one which must here be dealt with quite briefly. It was quite impossible
that Königsmarck’s devotion to the Princess before his departure to
Flanders should have remained unnoticed at the Hanoverian court; and
nothing could have been more appropriate than that her mother-in-law,
the Duchess Sophia, who, without at all suspecting the worst, must have
been seriously annoyed by what she had observed—unless we are to adopt
the absurd supposition that she was pleased to see her daughter-in-law
beginning to go wrong—should have lectured the Princess on her want of
_conduite_. But Sophia Dorothea was aware that there was at court
another and a less straightforward influence, which she suspected would
be adverse to her—that of the Countess Platen. From what followed, there
can be no doubt that the Countess had reasons for bearing Königsmarck a
grudge; and it has been unhesitatingly assumed, in accordance with an
unauthenticated tradition, that her motive was jealousy, and that he had
formerly shared her favours. On the other hand, the Duchess of Orleans
deliberately states that there is no _apparentz_ of Countess Platen
having sought to attract to herself so young a man, and that it is more
likely that, as the Electress Sophia had been informed, the Countess
cajoled Königsmarck in the hope of his marrying her daughter; ‘for he
was a good match.’ This story also long found acceptance; but it does
not very well suit either Königsmarck’s account of his later meeting
with Countess Platen, or the jealousy of her which this account
unmistakably excited in the Princess. In any case, when it occurred to
Sophia Dorothea to consult the Electress Sophia Charlotte of Brandenburg
on the situation—a step which at all events shows her to have been
without fear of any underhand action on the part of her cousin or her
mother-in-law—Sophia Charlotte counselled her to conciliate the Countess
Platen; and this piece of advice was communicated by Sophia Dorothea to
Königsmarck. On his return to Hanover, about November, he seems to have
determined to contribute towards the appeasing of the powerful mistress;
but, whether in sheer recklessness, or because he considered himself
safe with the Countess, who would assuredly remain silent on the subject
towards her august protector, he clearly overdid his part. After this
escapade, a sort of desperate rage seems to have seized upon him, and
the correspondence of the year 1692 concludes with a brutally sarcastic
tirade launched against the new ‘Electoral Princess’ by her infuriated
lover. It is, then, manifest that Sophia Dorothea had grounds for
distrusting Countess Platen; but, how far the double insult offered to
the Elector’s mistress by Königsmarck’s conduct is to be connected with
the terrible events that followed, no evidence exists to show, and the
part of evil genius assigned to the Countess in the tragedy has had to
be written up with the aid of conjecture and fiction.
The last chapter of the correspondence, which extends from the early
summer to the close of the year 1693 (or thereabouts), shows the fatal
passion of the pair still aflame, but the clouds of danger thickening
around them. In the absence of her husband during the year’s campaign in
Flanders, the Electoral Princess continued to idle away her days with
her parents-in-law at Luisburg, or with her own parents at Brockhausen,
whither Königsmarck followed her. She took some comfort from the good
humour of the Electress Sophia; though, foreseeing that, if she came to
know the truth, she would show no pity, Königsmarck warned the Princess
that her mother-in-law would, sooner or later, be her ruin. At
Brockhausen, a nocturnal meeting between the lovers was not wholly
unwatched, and the letters afterwards interchanged by them show
increasing apprehension. Countess Platen herself vaguely warned the
Princess as to the risk she was running—an act which it must be conceded
at least admits of a kindly explanation. In her last extant letter,
Sophia Dorothea utters what comes very near to a cry of hopeless
despair. In the course of the month in which this letter was written
(August, 1693) Königsmarck was obliged to absent himself from Court, in
order to take part in a military movement intended to check a Danish
_coup de main_ upon the contested duchy of Lauenburg. When he returned
to Hanover, fresh warnings reached him—from old Marshal von
Podewils,[110] under whom he had served, and from the youngest of the
Hanoverian Princes, Ernest Augustus, whose devoted attachment to his
brother, the Electoral Prince, appears not to have prevented this act of
kindness. These warnings themselves, together with other indications,
show that, although the actual character of the intrigue between Sophia
Dorothea and Königsmarck may have remained unknown—unless indeed some
letters had already fallen into the wrong hands—the _liaison_ itself
was, as is, after all, usual in such cases, more or less of an open
secret, and that thus the pair were rushing headlong to their ruin.
Quite at the end of the year, Königsmarck had once more to go away from
Hanover; and, at this point, the Lund correspondence comes to an end
with a letter from him evidently addressed to the confidante, and,
through her, assuring _Léonisse_ that, whatever might befall, he would
not abandon her.
-----
Footnote 110:
‘_Le bonhomme_’ in the lovers’ cipher.
-----
The cessation of the correspondence leaves us in some doubt as to the
precise nature of the occurrences in Hanover in the earlier half of the
year 1694, which was to see the end of this lamentable history.
Königsmarck, who had returned to Hanover, quitted it again in April;
and, without having resigned his Hanoverian commission, betook himself
to the Court of the Elector Frederick Augustus of Saxony (Augustus the
Strong) at Dresden. Here he undoubtedly behaved with an indiscretion
beyond that habitual to him, and it is probable enough—though this again
cannot be proved—that his vaunts included some reference to his
successes with Countess Platen. However this may have been, Königsmarck,
though he had not accepted a commission offered him in the Saxon army
and still remained a Hanoverian officer, could hardly expect on his
return to Hanover to carry on his amour as before. There had been
indications of an uneasy feeling at Court, which explain themselves
without the supposition that a combination was at work there to drive
Sophia Dorothea to her ruin, and without the wholly gratuitous
assumption that, in the front of that combination, stood the Electress
Sophia. Attempts were afterwards said to have been made to provoke
ill-will between the Electoral Prince and his wife through the agency of
her lady-in-waiting, Fräulein von dem Knesebeck; and, though there is no
reason for suspecting her of any interference of the kind, it is certain
that, about the early part of June, Sophia Dorothea left the Electoral
Court and repaired to her parents at Brockhausen. Once more, there is
nothing to show that her departure had been caused by actual
ill-treatment on the part of her husband. On her way home to Hanover,
she refused to alight at Herrenhausen in order to pay her respects to
the Elector and Electress; and, after ascertaining at Hanover that her
husband was away at Berlin, she resolved once more to join her parents
at Brockhausen. But they refused to receive her; and, on the fatal night
of July 1st, 1694, she was still with her faithful lady-in-waiting in
the Leineschloss at Hanover.
On the same night, Count Königsmarck left his house at Hanover, never to
be seen again. That his intention was to enter the Leine Palace and the
apartments of the Electoral Princess, there can be no doubt; but the
actual purpose of their meeting, and the plan on which they then agreed
or on which they had agreed before, remain unknown. They may have merely
designed to contrive her escape with his help to Wolfenbüttel, where she
might rely on a welcome from Duke Antony Ulric; or they may have
intended to realise the dream to which their correspondence refers, and
henceforth to belong wholly to one another. But, from Sophia Dorothea,
no attempt was afterwards made to extract an avowal on this head; and
the confidante, Eleonora von dem Knesebeck, persisted from first to
last, both during her imprisonment and after she had effected her escape
from it, in asserting the innocency of her mistress. Yet Fräulein von
dem Knesebeck confessed to having known of a ‘plot,’ and to having been
so full of uneasiness that tears and entreaties were needed to persuade
her to remain in the Princess’ service.
Some days passed before the disappearance of Königsmarck attracted
public notice. The first sign that there was something wrong appears to
have been the intimation, noticed in a despatch of July 3rd from
Cressett (Colt’s successor), that, while the Electoral Prince remained
at Berlin, the Princess was sick at Hanover. As a matter of fact, both
she and her confidante had been strictly confined to her apartments;
whether any letters from Königsmarck had been discovered in her keeping,
we do not know. But there is evidence that, already in May and June,
hands had been laid on some of the correspondence between the lovers;
and the knowledge of this had probably determined the Elector Ernest
Augustus to proceed against his daughter-in-law. And it is certain that
some of her letters were sent by the authorities at Hanover to her
parents; for Leibniz positively asserts that, had not her letters been
produced, they could not have thought her so guilty at Celle. These
letters must have been found in Königsmarck’s residence; and we have no
reason for doubting the statement that a thorough search was made in his
cabinet, in the presence of officials only, although it is added that a
packet of letters thought to be incriminating was sent by persons who
had been in his confidence to Celle, where his sisters soon afterwards
made their appearance. These latter, in all probability, formed the
correspondence which ultimately found its way to Berlin.
