The heart of Europe - 2 of 2

Sweden has many old connections with Brussels.

Did you know, for example, that Gustav Vasa's wild daughter Cecilia died here in 1627, at the age of 87, after a particularly stormy and remarkable life, i.a. with a professional profile in Antwerp's more decadent quarters, down by the harbour? This poor girl, who had once been married to the Margrave of Baden-Rodemachern, fell deeper and deeper into sin, so deep that one of her sons, according to a number of chroniclers, came to Antwerp in 1590 to pluck his then 50-year-old mother from the nests of sin. He is said to have done so so literally that her hair fell out and she broke an arm. But she was saved anyway.

The sons of poor Cecilia met equally sorry ends, the saviour-son died soon afterwards of consumption and another son, equally infamous for his irregular lifestyle, fell down the stairs during a particularly violent party and broke his neck.

Queen Christina came, when she had abdicated as Queen of Sweden, with a great procession of followers to Brussels the day before Christmas Eve 1654. She came in a gilded sloop which was drawn up the river by 12 white horses. At that time Brussels was the capital of the Spanish Netherlands. Canons fired salutes, the whole town was lit up. Carpets had been laid on the streets and over the town gates her name was lit up in flaming torches carried by angels. She went past the Great Square and the Town Hall which was illuminated with 3000 artificial fires which made beautiful pictures. The next day, on Christmas Eve 1654, she converted secretly to Catholicism in the palace church in Brussels.

Then she lived for six months in the Arenberg palace, which is still there, before she set off with an even larger procession of followers towards Rome.

The Hôtel Bellevue is also still there in Brussels, today a distinguished 18th-century museum. There lived Axel von Fersen for a couple of years after he had tried to rescue the French King and Queen from revolutionary Paris. There at Bellevue he kept contact with Marie-Antoinette in her imprisonment, they got letters to one another via hatboxes, cake-tins and secret agents. Twice Fersen was forced to flee from French revolutionary troops who were on their way to take Brussels.

It was from here that Fersen once took himself in the greatest secrecy back to Paris and into the Tuilleries palace, where he spent one last night with Marie-Antoinette. He was here in Brussels when he received the news that she had been beheaded.

Here to Brussels came Sweden's new crown-prince Karl Johan Bernadotte at the head of the Swedish army when they had been part of the force which defeated Napoleon in April 1814. Bernadotte's military procession with the Swedes was Sweden's last war in Europe. It was here that Bernadotte got to know that the Bourbon family had retaken the French throne. With that he understood that he had no chance of becoming king of France himself, and he returned to Stockholm and accepted his fate of being king of 'just' the union of Sweden and Norway.

The most well-known Swede in Belgium today is still Princess Astrid, the daughter of Prince Carl. She was married to the Belgian Prince Leopold. Astrid became Queen of Belgium in 1934, but died in a car accident in Switzerland a year later. She was the mother of the present king, Baudoin. She became extraordinarily popular in a short time and her name and her memory are still celebrated warmly by the Belgians.