Chapter D: O. M (2)

By none of the family was this indifference more keenly felt than by Sophia’s brother-in-law, Duke John Frederick, who showed no sign of any wish that his conversion should remain its own reward. Sophia was to have reason for congratulating herself on her discretion in abstaining from receiving an _incognito_ visit from him at Rome, before he left the city. For hardly had her husband and she, in the early spring in 1665, once more set foot in Germany on their homeward journey, when they learnt that the eldest of the brothers, Duke Christian Lewis, had died, and that John Frederick, having returned from Rome just in time, had made forcible entry into Celle and Lüneburg, to which he contended that George William, having once made his choice of Calenberg-Göttingen, could no longer claim any right of succession. Inasmuch as the question between George William and John Frederick, which the latter thus proposed to settle by a _coup de main_, turned on the interpretation of the will of their father, a bitter _Bruderstreit_ seemed to be announcing itself; and John Frederick, in his usual sanguine way, boasted his hopes of both Imperial and French support for his efforts as a Catholic prince. On the other hand, the facile temper of George William, who, moreover, at the time of his more ardent brother’s incursion, was occupied with his own private affairs in Holland, might have given John Frederick a chance, but for the exertions of Count George Frederick of Waldeek, afterwards celebrated as the right hand of William of Orange, and for the intervention of the Elector of Brandenburg. Several Catholic Estates, such as the Elector of Mainz and the Bishop of Münster, favoured John Frederick; on the other hand, Sophia had solicited the diplomatic intervention of her brother, the Elector Charles Lewis. After long and angry negotiations, in which the Scandinavian Powers as well as France took part, John Frederick had to rest satisfied with the addition of Grubenhagen to the territories transferred to his sway from that of George William, who in his turn entered into possession of the eldest brother’s portion of Lüneburg-Celle. The energy of Ernest Augustus, which had been as conspicuous in these transactions as had George William’s want of this quality, was rewarded by the transfer to the Bishop of Osnabrück of the Countship of Diepholz.

We are obliged to refrain from more than touching upon the remaining course of John Frederick’s career, and the _régime_ now established by him at Hanover—one of the most peculiar of the vicissitudes undergone by that capital in the course of its many and changeful experiences. Capuchin friars once more found a home at Hanover, which, in days of old, had been a town full of churches and cloisters; a Vicar Apostolic and Bishop of Morocco _in partibus_ resided there as the centre of a propaganda fostered alike by Pope and Emperor.[69] The Jesuits at the same time had a centre of activity at Hildesheim. But there was no interference either with the rights of the Lutheran establishments, or with the claims of free intellectual enquiry, as represented by those whom John Frederick’s high-minded liberality drew to his Court, and, above all, by his librarian, Leibniz. The political ambition of the Duke, who cherished the design of securing a Ninth Electorate for the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg a generation before it was actually accomplished, ranged him on the side of France in the chief political conflict of his times, and thus led him to stand in opposition, not only to the interests of the Empire, but also to the policy, on which his brothers finally determined, of resisting the action of Louis XIV. On the other hand, it was John Frederick who set his younger brother the example of a firm monarchical administration, and who took the all-important step of providing this administration with the support of a standing army (two-thirds of which he was, however, pledged by a secret treaty to hand over as auxiliaries to France). But, before the issues of the great European contest in which he was prepared to sustain the part chosen by him finally declared themselves, he was overtaken by death, on his last journey towards his beloved Italy, in 1679. Many ambitions, as has been seen, had fretted his (far from pygmy) body. It was natural that, estranged as he was from his brothers, he should have hoped himself to become the founder of a dynasty; and it was equally inevitable that his brother Ernest Augustus and his sister-in-law Sophia, who were already intent upon guarding in every way the interests of their own descendants, should have shown scant sympathy with his matrimonial projects, which were, as a matter of course, directed to securing the hand of a Catholic princess. Towards this end no aid could be more effective, as none was more ready, than that of Sophia’s sister-in-law, the ‘_Princesse Palatine_’ (Anne of Gonzaga), in whose dexterous hold were successively gathered the threads of so many marriage-schemes calculated to advance the interests of France, and approving themselves to the Church of Rome. The _Princesse Palatine_ accordingly apprised John Frederick, whose ambition was at the time occupied with thoughts of the next vacancy on the Polish throne, that an alliance with one of her and Prince Edward’s daughters might ease the way to such a goal:—‘_pour cela, il faut commencer avec le mariage_.’ The negotiations for the match were carried on by the busy French diplomatic agent de Gourville, who, during these years and again at a later date, was employed by the Government of Louis XIV in the task of trying to win over the Brunswick Dukes to the interests of France, and whose _Memoirs_ are thus a notable source of information concerning their Courts and their policy.

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Footnote 69:

This was the vivacious Valerio Maccioni, one of the pleasant Catholic
ecclesiastics who were Sophia’s familiar associates and correspondents
in these kindly days. (Others were the Abbé (afterwards Count) Balati,
a Florentine nobleman who was afterwards of service to Ernest Augustus
as a diplomatist and to the ladies of his family in the matter of
_chiffons_ at Paris, and the Abbé Hortensio Mauro, Italian secretary,
and afterwards attached to the Court at Celle.) Maccioni, after acting
for some years as John Frederick’s ecclesiastical adviser and as papal
representative at Hanover, was episcopated in 1669, when about
thirty-eight years of age. He died at Hanover in 1676. Sophia was on
the easiest of terms with him, as is shown by the references, in her
letters to him, to the Holy Court at ‘Traive,’ and to a prophetess
with a magic mirror, whom she requested the Bishop to exorcise, should
he opine that the devil had a hand in her manifestations.

