17
The Electress, Two Dukes, and the Lady-in-Waiting
WHILE LOUISE WRESTLED WITH WEIGHTY matters of spirituality amid the corruption and intimidation of The Hague, her younger sister Sophia, still ensconced with her brother’s family in Heidelberg, faced a challenging home environment of her own, although on a rather less exalted plane. Specifically, she was forced to cope with the cascading domestic friction between Karl Ludwig and his wife, Charlotte. It was perhaps to be expected that a marriage that had begun so stormily would unravel still further over time; many do. But not like this. This was one for the history books.
The first two years had been rocky but manageable. Charlotte fulfilled the first obligation of wedlock by giving birth, on March 31, 1651, to a son and heir they named Karl and then followed up this achievement on May 27, 1652, with a little girl, christened Elizabeth Charlotte but whom everyone called Liselotte. Karl Ludwig, for his part, improved the economic environment in Heidelberg sufficiently to begin work on the ruined family castle and so had been able to move everyone into the renovated space in time for the birth of his son.
But this uneasy truce between husband and wife vanished abruptly in 1653 with an invitation to the imperial court. Karl Ludwig had already been formally received by the emperor (still Ferdinand) the previous year in Prague, a prestigious event that Charlotte had been unable to attend due to the birth of Liselotte.* She had complained bitterly about being left at home, so Karl Ludwig thought to appease her by taking her, along with his sisters Sophia and Princess Elizabeth, who had also joined the household, to meet the emperor at Ratisbon, nearly two hundred miles to the east.
Charlotte, envisioning a social triumph, threw herself into preparations for this exciting round of festivities, ordering splendid gowns as befit her position as Karl Ludwig’s wife. “The Electress, whose one thought during the whole expedition was how best to display her beauty before this great assembly, had sent to France for a Mme. La Prince to dress her hair, and nothing was omitted to show her off to the best advantage,” Sophia remembered. All had been packed and sent when Charlotte, to her very great chagrin, discovered herself to be pregnant again. Her hair might have looked charming but her chic new gowns did not fit, and of course no one looks or feels her best with several extra inches around the waist. Ferdinand and his wife took pains to treat her with great respect, but it was no use; Charlotte was in “such a bad temper that her husband often took refuge in my rooms to escape from it,” Sophia revealed.
Matters were not improved when the baby was born prematurely and died the next day, and Karl Ludwig accused his wife of having brought on the tragedy by insisting on accompanying the imperial court when it moved on to Augsburg rather than waiting quietly at Ratisbon for the birth. Charlotte retaliated by refusing to sleep with him. By the time everyone returned to Heidelberg it was all-out war: she threw the dishes at him, he slapped her so hard her nose bled. A further complication ensued when Karl Ludwig, denied the solace of his wife’s bed, fell in love instead with Louise von Degenfeldt, Charlotte’s sweet-tempered twenty-year-old lady-in-waiting.
Charlotte’s first inkling that Karl Ludwig’s attentions might be wandering came in the summer of 1654 with the arrival of yet another member of her husband’s family: his brother Rupert. Ill and exhausted from his years at sea, Rupert had given up pirating and was considering his options. Domesticity appealed to him (probably because he had no experience with it), and Karl Ludwig had generously agreed to give his brother a substantial plot of land out of his own holdings in the Palatine on which to settle. Naturally, Rupert stayed with Karl Ludwig and the rest of the family at the castle in Heidelberg while the details of this transaction were being finalized.
Unfortunately, during this visit, Rupert also met Charlotte’s endearing lady-in-waiting Louise and, used to success in affairs of the heart and having no idea that he was trespassing on his brother’s territory, made a play for her. When she rejected him, he passed her a note declaring his love and accusing her of coldness. To deflect suspicion, Louise in turn handed this incriminating document over to Charlotte, pretending it had been meant for her. Charlotte, thrilled to have attracted Rupert’s attention, rushed to assure him of the warmth of her affections, a confession that caused her disconcerted brother-in-law to blush with embarrassment. Charlotte immediately perceived from his reaction that the note had been intended for her lady-in-waiting and not herself, and angry and humiliated, she tried to dismiss Louise, only to have her husband intervene and place the young woman under his protection, insisting that she stay. So besotted was Karl Ludwig with his new love that he rashly revenged himself on Rupert by reneging on the land-settlement deal. He even went so far as to shut the gates of Heidelberg against his rival, a gesture his brother found so hurtful that he left the city and never returned.*
In the aftermath of this debacle, the remaining household divided into two opposing camps. Princess Elizabeth, appalled at Karl Ludwig’s behavior, sided with Charlotte, while Sophia, always her brother’s favorite, remained his ally. Her husband’s fondness for his youngest sister excited Charlotte’s wrath. “She tried to forbid the Elector’s visits to my rooms, but this only made him more determined to come nearly every evening attended by his whole court, at which the anger of the Electress knew no bounds,” Sophia admitted.
