She travelled at a furious pace and in a savage mood, mocking her tired servants for having journeyed so far in Sweden without a glimpse of the capital. She proposed ironic toasts to the King and the regents, then lapsed into a prolonged bad temper. Every delay was attributed to some deliberate act against her, and at times she feared she would be arrested. Pathetically, too, she harried Pontus for news from the regents – had the post arrived yet, would it be waiting for them at the next stage, was she not about to be recalled? There was no recall, and the horses pounded relentlessly onward; Christina’s conceding alone could have halted them, and this she would not do. Within three days, the company had arrived back at Hälsingborg, and on the fifth of June, at nine o’clock in the morning, Christina and her household embarked to cross the sea to Denmark. Whatever other feelings he may have had, Pontus was relieved to see her safely on board. The journey had been so fast and furious that his eyes had become infected from the dust of the roads; it was two days before he was able to report her departure to the regents. The little Queen had worn the herculean Count into the ground. ‘I am so tired, I can hardly stand up,’ he wrote. ‘I’ve never known such hard work in my life.’13
Christina took the time to pen a misleading note to the French Ambassador at Copenhagen, informing him that she was on her way back to Hamburg, and as a postscript to the letter, she added, untruthfully, ‘I forgot to tell you that they were not going to let me attend mass at Pomponne’s. After that, I couldn’t in all honour remain in Sweden.’14 Five days later, accompanied by 138 moaning, muttering men, she arrived. Dirty and dusty and burnt by sun and wind, they looked ‘like gypsies’ staggering in from the road. The Marchese Del Monte had reached his limit, and exhaustion overtook him. As for the two women of the household, they were apparently ‘not fit to be seen’; they stumbled directly from carriage to bed, pausing only to wash, perhaps. Only Christina remained alert, needing neither rest nor refreshment. Rage had kept her going.
As usual, she tried to lay the blame elsewhere. In a letter to Azzolino, she insisted that the regents had never expected her to go to Sweden at all. All the elaborate formalities were no more than a ruse to persuade the people that it was her own decision not to come, and that they had been prepared to welcome her warmly. ‘They tried to put the blame on me,’ she wrote. ‘They were simply terrified at the thought of my presence, and the prospect of my staying a long time frightened them more than death. They simply had to get me out of Stockholm and out of Sweden as soon as possible. The whole of Sweden and the whole world holds them responsible, and the consequences could be very bad for them’.15 But there was no one to avenge her, and the only ill consequences were her own. After eleven months of waiting for her chance to visit Stockholm, she was back in ‘dreary, stinking, barbaric’ Hamburg, while Magnus congratulated himself on having served his kingdom honourably, and having settled, at the same time, an old personal score.
When the ailing Pope Alexander VII went at last to his eternal reward, Rome erupted in a fest of irreverence. Alexander’s lofty moral principles and his ascetic, bookish way of life had earned him no popularity with ordinary Romans, and in higher circles, his attempts at administrative reform had disrupted many familiar old patterns of influence. Lampoons hung about the necks of Rome’s ‘talking statues’ denounced the deceased Pope as a miser and a hypocrite and, worst of all, a bore. A swift conclave produced a general favourite to succeed him: Giulio Rospigliosi, Pope Clement IX, an able and easygoing man, a lover of society, and a noted patron of the arts. Azzolino and the Squadrone had worked for his election, and so had the French, though Christina did not know it – they had pretended to favour a cardinal of the great Farnese family. Christina was elated, anyway. The new Pope was a personal friend, and he loved everything, or almost everything, that she loved. Above all, he loved the theatre, and had written for it himself – the libretto for the Trionfo della Pietà on her arrival in Rome had been his own. More, Rospigliosi had pledged to end the tradition of nepotism, and most wonderful of all, he had appointed Azzolino Vatican Secretary of State – a dual appointment, ironically enough, with his nephew Giacobo Rospigliosi.
