The treaty of peace of Westphalia was signed in October, 1648. The representatives of Sweden were John Oxenstierna, a son of the great chancellor, and Adler Salvius. Sweden received, as a reward for her decisive and glorious part in the Thirty Years’ War, the following possessions: West Pomerania, with the islands of Rugen and Usedom; the western part of East Pomerania, with the island of Wollin; the town of Wismar, with surrounding territory, and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. With these German possessions followed three votes at the German Diet. The Swedish government was to receive a sum of several millions to defray the army expenses, of which Queen Christine recklessly ceded the larger part.
Through these glorious conditions of peace Sweden rose to the rank of one of the mightiest of European empires, which held the balance of power in Northern Europe. Her possessions made the Baltic almost an “inland lake of Sweden,” and efforts soon followed to make it completely so. Sweden exerted a beneficent influence throughout her large possessions, which, from a cultural point of view, hardly can be overestimated. Her methods of planting the seeds of culture, by establishing Swedish and German universities, and by abolishing serfdom in the conquered lands, are worthy of the highest respect. But with her new political grandeur Sweden acquired formidable enemies; she had not the resources to sustain or defend her great possessions, and the development of the mother country was for a time misdirected by dreams of vain glory.
The government of Sweden during Christine’s minority, according to the directions left by her father, consisted of the five highest officials of the realm. Among these the chancellor, through his experience and his former intimacy with Gustavus Adolphus, was the leading spirit, king in all except the name, and deserving the honorable surname of “our greatest civilian,” given him by Swedish historians. Unlike the majority of other uncrowned or crowned rulers, he did not use his power to secure wealth or distinction for himself and his family until upon his retirement. Offers to make him a ruling prince of Germany, and the young queen his son’s consort, were coldly refused. While the war was going on he strengthened the foundations of the centralization of the state by the government regulations of 1634. At the side of the supreme court of Stockholm another was established at Jœnkœping, for Gothaland, with a state councillor as president. The system of various government departments was enlarged upon.[2] The most important of these was the chancery, in which all business to come before the government was prepared. Departments for commerce and for mining were established. Sweden was divided into eleven administrative districts, læn, later increased to sixteen, each of these having a governor. Finland was divided into five districts. Count Peter Brahe the Younger, as governor-general of Finland, did more for this neglected country than was ever done before to right wrongs and foster prosperity. Livonia and Ingermanland received each their governor-general, the latter province, by repeated wars brought into a devastated condition, serving as a place of deportation. This system of administration won the admiration of the Continent and was in many instances copied as a pattern of perfection. The Swedish army was considered the finest in the world, and troops better trained or more victorious did not exist. At the end of the Thirty Years’ War about 100,000 men were under Swedish command. The majority of these were foreigners, who afterward were enlisted for continual service. Their officers were raised in great numbers to the rank of nobles and endowed with dignities and estates. The army was divided into twenty regiments, seven of which were Finnish. The town and coast population regularly furnished able men for the navy. Much was done to improve the interior communications by means of new roads and canals. A postal route was established between Stockholm and Gothenburg, and others followed. A Swedish postmaster in Hamburg had charge of the foreign mails. Newspapers were published, the government shaping for itself an organ for official announcement which is yet published.
Great improvements were made in the mining industry, thanks principally to the efforts of the noble immigrant, Louis de Geer and his Walloons, who made the mines of Dannemora a source of riches. Weapons and cannon were manufactured not only for the army, but for exportation also. The brass foundries were excellent. The towns began to flourish, especially Stockholm and Gothenburg, through commerce with Holland and the Baltic States. A Swedish colony, planned by Gustavus Adolphus through the South Company, created by him in Gothenburg, was founded in North America. In 1638 two ships, “Kalmar Nyckel” and “Fogel Grip,” arrived at the mouth of the Delaware River, where territory was procured through honest purchase from the Indians. The Dutch in neighboring colonies tried to persuade the Indians to oust the newcomers, but the Swedish governor, Peter Menuet, won their goodwill by fair dealing. The members of the colony of New Sweden were honest, upright people, who dwelt in peace with the natives. They accepted a governor appointed by the government, in the person of John Printz, but refused to tolerate among themselves criminals who later were despatched to their colony, and these had to be taken back. New Sweden after a few decades became the prey of the Dutch, but many American families point with justifiable pride to their descent from these honest and industrious Swedish settlers. A Swedish colony on the coast of African Guinea existed between 1650 and 1663, but was through treacherous dealings turned over to the Dutch.
Much was done to build up the educational system, several new colleges were established, and regulations made to instruct the peasants. Peter Brahe founded the University of Abo, in 1640, while in Finland, and the German University of Greifswald, in Swedish Pomerania, was re-established. Swedish men of learning began to attract attention, such as John Skytte, who was considered the most brilliant Latin scholar of Europe in his day, Stiernhœk, the jurist, Bureus and Messenius, the historians, and Georg Stiernhielm, poet and antiquarian. The old Icelandic literature was discovered and began to exert a strong influence on literature and science, to a great extent strengthening their chauvinistic spirit. The Swedish poets Stiernhielm, Runius, Holmstrœm, Lucidor and the poetess Brenner, from the Eddic songs, which contain some of the oldest humorous poems in existence, learned how to write in a humorous vein, something entirely unknown in the German and French literatures of that day.
