See Just Matthias Thiele, Christian den Ottende (Copenhagen, 1848); Yngvar Nielsen, Bidrag til Norges Historie (Christiania, 1882-1886).
CHRISTIAN IX. (1818-1906), king of Denmark, was a younger son of William, duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (d. 1831), a direct descendant of the Danish king Christian III. by his wife Louise, a daughter of Charles, prince of Hesse-Cassel (d. 1836), and grand-daughter of King Frederick V. Born at Gottorp on the 8th of April 1818, Christian entered the army, and alone among the members of his family served with the Danish troops in Schleswig during the insurrection of 1848; but he was a personage of little importance until about 1852, ten years after his marriage with Louise (1817-1898), daughter of William, prince of Hesse-Cassel (d. 1867), and cousin of King Frederick VII. At this time it became imperative that satisfactory provision should be made for the succession to the Danish throne. The reigning king, Frederick VII., was childless, and the representatives of the great powers met in London and settled the crown on Prince Christian and his wife (May 1852), an arrangement which became part of the law of Denmark in 1853. The “protocol king,” as Christian was sometimes called, ascended the throne on Frederick’s death in November 1863, and was at once faced by formidable difficulties. Reluctantly he assented to the policy which led to war with the combined power of Austria and Prussia, and to the separation of the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg from Denmark (see [Schleswig-holstein Question]). Within the narrowed limits of his kingdom Christian’s difficulties were more protracted and hardly less serious. During almost the whole of his reign the Danes were engaged in a political struggle between the “Right” and the “Left,” the party of order and the party of progress, the former being supported in general by the Landsting, and the latter by the Folketing. The king’s sympathies lay with the more conservative section of his subjects, and for many years he was successful in preventing the Radicals from coming into office. The march of events, however, was too strong for him, and in 1901 he assented in a dignified manner to the formation of a “cabinet of the Left” (see [Denmark]: History). In spite of these political disturbances Christian’s popularity with his people grew steadily, and was enhanced by the patriarchal and unique position which in his later years he occupied in Europe. With his wife, often called “the aunt of all Europe,” he was related to nearly all the European sovereigns. His eldest son Frederick had married a daughter of Charles XV. of Sweden; his second son George had been king of the Hellenes since 1863; and his youngest son Waldemar (b. 1858) was married to Marie d’Orléans, daughter of Robert, duc de Chartres. Of his three daughters, Alexandra married Edward VII. of Great Britain; Dagmar (Marie), the tsar Alexander III.; and Thyra, Ernest Augustus, duke of Cumberland. One of his grandsons, Charles, became king of Norway as Haakon VII. in 1905, and another, Constantine, crown prince of Greece, married a sister of the German emperor William II. Christian was also the ruler of Iceland, where he was received with great enthusiasm when he visited the island in 1874. He died at Copenhagen on the 29th of January 1906, and was buried at Roskilde.
See Barfod, Kong Kristian IX.’s Regerings-Dagbog (Copenhagen, 1876); and Hans Majestet Kong Kristian IX. (Copenhagen, 1888).
CHRISTIAN, WILLIAM (1608-1663), Manx politician, a son of Ewan Christian, one of the Manx deemsters, was born on the 14th of April 1608, and was known as Illiam Dhone, or Brown William. In 1648 the lord of the Isle of Man, James Stanley, 7th earl of Derby, appointed Christian his receiver-general; and when in 1651 the earl crossed to England to fight for Charles II. he left him in command of the island militia. Derby was taken prisoner at the battle of Worcester, and his famous countess, Charlotte de la Tremouille, who was residing in Man, sought to obtain her husband’s release by negotiating with the victorious parliamentarians for the surrender of the island. At once a revolt headed by Christian broke out, partly as a consequence of this step, partly owing to the discontent caused by some agrarian arrangements recently introduced by the earl. The rebels seized many of the forts; then Christian in his turn entered into negotiations with the parliamentarians; and probably owing to his connivance the island was soon in the power of Colonel Robert Duckenfield, who had brought the parliamentary fleet to Man in October 1651. The countess of Derby was compelled to surrender her two fortresses, Castle Rushen and Peel castle, while Christian remained receiver-general, becoming governor of the island in 1656. Two years later, however, he was accused of misappropriating some money; he fled to England, and in 1660 was arrested in London. Having undergone a year’s imprisonment he returned to Man, hoping that his offence against the earl of Derby would be condoned under the Act of Indemnity of 1661; but, anxious to punish his conduct, Charles, the new earl of Derby, ordered his seizure; he refused to plead, and a packed House of Keys declared that in this case his life and property were at the mercy of the lord of the island. The deemsters then passed sentence, and in accordance therewith Christian was executed by shooting on the 2nd of January 1663. This arbitrary act angered Charles II. and his advisers; the deemsters and others were punished, and some reparation was made to Christian’s family. Christian is chiefly celebrated through the Manx ballad Baase Illiam Dhone, which has been translated into English by George Borrow, and through the references to him in Sir Walter Scott’s Peveril of the Peak.
See A.W. Moore, History of the Isle of Man (1900).
CHRISTIAN OF BRUNSWICK (1590-1626), bishop of Halberstadt and a general during the earlier part of the Thirty Years’ War, a younger son of Henry Julius, duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, was born at Gröningen on the 20th of September 1599. Having succeeded his father as “bishop” of Halberstadt in 1616, he obtained some experience of warfare under Maurice, prince of Orange, in the Netherlands. Raising an army he entered the service of Frederick V., elector palatine of the Rhine, just after that prince had been driven from Bohemia; glorying in his chivalrous devotion to Frederick’s wife Elizabeth, he attacked the lands of the elector of Mainz and the bishoprics of Westphalia. After some successes he was defeated by Tilly at Höchst in June 1622; then, dismissed from Frederick’s service, he entered that of the United Provinces, losing an arm at the battle of Fleurus, a victory he did much to win. In 1623 he gathered an army and broke into lower Saxony, but was beaten by Tilly at Stadtlohn and driven back to the Netherlands. When in 1625 Christian IV., king of Denmark, entered the arena of the war, he took the field again in the Protestant interest, but after some successes he died at Wolfenbüttel on the 16th of June 1626. Christian, who loved to figure as “the friend of God, the enemy of the priests,” is sometimes called “the mad bishop,” and was a merciless, coarse, and blasphemous man.