Christina decided to ignore this inconvenient inconsistency. The position of Secretary of State had been Rospigliosi’s own before his election, and she interpreted Azzolino’s appointment as a sign that he himself might one day wear the papal tiara. Her sulky enduring of ‘dreary, stinking, barbaric’ Hamburg gave way to a sudden exuberance, and she announced that her period of mourning for the Queen of Poland was at an end. Casting off her black garb, she began to lay plans for a celebration in the grandest style, egged on by the canny Marchese Del Monte, spotting his chance to turn a quick profit. The preparations for this ‘publick Testimony of her Joy’ were extravagant, and it was soon the talk of the town.16 Pulpits rocked as one Lutheran pastor after another fulminated against the evils of the Queen’s Catholicism, while her links to the Texeira family provided the pretext for an outburst of antisemitism. Friends grew anxious, and tried to change her mind. The city magistrate paid her a visit, warning of the dire consequences that might be provoked by so public a Catholic celebration in so determined a Protestant town. But, ‘notwithstanding all that could be said, she would follow her own Capricio’. Defiantly, or bravely, or foolishly, she pressed on, laying in supplies of arms and ammunition along with the meat and wine, and on the twenty-fifth of July, the festivities began. They began with a mass, a solemn pontifical mass of elaborate stateliness and spectacle, celebrated in the great hall of the palace. The priests donned special vestments, a seventh candle burned upon the altar, and, in a distinctly unorthodox gesture, several cannon fired off at the elevation of the host. A grand dinner followed for the Queen and her guests, while at the front of the building servants prepared the evening’s principal entertainment.
It was a highlight in more than one sense, for it consisted of a huge structure which supported no fewer than 600 torches, as yet unlit, arranged in the shape of the papal tiara and keys, along with the words Long Live Pope Clement IX. Together with the Pope’s heraldic arms, there were ‘many curious Figures which represented his Vertues’. Above them was displayed ‘a Picture of the Eucharist in a Cloud, ador’d by Angels, and below was an Emblem of the Church in a Pontifical Habit, treading Heresie under Foot’.
It was not exactly calculated to placate local tensions, and Christina’s martial preparations showed that her imagination had already flown quite far. A crowd of townsfolk, milling about since the morning hours, increased as the evening approached. People wandered over after their day’s work, until ‘a great number of Seamen, both English, Dutch, and Danes, joyn’d to the Populace of Hambourgh, were crowded into the Space which is before the Palace, being drawn together by the Novelty of the Sight’, and no doubt by the two fountains of wine gushing gratis in the square.
When night fell, the torches were lit; the Pope’s name and insignia and all his ‘Vertues’ flamed out above the crowd, and at this, the first stirrings of revolt were felt. But the cannon fired another salute, the wine continued to flow, and the muttering subsided. Christina herself took the opportunity to step outside to see the illumination. No one bothered her, and presently she went back inside, her guests took their leave, and she began to get ready for bed.
A hail of stones and the smashing of glass stopped her in the midst of her preparations. Through the broken windows came the sounds of a restive, drunken crowd. The torches had lasted for three hours, and the fountains of wine for six; both were now exhausted. Stones battered the windows and doors, chipping away the palace façade. Servants rushed to close the gates. The crowd was becoming a mob.
This much is agreed on all sides, but the details of the ensuing riot, from both inside and outside the palace, remain contentious. Christina herself later prepared an official account of it, which she intended for publication; supposedly, it was the work of her secretary-priest, Father Santini, but she is known to have made a number of amendments to it, an
d there is little doubt that it was in fact her own work. It is entitled ‘Report on the Insult Offered by the Populace at the Queen’s Palace’, and it relays an action of considered self-defence, with Christina herself playing an exemplary, not to say heroic, part. The report begins with the closing of the palace gates:
We closed the gates and defended ourselves against the fury of the populace with their hail of stones and their pistol and rifle shots. We wanted to fire on them, but the Queen forbade anyone to do so without her express order. No one has ever resisted such a temptation, and no one wanted to fire more than she herself. But she judged quite rightly that we should not arrive at such a resolution except in the greatest extremity…Remaining calm throughout, the Queen acted with great prudence and vigour…But seeing the danger increasing rather than receding, she…gave the order that the cannon should be prepared…It seemed very likely, that she must now prepare to die.
