(1776-1810)
[Illustration: Queen Louise of Prussia.]
There is at Paretz, near Potsdam, a flower-bordered walk leading
from a grotto overlooking the Havel to an iron gate, above which is
inscribed "May 20, 1810" and the letter "L." Within the grotto an
iron table bears in golden characters, "Remember the Absent."
These words were engraved by order of Friedrich Wilhelm III. of
Prussia; and the "absent" he would have remembered--"the star of his
life, who had lighted him so truly on his darkened way"--was the
wife who died of a broken heart before reaching middle age.
Louise Augusta Wilhelmina, third daughter of Duke Charles of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz, was born on March 10, 1776, in the city of
Hanover. Her mother died when she was six years old, and henceforth
she and her sister Frederica lived with their grandmother, the
Landgravine of Darmstadt, sometimes at the Burgfreiheit Palace,
sometimes at a château in the Herrengarten, surrounded by formal
gardens and orangeries. The girls were brought up simply, making
their own clothes, and going much among the poor. Now and then they
made expeditions to Strasburg or the Vosges Mountains; and, when the
Emperor Leopold was crowned at Frankfort, the Frau von Goethe housed
them hospitably, and was highly entertained by the glee with which
they worked a quaint sculptured pump in her courtyard. Two years
later the advance of French troops compelled them to seek refuge
with their eldest sister, the reigning Duchess of Hildburghausen;
and on their homeward way they visited the Prussian head-quarters,
that the Landgravine might present them to the king. His sons were
with him, and long afterward the Crown Prince told a friend, "I felt
when I saw her, 'tis she or none on earth."
The wooing was short. On April 24, 1793, he exchanged betrothal
rings with Louise, and then rejoined his regiment. Soon after, the
Princesses of Mecklenburg went over to the camp, Louise appearing "a
heavenly vision" in the eyes of Goethe, who saw her there.
In the December of that same year Berlin, gay with flags and ablaze
with colored lamps, welcomed Duke Charles and his daughters; and on
Christmas Eve the diamond crown of the Hohenzollerns was placed on
her fair head, and in her glistening silver robe she took part in
the solemn torch procession round the White Saloon.
Then her young husband took her home to their palace in the "Unter
den Linden." They were very happy. In the sunshine of his wife's
presence the prince's spirit, crushed in childhood by a harsh tutor,
soon revived, while Louise, though the darling of the court, was
always most content when alone with him.
"Thank God! you are my wife again," he exclaimed, one day, when she
had laid aside her jewels.
"Am I not always your wife?" she asked, laughingly.
"Alas! no; too often you can be only the crown princess."
Her father-in-law never wearied of showering kindnesses on his
"Princess of Princesses." On her eighteenth birthday he asked if she
desired anything he could give. "A handful of gold for the Berlin
poor," was the prompt petition.
"And how large a handful would the birthday child like?"
"As large as the heart of the kindest of kings."
The Castle of Charlottenberg, one of his many gifts to the young
pair, proving too splendid for their simple tastes, he bought for
them the Manor of Paretz, about two miles from Potsdam. There Louise
busied herself with household affairs, while her husband gardened,
strolled over his fields, or inspected his farm stock. They played
and sang together, or read Shakespeare and Goethe, while to complete
this home-life came two baby boys: Fritz, born in October, 1795, and
Friedrich Wilhelm, in March, 1797. Someone once asked Louise if this
country existence was not rather dull. "Oh! no," she exclaimed; "I
am quite happy as the worthy lady of Paretz."
But in the late autumn of 1797 the king died, and the quiet freedom
of Paretz had to be exchanged for the restraints of court life.
Little as either of the two desired regal pomp, they played their
new parts well. Friedrich Wilhelm, stately in bearing, and
acknowledged as the handsomest man in his realm, looked every inch a
king; and if his laconic speech and caustic criticisms sometimes
gave offence, the winning gentleness of his beautiful wife more than
made amends. Nobles and citizens, statesmen, soldiers, and savants
were alike made welcome; and Louise knew instinctively how to make
each show at his best. With eager interest she discussed
Pestalozzi's ideas with his disciples; and when Gotlöeb Hiller, the
poet-son of a miner, was presented to her, she led him aside, and by
the friendly ease with which she talked of things familiar to him,
speedily banished his shyness. Indeed, ready as she was to recognize
high gifts and to learn from all able to teach, yet it was to the
obscure and suffering that her tones were most soft and gracious.
