1648-50]

Christina as Queen

575

wife of John Casimir, who had brought her up, while reasons of State dictated the removal from her side of a mother who despised Sweden. She grew to womanhood as the living embodiment of a monarchy which the most consummate statesman and the most formidable army in Europe combined to make resplendent. Lonely as she was, conscious of energy and imagination beyond the ordinary, hourly exposed to the flattery of her Court and the reverence of her people, it need excite little wonder if she failed to discriminate between her own greatness and the greatness of her office. "It is a pleasure," wrote the French ambassador Chanut, "to see her lay the crown beneath her feet and declare that virtue is the only good." "She held it an honour," ran Christina's comment on this verdict, "to place under her feet what other kings set upon their heads." "Thou hast made me so great," she cried to God, "that if Thou gavest me the whole realm of earth my heart were not content."

Like Elizabeth of England, Christina was constantly importuned to provide for the welfare of the State by marriage. The Elector of Brandenburg, as the nominee of Gustavus Adolphus, was first spoken of, and Count Magnus de La Gardie enjoyed the obvious favour of the Queen; but her cousin and playmate Charles Gustavus soon became her expectant lover and the choice of the people. Marriage, however, she regarded as a repulsive servitude and she resolved never to endure it.. In 1649 she wrung from the Råd and the Diet a reluctant acknowledgment of Charles Gustavus as her eventual successor upon the throne; and next year, in spite of the opposition of Oxenstierna, his male descendants were placed in the line of succession.

Administrative routine in a Government of which the monarch was

still the centre filled Christina with disgust. Her zeal for learning, illustrated by her patronage of Grotius, Salmasius, and Descartes, as well as of the Swedish men of science Stiernhöök and Stiernhielm, found expression in educational reform. But this service to the State was far outweighed by her neglect of affairs, and especially by her financial incompetence. Simple in diet and in dress, she set no bounds to the flood of her liberality. In ten years she doubled the number of noble families and endowed them with grants of estates so lavish that the Crown had no more to give.

The recklessness of the Queen strengthened a movement which had been gathering strength since the frälseköp of 1638, and which found open expression at the Diet of 1650. Led by Professor Terserus and Nils Nilsson, the Mayor of Stockholm, the Commons demanded a Reduction, or resumption of part of the alienated estates and revenues of the Crown. The Diet was prolonged to the unprecedented duration of four months; and for a moment civil war seemed to be at hand. The Commons, however, assured of the Queen's sympathy with their defence of their freedom, contented themselves with presenting to her a written

576

Difficulties and abdication of Christina

[1650-4

indictment of the nobles. Many began to look upon Charles Gustavus, who for the time being held aloof from politics, as the destined saviour of the State.

Amid extravagant festivities, however, Christina was crowned in October, 1650. In February, 1654, she informed the Råd of her irrevocable determination to abdicate. In the meantime she had received further proofs of the toilsomeness and unpopularity of her rule, and had found a new and potent motive for laying it down. In December, 1651, a rhymed pamphlet was discovered which attacked the government of the Queen and called upon Charles Gustavus to overthrow it. The author, Arnold Messenius, suffered death; but investigation showed that he had been but the imprudent spokesman of the Opposition. Charles Gustavus cleared himself to the Queen's satisfaction, and by her command the matter was hushed up. In 1652 she met the Diet, which in face of the threatening attitude of Poland and Denmark did not refuse to vote three years' conscription and augmented taxes.

The grievances of the peasants against the nobles, heightened as they were by the negligence and extravagance of the Queen, seemed none the less to threaten revolution. The ferment of the nation could not but increase Christina's distaste for her crown. So early as 1648 she had spoken privately of abdicating, and three years later she published her design. Her subsequent hesitation was now brought to an end, as seems probable, by her eagerness for full reception into the Church of Rome. Accomplished and sympathetic foreigners, Chanut, Bourdelot, the French physician whom she believed to have saved her life, disguised Jesuits, above all, since 1652, the Spanish ambassador Pimentelli, had prepared the way for a conversion which it was impossible for a Swedish monarch to complete. Having secured a substantial appanage, Christina formally put off the trappings of sovereignty in June, 1654. A few days later she was rejoicing in the hope that she had quitted Sweden for ever.