Both the Elector Ernest Augustus and Sophia Dorothea’s father, the Duke
of Celle, considering her guilt to be established, the question next
arose as to the way in which her case should be treated. In the first
instance she was taken to Ahlden, a magistrate’s house or ‘castle’—no
one who has cast eyes on it could ever think of it as anything but a
‘moated grange’—situate in a lonely marshland corner of her father’s
territory, at some twenty miles’ distance from Hanover. While she was
detained here in strict custody, the mode of procedure against her was
arranged. It was resolved, for the honour of the House—which, for good
or ill, was the dominant motive in the whole of this melancholy
business—to keep the name and person of Königsmarck out of the affair
altogether, and to make the desertion of her husband by the Princess the
ground of a suit of divorce before a specially constituted Consistorial
tribunal. This course, which could hardly have succeeded but for the
attitude maintained by her, was carried through with a completeness
which must have surpassed the anticipations of the astute minds that had
devised it. Throughout the enquiry, the Princess made no confession
whatever of any act of infidelity, adhering to the instructions conveyed
to her by her father’s ministers, Bernstorff and Bülow, who, in an
interview at Ahlden, had informed her that ‘everything was
discovered’—manifestly another reference to the evidence of part of her
correspondence with Königsmarck. Accordingly, notwithstanding the
representations of the honest counsel with whom she had been
provided—and to whose dissatisfaction with the proceedings and desire to
preserve the proofs of his not having been responsible for their result
is due the private preservation, at least in part, of the documents of
the divorce-suit—she refused to swerve from her declared resolution no
longer to live with the Electoral Prince as her husband. After some
attempts on the part of the Duke of Celle to mitigate the rigour of the
expected result, which were successfully resisted on the part of the
Hanoverian Government, the sentence of the Consistorial tribunal was
pronounced on December 28th, 1694, and delivered to the Princess at
Lauenau, whither she had been temporarily removed, on the last day of
the year. It dissolved the marriage between her and the Electoral
Prince, granting him, as the innocent party, permission to remarry, but
withholding this from her as the guilty party. She at once accepted the
sentence; a few days later her confessor informed her father that she
acknowledged ‘_sa faute_,’ and the justice of the punishment inflicted
upon her; and, in 1698, on the occasion of the death of the Elector
Ernest Augustus, she wrote to her former husband and to his mother, the
Electress Sophia, beseeching them to pardon her faults of the past, and
entreating the favour of being allowed to see her children. This favour
was never granted to her.
The Hanoverian court and Government had, as has been seen, persistently
striven to dissociate the disappearance of Königsmarck from the disgrace
of the Princess. In the first instance, this disappearance had been
simply ignored, while a circular had been issued to foreign courts,
drawn up in this sense, and attributing the alienation of the Princess
from her husband to the machinations of Fräulein von dem Knesebeck, who
was soon afterwards clapped into a dungeon at Scharzfels in the Harz,
from which she did not make her escape till four years afterwards.[111]
As to the vanished Königsmarck, it had been easy to stifle the anxieties
of the unhappy Sophia Dorothea, who, before she was effectually
silenced, had written a letter expressive of her fear that he had fallen
into the hands of a certain lady, and that his life might be in danger.
There can hardly be any doubt but that this referred to Countess Platen,
although it merely proves Sophia Dorothea to have been afraid of the
consequences of the Countess’ anger. Nor could it be impossible to
baffle the curiosity of the world at large—represented by no less august
an enquirer than Louis XIV—in the assurance that the mystery would in
due course be forgotten as a nine days’ wonder. But it proved a serious
task to meet the pertinacious efforts of Königsmarck’s sister Aurora,
who, adopting a rumour which for some time found an extraordinary amount
of credit, insisted that her brother was still alive, and, while
demanding that the truth should be revealed, pursued Countess Platen
(with whom she had a quarrel of old standing) with special animosity. It
is noteworthy that the Electress Sophia should be found taking the side
of Countess Platen, who, she writes, is not accustomed to be spoken of
in the terms applied to her by the Countess _Orrore_. Having been
forbidden to show herself in Hanover, Königsmarck’s dauntless sister
betook herself to Dresden, in order to secure the assistance of the
Elector Frederick Augustus in her quest. It was on this occasion that
she conquered that potentate altogether; and he espoused her cause so
heartily as to send Colonel Bannier to Hanover, there to demand that
Königsmarck, as an officer in the Saxon service, should be given up to
him. As late as December, 1694, Bannier remained convinced that the
Count was still alive, and detained as a prisoner somewhere in the
Palace. Not until after some months had passed was the tempest raised by
Aurora allayed, largely through the diplomatic skill of the Hanoverian
minister at Dresden, Jobst von Ilten. But her passionate activity, and
the widespread interest excited by so impenetrable a mystery, already in
1695 led to the publication of a narrative purporting to have been sent
from Hamburg to the French minister at the Danish court, which the
Duchess of Orleans characterised as impertinent and mendacious, and to
which Leibniz was instructed to supply a corrective commentary.
Meanwhile the Electoral Government had not only maintained an absolute
silence as to the Königsmarck affair, but had resorted to the expedient
of systematically destroying all evidence concerning it or in any way
connected with it. This policy was carried through with extraordinary
vigilance and consistency, as might be shown in various instances, of
which some reach down to our own times. Above all, a systematic
destruction took place of all the documents, whether public or private,
at Hanover, in London—and even in Ahlden—which might have thrown light
on the episode. Among the rest, the letters of the Electress Sophia
bearing on it were destroyed. This was in accordance with the wish of
the Duchess of Orleans, whose sagacity apprised her that there was
something in the rumours which had reached her, although the excellent
Frau von Harling had declared them to be all lies.[112] It would,
however, appear that, whether because of a desire on the part of the
Duke of Celle that some evidence should be procured which would justify
his assent to the severe treatment of his daughter,[113] or because of
the Electress’ own wish not to annihilate all proof, certain
incriminating portions of the correspondence remained undestroyed; and
these were perhaps the letters which are supposed to have been
afterwards sent to Berlin, in order to remove the doubts of Sophia
Dorothea’s daughter and namesake as to the misconduct of her mother, to
whom she always behaved with kindness—and which, afterwards, certainly
found their way into the hands of Frederick the Great and thence into
the Secret Archives of State. So far as Königsmarck is concerned, the
current story as to his death, and as to the horrible part played in it
by the Countess Platen, still remains unauthenticated. Horace Walpole,
the author of _Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard
III_, was prepared to believe a story which he professed to have derived
from George II, through Queen Caroline and Sir Robert Walpole, according
to which, on the occasion of some repairs in the Leine Palace, the
remains of Königsmarck were discovered under the floor of Sophia
Dorothea’s dressing-room; and, of the assassins rumoured to have been
hired by Countess Platen, one at least is said to have been enabled by
his crime to found a family of much respectability at Hanover.
-----
Footnote 111:
Of this castle little or nothing remains at the present day but a
‘restored’ gate and staircase.
Footnote 112:
According to W. H. Wilkins, _A Queen of Tears_, George III similarly
ordered the destruction of the entire correspondence with Copenhagen
occasioned by the catastrophe of his daughter Caroline Matilda of
Denmark and Struensee.
Footnote 113:
In the spring of 1695, Cresset reports that the Duke and Duchess of
Celle feel some distaste, now, for the company of the Electress, on
account of the divorce proceedings.
-----
Sophia Dorothea herself was henceforth lost to the history of her House,
and almost fell out of the remembrance of the world in which she might
have played so prominent a part. She was now officially styled the
Duchess of Ahlden, the village on the Aller over whose immediate
district a certain petty jurisdiction was given to the prisoner,
together with a few shadowy rights of honour. During a period of
thirty-two years she lingered out here her life of durance—never being
allowed to quit Ahlden, with the single exception, when a movement of
Saxon-Polish troops seemed to render her place of detention unsafe, of a
brief visit to Celle, where, however, her father declined to see her.
Neither was she at any time permitted to go forth from her castle beyond
a distance of six miles; and her carriage, closely attended by a guard
of honour, had always to drive along the same road.[114] She had the
occasional consolation of a visit from her mother till the Duchess
Eleonora’s death in 1722; for the mother’s love never waned, and her
will contributed to make the prisoner nominally the possessor of great
wealth. On the other hand, she was, as already noted, never allowed to
see her children. She occupied herself much with works of charity and
piety. She presented an organ and candelabra to the parish church where
during part of her imprisonment she worshipped—and was extremely popular
in the village, which she rebuilt at her own cost after a fire in 1715;
and she gave much attention to the affairs in the neighbourhood,
receiving formal visits, and bestowing great care upon her personal
adornment. She never quite abandoned the hope of a change in her
condition, until shortly before her death she discovered that her
interests had been betrayed, and (it is said) most of her large
accumulated capital made away with, by an agent (a certain von Bahr), in
whom she had reposed confidence. The records of the poor woman’s life
during the long years of her confinement do not change our notions of
her character; but the story of her solitary woe needs no deepening.
-----
Footnote 114:
Her habit of driving along it at a furious pace recalls the practice
of a very different captive—Napoleon at St. Helena.
-----
George Lewis has met with nothing but blame for his share in the whole
story of Sophia Dorothea’s misfortunes. Our age happily refuses to
accept the view that what is unpardonable in a wife is venial in a
husband; but such was not the opinion of George Lewis’ contemporaries.
On returning to Hanover, he had found the relations between his wife and
Königsmarck very much of an open secret at court; and, when proofs were
in his hands, a divorce was the only course open to him, if the honour
of his House was to be vindicated. There was afterwards a rumour,
mentioned by Elizabeth Charlotte to her aunt, that he would take back
his wife on his accession to the Electorship at his father’s death; and,
in 1704, a report was again current at Paris, that the Duke of
Marlborough hoped to effect a reconciliation between the Elector and his
discarded consort. But, as a matter of fact, he never varied his
attitude towards her of absolute and immutable estrangement; and least
of all did he show any inclination to invite her to share the glories of
the English throne, though it is probable that he might, by such a step,
have diminished the prejudices to which he was exposed in his new
kingdom.[115] On the occurrence of her death on November 13th, 1726
(which, as is known, preceded his own by but a few months), he
prohibited a general mourning in the Electorate, and she was buried
without ceremony in the family vault at Celle, after her interment at
Ahlden had proved impracticable. There can be no doubt that the bitter
resentment with which her conduct had inspired him was, in a measure,
continued in his feelings towards his son, the future King George II;
but, though the accounts on this head are contradictory, it is at least
doubtful whether Sophia Dorothea’s son ever exhibited any active
sympathy for his unfortunate mother.[116] Sophia Dorothea the younger,
who, in 1706, married the Crown Prince of Prussia (afterwards King
Frederick William I), kept up some communication with her mother, and,
after she became Queen, took Eleonora von dem Knesebeck into her
service, besides entering into a more frequent correspondence with the
prisoner. But mother and daughter never met; and, finally, there seems
to have been a marked difference of opinion between them as to the
famous Double Marriage Project between the courts of Great Britain and
Prussia.