Even in trifles her thoughtfulness was unfailing. When a count and a
shoemaker were announced at the same moment, she gave audience first
to the shoemaker. "For time is more valuable to him."
[Illustration: Queen Louise visiting the Poor.]
At Dantzic she constantly wore an amber necklace, because it had
been the gift of the townsfolk. The voice which in childhood had
pleaded for the panting footman running beside her grandmother's
coach, might still be heard interceding, for when the royal carriage
was overturned near Warsaw, and the Oberk of Messterin rated the
servants, Louise interposed: "We are not hurt, and our people have
assuredly been more alarmed than we."
Sometimes the midday meal was spread beneath a forest tree, and from
far and near the peasants flocked to get "even a glimpse of her
lovely face." They followed in crowds while she and the king climbed
the Schneekoppe on foot, but loyal shouts died into awed silence
when, at the summit, Friedrich Wilhelm bared his head, and the two
standing side by side gazed at the glorious view. "That was one of
the most blessed moments of my life," Louise said afterward; "we
seemed lifted above this earth and nearer our God."
They entered the mines at Woldenberg by a swift-flowing stream, and
twenty years afterward the steersman of their boat was fond of
telling how, in the dark cavern--"The Foxes' Hole"--he saw her well
by the torchlight. "In all my life I never saw such a face. She
looked grand, as a queen should look, but gentle as a child. She
gave me with her own hands two Holland ducats. My wife wears them
when she goes to church, for what she touched is holy."
Louise had never meddled in foreign politics. She had been, she
designed to be, only the "Landesmutter," and even when the murder of
the Duc d'Enghien, seized on Prussian soil, aroused in Berlin a
storm of indignation, in which she fully shared, she yet sympathized
in the mental distress which found vent in her husband's
often-repeated words, "I cannot decide for war."
At last he did decide. In October, 1805, Napoleon ordered Bernadotte
to march his army corps through Anspach. This contemptuous comment
on Prussia's ten-years' forbearance was too much for the king's
pride. Armies were raised in Franconia, Saxony, Westphalia, and
while the excitement was at fever point the czar came to Berlin. All
his rare charm of manner was brought to bear, and at midnight, in
the presence of Louise, the two monarchs, standing with clasped
hands beside the tomb of the great Friedrich, solemnly pledged
themselves to a close alliance.
Alexander departed to lead his Russians to Moravia, and Friedrich
Wilhelm despatched a protest to the French camp; but the envoy,
Haugwitz, arriving on the eve of Austerlitz, waited the issue of the
battle, and then, withholding his packet, proposed to the victor a
fresh treaty with Prussia. There was wrath in Berlin when his doings
became known. The king at first disowned the disgraceful compact,
but Austerlitz had just taught him what Napoleon's enemies might
expect. French troops were already massing on his frontier, and in
an evil hour he broke faith with the czar! To Louise, who neither
feared foe nor deserted friend, that was a bitter time--doubly sad,
indeed, since most of the long winter was spent by the dying bed of
her youngest child. When she lost him her own strength broke down,
and the doctors ordered her away to drink the Pyrmont waters. In the
late summer she was able to rejoin her husband, and he had startling
news to tell, for war with France was close at hand.
Since Haugwitz's fatal agreement Napoleon had heaped injuries on
Prussia. Now, at least, king and people were of one mind. The young
Prussian officers sharpened their swords on the French ambassador's
window-sills, patriotic songs were hailed with thunders of applause
in street and theatre, and when the queen, clad in the uniform of
her own Hussars, rode at their head through the city, she was
greeted with passionate loyalty.
Unhappily, Friedrich Wilhelm, hitherto too tardy, was now too
precipitate. He had been passive while France crushed Austria, and
Austria, suspicious and disabled, neither could nor would assist
him. Russia, with better reason for distrust, responded generously
to his appeal, but he did not wait for her promised aid. For all his
haste, Napoleon, with 180,000 men, was nearing the Thuringian Forest
before the Prussian troops left Berlin. They were very confident,
those Prussian troops, and the shouting multitudes who watched the
well-trained artillery and cavalry defiling by, hardly dreamed of
disaster; yet it came almost at once. The Saxon corps, led by the
king's cousin, Prince Louis, pushing on too fast, was surprised and
surrounded, and the gallant young commander, the queen's dear
friend, the idol of the army, fell while rallying his men.
