AN ERA OF INTELLECTUAL DESOLATION
War! War! War! From that pregnant day in 1521 when Luther, at Worms,
cried: "Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me!" Germany, for
nearly three centuries, was never, long at a time, free from bloody
strife. In some districts of the empire men and women were conceived in
time of war, born in time of war, lived to the Scripturally allotted age
of threescore years and ten in time of war, died, and were buried,
leaving war to rage for years to come above their unquiet, desecrated
graves.
In these disintegrating centuries, women of all classes suffered to the
uttermost. The lowest became beasts, like the men who debauched them. By
thousands, and tens of thousands, women followed the armies. Every
soldier, from the private to the highest officer, was allowed to take
with him into the field his wife or mistress frequently both and as many
other female relatives as he pleased. Even grandmothers were frequently
seen in camp. Schiller's picture of the old marketwoman in Wallenstein's
Camp is not overdrawn.
Women in the army cooked, washed, mended, and, more or less skilfully,
nursed the sick and wounded. They were not taken to the field, however,
as ministering angels. The bald truth is that women were kept in the
army for the sole purpose of gratifying man's lust. With every newly
recruited regiment that started for the front went hundreds of
respectable young girls torn unwillingly from their humble homes. After
every decisive battle, women formed a large part of the spoils of war
borne off by the victors. Children, mostly born out of wedlock, swarmed.
Gustavus Adolphus made a vain attempt to keep women out of the army. He
established tent schools for the children. Women in the field were under
martial law. Frequently, for minor offences they were stripped, flogged,
and drummed out of camp. The discipline of the field schools was very
severe. Once, it is related, a cannon ball crashed through a school
tent, killing half a dozen children. But the survivors, more afraid of
their schoolmaster than of death, kept on with their tasks as if nothing
had happened.
For woman there could be, there was, but one outcome of this army life,
moral degradation. Grimmelshausen, in his _Simplicius Simplicissimus_,
one of the greatest satires ever written, gives a horribly revolting
picture of women in camp during the Thirty Years' War. There is no doubt
that the picture is a true one, for Grimmelshausen, a nobleman and a
powerful writer, was an eyewitness of the horrors which he describes in
this life story of a vagabond adventurer in the long and terrible war.
Neither wealth nor high birth could screen women from the anxieties, the
sorrows, and the miseries of war. Philippine Welser, of Augsburg, was
probably the last patrician woman in Germany to receive Renaissance
training. The Welser family of burgher-merchant origin, ennobled by
royal favor was famous for its upright men and its pious, scholarly
women no less than for its enormous wealth. The story of Philippine
Welser and her lover--husband,--Prince Ferdinand, son of Emperor
Ferdinand I. and favorite nephew of Charles V., contrasts pleasantly
with the cruel, coldly selfish treatment of most princely lovers in that
war-brutalized age.
According to legend, Philippine Welser first saw "Prince Ferdinand of
the Golden Locks" as he rode past her father's house in old Haymarket
Square, at the head of a glittering procession. Philippine, a vision of
pink and white girlish beauty, stood at a long, open window, looking
down on the gorgeous pageant. The prince saluted her. Their eyes met,
and straightway, after the old fashion which never quite goes out of
date anywhere in the world, either in war or in peace, they fell in
love.
At the public ball that evening, in Augsburg's new hall of gold, the
prince showed the merchant-banker's fair daughter marked attention,
dancing with her often. In the weeks that followed, Prince Ferdinand's
intimate friend, Count Ladislaw von Sternberg, was seen almost daily
going back and forth between the old Welser house and the archducal
palace near the Cathedral.
At last the prince left Augsburg. A few days later Philippine Welser
also disappeared down the street which now bears her name. Henceforth
her native city knew her no more. She was in Bohemia, with her aunt
Katharine, wife of the knight George von Loxan. An imperial castle
crowned a neighboring height. Prince Ferdinand suddenly discovered that
affairs in his Bohemian inheritance needed his immediate personal
attention. He resided at the castle for several weeks, making frequent
visits to the Loxan estate. A formal betrothal took place in the
presence of a priest, Philippine's aunt, and other witnesses. Through
nine years of betrothal and twenty-three of married life, the archduke
was true to Philippine. War separated them for years at a time, but
their love suffered no diminution. The archduke Ferdinand was a genuine
scion of an impetuously loyal race. From Maximilian I., whose heart, by
his own command, was placed in the tomb of fair Mary of Burgundy, down
to Don John and to unfortunate Rudolph in the nineteenth century,
Habsburg princes have ever been ready to cast aside rank, wealth, and
power for love.
