The Complicity of Magdalena Rudenschöld in the Armfelt Conspiracy

This is the story of a noble woman convicted for crimes against her country because of her devotion to the wrong person. To talk about how Magdalena Rudenschöld found herself a traitor to the Kingdom of Sweden and imprisoned for it, we need to talk about that wrong person -- a Swedish courtier and diplomat named Gustaf Mauritz Armfelt, and the conspiracy that was named for him.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Criminally a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership
with I Heart Radio. There's more to this story than
we plan to tell. There's more to expand upon in
the late eighteenth century on the historical timeline of Sweden,

(00:23):
Finland and Russia where today's episode takes place. But we
won't be getting into the wars, and we mostly won't
be getting into the coup's. Here's what you need to
know though, about the few years that we will be visiting.
Finland was part of Sweden for nearly seven hundred years,
from roughly eleven fifty until the conclusion of the Finnish

(00:44):
War in eighteen o nine, which was fought between the
Kingdom of Sweden and the Russian Empire, after which the
Grand Duchy of Finland within Imperial Russia was established and
Finland remained an autonomous part of the Russian Empire, that is,
until nineteen The events leading up to our treasonous story
are during a period of great change for this region.

(01:06):
But we're going to try to stick to the story
of one woman who was imprisoned for treason because of
her devotion to the wrong person. Welcome to Criminal Lea.
I'm Maria Tremarquis and I'm Holly Fry. Magdalena Carlotta Rudenschold
was born on January one, seventeen sixty six, to Karl
Rudenschold and Christina Sophia rudenscholdne Bierka in Stockholm, Sweden. I

(01:30):
feel like we should say right out of the gate,
there's a lot of Swedish names. We're doing our best.
We may not get them all perfect. But going back
to Magdalena, she was known by the nickname Mala, and
she was a Swedish countess and a lady in waiting.
Her father had been ennobled following his successful career as
a government official. Her mother was a countess born into

(01:52):
one of the most prominent noble families of Sweden. Mala
was spirited and talented, and by her own ad chin
a spoiled child. She was well educated and as we
learned in research, in particular, she quite mastered the French language.
Through her parents social position and kinship, her family had

(02:14):
very close connections with the royal court. When she was
seventeen years old, Mala succeeded her sister in the highly
desirable position of Lady in waiting to Princess Sophia Albertina,
daughter of King Adolph Frederick of Sweden and Luisa Ulrica
of Prussia. Sophia was also the sister of Gustaf, the
third future king. He's going to be a key figure

(02:36):
in this story. It said that Mala, for her liveliness,
quickly became among the most popular in the court circle.
She often participated in the plays that were performed in
the royal castles. But Mala was also a political conspirator
and a key member of the Armfelt conspiracy which was
exposed in sevente And to talk about how Mama found

(02:59):
herself accused of treason and imprisoned, we need to talk
about a Swedish courtier and diplomat named Gustave More It's
armfeld and the conspiracy that was named for him. Mama
was a triple threat with her lively spirit, intelligence and beauty,
and those qualities garnered her a succession of admirers and suitors.
But she never married. But she did fall in love

(03:23):
and hard for Gustaf Armfeldt, who happened to be one
of those admirers. Historians estimate that their relationship began probably
around seventeen eighty four, when armfeld was already engaged to
another woman, Swedish lady in waiting, ed vig Ulrica de
la Gardie. Mala and Armfeldt never hid their affair despite

(03:45):
his engagement. Their relationship continued ten years into his marriage,
and Mala gave birth to two of his children. Their
daughter was born in Berlin, Germany in sev seven, and
two years later their son was born in Stockholm. Both
children died in infancy. According to Armfeldt, he never actually
had serious feelings for Mala, but for Mala things were different.

