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An authentic portrait engraved exclusively for the Court Magazine
No 85 of the series of ancient portraits

VOL. XVIII.

1840.

Nou, Carey street Lincoln's Inn. London

THE COURT AND LADY'S MAGAZINE,

MONTHLY CRITIC AND MUSEUM.

A Family Journal

OF ORIGINAL TALES, REVIEWS OF LITERATURE, THE FINE ARTS, MUSIC, DRAMA, FASHIONS, &c., &c.

UNDER THE DISTINGUISHED PATRONAGE OF

HER ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUCHESS OF KENT.

MEMOIR OF

CHRISTINA, QUEEN OF SWEDEN,

FOUNDER OF THE ORDER OF THE AMARANTH.

Embellished with a Full-length authentic coloured Portrait, from the original of BOURDON, No. 85 of the Series of authentic ancient Portraits.

THIS far-famed Queen-regnant was the heiress of the great Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, at the same time champion of protestantism and the hero of his age. The mother of Christina was Maria Eleanora, eldest daughter of John Sigismund, Elector of Brandenburg. Queen Maria Eleanora was a handsome and amiable woman, but according to the superstitions of the seventeenth century, given weakly to faith in astrology. Some weeks before the birth of Christina, she made herself very unhappy, both by her own dreams and the dolorous prognostications of her soothsayers, who predicted not only her own death and that of her expected infant, but that an illness which had just then seized on the great Gustavus would terminate fatally.

Never, however, were conjurors more mistaken in their reckoning; the King got well; the infant was born, a healthy and vigorous child; and Queen Maria Eleanora recovered much sooner than she did on former similar occasions; for the Queen of Sweden had been a mother twice previously, but had lost her infants soon after their birth.

The French biography of Christina, by Lacombe, which is our text-book in this memoir, is compiled chiefly from Queen Christina's own autobiography, the private memorials of the court of Sweden which enliven this sketch, are, therefore, derived from the highest authority.

"When I was born," says Christina, "my voice was so strong and sonorous, that they took me for a boy, and the news was spread, in an instant, all over the palace of Stockholm, that an heir was granted to the throne. The tidings reached the king,

and some alarm was experienced among the queen's attendants at the means of undeceiving him. The sister of the king, the Princess Catherine, undertook that task; but the Great Gustavus manifested neither surprise nor disappointment; he replied tranquilly-.

6

Let us thank heaven, my sister, for what he has sent us; we will hope this girl will prove as good as any boy. I pray God to preserve her, since he has given her He then added, laughingly, 'This girl ought to prove a clever one, since she has deceived us all, already.'

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This scene took place December 18, 1626.

The king proceeded to order public rejoicings and all the fêtes usually celebrated when an heir-apparent was born to the throne of Sweden. Gustavus was perfectly satisfied with being the father of a living child; the queen, on the contrary, was inconsolable at not being the mother of a son; moreover, she considered her daughter very ugly, as she had a tawny skin and strong masculine features, and she refused to bestow upon her infant those tender caresses which spring from maternal instinct. The infant Christina, in after years, repaid this unkindness by indifference to her royal mother, while she testified lively affection for her mighty sire, and retained a tender remembrance of him throughout her whole life.

More than one mischance beset the nursery and cradle of the infant princess; when only a few days old, a pillar fell near the place where she was sleeping, half covering the bed with its fragments, yet it neither hurt nor disturbed the sleeping babe. She had also many dangerous falls, some of which she ascribed rather to malice than accident. To one of these falls she attributes the defect in her shape; and, although she knew how to conceal her deformity by her dress, yet one of her shoulders was higher than the other.

These sufferings and dangers of infancy, Christina does not scruple to attribute to maternal neglect and dislike, which unnatural feelings influenced the conduct of the queen's women, and the nurses of the little ugly infant, who was to inherit the glory of the great Gustavus; meantime, the affection of the royal sire of Christina was unbounded. He convoked the States-General of Sweden, to render homage to his darling as to his successor, "that cherished child of his heart," who, to quote her own eloquent words, "reposed on palms and laurels, while victory and fortune smiled on her, even in her cradle!"