The abdication of Christina signified neither the extinction of the Vasa dynasty in Sweden nor a breach in its long sequence of distinguished monarchs. Charles X Gustavus, who succeeded her, was the grandson of Charles IX and the grandsire of Charles XII, and proved himself not unworthy to be named with them or even with the great Gustavus. A Wittelsbach by descent on the father's side, he belonged in thought and character to the land which had sheltered the Count Palatine, John Casimir, his father, and in which he himself was born and bred. With France, Germany, and Denmark he was already well acquainted. He had learned strategy from Torstensson and diplomacy from Oxenstierna, while at Leipzig and in Öland he had gained experience of administration. His kinship to the royal House had made him from infancy the centre of party strife; and it was in war that he had sought

1654-5]

Charles X. The "Reduction"

577

refuge from this and from his pain at the rejection of his suit by Christina. He came to the throne as a man of thirty-two, experienced and pious, modest and firm, inscrutable yet winning, and ready to face with an immense reserve of energy the chaos in which he found the nation. His conduct towards Axel Oxenstierna, who had been the most steadfast political opponent both of John Casimir and of his son, gave early proof of his magnanimity. With filial reverence, the King at once turned to him for help; and when, in August, 1654, the aged Chancellor died, he appointed his son Erik in his stead. His statesmanship was next tested by the need of transforming a bankrupt and divided nation, fringed by provinces which it had conquered but not assimilated, into a State able and willing to seize, in the face of many enemies, the present opportunity of expansion. For reasons to be mentioned immediately, King and Råd decided in 1654 in favour of a Polish war. It remained for the Diet of 1655 not only to endorse their decision, but also, at the expense of the recently aggrandised nobles, to restore the balance of the constitution and the revenue of the Crown.

The demand of the Commons for some "Reduction" gained irresist ible force from the mere contemplation of the national impotence. When the navy was short of provisions, and the King's horses without hay, it was clear that some of the estates which formed the only source of such supplies must be resumed by the Crown. But, while the peasants fiercely insisted upon a sweeping measure of confiscation, the great nobles, whose united force could almost defy coercion, were loath to disgorge more than a small fraction of their gains at the price of a secure title to the remainder. Charles solved the problem by proposing, with the consent of the Råd, a reduction large enough to give the State a revenue and not too large for a firm and tactful monarch to carry into effect. Those estates, which were termed "indispensable" because the maintenance of a definite part of the Administration was specifically charged upon them, were to be resumed in their entirety. Of the remaining alienations one-fourth was to be surrendered. The great nobles succeeded, however, in limiting the latter provision to the estates which they had acquired since the death of Gustavus Adolphus, and in confining their immediate sacrifice to an annual payment in money. A special "college" or department of Government, under the active presidency of Herman Fleming, immediately began to investigate the title to lands and to "reduce" the appropriate fraction to the full ownership of the Crown. Although the subsequent turmoil made it impossible to complete the work, the Crown thus regained nearly three thousand homesteads.

The remainder of his short reign proved that Charles lacked neither interest nor skill in administration. He was a keen-eyed overseer of the land, and kept an open ear for the complaints of his people. In six years he convoked the Estates five times, and again and again

C. M. H. IV.

37

578

Domestic and foreign policy of Charles X 1654-6

succeeded in persuading his weary subjects to make the sacrifices necessary for foreign war. He rivalled his predecessors in zeal for learning. From him the University of Upsala received a constitution which remained valid for almost two hundred years (1655-1853). He granted to the Livonian Palmstruch in 1656 a patent for the term of thirty years for the first Swedish bank; and the famous iron and steel industry of Eskilstuna was at the same time transplanted thither from Riga. Many signs betokened the advent of a strong and beneficent ruler possessing the confidence of his people.

Outside the peninsula the King's first duty, besides furthering the political advantage of Sweden by means of a suitable marriage, was to bring to an end the war which Bremen had been waging with some success against Christina in defence of its ancient rights as a free city of the Empire. His marriage in October, 1654, with Hedwig Eleonora, the second daughter of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, was a bid for security against the hostility of Denmark, particularly near Elbe and Weser.

