Christina reserved to herself the revenues of some districts in Sweden and Germany, the entire independence of her person, and supreme authority, with the right of life and death, over all such persons as should enter her service and form her suite. A few days after this public act she set oft• for Brussels, where she privately abjured the Protestant religion. A little later she publicly embraced Roman Catholicism at Innepruck. From the Tyrol she travelled to Rome, where she made a sort of triumphal entrance, riding on horseback, dressed almost like a man. Here she surrounded herself with poets, painters, musicians, numismatists, and the like. Quarrelling however with some of the College of Cardinals, she made a journey into France in 1656. At Paris she of course made a great sensation. Her constant companions were authors and academicians; for tho society of her own sex she showed a greater contempt than ever, and the only French woman about whom she seemed to take any interest was Ninon L'Enclos. Iler stay in Paris is said to have been shortened by Cardinal Mazarin, who, finding her inclined to engage in some intrigues against his authority, took such measures as rendered that capital an unpleasant residence for her. Sho however returned to France in the following year, and added to her notoriety by causing Monaldeschi, her master of the horse and chief favourite, to be put to death, for some alleged offence. This murder she justified by stating that by her deed of abdication she had reserved to herself supreme power over her own suite, that she was still a queen wherever she went, and that Monaldeechi was guilty of high treason. Strange to say, she found defenders elsewhere; and among them Leibnitz, who wrote an elaborate justification of the deed at Fontainebleau.
The court was offended, but took no public notice of this atrocious act. Finding herself avoided in France, Christina thought of visiting England, but the Protector Cromwell turned the dark side of his countenance towards her ; she therefore did not land in England, but returned to Rome, where she presently involved herself in great pecuniary difficulties, and a quarrel with the pope (Alexander VII.). Upon the death of the king, her cousin, Charles Gustavus, in 1660, she travelled hastily from Rome to Stockholm, where, according to most accounts, she showed a strong desire to re-ascend the throne ; but the minds of the people were entirely alienated, and her change of religion was an insuperable barrier. She returned once more to Rome, which
she never again left, except for one or two short intervals, during the remaining twenty-eight years of her life. Through that long period her occupations were various, and many of her proceedings indicate eccentricity approaching to insanity. She took part in several political intrigues; she is even said to have aspired to the elective crown of Poland ; she interested herself for the Venetians in Candia, besieged by the Turks ; she quarrelled anew with the pope and cardinals, who bad liberally supplied her with money ; she engaged actively in the Molinist or Quietist controversy; she indulged in the dreams of alchemy and judicial astrology ; she violently censured Louis XIV. for his revocation of the Edict of Nantes and his dragonades against the Protestants of France ; she founded an ‘Accademia,' or literary society; she corresponded with many sevens, and she made a large collection of objects of art and antiquity. The ruling passion, in short, was the ambition of influencing great political affairs even when all power and influence had departed from her. She died at Rome with great com posure on the 19th of April, 1639, in the sixty-third year of her age. Though sho wrote continually, not much of her writing has been preserved. Her 'Maxims and Sentences,' and Reflections on the Life and Actions of Alexander the Great,' were collected and published by Archenholtz, in his memoirs of her life, 4 vols. 4to, 1751. From the somewhat tediously minute work of Archenholtz, who was librarian to the landgrave of Hesse Cassel, and an honest painstaking man, Lacombe derived the materials for his life of Christina, and D'Alembert his reflections and anecdotes of the samo personage. Her 'Secret Letters,' and Memoirs of her own Life, dedicated to God,' are forgeries.
(See Archenholtz, as above ; Catteau-Calville, Histoire de Cristinc, Reins de la Stade; Fortia, Travels in Sweden; Biographic Universelle; the works of Bayle, her contemporary and correspondent; Voltaire ; and Horace Walpole.)