Christina, As we have seen, Gustavus Adolphus, upon leaving Sweden in 1630 Gustavus Adolphus to take part in the Thirty Years' War, placed the government of his in the kingdom in the hands of a Council of Regency presided over by his Thirty Years' able Prime Minister, the Chancellor, Axel Oxenstiern; confiding his War. infant daughter Christina to this council. Upon her valiant father's death on the memorable field of Lutzen, in 1632, CHRISTINA was proclaimed Queen of Sweden; the government being administered by Oxenstiern, under whose guidance Sweden became the head of the Protestant、 league. The Thirty Years' War made Sweden the great military power of the North, and gave rise to the States-System in the Northern kingdoms of Europe. During the young queen's minority the noble families of Sweden improved their opportunity to increase their privileges and property. Christina assumed the government in 1644; and during the first years of her reign she displayed a wisdom, a firmness and a manifold ability which surprised her venerable counselors, and thus proved herself a worthy daughter and successor of Gustavus Adolphus. She exhibited a masculine spirit and character in everything. Her influence in favor of peace was felt in the Treaty of Westphalia. Christina surrounded herself with a brilliant court adorned with the society of artists and scholars from all Europe, whom she invited to Stockholm. Her extraordinary accomplishments won the admiration of the learned foreigners who thronged her court, among whom was the great French philosopher Descartes. Unfortunately, Christina's powers of mind were not properly balanced and supported by steadiness of purpose. She wasted her revenues in fantastic entertainments, and bestowed the crown-lands on her favorites, who made use of her gifts to oppose the royal prerogatives in the next reign. As the years advanced, Christina disappointed the expectations that had been formed of her in the early part of her reign. Her taste for art and her love for science found little encouragement in the Protestant North, and for that reason she never found herself at home in her kingdom. Thus becoming weary of the cares of state, and in order to indulge her artistic and scientific tastes, she abdicated the throne of Sweden in 1654, after a reign of ten years and in the twentyeighth year of her age, naming her cousin Charles Gustavus of PfalzZweibrücken as her successor, and reserving an annuity for herself. Christina then left her native Sweden and sought freedom in a milder climate. At Innsbruck she abjured her father's religion and was solemnly admitted into the Roman Catholic Church. She passed the remaining thirty-five years of her life in wandering over Europe; traveling through the Netherlands, France and Italy, and twice re A. D. 16321654 Her Reign. Her Patronage of Learning. Her Extrava gance. Her Abdication. Her Wander ings in Other Lands. Charles 1654 1660. visiting Sweden; dividing her time between learning and vice; and finally establishing her permanent residence in that renowned city filled with all the splendor of art-Rome-where she ended her dissolute life in 1689 at the age of sixty-three. CHARLES X., the cousin and successor of Christina, upon his accesX., A. D. sion in 1654, found Sweden still exhausted by her efforts in the Thirty Years' War, as well as by Christina's extravagant expenditures. Nevertheless, he was ambitious of building up a great Scandinavian empire in the North of Europe under the supremacy of Sweden, and His thus making himself the absolute master of the North. The weakness Ambition. of the neighboring kingdoms of Denmark and Poland seemed to flatter the hopes of the ambitious King of Sweden. His Alliance with Alexis of Russia against Poland. His rary of Poland. As John Casimir, King of Poland, claimed the Swedish crown, the Swedish monarch formed an alliance with the Czar Alexis of Russia, the second of the Romanoffs, who found a pretext for war with Poland in a revolt of the Cossacks of the Ukraine against the Polish kingdom, to which they had been subject since 1386. In 1654 the Czar Alexis besieged and took Smolensk, while other Russian armies occupied Lithuania and the Ukiraine; and in 1655 two Swedish armies invaded Poland, while the Swedish fleet blockaded the free city of Dantzic. In August, 1655, King Charles X. of Sweden defeated King John Tempo- Casimir of Poland in the decisive battle of Sobota, after which WarConquest saw surrendered to the victorious Swedish king. The Polish army and most of the Polish nobility took oaths of allegiance to the King of Sweden. Cracow also opened its gates to the Swedish monarch; and the province of Lithuania, occupied chiefly by his Russian allies, acknowledged him as its sovereign. A party in the Polish Diet offered the crown of Poland to the Emperor Leopold I. of Germany, but a majority of the Polish nation favored Charles X. His Struggle with the Great Elector of Brandenburg. His In this emergency the Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg, the ally of John Casimir of Poland, led an army into West Prussia to protect that duchy against the Swedes; but he was defeated by Charles X. of Sweden, and was thus forced to acknowledge himself a vassal of Sweden instead of Poland. In subsequent treaties the Swedish king's embarrassments enabled the Great Elector to secure the sovereignty of the duchy of East Prussia, thus laying the foundation of the subsequent powerful Kingdom of Prussia. In the meantime King John Casimir of Poland mustered an army of Second Poles and Tartars to recover Warsaw from the Swedes, and recaptured Conquest of Poland. that city June 21, 1656; but after a three days' battle in its vicinity the next month, July, 1656, in which Charles X. of Sweden and his new ally, the Great Elector of Brandenburg, were victorious, Warsaw again surrendered to the Swedish monarch. with Russia, and At this juncture Poland was saved from destruction by the lack of His War harmony among her enemies; as the Czar Alexis of Russia had now grown jealous of the Swedes, and invaded the Swedish province of Germany Livonia with one hundred thousand men, while he sent another army Denmark. to ravage the Swedish provinces of Ingria, Carelia and Finland, on the east side of the Baltic. The Emperor Leopeld I. of Germany and King Frederick III. of Denmark also became alarmed and offended by the progress of Charles X. of Sweden, and became the allies of John Casimir of Poland in opposing the "Pyrrhus of the North," A. D. 1657. Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, favored Sweden, though he offered her no active aid; but George Ragotzky, Prince of Transylvania, entered into a close offensive alliance with the King of Sweden, in the hope of obtaining the crown of Poland, or at least the Polish provinces of Red Russia, Podolia, Volhynia and a large territory in the South of the Polish kingdom. The Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg retired from the Swedish army with his contingent force; and by the Peace of Welau with Poland, September 19, 1657, he was guaranteed his title of Sovereign Duke of Prussia and the possession of that duchy as an independent state. His Alliance with Ragotzky, of Transylvania. The Great Elector as Duke of Prussia. Coalition As the Czar Alexis of Russia, King John Casimir of Poland, King Frederick III. of Denmark, the Emperor Leopold I. of Germany, the Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg and the Dutch Republic united in 1657 in an alliance to compel King Charles X. of Sweden to relinquish his conquests, the Swedish king at once retired from Poland and made a sudden dash at Denmark, overrunning the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein without opposition, and sending a Denmark. formidable detachment under General Wrangel to occupy the duchy of Bremen. His Invasion of His Victories in The King of Sweden took Frederiksödde by siege, October 24, 1657; and, as soon as a winter of unusual severity, even for those Northern regions, had covered the Baltic with ice, he commenced a remarkable Denmark. series of maneuvers among the islands of the Sound by crossing the two Belts on the ice with his cavalry and artillery, capturing Fünen, Langeland, Laaland and Falster, and finally passing over into the island of Zealand and placing Copenhagen at his mercy. The Danish capital was poorly fortified and utterly taken by surprise. The threatened intervention of the Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg and of the Dutch Republic in favor of Denmark, and the mediation of France and England, led to the Peace of Roskild, in March, 1658, by which Denmark ceded some of her most important islands to Sweden and abandoned all her offensive alliances. Peace of His Ambitious The ambition of Charles X. of Sweden had grown by indulgence; and he now not only contemplated the founding of a great ScandinaDesign. vian empire in the North of Europe, but also of marching southward into Italy with an overwhelming host, and, like Alaric the Goth more than twelve centuries before, establishing a Gothic kingdom in that sunny land of Southern Europe. His Second Denmark. Early in August, 1658, Charles X. of Sweden renewed the war Invasion against King Frederick III. of Denmark, on the pretext that the of Danish monarch had not faithfully executed all the conditions of the Treaty of Roskild. The Swedish king took Kronenborg, September 5, 1658, after a siege which gave the Danes time to strengthen the fortifications of Copenhagen, so that it would be enabled to hold out until the arrival of a Dutch fleet which was sent to aid the Danes in the defense of their capital. Denmark Saved by the Dutch, the Poles and the Great Elector The Swedes then turned the siege of Copenhagen into a blockade, but they themselves were besieged before the Danish capital by the Dutch and Danish fleets which guarded the sea; while the Great Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg also came to the relief of Denmark with a combined army of Poles, Austrians and his own subjects, driving the Swedes from the peninsula of Jutland and capturing denburg. most of the towns in Swedish Pomerania. Thorn surrendered to the Poles in December, 1658, after a siege of eighteen months; and Elbing and Marienburg were the only towns in Prussia that still remained in possession of the Swedes. Foreign Intervention. XI., of Sweden. England, France and Holland, whose commerce was embarrassed by the closing of the Baltic ports, now intervened to put a stop to the war; but the main cause of disturbance was removed by the sudden death of Charles X. of Sweden, in February, 1660. His son and successor, CHARLES XI., was a child of four The queen-regent of Sweden, with her Council of State, at once commenced negotiaPeace of tions with the hostile powers, and concluded the Peace of Oliva with Poland in May, 1660; the Peace of Copenhagen with Denmark in July, 1660, and the Peace of Cardis with Russia in July, 1661. Oliva and of Copenhagen. Branden years. In 1675 Charles XI. of Sweden, as an ally of Louis XIV. of France, Swedish became involved in a disastrous war with the Great Elector Frederick War with William of Brandenburg and King Christian V. of Denmark, who burg and were aided by a Dutch fleet. The Swedes invaded Brandenburg, but were defeated by the Great Elector's forces twice within four days at Battle of Rathenow and Fehrbellin, in June, 1675. The brilliant victory of the Great Elector in the battle of Fehrbellin, June 28, 1675, was the foundation of Prussia's greatness. Denmark. Fehr bellin. Swedish In 1675 the Danes and the Dutch also defeated the Swedes at sea several times. The Danes conquered the island of Rügen from the |