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The danger with which Sophia and her husband found themselves ‘_toujours menassés_’ was realised, when, in 1667, John Frederick gave his hand to the youngest of Edward’s daughters, Benedicta Henrica. But, though two daughters were born to John Frederick (the elder of whom, Charlotte Felicitas, afterwards became Duchess of Modena, while the second, as the consort of Joseph I, attained to the dignity of Empress), his hopes were not crowned by the birth of a son. Of the Duchess Benedicta, who, as a Catholic, was excluded from the English Succession, to which, in her later years, she had the first claim by birth among the surviving descendants of the Queen of Bohemia, Sophia’s correspondence contains occasional kindly mention; though there was little trace of the high spirit of the Palatines in the gentle and sombre-featured widow of the massive John Frederick. His own soaring ambition and imperious will isolate his memory in the annals of his House, while the shadowy figure of his consort has come to be all but forgotten in the history of the English Succession.

It may be convenient to note in this place that, owing to the attack made by ‘Münster’s prelate,’ as an ally of Charles II of England, upon the United Provinces, the States-General had appealed for aid to George William and Ernest Augustus, who duly arrived in their support. In return, the Bishop of Münster threatened the city of Osnabrück, where Sophia and her children accordingly had to take up their abode during the winter 1665-6, under the protection of the Bishop’s troops, Iburg being too exposed to be safe. It would have been a curious accident if this Bishop’s war had ended in any mischance, by which the future Heiress of Great Britain should have been taken prisoner by the ally of its King. In June, 1666, Sophia was enabled to return to the ‘delightful solitude’ of Iburg. The autumn and winter of 1666 she spent chiefly at Osnabrück, while her husband and his brother were carrying on operations against Sweden in defence of the city of Bremen.

At the time of the negotiations which ended in the establishment of Duke George William at Celle, and of Duke John Frederick at Hanover, their youngest brother, Ernest Augustus, and his faithful Duchess were much exercised in spirit by the beginnings of another family trouble, of which the course was to be more protracted and the consequences far more enduring. For some time George William’s brother and sister-in-law had been disquieted by the attentions paid by the amorous Duke to Mademoiselle Eleonora d’Olbreuze, who, in 1665, when he first made her acquaintance at the Hague, was lady-in-waiting to the Princess (Henry Charles) of Taranto, by birth a Princess of Hesse-Cassel. The _animus_ of Sophia, which renders it necessary to treat with the utmost caution any statement made by her or hers in the present connexion, is evident from her earliest mention of the lady who was to be the object of her long and bitter hatred, as ‘_une fille qui estoit à la princesse de Tarente_.’ Mademoiselle d’Olbreuze sprang from an ancient Poitevin family which belonged to the minor nobility of a province long full of Huguenot sympathies, and which held a leading position in the oligarchy, as it has been called, that charged itself with the religious and intellectual interests of Protestantism in these regions.[70] That she was exceptionally endowed with an ability including a great deal besides tact, is abundantly clear not only from the success of her manœuvres for raising herself, and afterwards her child, to such greatness as was attainable by them, but also from her living to be chosen as the spokeswoman of the House of Brunswick-Lüneburg on a memorable occasion in its history. Nor can there be any doubt but that her intellectual influence was a refining one, while her personality must have possessed a charm which is hardly suggested by such portraiture of her as remains. Sophia, after having, apparently through Mademoiselle d’Olbreuze’s own judicious prudence, been spared her company in Italy, had found herself constrained, by her husband’s anxiety to please his brother, to bring her over almost in state from Hertogenbosch to Iburg; and, though the _Memoirs_ refer with scorn to the Frenchwoman’s real or pretended conquests before that of George William, Sophia is obliged to confess that she found the intruder both modest and pleasant of speech, and altogether very amiable. Thus it is clear that she prepared with consummate skill the first upward step on which so much depended, and which she actually accomplished in November, 1665. On the solemn occasion of the funeral of Duke Christian Lewis, the whole family, including his widow, his brothers George William and Ernest Augustus, and Sophia, met at Celle; and to this august conclave the new ‘Duke of Celle,’ as he was now so usually called, made known what Sophia terms his ‘anti-contract’ of marriage with Eleonora d’Olbreuze, and what, in other words, was his recognition of her as his mistress _en titre_. In this document, signed by his brother and sister-in-law, as well as by his mistress and himself, George William repeated his promise to remain unmarried, which he declared to have been dictated by his affection for his brother, and by a desire to consult his interests and those of his children. Mademoiselle d’Olbreuze, who had innocently begged that she might henceforth bear the name of Madame de Celle, had instead to put up with that of Madame de Harburg, by which, as Sophia rather savagely adds, she continued to be known for the next ten years.

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Footnote 70:

This information I owe to Mr. H. H. Sturmer, author of _Some Poitevin
Protestants in London_ (London, 1896).

