peace lightened the cares of government; but they were still too weighty for Christina. "I think I see the Devil!" said she, "when my secretary enters with his dispatches '."

In order to enable the queen to pursue her literary amusements, without disadvantage to the state, the Senate of Sweden. proposed, that she should marry her cousin, Charles Gustavus, for whom she had been designed from her infancy. But although this prince appears to have been a favourite, and Christina's conduct proves that she was by no means insensible to the passion of the sexes, yet like our Elizabeth, she did not choose to A.D. give herself a master. She prevailed upon the states, 1650. however, to declare Charles her successor; a measure by which she kept herself at liberty, secured the tranquillity of Sweden, and repressed the ambition of those powerful nobles who, in case of her death, might otherwise have offered pretensions to the

crown.

Yet the Swedes, among whom refinement had made little progress, but whose martial spirit was now at its height, and among whom policy was well understood, could not bear to see the daughter of the great Gustavus devote her time and her talents solely to the study of dead languages; to the disputes about vortexes, innate ideas, and other unavailing speculations; to a taste for medals, statues, pictures, and public spectacles, in contempt of the nobler cares of royalty. And they were still more displeased to find the resources of the kingdom exhausted in what they considered as inglorious pursuits and childish amusements. A general discontent arose; and Christina was again pressed to marry. The disgust occasioned by this importunity first suggested to her the idea of quitting the throne. She accordingly signified, in a letter to Charles Gustavus, her intention of A.D. resigning her crown to him in full senate.

1652.

Charles, trained in dissimulation, and fearing that the queen had laid a snare for him, rejected her proposal, and prayed that God and Sweden might long preserve her majesty. Perhaps he flattered himself that the senate would accept her resignation, and appoint him to the government in recompense for his modesty; but he was deceived, if these were his expectations. The senate and the chief officers of state, headed by the chancellor Oxenstiern, waited upon the queen. And whether Christina had a mind to alarm her discontented subjects, and establish herself more firmly on the throne by pretending to desert it, or

1 Mém. de Christine.

whatever else might be her motive for resigning; in a word, whether, having renounced the crown out of vanity, which dictated most of her actions, she was disposed to resume it out of caprice; she submitted, or pretended to submit, to the importunity of her subjects and successor, and consented to reign, on condition that she should be no more pressed to marry'.

Finding it impossible, however, to reconcile her literary pursuits, or more properly her love of ease and her romantic turn of June, mind, with the duties of her station, Christina finally 1654. resigned her crown, when she was in the twenty-ninth year of her age; and Charles Gustavus ascended the throne of Sweden, under the name of Charles X. After despoiling the palace of every thing curious or valuable, she left her capital and her kingdom, as the abodes of ignorance and barbarism. She passed through Germany in the dress of a man, and intending to fix her residence at Rome, that she might have opportunities of contemplating the precious remains of antiquity, she embraced the Catholic religion at Brussels, and solemnly renounced Lutheranism at Inspruck'. The Catholics considered this conversion as a great triumph, and the Protestants were not a little mortified at the defection of so celebrated a woman, but both without reason; for the queen of Sweden, who had an equal contempt for the peculiarities of the two religions, meant only to conform, in appearance, to the tenets of the people among whom she intended to live, in order to enjoy more agreeably the pleasures of social intercourse.

But Christina, like most sovereigns who have quitted a throne in order to escape from the cares of royalty, found herself no less uneasy in private life: so true it is, that happiness depends on the mind, not on the condition! She soon discovered, that a queen without power was a very insignificant character in Italy, and is supposed to have repented of her resignation. However that may be, she certainly became weary of her situation, and made two journeys into France; where she was received with much respect by the learned, whom she had pensioned and flattered, but with little attention by the polite, especially of her own sex. Her masculine air and libertine conversation kept women of delicacy at a distance. Nor does she seem to have A.D. desired their acquaintance; for when, on her first appearance, some ladies were eager to pay their civilities to her, What," said she, "makes these women so fond of me? Is it

66

1656.

1 Puffend. lib. vi.-Archenholtz, tome i.

2 Mém. de Christine.

because I am so like a man?" The celebrated Ninon de l'Enclos, whose wit and beauty gave her the power of pleasing to the most advanced age, and who was no less distinguished by the multiplicity of her amours than by the singularity of her manner of thinking, was the only woman in France whom Christina honoured with any particular marks of her esteem'. She loved the free conversation of men, or of women, who, like herself, were above vulgar restraints.

The modest women in France, however, repaid Christina's contempt with ridicule. And happy had it been for her character, had she never excited, in the mind of either sex, a more disagreeable emotion; but that was soon succeeded by those of detestation and horror. As if not only sovereignty but despotism had attached to her person, in a fit of libidinous jealousy she ordered Monaldeschi, her favourite, to be assassinated in the great A.D. gallery of Fontainebleau, and almost in her own presence. 1657. Yet the woman who thus terminated an amour by a murder, did not want her apologists among the learned; and this atrocious violation of the law of nature and nations, in an enlightened age, and in the heart of a civilized kingdom, was allowed to pass, not only without punishment, but without judicial inquiry!

