THE ELECTORATE OF HANOVER.
The House of Hanover ranges itself against France--Ernest Augustus
created Elector--Domestic rebellion of his son Maximilian--His
accomplice, Count von Moltke, beheaded--The Electors of Germany.
While Sophia Dorothea was daily growing more unhappy, her father-in-law
was growing more ambitious and the prospects of her husband more
brilliant. The younger branch of Brunswick was outstripping the elder
in dignity, and not merely an electoral but a kingly crown seemed the
prize it was destined to attain.
When Ernest’s elder brother, John Frederick, died childless, and left
him the principalities of Calemberg and Grubenberg, with Hanover or a
‘residenz,’ he hailed an increase of influence which he hoped to see
heightened by securing the Duchy of Zell also to his family. He had
determined that George Louis should succeed to Hanover and Zell united.
In other words, he established primogeniture, recognised his eldest son
as heir to all his land, and only awarded to his other sons moderate
appanages whereby to support a dignity which he considered sufficiently
splendid by the glory which it would receive, by reflection, from the
head of the house.
This arrangement by no means suited the views of one of Ernest’s
sons, Maximilian. He had no inclination whatever to borrow glory from
the better fortune of his brother, and was resolved, if it might be,
to achieve splendour by his own. He protested loudly against the
accumulation of the family territorial estates upon the eldest heir;
claimed his own share; and even raised a species of domestic rebellion
against his sire, to which weight, without peril, was given by the
alleged adhesion of a couple of confederates, Count von Moltke and a
conspirator of burgher degree.
Ernest Augustus treated ‘Max’ like a rude child. He put him under
arrest in the paternal palace, and confined the filial rebel to the
mild imprisonment of his own room. Maximilian was as obstinate as
either Henry the Dog or Magnus the Violent, and he not only opposed his
sire’s wishes with respect to the aggrandisement of the family by the
enriching of the heir-apparent, but went counter to him in matters of
religion. In after-years he was not only a good Jacobite, but he also
conformed to the faith of the Stuarts, and Maximilian ultimately died,
a tolerable Roman Catholic, in the service of the Emperor.
In the meanwhile, his domestic antagonism against his father was not
productive of much inconvenience to himself. His arrest was soon
raised, and he was restored to freedom, though not to favour or
affection. It went harder, however, with his friend and confederate
Count von Moltke, against whom, as nothing could be proved, much
was invented. An absurd story was coined to the effect, that at the
time when Maximilian was opposing his father’s projects, Count von
Moltke, at a court entertainment, had presented his snuff-box to
Ernest Augustus. This illustrious individual having taken therefrom
the pungent tribute respectfully offered, presented the same to an
Italian greyhound which lay at his feet, who thereon suddenly sneezed
and swiftly died. The count was sent into close arrest, and the courtly
gossips forged the story to account for the result. The unfortunate
von Moltke was, indeed, as severely punished as though he had been a
murderer. He was judged in something of the old Jedburgh fashion,
whereby execution preceded judgment; and the head of Count von Moltke
had fallen before men could well guess why he had forfeited it. The
fact was that this penalty had been enacted as a vicarious infliction
on Prince Maximilian. The more ignoble plotter was only banished, and
in the death of a friend and the exile of a follower, Maximilian,
it was hoped, would see a double suggestion from which he would
draw a healthy conclusion. This course had its desired effect. The
disinherited heir accepted his ill-fortune with a humour of the same
quality, and, openly at least, he ceased to be a trouble to his more
ambitious than affectionate father.
The next important public circumstance was the raising Hanover to
an Electorate; and this was not effected without much bribery and
intrigue. In those warlike times, when France and the German empire
were in antagonism, the attitude assumed by such a state as Hanover
was matter of interest to the adverse powers. It is said that the last
argument which decided the Emperor’s course was a hint from De Groot,
the Hanoverian minister, that Ernest Augustus might cast in his lot
with France. A prince who had so often well served the empire was not
to be allowed to assist France for lack of flinging to him the title of
Elector. This title was granted, but under heavy stipulations. The two
Dukes of Hanover and Zell bound themselves, as long as the war lasted,
on the side of the Emperor against the French and against the Turks,
to pay annually 500,000 thalers, to furnish a contingent amounting to
9,000 men, to uphold the claim of the Arch-Duke Charles on the Spanish
throne, and at any election of a new Emperor to vote invariably for the
eldest heir of the House of Hapsburg. The 19th of December 1692 was the
joyful day on which Ernest Augustus was nominated Elector of Hanover.