Unable to subvert her adversaries, Charlotte sought to divide them. The simplest way to accomplish this was to exile Sophia by marrying her off. To teach her sister-in-law a lesson, the electress, wretched with her own husband, thought to punish Sophia by arranging a similarly joyless match.
THE PROSPECTIVE BRIDEGROOM HAILED from the Swedish court. On June 6, 1654, just as Rupert was arriving for his turbulent family visit, Queen Christina, intent upon converting to Catholicism, famously abdicated her throne in favor of her cousin Charles X Gustav. Charles Gustav’s wife, the new queen of Sweden, had a brother Adolf. Sometime toward the end of 1654, Prince Adolf arrived in Heidelberg on a diplomatic mission.
Sophia took an instant dislike to him. “His manner was good and his figure rather fine, but he had a disagreeable face with a long pointed chin like a shoehorn,” she observed queasily. “After a short sojourn at Heidelberg he asked my hand in marriage; the Electress, wishing to be rid of me, had no small part in bringing this about. She contrived to conceal from the Elector and from me that this prince was so extremely bad-tempered—he had actually beaten his first wife, a fact the Electress knew full well.” But the Swedes were allies of the Palatinate and Sophia knew herself to be in trouble. “The Elector was devoted to the King of Sweden, and therefore unwilling to refuse anything to his brother. He consented on condition that the King approved the match and ratified all the advantageous terms which the Prince had willing promised me,” she despaired.
Luckily for Sophia, there’s nothing like a firm bid to increase market value. Way over in Hanover, some two hundred and fifty miles due north of Heidelberg, Duke George William of Brunswick, the second eldest of four brothers, “heard the report of my engagement at the very time when, urged by his subjects to marry, he had promised to take the subject into consideration, if they on their part would increase his revenues,” Sophia explained. Although he had never met her, “while in treaty with his subjects on this question, he could think of no princess more suitable than myself were he, indeed, forced to take a step to which he had always felt the greatest repugnance,” she noted drily. As he customarily spent his winters in Venice, Duke George William decided to drop by Heidelberg on his way to Italy and, as part of his salary drive, see if Sophia’s charms were really as advertised. He brought his youngest brother, Duke Ernst Augustus, with him on the inspection tour for moral support. Sophia had actually met Ernst Augustus several years earlier and enjoyed his company; he played the guitar, “which served to show off his exquisite hands; in dancing he also excelled,” she remembered.
Duke George William, the older brother and hopeful suitor, turned out to be very nice as well, especially as compared to Sophia’s Swedish conquest. “I infinitely preferred the Duke to Prince Adolf, to whom I had taken so great an aversion that only a strong effort of will could have overcome it,” she confessed. Happily, the duke “at once attached himself to me, questioning me as to my reported engagement, and paying me numberless compliments, to which I was not backward in responding. At last he spoke the great word, asking if he had my permission to demand my hand of the Elector.” Sophia’s relief at having secured this second timely proffer for her affections was obvious. “My answer was not that of a heroine of romance, for I unhesitatingly said ‘Yes,’” she declared forcefully.
There remained only the small problem of her previous commitment to Adolf, but again fortunately for Sophia, Duke George William was wealthier and, as sovereign of his own duchy, of higher standing than the prince. “I knew also that the Elector loved me well enough to approve my choice, especially as right was on my side, for this match was much superior to the other,” she reported. She was correct in her assessment. “The Elector did not wait to be asked twice, but at once gave his consent,” she affirmed. By the time the duke and his brother left Heidelberg for Italy, the marriage contract had been drawn up and signed by all the relevant parties, although Duke George William, who was clear on his priorities, “enjoined the strictest secrecy on us, saying that, were his subjects to hear that he was already engaged, all hope of obtaining from them any increase of revenue would disappear.”