Sometimes, hiding under the soiled robe of politics, love actually slips
into a state marriage, as in the union of Elizabeth Stuart of England
with Frederick, Prince of the Palatinate, better known to history as the
"Winter King" of Bohemia.
Though not German by birth, Elizabeth, through good and through evil
report, so thoroughly identified herself with her husband's interests
and people, and became the ancestress of so many famous rulers, among
whom are Frederick the Great, Queen Victoria, and Emperor William I.,
that her story properly deserves a place in any history of German
womanhood.
Elizabeth possessed the grace, beauty, and charm of manner common to the
Stuarts. To these gifts were added wit, a kindly sense of humor, and an
honest loyalty of spirit peculiarly her own. The title she won in
Germany, "the Queen of Hearts," seems to have been a spontaneous and
well-deserved tribute. Between Elizabeth Stuart and her elder brother
Henry, the beloved and manly Prince of Wales, who died at the age of
eighteen, the closest love and sympathy existed. Out of many suitors for
his sister's hand, Frederick, Prince of the Palatine, was Prince Henry's
choice. The two young men loved and respected each other. Together they
had ridden, hunted, played tennis and other athletic games, Elizabeth
often being an interested spectator of their friendly contests. The
dying prince's last words were half-delirious ramblings concerning his
sister's marriage to Prince Frederick.
Political exigencies were pressing. As usual, war loomed. Prince Henry's
death, therefore, delayed the marriage but a few days. Frederick
possessed a sweet and lovable nature. His letters, to this day,
strangely win the reader's heart. To the stricken sister, mourning the
loss of her idolized brother, the tenderness of Prince Frederick was
balm. Her bridegroom had been her dead brother's friend. To
loyal-hearted Elizabeth Stuart that memory was far more precious than
the diamond rose-wreath crown which her lover brought her from the
Palatinate. Yet the glittering coronet it may be seen to-day in Munich
was very beautiful. Clear, sparkling, as if made of ice shot through by
sunlight, it seems a fit ornament for a young "Winter Queen."
The bridal journey to the Palatine was a triumphal progress. Elizabeth
and Frederick were like two children newly escaped from school. They
cast convention to the winds. The court chamberlain was in despair. But
the two happy lovers only laughed at him and his "precedents." They said
they would make new precedents, and they did. In Noernberg they invited
themselves to a burgher wedding. The bride was a Welser, a distant
cousin of Philippine Welser. Both Elizabeth and her husband danced at
this wedding until after midnight. Prince Frederick, indeed, danced so
heartily, says an old chronicler, "that he did twirl some of the maidens
with him clean out into the street."
About this time died the Emperor Matthias, successor of Ferdinand I. The
Protestant Union earnestly wished to prevent the election of the
Catholic Ferdinand, King of Bohemia, as emperor. An opportune uprising
of Protestants in Bohemia served as a pretext for placing Frederick of
the Palatinate, head of the Protestant Union, upon the throne of
Bohemia. The whole world knows the story of that brief, brilliant,
winter reign of Frederick and Elizabeth in Bohemia.
The Stuart "Queen of Hearts" was more popular in Bohemia than her
Calvinistic husband. Rich presents of money and plate were made to her.
A delegation of the wives of the most prominent citizens waited upon her
in Prague. Behind them slowly moved nine large wagons loaded with gifts.
Among other presents was a baby's entire outfit, including a stately
cradle made of ebony and ornamented with gold and precious jewels. The
cradle was needed, for Elizabeth bore thirteen children.
The king and queen were too unconventional to please the stiff Bohemian
nobility. The young royal couple gave mortal offence once to the entire
court by coasting down hill with a lot of school children. The
conspicuous costume worn by his majesty on that unfortunate day seems to
have been an added injury to court etiquette. He wore, we are told, "a
satin fur-trimmed pelisse and a large white hat with long, floating
yellow plumes."
But days of childish gayety were well-nigh passed for Frederick and
Elizabeth. Sorrow, humiliation, poverty awaited them. Ferdinand II. was
triumphantly elected. One of the new emperor's first acts was to
confiscate Frederick's principality of the Rhine Palatinate and make it
over to a Bavarian Prince. His next act was to send a force under Tilly
to regain the Bohemian throne. Frederick made no resistance worthy of
the name. Instead, he fled with his family.