-----
Footnote 115:
It is a curious instance of a certain cynical hauteur in George Lewis
(which, however, contains an element of manly self-possession) that he
should have supplied the Duchess of Orleans with a key to the
characters of the Supplement to the _Roman Octavia_, in which Duke
Antony Ulric had taken the opportunity, perhaps with the help of
Fräulein von dem Knesebeck’s reminiscences, of giving to the world a
version of the whole story of the Duchess of Ahlden.—A French MS.,
_Histoire de Frédegonde, Princesse de Chérusque, Duchesse d’Hanovre,
Épouse de George, Roi de la Grande Bretagne_, proposing to give an
account, _inter alia_, of ‘_sa Prison au Chateau d’Alhen, où elle a
fini ses jours_,’ supposed to date from about 1740, was not long since
advertised for sale.
Footnote 116:
Lord Hervey’s story of his having preserved his mother’s picture may
be true; but the further statement that he proposed, if she had
survived, to have brought her over and declared her Queen, needs a
stronger qualification than the ‘it was said,’ by which it is
accompanied. (_Memoirs_, Vol. iii. pp. 348-9.)
-----
That the unfortunate prisoner should have gained the active goodwill,
which the fair young Princess had never conciliated, of her
mother-in-law, the Electress Sophia, was hardly to be expected. Such
advances as were made to her by the Duchess of Ahlden seem to have been
coldly rejected; and the tone in which the Duchess of Orleans continues
occasionally to speak of her ill-fated relative no doubt reflects, with
tolerable accuracy, that adopted by her aunt in her non-extant letters.
The Electress, as we now know, had verified the conclusion of Elizabeth
Charlotte, that Sophia Dorothea’s case exemplified the proverb as to
there being no smoke without fire; and, while we may regret that the
charity which, in the matter of morals, the Electress Sophia readily
showed to the shortcomings of the men of her family, was never extended
by her to the daughter of Eleonora d’Olbreuze, there is in this rigour
nothing unnatural or incompatible with the rules of life which she
consistently observed. To argue, however, from this severity back to the
unproved supposition of an active cooperation on the part of Sophia
towards the ruin of her daughter-in-law, is palpably unjust. And it
should always be borne in mind that the sympathy of posterity was
secured to Sophia Dorothea by her misfortunes, not by her character, in
which there is little or nothing to admire, while much in it may have
justly repelled the sound and self-controlled nature of her
mother-in-law; and that the Electress was more impressed by the
Princess’ fall than by what might seem its legitimate consequences.
There seems no reason for attributing to the painful experiences through
which the House of Hanover had recently passed the decline which, about
this time, set in in the health of the Elector Ernest Augustus. His
illness (which Cressett thought in a large measure imaginary) has quite
gratuitously been brought into connexion with Sophia Dorothea’s
catastrophe, the suggestion being that the wife and the mistress of the
Elector had conspired to avert the consequences which might ensue, in
the event of his death and the accession of a new Electress. In June,
1697, the Electress Sophia informs the Raugravine Louisa that, though
the other symptoms in the Elector’s condition are good, his nervous
debility is great, and that it has been resolved to try the skill of a
Dutch empiric, with whose ‘_charlattaneri_’ she characteristically
expresses impatience. Towards the end of the year the course of his
malady seemed to have been in a measure arrested; but the decay of his
powers soon set in again with alarming rapidity. His life of constant
self-indulgence ended very miserably; for some time loss of sight in one
eye was feared, and after this he was all but deprived of the use of
speech. The Electress Sophia faithfully nursed him to the last. Even in
the days of his health she had bravely accustomed herself to his habits;
and she afterwards humorously related that she had made a point, in the
hour of domesticity, of filling his pipe with the tobacco which she
loathed. In his last illness she, during many months, never left his
side, except when he was asleep. The end came on January 24th, 1698; and
a letter written by Sophia a few months later shows her still in a
condition of deep and unaffected grief—hopeful only ‘_que le bon Dieu me
fera bientost rejoindre ce cher Électeur en l’autre monde_,’ but
consoled by the attentions of her children and her brother-in-law.
Ernest Augustus had well played his part as a ruler, not only providing
a sure basis for the progress of his dynasty to augmented power and
influence, but also strengthening and consolidating the civil as well as
the military administration of the Electorate established in his person.
His extravagant expenditure on himself and on his court, though no doubt
largely occasioned by habits of self-indulgence and a profligate
temperament, seemed in consonance with what was probably a well-merited
reputation for liberality of conduct and feeling towards those who
served him well. Thus he proved, in his way, an apt imitator of the
great French prototype whom he, not less than his brother John
Frederick, kept before his eyes; and the style in which he lived and
reigned suited the interest of the dynasty as well as his own tastes. At
the same time, he knew how to combine with his magnificence and
generosity a self-restraint that enabled him in his will to dispose of
an unencumbered personal estate. To Sophia his death, in more respects
than one, brought a considerable change. She had never ruled him, not
even controlled him by her influence, as Eleonora of Celle long
controlled her Duke, or as, in another generation, Sophia’s favourite
Caroline of Ansbach was to control King George II. But the aid of her
counsel had been of great value to Ernest Augustus, both in the ordinary
business of government and in great questions of state policy; and much
of the authority which thus accrued to her passed away with him. George
Lewis was not of a disposition likely to induce him, from motives of
piety, to show to his mother a deference beyond that of ordinary custom.
On the other hand, the death of Sophia’s husband gave to her more of
that freedom which no princess ever used less ostentatiously or more
nobly; it made her, in certain respects, more distinctly the centre of
the intellectual life of the Hanoverian Court than she had cared to be,
or at all events to seem, in the lifetime of Ernest Augustus; it
probably brought her closer to her daughter, and certainly allowed her a
fuller enjoyment of the friendship of Leibniz.
No sooner had the reign of Ernest Augustus come to an end, than his sons
Maximilian and Christian renewed their protest against the principle of
primogeniture which he had so persistently maintained;[117] and the
sympathy with Maximilian displayed by his sister, the Electress Sophia
Charlotte of Brandenburg, can hardly have failed to find a secret
response in the maternal heart of the Electress Dowager Sophia herself.
But, though there was some talk of her paying a visit at this season to
Berlin, she had learnt to tutor her own wishes, and was well aware how
much depended upon the maintenance of the good understanding between the
two Electoral Governments, which was at the time endangered by certain
territorial questions that may here be passed by. Thus George Lewis
succeeded without let or hindrance to the whole of the paternal
inheritance and expectancies; and, as was noted above, Hanover and
Brandenburg were united by a close and ‘perpetual’ alliance at the very
period when the dynastic ambition of the one seemed on the point of
consummation, and that of the other was near achieving its absorbing
object—the acquisition of a royal (Prussian) crown. That the Hanoverian
court was filled with joy by the success of the operations which ended,
early in 1701, with the coronation of the first Prussian King, Frederick
I, would be an unnatural supposition. The event had, however, been
rendered virtually inevitable by the accession, in 1697, of the Elector
Frederick Augustus of Saxony to the Polish throne; and the Elector
George Lewis was personally not so constituted as to be impelled, even
by jealousy, to an eagerness to follow suit. As for the Dowager
Electress Sophia, there was, to her, something more than compensation in
the thought that a royal crown now surmounted the brow of her favourite
child.
-----
Footnote 117:
Early in 1694, Cresset reports him as ‘moving heaven and earth’ on the
subject.
-----
Sophia Charlotte, her parents’ only daughter, had grown up in a long and
unbroken intimacy with her mother. With that mother, as already noted,
she had in common a clear and penetrating intelligence, a charm of
manner irresistible to anyone whom she chose to admit to familiar
intercourse, and a self-possession against which scandal waged war in
vain. She also had her mother’s intellectual curiosity and general love
of knowledge; but she must have approached more nearly to her aunt
Elizabeth in her power of entering into problems of philosophy, though
it is only with a grain of salt that the assertion can be accepted as to
the conferences between her and Leibniz having originated his
_Théodicée_. On the other hand, what little remains from her hand in the
way of familiar correspondence, can scarcely be said to be lit up with
the natural humour that her mother and the Duchess of Orleans always had
at command. Notwithstanding her power of delighting those admitted to
her society by the sunny brightness of her manner, when she was so
disposed, or when she was stimulated by intellectual interest, her
nature seems from early years to have possessed the tranquillity which
reason and resignation enabled her mother more gradually to acquire.
Probably a certain physical indolence, or phlegma, may have contributed
to this result; together with a calm determination to please herself—a
luxury in which her mother had rarely or never enjoyed opportunities of
indulging.
