A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Christina, Queen of Sweden
CHRISTINA, QUEEN OF SWEDEN,
Daughter of the great Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, and of Maria Eleonora of Brandenburgh, was born December 18th., 1626. Her father was very fond of her, and carried her about with him in all his journeys. When she was about two years old she was taken to Calmar, the governor of which hesitated, on her account, whether to give the king the usual salute, but Gustavus exclaimed, "Fire! the girl is a soldier's daughter, and should be accustomed to it betimes." The noise delighted the princess, who clapped her hands, and, in her infantile language, cried, "More, more!" showing thus early her peculiarly bold and masculine turn of mind.
Her father died in 1633, and Christina, a girl of seven years old, was placed upon the throne, and even at that early age she appeared to be conscious of her high destiny, and in all trying circumstances conducted herself with great firmness and dignity.
The queen-mother was a woman of weak judgment and capricious temper, and her injudicious management of the young Christina was doubtless the first cause of her dislike for her own sex, which was farther increased by the manner of her education. She early displayed an "antipathy," to use her own words, "to all that women do and say;" but she was an excellent classical scholar, admired the Greeks and Romans, and all the heroes of antiquity, particularly Homer and Alexander the Great. At the age of fourteen, she read Thucydides in the original; she rode and hunted, and harangued the senate, and dictated to her ministers. But in the gentler graces and virtues of her own sex she was deficient. She grew up self-willed, arrogant, and impatient; and yet was flattered because she was a queen. She understood this, and observed that "Princesses are flattered even in their cradles; men fear their memory as well as their power; they handle them timidly, as they do young lions, who can only scratch now, but may hereafter bite and devour."
When Christina had assumed the reins of government, in 1644, many of the most distinguished kings and princes of Europe aspired to her hand; but she uniformly rejected all their proposals, and caused one of her suitors, her cousin Charles Gustavus, to be appointed her successor. Her love of independence and impatience of control had exhibited themselves from childhood in a distaste to marriage. "Do not," said she to the states, "compel me to make a choice: should I bear a son, it is equally probable that he might prove a Nero as an Augustus."
Christina had an opportunity to display her magnanimity in the early part of her reign. While she was engaged in her devotions in the chapel of the castle at Stockholm, a lunatic rushed through the crowd, and attempted to stab her with a knife. He was seized, and Christina calmly continued her devotions. Learning that the man was insane, she merely had him put under restraint.
One of the most important events of Christina's reign was the peace of Westphalia, to which her influence greatly contributed. It was settled October, 1648, and by this treaty Sweden was confirmed in the possession of many important countries. The services of Salvius, one of her plenipotentiaries on this occasion, were rewarded by the dignity of senator; a prerogative which had till then belonged to birth, but to which the queen thought merit had a better claim.
During the remainder of her reign, a wise administration and a profound peace, reflect upon Christina a higher praise than can be derived from subtle negotiations or successful wars; she enjoyed the entire confidence and love of her people. All persons distinguished for their genius or talents, were attracted by her liberality to the Swedish court; and although her favour was sometimes controlled by her partialities or prejudices, and withheld from the deserving while it was lavished on those who flattered her foibles, yet she soon discovered and repaired such mistakes.
She, at length, began to feel her rank, and the duties it devolved upon her, a burden, and to sigh for freedom and leisure. In 1652, she communicated to the senate her resolution of abdicating the throne; but the remonstrances of the whole people, in which Charles Gustavus, her successor, joined, induced her to wear the crown for two years longer; when she resumed her purpose and carried it into effect, to the great grief of the whole nation.
In leaving the scene of her regal power, she appeared to rejoice as though she had escaped from imprisonment. Having arrived at a small brook which separated Sweden from Denmark, she alighted from her carriage, and leaping over it, exclaimed, "At length I am free, and out of Sweden, whither I hope never to return." Dismissing with her women the habit of her sex, she assumed male attire. "I would become a man," said she; "but it is not that I love men because they are men, but merely that they are not women."
On her arrival at Brussels she publicly and solemnly abjured the Lutheran faith, in which she was educated, and joined the Roman Catholic communion. From Brussels she went to Rome, which she entered with great pomp. She was received with splendid hospitality by the pope, and the Jesuits affirmed that she ought to be placed by the church among the saints: "I had rather," said Christina, "be placed among the sages."
She then went to France, where she was received with royal honours, which she never forgot to claim, by Louis the Fourteenth. But she disturbed the quiet of all the places she visited, by her passion for interfering and controlling, not only political affairs, but the petty cabals of the court. She also disgusted the people by her violation of all the decencies and proprieties of life, by her continuing to wear the dress of the other sex, and of her open contempt for her own. But the act that roused the horror and indignation of Louis the Fourteenth and his whole court, and obliged Christina to leave France, was the murder of Monaldeschi, an Italian, and her master of the horse, who is supposed to have been her lover, and to have betrayed the intrigue, though the fault for which he suffered was never disclosed by Christina. This event occurred in November, 1657, while she was residing in the royal palace of Fontainebleau. Monaldeschi, after having been allowed only about two hours from the time that the queen had made known to him her discovery of his perfidy, was put to death, by her orders, in the gallery aux Cerfs of the palace, by three men.
Louis the Fourteenth was highly indignant at this violation of justice in his dominions; but Christina sustained her act, and stated that she had reserved supreme power over her suite, and that wherever she went she was still a queen. She was, however, obliged to return to Rome, where she soon involved herself in a quarrel with the pope, Alexander the Seventh. She then went to Sweden; but she was not well received there, and soon left for Hamburgh, and from thence to Rome. She again returned to Sweden, but met with a still colder reception than before. It is said that her journeys to Sweden were undertaken for the purpose of resuming the crown, as Charles Gustavus had died in 1660. But this can hardly be true, as her adopted religion, to which she always remained constant, would be an insuperable obstacle, by the laws and constitution of Sweden, to her re-assuming the government.
After many wanderings, Christina died at Rome, April 15th., 1689, aged sixty-three. She was interred in the church of St Peter, and the pope erected a monument to her, with a long inscription, although she had requested that these words, Vixit Christina annos LXIII., should be the only inscription on her tomb. Her principal heir was her attendant, Cardinal Azzolini. Her library was bought by the pope, who placed nine hundred manuscripts of this collection in the Vatican, and gave the rest of the books to his family. Christina wrote a great deal; but her "Maxims and Sentences," and "Reflections on the Life and Actions of Alexander the Great," are all that have been preserved. She had good business talents, and a wonderful firmness of purpose. The great defects of her character, and the errors of her life, may be traced to her injudicious education, including the dislike she felt for women, and her contempt of feminine virtues and pursuits. She should be a warning to all those aspiring females, who would put off the dignity, delicacy, and dress of their own sex, in the vain hope that, by masculine freedom of deportment and attire, they should gain strength, wisdom, and enjoyment.