Never was royal fall more humiliating. Landless, penniless, almost
friendless, Frederick and Elizabeth suddenly found themselves the
laughing-stock of Europe. It was a brutal age, a vulgarly coarse age.
Minor incidents often show most clearly the progress of civilization.
To-day a woman dragged down by her husband's fall is screened.
Not so in Elizabeth Stuart's time. The press of that day lampooned her
more unmercifully than it did her unfortunate consort. Cruel cartoons,
picturing her in a beggar's dress were scattered broadcast. King James
I. offered his daughter an asylum in England, but she answered proudly:
"My place while I live is by my husband's side. I shall never forsake
him."
So intense was Elizabeth's love for her husband that it practically
crowded out all other love except the love for her dead brother. Even of
her children she said: "I love them more because they are his than for
themselves or for my own comfort." For three days after Frederick's
death Elizabeth neither spoke nor ate nor wept. To the day of her own
death, her room, sometimes a pitifully poor room for a king's daughter
and a king's wife, was draped in black in memory of her husband.
The eldest daughter of Elizabeth and Frederick also an Elizabeth was a
diligent student of philosophy. Descartes honored her with his
friendship. For many years she corresponded with the great philosopher.
In youth, this Elizabeth was very pretty a vivacious, black-haired,
brown-eyed beauty, with a slender aquiline nose which tried her sorely
by turning unbecomingly red at times. The poverty-stricken Palatine
princesses, living as poor relations, first at this court, then at that,
kept up courage by sharpening their wits on one another. One day when
the annoying nose was blushing, Elizabeth's next younger sister, Louise,
said: "Come, it is time to attend the audience of our cousin, the
Queen," and Elizabeth answered aggrievedly: "Do you expect me to go with
this nose?" To which quick-witted Louise replied: "Do you expect me to
wait until you grow another one?"
Elizabeth, perhaps to gain leisure to study her beloved subject,
philosophy, entered the Lutheran convent at Herfort, becoming later its
abbess. Louise became abbess of a Catholic convent at Naubisson, and a
very lively and comfortable, if not exactly moral, abbess she made. A
third sister, Henrietta, took to preserves instead of either philosophy
or religion. She married, and lived happily ever after among her sticky
pots and kettles. Not the least blessed of the three, to judge from her
letters, was the lot of practical Henrietta.
At the end of the Thirty Years' War, Germany lay prostrate, bleeding at
a thousand wounds. The condition of the peasant women was not greatly
improved. They had more cows to milk, it is true; but, on the other
hand, they were furnished with fewer books from which to draw mental
nourishment. The public schools had gone to ruin. Even the boys were not
properly taught. "Our wenches learn nothing," an exceptionally
interested father complains.
The old manufacturing interests, like weaving by hand, in which women
formerly aided, had declined. Workingwomen in the cities found it hard
to earn a living. By losses resulting from the war, many of the genteel
poor, ladies born and bred, had been forced into the ranks of the
workers. These timid unfortunates became nursery governesses in families
of the impoverished nobility, day teachers, court ladies without salary,
and the like. The personal secrets of the children of labor are kept
only in the archives of solitary human hearts; else, many a story of
tragedy, love, and brave self-denial might be written from the bitter
experiences of these pioneer women workers. In considering the condition
of workingwomen during this unhappy period, the word "Vice," written
large, must be constantly kept in mind. It was not a question of
temptation to vice; the problem, instead, was how a respectable
workingwoman could possibly escape being driven into sin by man's
physical force.
The counter reformation, set in motion by the wonderful intellect of
Ignatius Loyola, had a mighty influence upon women in certain parts of
the empire. "In the year 1551," says Steinmetz, "the Jesuits had no
fixed position in Germany. In 1556 they had overspread Franconia,
Swabia, Rhineland, Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, and Bavaria." This rapid
but quiet growth of the Society of Jesus was due largely to the
influence of a comparatively few rich, intelligent Catholic women, like
Maria of Bavaria.
The relation between women and early Jesuitism bears out the old
assertion that kicks and beatings increase both canine and feminine
affection. Ignatius Loyola himself compared woman to the devil. He
writes: "Our enemy imitates the nature and manner of a woman as to her
weakness and frowardness. For, as a woman, quarrelling with her husband,
if she sees him with erect, firm aspect, ready to resist her, instantly
loses courage and turns on her heel, but if she perceive he is timid and
inclined to slink off, her audacity knows no bounds, and she pounces
upon him, ferociously. Thus the devil," etc.
