THE GREATEST OF THE MODERN COBURGS.
Romantic Career of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the Queen's
Uncle--his Continuous, Kind, and Fatherly Care of his Orphaned
Niece--The Duchy of Coburg held by Napoleon--Sufferings of the Ducal
Family--A Temptation resisted--The Tide turned--Leopold's Popularity
in England--Betrothal and Marriage to the Princess Charlotte of Wales.
[Sidenote: PRINCE LEOPOLD OF SAXE-COBURG.]
Born in the year 1790, Prince Leopold was a soldier and in the saddle when
he was fifteen years of age. In 1805, that war broke out between Napoleon
and Austria, in which the power of the Kaiser was so near being destroyed.
The health of the Duke Francis, Leopold's father, was fast failing him,
and the tremendous sorrows and sufferings inflicted by the victorious
French upon Germany, hastened the rapidity of his descent to the grave.
Ernest, the eldest son, and Leopold hurriedly left Coburg to join the
Russian army in Moravia. Their only other brother was already in an
Austrian regiment of Hussars. Ere Leopold could flesh his sword,
Austerlitz had been fought and lost, and Austria was thoroughly crippled.
He returned to Coburg to witness his father's death. The French were in
possession of the town and Duchy, and when they learned that the new Duke
was with their Prussian foe, they appointed a military intendant, a M.
Vilain--in nature as well as in name, so Leopold afterwards recorded. The
Ducal family were reduced to such straits, that they depended for their
very sustenance upon the clandestine benefactions of the Governmental
subordinates, surlily winked at by their French masters. The Duchess set
off on a journey to Warsaw to endeavour to propitiate Napoleon; but she
was permitted to proceed no farther than Berlin, as Napoleon hated such
visits. She returned baffled to Coburg, which remained "une possession
Francaise." The Peace of Tilsit, among its other provisions,
"reintegrated" Coburg; but, through the greed and treachery of Prussia,
the stipulated arrangements were never fulfilled. On the ratification of
the Peace, Duke Ernest came to Coburg for the first time to assume his
Ducal power and dignity.
As a matter of policy, Leopold, with other German Princes, now visited
Napoleon at Paris, where he was courteously received. On his return from
Paris, early in 1808, he nearly died of scarlet fever. After a very tardy
and painful recovery, he went, at the end of the year, to the Congress of
Erfurth, to which he had been summoned by the Czar Alexander. He tried
there to secure to his brother his undiminished territorial possessions,
and succeeded in making such a favourable impression upon Napoleon that he
would have done so, but for the impolitic excessiveness of his brother's
claims, and the apathetic manner in which the Czar supported them. The war
with Russia came on, in which he eagerly desired to serve against the
French; but Napoleon caused it to be known that if he did so his brother
would be held responsible; so he had to abide in inglorious and detested
ease. Napoleon made him tempting offers to enter his service, and would
have been more incensed at his persistent refusal than he was, but for
the friendly intercession of Josephine and Queen Hortense, her daughter,
who were both very friendly to the young Prince.
Meanwhile he turned his eminent talents for diplomacy to good account. He
persuaded Bavaria to return to his brother portions of Coburg territory
which that state unjustly held, and removed the galling pain of the
Bavarian flag floating over villages within four English miles of the town
of Coburg itself.
[Sidenote: THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.]
In 1812 Napoleon's frightful war with Russia broke out. Napoleon summoned
the subject and enfeebled German Princes to Dresden. Duke Ernest was
compelled to go, and Leopold also was cited to the gathering, but he went
to Vienna, and then to Italy, to keep out of the way. It would have been
now most dangerous to decline the French service, and he was determined at
all costs not to enter it. "Germany," said he, "was, at the beginning of
1812, in the lowest and most humiliating position; Austria and Prussia
sunk to be auxiliaries; everybody frightened and submissive, except Spain,
supported by England." But Napoleon's reverses in Russia soon followed,
and they electrified all Germany into new courage. The Duke of Coburg
posted off to Berlin to endeavour to stimulate the perplexed, vacillating,
and timorous Prussian King into manly and decided action. The other
brother, Ferdinand, went to Vienna on a similar errand. Leopold hied him
to Munich to stir up the Crown Prince of Bavaria, afterwards King Louis.
