The fortunate Russians had played no part in the long-drawn-out war or the long-drawn-out peace. They had watched from the periphery as Sweden’s armies advanced across the continent, and as they had watched, so their anxiety had grown. The Swedes were old enemies of the Russians; the two had been at war for years during Gustav Adolf’s reign, and shortly before Christina’s birth her Vasa cousins had still been pursuing their own claim to the Russian throne. Russia was still a minor power, but Gustav Adolf had feared Sweden’s fate ‘if Russia should ever learn her strength’. The fear was mutual, and in the early summer of 1649, the Grand Duke Alexei of Muscovy decided that, since the Swedes had stopped fighting in the south, it would be wise to pre-empt a resumption of their interest in the east. Accordingly, a delegation of 112 diplomats was dispatched to Sweden, bearing greetings from their noble Romanov lord. Their visit was observed, and reported in some detail, by the correspondent of a Swedish-controlled news-sheet in Leipzig.17
It seems that, from their ships moored on the lovely waters of Stockholm, the Russians disembarked to be met by an assembly of the usual councillors and secretaries, as well as ‘three substantial-looking old persons’, otherwise unidentified. The following day, in an echo of her very first ambassadorial reception at the tender age of six years, the young Queen herself received them at a public audience.
The Russians appeared to have lost none of their magnificence in the sixteen intervening summers. They were dressed very richly in gold-embroidered robes interwoven with pearls, and they processed towards the Queen in stately fashion, still bearded, it seems, but without any show of the ‘wild manners’ of which she had once been forewarned. Christina remained ‘on her royal seat’, with a cushion beside her bearing her crown and orb and one of her dozen-odd sceptres, lengthened since the last Russian visit to suit her now full-grown height.
This time, too, the ambassadors had come laden with presents for her, including, as the correspondent reported, nine pieces of gold cloth, each one ‘twelve ells’ in length,18 tapestries worked in gold thread, three suits of Turkish clothes ‘and similar things’, twenty mink furs ‘for wearing indoors’, a beautiful vessel studded with rubies and turquoises, and – in a wintry echo of the lion looted from Prague for her only months before – three live mink. They brought so many presents, in fact, that it took 40 soldiers to carry them all. With them, too, came the more prosaic gifts of letters from the Grand Duke Alexei exhorting ‘eternal peace’ between their two lands, and a rather tardy apology for the several hundred soldiers who had deserted the Swedish army to join the Russians more than thirty years before.
Following the reception, the ambassadors repaired to the excellent lodgings which had been provided for them, and there, one evening shortly afterwards, they were visited by the Baron Güldenstern and a gentleman of the prominent Sparre family, whom Christina had sent along to keep them company. It seems that, by the time the two Swedes arrived, the Russians had already raised one or two glasses to drink the health of one or two people, and they were not averse now to drinking the health of Her Royal Majesty, the Queen of Sweden. This toast drunk, however, the health of the Grand Duke of Muscovy was immediately proposed by one of the Russians. The Swedes objected; this would imply an equivalent status between the Grand Duke – technically a mere prince – and their own Queen; the Grand Duke should wait until a few nobler toasts had been drunk.19 The indignant Russians stood up, or staggered up, from the table, and left the room without adieu.
The next day, a delegation from the delegation appeared ‘very solemnly’ before Christina to make a formal protest. Whether amused or annoyed by all the fuss, the Queen advised them directly to let the matter drop, and added that, if they did not, there would be no further visits from Swedish noblemen to Russian ambassadors – in future, it would be the commonfolk who would be sent to keep them company in their lodgings. Moreover, she warned, if they persisted in their protest, she would lodge her own complaint against them with the Grand Duke himself. This last threat proved to be more than enough. Their indignation evaporated with their courage, and the cowed ambassadors began to plead with the Queen; their master must absolutely not hear of the affair. She promised to say nothing, but the Grand Duke had other sources of information: in the middle of June, the whole story appeared in the Leipzig weekly news-sheet, where the Swedish correspondent noted ominously, ‘What will happen now, no one can tell.’
Christina should not in fact even have been in Stockholm to hear the Russians’ complaint. She had been expected to leave the city directly after their formal reception, to travel to Fi’holm, a day’s journey away in the bright summer weather, for the funeral of Madame Oxenstierna, the Chancellor’s wife. But the opportunity to spite the Chancellor had proved irresistible to her, more so than any Russian gold or rubies or mink, dead or alive. The night before she was due to leave for Fi’holm, she became suddenly ‘indisposed’; though a large retinue had been sent on ahead to prepare for her arrival, she announced that she would not be able to attend the funeral after all. Her transparent stratagem must have saddened Oxenstierna, or perhaps made him angry; certainly it did not convince anyone else. In Leipzig, it was noted sardonically that, once the day of the funeral had passed, Her Majesty ‘suddenly became quite well again’.
It was a petty act, unworthy of any Queen, or indeed of any adult. Determined to dim the Chancellor’s prestige, she had succeeded only in offending him, and in making herself look foolish. In so doing, Christina revealed how much she had still to learn about strength and self-indulgence, and the difference between the two.
In the spring of 1649, the fabulous collection of the Emperor Rudolf, pushed and pulled all the way from Prague, was brought ashore at Stockholm, and Christina found herself mistress of one of the finest cultural treasures in Europe. It was a splendid crowning of many smaller efforts of plunder and purchase, the work of more than a century, as successive rulers had brought home piece after piece of beautiful tinder to stoke the Swedes’ reluctant aesthetic fires. Christina’s father had been the most determined of them, to the extent of leaving two of his best generals hostage in Bavaria for the sake of his newly looted Holbein canvases.1 The Holbeins, along with works by Lucas Cranach and many other German and Dutch masters, were sufficient in number and in quality to form the basis of a first Swedish national collection, installed during Christina’s childhood in the Tre Kronor Castle. Though she was quick to appreciate her father’s methods of acquisition, she was slower to appreciate the works themselves; the restrained northern painters held little appeal for her, and she was able to give many fine canvases away without so much as a backward glance.
But whether she liked the paintings or not, they were important to her. A certain level of cultural life was necessary if Sweden’s national prestige were to be maintained, or indeed even acquired – there was a vast distance to be covered before the Swedes could compare with most of their northern neighbours, let alone with the richly cultured southern lands of Spain or France or, above all, Italy. Plundering was a quick, but not necessarily cheap, way of building up collections; armies were as costly as marble and canvas, and victory was not always assured. Besides, no one would fight for a sculpture or a painting; booty of this kind was unpredictable, to be seized opportunistically like windfall apples from the highest branches. No monarch could afford to presume upon it, and neither did Christina. Even as a young girl, tantalized by ambassadors’ tales of beautiful and brilliant things, she had sent emissaries abroad to seek out books and works of art. One envoy went as far as Egypt, lending his hand in excavations for the remnants of the ancient world. Others scoured the studios and libraries of Europe, unearthing sculptures and drawings and a great many books and manuscripts for the avid young Queen, whose plundering streak was strong enough for her to leave many bills unpaid.
It prevented her, too, from building up her collections in any systematic way. Though she did request specific books, to match her