Already in her childhood, benefiting by the traditions in her mother’s
family as to the necessity of a good education based on linguistic
knowledge, she had exhibited signs of talent; while her character
probably owed much to the training of Frau von Harling (who was also
Elizabeth Charlotte’s governess), one of those teachers whose destiny it
is to be loved for their administration of the rule of law by pupils
who, under a less vigorous influence, would certainly be inclined to
remain a law to themselves. In the eleventh year of her age, Sophia
Charlotte, as we saw, accompanied her mother on a visit to the French
Court, while her father was recruiting his health at Ems. It was a
delightful visit—perhaps one of the happiest episodes of Sophia’s
life—in the mixture which it offered of pleasant retrospect under the
caresses of the faithful Duchess of Orleans, and of still earlier
reminiscences in the genial company of the Abbess of Maubuisson, with a
hopeful looking-forward to the future in store for her charming
daughter. King Louis XIV himself was the perfection of magnificent
courtesy, requesting his brother, the Duke of Orleans, not to whisper in
Sophia’s presence, and taking magnanimous notice of her daughter.
Sophia’s quick wit helped her through every difficulty, and enabled her
to avoid any mistake—even that of accepting a _tabouret_ when
self-respect bade her take a _fauteuil_, or not sit at all. She knew how
to meet both the stiffness of the French Queen (a Spanish princess) and
the effusiveness of the Spanish Queen (a French princess); nor was her
self-possession disturbed even by the splendour of Versailles, for
which, as she justly observed, art had done more than nature. As for
Sophia Charlotte, the impression created, both by her beauty and by the
extent of her knowledge, was such as to suggest to Louis XIV the idea of
a match between her and one of his princes. Nothing, however, came of
the notion except, perhaps, an accentuation of the diplomatic activity
of de Gourville at the Lüneburg courts. Sophia Charlotte’s quiet life
continued; and, though there was some talk of a Bavarian suit for her
hand, it gradually became known that her destiny was shaping itself
nearer home. The establishment of relations of intimacy between the
Courts of Brandenburg at Hanover had become a political necessity, and
Sophia had recognised the expediency of promoting his object with the
aid of her daughter’s hand. When, in 1683, the Electoral Prince
Frederick of Brandenburg became a childless widower, these speculations
at once assumed a practical aspect. The obstacles which had to be
surmounted did not include a religious difficulty, inasmuch as the
Reformed (Calvinist) faith, of which Sophia Charlotte made public
profession shortly before her marriage, was a form of religion always
favoured, though never actually professed, by her mother.[118] There is
no reason for crediting the story (which rests only on the gossip of
Pöllnitz) that it had been thought unnecessary to anticipate Sophia
Charlotte’s own choice of a form of Protestantism till it was known whom
she was to marry. But, whatever the daughter’s religious profession,
tolerance would always have formed part of her creed, as it did of her
mother’s. The marriage was celebrated at Herrenhausen on September 28th,
1684.
-----
Footnote 118:
‘I used,’ she writes to the elder Schütz in 1703, ‘to know all the
common prayers, practically, by heart, but I was never taught that our
religion much differed from the reformed religion of France and
Germany, and I have communicated in this also;’ and, again: ‘I have
had prayers offered for the Queen’ [Anne] ‘in both the German and the
French reformed churches here’ [at Hanover], ‘with the permission of
the Elector.’—Erman, preacher at the French Reformed church in Berlin,
subsequently wrote _Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de Sophie
Charlotte, Reine de Prusse_.]
-----
From the first, Sophia Charlotte displayed that indifference to playing
any part in politics which seemed so strange in her, considering the
capacity which she indisputably possessed for exerting influence alike
by her personal charms and by her intellectual powers. But, during the
few remaining years of the Great Elector’s life, the Electoral Prince
Frederick was under a cloud; and, in 1686, he had to withdraw with his
consort to Halle. In 1688 he succeeded his father as Elector, and a few
months later his consort presented him with an heir to his honours (the
future King Frederick William I). She continued, however, to show little
disposition to assert the authority and influence which had now accrued
to her; and, though, during the ensuing decade, so eventful in the
history of the relations between the Houses of Hanover and Brandenburg,
she was always happy to exchange visits with her parents and to listen
to the advice bestowed on her by her mother, she cannot be said to have
taken much trouble to use, either directly or indirectly, the power
which she can hardly have lacked aught but the will to exercise. It was
not that she had to contend against any great strength of character in
her husband, who, if humoured in a few things, could without much
difficulty be ruled in the rest. But she did not care to stoop even to
the level of his rather commonplace and formal nature, in order to
conquer for herself an all-controlling influence in both public and
private affairs. She preferred to create a sphere or circle of her own,
into which only those were admitted who approved themselves to her, more
especially by their intellectual gifts. Here simplicity, typified by
black dress, was the rule. The colony of French refugees, which was in
these years establishing itself at Berlin and Brandenburg, was largely
represented in her intimate social circle. Sophia Charlotte appreciated
those gifts of conversation, of which, in her age, Frenchmen and
Frenchwomen possessed, if not the monopoly, at least a predominant
share; and she seems herself to have become mistress of an art which is
always more easily described than reproduced. She was fond of theatrical
entertainments of many kinds, and probably gave more offence to the
pietism prevailing around her by these, for the most part, innocuous
tastes than by her philosophising tendencies. Toland amused her, and she
was not, like her mother, obliged to respect British prejudices about
his views or principles, though she was indignant to have been supposed
to have gone so far as to ask a man without birth or official position
to dine at her table. In general, she was, no doubt, very much _sans
gêne_ in her relations with persons whom she liked; but, though scandal
was busy with these freedoms, she never compromised herself by indulging
in them too far. The height of her personal influence seems to have been
reached when, by 1696, the Elector Frederick III had fulfilled her
heart’s desire by building for her a country residence in the village of
Lützen on the pleasant declivities of the Spree. She had never been
willing to sojourn in the castle of Copenick, where her predecessor,
Frederick’s first wife, had pined away her days; and the ample gardens
at Berlin, which he had presented to his Electress, she had, with
intelligent philanthropy, mainly distributed in allotments among the
townsfolk, with whom, for this reason, and perhaps also because of a
sympathetic quickness of wit indigenous among the inhabitants of the
growing capital, her reputation always stood high. Lützenburg, as the
Italian villa, which gradually grew into a palace, was called, became
Sophia Charlotte’s chosen abode, although the magnificence with which it
was in course of time adorned, both inside and out, had not received its
final touches before her death, when this famous royal residence was, in
remembrance of her, rechristened Charlottenburg.
The death of Ernest Augustus, in 1698, as we saw, drew mother and
daughter more closely together; and, in the same year, a very important
ministerial change at Berlin, the circumstances of which to this day
occupy the attention of historical students, greatly increased Sophia
Charlotte’s opportunities of exercising a personal influence upon the
government and policy of her husband. The fall of the hitherto
omnipotent minister, Eberhard von Danckelmann, which was speedily
followed by his incarceration, affords a most striking instance of the
uncertainty of princely favour, and a cruel illustration of the
recompense that may await great political services.[119] Here it must
suffice to say, that Sophia Charlotte had certainly been jealous of
Danckelmann’s influence, and that his downfall was regarded by her
mother and her friends, even more decidedly than by herself, as an epoch
in her personal career. Leibniz wrote to her, with rather exasperating
_aplomb_, surmising that, since she had now secured the entire
confidence of the Elector her husband, she would recognise the necessity
of taking advantage of the situation (_ménager la conjoncture_). As
there was, he continued, an identity of interest between her and her
mother, it was to be hoped that they would find consolation for the
evils that had befallen them (the death of Ernest Augustus) in employing
their gifts so as to bring about a complete union between Sophia
Charlotte’s brother and her husband. (It may perhaps be noted that the
sorrow afterwards shown by George Lewis on his sister’s death indicates
the existence of a genuine affection between them.) Leibniz could not
think of anyone likely to manage so effectively the requisite
communications between the two Electresses as it would be within his own
power to do; and he suggested that this purpose would be most easily
accomplished if he were to be appointed to some supervising post
connected with science and art at Berlin, and thus supplied with a ready
reason for occasional visits to that capital. As a matter of fact,
Sophia Charlotte used her best endeavours to induce Frederick III to
call into life a (prospectively) Royal Society or Academy of Science,
which, as the Elector was quick to perceive, would conspicuously add to
the reputation of his court and to the glory of the monarchy of which he
was ambitious to become the founder; and, after Leibniz had spent
several months at Berlin, and conducted the deliberations on the
subject, besides participating in the intellectual delights of
‘Lustenburg’ (Lützenburg), the Society of Sciences was, in July, 1700,
actually called into life, with Leibniz as its perpetual president.[120]
-----
Footnote 119:
See H. Breslau, _Der Fall des Oberpräsidenten E. von Danckelmann_,
1692 (H. Breslau and S. Isaacsohn, _Der Fall zweier Preuss.
Minister_). Berlin, 1878.
Footnote 120:
Curiously enough, on the day after the opening of this august
institution, Leibniz took a prominent part in a ‘Village Fair’ at the
Court, of which a graphic description remains in a letter from him to
the Electress Sophia. It seems to have been a revised edition of the
_Wirthschaften_ of her youth, and of similar Arcadian diversions of
later days.—For an interesting survey of the relations—both personal
and philosophical—between Leibniz and Sophia Charlotte, see A. Foucher
de Careil, _Leibniz et les deux Sophies_, Paris, 1876.