(04:08):
She was devoted to him, and if you're already thinking no, no, Mala,
get used to that feeling. Hailing from the Finnished provinces
of the Kingdom of Sweden, Armfeldt was the great grandson
of Sweden's General Carl Gustav Armfeldt, who served under King
Charles the twelve. He had a great interest in not

(04:30):
only politics, but also music, theater, architecture, travel. He was
an intelligent and curious man, and he ended up having
the ear of the King of Sweden. King Gustaf the
Third took the throne through a bloodless coup deata known
as the Revolution of seventeen seventy two. His Coronation Oath

(04:50):
contained some new clauses, and he expanded those new provisions
in seventy nine under the Union and Security Act, and
those changes that he was making were revolutionary. This new
constitution meant that as king, he would now have sole
power to declare war and to make peace, instead of

(05:11):
sharing ruling powers. Without those changes, the king would have
shared his powers with two groups, the Privy Council, which
consisted of magnets who advised and even sometimes sort of
co ruled, and with what we're known as the Four Estates.
The Estates included the clergy, nobility, burghers, and farmers. With

(05:32):
King Gustaf the third now established as an absolute ruler,
the Estates lost their ability to initiate legislation, but they
did keep their ability to vote on new taxes. The
Estates called ricks Dog of the Estates, when all four
were assembled, were angry that he had withdrawn their privileges. Farmers,
for instance, were really mad because his laws banned them

(05:55):
from distilling alcohol. With each passing year, the Estates were
growing potentially more mutinous. We're going to take a break
for word from our sponsor while Mala remained devoted to
Gustaf Armfeldt. Armfeldt remained devoted to Gustaf the Third. Let's
talk about just how influential Armfelt was when we're back.

(06:30):
Welcome back to Criminalia. Mala wrote many letters to armfeld
some personal and some conspiratorial. Let's talk about how all
of that writing landed her in prison, even her love letters.
King Gustaf the Third is known for more than the
coup we talked about before the break. He's also known

(06:51):
to have prohibited torture in his kingdom, and he's known
for his numerous contributions to culture, which got him the
nickname the theater King. And Armfelt was a member of
his court. At first, he was given the role of
Master of Ceremonies of the Swedish Court, but it was
not long before more serious affairs were entrusted to him.
He was appointed gentleman to King Gustaf the Third in

(07:13):
seventeen seventy one, and he remained as such until the
king's assassination in seventeen ninety two. He became not only
the king's closest adviser, but also a friend and confidante,
and consequently one of the most powerful men in the kingdom.
During his years with Gustaf the Third, his influence was paramount.

(07:34):
He took part in negotiations with Katherine the Second of
Russia in seventeen eighty three. You will recognize her, possibly
as Catherine the Great. During the Russo Swedish War of
seventeen eighty eight to seventeen ninety, he was one of
the king's most trusted and active counselors. He was the
Swedish Plant Potentiary at the Treaty of Ralah, which concluded

(07:56):
the Russo Swedish War on August fourteen, seventeen nine. B
Armfelt remained faithful to Goostaf the Third when nearly all
of Swedish nobility fell away from the king. The king
was assassinated by a man named Yakob Johann Ankomstrom on
March sixtevento at a masquerade ball at the Royal Swedish

(08:18):
Opera in Stockholm. Ankerstrom was part of a group of
conspirators who plotted to assassinate who they called quote the Tyrant.
Gustaf the Third was forty six years old when he died.
Of course, as a result of this assassination, there was
an ensuing struggle for political power. Immediately following in what
had been an aristocratic parliamentary coup attempt, Armfeldt lost his

(08:42):
social position within the ruling elite. A regent government form
created on behalf of the king's infant son, Gustaf the fourth,
because he was an infant and not yet of any
kind of age to rule. Duke Carl you'll sometimes see
him listed as Duke Charles in English language accounts, who
was Gustav the Fourth's uncle, and the Baron Gustav Adolph

(09:04):
Reuter Holme, a Swedish statesman, now ruled the Swedish Empire.
Many of Gustaf the third supporters opposed the anti Gustavian
temporary government and Duke Carl in particular, so the pair
sought to um. Basically, they just decided they weren't going
to try to appease anyone. They sought to render Gustav