The excellent government, of which Axel Oxenstierna was the leading spirit, had its defects. In its perfect system of administration, which in the main features stands unshaken to this day, there appeared to be no room for the people themselves to be governed. On account of the great allowances made to the nobles it was necessary to increase the taxes of the peasants. Many had to leave their homes and farms for want of resources to pay their taxes; others were forced away from their property by the nobles. There was danger of the destruction of the free, self-dependent yeomanry. A hatred against the nobility grew up. The great lords returned from the wars laden with booty, erected fine castles, and continued the high living to which they had become accustomed while abroad. The power of the nobility was increased by lavish donations from Queen Christine and by the appropriation of other crown lands which the government was forced to sell or mortgage on account of the wars. The clergy were the spokesmen of the peasant class at the Riksdag, every year demanding with greater emphasis a restitution to the crown of its property, which was held by the nobles.
Queen Christine herself took the reins of government, in 1644, at the age of eighteen. She had inherited from her illustrious father some of his genius, and from her mother, Marie Eleonore of Brandenburg, a peculiar nervous disposition. Her mother took no interest in her until the death of Gustavus Adolphus, when a flood of exalted tenderness suddenly was let loose over her. Count Jacob de la Gardie took the lead in opposing the undesirable and unstable character of this relation, Christine being separated from her mother and educated by the Countess-Palatine Catherine, a pious and noble woman, the older sister of Gustavus Adolphus. Greatly offended, Marie Eleonore left the country never to return. Queen Christine showed a remarkable faculty of absorbing knowledge. Well versed in a great number of languages, and well read in various sciences, particularly mathematics, she soon acquired fame as the most learned woman of her time. She was of frank countenance, slept little, cared little for dress, and was passionately fond of hunting and riding on horseback. Queen Christine possessed a sharp intellect, was daring and resolute, but headstrong, fickle, extravagant, and but little particular in her choice of favorites. Her vanity and egotism knew no bounds. At the beginning of her reign she took pains to give serious attention to the affairs of state. The great chancellor had been her instructor in economics and statecraft, but she repaid him by open coldness and secret antagonism. Her ambition to surround herself with scientists of note, particularly foreigners who flattered her vanity by blowing her fame to the four corners of the earth, killed her interest for politics. Later she was seized by the evil spirit of frivolity, abandoning herself to empty pleasures and to excesses of extravagance when her learned admirers were forgotten for unworthy favorites. Among the latter, Count Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie was for a long time all-powerful. The grandson of General Pontus and a daughter of John III., he was the son of Count Jacob de la Gardie and Ebba Brahe, and one of the most brilliant noblemen of Europe. In his youth he formed an intimate friendship with the dauphin of France, later Louis XIV., who throughout his life honored him with the title of “Mon Cousin,” or “Mon cher Cousin.” His ambition to become Queen Christine’s consort was never satisfied, nor was he allowed to accept the rank of a prince from the German emperor, but the queen made him the richest man in her realm. Magnus de la Gardie did not possess the sterling qualities of his ancestors, but was of great patriotism and lavishly liberal toward educational institutions, in this respect without a peer in Swedish history. In 1666 he founded the Academy of Antiquities, which was the first archæological institution in Europe, the Swedish antiquarians of the day, principal among them Bureus and Stiernhielm, doing valuable antiquarian research. In 1664, Count de la Gardie donated to the University Library of Upsala a highly valuable collection of manuscripts and books, chiefly from Iceland. In the collection was also the Gothic Bible translation of Bishop Wulfila in the only copy extant. Liberal with his silver, Count de la Gardie gave to the precious book a silver binding, as he had in earlier years presented to Queen Christine a silver throne (which is still in use). This book has an interesting history of its own.
Codex Argenteus, the silver book, thus called on account of its silver binding, contains fragments of the four Gospels in the Gothic language. The translation was made from the Greek original by Bishop Wulfila (b. 318-d. 388), the apostle of the Goths. The writing is done in so-called encaustum (printing with heated stamps) of gold and silver letters on vellum of scarlet color. This copy is considered to have been made toward the end of the fifth or in the beginning of the sixth century, when the East Goths still held sway in Italy. Its early fortunes are unknown, but it is supposed that the book was found in the possession of the Visigoths (or West Goths) when their empire was seized by the Franks, and donated to the monastery of Verden by some munificent Frankish chief. Here, in the Benedictine abbey of Verden, on the river Ruhr, in Westphalia, the book was discovered at least as early as 1554, when the scholars Cassander and Gualther of Cologne are known to have had copies which can have been made from no other source.
After the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War, the Codex was transmitted to Prague for safety. In the year of 1648, Prague, or rather the older portion of the town, was captured by the Swedish general, Count Hans Christopher Kœnigsmark, who, among the vast treasures of the Bohemian capital, found also the Codex Argenteus which he presented to Queen Christine. All the books and manuscripts of the queen were in the care of her librarian, Isaac Vossius, a learned but eccentric scholar of Dutch parentage. Vossius was at first Queen Christine’s teacher of Greek, not a very agreeable position, for the queen called him to the castle at three o’clock in the morning for her first hour. In 1650 he had to leave court and country on account of a quarrel with that light of learning, Claude de Saumaise (Salmasius), another one of the foreign scholars in favor with the queen. In 1653 he was called back, and again took charge of the books of the queen, but soon returned to Holland. Before his departure he gathered several costly books and manuscripts, among which Codex Argenteus, with or without the queen’s private permission, taking them with him. In 1670, Vossius came to England, where he died, in 1688, as court chaplain at Windsor. King Charles II. of England said of him: “Vossius believes in anything but the Bible.”
When in Holland, the Codex Argenteus passed out of the hands of Vossius after his uncle Franziskus Junius had made a complete copy of it. Junius, called the “grandfather of modern philology,” published the first edition of Codex Argenteus at Dortrecht, in 1665, providing the beautiful fac-simile with parallel Old English texts and a Gothic glossary. In Holland the Codex changed hands repeatedly until found in Brabant by Samuel Pufendorff, in 1661, who, in the following year, bought it for Count de la Gardie, paying a sum of something like $1,200 for it.