She therefore commanded a salvo of muskets to be fired, because there was no hope of any help…The order was no sooner given than carried out, and so successfully that we killed a number of people on the square. Several others were wounded.17
Santini’s report, edited or rewritten by Christina, effectively describes the events as she wished them to have been; perhaps she had even managed to convince herself of its truth. A very different tale is told by her chronicler servant. He begins by noting the ill effects of the hours of freely flowing wine, and the misjudged firing of blank shots into the crowd:
To increase the Misfortune she had made two Fountains of Wine, whose Liquor animated them the more to throw Stones against the Decoration. Some of the Queens Domesticks to repress the Insolence of the People, shot Pistols out at the Windows without Ball, but this instead of dispersing, incited them the more, and made them redouble their Insults, till they within were forc’d to shut the Palace Gates. The Windows were quickly battered all to pieces, and many of them would have set fire to the Gates with Bundles of Straw. In this Extremity the Queens Servants had recourse to four Falcons [small cannon] that lay in the Hall, loading them with broken pieces of Brass and Iron, and discharged them against the enraged Populace, of whom they kill’d some and wounded others. This indeed made them recoil a little, but the Blood and Cries of their wounded Companions animated them afresh; so they return’d to the Charge with an Intent to break open the Gates and plunder the Palace. But because they had neither Petards, nor Engines to force them, a Score of Lusty Fellows brought a huge long Body of a Tree, that lay at a Carpenter’s Door in the Street to make a Mast for a Ship, which they moving backwards and forwards like the Battering Rams of the Antients, did many times essay to break open the Gates.
It was then the Queen knew, but too late, that she had done ill to follow the Counsel which had been given her; and the fear of falling into the Hands of this Insolent Mob, did so terrifie her, that she knew not what to resolve on; for the Place was no longer tenable, and the greatest part of her Domesticks were without Doors, and even the Marquis del Monte…
At last two of the Servants took the Queen by the Arms, and led her out at a Back-door, which opened into another Street, and brought her on Foot, in Man’s Apparel, to Monsieur le Chevalier de Terlon’s Lodgings…He liv’d in a Quarter of the Town that was at some distance, and the Queen being half dead when she got thither, they put her to Bed, and presently after brought up Supper. When she was come to her self, she began to eat with a good Appetite, and after a while falling into her accustomed Rhodomon-trades, she affirmed, That if they would but have let her appear at the Windows, she should have Thunderstruck all this Rabble, which had lost the Respect that was due to her. The Prince of Homburg being informed of this Uproar, he (accompanied by some other Gentlemen of Note and Reputation) crouding themselves among the Populace, endeavour’d to appease them with fair Words, swearing they themselves would be reveng’d on those Dogs the Papists, that had been the Cause of this Scandal; But (said they) the Queen knows nothing of all this, and will be the first that shall Chastize the Inventers, provided you commit no further Outrage, by forcing her Palace. But know, that if we do not make a speedy Reparation for the Injuries done Her Majesty, we shall not only draw upon us the Arms of Sweden and Denmark, but of all the Princes of the Empire, and of the Emperour himself, who will severely revenge it. These few Words pronounc’d with force, disarm’d these Mutineers; to which also the Burghers being in Arms, did not a little contribute. So the siege was rais’d, and the next Week after the Magistrates conducted the Queen to her Palace in Triumph. And then this Princess was so bountiful as to disburst Two thousand Crowns among the Wounded.18
The truth may be one or the other, or somewhere in between. But with an angry mob outside, and eight people lying dead in the square, and ‘a Score of Lusty Fellows’ trying to batter in the doors, it is quite likely that it ‘did so terrifie her, that she knew not what to resolve on’, until two sensible servants bundled her out the back way in disguise, leaving the Prince and his companions to dispel the chaos by tacticful words and visible weapons.