Ignatius Loyola was magnificently in earnest. He remembered the Medician
Papal courts and their scandal. He would have his order endangered by no
looseness of priestly morals. His rules were of iron strictness.
Moreover, and this greatly to his official advantage, he knew women.
Especially well he knew, too, the sentimental, introspective,
hero-worshipping woman. The spiritual direction of three such women for
a short time gave him more trouble, he afterward declared, than the
government of his whole world-spread order. Accordingly, he decreed:
"No woman shall come twice to confession in one day."
"If the female penitents pretend to scruples of conscience, the
confessors are to tell them 'not to relate tales and repeat trifles.'
Sometimes they must be silenced at once, for if they are truly disturbed
by conscience there will be no need of prolixity."
"Consolation and advice to women are to be given in an open part of the
church."
Visits to women were also severely restricted. They must be confined to
women of rank and consequence. The women visited must be those who have
rendered signally important service to the order. Visits must be
agreeable to the husband or other ruling male relative of the woman
visited. Confession by a woman was always to be witnessed by another
priest, stationed near the confessor.
A Jesuit of advanced age and ancient probity once infringed this last
order and listened to a woman penitent without witnesses. Loyola called
eight priests together and made the old Jesuit scourge himself on his
naked back till each of the priests had repeated one of the penitential
psalms.
To do all things vehemently has always been a German trait. According to
Hasenmuller, a German Jesuit turned Lutheran, many of Loyola's disciples
in Germany exceeded their chief in their expressed contempt for women.
Some Jesuit priests, he says, expectorated whenever a woman's name was
mentioned. Others would eat no dish prepared by a woman. One cried:
"When I think of a woman my stomach rises and my blood is up." Another
exclaimed: "It grieves me and I am ashamed that a woman brought me into
the world."
The emotional element in Jesuitism appealed strongly to women. The
general contempt for their sex expressed by Jesuit priests made special
notice all the more valuable. No modern woman of fashion who has secured
for her drawing room the first appearance of a social lion is more
elated thereby than were the few queens, princesses, and women of wealth
who, in the early days of the order, were honored by the notice of
Jesuit priests. Add to this the fact that the Jesuits were, in general,
a picked body of young, strong, handsome men of gracious manners and
fascinating address, and we have the secret of their power over women.
Small wonder that women worked indefatigably to advance the interests of
the new order.
Allied to the Jesuits only by the smarting, chafing tie of persecution
were the Jewish women. After the Thirty Years' War there were many of
these in Germany. Their descendants, even when Christians, were debarred
from entering the Society of Jesus. The babes of Jewish mothers were
often forcibly baptized. Freytag quotes a pathetic story told in an old
pamphlet written by two Jesuit fathers, Eder and Christel.
One Samuel Metzel was converted to Christianity. His wife refused to
forsake her ancestral faith. Her four children were taken away from her
and placed in Christian families. She was about to bring a fifth child
into the world. In terror lest she should lose this one too, she hid
herself in a retired spot. Her oldest little girl unconsciously betrayed
the mother's hiding place. When the babe was born the father and the two
priests sent a Christian midwife to baptize and kidnap it. Three "pious
ladies" accompanied the midwife.
When the Jewish mother saw that the midwife baptized her newborn babe,
she "sprang frantically from her bed and with vehement cries tore the
infant from the woman's arms." The "pious ladies" sent for masculine
help. The city judge, with armed men, entered the room and "tried to
separate the now little Christian son from his mother. But as she, like
a frantic one, held the child so tightly clasped in her arms, they
desisted, fearing to stifle the babe, and the judicious judge contented
himself with strictly forbidding the Jews in the house to try to make a
Jew of the child." The Lord Count of the empire, when appealed to,
decided that the child must be delivered to its father. The priestly
historians add, with evident pride and satisfaction: "Not long after,
the mother who had so stubbornly adhered to Judaism gave in and was
baptized."
When the plague swept Germany, the Jesuits and their women coadjutors
were magnificent in their self-forgetfulness and unremitting work of
succor. Splendidly, too, as a rule, did they stand by one unfortunate
class of women the so-called witches of the seventeenth century. It was
a Jesuit priest, the noble Frederick von Spee, who, when asked by the
Elector of Mainz why his hair had turned white at the early age of
forty, replied: "Sire, it is because I have accompanied to the stake so
many women accused of witchcraft not one of whom was guilty."