Louise, who had hurriedly joined the king from Weimar, could hardly
be persuaded to leave him, but on the evening of October 13th he
confided her to a cavalry escort, promising speedy tidings of the
coming battle. As she threaded the lonely passes of the Hartz
Mountains she heard the distant cannonading, and a broken sentence
now and again fell from her lips: "We know that all things work
together for good." Late in the misty October twilight she drove
into Brunswick. At Brandenburg a courier brought the news her
trembling heart awaited. All was lost! Twenty thousand Prussians lay
on the fields of Auerstadt and Jena, and the French were already in
Weimar. The king was alive, but two horses had been killed under
him. Grief-stricken, travel-worn as she was, Louise must not halt.
Before she reached Berlin her children had been sent to
Schwedt-on-Oder. She followed thither, almost terrifying them by her
changed, despairing looks. As soon as she could check her weeping,
she told her boys all she knew about Prince Louis's death. "Do not
only grieve for him. Be ready for Prussia's sake to meet death as he
met it," and then, in burning, never-forgotten words, she bade them
one day free their country and break the power of France.
There seemed only a choice between utter destruction and utter
submission, and yet when Napoleon demanded the cession of almost the
whole kingdom, Friedrich Wilhelm and his wife agreed that "only
determined resistance can save us." She was slowly rallying at
Königsberg from a fever caught in the crowded city, when the cry was
raised of the coming French. Propped by pillows, swathed in shawls,
she drove through blinding sleet to Memel, the one fortress still
left to the king. At her first halting-place the wind whistled in
through a broken window, and the melting snow dripped from the roof
on to her bed. Her companions trembled for her, but she, calm and
trustful, hailed as a good omen the sunshine which welcomed them
within the walls of Memel.
A week later Benningsen and his Russians, who had been wading
knee-deep through Polish forests and fording swollen streams, always
with 90,000 Frenchmen in hot pursuit, turned to bay amid the frozen
lakes and drifted snows of Eylau. Next day those snows for miles
around were red with blood. It was hard to tell with whom the costly
victory lay, but Napoleon despatched Bertrand to the Russian
outposts to propose an armistice, and Benningsen sent him on to
Memel, reminding the Prussian king that it could not be their
interest to grant what it was Napoleon's interest to ask. The terms
were, indeed, far easier than those offered after June; but
Friedrich Wilhelm, true to the ally who had held the field almost
single-handed through that terrible winter, would make no separate
agreement, nor did Louise receive more favorably a message to
herself, conveying Napoleon's wish to pay his court to her in her
own capital.
Though the piercing Baltic winds tried her strength greatly, she
employed herself whenever able in reading and visiting the over-full
hospitals. To a dear friend she said, "I can never be perfectly
miserable while faith in God is open to me." "Only by patient
perseverance," so she wrote to her father, "can we succeed. Sooner
or later I know we shall do so."
It was not to be yet. On June 14, 1807, Napoleon annihilated the
Russians at Friedland, and four days later Dantzic fell. Her tone
grew sadder. "We are not yet bereft of peace. My great sorrow is
being unable to hope."
As the czar could resist no longer and Napoleon desired peace, they
met at Tilsit, and there, on a covered raft moored midway in the
Niemen, arranged the outlines of a treaty. The next day Friedrich
Wilhelm, yielding to stern necessity, accepted terms "to the last
degree hard and overwhelming." The czar, believing that Louise might
move even Napoleon to clemency, her husband begged her to join him
at Tilsit. On reading this summons she burst into tears, declaring
this the hardest task ever given her to do. "With my broken wing how
can I succeed?" she pathetically asked.
Napoleon paid his respects soon after her arrival, and they met at
the stairhead. Louise, for Prussia's sake, forced herself to utter
courteous regrets that he should have to mount so steep a staircase.
He answered blandly that no difficulties were feared when striving
for a reward beyond. Then, touching her gauze robe, asked, "Is it
crêpe?"
"Shall we speak of such trifles at such a time?" was her only reply.