Christina’s public celebration had been unwise in itself, as she had been formally warned, and the huge fiery images of Catholic loyalty, burning for three hours above the square, had been provocative in the extreme. Moreover, two fountains of wine, flowing freely for six hours, were almost calculated to cause trouble. She could hardly have created better conditions if it had been her outright intention to provoke an anti-Catholic riot; perhaps it was. The four little cannon and the supplies of lead and brass and gunpowder no doubt provided a whiff of the excitement of battle for this heroine manquée, but with such small provisions, she cannot have expected any major disturbance. In advance, as in retrospect, she could be brave in perfect safety.
Nor did she lack admirers, or flatterers, prepared to confirm her memory of the events, as the chronicler observes wryly:
If I had been a brib’d Historian, I should have extoll’d the undaunted Courage of the Queen upon this Occasion to the very Skies, and assured the World, that she gave the uttermost Proofs of an Heroick Courage, but then I should have betray’d the Truth: For it is most certain, that never any Woman was more timerous than she; tho’ when the Danger was pass’d, she play’d the Braggadocio, and was infinitely pleas’d when her Sycophants affirmed, That neither Alexander nor Caesar had ever testified so much Bravery in the midst of so many Dangers. So true it is, that Flattery can disguise any thing.19
And nine days afterwards, when the danger was well and truly past, Christina ‘play’d the Braggadocio’ again in the account of the events that she sent to Cardinal Azzolino. It reveals the same tone of exaggerated defiance that is found in the letters that she wrote following the death of Monaldeschi. It is as if she is holding her head just a little too high to be comfortable:
I am sending you an account of the celebration which I gave here for His Holiness; here you will see the pure and impartial truth, without exaggeration, and you will see that unfortunately I was forced to make blood flow once there was no more wine; but my consolation is that I did what I could to prevent it and that I was forced into it by the most barbarous attack there has ever been. God has preserved us, miraculously, for you must know that I defended myself with about a dozen men against more than 8,000, you could say against the whole town of Hamburg. The gazettes all speak highly of my action, but they lie in saying that my people started a quarrel with the townspeople. That is not true, and I insist that on our side there was no cause offered for such an insult; we did not give so much as a wink that might have caused offence. Everything is absolutely calm now. Only the preachers speak against me, though the magistrate has forbidden them to do so. Their outrage started when I ordered the exposition of the Holy Sacrament for the Pope’s election, and they could not bear the fact that I had celebrated it in their town. Still, the town has suffered a mortification which it will remember for a long time, and I flatter myself that I have upheld the Pope’s glory, and my own, quite worthily.20
Azzolino’s
response is unknown, but he cannot have been pleased to learn of the eight people killed and many more wounded, effectively in the name of the Catholic Church; Christina’s remark that she was ‘forced to make blood flow once there was no more wine’ is, after all, not very amusing. Nor can it have helped to smooth any diplomatic paths for the newly elected Pope in an already virulently anti-Catholic city. Though flippant in tone, Christina’s letter to Azzolino reveals, between the lines, a contained alarm, a shaky determination to place herself in the right. It is the uneasy defiance of the guilty man who knows he has done wrong, but dares not admit it – not for fear of punishment, but because doing wrong is a sign of weakness, and weakness deserves no respect. The Hamburg mob, like Monaldeschi, had lost ‘the respect that was due to her’. Money might be lacking, friends might fail her, love might die, but respect she would have, and must have, at any cost. It is this that lay beneath her frequent ‘Rhodomontrades’, where she bragged of her power and of the force of her own personality – ‘if they would but have let her appear at the Windows, she should have Thunderstruck all this Rabble’. It recalls her wishful story of the Russian ambassadors, awestruck in her six-year-old presence.
Christina Queen of Sweden: The Restless Life of a European Eccentric Page 38