The persecution of so-called witches grew to fearful proportions in the
seventeenth century. No ugly old woman who had village enemies was safe
from arrest and execution on a charge of witchcraft. The following
statistics from the small district of Drachenfels are typical, as in
every other town of the empire similar conditions prevailed.
Between July, 1630, and December, 1631, and between November, 1643, and
May, 1645, ninety-two out of the eight hundred inhabitants of the
district were executed for witchcraft. Every second house furnished at
least one victim. Sometimes four or five out of a single family were
accused. The youngest woman burned was twenty-nine years of age. The
others were between fifty-five and eighty. Confessions were secured by
the use of the rack and other horrible tortures. The confessions were
always similar, a mere echo of the stories told around every village
hearth on winter evenings. The alleged witch had sickened cattle. She
had sought at midnight the woodland dancing place of evil spirits or had
ridden through the air on a broomstick. She had made a compact with the
devil, etc., etc.
But confession was not considered evidence enough. Accomplices must be
declared. Just here, sometimes, splendid heroism came in, as in the case
of Frau Merl of Drachenfels. Neither the rack, the thumbscrew, nor
ice-cold water poured over her could induce her to name as co-witch any
but dead women. Through three courts they dragged her case. There was
even a chance of saving her own life if she would implicate certain
other suspected persons. Instead, however, she went alone to the stake.
One wishes that Von Spee might have walked beside her, whispering words
of consolation.
A minor cause of woman's degradation in this unhappy age of her history
was the prevalence of drunkenness. An official map was once issued that
showed drinking districts, places being marked as "ever drunk," "mostly
drunk," "half drunk," etc. "No drunk" did not exist even as an imaginary
geographical line.
From the lowest strata of society to the highest women were made
miserable by this evil of intemperance. The intoxicated peasant knocked
his wife down and kicked her. The cultured prince, inflamed by wine and
anger, slapped my lady's face at the royal dinner table before the whole
court.
Riehl, in his _History of the Physical Development of the German
People_, devotes one chapter to the gradual "Divergence of the Sexes."
He makes the interesting suggestion, which reflection and observation
seem to confirm, that three hundred years ago woman was far more
masculine in her personal appearance, even in her anatomy and physical
strength, than now. He calls attention to the almost manly expression
and cast of features shown in the portraits of bygone famous beauties
like Marie Stuart and others.
Louisa of Orange-Nassau, wife of the great elector, Frederick William
(1640-1688), was a remarkable woman. She was self-poised, loving,
earnest, virtuous, pious in a helpful, practical fashion, founding
girls' schools, hospitals, and similar institutions of ethical and civic
value, and interested in every department of her husband's manifold
activity. When he travelled, she journeyed with him, carefully watching
to keep away from him both draughts and bores. On a long military march
of four hundred miles from Berlin to the relief of Konigsberg she
accompanied him, sharing all his hardships without a complaint.
Frederick William built for his wife a pretty country place north of
Berlin, which they called _Oranienburg_ (Orange Burg). Louisa made this
place a genuine Dutch homestead. Much of Frederick William's youth was
spent in Holland, where he wooed and won his bride. Theirs was a true
love marriage. Louisa bore him two sons; the elder died young, the
younger, Frederick, became the first king of Prussia.
Frederick William was often in a state of ebullition, and many women
would have found life with him a hell upon earth. But Louisa of Orange
had love, patience, and great good sense. She was happy in his love, and
he in hers. "At the moment of her death," says Carlyle, "when speech had
fled, he felt from her hand, which lay in his, three slight, slight
pressures. 'Farewell!' thrice mutely spoken in that manner, not easy to
forget in this world."
Reasons of state compelled the elector to contract another marriage. His
second wife, Dorothea of Holstein, was a most practical housewife and
gardener. Under her energetic direction the palace shone like a new pin.
She took a great interest in the planting of trees. Unter den Linden,
the now fashionable avenue of Berlin, was, primarily, a project of
Dorothea's. Her dairy was wonderfully remunerative, and it was even
rumored that she held a controlling interest in a brewery. Thrifty
Dorothea certainly was; comfortable to live with, either as wife or
stepmother, she evidently was not. She never filled the vacant place in
Frederick William's heart. "Ah! my poor Louisa," the great elector, now
growing to be the old elector, often exclaimed; "I have not my dear
Louisa now. To whom shall I turn for help and comfort?"