Meanwhile, Prince Adolf, justifiably operating under the assumption that he and Sophia were getting married, had obtained the desired consent of his brother-in-law the king of Sweden to the match. This inconvenient fact was brought home to Karl Ludwig with the arrival of a Swedish ambassador bearing a letter from the monarch welcoming Sophia into the family and inquiring when would be the best time for Adolf to come collect his bride. With “the greatest gentleness,” Karl Ludwig, without actually mentioning the other engagement, broke the news to the envoy that “the state of affairs was changed” and that “even were his sister not so fortunate as to become Prince Adolf’s wife, he (the Elector) would all the same remain his obedient servant, ready and willing on all occasions to serve him to the utmost of his ability.” Then he dismissed the ambassador “laden with fine presents.”
This did not work. Adolf did not want fine presents or the elector’s service; he wanted Sophia. He showed up in Heidelberg unannounced and tried to force the issue. “The idea that he was to possess me was so fixed in his mind as to become his prevailing passion, and he left no stone unturned to gain his object,” Sophia recalled. “Sometimes he wept, at others flew into a rage.” When these tactics failed, he rode off in a huff, “determined to go himself and persuade his brother [the king of Sweden] to take up his cause.”
No sooner had Adolf departed than a new, and far more ominous, impasse occurred. Duke George William, enjoying his accustomed sojourn in Italy, which clearly included many pleasures not commonly associated with holy wedlock, “plunged in the dissipations of Venice, ceased to think of me, nor had his subjects come to any conclusion as to the increase of his revenue,” Sophia was forced to report. Worse, “he began to repent the promise, which bound him by word and deed to me, his letters grew colder, and he himself failed to appear at the appointed time. The Elector was very uneasy,” she added, and it was clear her concern matched her brother’s. If the duke backed out, she would have no excuse but to marry the obnoxious Adolf after all.
And just at this moment, with Sophia’s fate hanging in the balance, Charlotte made a discovery.
ALL THROUGH THE EXTENDED process of negotiation with first Prince Adolf and then Duke George William, Karl Ludwig had been engaged in similar (albeit clandestine) bargaining for the affections of Louise von Degenfeldt, his wife’s lady-in-waiting. To forward his suit—she obstinately resisted the ultimate surrender, holding out for marriage—he sent her love letters, which he took the precaution of writing in Latin, a language of which he knew Charlotte to be ignorant. But Karl Ludwig, like his grandfather James I before him, had been highly educated and was something of a snob about scholarship, and he made the mistake of bragging one night at dinner before guests that his wife employed a lady-in-waiting of such superior quality that she could read and write Latin.
Charlotte might not have been steeped in the classics, but she was sharp enough to have her suspicions aroused by this comment. And although it was true she herself could not read Latin, she knew someone who could—her sister-in-law Princess Elizabeth, who conveniently happened to be staying with them. The electress took the first opportunity to sneak into her handmaid’s room, where she broke into the little box that held her correspondence. There she found several suspect letters from Karl Ludwig, which Princess Elizabeth confirmed to be love notes. A further frenzied search of Louise’s quarters revealed that her errant husband had not confined his activities to pen and paper but had also urged his case with gifts of jewelry, including a ring “stolen from out of her [Charlotte’s] drawer… given her by the Elector.”
It was the jewelry that did it. Charlotte might have forgiven Karl Ludwig for adultery but not for adornment. She raised such a ruckus that Louise, forewarned, ran to get Karl Ludwig, who was followed by the rest of the household. “On entering the chamber we saw an extraordinary scene,” read Sophia’s report of this picturesque domestic interchange. “The Elector was standing in front of his mistress to protect her from his wife’s blows; the Electress was marching around the room holding La Degenfeldt’s jewels in her hands… the Elector said that she must give back the jewels to the one who owned them. She replied by throwing them all over the room. ‘If they aren’t to be mine, then voilà!’ However, the Elector took his mistress and… lodged her in a fine apartment above his chamber where he made a hole in the ceiling through which he could climb by means of a ladder. The Electress soon discovered this route and would have climbed up the ladder with a knife in her hand if her ladies had not prevented her.” Undeterred, by her own admission, Charlotte later availed herself of a gun, which she intended to use to “send a bullet through the ill-conditioned heart of the peace-destroyer [her husband],” but was again overpowered by a member of the household, who emptied the cartridges harmlessly by shooting out the window into the garden.