-----
Danckelmann’s fall had, however, not put an end to Sophia Charlotte’s
difficulties at her husband’s court. Some of these were of much the same
sort as those from which her mother had suffered so much at Hanover, and
from which the more sensitive nature of her grand-daughter Wilhelmina
was afterwards to suffer at Baireuth. The Elector Frederick III’s new
minister-in-chief, Kolbe von Wartenberg, had himself many attractive
qualities; but his wife was of humble origin and undistinguished
manners. It pleased the Elector, apparently only for the sake of the
completeness of the thing, to confer on her the position of his mistress
_en titre_. Sophia Charlotte’s pride long rebelled against receiving
this lady at her private court. Another source of anxiety to Sophia
Charlotte was the training of her son Frederick William, which, during
part of his fourth year, she had entrusted to the veteran Frau von
Harling at the court of her mother, the Electress Sophia. But the boy,
both passionate and obstinate, could not agree with his cousin George
Augustus, and had to be taken back to Berlin. As he grew up he seemed to
care for nothing but soldiering, while he detested the ceremonial dear
to his father’s heart, and more distinctive than ever of the Court of
Berlin since the manœuvres for securing a royal Crown had assumed a
definite shape, and this project had come to absorb the entire policy of
the Brandenburg court and Government. Neither Sophia Charlotte’s nor her
mother’s intelligence could fail to grasp the situation. The Electress
of Brandenburg made up her mind that no personal grievance should
interfere with the maintenance of a good understanding between her
consort and herself, and received the Countess of Wartenberg at
Lützenburg, although, oblivious of her guest’s imperfections of
education, she welcomed her there with a few words of French. The
Electress Dowager Sophia was willing to cooperate; and, partly with a
view to procuring for the furtherance of the project the good offices of
King William III and of the Elector Maximilian Emmanuel of Bavaria,
Governor of the Austrian Netherlands, it was, in the spring of 1700,
arranged that the two Electresses should, on the pretext of Sophia
Charlotte’s health, repair to the baths of Aix-la-Chapelle, and thence
visit Brussels and Holland. They accomplished this journey, on which
Leibniz was by his own ill-health prevented from accompanying them, but
in the course of which they, at the Hague, made the personal
acquaintance of another philosopher of European reputation—‘_l’illustre
Bayle, honneur des beaux esprits_.’ And, in October, 1700, they were
received at the Loo, where (as we shall see immediately) other matters
were also discussed between the Electress Dowager and King William, and
where he promised Sophia Charlotte to acknowledge her husband as the
first King in Prussia. The desire of Sophia Charlotte’s consort (rather
than her own) was consummated by their coronation as King and Queen of
Prussia at Königsberg on January 18th, 1701—the year which likewise
proved her mother’s conference with her host at the Loo not to have been
held in vain.
To understand this result, it is necessary to go back a few years, and
to recall the circumstances which, in 1696, had led to an earlier, but
more transitory, visit on the part of the two Electresses to the Loo.
The year 1696 was one of some importance in the history of the English
Succession question. After the death of Queen Mary, on December 28th,
1694, some time had necessarily passed before even a conjecture could be
formed as to the future intentions of King William, who was prostrated
with grief. But he was only in his forty-fifth year, and his remarriage
was therefore by no means an unlikely event. In the course of 1695,
speculation was accordingly rife on the subject, and, taking time by the
forelock, Louis XIV provided that any overtures made on William III’s
behalf at Stockholm (for the hand of the Princess Hedwig Sophia) should
meet with a cold reception. The hopes of the House of Savoy were once
more aroused. The claims by descent of the Duchess Anna Maria, daughter
of Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, and grand-daughter of Charles I, and
of her issue, were superior to those of the Electress Sophia and the
House of Hanover; and, in the twofold event of another son being born to
Anna Maria and Victor Amadeus II, and of the boy being brought over to
England and there educated as a Protestant, he might acquire a
Parliamentary title. William III was supposed to look favourably upon
this scheme; and, though, already in the summer of 1695, there were
rumours of Savoy having entered into secret negotiations with France,
Victor Amadeus was one of the Princes who, about this time, ratified the
renewal of the Grand Alliance. But, in the following year, after France
had paid the price of the restoration of Pignerol, the Duke of Savoy
went over to her side (thus executing a movement of which he carried out
the exact converse in 1703, early in the great War), and thereby closed
any prospect of his House inheriting the English throne.
Meanwhile, King William’s widowed state occupied the thoughts of the
dynasty of whose close connexion with the House of Hanover we have just
been treating. Immediately after the campaign of 1695 and the renewal of
the Grand Alliance, the Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg had begun
to sound King William, through the agency of his favourite, Keppel (soon
afterwards created Earl of Albemarle), as to the royal intentions on the
subject of a remarriage, with a view to directing the King’s attention
to the Electoral Princess Louisa Dorothea, then fifteen years of age. In
the following year, 1696, William had found himself the object of an
unprecedented popularity in England, owing to the discovery of the
Assassination Plot, at the time when James II was known to be preparing
an invasion of these shores. The Jacobite interest, which was to have
benefited by the most gracious proclamation ever drafted by the exiled
King, experienced one of the most disheartening of its many rebuffs;
and, instead of reconquering his kingdoms, James II informed the Abbot
of La Trappe, that ‘all these attempts which seemed to be lost labour in
the eyes of the world, were great advantages as he managed them in order
to that great end which had now become his sole concern.’ Still, the
‘Prince of Orange’s’ weak condition of health prevented King James from
regarding the chances of his restoration as at an end; and, in the event
of his rival’s death, he was resolved to ‘return into England, though
three men had not followed him.’[121] In May, 1696, King William resumed
the command of the army in the Low Countries, but no military operations
of importance took place; and, in the course of the summer, the Elector
Frederick III, with his family and court, took up their residence at
Cleves, whither the Duke of Celle likewise found his way, and whence in
August the Electress Sophia Charlotte, with her mother the Electress
Sophia, paid an _incognito_ visit to the Loo in the King’s absence. He
was then invited to Cleves; but he preferred in the first instance to
send two agents—an Englishman (Southwell) and a Dutchman (General
Hompesch)—to report to him on the personality of the Princess Louisa
Dorothea. Their reports were unfavourable, and, the King’s visit having
been deferred on the plea of difficulties of ceremonial,[122] no less a
personage than Portland was sent by him to Cleves to make another
report. Though this again proved deterrent, William resolved to trust to
his own eyes, and, in September, paid a visit to Cleves, of which a full
account remains in a letter from Stepney, then in the royal suite, to
Sir William Trumbull. The Princess stood, during four hours, as a
spectatress of the royal game at _l’hombre_, while the favourite,
Keppel, was accommodated with a seat. But the visit led to no result;
and, when it became known that the two Electresses had abandoned their
proposed tour through Holland, it was understood that the marriage
project was for the present at an end.
-----
Footnote 121:
This was the time when James II refused Louis XIV’s offer of aid
towards securing for him the Polish throne, then vacant by the death
of John Sobiesky; on which occasion Sophia wrote to the Duchess of
Orleans that King James might pass for a saint, since we are told to
become as little children, or we shall not enter into the kingdom of
heaven.
Footnote 122:
These were of a kind of which the Electress Sophia had, as we have
seen, had some experience. According to English usage, the King was
alone entitled to an arm-chair (_fauteuil_); but, according to the
German rule, the Electors were privileged to occupy an arm-chair even
in the presence of the Emperor. Hence the King and the Elector could
not _sit_ in one another’s company; and, when the King actually came
to Cleves, the Elector had to absent himself from the royal _partie_.
-----
Whether or not because of his own unwillingness to contract a second
marriage, as well as on account of the secession of the House of Savoy
from the Grand Alliance, the attention of William III, in the latter
part of 1696, turned more decisively than before to the Electress Sophia
and the House of Hanover. He interested himself directly in the still
unsettled question of the admission of the Elector of Hanover into the
Electoral College. About the same time (October), when George William of
Celle had returned home from a long visit to the Loo, whither he had
proceeded from Cleves, Leibniz (who, it must be remembered, was in the
service of the entire House of Brunswick-Lüneburg) put forth one of
those feelers by which he is henceforth found from time to time
endeavouring to test the sentiments of the Electress Sophia on the
Succession question. Though on this occasion he approaches the subject
most cautiously, it may be looked upon as significant that he prophesies
for Sophia’s grandson a renewal of the historic achievement of William
III. Nothing, however, could be more explicit than her reply refusing to
act on his insinuation. Two months later, she wrote to her niece, the
Raugravine Louisa, then on a visit to London, where she had met with
scant courtesy on the part of the Princess Anne, that everything
‘Palatine’ seemed to have quite fallen into oblivion in England, nor did
anybody there remember her (the Electress’) existence, inasmuch as there
was no apparent intention of allowing the Crown to descend to her
family.
