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

(#litres_trial_promo) Since their king, Sigismund III, would not renounce his claim to the Swedish throne, a real peace remained elusive, but for Gustav Adolf a halt to the actual fighting was for now just as useful. It was an opportune moment for the Swedes to become involved at last in the great conflict which had been gathering pace in the Habsburg lands for more than a decade already. Protestant Germany had found no champion, and many exiled voices were calling for Swedish help. Now the armistice with Poland released thousands of battle-hardened men, ready for active service elsewhere.

Gustav Adolf’s decision met with loud applause from the Dutch; they had their Baltic trade to protect. But they were not the only power to welcome the idea of a Swedish march against the Empire. The French encouraged it, too, and promised to assist with subsidies; Catholic France was no friend to Catholic Austria, and Richelieu had hopes of using the Swedes as a pawn in his own ongoing game against the Emperor. But his terms were unacceptable to Gustav Adolf, and towards the end of 1629, preferring to find other allies, the King sent his own emissaries to the various courts and free cities of Europe; all returned empty-handed. The German Protestant princes, who had most to gain by a Swedish invasion, also declined to help, for by the same invasion, or so they feared, they also had most to lose.

Sweden was a small country, with not many more than a million souls. Despite many recent reforms initiated by the King and his able Chancellor, it was still poor, with commerce and industry struggling to develop, and the state coffers empty after years of war by land and sea. It could not afford to fight alone against the resourceful Habsburg Empire. Bereft of allies, Gustav Adolf hesitated. Then, paradoxically, the very lack of money which had stayed his hand now forced it. In Prussia, squadrons of German cavalry who had fought for him against the Poles stood waiting; they were mercenaries, and, though their Polish campaign was over, they could not be disbanded, for there was no money to pay them off. If they were kept in service, payment could be delayed, and so it was decided. The cavalry would be sent to Pomerania, now occupied by imperial troops, and there the rest of the Swedish army would join them.

The forces ranged against the Swedes were led by the Czech Count Wallenstein and General Count Tilly, the latter a Dutch nobleman and a professional soldier, a Jesuit manqué whose devotion to the Virgin Mary and strict personal morality had earned him the epithet of ‘the monk in armour’.

(#litres_trial_promo) Wallenstein, though he led his own armies, was neither by nature nor by training a military man. Modestly born, through an advantageous marriage and the cheap purchase of no fewer than 66 estates confiscated from the defeated Bohemian rebels a few years before, he had become one of the wealthiest men in Europe. He was consequently able to raise and pay large armies of his own, and owing to his administrative brilliance, to keep them fully supplied as well.

(#litres_trial_promo)

The imperial forces needed Wallenstein, but at this crucial point, unwisely, they let him go. Flush with recent Catholic victories, in March 1629, the Emperor Ferdinand had declared an Edict of Restitution, whereby Protestant worship was to be banned, and the Catholic powers were to reclaim all lands acquired by Protestants since the Peace of Augsburg in 1555, almost 75 years before. It was an extravagant order which looked, even then, impossible to carry out. The areas in question were huge, and it seemed that there were not even enough potential Catholic landowners to claim them. Many leading Catholics opposed the Edict, among them Wallenstein himself. He had in fact been brought up as a Lutheran, and although in his youth he had converted to Catholicism, the armies he now maintained were full of Protestant soldiers. His protest against the Edict was met by his swift dismissal from the imperial forces, who were now to be commanded by Tilly.

The Emperor’s Catholic allies were delighted. They had resented Wallenstein’s swift climb to power, suspecting that Ferdinand was little more than a pawn in the Count’s ambitious hands. But they were soon to regret his departure, for as he went so too did his men, along with many thousands of other imperial soldiers who had also been paid with his money, and fed, clothed, mounted, and armed through his superbly organized lines of supply. In due course Wallenstein would return, but now, to the Emperor’s dismay, the gap left on the battlefields by the armies of his former ally was filled by those of a new and fearsome enemy, Gustav Adolf, the King of Sweden.