Paternal love was so active in the heart of the heroic Gustavus, that one time, when on an important statistical visit to the mines of his kingdom, he received news that the infant Christina was attacked with a malady, supposed to be mortal. Alarmed by this news, the king travelled to Stockholm with such diligence that he out-stripped the couriers he had sent with despatches to the capital the day before. On his arrival at Stockholm he found the dreaded crisis past, and his convalescent infant greeted him with smiles of recognition. The heart of the great father overflowed with joy as he took his restored darling into his arms; solemnly he blessed her, and thanked heaven for her preservation with all the ardour of his enthusiastic religious feelings. The strong masculine features which made the queen of Sweden hate her daughter for her unfeminine plainness of person were the print of the hero's own bold, manly cast of countenance-the veterans of Sweden saw in the little princess the model of the honoured countenance of their royal leader, and loved her the more for the very cause that bred the dislike of her mother.

Gustavus ordered a solemn thanksgiving to be offered for the recovery of the heiress to his throne, and, warned by the sharp pain he had suffered when he heard of her danger, he vowed that his infant should never again be separated from him, at least while he remained in his native kingdom. From that hour Christina was the companion of her royal sire in all his travels and voyages. She was only two years old when her father took her with him to the fortress of Calmar.

Upon his arrival the governor of the citadel sent to ask the king whether the usual salvos of cannon, on a royal reception, ought not to be omitted on this occasion, lest they should have the effect of scaring the infant princess. Gustavus pondered for a few seconds and then exclaimed-" Fire, fire! my Christina is a soldier's child; it is fitting that she should be early accustomed to the roar of artillery."

A royal salute burst from the ramparts of Calmar, and so far from being frightened by that martial sound, the infant Christina clapped her tiny hands, and with many gestures of approbation signified her desire of a repetition of the warlike thunder.

From that moment the heroic Swede never omitted taking with him his infant whenever he reviewed his troops, and he pointed out to his generals the joyousness his child testified at the pomp and glitter of the rehearsal of war; he was heard to observe

"Wait awhile, and the time will come, my girl, when you shall go with me where you will have enough of the reality to your heart's content."

"But alas for me!" exclaimed Christina, when recording this anecdote, "death prevented my heroic sire from keeping his word, and I had not the happiness of serving my noviciate in the art of war under so great a master!"

The dangers that threatened protestanism now called the Swedish hero to the field in defence of his beloved religion. Gustavus was, by the reformed States of Germany, recognised as their leader and defender against the bigotry of the emperor. The war threatened to be long and bloody, and Gustavus, warned by a foreboding feeling, settled all things as if he should never more re-visit his capital nor country.

To his sister, the Princess Catherine, and to her husband, the Prince Palatine, he confided the care of the finances, and, above all, the charge of the person and education of his dear Christina. Five of his great officers of state he appointed as the heads of the council of regency and tuition during his absence, or in case of the minority of a young queen. Gustavus expressly excluded his consort from interference in his daughter's affairs, for besides her unmaternal antipathy to her young child, he saw with displeasure her tendency to favour foreigners, and to introduce them to offices of trust in Sweden. The great king left it at the option of the States to fix the date of the young sovereign's majority, in case of his death, wisely desiring them to be guided in their decision by her capacity and genius for the affairs of government.

The great chancellor Oxenstiern, the prime minister of Sweden, was placed by his royal friend and master as the guiding spirit of all things pertaining to the minority. To this Sully of the north did the warlike Gustavus confide the interests of his beloved child, that Christina whom his prophetic spirit whispered would so soon be fatherless.

The army and senate of Sweden were called upon to recognise Christina as the heiress of their great monarch, in case he should fall in the ensuing campaign.

The senate assembled, and Gustavus presided, holding his infant daughter by the hand. In his beloved presence, she forgot the playfulness of four years of age, and seemed to listen with serious attention, while her great sire unfolded to his senate his plans for her education and government, in case of his death. Finally, he prepared himself for his voyage to the German continent. The king, when leaving the palace, did not listen to a little compliment which Christina's attendants had taught her to learn by rote and recite to him. The poor infant finding that the king did not heed her, pulled him by the cloak and, with the plaintive tones of childhood, entreated him to look down upon her, and, when she had succeeded in attracting his attention, commenced again to babble her little oration. Gustavus turned towards his child and, reproaching himself with his temporary neglect, snatched her to his bosom and bathed her with tears.