The day, however, was anything but one of joy to the branch of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. That elder branch felt itself dishonoured by
the august dignity which had been conferred upon the younger scion of
the family. The elder branch, and the Sacred College with it, affirmed
that the Emperor was invested with no prerogative by which he could,
of his own spontaneous act, add a ninth Elector to the eight already
existing. Originally there were but seven, and the accession of one
more to that time-honoured number was pronounced to be an innovation
by which ill-fortune must ensue. Something still more deplorable was
vaticinated as the terrible consequence of a step so peremptorily taken
by the Emperor, in despite of the other Electors.
It was said by the supporters of the Emperor and Hanover that the
addition of a ninth and Protestant Elector was the more necessary, that
there were only two Electors on the sacred roll who now followed the
faith of the Reformed Church, and that the sincerity of one, at least,
of these was very questionable. The reformed states of Germany had a
right to be properly represented, and the Emperor was worthy of all
praise for respecting this right. With regard to the nomination, it was
stated that, though it had been made spontaneously by the Emperor, it
had been confirmed by the Electoral College--a majority of the number
of which had carried the election of the Emperor’s candidate.
Now, this last point was the weak point of the Hanoverians; for it was
asserted by many adversaries, and not denied by many supporters, that
in such a case as this no vote of the Electoral College was good unless
it were an unanimous vote. To this objection, strongly urged by the
elder branch of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, no answer was made, except,
indeed, by praising the new Elector, of whom it was correctly stated
that he had introduced into his states such a taste for masquerades,
operas, and ballets as had never been known before; and that he had
made a merry and a prosperous people of what had been previously but a
dull nation, as regarded both manners and commerce. The Emperor only
thought of the good service which Ernest Augustus had rendered him in
the field, and he stood by the ‘accomplished fact’ of which he was the
chief author.
The College was to the full as obstinate, and would not recognise any
vote tendered by the Elector of Hanover, or of Brunswick, as he was
at first called. For nearly sixteen years was this opposition carried
on. At length, on the 30th of June 1708, this affair of the ninth
electorate was adjusted, and the three colleges of the empire resolved
to admit the Elector of Hanover to sit _and_ vote in the Electoral
College. In the same month, he was made general of the imperial troops,
then assembled in the vicinity of the Upper Rhine.
His original selection by the Emperor had much reference to his
military services. The efforts of Louis XIV. to get possession of the
Palatinate, after the death of the Palatine Louis, had caused the
formation of the German Confederacy to resist the aggression of France
--an aggression not checked till the day when Marlborough defeated
Tallard, at Blenheim. Louis was hurried into the war by his minister,
Louvois, who was annoyed by his interference at home in matters
connected with Louvois’s department. It was to make the confederation
more firm and united that Ernest Augustus was created, rather than
elected, a ninth Elector. The three Protestant Electors were those of
Saxony, Brandenburg, and Hanover; the three Roman Catholic, Bohemia,
Bavaria, and the Palatinate; and the three spiritual Electors, the
Prince-Archbishops of Metz, Trèves, and Cologne.
The history of the creation of the ninth Electorate would not be
complete without citing what is said in respect thereof by the author
of a pamphlet suppressed by the Hanoverian government, and entitled
‘Impeachment of the Ministry of Count Munster.’ It is to this effect:
‘During the war between Leopold I. and France, at the close of the
17th century, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, and administrator
of Osnabrück, father of George I., had been paid a considerable sum
of money on condition of aiding the French monarch with ten thousand
troops. The Emperor, aware of the engagement, and anxious to prevent
the junction of these forces with the enemy, proposed to create a ninth
electorate, in favour of the Duke, provided he brought his levies to
the imperial banner. The degrading offer was accepted, and the envoys
of Brunswick-Luneberg received the electoral cap, the symbol of their
master’s dishonour, at Vienna, on the 19th of December 1692. From the
opposition of the college and princes, Ernest was never more than
nominally an Elector, and even his son’s nomination was with difficulty
accomplished in 1710. It was in connection with this new dignity that
Hanover, a name till then applied only to a principal and almost
independent city of the Dukedom of Brunswick, became known in the list
of European sovereignties.’
But while the Court of Hanover was engaged in the important or trivial
circumstances which have been already narrated, a notable individual
had been pursuing fortune in various countries of Europe, and had made
his appearance on the scene at Hanover, to play a part in a drama which
had a tragical catastrophe--namely, Count Königsmark.