The Swedes pressed inland, and on a hot and windy day in the September of 1631, they drew up at Breitenfeld, near the Saxon city of Leipzig, where imperial forces commanded by Tilly were already waiting. At the eleventh hour, the wavering Elector of Saxony, Johann Georg, had thrown in his lot with the Swedes; his own land was now at stake, and he had arrived to do battle himself at the head of his ranks of young noblemen, with their new-polished armour and their gaily coloured cloaks – ‘a cheerful and beautiful company to see,’ said Gustav Adolf, and so indeed they must have seemed by comparison with his own hardbitten men in their torn and dusty outfits.

Tilly’s forces had begun to fire as soon as their opponents came into sight, but the imperial general, despite his great experience, was soon disconcerted by the novel ‘chessboard’ manoeuvres of the Swedes, whose agile little squares of alternating cavalry and infantry swivelled to fire in all directions, easily outmanoeuvring Tilly’s traditional forward-facing lines.

(#litres_trial_promo) Despite a dazzling sun against them, and despite the hasty departure of the frightened Saxon Elector and most of his novice troops, the Swedes achieved a resounding victory, in no small part due to the brilliant planning and indefatigable energy of their own remarkable King.

(#litres_trial_promo)

And by morning, of the host of imperial soldiers who had survived the battle only to be taken prisoner by the Swedes, many thousands had enlisted in the service of their yesterday’s foe. After the Battle of Breitenfeld, mercenaries from all parts of Europe flocked to the Swedish standard. By 1632, as well as substantial forces in Prussia and the Baltic, on the seas and at home on Swedish territory, Gustav Adolf had some 120,000 men fighting in the German lands. Of his great army, perhaps one-tenth were native Swedes. The remainder, mostly mercenaries, were drawn from east to west: Finns and Germans, Scotsmen, English and Irish, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Czechs and Poles and Russians, their motives for fighting as varied as their origins.

The fortunes of war of the Emperor Ferdinand were now at their lowest ebb. The Swedes’ position seemed unassailable. At this point, Gustav Adolf could have offered a peace settlement, but he chose to fight on, expanding his territories and claiming hesitant allies among the German princes, both Protestant and Catholic. In the spring of 1632, his soldiers cut a triumphal path through southern Germany towards Bavaria. In early April they crossed the Danube river, leaving in their wake a devastated countryside from which no pursuing army might take sustenance. By the middle of May they stood at the gates of Munich, where they met with no resistance; a huge ransom had purchased the safety of the city and its people. From Munich, Gustav Adolf hoped to entice the Emperor’s forces into battle, and then to march on the imperial capital of Vienna.

On the Bohemian border, the Generalissimo Wallenstein waited with his own army. He had himself raised it, equipped it, and paid it, but as yet he refused to lead it into battle. Since his dismissal from the imperial command, he had ignored all attempts to reinstate him, but now it seemed that the price he demanded to do so was about to be paid. The price was enormous: absolute control over the imperial armies and over all peace treaties, huge areas of Habsburg lands, and the title of Elector.

(#litres_trial_promo) But, with Gustav Adolf nearing Vienna, the desperate Emperor conceded everything.

His extravagant terms agreed, Wallenstein moved his army into Prague itself, barring the Swedish army’s way to Vienna. The King’s allies wavered, and in June a hesitant Gustav Adolf withdrew to Nuremberg. There, over the next few days, he revealed his plan for the future of Germany. The lands of the Holy Roman Empire were to be completely reorganized. The power of the Habsburg dynasty would be broken, and a new, dominant body of Protestant princes, the Corpus Evangelicorum, would take its place under an elected president, Gustav Adolf himself. The ban on Protestant worship was to be withdrawn, and religious toleration practised throughout the Empire. Peace would be maintained by a strong standing army.

