Christina turned happily to her books and her music and her garden.
In the same summer of 1659, the French and the Spanish brought their war to an end in the Peace of the Pyrenees, and in the following June, Louis XIV of France married his cousin, Maria Teresa, the Infanta of Spain.
Christina might have been happy to stay at her new palazzo on the hill above the river, but lack of money, as usual, dictated her plans. For the Queen’s purposes, Mazarin’s pockets were now empty. Most of her payments from the Pomeranian territories were going directly to him, and as Sweden’s wars expanded through Denmark and Poland and into Russia, even these began to be sporadic. Karl Gustav did what he could to bridge the gap, allotting her an extra 20,000 riksdaler – 10 per cent of her expected revenues – which he could ill afford himself. It was a loyal gesture, but it was not enough to purchase her gratitude. She repaid it by approaching the Emperor, who was again at war with the Swedes, asking for money in return for concessions for Swedish Catholics once peace had been concluded. But by now Christina’s word was not worth much, and besides, everyone except herself could see that she no longer had any influence in Sweden. The Emperor took no notice of her.
Karl Gustav’s thoughtfulness to his wayward cousin was his last. In February 1660, news arrived of his sudden death at the age of 38. If Christina grieved for him, remembering their childhood years together and their timorous, sweet first love, her grief was surmounted by anxiety for herself. Karl Gustav’s successor was his little son, just five years old, the very same age that Christina had been when Sweden’s throne had fallen to her. The boy was sickly, and he had no brothers. The country was to be ruled by a regency council, its Chancellor Christina’s longtime favourite and eventual bête noire, Magnus De la Gardie. After her departure from Sweden, his rise had been swift, and he was now effectively leading the government. There was no reason to expect that Magnus would be as considerate towards her as Karl Gustav had been. Worse, if the little King Karl should die, some other prince would take his place, someone, perhaps, not well disposed at all towards a renegade Catholic who had proved more than once disloyal to her native land. Christina’s uncertain financial situation might quite suddenly become desperate. This fear dislodged her from her garden and her books, and sent her on an anxious path northward, funded, once again, by the Pope. She needed to be in Stockholm before the first Diet was convened in the autumn. Her personal presence there would surely persuade the Riksdag to agree to continue her apanage. She travelled via Hamburg, and in the middle of October 1660, after more than six years’ absence, she set foot once again on the shores of her homeland.
She was by no means welcome. A formal letter, followed by a formal visit to Hamburg and a formal request that she return to Rome without coming to Stockholm, had all been ignored. The regents and senators gritted their teeth and gave her a ritual greeting. At the Diet convened in the first week of November, they agreed in principle to continue the apanage, but the war had changed things, and her lands were now yielding only half the sum that they had given before. Her former Majesty was now expected to take her leave, but Christina would not go. Not content with flaunting her Catholicism with far greater enthusiasm than she had ever shown in Rome, she wrote to the senators to inform them that, if her ailing little nephew should not survive, she intended to reclaim the Swedish throne for herself. Within hours her statement had been returned to her, without comment, and shortly thereafter she received a new document of the senators’ devising, which confirmed her abdication and renounced any
future claim to the throne. As they held the purse strings, she was obliged to sign it. To add insult to injury, the two priests accompanying her were required to leave the country forthwith. The French Ambassador thoughtfully sent his own priest to say mass for her, but his good offices were not sufficient to keep her in Stockholm, and she withdrew, priestless, to her own town of Norrköping.
Here, a hundred miles from Stockholm, she passed the freezing winter months, trying to secure a better return on her local rents. It was effort wasted, for management of any kind was alien to her, and she had none of Azzolino’s capable Marchigiani on hand to help. There was only the Conte Gualdo Priorato, another plausible figure in the Santinelli mould, and he was with her only when she did not send him slogging off to Paris to beg money from Mazarin or even from the King. When the Cardinal died in March 1661, Priorato descended on his relatives, trying to claim those of his bequests to which Christina felt herself entitled. Louis was asked to provide lifelong pensions for several members of her household, including Landini, her Captain of Guards and one of Monaldeschi’s killers, who had escaped Azzolino’s purge. His Most Christian Majesty may have been distracted by the charms of his pretty new bride; in any event, he made no response.