Christina was inconsolable for the absence of her heroic sire; she wept so much, and for so many days that serious apprehensions were entertained for her sight, particularly as her eyes were weak like those of her royal father. The passionate grief of their infant princess, so enduring beyond what any one could have expected at her tender age, seemed to the Swedes to be a bad presage, and the saying went forth among them," that their royal hero would never more return to his capital."

We cannot follow the great Gustavus through that wondrous campaign of 1630, which at the same time raised his glory to its highest pitch, and relieved the oppressed and tormented protestants of Germany from a succession of such horrors as were committed by the merciless Tilly, at Magdeburgh, which the monster merrily

termed the "Wedding Feast of Magdeburgh."

Suffice it that Gustavus anni

hilated Tilly's army, and as Schiller eloquently says:

"Beside the Lech sunk Tilly, your last hope;

Into Bavaria like a wintry torrent

Did that Gustavus pour.'

The might of the great Wallenstein could scarcely check the impetuous career of the royal Swede.

It was on the 16th of November, 1632, that the battle took place between the Swedes and the Imperialists, at Lutzen, in High Saxony, which rendered Christina fatherless, and imposed the weight of a crown on her young and innocent brow.

Gustavus was remarkable for the religious, as well as military discipline that prevailed in his camp: he was not only a zealous protestant, but a practical religionist, and made all his army observe the ordinances of devotion as if they had been officered by priests. This spirit is well described in the brilliant lines into which Lord Francis Leveson Gower has rendered Schiller's couplets, in the introduction to the grand dramas of Wallenstein. The discontented mercenary is made to say—

"What a coil and a torment in word and in deed
With that pest of his people, Gustavus the Swede!
A church was each casern, a chapel each tent
And to it at morning and evening we went!
To psalms and prayers round the standard we flew,
At the morning reveillé, the evening tattoo;

And if we but ventured an oath or a jest,

He could preach from his saddle as well as the best."

In conformity with this singularly religious bias in a camp, Gustavus received the sacrament at the head of his army, and, after giving the word of command, the whole of the Swedish forces commenced the work of destruction, at the same time singing the 100th psalm. The Imperialists had already given way, and Gustavus was hot in pursuit when a fatal ball stretched him lifeless by a great stone near the high road of Lutzen, still called "the King's stone."

The death of this great monarch is as much shrouded in mystery as that of his collateral relative Charles XII.; the shot which entered at his back, is supposed, as in the case of Charles, to have come from the hand of one of his own people or his allies. Duke Franz of Lauenberg was the party suspected, who in defence asserted that the king having broken his spectacles at the beginning of the battle, and being very short-sighted, took a small group of Imperial Uhlans for his own people, and fell by their pistols.

Be this as it may Gustavus neither spoke nor breathed after he fell by the great stone of Lutzen. The Swedish battalions, as they marched forward saw the breathless body of their adored sovereign, and, infuriated at the sight, pursued the troops of Wallenstein with such vengeance that they completed the victory.

The death of this warrior king placed his infant daughter Christina, then but five years of age, on the martial throne of Sweden and made her the head and protectress of the protestant princes of Germany.

The dead body of Gustavus was embalmed and transported to Sweden; the queen, who had adored her husband, though she never loved her child, abandoned herself to the most frantic expressions of grief at the sight of his coffin; she enclosed herself in a chamber, hung with black and lighted with tapers. She had Christina brought to her, and, clasping her in her arms, bathed her with tears, and traced in her face the exact resemblance of her lost father. During two years she kept her daughter in this doleful solitude. The phrenzy of the queen's grief prevented the council of regency and tuition, for a while, from complying with the imperative mandate of Gustavus, who expressly ordered, and re-iterated his orders in a letter he wrote to his chancellor, the evening before the fatal fight of Lutzen," that the queen should have every honour that could be paid to her rank in case of her widowhood, but on no account was she to be permitted to interfere with the tuition

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