The Corpus Evangelicorum was an idea born of crisis, an interim plan to provide cohesion and leadership for the duration of the war. It implied no long-term political objectives, and was not intended as a blueprint for a Swedish empire in the German lands. So at least said the Swedes, but few, and least of all the group’s proposed members, regarded it so innocently. As the German campaigns had progressed, it had seemed to them increasingly clear that Gustav Adolf harboured major dynastic ambitions for himself, ambitions which had much to do with their own German territories.

The Corpus Evangelicorum itself may have been an interim plan, but it seems that something of its kind was, after all, intended to endure. For more than a year already, Gustav Adolf had been negotiating a betrothal between his five-year-old daughter and her cousin Friedrich Wilhelm, the eldest son of the Elector of Brandenburg. This, the King hoped, would achieve what his own marriage to the Elector’s sister had so far not achieved: unite Swedes and Germans in a new northern bloc, which would shift the whole balance of power in Europe away from the Catholic Habsburg south and towards a new Protestant Swedish-German dynasty.

Honoured and beloved Father,

As I have not the happiness of being with Your Royal Highness, I am sending you my portrait. Please think of me when you look at it, and come back to me soon and send me something pretty in the meantime. I am in good health, thanks be to God, and learn my lessons well. I pray God will send us good news of Your Majesty, and I commend you to his protection.

I remain,

Your Royal Highness,

Your obedient daughter,

Christina.

(#litres_trial_promo)

So read the King, seated on a campstool in his tent at Fürth, on the outskirts of Nuremberg. The summer was drawing to a close. For almost three months, his army had been encamped there, while on the ridge above them, the imperial force stood waiting. Wallenstein had followed the King to Nuremberg, and now held him trapped with his weakening army. Though the King’s thoughts may have turned often enough to his little daughter at home, he cannot have had much leisure to think of sending ‘something pretty’ to her, for his supply lines were poor, food and water were scarce, and his men were beset by disease and discouragement. An attempt to fight their way out had ended in disaster; of their cavalry alone, three quarters had been lost. The camp was full of rumours that the King’s allies were turning from him, and among the men, for the first time, his popularity began to fade.

The time had come to offer peace terms, and accordingly, Swedish envoys were sent out to Wallenstein, in their hands the plan for the Corpus Evangelicorum, with plenty to placate the besieger. The Generalissimo chose not to accept it, as he could well afford to do, with Gustav Adolf and his once invincible men penned in beneath the ridge. Without fresh supplies, the Swedes could not survive the cold weather that would soon be upon them, and in mid-September the desperate King decided to attempt a retreat from the camp. If he succeeded, he would march towards Austria, where new rebellions were rumoured to have started against the Habsburg powers.

The retreat began, the Swedes fearing every moment the onslaught of the imperial troops. But Wallenstein did not attack. Instead, he turned his army towards Saxony, to the lands of Gustav Adolf’s half-hearted ally, the Elector Johann Georg. The Swedes themselves turned back to help the Elector, and by mid-October they were once again in Nuremberg, the scene of their own grim defeat only weeks before. Now, passing through the abandoned imperial camp, they found, to their horror, the remnants of Wallenstein’s army, the unburied dead and, worse, the starving wounded, still lying there. The King gave instructions for the occupation of the area before the winter should set in, and moved his army on towards Saxony. They marched via Leipzig, then west some fifteen miles to the little town of Lützen, where, so they had heard, Wallenstein was encamped with a reduced army. There the revitalized Swedes would engage them, sure of victory with their novel fighting tactics and their superior numbers.

But Gustav Adolf’s information was only partially correct. Wallenstein had only just dismissed his 12,000 allied forces. Learning of the Swedish King’s advance, he had sent for them to be recalled. His remaining army alone numbered some 14,000, and they spent the night setting up their cannon and their barricades. In the early hours of the next morning they were still to be seen, making their way by torchlight, digging their trenches and hoisting their defences, while, outside the town, in the fields nearby, the 16,000 Swedish troops lay sleeping.