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Sophia and her husband seem at first to have regarded this revised arrangement, which was substantially quite in accordance with German as well as Italian precedents, as on the whole likely to ensure what to them was naturally the main point, the continuance of George William’s bachelorhood. In September, 1666, his mistress bore him a daughter, the ill-fated Sophia Dorothea. From the same year onward, Ernest Augustus and his wife’s own family rapidly increased, by the birth, in December, of their third son, impartially christened Maximilian William after the Catholic Elector of Cologne and the Protestant Elector of Brandenburg, and the births of their daughter Sophia Charlotte, in 1668, and of their sons Charles Philip, Christian, and Ernest Augustus, in 1669, 1671, and 1674 respectively. Sophia’s love for her children forms, perhaps because of the perfectly natural expression which she gives to so natural an affection, a most delightful feature of her personality. This love enveloped alike the more and the less gifted, the successful and the unlucky, the phlegmatic and mild-mannered, though ungainly ‘Brunswicker’ (her eldest son, George Lewis), and the fearless little spitfire of a ‘Palatine’ (her second son, Frederick Augustus)—as she described them in their early days. We shall see how her tenderly loved only daughter’s bright and enquiring spirit also commended her to her mother’s intellectual sympathies; but her motherly heart flowed out towards all her sons, and even the inexpansive nature of the eldest seems to have in a measure warmed towards her. But she could only with difficulty reconcile herself to a policy which made it necessary to sacrifice the interests of his younger brothers to his, or rather to those of the House as a whole; and even among these younger brothers themselves, it would almost seem as if her anxiety, like a true mother’s, had been deepest for those who most needed support. Thus we find her, when both Frederick Augustus and Charles Philip were serving the Emperor in arms, pitifully pointing out to Leibniz how the younger of the pair was not ‘_si chiche de ses sollicitations_’ nor ‘_si misanthrope_’ as his brother, and succeeded better accordingly. Yet his prosperity, too, she had at heart; nor could she suppress the thought that the sum spent on the purchase of a regiment for him by his father was less than what the latter had on occasion been known to lose at the basset-table.

In these earlier years, however, before the deeper anxieties of her motherhood had yet come to Sophia, although the happiness of her life was already beginning to centre in her children, it owed much to the presence at Hanover and Iburg of the niece, who had become to all intents and purposes her adopted child. From her fourth to her eleventh year, Elizabeth Charlotte, the Elector Palatine’s only daughter by his unhappy first marriage, was the constant companion of her aunt, to whom this joyous period of intimacy sufficed to bind her heart and soul during a long life of trials. It was in a happy moment that her father resolved upon sending his child, in the company of her governess (afterwards, as Frau von Harling, one of the most favoured recipients of Elizabeth Charlotte’s flow of confidences), to what became the home of her heart, and was, in after days, the perennial refuge of her thoughts. As a child ‘Liselotte’—so she was familiarly called—was the very incarnation of high spirits and natural gaiety, delighting in air and movement like the leaves which the wind drives before its blast; hence the sobriquet, untranslateable but conjuring up a world of fairies and imps of mischief, by which she liked to speak of herself, even when cribbed and confined amidst the royal splendours of Versailles. _Rauschenblattenknechtchen_ never forgot either the homely comforts of Hanover in meat and drink, or the airy freedom of the heights of Iburg; and for its _châtelaine_, for her virtues and her wisdom, for her high intellectual powers, and for the charm of her style, she conceived a loving admiration, which long outlived its object, and which found expression in many volumes of letters, brimful, from the first to the last, of quick observation, animated comment, and a piquant or pleasantly malicious wit, relieved here and there by touches of an equally irresistible natural pathos. So early as 1663, Liselotte was, to her unfeigned sorrow, summoned back to Heidelberg by her father, whom her mother’s departure to Cassel had at last enabled to arrange his family life after his own fashion. Sophia deeply regretted her niece’s departure from Iburg, where, as she wrote, they had led a vagabond life together; but, with her usual common-sense and self-control, she declared it quite in order that the Infanta of the Palatinate should be brought up at a Court like Heidelberg, rather than down in Westphalia, where her kinsfolk had lived in simple _bourgeois_ condition and seen few people. To her changed home Elizabeth Charlotte’s nature, readily susceptible to kindness, without difficulty accommodated itself during seven further happy years. The moral atmosphere in which they were spent was that of a religious tolerance springing partly from kindliness of disposition and partly from indifference; the epoch of religious strife seemed over, and another at hand, of less fettered thought and philosophic speculation. Into this new movement it was easy to enter superficially, encouraged by the lofty aspirations for a reunion of Christendom that occupied some of the foremost among contemporary thinkers. From these influences, of whose effect upon the Elector Palatine Charles Lewis and his favourite sister Sophia note has already been taken, so receptive a mind as that of his Elizabeth Charlotte was not likely to escape; and they undoubtedly help to account for the process of the conversion which ominously preceded a marriage destined to alter the whole course of her life. To the ‘_Princesse Palatine_’ (Anne of Gonzaga) and her allies no path seemed impracticable that led to Rome; and, in the case of the niece, no such apparatus of argument was required as had to be set in motion when the attempt was made at a later date to work upon the mind of the Duchess Sophia and her husband through the pertinacious fervour of Madame de Brinon and the swooping condescension of the ‘Eagle of Meaux.’ For Elizabeth Charlotte was constrained by the instinct of filial obedience, her father having persuaded himself that the welfare of the Palatinate necessitated, together with the sacrifice of his daughter’s happiness, the ignoring of her conscience. That in this calculation he, as was indicated above, terribly deceived himself, and that the bond thus knit proved the ruin of the land which it was intended to benefit, only enhances and deepens the cruel irony of the whole transaction. A marriage had been arranged between Elizabeth Charlotte and Louis XIV’s brother, the Duke of Orleans (whose first consort, Charles II’s sister Henrietta, had died in 1670, in circumstances long regarded as suspicious); and, though no mention of the subject of religion had been made in the contract, her conversion to the Church of Rome was regarded as an indispensable preliminary step to its execution, and it was necessary that this step should seem to have been taken spontaneously. She was accordingly prepared for it by her father’s secretary,[71] to the diversity of whose historical and philosophical learning two volumes of _Chevreana_ survive to testify. Hereupon she was taken to Strassburg, whither her aunt the Duchess Sophia also found her way to meet her and her father, but where also appeared the presiding genius of the whole business, the ‘_Princesse Palatine_.’ After the sojourn at Strassburg—where aunt and niece parted—Elizabeth Charlotte passed on to Metz, where she was received into the Church of Rome, and thence into her new married life. The religious comedy was completed by a letter from her to her father entreating his pardon for her change of faith, and by his reply, the really contemptible part of the process, making pretence of a virtuous indignation. Whatever Elizabeth Charlotte’s feelings may have been at the time, she afterwards made no secret of the matter to her aunt Sophia, and frequently dwelt upon her aunt’s share in the transaction. ‘It was you,’ she says on one occasion, ‘who made me a Catholic’; and, when Duke Antony Ulric had gone over to Rome, ‘Why,’ she asks, ‘should you be so sorry, when you are such a fine convert-maker yourself?’[72] But, though the constraint which had been put upon her never ceased to rankle in her mind, and though her conversion was not consummated without some rubs and some qualms, these feelings perhaps never went very deep. Her real grief, which made her ‘cry all through the night from Strassburg to Chalons,’ was at parting from her German home and its associations, in which her whole heart was wrapped up; and of this parting the enforced change of religious profession was merely an incident. ‘ Between ourselves,’ she afterwards wrote to her aunt, out of her gilded exile, ‘I was stuck here against my will; here I must live and here I must die, whether I like it or not.’

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Footnote 71:

Urban Chevreau accomplished the task of ‘instructing’ Elizabeth
Charlotte in four weeks. It must have been about this time that the
same _savant_ induced her father to read a few pages of Spinoza, who
was thereupon invited to Heidelberg.

Footnote 72:

It should be noted that, at the time of Elizabeth Charlotte’s change
of confession, toleration still obtained in France. We have her own
assurance that, had the persecutions of the Huguenots at that date
already begun, she would have refused to be converted. In 1698, she
writes to her aunt Sophia: ‘At Court one never hears a word spoken on
behalf of those of the Reformed faith. If they had been persecuted in
this way twenty-six years since, when I was still at Heidelberg, you
would never have succeeded in persuading me to turn Catholic.’ Sophia
herself, when replying to a renewed attempt upon her Protestantism by
Mme. de Brinon, by the remark that she trusts in the goodness of God,
who cannot have created her to see her lost, adds that she cannot
reconcile herself to the persecution of the Protestants in France, who
crowd England, the Netherlands, and Germany as refugees.

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And so the genial daughter of the Palatinate, true of heart and sound in body and mind, became the wife of a feeble and effeminate voluptuary, devoid of all character or will of his own, and by him the mother of a prince who, though neither incapable nor ill-meaning, typified the decadence of that France which he was called to rule as Regent. But with this long second stage of her life we cannot concern ourselves here. About August, 1679, she had the pleasure of a visit from the Duchess Sophia, who, as already noted, came to France at that time to see her sister at Maubuisson. The aunt found her beloved niece stouter, but in excellent spirits. On the invitation of the Duke of Orleans the Duchess Sophia was present at Fontainebleau on the occasion of the wedding of the Duke’s daughter by his first marriage to the King of Spain (Charles II); and, though she kept up her _incognito_, King Louis XIV called upon her, and charmed her by his conversation, which he magnanimously turned to the success of the Hanoverian arms at the bridge of Conz, mentioned below. For the rest, the sacrifice of which, for all her philosophy of good humour, Elizabeth Charlotte was the conscious victim, was, as we know, not only made in vain, but brought upon her father’s and her own beloved Palatinate, in the shape of the so-called ‘Orleans War’ (1688-90), consequences which were the direct opposite of those intended by him, and which caused her many days and nights of anguish. During the half-century of her exile—for down to the day of her death, in 1722, she never saw the Palatinate again—though she held her head high, with eyes undazzled even by the closest propinquity to the sun, there was hardly an experience of bitterness and disappointment which she was not fated to undergo; and through all she had but one consolation, which was her pen. She wrote because she loved her correspondents, but also because she loved the relief of writing, and the opportunities thus afforded of self-expansion and of free expression for the loves and hatreds of her soul. That—in the days of Louis XIV—her letters would be opened, so as to ascertain the working of her Protestant sympathies, and perhaps of her interest in the English Succession question, troubled her not a whit; if her insults to Madame de Maintenon—apparently quite unprovoked, and certainly, in a large measure, baseless—were made known to their object, this was so much gain to their author. Yet, after every deduction has been made on account of the pride, the jealousy, the personal and other prejudices, and the perennial impatience which weariness of heart had made second nature to the kindly-hearted Palatine, her picture of the Court of Louis XIV, in the latter half of his reign, possesses a historical value which is only surpassed by its general human interest.[73] It is, above all, in Elizabeth Charlotte’s letters to Sophia, and in the references to _ma tante_ in those addressed to her various other correspondents, that the pathetic side of her humour asserts itself, together with the malicious; nor has the whole literature of confidences any second example quite comparable to this, either in volume or in the directness of its derivation from nature’s self.

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Footnote 73:

In a series of articles in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, beginning
October 15th, 1906, entitled _Madame, Mère du Régent_, M. Arvé de
Barine takes great pains to show that in estimating the Duchess of
Orleans’ censure of the state of morals at the French Court we should
remember that she might have found a good deal to complain of nearer
her parental home.

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We return to Osnabrück and Iburg, whither Elizabeth Charlotte longed to fly, tying herself to the end of a ribbon transmitted by her as a sample of the fashions of Versailles. So long as the relations between Duke George William and Madame de Harburg remained unchanged, Ernest Augustus or his descendants were assured of the Succession in Celle and Lüneburg; for it had been finally settled with John Frederick that the right of further option, against which he had formerly protested, had now determined. John Frederick’s marriage, in 1668, seemed to cut off from Ernest Augustus and his line the prospect of succeeding in Hanover likewise, until John Frederick, whose hopes of a son and heir had been repeatedly disappointed, died in 1679 without having seen them fulfilled. Thus, during these years, it was upon the Succession at Celle that the ambition of Ernest Augustus and Sophia was concentrated; nor had they for some time any reason to fear that their wishes would be thwarted by George William. Indeed, his acceptance of the existing situation seemed clear from his endeavours to secure, by means of a series of treaty arrangements, a large private estate in land to his children by Madame de Harburg. The early death of all of these, with the sole exception of the eldest, Sophia Dorothea, born in September, 1666, eventually made her a wealthy heiress; but some time passed before her father abandoned all expectation of a son, and a disquieting rumour reached Osnabrück that, if George William’s mistress were to present him with the desired heir, it was his intention to marry her, his ‘anti-contract’ notwithstanding. As there had been precedents in plenty for the promise,[74] so it might no doubt be possible to find others for setting it aside. Already, Eleonora was tactfully asserting herself at Celle, and her personality was becoming the dominant power in the ducal Court. Some of her Poitevin relations held high office there; and, though the fact that other Frenchmen of family entered the military service both of George William and of his brother the Bishop was, at the time, by no means an exceptional phenomenon, yet it added to the significance of an influence which the policy of Louis XIV might just then deem worth cultivating.[75] For the Brunswick Dukes were, from the time of the Triple Alliance (1668) onwards, political personages of much interest both to France and to her adversaries, and had, two years earlier, even seemed to have some chance of subsidies from a Government more in the habit of receiving than granting them—the Government of Charles II. After John Frederick of Hanover had, as has been seen, decided finally to throw in his lot with France, his brothers George William and Ernest Augustus continued to be solicited by her diplomacy; and it was with the palpable purpose of gaining over the former and more important of the pair, that, in 1671, de Gourville was instructed to question him by presenting a royal ordinance, naturalising his daughter by Madame de Harburg in France as ‘_Demoiselle Sophia-Dorothée de Brunswick et de Lunebourg_.’ But the bait was too minute.[76] Larger issues were involved, and, though in 1671, apprehensive of the consequences which a bolder policy might have for the safety of his bishopric, Ernest Augustus actually entered into a treaty of neutrality for two years with France, George William was by his far-sighted Chancellor, Baron Lewis Justus von Schütz,[77] prevailed upon to stand firm. When the invasion of the United Provinces of the Netherlands took place in 1672, Duke George William ranged himself on the side of the adversaries of the French invader, and very soon Ernest Augustus followed suit. In 1674, George William, accompanied by Ernest Augustus, was in command of the Brunswick-Lüneburg troops forming part of the imperial army opposed to Marshal Turenne, the devastator of the Palatinate, in Alsace; and, in the following year, the Bishop of Osnabrück and his eldest son George Lewis achieved a brilliant military success at the bridge of Conz, and followed it up by taking part in the recovery of Treves. Before leaving Osnabrück for this campaign, Ernest Augustus had handsomely raised his consort’s dowry to an annual income of 16,000 dollars. ‘I hope,’ she wrote, ‘that I shall never need it, and that the Parcæ will allow him to survive me.’ On this occasion he returned wreathed in laurels. At Osnabrück an imposing triumphal arch was erected by ‘the dancing-master Jemme,’ and all the princes and princesses at the little Court joined in a dance given in his garden by the same public-spirited professor. In 1675, they took part in the war carried on by the Empire against Sweden, which they helped to oust for a time from the duchies of Bremen and Verden. To allies so loyal and so useful as the two Dukes, no reasonable favour could be refused by the Emperor Leopold, who was manifestly unaware of the conflict between the desires of the elder and the interests of the younger brother. (It is interesting, as an illustration of the consistent dynastic policy of Ernest Augustus, that, when in 1674, after some cautious hesitation, he had concluded a ten years’ league with the Emperor, the United Provinces, and Spain, he procured the insertion in the compact of a clause binding the States-General to use their whole influence in the peace negotiations in favour of his bishopric of Osnabrück being turned into a secular principality.) In July, 1674, a patent issued from the Vienna Chancery, granting to Madame de Harburg, for herself and her children, the hereditary title of Countess of the Empire (_Reichsgräfin_) of Wilhelmsburg—the designation of the landed property between Hamburg and Harburg settled upon her and her descendants by her protector. At the same time, the Empress Eleonora, a scion of the Catholic Neuburg branch of the Palatine House, conferred upon her namesake at Celle the Order of the Female Slaves of Virtue, hitherto reserved for princesses. Soon afterwards, the right was secured to Eleonora’s daughter Sophia Dorothea, in the event of her marrying a prince, of bearing the arms of the House of Brunswick and of being recognised as herself belonging to that House. The name of the prince who was to secure the prize of the heiress’ hand while thus raising her in advance of her mother, to the coveted rank, was no longer a secret: it was Augustus Frederick, the youthful eldest son of Duke Antony Ulric of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Antony Ulric was at the time, though co-regent with his elder brother, involved in debt and prepared to bring about a rise in the prospects of his family, even by means of a matrimonial connexion in other respects not a little dubious. For the conclusion of this match Sophia Dorothea’s legitimation was indispensable; but her aunt, the Duchess Sophia, indignantly relates that a shorter and readier way of reaching this end was suggested to her brother-in-law by his Chancellor Schütz. He advised the Duke to marry Sophia Dorothea’s mother. Schütz was the most capable politician in his master’s Court, and served him, as his son-in-law Bernstorff afterwards served Ernest Augustus and his son, with equal fidelity and distinction. There is no reason for attributing sordid motives to the advice which this petty Wolsey gave to his easy despot—that he should take the course on which his heart might not unnaturally be supposed to be set. For the moment, the incomplete step of securing a patent of legitimacy for his daughter was deemed sufficient; but, very soon, Eleonora, or Eleonora’s ally, prompted by the restless Antony Ulric, again entered into campaign. At first, a morganatic marriage, with renewed safeguards for Ernest Augustus and his line, was suggested; then, a preliminary attempt was made to place the lady on a level with her lord, by obtaining for her the title of Princess. The Duchess Sophia was on the alert, and cites at length a letter which she wrote to her brother-in-law in order to avert the impending thunderbolt, and his bland reply assuring her that it would prove absolutely harmless to her family. In April, 1676, the marriage of George William and Eleonora, who still remained Countess of Wilhelmsburg only, was celebrated at Celle; and nothing could, on the face of it, be more reassuring than the treaty which followed in May, and which, while guaranteeing the Succession in George William’s dominions to his brother and his brother’s descendants, actually provided that the oaths of allegiance taken by his subjects in future should be sworn to his brother as well as to himself. It seemed to Sophia that this procedure might opportunely have been set on foot when George William’s wife was again expected to present him with a son. Meanwhile Eleonora speedily achieved the remainder of her ascent; in April, 1676, Sophia had to learn that the Frenchwoman—in her intimate correspondence this designation would have been avoided as colourless—was prayed for in church at Celle, as if she were the reigning Duchess; and, soon afterwards, the final blow descended, when it became known that the Emperor’s envoy had saluted her by the title of Highness. Sophia expresses herself, with not undeserved contempt, as to the excuse preferred by George William, that he could not help obliging one whom others called his wife. From the silence which, in the remaining pages of Sophia’s _Memoirs_, ensues on a topic which cannot fail to have continued to exercise her patience, we infer that, though it was very long before either she, or anyone who cared for her, had a good word for the Duchess of Celle, the common-sense which no kind of emotion ever extinguished in her induced her to abandon the struggle against the inevitable. She consoled herself, as she told her favourite niece, with the reflexion that, whatever title the intruder might herself bear, no son of hers could ever be more than a Count of Wilhelmsburg, and that George William might still be trusted, in the event of a son being born to him, to keep his promise to his brother. The Duchess of Orleans did her best to promulgate this faith to unbelieving or indifferent listeners at Versailles; but it was not in this way that Sophia’s half-pathetic trust in her _ci-devant_ lover was destined to be put to the proof.[78]

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Footnote 74:

One of these was the case of the Elector Palatine, Frederick I, just a
century earlier (1472), who after, on his usurpation of his nephew’s
dominions, making a promise similar to George William’s, twenty years
afterwards married his mistress with his nephew’s consent. Another
instance is that of Henry of Dannenberg, who, notwithstanding a
supposed promise, married, greatly to the vexation of his brother
William the Younger, the founder of the New House of Lüneburg.

Footnote 75:

No doubt a less reputable class of French and Italian adventurers also
found their way to George William’s court, which in 1670 Sophia states
‘under the roos’ to be called ‘_le Royaume de la Canalle_,’ adding
that the nobility is held of no account there, and that cooks are
probably better paid than Ministers of State.

Footnote 76:

According to another view, this naturalisation of her daughter,
together with permission to herself to return to France in the event
of danger, had been sought by Eleonora herself, aware of the jealousy
with which she was regarded by most of her protector’s relatives.

Footnote 77:

The elder Schütz was sent to London in 1683, to congratulate Charles
II on his escape from the Ryehouse Plot. His reports from London are
preserved from 1689 to 1709, the year of his death; but his
interesting correspondence with Sophia (recently edited with other
letters from her and Queen Sophia Charlotte by Dr. R. Doebner) does
not, with the exception of a single letter, include any letters dated
before 1701.