During the period immediately ensuing, William III was necessarily
occupied by the task of securing his own seat upon the English throne,
rather than by that of determining its ulterior devolution. The success
of the peace negotiations which opened at Ryswyk, in June, 1697, was
rendered more than doubtful by the avoidance of any direct communication
between the representatives of the King of France and of the King of
England, whom Louis had as yet refused to recognise; and William III had
accordingly taken the startling step of entering into a secret
negotiation with France. Among the extraordinary rumours that hereupon
spread as to the compromise contemplated by the two sovereigns, was one,
wholly false, which contrived to make its way into ‘history.’ William,
it was said, intended to purchase peace by promising to secure the
Succession to the English Crown to the son and heir of James II. In the
instrument of the peace, William was not actually recognised as King of
England, Scotland, and Ireland by Louis XIV; but he was mentioned as
such in the preamble, and secured in his possession of these kingdoms by
a formula binding Louis XIV to refuse any direct or indirect assistance
to William’s enemies. Indeed, this indirect recognition, and the check
which it implied upon the original designs of Louis, constituted
England’s chief gain by the peace. William’s motives for seeking, in the
period next ensuing, to remain on good terms with Louis XIV, cannot be
discussed here; but they help to account for a certain slackness on
William’s part in his dealings with the Succession question, at a time
when it was becoming of the highest importance for the future of his
kingdoms.
In the autumn of 1698, however, shortly after the secret conclusion of
the First Partition Treaty between Louis XIV and William III, the latter
took up this question of a Succession which concerned him more nearly
than that to the Spanish monarchy. He was in the habit of annually
welcoming to the Loo, at this season, his old friend and
fellow-sportsman, Duke George William of Celle; but on the present
occasion they met in the hunting-castle of the Göbrde,[123] near
Lüneburg. The Elector George Lewis also put in an appearance there, as
did his son, the Electoral Prince George Augustus, and his daughter,
Sophia Dorothea the younger, then eleven years of age. Although Count
Tallard, the French ambassador at the Court of St. James, was thoroughly
puzzled as to the purpose of the King’s journey, it could be no secret
to the members of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg. In September, the
Princess Anne, who stood next in the Succession so long as King William
remained childless, had given birth to another still-born infant; and
her only surviving child, the Duke of Gloucester, was known to be in
weak bodily health. Nor could any reliance be placed upon Princess Anne
herself, who was in constant communication with St. Germains, and who,
had her father but given his assent to her mounting the throne in due
course, would have been glad enough afterwards to play it into the hands
of her half-brother. King William must, therefore, manifestly have
visited the Brunswick-Lüneburg territories with at least a
predisposition towards placing the House of Hanover in a more
satisfactory position, in regard to the Succession, than it held at
present; but he had no reason for supposing that the members of that
House were themselves eager to meet him half-way. Strangely enough, the
personage who now came forward to urge upon him a decisive course, was
the Duchess Eleonora of Celle—perhaps with a view to thus recovering
some of the influence lost to her through her daughter’s catastrophe,
perhaps in the hope of mitigating the effects of that catastrophe for
the unhappy Sophia Dorothea herself, or simply from an inborn love of
diplomatic action and a general desire to make things pleasant. Leibniz
afterwards assumed to himself the credit of having given her the first
hint of speaking to the King. This she did before he quitted the Göhrde,
representing herself as obeying an inspiration from Hanover, and begging
her royal guest—now that the House of Savoy was out of the question—to
promote the placing of the Electress Sophia and her descendants in the
Succession. When the King pointed out that the Duke of Gloucester,
though in delicate health, might imitate him by growing up into manhood,
Eleonora further suggested that her grand-daughter, Sophia Dorothea the
younger, would be a suitable match for the Duke. George William of
course agreed _ex post facto_ to the step taken by his wife, but
stipulated that it should be mentioned to his nephew, the Elector, who
gave vent to his annoyance that the King should be led to suppose him to
have sanctioned this manœuvre. But, when the King met the Electress
Sophia at Celle, he referred to the question of establishing her and her
descendants’ claim, and, as Leibniz expresses it, made considerable
advances in this direction. Sophia, we may be sure, received these
advances discreetly; but that she should have rejected them, or have met
them with coldness, is a conjecture unwarranted by her conduct either
before or after. Neither can she be shown to have viewed with
displeasure the activity, restless though it undoubtedly was, of
Leibniz, who about this time corresponded with London as frequently as
possible and encouraged the efforts of a Hanoverian agent there. Had
Sophia taken up an attitude of indifference, King William would hardly,
in June, 1699, have informed her in writing that he had used his best
endeavours to bring the business to a conclusion satisfactory to her,
and that he felt assured of effecting his purpose within a very short
space of time. It is, moreover, significant that the two branches of the
House of Brunswick-Lüneburg were acting in perfect harmony with one
another; in May, Gargan, the Electress’ secretary, declares it
impossible to listen without emotion to the conversations between the
two illustrious ladies (Sophia and Eleonora), whom he describes as
related to one another not less closely by blood than by friendship.
-----
Footnote 123:
This favourite seat of both George I and George II was in September,
1813—shortly before Leipzig—the scene of a Hanoverian success against
a French division.
-----
The reason why the Celle interview led to no immediate results in
England lay, not in Sophia, but in the discordant relations between King
William and his Parliament, caused mainly by his policy with regard to
the Spanish Succession, into which of course the Electress and the House
of Hanover had not been initiated. So late as July, 1700, she wonders
what interest England and the United Provinces could have in seeking to
cement the power of France. The unfriendliness of Parliament to the King
had been heightened when, about a month earlier, the substance of the
Second Partition Treaty had become known in this country; and, as
matters now stood, there was little or no chance of the House of Commons
in particular agreeing to any proposals concerning the Succession that
should emanate from the King. In the midst of this trouble, less doubt
than ever remained as to the decrease of his physical strength, at no
time anything but precarious; so that, after Anne, the only hope for the
Succession depended on the feeble vitality of the young Duke of
Gloucester. Suddenly, on July 30th, 1700, the frail thread of his life
was snapped, and the prospect had vanished of a successor who would have
been generally acceptable, and, in all probability, have proved both an
intelligent and a kindly ruler. In announcing the news to the Electress
Sophia from Berlin, her vigilant monitor, Leibniz, promptly pointed out
that it would now more than ever be time to think of the English
Succession. But it so chanced that already, three days previously, she
had written to him on the same subject from Hanover, exhibiting her
usual perfect self-control. Though she took very coolly the news of the
young Duke’s ‘decampment’—as she called his death, perhaps in cynical
allusion to his innocent military tastes,—she by no means showed herself
blind to the importance of the event. Were she younger, she told
Leibniz, when informing him that, in October, 1700, the Duke of Celle
was to visit King William at the Loo, she might fairly have looked
forward to a Crown; as it was, had she the choice, she would rather see
her years increase than her grandeur. But she well knew that persons in
her station rarely have a choice, if they are resolved not to fall short
of their sense of duty. She could hardly be aware of the fresh intrigues
that were being carried on by the Princess Anne, or of the hopes, still
entertained by certain of William’s most loyal English subjects, that he
would marry again, perhaps this time choosing a Danish princess. But she
could not have remained unaware that the thoughts of a wider circle of
Englishmen were taking the direction of Hanover. Partly, however, under
the influence of the regrets caused by the recent death of the young
Duke of Gloucester, partly because of the wish to secure an heir to the
throne young enough to be Anglicised and, more especially,
_Anglicanised_ before his advent to it, politicians, and Tory
politicians in particular, were as yet intent rather upon the ultimate
succession of the Electoral Prince than upon that of his father, the
Elector, or that of his grandmother, the Dowager Electress.
At the meeting of King William with the Duke of Celle at the Loo, it was
arranged that he should receive there the Electress Sophia and the
Electress of Brandenburg, on the occasion of the visit to the baths of
Aix-la-Chapelle on which the latter had persuaded her mother to
accompany her. Burnet insists that now ‘the eyes of all the Protestants
of the nation turned towards the Electress of Brunswick’; but the
arrival in Holland, as his mother’s and grandmother’s visit drew to a
close, of the young Electoral Prince of Brandenburg (afterwards King
Frederick William I of Prussia) seems to have vividly suggested to
William III the notion of placing the heir of the Hohenzollerns in the
position left vacant by the Duke of Gloucester. This passing fancy may
be regarded as the sequel of a not less transitory ambition which
appears to have flitted through the mind of the Elector Frederick III,
of taking advantage of the Princess Anne’s unpopularity to endeavour
himself to find his way to the English throne. The idea of including the
Electoral Prince of Brandenburg in the Succession could not of course be
welcome to the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg; and we accordingly find
Bothmer, who was in the Celle service as envoy at Paris and was soon to
play an important part in the progress of the Succession question,
complaining to Ilten (August 31st, 1700) that the Berlin Ministry were
preparing for their young Prince the plurality of King of Prussia,
Stadholder, and King of England. Count Platen afterwards stated that he
had heard it suggested that the Calvinism of Berlin might suit King
William better than the Lutheranism of Hanover. Nor is it at all
unlikely that he recognised in the Electoral Prince the germ of
administrative powers to which full justice has only very tardily been
done.[124] But, however this may have been—and perhaps something might
be said as to the religious influence noticeable in this period of
Hanoverian history—there is no proof that William III seriously thought
of adopting the Electoral Prince of Brandenburg, or of introducing him
in any other way into the English Succession. Moreover, even had this
been on his part more than a passing wish, he of course possessed no
right of nomination. No doubt, he would more speedily have dismissed the
fancy, had he believed the House of Hanover to be very eagerly intent
upon the prospect now opening before it. But, at all events it is
neither proved nor probable, that at the Loo the Electress Sophia once
more rejected the overtures of her host on the subject of the
Succession. The question possesses so much significance, if we are
desirous of forming a judgment as to the whole tenor of her conduct in
this matter, that it must needs be dwelt upon at some length. What
actually passed between her and the King on the occasion is unknown; and
her behaviour can only be conjectured from the attitude which she
maintained during a journey undertaken by her, it must be remembered, in
the first instance at all events, in her daughter’s interest rather than
in her own.