(09:24):
the third supporters powerless. They wanted to take the existing
government in a different direction. On his deathbed, King Gustav
the Third had appointed Armfeldt to the Council of Regency
as well as ever Stuttlerum of Stockholm. That was a
position of like an over governor, and it was the
highest official for the city, but that appointment didn't really

(09:48):
play out. Instead, in July of s the regent government
sent Armfelt to be the Swedish ambassador to Naples, Italy.
You could call this an exile and wouldn't be totally incorrect.
The purpose of the Armfelt conspiracy was to depose the
anti Gustolian government led by regents Duke Carl and Baron

(10:09):
Ruderholme and replaced them. You might have guessed this Goustaf
Armfeldt the man favored by the king. That's King Gustaf
the third. I mean the plot was instigated by Armfelt,
but because he was living in Naples, it was managed
and carried out by his agents on the ground in Sweden.
Among them, most notably was his lover, Mala Rudenschal. Because

(10:33):
of her status as Lady in waiting and her time
spent among the nobles, Mala had a well established network
of contacts within the royal household and the court, as
well as among diplomatic circles. She communicated with Armfelt through
letters only during his time in Italy, but it did
not matter that she had not had any personal contact

(10:54):
with him when it came to her guilt, at least
not in the eyes of the government. She was core
responding with him, and that correspondence was being monitored. Her
letters resulted in her arrest on the night of December eighteen, seventeen.
Nine the confiscated letters, some reports suggest that Armfeldt's mail
was written Hamburg, and her subsequent interrogations revealed nothing more

(11:19):
compromising than criticism of the government and vague mentions of
conversation with Russia. Fairly mild stuff. However, in early April
of seventeen a new pile of confiscated letters arrived in
Stockholm from Naples, and these were not benign. These made
mention of a Russian fleet coming to Stockholm in support

(11:43):
of Armfelt's intended coup. From Naples, Armfelm had also communicated
with Catherine the Great, convincing her to bring a military
demonstration to change the Swedish government in favor of the Gustavians.
The new batch of letters also contained discussion of Mala
helping Armfeldt call up parliament in the Swedish city of
Falon in order to influence public opinion in their direction,

(12:05):
and of which the Russian ambassador Auto Magnus Stuckelberg was
to attend. Armfeldt pressed Mala to engage more with Russia,
and he pressed her to establish an internal opposition to
the regent government. During the first six months of Armfeldt's
time in Italy, Mala sent him at least seventy five letters.

(12:27):
You do the math on that, at averages out to
about one every two and a half days. At first,
these letters were strictly personal, but eventually they shifted in
tone and they turned into reports about how things were
for Gustavians in Stockholm. When authorities presented Mala with the
information contained in her correspondence with armfeld she confessed that

(12:49):
there was a planned coup, and she confessed to her
involvement in it. The planning was mostly done through correspondence,
and she had also mediated letters between other people. She
had made no attempt to stop this plot. Armfeldt had
the support of the Russian Empire under Catherine the Great,
and Malla had offered to travel to Russia to speak

(13:11):
for their cause. There was really no way she could
have denied her actions. Her involvement was completely clear from
her correspondence, which was read back to her. So we're
again going to take a break for word from our sponsor,
and when we're back we will talk about Mala's conviction,
her sentencing, and how and why Duke carl was involved.

(13:44):
Welcome back to Criminalia. On July, the verdict was handed
down because of her actions, Mama was convicted of treason
against the King and the Kingdom of Sweden. It reported
that her treatment during the trial and her punishment upset
the public. Think about that scene for a minute. She

(14:06):
was a lady in waiting, She was beautiful, charming, popular.
The situation was definitely not a normal occurrence. Princess Sophia Albertina,
along with the Duchess head Big Elizabeth Carlotta, as well
as members of her own family, petitioned Duke carl for
her pardon. Mala and others involved in the plot were
moved to Ridderholm, in a small islet in central Stockholm,