Footnote 78:

It was a proud experience of the Duchess of Orleans (in 1717) to find
that Louis XIV had observed her dislike of _mésalliances_, and more
than one racy reference to a horrible occurrence of the kind might be
cited from her letters. The Celle marriage she could never have
forgiven, if only for her aunt’s sake. Yet _mésalliances_ were not
altogether unknown in the House of Brunswick (see above as to ‘Madame
Rudolfine’)—perhaps for the very reason that it was formerly one of
those ancient German princely Houses (i.e. Houses which had a seat and
vote in the Diet before 1582) which sought to maintain the principle
of _Ebenbürtigkeit_. It is only in the branch of the House which
attained to a royal throne that a wise policy (embodied in the Act of
1772) substituted for a rigid rule a provision which has sufficiently
protected the dignity of the royal family and the interests of the
Empire. It may be added that, according to Lord Dover, the
_mésalliance_ with Eleonora d’Olbreuze prevents the British royal
family from taking rank as what is called _chapitrale_ in Germany.
(See Horace Walpole’s _Letters_, ed. Cunningham, Vol. ii. p. 251,
note.) Concerning the _Ebenbürtigkeit_ principle as recognised in the
House of Hohenzollern, and the rights of the head of the House with
regard to the marriages of its members, see an article by E. Berner in
_Historische Zeitschrift_, 1884, 4, _Die Hausverfassung der
Hohenzollern_ (a review of H. Schulze, _Die Hausgesetze der reg.
Deutschen Fürstenhäuser_).

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The influence of the Duchess of Celle upon her husband’s mode of life, and upon the tone of his Court, was altogether so excellent that we may without much hesitation discredit her sister-in-law’s insinuations as to the bringing-up of George William and Eleonora’s only surviving child, the ill-fated Sophia Dorothea. The engagement which had actually been concluded between her and the youthful Prince Augustus Frederick of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel came to a sudden end by his death in August, 1676, from wounds received at the siege of Philippsburg; and the attempt of his father Duke Antony Ulric to secure the hand of the heiress for one of his younger sons met with no ready acceptance. Other suitors appeared or were spoken of: the young Hereditary Governor of Friesland, Henry Casimir of Nassau-Dietz, who was recommended to George William by his cousinhood with William III of Orange, and Prince George of Denmark, for whom fate had in store the splendid, if not in all respects enviable, position of consort to an English Queen. Curiously enough, the hand of the Princess Anne had at this time been also thought to be within reach of Ernest Augustus and Sophia’s eldest son George Lewis, who paid a visit to England from December, 1680, to the following March. But for him, too, a different destiny was reserved; nor, if the account of a most sagacious observer and true friend is to be trusted, had this particular honour ever been coveted either by the Prince himself or at Hanover—for this among other reasons, that Princess Anne’s birth on the mother’s side was from a very second-rate family. The Prince had, accordingly, taken very little trouble in the matter; so that, when he left England, it was thought that the marriage would never take place—all of which things Queen Anne never forgot.[79] Before long a project of dynastic ambition ripened, as we must conclude, in the minds of the brothers at Celle and Osnabrück, which, if carried out, besides serving the immediate end of replenishing the resources exhausted by the extravagant life of Ernest Augustus, would go far towards ensuring the ultimate union of all the dominions of the Brunswick-Lüneburg line. As to the former purpose, it probably weighed heavily with Sophia’s husband, whose expenditure on travel abroad and on pomp and ceremony at home had long been excessive, and who had more recently added to his self-indulgences the costly luxury of a mistress _en titre_, in the person of Clara Elizabeth von Meysenbug, since 1673, by her marriage to one of Ernest Augustus’ chief courtiers, Baroness von Platen.[80] It would not be easy to show from Sophia’s letters how she was affected by a _liaison_ which lasted during her husband’s lifetime; one quite welcomes the late indication afforded by her remark, on the occasion of the visit of the Tsar Peter the Great, in 1697, that in Russia all women paint, and that this was why Countess Platen so much charmed the Muscovites. Of her personal power over Ernest Augustus, and of certain other features in her history and that of her family, something will have to be said below; but it may be as well to point out that there is no satisfactory evidence to show that she played the part ascribed to her in the tragedy to be noticed below. This was not Ernest Augustus’ only infidelity, for about the same date we hear of a relation between him and one ‘Esther,’ a _femme de chambre_ in the service of his wife.[81] Sophia, from whom her husband’s affections were thus being alienated, after she had borne him six children, seems at first to have felt anything but satisfaction at the project of a marriage between her eldest son, George Lewis, and his cousin, Sophia Dorothea; indeed, in a letter of November, 1677, the Duchess of Orleans, as her aunt’s faithful echo, profanely denounces the union of such a creature with so worthy a young prince as a sin against the Holy Ghost. In 1679, Sophia describes the pill as difficult to swallow, though adequately gilded, and adds that, for her part, she would have preferred a daughter of John Frederick of Hanover with a third of the gilding. But, three years later, in 1682, the Duchess of Orleans treats the marriage as an accomplished fact. ‘She will,’ she observes, ‘imitate the discretion of her aunt;’ but ‘like the parrot of the Duke of Savoy, though she holds her tongue, she thinks a great deal.’ A large amount of fiction, the origin of which is traceable to the same tainted source—a ‘historical’ novel published, nearly a generation afterwards, by the ingenious but far from disinterested Duke Antony Ulric[82]—has accumulated round the supposed exertions of Sophia to induce her brother-in-law, despite the reluctance of his wife, to approve the sacrifice of their daughter. All we know is that, by 1681, the tone of Ernest Augustus and Sophia towards Eleonora had entirely changed; and it is clear what had made both the parents of the ‘worthy’ Prince George Lewis intent upon bringing the matter to a conclusion. About this time, Ernest Augustus had conceived the design of obtaining the Emperor’s consent to the postulation of one of his sons as his successor in the bishopric of Osnabrück, notwithstanding the express provision of the Peace of Westphalia that it should be alternately held by a Catholic and a Lutheran. Sophia was quite prepared to drive a coach and four through that settlement, and let the Catholics afterwards appoint two bishops in succession if they chose. But this would have been a merely temporary gain for the House. At the close of the year 1679, as has been seen, John Frederick of Hanover had died without leaving a son; and to Ernest Augustus, on succeeding to his principality, the prospect of an enduring greatness for himself and his dynasty at last clearly opened. If the cordial relations between his surviving brother and himself could be maintained, the actual union in his hands, or in those of his descendants, of the entire territories of the Brunswick-Lüneburg House, was now merely a matter of time; and on the possession of so extensive and solid a dominion his dynastic ambition would be warranted in basing ulterior designs. Already personages of the greatest political consequence in Europe began to interest themselves in the fortunes of the House of Hanover, and in the immediate scheme of a marriage promising results of so high an importance. Hardly had Ernest Augustus and Sophia held their entry at Hanover, when, by the express advice of William of Orange, they at once recognised the ducal title of Eleonora. In the same year the august counsel of Louis XIV, still hopeful of conciliating the goodwill of the Brunswick-Lüneburg Dukes, was bestowed in favour of the match, through his minister at Celle, the Marquis d’Arcy, to whom the Duchess Eleonora spoke with gratification of the civilities of her sister-in-law. The Estates of Celle-Lüneburg, on the one hand, and those of Calenberg (Hanover), on the other, with a docility surprising after their former insistence on continued separation, declared that, if the marriage was actually concluded, they would consent to the establishment of the principle of primogeniture; and a law establishing this principle, the very coping-stone of Ernest Augustus’ dynastic policy, received the Imperial sanction in 1683, though it was only promulgated in the Brunswick-Lüneburg dominions, as part of the will of Ernest Augustus, on his death fifteen years afterwards. This provision was to entail upon Sophia even more personal unhappiness than the marriage of her eldest son itself; but a renunciation of her own wishes had by this time become a law of her life.

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Footnote 79:

See Ezechiel Spanheim’s _Account of the English Court_, printed by Dr.
R. Doebner in _English Historical Review_, Vol. ii. 1887, pp. 757
_sqq._ Spanheim’s statement as to the scruples felt at Hanover is
exactly borne out by an observation of Sophia, _à propos_ of the
proposed match between her son George Lewis and the Princess Sophia
Dorothea, that the example of the Prince of Orange (William III)
‘renders the notion more endurable.’ In other words, the House of
Hanover thought a marriage with a daughter of Anne Hyde a sort of
_mésalliance_. (See _Briefwechsel d. Herzogin Sophie mit d. Kurfürsten
Karl Ludwig_, p. 387.)

Footnote 80:

The Meysenbug family makes its first appearance as residing at the
Court of Osnabrück during Ernest Augustus’ episcopate.

Footnote 81:

An earlier _faiblesse_ (1668) of Ernest Augustus for a French lady,
Susanne de la Manoelinière, had been treated by his wife with great
discretion and success.

Footnote 82:

Vol. vi. of _The Roman Octavia_, a romance in the then fashionable
style of the _Grand Cyrus_.

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In September, 1682, the Duchess Sophia informed her ubiquitous correspondent, the Abbé Balati, that henceforth Hanover and Celle would reckon as a single State—a result so advantageous as to warrant defiance of the German genealogical scruple about being equally grand on both sides of the tree. Prince George Lewis had made up his mind, and his mother trusted that he had done so under a good constellation.[83] On November the 21st following, the wedding of George Lewis and Sophia Dorothea took place at Celle, and was celebrated by Leibniz (such are the vicissitudes of Court life) in indifferent French verse. Nothing is known as to the early married life of a husband and wife who were no better, though perhaps not much worse, assorted than most couples united under similar conditions. Sophia Dorothea’s was an indolent and emotional nature; the habits of George Lewis were active; he was fond of the camp and the chase; and his bearing was characterised by a reserve which afterwards became stolidity. But, in these years, he was much absent from home, continuing his military career in the Imperial service, taking an honourable part in the historic achievement of the rescue of Vienna by Sobiesky, in 1683, and distinguishing himself two years later at the capture of Neuhäusel in the Hungarian campaign of Duke Charles of Lorraine against the Turks. Sophia Dorothea bore her husband two children—George Augustus (afterwards King George II), in 1683, and Sophia Dorothea (afterwards Queen of Prussia and mother of Frederick the Great), in 1685. Some letters of her mother-in-law, in 1684 and the following year, show that Eleonora’s daughter had not been successful in conciliating permanently the sympathies of Sophia, whose politeness towards the mother had not developed into any warm goodwill towards the daughter; but the complaints against Sophia Dorothea are not very serious, and rather suggest a spoilt child in the company of an unsympathetic but by no means stony-hearted relative.

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Footnote 83:

‘_Il est à present_,’ she adds, ‘_avec sa maîtresse_.’ It is to be
feared that this should be translated literally.

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