-----
Footnote 124:
It may be noted that Borkowski, _Königin Charlotte als Mutter und
Erzieherin_ (in _Hohenzollern-Jahrbuch_ for 1903), defends the Queen
against the charge of having insufficiently cared for the education of
the heir to the throne, and cites in proof letters addressed by her to
Alexander von Dohna, whom she selected and maintained against all
opposition as the supervisor of her son’s education.
-----
At Aix-la-Chapelle Sophia had received a remarkable letter from Stepney,
written from London about the middle of September, in which he reviewed
the entire situation. Remembering that in her veins ran the blood of the
Stewarts, and that her personal reminiscences mounted back to the days
of Oliver Cromwell, he excused himself from offering a decided opinion
of his own as to the genuineness of ‘_le Fils_,’ but pointed out that
there was no chance of his ever abandoning the religion of Rome, or
escaping from the political leading-strings of France. On the other
hand, he assured the Electress that the English were not Republicans at
heart, and that among them there was nobody capable of playing Oliver’s
part over again as ‘Captain-General.’ In response to his modest appeal
for a reply (by means of which he no doubt hoped to be able to clear up
the situation at head-quarters), Sophia wrote the letter, undated, in
which, from Lord Hardwicke downwards, so many critics have found
indications of her Jacobite tendencies. In this letter she declares
that, were she thirty years younger, she would have sufficient
confidence in her descent and in the religion professed by her, to
believe in her being thought of in England. After her death, which in
the natural course of things would precede the deaths of the King and
his appointed successor, her sons would be regarded as strangers.
Moreover, the eldest of them was far more accustomed to sovereign
authority than was the poor Prince of Wales, who was so young and would
be so glad to recover what his father had thrown away that they would be
able to do with him what they liked. After referring to her hope of
shortly seeing the King in Holland, whither she had been induced by her
daughter to accompany her, she added that she was of course neither so
philosophical nor so foolish as to dislike hearing a Crown talked of, or
as to refuse full consideration to her correspondent’s extremely
sensible and obliging remarks on the subject, though the number of
factions apparently existing in England made it difficult to feel sure
about anything.
Such is the substance of what is sometimes cited as the ‘Jacobite
letter’ of the Electress Sophia. Clearly, it is nothing of the kind; but
at most shows that, while primarily desirous of deferring all discussion
till she should meet the King, she desired to apprise him, through a
safe channel, that she was alive to the _cons_ as well as the _pros_—the
uncertainties as well as the opportunities—of the situation. Above all,
she wished to show herself aware of the possibility of that situation
being fundamentally changed by the conversion to Protestantism of the
‘Prince of Wales,’ as—assuredly without any _arrière pensée_—she
naturally called the kinsman whose claim to this title she had never
professed to doubt. Nor is any ‘Jacobitism’ on her aunt’s part proved by
the Duchess of Orleans’ nearly contemporary graphic account of King
James II’s tender sentiments towards the Electress, who, as he
stammered, ‘_m’a tou-toujours aimé_.’
The visit to the Loo was succeeded by a brief meeting between the King
and the two Electresses at the Hague, just before his departure for
England. It was on this occasion that Sophia Charlotte was accompanied
by her son Frederick William, for whom the King manifested a sudden
personal fancy. Whether under its influence, or because he had resolved
to respond to Sophia’s guarded attitude by maintaining a reserve of his
own, or, as is most probable, because English opinion was in his
judgment, as well as in hers, still unripe for action—certain passages
in the Electress’ correspondence with the Raugravine Louisa, a few
months later in date, show that William III had not arrived at any
immediate decision as to naming the Electress and her descendants in the
Succession, though he had held out to her the prospect of such a result
being brought about. This implies that she had by no means refused to
entertain such a proposal. In a word, the attitude of cautious
expectancy maintained by her and her House, was confirmed by her brief
personal intercourse with the actual occupant of the English throne.
Before the end of this year, 1700, all hesitation vanished from the
policy of William III. His hopes of securing the peace of Europe by an
international agreement based on the Second Partition Treaty were
finally extinguished, when the death of Charles II of Spain, on November
1st, was followed by the acceptance of his will, bequeathing the whole
of the Spanish monarchy to the Duke of Anjou, by that Prince’s
grandfather, Louis XIV. In February, 1701, French troops surprised the
Dutch garrisons in the Barrier fortresses; and the States General
recognised King Philip of Spain. The question whether England would
follow suit, or declare war, would have to be decided by the new
Parliament, summoned for February, 1701, ‘in respect of matters of the
highest importance’; which expression, as de Beyrie, the Hanoverian
resident in London, informed the Electress, unmistakably applied to the
choice of the Duke of Anjou, and to the English Succession. Stepney, or
some other correspondent, had previously apprised her of the course
which events might be expected to take in Parliament with regard to the
Succession. The Whigs would press for a further limitation in the
Protestant line, and, if necessary, for the exclusion of any child or
pretended child of James II except the Princess Anne. An effort
(proceeding from the Marlborough interest) in favour of the Princess
Anne’s consort, Prince George of Denmark, would serve to lead Parliament
to the direct Protestant line, beginning with the Electress Sophia, and
going on to the Elector and the Electoral Prince. Early in the same
month (November) the Electress, who was accompanied by Leibniz,
conferred with her brother-in-law at Celle. The Elector George Lewis was
not present; and the confidential memorandum on the rights of the House
of Brunswick-Lüneburg in respect of the English Succession drawn up
immediately afterwards by Leibniz for the use of Cresset, then at Celle,
contained a significant passage. The Succession, it was observed, could
much more easily be secured by the House, while King William, Duke
George William, and the Electress Sophia were still ‘_pleins de vie_.’
Soon afterwards, Sophia herself drafted a letter, which was approved by
the Duke of Celle, asking the King’s advice as to the course of action
to be pursued; and Leibniz, who thought this insufficient, was permitted
to compose a supplementary letter to Stepney, for the information of
Baron Schütz, who represented the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg at the
Court of St. James.[125] In this it was suggested that, while the
Electress wished not to appear at present to be taking any active steps,
a further limitation of the Act of Settlement might advantageously be
promoted in England by means of private overtures and of pamphlets not
purporting to emanate from Hanover. The Electress once more showed a
judgment superior to that of Leibniz, who, in his zeal, offered, if
called upon, to proceed to London in person, but whom, in May, 1701,
Stepney informed that, in his opinion, the English nation was so well
disposed towards the Hanoverian Succession that neither pamphlets nor
men of talent were needed to push it.
-----
Footnote 125:
She told Schütz, about this time, that she was very sensible of the
kindness shown her by the English people, but very sorry that she was
so old that she would never be of any use to them, and much annoyed
that her son had not the same inclinations on this head as she had
herself, and made no secret of his sentiments.
-----
In the meantime, Parliament, which sat from February to June, had nearly
concluded its session. The Speech from the Throne had duly recommended
the further limitation of the Succession in the Protestant line; and a
proposal for carrying this recommendation into effect was, without loss
of time, brought forward by the Whigs in the House of Commons (March
3rd). But, though the Tory majority in the House was not as a whole
unfriendly to the Hanoverian claims, the opinion prevailed that it would
be well to postpone the naming of any further successor, until certain
additional securities had been obtained for the rights and liberties of
the subjects of the Crown. It was generally understood that the
Electress Sophia should be named; but some desired to name the Elector
and the Electoral Prince likewise, in the expectation that the Electress
Dowager and the Elector would waive their claims. On the other hand, it
was felt that such an arrangement would involve a difference between the
English and the Scottish limitation, which latter had, already in 1689,
been made to include Sophia’s name; and this could not have been easily
set right until the anti-English feeling excited in Scotland by the
Darien Settlement affair should have had time to subside.
Thus, after the eight articles had been agreed upon which were to take
effect from the beginning of the new limitation to the House of Hanover,
and some of which were, as a matter of fact, dictated by jealousy of the
rule of a foreign line, the name of the Electress Sophia was inserted
without opposition; and by the _Act for the further Limitation of the
Crown, and better securing the Rights and Liberties of the
Subjects_—called in short the _Act of Settlement_—the Crown of England
was, in default of issue of the Princess Anne or King William III,
settled upon the Electress and her posterity, being Protestants. A
protest, inspired by the Duke of Berwick acting under instructions from
Louis XIV was, indeed, raised by the Duchess Anna Maria of Savoy, and
communicated to both Houses of Parliament by the envoy of Duke Victor
Amadeus II; but no notice was taken of it.[126] On June 12th, 1701, the
Act of Settlement received the royal assent, and, in his Speech from the
Throne, King William, after thanking the two Houses for further securing
the Protestant Succession, passed on to the subject of the Grand
Alliance. The answer of the House of Commons was an Address promising to
support the King in sustaining the alliances deemed necessary by him for
upholding the liberty of Europe and the welfare of England, and for
reducing the exorbitant power of France.