It was the sixth of November. By eight in the morning, in clear light, the first shots had been fired, while the King still stood before his army, offering prayers for a Protestant victory. Wallenstein had drawn up his army in traditional formation, with infantry in the centre, protected by artillery, and cavalry on the wings, while the Swedes stood ready in the flexible squares which had served them so well at Breitenfeld. It was not until ten that the two armies engaged, and by then the battleground was covered in a thick mist, alternately providing cover and hampering visibility. The Swedes charged first, and the desperate struggle began.

(#litres_trial_promo)

Later, those who had fought that day could not agree when the imperial reinforcements had arrived; some thought midday, others thought not until the evening. In fact, the cavalry arrived first, led by the legendary Count Gottfried Pappenheim, hero of the imperial army and idol of his own soldiers. They attacked immediately, beating the Swedes back over the territory they had won. Pappenheim was shot through the lung and retreated from the battle to die, choked with blood, in his coach behind the lines. It was rumoured that Gustav Adolf had also been hit. His horse had been seen, wounded in the neck, plunging wildly across the battlefield. The imperial general Piccolomini, himself grazed seven times by bullets, swore that he had seen him lying on the ground. Duke Bernard of Saxe-Weimar took command of the Swedish force, and by nightfall, the imperial troops had been driven back. Wallenstein retreated to the nearby town of Halle, leaving his men in disarray behind him. The battle had been inconclusive, but the Swedes now occupied the field, and the victory was held to be theirs.

In the darkness, the Swedish soldiers began the terrible search for the body of their King. Beneath a heap of the dead, naked but for his shirt, they found him. He had been killed by a shot through the temple, but his body showed other wounds: a dagger thrust and another shot in his side, two shots in the arm, and a shot in the back.

Rumours spread that the King had been betrayed, killed by his own men under cover of battle. Some recalled the Bloodbath of Linköping, saying that the sons of those beheaded by his father had succeeded in claiming a tardy revenge.

(#litres_trial_promo) Others held that his murder had been ordered by Cardinal Richelieu, determined to be rid of the ‘impetuous Visigoth’ who had bettered him at his own political games. It seemed impossible that the great Gustav Adolf could have died like any ordinary soldier, shot and stabbed as he fought his way through enemy lines. Bernard of Saxe-Weimar gave out that the King was not dead, but only wounded, and for days afterwards merchants in London were placing bets that he was still alive. Waiting in Erfurt, Maria Eleonora learned the truth on the tenth of November; she collapsed with grief. The following day, in Frankfurt, Chancellor Oxenstierna heard the news, and passed the first sleepless night of his life.

Gradually it emerged that, leading a cavalry charge early in the battle, the King had been shot in the arm, and had lost control of his horse. In the thick mist covering the battlefield, he had been separated from his escort of cavalrymen. Wounded again, he had fallen from his saddle, but his boot had caught in a stirrup, and he had been dragged along the ground. Falling free, he had been unable to rise, and had been shot in the head where he lay.

His body was carried, on a powder wagon, to the little village of Meuchen near the battlefield, and there it was washed clean of dirt and blood. The King’s reverent soldiers stored the blood itself in the village church, marking the place with his coat of arms. Overnight, the body lay before the altar, and when morning broke, the village schoolmaster, who served as the local joiner as well, set to work to build a wooden coffin. In this the King’s body was carried to the town of Weissenfels, some ten miles distant. There, in the bay-windowed room of a local guesthouse, it was laid out and embalmed by the King’s own apothecary. Among those who saw the body there in its simple coffin was Gustav Gustavsson, the King’s illegitimate son, now sixteen years old, and serving in the Swedish army.

Back in Meuchen, one Swedish soldier, recovering from his own wounds, arranged a primitive memorial to his lost commander-in-chief. With the help of local peasants, he rolled a large stone – the ‘Swede’s Stone’ – to the place where his King had fallen.