In May, Christina left Sweden. Her departure was unregretted, and she left with only one regret of her own: in the six months of her stay, she had not been able to see the Countess Ebba Sparre, her beloved Belle. Magnus had vindictively refused to permit his widowed sister-in-law to meet the Queen. Christina believed that Belle tried to follow her to Hamburg, but they do not seem to have met again. The Countess was already in poor health, and she did not live another year.
Hamburg was no more pleasant than Sweden had been, but Christina was obliged to remain there for twelve restless months. She took what refuge she could in her books, in the ancient world that she loved, remarking wryly that ‘the conversation of the dead must console me for that of the living’. Her old banker, Diego Texeira, had retired, and her new ‘Resident in Hamburg’ was his son, Manoel. Christina preferred him to his Antwerp associate, Fernando de Yllán, the son of her former host, and decided to transfer the administration of all her affairs from Antwerp to Hamburg. It was no small task, but at length it was arranged, the repayment of loans, the redemptions from pawnshops, the bankers’ fees, and all. Texeira was to deal with the Queen’s administrators in her Swedish lands, and she was to receive from him a monthly income of 8,000 riksdaler – more than enough for her to live upon comfortably, provided the Swedes kept paying. Content with this settlement, Christina began to lift her gaze once more beyond ‘those matters so much beneath her as expenses and accounts’. She began to think of politics and she began to think of religion, and for maximum effect she put the two together. The Kingdom of Denmark and the city of Hamburg were ready for religious liberty, she decided. There were Catholics enough in both places – though apparently not in Sweden – to warrant a general freedom of observance. This must be demanded, and the great Catholic powers must do the demanding. Accordingly, she sent off letters to France and Spain and Habsburg Vienna. In all places, it seems, memories were longer than her own. The sighing conclusion of the Thirty Years War – cuius regio eius religio – was not about to be called into question now. Louis replied with a pair of elegant, non-committal letters. The German Emperor flatly refused to listen to a word about it. From Felipe, nothing was heard for months, prompting a wry old adage from the lips of a wry old courtier – ‘If death came from Spain,’ it ran, ‘we would all be immortal.’ By the time the King’s reply arrived, Christina was gone, and the project forgotten. But the Pope, at least, remembered it, and noted it down with a mark of approval. He was there to welcome the Queen when she arrived again in Rome in the bright midsummer of 1662.
Her greeting was affectionate, her old friends gathered about her, and she was ready to settle quietly back into her beautiful home on the hill. So at least it seemed, and so at least it might have been, had not an opportunity presented itself for her to interfere once again in a diplomatic incident, and clumsily make things worse.
Christina’s return to Rome coincided with the arrival of His Grace Charles III de Poix, Duc de Créquy, Ambassador Ordinary from His Most Christian Majesty, King Louis XIV of France. The Queen and the Ambassador arrived on the very same day, and, though Christina’s return would have been food enough for Roman society, the Duc’s arrival was viewed as a welcome surfeit. The great Cardinal Mazarin was dead, and the twenty-three-year-old Louis was now in full command of France. It was the first time in nine acrimonious years that a regular French Ambassador had been appointed to the Holy See, and in consequence, the Duc provided a focus for renewed discussion of the many disputes which had never been properly settled. The Pope had not yet forgiven the French for their extravagant demands at the peace negotiations in Münster, almost fifteen years before; the French had not yet forgiven the Pope for his determined stance against the same. The Pope had not forgiven the French for opposing his election at the last conclave; the French had not forgiven the Pope for opposing their own territorial ambitions. The Pope’s relatives still had too much influence in papal affairs, or so thought the King; the King only wanted to replace their influence with his own, or so thought the Pope. Countless other diplomatic differences, great and small, had kept ‘the spirits of both sides boiling’.2 The Pope’s arch-enemy, Mazarin, bereft of his paintings and ‘all this’, had departed to higher riches, but there had been no abating of anti-papal rhetoric in his adopted country.