(14:29):
to be closer to the Court of Appeal. It was
also known that secret interrogations were held there. The trials
of those involved in the Armfelt plot coincided with another
occurrence that significantly influenced the politics of the day. That
was an angry leader that angry leader was Baron Reuterholm, who,
as you'll recall, was leading the regency government alongside Duke

(14:51):
Carl and Reuterholm wanted to strengthen the prosecution's case against
the traders by publicly discrediting anyone in involved. Basically, he
really wanted to make this conspiracy seemed much bigger and
much more organized than it was, even if he took
the low road to do so. He allowed love letters

(15:12):
written between Mala and Armfelt to be published, despite the
fact that they contain no political content whatsoever. He also
spread gossip that Mala had aborted pregnancies with Armfeldt and
had willingly done so, insinuating questionable bit moral behavior on
her behalf. He had no evidence to back those rumors up.

(15:35):
In the summer of sevent those charged with taking part
in the Armfelt conspiracy were sentenced. Sentences ranged from execution
to the loss of noble status, the loss of property, pillorying, imprisonment,
and forced labor. Many of these sentences were eventually reduced.
On July, the verdict for the Countess was handed down.

(16:00):
Mala was sentenced to death. Armfeldt's correspondence with Catherine the
Great was also discovered by spies for the regent government,
and he too was sentenced to death in the Swedish court.
He narrowly escaped with his life as he fled Naples
for Russia. Because of his plot against the Duke and
the Baron in Sweden, he was condemned to death as

(16:20):
a trader, but he was not captured and he was
not imprisoned, but he did not come back to Sweden.
On September twenty Mala's sentence was reduced rather than life,
She would serve two years in prison for trying to
overthrow the Swedish government, and she was pilloried in central Stockholm.
A pillory, just in case you're not up on your terminology,

(16:43):
is a tool of corporal punishment and public humiliation, and
that punishment is really similar to being placed in the stocks.
So a pillory is made of a wooden or metal
framework erected on a post. It's raised up several feet.
There are holes used for securing a per his head
and hands in the boards of the framework, and those
boards locked together to secure the prisoner. Two members of

(17:07):
the temporary government sat as part of the court that
sentenced her. They were probably not the fairest judges for
her punishment, another of the accused in this treasonous plot
set of Mala. Her mistake was quote love, this violent
passion which among so many people of all ages, overwhelms reason.

(17:29):
She spent those two years in Stockholms Spinning House, which
was a type of prison where female inmates were forced
to spin yarn. The male equivalent was called a rasthouse
where male prisoners rasping would She was released on June one.
Upon her release, Duke Carl provided property on the Swedish

(17:52):
island of Gotland for Mala to live. That sounds sort
of lovely, but it was a confinement arrangement and he
was not allowed to leave without royal permission. The Duke
and Mala, it turns out, had history. He had once
been in love with her and she had rejected his courtship.
So that's just a little extra spice in Malla's story here,

(18:14):
and a little bit of motivation perhaps on Duke Carl's behalf.
When Gustav the Fourth came of age to rule, he
dissolved the judgment in Mala was allowed to leave Gotland
and returned to the mainland. The search for Armfeldt was
also lifted at this time. Most reports suggest that Mala

(18:35):
returned to Stockholm, where she settled in with her mother,
and it said that Armfeldt showed little, if any compassion
for her fate. There are no records of them communicating
again once Mala was freed. There are some wild suggestions
of what became of Mala once she left Gotland. There
are stories Armfelt helped his former lover by funding her

(18:58):
living expenses as well as viding her with an annual allowance.
It's also reported she spent ten years living in a
small village near Geneva, only to return to Sweden to
run her brother's household after he had become a widower.
There's also a story that she gave birth to a
son in or around sev Another tale suggests she lived

(19:18):
with her mother for a short time in Stockholm, but
was asked to leave after beginning a relationship with one
of the domestic help in their home. There is more,
but we're not going to get into all of it
because there's so much of it and it all appears
to be totally unfounded. We can't verify any of these rumors.
What we do know is Mala died of chest inflammation