Between Dorothea and her stepson, the crown prince Frederick, a constant
state of warfare existed. Political enemies even accused Dorothea,
without a shadow of truth, of attempting to poison him. At last
Frederick withdrew entirely from his father's court, leaving his
stepmother and his four stepbrothers in possession of the field. This
wearing domestic friction, combined with much political opposition,
embittered the last years of the elector's life. He died in 1688; but he
had not lived in vain. His private life was honorable; his morals were
above reproach. In his conjugal fidelity, he stands a solitary figure
upon the threshold of a new and still more debased age.
War was not the sole cause of woman's degradation in this unhappy
period. French influence, proceeding from the brilliant, evil court of
Louis XIV. (1643-1715), debased her incalculably. Like a moral miasma,
this influence permeated every stratum of German society. Upon the
innocent and the guilty woman alike its effect was deadly. This
destructive conquest over the brain and soul of Germany was not made in
a single generation, for, in the beginning, men of the stamp of the
great elector and women like his beloved Louisa fought against the
subtle, poisonous influence.
For half a century a German princess lived at the very fountain head of
corruption, the court of Louis XIV., and remained pure. Elizabeth
Charlotte of the Palatinate was a granddaughter of Elizabeth Stuart. Her
father was Carl Ludwig, Prince of the Palatinate, to whom had been
restored a part of his paternal inheritance the Rhine Palatinate. She
was educated by her father's sister, Sophia, Electress of Hanover, whom
she loved devotedly. To this aunt, through fifty years of life in a
corrupt and foreign atmosphere, which to the end she hated, the exiled
German princess poured out her heart in letters that, to the historian,
have proved of priceless value. Ranke says: "Nowhere else is the
uncleanness of French and German national spirit during this epoch so
perfectly photographed as in the correspondence of Elizabeth of Orleans
with her aunt, the Electress of Hanover."
At the age of nineteen, in the year 1671, Elizabeth Charlotte was
married to Philip, Duke of Orleans, only brother of Louis XIV. It was a
loveless marriage. Louis XIV. brought about the union for the sake of
securing the neutrality of the Prince of the Palatinate in an
approaching war between France and Holland. At the time of her marriage
Elizabeth was a bright, wholesome, companionable girl. Her husband, a
widower of thirty-two, was commonly suspected of being at least
accessory to the poisoning of his first wife, Henrietta, a sister of
Charles II. of England. In the correspondence of Elizabeth and her aunt,
the Duke of Orleans is always referred to as "Monsieur."
Elizabeth's ideal of manhood was the older German ideal, an honest,
fearless man, an enthusiastic hunter, a skilful horseman, a sturdy
drinker, and, withal, a stout-handed Christian, ready at a moment's
notice to knock down an old church and build a new one on its site, or,
if his faith lay the other way, to fight to the last ditch for the old
church against the new. Therefore, there must have been bitterness at
the young wife's heart when she penned the following very accurate
description of her bridegroom:
"Monsieur has extremely ladylike manners. He cares for nothing so rude
as horses and hunting. He cares for nothing, in fact, except the Court
receptions, for dainty eating, dancing, and fine toilettes. In short,
his tastes are all effeminate."
She gives an equally merciless picture of herself: "I must be very ugly.
I have little eyes, a short, thick nose, and a flat, broad face. I am
little and thickset. Naturally, I hate mirrors and never injure my
self-esteem by looking into one if I can help it." Though Elizabeth was
not beautiful, she must have possessed the charm of a thoroughly honest,
humorous, and impulsively kind nature. Her boy-cousins and young friends
in Germany called her "Comrade" and "Bub." Louis XIV. was very fond of
his German sister-in-law. She walked, rode, and hunted with him
frequently. Except when he persecuted Germany, she liked the king
extremely well.
Although no love existed at any time between the Duke of Orleans and his
wife, one point, remarkable in that universally loose age, must be
noted. They were true to each other. She writes in later years: "I never
had any reason to complain of Monsieur in respect to his behavior so far
as other women were concerned." She had no "love affair" in all the
years she lived with him. A cabal, seeking to fasten scandal upon her in
connection with the Chevalier Sincsanct, utterly failed to produce proof
against her, or even to cast public suspicion upon her. She had three
children, two boys and a girl. The oldest boy died at the age of three
years. The struggle of Elizabeth's life was to preserve her two
remaining children from the impure influences around them, and it was a
long and bitter fight. Her daughter she saved. Her son, afterward Regent
of France during the long minority of Louis XV., owed all that was good
in him and that was much, in spite of his excesses to the prayers, the
love, the admonitions of his mother. In her efforts to train the
children rightly Elizabeth was constantly thwarted by her husband.