Under the circumstances, in the spring of 1657, Karl Ludwig decided it was best that he and Louise remove themselves from the castle at Heidelberg until such time as a more permanent solution to his marital troubles could be arranged. Being Protestant, he unfortunately could not avail himself of an appeal to the pope for an annulment, so he did the next best thing: he made a thorough investigation of German history and learned that one of Charlotte’s own ancestors, a Lutheran who had experienced a similarly unhappy family situation, had been allowed to trade in one wife for another. He then used this discovery as precedent to begin divorce proceedings against Charlotte, a course of action that prompted his mother to observe that “if everybody could quit their husbands and wives for their ill humors, there would be no small disorder in the world.”
And it was at this point that Duke George William, motivated by a similar yearning to be free of an unwanted commitment, came up with his own creative solution to the problem of his engagement. Only in his case, he aspired to swap not wives but husbands.
FACED WITH THE DILEMMA of how to maintain his treasured bachelorhood and get married at the same time, George William, after considerable thought, had the inspired notion of employing a surrogate. “The Duke of Hanover… perplexed how to find an honorable escape… hit on the expedient of proposing to his brother, Duke Ernst Augustus, that he, as his other self, should marry me,” Sophia explained. So sincere (and desperate) was the older brother in his overture to the younger that he offered to make over all of his property to Ernst Augustus if only he would agree to take Sophia off his hands, “proposing to retain for himself only a liberal income sufficient for his private expenses. He also assured his younger brother that he would give him a paper, written and signed by his own hand, to the effect that he would never marry, but live and die a bachelor,” Sophia continued. This was quite a good deal for a fourth son. “Duke Ernest Augustus listened with pleasure to this proposition,” Sophia related.
Having settled the matter between them, there remained only the challenge of convincing the other interested parties to accept this somewhat unorthodox arrangement, beginning with their middle brother, Duke John Frederick. It must be confessed that his reaction did not bode well for the success of the initiative. “Duke John Frederick by no means relished this proposal, and replied to the Duke of Hanover: ‘Why should you give the Princess to my brother and not to me? It would be absurd on my part to grant such an advantage to the youngest!’” But George William, who favored Ernst Augustus, had no intention of allowing sibling rivalry to undermine so excellent a solution to his predicament. “The Duke of Hanover was so enraged by this answer that he drove John Frederick in the rudest manner out of the palace,” Sophia observed.
His advisers’ views of this scheme were also given short shrift. The duke of Hanover, who had learned his lesson about asking for consent, simply presented the plan to them as a fait accompli. “George William announced to his Council that, being resolved never to marry, he had persuaded his brother Ernst Augustus to bear for him the burden which he could not bring himself to endure,” Sophia recounted. “He, therefore, demanded that his brother’s income should be so considerably increased as to enable him to maintain a wife. Though this speech was by no means to the taste of the audience, still they were forced to content themselves with it, and obey their master by raising the funds required.”
There remained then only the necessity of informing the unwanted fiancée and her brother of the last-minute change of bridegroom. George William not having the courage to break this news in person, a messenger was accordingly dispatched to Frankenthal, about ten miles northwest of Heidelberg (where Karl Ludwig, “to avoid disturbances at home,” had “taken refuge”). The envoy presented the details of the new plan, assuring Karl Ludwig that “I should be mistress at Hanover, for my children, should God grant me any, were to inherit all the Brunswick possessions, seeing that… John Frederick [the middle brother] was too stout ever to have any,” Sophia reported. “I, therefore, should become mother to the family and country as effectually as though I had been made the wife of Duke George William. The Elector listened with considerable surprise to this discourse,” she noted.
But being in the middle of his own highly irregular divorce and general marital finaglings, Karl Ludwig was hardly in a position to object. He did voice concern that Duke George William would later change his mind about remaining single, but, being “assured that he need entertain no apprehensions on that score,” he agreed to write to Sophia to see what she thought of the substitution. With the detested Adolf still lurking in the background, Sophia answered “that a good establishment was all I cared for, and that, if this was secured to me by the younger brother, the exchange would be to me a matter of indifference,” a demonstration of clearheaded reasoning worthy of the protagonist in a Jane Austen novel.