They were all moderately successful, and Leopold hastened to Kalisch, in
Poland, being the first German Prince to join the Army of Liberation. He
was equally honoured and gratified by being appointed a Major-General by
the Czar. He was present at the hard-fought but indecisive battles of
Lutzen and Bautzen. There followed an armistice, and a conference at
Prague, with a view to a definite settlement. This the Prince attended. He
was the only person admitted to the presence of the Emperor of Austria,
and spent much of his time with the plenipotentiaries Metternich,
Humboldt, Ansted, Gentz, and others. The negotiations broke off, and
hostilities were resumed. At the decided defeat which the French general
Vandamme sustained, shortly before the crowning victory of Leipsic,
Leopold commanded all the allied cavalry, and distinguished himself the
more that he was the only general in the field who knew the country. He
was present, and in high command, at Leipsic, where Germany was finally
freed. After the fight, the Grand Duke Constantine accompanied him to
Coburg, visiting the relatives of the wife from whom he was now separated,
and who lived and died in retirement in Switzerland. Amongst others they
visited the future Duchess of Kent, then Princess of Leiningen, her first
husband being still alive. Shortly afterwards Constantine and Leopold
rejoined the army in Switzerland, where Leopold tried hard, but
ineffectually, to effect a reconciliation between his sister and her
husband. Leopold subsequently entered Paris at the head of the cavalry;
his eldest brother procured the evacuation of Mayence by its French
garrison. The three brothers all met in Paris, from which Leopold
proceeded, in the suite of the Czar, to the great triumphant gathering of
the Allied Sovereigns in London. Now for the first time he met his future
bride, the Princess Charlotte, only child of the Prince Regent, and heir
to the throne. His splendid continental career already propitiated her,
as it did all the British people, in his favour. The project of a
matrimonial union between the gallant young general and the still more
youthful princess was warmly taken up by the leading men in power,
including Wellington, his brothers, and Castlereagh. The Prince Regent
alone was opposed to the project. He was irritated by his daughter's
repugnance to the Prince of Orange, who was destined by him to be his
son-in-law, and by her recent flight from Carlton House to the residence
of her mother. Leopold, however, decidedly succeeded in winning the
affections of the lady herself, and the nation was delighted at the
project. The Dukes of York and Kent, too, warmly encouraged his suit. On
his return home he found that his youngest sister had been unexpectedly
left a widow, and he arranged the guardianship and pecuniary affairs of
the future mother of England's Queen. At the Congress of Vienna, whither
he went to plead the cause of his brother, his amazing sagacity and tact
induced the negotiators to make a very satisfactory arrangement of
frontier. This he settled, to the great chagrin of Humboldt, the Prussian
envoy, who, with the Prussian Court and people generally, seems to have
been extremely spiteful towards the little principality, their near
neighbour.
[Sidenote: A ROYAL MARRIAGE.]
Leopold was not at Waterloo--fought so near the capital of his future
kingdom. He was posted in Alsace in command of an army of observation,
which, of course, was never needed for action. Leopold went alone to
Paris, with the leave of the Czar, still animated by the purpose of
advancing his brother's pretensions; Prussia having failed to carry out
the rectifications of frontier enacted at Vienna the year before. He
succeeded in this object, and hopes of the highest nature were engendered
about an affair still nearer to his heart. Wellington and Castlereagh
treated him with marked and significant deference. And through the kind
intervention of the good-hearted and simple-minded Duke of Kent, he
received from his ladye-love some pleasant tokens of continued affection
and renewed pledges of staunch fidelity. He was strongly recommended to
repair to England and renew and prosecute his wooing in person; but he
very astutely declined, thinking it unwise to "brave" the Prince Regent.
He went, instead, to Vienna, to act as groomsman at the wedding of his
brother Ferdinand with the great Hungarian heiress whose love he had won;
and from thence to Berlin, persistently to enforce his brother's twice
recognised and sanctioned rights. At Berlin he received a welcome
invitation to England from the Regent, and a most satisfactory letter of
"explanation" from Lord Castlereagh. He arrived in London in February,
1816. Castlereagh at once took him to Brighton, where the Regent was. He
received his daughter's wooer most graciously. The old queen and her three
daughters posted after Leopold from London, and in a family council the
marriage was definitely agreed on. The young couple were married in May,
amid the joyful acclamations of the whole nation.