Christina found it necessary, however, to leave France, where she was now justly held in abhorrence. She therefore returned to Rome, where, under the wing of the vicar of Christ, the greatest criminals find shelter and consolation; and where the queen of Sweden, a dupe to vanity and caprice, spent the remainder of her life, in sensual indulgences, and literary conversations with cardinal Azzolini, and other members of the sacred college; in admiring many things for which she had no taste, and in talking about more which she did not understand.

While Christina was thus rambling over Europe, and amusing herself in a manner as unworthy of her former character as of the daughter of the great Gustavus, Charles X. was indulging the martial spirit of the Swedes, by the conquest of Poland. When I last treated of the affairs of that country, I informed you of the armistice concluded by the Swedish court with Sigismund III. who, dying in the year 1632, was succeeded by his son Ladislaus, a prince of courage and capacity. The Russians having violated the peace with Poland, the new king acted with such spirit, that the czar Michael was humbled into forbearance. The Turks, being guilty of a similar breach of their engagements,

1 Mém. de Christine.

2 D'Alembert.

were chastised by a considerable defeat; and Morad IV. was constrained to accept the terms imposed by the victor. Without the hazard of actual war, Ladislaus procured from the Swedes a restitution of the conquests of the great Gustavus in Prussia. He imprudently concurred with the senate in the oppression of the Cossacks, who, though they were reduced to submission by the efforts of the Polanders, were not deterred from a general revolt. He left the state thus embroiled when he died in 1648. His brother and successor, John Casimir, was unwilling to continue the war against the Cossacks; but the nobles insisted on its prosecution, and again led their vassals into the field, without securing the honours of triumph. Though a treaty was concluded with the revolters in 1649, the war was soon renewed; and the Tartars engaged in it as the allies of the Cossacks. The king defeated, with great slaughter, a very numerous army of his Tartarian foes; and the fame of the victory produced the dispersion of the Cossack host. The late pacification was then outwardly confirmed; but Casimir was not destined to enjoy long tranquillity'.

Alexis, who (in 1646) had succeeded his father Michael on the Russian throne, was prompted by ambition to take advantage of the dissensions between Casimir and the nobles, and the unsubdued spirit of the Cossacks. His troops, with the aid of the latter, reduced Smolensko, in 1654, after a long siege; took Wilna, the capital of Lithuania, and ravaged that duchy with execrable inhumanity.

While Poland was thus harassed, the enterprising king of Sweden rushed into the country at the head of a powerful army, received the ready submission of the inhabitants of many of the towns, obtained two victories in the field, made himself master of Cracow, and drove the terrified Casimir into Silesia. The provincial governors now transferred their allegiance to the invader; and he acted for a time as sovereign of Poland. But his arms met with an effectual check in Polish Prussia; for though most of the towns of that territory submitted to him, the burghers of Dantzic manifested an intrepid spirit of resistance, and promoted, by their bold example, a general association among the Polanders to shake off the Swedish yoke. The elector of Brandenburg (whose family had possessed Ducal Prussia from the year 1520) at first co-operated with the Swedes, and assisted at the siege of Warsaw ; and his name deserves a share of the infamy attached

1 Puffendorf.-Heidenst.

to the cruel massacre perpetrated at the reduction of that city. But he afterward joined Casimir against Charles X.; the czar also turned his arms against a prince who had excited his jealousy ; the emperor Leopold espoused the same cause; and Frederic III. of Denmark took arms against his aspiring and formidable neighbour 1.

Not dismayed by the number and the power of his adversaries, Charles led an army over the ice to Funen, reduced that and other Danish islands, and was preparing to besiege Copenhagen, when Frederic, intimidated by the progress of the enemy, sued for peace, which he obtained on unfavourable terms. This agreement, however (called the treaty of Roschild), was quickly violated by the suspicions of the Swedish monarch, who, imagining that the Danes would soon renew hostilities, formed in 1658 the siege of Copenhagen. He was on the point of reducing it, when it was relieved by a fleet sent from Holland; and, in the following year, it was saved by the joint interference of that republic and the English protector. While nego- A.D. tiations were on foot, Charles died of an epidemic fever. 1660. with the character of a prince too active and ambitious for the peace of Europe.

Before the death of the Swedish potentate, a truce had been concluded between him and Alexis, who had not been very successful against him; and Casimir had recovered a considerable part of Poland. He [regained the rest by the treaty of Oliva, to which the states and the regency of Sweden readily agreed; and that the minority of Charles XI. might not be disturbed by foreign war, a pacification was adjustedwith Denmark and other powers.

We must now, my dear Philip, return to the transactions of England, which had become powerful under a republican government, and during the latter part of the period that we have been reviewing, diffused through Europe the terror of its

name.

'Histoire des Revolutions de Pologne, par l'Abbé des Fontaines.-Puffendorf.