France’s new Ambassador was a dull and heavy man, of dull and heavy mind. He brought no agility to the delicate situation now obtaining between his nation and the Holy See, but instead kept the fires of animosity stoked by countless little tinders of stubbornness and pride. As the Spanish Ambassador had once done before him, the Duc immediately set about creating difficulties over small matters of diplomatic etiquette, taking every opportunity to offend the Pope and his supporters. He began by refusing to call upon the Pope’s family: they should call upon him first, he declared. He continued by making a fuss at Christina’s Palazzo Riario, where he insisted on due recognition of his superiority to the cardinal princes of the Church: he was to have a proper armchair to sit down upon, rather than a stool, even when he was Her Majesty’s sole visitor. A formal remonstrance was made to the King, Christina added her own complaint, and in due course a compromise was reached: there was to be no armchair, but Her Majesty would in future go a little further to welcome the Ambassador – specifically, whenever he visited, she would take three extra obliging little paces towards him, significantly stepping off the royal carpet.
The Ambassador’s residence was none other than the Palazzo Farnese, Christina’s former home, long since restored following the unrestrained activities of her servants in their early days in Rome. In front of the palazzo was a little piazza, and every day a band of soldiers, the Roman Governor’s Corsican Guards, paraded across the piazza towards their quarters. The long chain of command to which the Guards were subject ended in the person of Don Mario Chigi, the Pope’s own brother, and although Don Mario played no active role in their activities, his nominal responsibility for them provided an excellent opportunity for the Ambassador to niggle the Pope. The Duc therefore demanded that the Corsican Guards should no longer pass by his residence on their daily march home. The demand was viewed as provocatively as it had been intended – there was no other route to their quarters. The matter remained under consideration, and the already bad relations between the two parties grew steadily worse.
One hot August evening, as the Corsican Guards made their usual crossing of the piazza, the Duc’s men challenged them, flinging out insults and throwing one of them to the ground. Only too ready to respond, the Guards promptly surrounded the Palazzo Farnese, and when the Duc himself appeared at a balcony to see what was happening, a shot from an arquebus whizzed narrowly past him and slammed into the wall at his side. His lady wife, meanwhile, trying to return to the pal
azzo from a visit to a nearby church, found her way barred. The Guards began to batter her carriage, smashing the windows, then they seized one of her pages, set upon the boy, and killed him, and in the fight that followed, dispatched two French soldiers as well.
Within minutes, Christina had heard of the incident. She was enjoying a quiet evening stroll with Azzolino in the Riario gardens when an excited servant burst upon them with the news. The Queen was soon no less excited herself, and at once sent word to the Duchesse de Créquy – though not to the Duc – that, if the Palazzo Farnese was not yet secured, Her Grace would be welcome to pass the night under the Queen’s protection at the Riario. Her Grace, however, remained where she was, not wishing, perhaps, to leave her husband alone and unprotected, or perhaps because hostilities had now ceased, or even perhaps because the Roman Governor, in whose service the Corsican Guards were employed, was none other than Cardinal Lorenzo Imperiali, a known member of the Squadrone Volante and a close friend to Azzolino and to the Queen.
Christina had graciously offered her assistance, and her offer had graciously been declined, and that might have been an end to the matter, but the summer was languid, and distractions few, and she decided that there was a role for her to play. She determined to act as mediator between the two parties, and she duly sent off messages to that effect: the Pope should send his nephew at once to apologize to the Duc; the Duc should at once admit him. Her public behaviour was diplomatic, but impartiality was not in Christina’s nature. In a private letter to Azzolino, she revealed that, at least at first, her sympathies lay with the French, and she revealed, too, a considerable cynicism, given that three men had been killed, and a sentence of death was the likely reprisal. ‘One of the Corsicans will have to be sacrificed,’ she wrote, ‘and if those responsible cannot be found, the innocent will have to be punished. It must be clear that they are not being protected, and that no tricks have been used to save them.’3
Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric Page 35