The affair of Bremen showed clearly the new international position of Sweden. The revolt of the citizens against a foreign master won the sympathy of their fellow Germans, while France was hopeful that the new monarch, as heir of the House of Zweibrücken, would march from Bremen to the Rhine, and make valid his claims to Jülich-Cleves by joining her in a common campaign against the Habsburgs. Charles was content, however, with the submission of the city, which relieved Sweden from a burdensome struggle and permitted her to sweep into her own ranks the mercenaries of northern Germany.

From the Diet of 1655 onwards, however, the history of the reign is mainly that of the Polish war, and of the wars with Russia and Denmark consequent upon it. The decision of King and people to attack Poland signally illustrates their mind and character, and the strength and weakness of Sweden. Justification for hostilities was indeed not far to seek. Since 1592 the two countries had been involved in a dynastic struggle interrupted only by truces. The last of these, arranged at Altmark in 1629 for six years and prolonged at Stuhmsdorf in 1635 for twenty-six years more, had now almost run its course. In 1648 Oxenstierna had striven earnestly to convert it into a definite treaty; but the Polish Vasa still refused to recognise their rivals as lawful sovereigns of Sweden.

France wished to establish a firm peace between two dynasties, each of which might do her good service against the Habsburgs; but both in 1651 and 1652 a congress held at Lübeck failed to accomplish her desire. Jeopardised by the revolt of the Cossacks, but no longer menaced by the host which Sweden had so long maintained in Germany, the Poles adhered to their outrageous demands that their rivals should evacuate Livonia and pay compensation for the throne which Sigismund

1648-55]

The Swedish attack on Poland

579

had forfeited in 1599. The final failure of the congress in February, 1653, left the future to decide which of the two Powers would first be ready to strike the Poles to vindicate these claims, or the Swedes to silence them for ever. It is said that in 1654 the envoy of John Casimir of Poland issued a solemn protest against the transference of the Swedish Crown from the Vasa family to Charles Gustavus. The great settlement of 1648, moreover, had loosened all anterior political systems, and in a new phase of European international relations the Polish quarrel might well involve Sweden in a new peril.

It would be idle to pretend, however, that the momentous declaration of war in 1655 was made with the sole purpose of defending Sweden against an eventual Polish attack. The questions which Charles and the Råd set themselves to answer were in fact first, Is war desirable? and second, If so, with whom? For many reasons it might seem expedient that Sweden should not lightly abandon what has been styled her most lucrative industry; and these reasons were powerfully reinforced by the aims and predilections of the King. Eminent though he was in diplomacy and administration, Charles was at heart a soldier, scorning to loosen by compromise knots which might be cut by the sword, threatening like some new Alaric that he would march to Italy with his Goths, excelling and delighting in war. By war alone could an army like that to which Sweden owed her new empire be kept together and paid; while without war it seemed impossible to free the land from the turbulence of the disbanded soldiery and the burning strife between nobles and commons. Charles, as his own best general, might well hope that war would bring popularity to himself and power to his Crown. If these hopes overcame the half-hearted arguments that war meant fresh expenditure at a time when Sweden already owed two millions, and fresh exertion when sixty years of strife had strained her powers, there was much to indicate Poland, rather than Denmark, which some preferred, as the most profitable field of battle. Poland was not, like Russia, a land too barren to nourish the invaders. In Prussia, with its Baltic coast-line and rich customs-dues, she offered a great prize. And by victory in Poland it might now be possible to end at a blow the two great conflicts which had embarrassed Sweden for generations. Those Baltic provinces, "the magazine of Sweden," which constituted her heritage from the Knights of the Sword, might be made secure after a century of armed contention, and the dynastic schism might at last be healed by the triumph of Charles X.

At this juncture, moreover, the Republic seemed so defenceless as to warrant the assertion that it was the duty of the Swedes to intervene in Poland to prevent their Baltic transmarine possessions from being outflanked by the conquests of the Tsar. The military successes of Wladislav IV (1632-48) had in no wise turned back the current which was bearing Poland towards anarchy. The nobles continued to