(#litres_trial_promo)

It is said that the Emperor himself wept, and ordinary people who had never set eyes on the great King wailed in the streets at the news of his death. ‘He alone was worth more,’ said Richelieu, ‘than both the armies together.’

The King’s body had now to be transported back to Sweden, escorted, in death as in life, between footsoldiers and cavalrymen. From Weissenfels it was carried a hundred miles north towards Berlin, and in the middle of December, the cortège was met by the newly widowed Queen. She was almost hysterical. For several weeks, fearing to aggravate her state, her attendants had kept her in Erfurt, preventing her from travelling to where her husband’s body lay. Now, seeing his lifeless form, she gave way to an extravagant grief. The King’s heart had been taken from his body, to be separately preserved; this Maria Eleonora now took to herself, wrapping it first in a linen kerchief and later placing it in a golden casket. She kept it with her constantly. At night, it hung above her bed, glowing in the light of vigil candles, while the Queen wept desperate tears.

Northward the Swedes continued their sorrowful journey. At Wolgast, they paused; the Baltic Sea was frozen, and for many months there would be no passage across to Sweden. Maria Eleonora’s behaviour became increasingly bizarre; the eccentric traits which she had shown for some years had been intensified, it seemed, by the shock of the King’s death. Now, disregarding the entreaties of those around her, she began to make plans for an elaborate funeral, spending wildly on one scheme after the next. Her stranded little court began to disintegrate into chaos, while, day and night, Maria Eleonora clung, often literally, to her husband’s mortal remains, until her attendants feared she had lost her reason. In February 1633, three months after the King’s death, she wrote from Wolgast: ‘Since We, God pity Us, were so rarely granted the pleasure of enjoying the living presence of His Majesty, Our adored, dearest master and spouse, of blessed memory, it should at least be granted to Us to stay near his royal corpse and so draw comfort in Our miserable existence.’

(#litres_trial_promo)

From Stockholm, the alarmed senators dispatched the Chancellor’s cousin, Gabriel Oxenstierna, to investigate the Queen’s entourage and to oversee the return of the King’s body home to Sweden. Delayed by illness and the winter weather, Oxenstierna reached Wolgast only in the middle of May, and there he found the grieving Queen ‘swimming in tears’, and her little court in wretched disorder.

It was not until July that the royal flagship set off at last, and in early August the entourage arrived at the industrial town of Nyköping, on the eastern coast of Sweden. Here, furnaces blasted and foundries thundered, shipwrights and millworkers toiled and travailed. Once the country’s capital, Nyköping now centred on a magnificent Renaissance castle, the Queen’s private residence. It was here, twenty years before, that Gustav Adolf had been proclaimed King, and it was here that his body now came to a temporary rest.

(#litres_trial_promo)

It was in Nyköping, too, that Maria Eleonora at last saw again her six-year-old daughter. It had been some fifteen months since their last meeting; since the spring of the previous year, the Queen had been in Germany, visiting her family, following her husband’s campaigns. Christina had been left in Sweden in the care of her paternal aunt, the Princess Katarina, and she had now travelled to Nyköping ‘in person, with all the senators and all the noblemen and women’, to meet the sad cortège. Dutifully, the little girl approached the unfamiliar, grieving woman who was her mother. ‘I kissed her,’ she was later to write, ‘and she drowned me with tears, and nearly suffocated me in her arms.’

(#litres_trial_promo)

The King’s body was laid at first in the castle’s Green Hall, but Maria Eleonora, now refusing any talk of burial, soon had it removed to her own bedroom. The coffin was covered by an elaborate set of oval pearls after her own design, but it remained unsealed, and it seems that it was not seldom opened. More than a year after the King’s death, the men of the Swedish parliament, shocked, embarrassed, and indignant, petitioned the Estate of the Clergy, asking ‘whether a Christian could in good conscience apply for and be granted the right to open the graves and the coffins of their dead and gaze at and fondle their bodies in the belief that through these acts they would receive some comfort and solace in their state of great heart-rending sorrow and distress’.