The Act of Settlement, which secured the Hanoverian Succession,
accordingly at the same time imposed certain fresh restrictions of the
prerogative, which had an important bearing upon the nature of the royal
authority exercised by Sophia’s posterity. Furthermore, the Act, in
which both the great English political parties concurred, secured the
Hanoverian Succession at a time when the critical struggle was about to
open between France and the renewed Grand Alliance; and thus, at the
very moment when the House of Hanover acquired a Parliamentary title to
the expectancy of the English throne, it was, again with the assent of
both parties, identified with the adversaries of France in the great
European conflict. Nor is it without significance that at this very time
a Pope (Clement XI) had been seated in St. Peter’s Chair, who, in a far
greater measure than his predecessor—for Innocent XII had on the whole
disappointed the hopes of Louis XIV—served the interests of France. The
letter addressed by Clement XI on his election in November, 1700, to
James II, had, in its ‘beautiful terms of paternal tenderness,’ drawn
tears ‘more from the heart than from the eyes’ of the exiled King.
Throughout these transactions, the conduct of the Electress Sophia had
been uniformly judicious—observing a wise mean between the adoption, as
a matter of course, of the advice readily given to her by Leibniz, and
an absolute impassiveness like that maintained by her eldest son. It
seems unwarranted to regard her as having energetically defended her
rights up to the time when policy and the condition of affairs in
England imposed upon her a certain reserve, and having at the last
enjoyed the satisfaction of seeing both King and Parliament sue for her
acceptance of their offer. On the other hand, her conduct is
misunderstood when she is supposed to have resisted so long as possible
the unwelcome necessity of securing the inheritance of a throne to which
she believed her kinsman, the Prince of Wales, to have had a just claim.
She had frankly accepted the situation, and done her best to promote a
solution in the interests of her dynasty, without going further than
would have been either seemly or judicious. Her letter written on June
22nd, 1701, to Burnet (who describes himself as in more or less
continuous correspondence with her from the death of the Duke of
Gloucester onwards) exactly expresses her point of view. Though sensible
of his affection to her in the matter of the Succession, which excluded
all Catholic heirs, ‘who had always caused so many disorders in
England,’ she felt herself ‘unfortunately too old ever to be useful to
the nation.’ Yet she wished that ‘those who were to come after her might
render themselves worthy of the honour awaiting them.’
On August 14th, 1701, the Earl of Macclesfield arrived in Hanover, in
order formally to notify to the Electress Sophia the passing of the Act
of Settlement, of which, kneeling before her, he presented her with a
splendidly illuminated copy, still preserved in the Hanover Archives.
Macclesfield appears to have been chosen for the office at his own
request, as the son of a cavalier closely associated with Prince Rupert
and a visitor at the Hague in Queen Elizabeth’s days, and therefore
likely to be _persona gratissima_ to the Electress[127]—though his own
antecedents rather associated him with the Mohocks. He was accompanied
by three other Whig Lords, Say and Sele, Mohun (Macclesfield’s intimate,
who is stated to have taken care to be on his best behaviour) and
Tunbridge. In their suite was the ingenious Toland, with his enquiring
eyes wide open, and in his pocket, according to Luttrell, a ‘treatise
lately wrote in relation to the Succession, intituled _Anglia Libera_,
or The Limitation and Succession of the Crown explained and asserted,’
for presentation to the Electress. With them were also ‘Mr. King the
herald,’ who brought the Garter for the Elector, and Dr. Sandys, the
ambassador’s chaplain, who read the common prayers of the Church of
England before the Electress in her ante-chamber. ‘She made the
Responses, and performed the Ceremonys as punctually as if she had been
us’d to it all her life.’ These and other details may be read in
Toland’s _Account of the Courts of Prussia and Hanover_, which he
published after his return. He was particularly anxious to recount the
honours which he had received at Hanover and Herrenhausen, including
that of conversing with the Electress, who, on one occasion, had told
him that ‘she was afraid the Nation had already repented their Choice of
an old Woman, but that she hop’d none of her Posterity wou’d give them
any Reason to grow weary of their Dominion’—much the same words as those
which she had used to Burnet.
-----
Footnote 126:
‘I do not see,’ writes Sophia in April, 1701, ‘how he can claim the
English Crown before King James and his two sons, being himself as
much a papist as they are; but perhaps he is offering to have his son
educated in the Anglican religion.’
Footnote 127:
She writes that Macclesfield’s father had been most friendly to her as
well as to Prince Rupert—‘_car il voulait me donner au roi
Charles_.’—Macclesfield died shortly after his journey to Hanover.
-----
We need not dwell upon the solemnities at Hanover and Celle, whither the
special embassy proceeded in due course, nor upon the lavish munificence
bestowed upon the ambassador,[128] nor upon the medals distributed in
honour of the event, among which none was more remarkable than that
which exhibited the portrait of the English Matilda, the consort of
Henry the Lion, and, on the reverse, that of the Electress Sophia,
‘_Angliae princeps ad successionem nominata_.’ But it may be worth our
while in our next chapter to return to Toland, and to his account of the
Court of Hanover, as giving an interesting, though no doubt rather
rose-coloured, picture of the Electress and her surroundings, at a point
of time which may be described as the climax of her fortunes.
-----
Footnote 128:
The Electress bestowed on him a golden ewer and her portrait in a
jewelled frame—the total expense amounting to 20,000 dollars—rather
more than two-thirds of the sum spent during twoscore years on the
maintenance of the palace buildings at Hanover. No wonder that this
profuse expenditure was looked upon without much satisfaction in the
long years of waiting that ensued.
-----
V
THE HEIRESS OF GREAT BRITAIN
(HERRENHAUSEN, 1701-1714)
Great Britain was never to see the face of its heiress, and the
widowhood of the Electress Sophia was almost entirely spent in the
tranquillity of Herrenhausen. More than any other place associated with
her name, this palace and its still delightful gardens, in the midst of
which her statue now stands, recall her regal personality. The building
of the palace that was so long her home, and the laying-out of the
gardens where Leibniz was so frequent a companion of her long daily
walks, were begun by Duke John Frederick as early as the year 1665, when
the old hunting-box of Lauenstädt was transferred hither. Herrenhausen
Palace seems to have been reconstructed, under the superintendence of
Sartorio, in imitation of the new palace at Osnabrück, of which, as has
been seen, the younger brother, Ernest Augustus, had more or less
borrowed the design from the Luxembourg at Paris. Ernest Augustus and
Sophia elaborated John Frederick’s beginnings, considerably enlarging
the gardens, which were designed by the elder Charbonnier, and carried
out by him and his son, in 1697, though it was not till 1705 that the
Elector George Lewis caused them to be completed in their present form,
which suggests Dutch influences. Thus a pleasing mixture of styles and
associations is presented by the solid clipped hedges, some of which in
the garden theatre serve as side-scenes and conceal dressing-rooms
(these are attributed specially to Quirini), by the prim summer-houses
and the wilderness, by the grottoes and the cascades with their
stalactites and shells, and by the profusion of statuary in gilt lead
among the hedges and in cool marble by the artificial water. It was in
these gardens that, during her married life, when she was already
accustomed to solitude, Sophia consoled herself with the company of the
nightingales, and here that, in 1700, she is found amusing herself with
her ducks and swans, and with the new lodgings erected by her for their
convenience. She had a genuine fondness for innocent open-air delights;
at Lützenburg she speaks of her promenades with her daughter as
affording her the greatest delight, while her sons disported themselves
at the opera and at comedies played by ‘noble’ comedians; and on the
gravelled paths of her Herrenhausen gardens she indulged her love of
walking almost literally to the moment of her death. No fine day was
allowed to pass without an hour or two—or even more—of her favourite
pastime; and her persistency tired out all her attendants, except, as
Toland elegantly puts it, when they had the honour of enjoying her
conversation.[129]
-----
Footnote 129:
Sophia’s love of walking seems to have been inherited by her eldest
son. Marshal Schulenburg, when on a visit to his sister, the Duchess
of Kendal, at Kensington, in 1727, describes his life there as
fatiguing, inasmuch as he had to promenade with the King in the
gardens every evening for three or four hours.
-----
Among the buildings at Herrenhausen, where Sophia spent the greater part
of her life from 1698 to 1714, the Orangery, one of the largest of its
kind in Europe, ought specially to attract the visitor, since a portion
of it was the residence, modest in dimensions, but decorated in a florid
Italian style, of the Electress Dowager. It had been erected in 1692;
its great hall was painted by Tommaso Giusti and stuccoed by Dossa
Grana. The Electress’ rooms are small and narrow, but overloaded with
decorations, and not in the most perfect taste, with the exception of
the fine portal into the little garden.[130] There seems no reason for
crediting her with an artistic taste transcending that of most of her
contemporaries, or sufficiently formed to maintain the Dutch preferences
of her younger days against the more debased French and Italian, but
more especially Italian, modes favoured by her husband and his
brother.[131] Clever with her hands as in every other way, she
understood the use of the brush[132] as well as of the embroidery
needle;[133] but neither artistic industry nor art, although as a
descendant of the Stewarts she had doubtless inherited some love of
both, was a sphere in which she sought to shine. Her husband
consistently treated art as a mere handmaid to luxurious
self-indulgence; thus, while he devoted nearly 25,000 dollars to the
furnishing and adornment of his new opera-house, he wasted an even
larger sum in the expenditure of a single carnival season.
-----
Footnote 130: