Background
He was the son of Axel Oxenstierna’s half brother, Gabriel Bengtsson Oxenstierna (1586–1656).
He was the son of Axel Oxenstierna’s half brother, Gabriel Bengtsson Oxenstierna (1586–1656).
After a careful education and a long residence abroad, he began his diplomatic career at the great peace congress of Osnabrück. Two years after the king’s accession in 1654, Oxenstierna was sent to represent Sweden at the Kreistag of Lower Saxony. In 1655 he accompanied Charles to Poland and was made governor of the conquered provinces of Kulm, Kuyavia, Masovia and Great Poland.
From 1662 to 1666 he was governor-general of Livonia.
In 1674 he was sent to Vienna to try to prevent the threatened outbreak of war between France and the empire. His appointment was generally regarded as an approximation on the part of Sweden to Austria and the Netherlands.
During the congress he laboured assiduously in an anti-French direction. A well-justified distrust of France was, indeed, henceforth the keynote of his policy, a policy diametrically opposed to Sweden’s former system.
In 1680 Charles XI of Sweden entrusted him absolutely with the conduct of foreign affairs, on the sole condition that peace was to be preserved, an office which he held for the next seventeen years to the very great advantage of Sweden.
His leading political principles were friendship with the maritime powers England and the United Provinces, and the emperor, and a close anti-Danish alliance with the house of Holstein. Charles XI appointed Oxenstierna one of the regents during the minority of Charles XII of Sweden. The martial proclivities of the new king filled the prudent old Chancellor with alarm and anxiety.
His protests were frequent and energetic, and he advised Charles in vain to accept the terms of peace offered by the first anti-Swedish coalition.
Oxenstierna has been described as “a shrewd and subtle little man, of gentle disposition, but remarkable for his firmness and tenacity of character.”.
During Charles’s absence in Denmark in 1657, Oxenstierna in the most desperate circumstances, tenaciously defended Thorn for ten months, and the terms of capitulation ultimately obtained by him were so advantageous that they were made the basis of the subsequent peace negotiations at Oliva, between Poland and Sweden, when Oxenstierna was one of the chief plenipotentiaries of the Swedish regency.