(19:42):
and that's according to her death notice on March five three,
when she was fifty seven years old. And you may
be wondering what happened to Armfeldt. Let's not forget about
the man whose name was linked to this plot. Armfeldt's
life post conspiracy is much different than that of Mala.
Armfeldt isn't even remembered the most for the conspiracy that's

(20:05):
named after him. Together with a politician named Gorn Magnus
sprang Porton, he's regarded as one of the fathers of
Finland as its own autonomous nation. When Gustav the fourth
of Sweden was old enough to take the throne, Armfeldt
returned to Sweden and he went about his life, and
he held a number of positions of command in the
Swedish Army. Eight years later he rose to president of

(20:29):
the War College of Sweden. In eighteen eleven, he transferred
to Russian service as chairman of a committee on Finnish affairs,
helping Finland with its transition from Swedish to Russian rule.
In eighteen twelve, he was promoted to the rank of
general of infantry. He was given the title of count
and he entered the state Council. Because of Armfeldt's on

(20:52):
popularity with many of the nobles in Sweden, and many
believed that Armfeldt had quote turned Russian, he chose not
to return. He died at sarco Cello, which now forms
part of the town of Pushkin near St. Petersburg, on
August fourteen. You lived out a very busy, seemingly happy life.

(21:14):
This was just a blip in his life as opposed
to our Mala. Should we pour something out for her? Yes?
I wanted to make something super delicious for Mala, because
who among us has not fallen for the wrong person.

(21:34):
I hope that we all have been smart enough to
untangle ourselves from it, But that's not always how it
works out. And so I can't help but having a
lot of sympathy for her, even though she did do
some very foolish stuff in service of someone who didn't
even really love her back. So I am going to
call this one overwhelmed reason in honor of her lack

(22:00):
of clarity in terms of what was going to be
best for her. She was in love. Who among us
has not made a foolish choice for somebody that we
thought we were in love with? I also wanted to
take this opportunity to work with a Scandinavian spirit. I
know that's kind of an obvious choice, but this is
also a spirit that you don't often come across unless
you're like a cocktail person and looking for it, or

(22:23):
unless you're in a craft bar that really likes to
do pretty interesting stuff, particularly if you're here in the
U s. If you're in Europe, you're golden. But this
spirit that I'm talking about is aquavite. You'll sometimes see
it also pronounced as aquavite. Now, this is one of
those spirits that often gets shelved in the US with liqueurs,
but I want to be very clear. It actually has

(22:43):
an a b V and alcohol by volume of about
that makes it really comparable to spirits like vodka or gin. Yeah,
I didn't know doubt about it. That that's interesting. I know.
It's It is of those things where I'm like, if
you're using it the way you would use a liqueur,
you might overpour because it explains a few things to

(23:04):
you to day, right hello, Uh, it might make you
finished and you will do things in aren't wise? It is.
I just mentioned gin, and it is often compared to
gin because of its flavor. It's flavored with botanicals. This
particular spirit dates back at least to the fifteen thirties,
possibly before then. That's just the first time it's mentioned
in print. And what's really interesting about it is its flavor,

(23:26):
because it's dominant flavor depending on who produces it, is
caraway or dill. I don't think I've actually had this before.
Oh Maria, get the to the liquor store. It's like
rye bread. I love it. It's also one of those
things that sometimes has Anna's flavor in it, which has
led to some confusion where people think it's going to

(23:48):
taste heavily of liquorice. It really doesn't. It's caraway that
most that I've had tastes more of caraway than dill.
So it has this really unique flavor profile that also
makes it really fun to play with. Man, I'm super
interested in it. Girl, get ready, this is the overwhelmed reason.
You need five very ripe blackberries and you're gonna put

(24:10):
those in the bottom of your shaker and muddle them
pretty aggressively. You know how m I was like, you
don't gotta go crazy. Go crazy if you want it's fine.
You basically want to get all the juice out of them.
You can, because you're gonna strain off the skin in
the pulp. I'm gonna take out the day on these blackberries.
Do it. Then, once you have muddled them, you were