Philip was entirely controlled by two bad men, the Chevalier de Lorraine
and the Marquis d'Essiat. Both hated Elizabeth because of her moral
influence over the king. By her efforts, many of their iniquitous plots
against women were frustrated. The only way they could punish her was
through her children. Madame de Maintenon, whom Elizabeth treated
disdainfully, was believed by the duchess to have been an accomplice in
the plan to remove her children from her influence.
Madame de Maintenon loved the children of the king's former mistress,
Montespan, as if they were her own. Two of these children, Mademoiselle
de Blois and the Duke of Maine, were still unmarried. It was now
proposed, ostensibly by the king, that Elizabeth's son, the Duke of
Chartres, should marry Mademoiselle de Blois. Also, it was planned, that
her daughter Charlotte should at the same time become the wife of the
young Duke of Maine. Elizabeth was furious. She refused her consent.
Saint-Simon, in his Memoirs, says of her at this time:
"She belongs to a nation which abhors bastards and mesalliances.
Moreover, she has a determined character which forbids all hope that she
may ever consent."
The Duke of Chartres a boy of eighteen promised his mother to refuse to
contract the alliance. Then, the Abbe Dubois, who had great influence
over him, secured a contrary promise. When the king himself urged the
duke to marry Mademoiselle de Blois, the youth became confused and said
he would leave the decision to his parents. Whereupon, his father,
without more ado, had the engagement announced that evening at the court
dinner. Elizabeth wept throughout the meal. Louis XIV., it is said, made
awkward attempts at consolation by passing her the choicest dishes. At
the circle which followed, her son came up to kiss her hand. The memory
of his broken promise was fresh in her mind. To the astonishment of the
polished French court, she boxed the boy's ears soundly. An awful
silence followed this impulsive piece of maternal discipline. The young
duke, scarlet with mortification, stood abashed. His poor little pale
bride-elect grew whiter than ever; Elizabeth, hardly making a reverence
to the king, left the room. The people of Paris sided with the duchess.
They threatened the life of Madame de Maintenon if the other proposed
marriage, between Elizabeth's daughter and the Duke of Maine, was
insisted upon. "I am very grateful to my friends, the Parisian mob,"
Elizabeth writes to her aunt.
From this time the breach between Elizabeth and her husband was
complete. She was also estranged from her son. Her daughter was kept at
a long distance from her amidst the most corrupt surroundings. Elizabeth
became very lonely. The king, because of her opposition to the seizure
of the Palatinate, now ignored her. Her husband seldom spoke to her. Her
daughter was away but had been happily married. Her son, at this time,
was very dissolute and avoided meeting her. She writes:
"Here in this great court I live, a hermit. Day after day I spend alone
in my library. If visitors come I see them a few minutes, speak of the
weather or the newspaper, then back again to my solitude."
In 1701 her husband died. By her aunt Sophie's sensible advice,
reconciliation followed with the king and also with good-natured Madame
de Maintenon. Her son, after one or two successful campaigns in Spain,
returned to France loaded with honors. He turned again to his mother
with the old affection of his boyhood. Much may be forgiven the Duke of
Chartres because of his sincere, even if tardy, goodness to his mother.
Her old age was made happy by him. To others he might seem a heartless,
dissipated roue, to her he was the eighth wonder of the world the
strong, tender, manly son on whom she leaned. Her daughter, too, by
frequent, loving letters brought her comfort.
The Duchess of Orleans died December 8, 1722. Beside her coffin her son,
then Regent of France, clasped his sister in his arms and the two wept
bitterly for their German mother.
Few women have been more loyal to their native country than Elizabeth of
Orleans. A day or two before her death she said: "In everything I am
now, what I have been all my life, wholly German. I despise those
Germans who, from choice, speak and write habitually in a foreign
tongue. Such sycophants are not worth a hair."
More fully than any other woman of her day, Elizabeth of Orleans
represents the nobler side of German womanhood in a period of national
debasement.