(24:30):
going to add two ounces of aquavite, one ounce of
lemon juice, one ounce of simple syrup. You're gonna put
ice in there, and you're going to give it a
very thorough shake, and then you're gonna strain it over
ice into a chilled glass. And you want a pretty
good strainer here because you want to get out that
BlackBerry pulp and just let the juice come through, because

(24:51):
it's really lovely. If you want at the end, if
you like like the look of some floating fruit in there,
you can let a little through your strainer, but or
just spoon someone top. But I like it pretty clean.
Then you're gonna top this with club soda and you're
all set. You can garnish it with a BlackBerry. I
actually sprinkled just a few grains of smoked sea salt

(25:11):
on the BlackBerry before I garnished it, and it just
did an interesting little thing, not a lot. Don't be
heavy handed. This is one too that I really recommend
trying it with just a little soda and seeing how
you like it, and then adding more if you wish,
Because some people really like this very interesting robust flavor.
Some do not as much. I am in love with

(25:32):
this drink one blackberries Delicious. Never can get enough to
Aquavit is just it's interesting, and it's novel for most
people's palates, I think. And these things together with a
little limon just I don't know, they do something light
and bright. It will make you forget the troubles that
you got into because you fell in with the wrong person.

(25:53):
Here is the really fun thing about this. For the
mock tail, it is also really good. And you're gonna
a caraway seed tea, which is super easy, but I
bet most people haven't done it. It's very easy. The
ratio that I usually have seen is a teaspoon of
caraway seeds to one cup of boiling water. You're gonna

(26:14):
crush those seeds a little bit first. This is one
where you don't have to pulverize them, just if you
have a mortar and pestle. Great if you don't crush
them in whatever way works best for you. And then
you're just gonna pour boiling water over it, or you
can put it into a pan of boiling water that
you've turned the heat off. You're gonna let it steep
just for like eight minutes, strain off those seeds, and

(26:34):
then you use that in lieu of the aquaviat once
it's cooled. Also delicious, Also great. You can actually instead
of using the club soda, you can just bump up
your tea content if you want more of that yummy
caraway flavor in it. So good. I'm very pleased with
how this one turned out. There are times when I
have to experiment a bunch with cocktails in there times

(26:57):
when it just works just right the first time, and
this was a just right the first time, and I
was like, yes, so I will be making more of these.
You got Mama, you got her. I do listen. Mama needs,
she needs a redemption arc and it might be this cocktail.
It starts right here. So that is the overwhelmed reason

(27:21):
for Mala. And I hope you try it, and I
hope you like it. If you have never played with aquavite,
you're in for a treat. And I hope you enjoy
it and realize the many things you can do there. Listen.
If you're in Sweden, it's not uncommon to just drink
it straight, very chilled, also good and interesting if you
want to just try it that way to really get
a sense of the flavor. There are both. When you're

(27:43):
looking at the grocery store or your liquor store, depending
on where you live. There are both aged and non
aged versions of Aqua vite. The aged ones take on
kind of very pale, golden tone. Most of the stuff
we have access to here in the US is going
to be the unaged, which is clear. They're both good,
they just have slightly different shifts to the way they taste.

(28:06):
Fun to play with both, and I hope you do,
and if you make the mocktail also fun to play
with caraway t because it also does great things. Allegedly,
I'm not saying this with any sort of confidence. Allegedly
it is also a digestive aid. I've never tested it.
I'm obviously not a doctor. I'm not going to go
to doctor jail for claiming anything. But that's just an

(28:26):
added benefit if it's true. It's an interesting thing about it.
If that is so, What I do know is it's delicious.
I can say that with confidence. Sure, that's what we
need to know. Yes, yeah, that's really the mark of
quality for me. Yes. We are so thankful that you
spent this time with us this week. I hope you

(28:48):
have enjoyed as story and this cocktail. We will be
right back here again next week with more tales of
treason and more perfecty pores. Criminalia is a production of
Shonda land Audio in partnership with I heart Radio. For

(29:09):
more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the I heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
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