And so a new marriage contract was drawn up to which was attached a singular document, dated April 11–12, 1658, entitled Renunciation of Marriage on the Part of Duke George William of Hanover. “Having perceived the urgent necessity of taking into consideration how our house of this line may best be provided with heirs and be perpetuated in the future,” it began, “yet having been and remaining up to the present date both unable and unwilling in my own person to engage in any marriage contract, I have rather induced my brother, Ernst Augustus… and he is prepared forthwith and without delay to enter into holy matrimony.”
And this time, the duke was as good as his word. The wedding took place in Heidelberg on October 17, 1658. Ernst Augustus was a month shy of his twenty-ninth birthday; Sophia had just turned twenty-eight. “I was dressed, according to the German fashion, in white silver brocade, and my flowing hair was adorned with a large crown of the family diamonds,” Sophia remembered with pleasure. “My train, which was of enormous length, was borne by four maids of honor… I was escorted by the Elector and my brother, Prince Edward; Duke Ernst Augustus by the little Electoral Prince [Karl Ludwig’s seven-year-old son] and the Duc de Deux-Ponts. Twenty-four gentlemen marched before us, bearing lighted torches, adorned with ribbons of our armorial colors, blue and white for me, red and yellow for the Duke. Cannons were fired at the moment when the clergyman united us.” The religious ceremony was followed by a splendid supper ball, where “we danced in German fashion, the princes dancing before and behind us with lighted torches in their hands.” Best of all, Sophia’s surrogate husband turned out to be just as charming, and certainly more enthusiastic, than her original intended. “I, being resolved to love him, was delighted to find how amiable he was,” she observed with relief.
A few days later, Ernst Augustus left Heidelberg to arrange an appropriately elaborate welcome for his bride in her new home, and soon after an impressive retinue arrived to escort Sophia to her husband. She traveled by carriage from Mainz to Frankfurt, from Frankfurt to Cassel, and finally to Hanover, where both dukes—Ernst Augustus and his older brother George William, in whose house they would all be living together—were waiting for her.
CONSIDERING ITS UNUSUAL GENESIS, Sophia’s marriage, at least in the beginning, was all she could have hoped for. No sooner had she arrived than “the Duke my husband, taking my hand, led me to a very fine room, which the Duke of Hanover [George William] had had built expressly for me,” she reported with pride. The palace was full of aristocratic company who had been invited to meet the bride, and a second wedding ceremony took place in front of this august body, followed again by an evening ball. But best of all was the improbable exhilaration the newlyweds found in each other’s company. “I take pleasure in remembering how rejoiced we were to be left to ourselves when all the guests were gone, and how great was the Duke’s devotion to me,” Sophia reminisced. “Marrying from interest only he had expected beforehand to feel nothing but indifference for me; but now his feelings were such that I had the fond conviction that he would love me forever, while I in return so idolized him that without him I felt as if I were lost. We were never apart,” she recalled wistfully. But of course, they couldn’t be completely by themselves, as Duke George William was living there too. “He took part in all our amusements, cards, hunting, and walking, and in return spared no pains to make himself agreeable to me,” Sophia noted. “The Duke my husband, who knew him better than I did, began to be jealous; but of this I was wholly unaware.”
In fact, in the face of so much obvious affection (not to mention sexual fulfillment), George William was clearly having second thoughts. Apparently, when debating the merits of man-about-town over matrimony, he had not sufficiently taken into consideration the concept of the honeymoon. Now he was forced to witness this seductive interlude from the unenviable viewpoint of the third wheel. “He actually told me one day that he much regretted having given me up to his brother,” Sophia volunteered. “This speech I cut short by pretending not to hear it.”
But try though Sophia might to ignore her brother-in-law, George William’s attentions were sufficient to arouse the notice of her husband. They had a big fight, with Ernst Augustus accusing Sophia of preferring his older brother to himself. Shocked and in tears, she vehemently denied the charge. They made it up, but Ernst Augustus continued to maintain his suspicions. “I took pleasure even in his precautions to guard me, for after dinner, when he took a siesta, he would seat me opposite to him, and place his feet on the sides of my chair so that I could not stir; this would last for hours together, and to anyone who loved him less than I did, would have been very wearisome,” Sophia admitted. She did everything she could to ease his mind, shunning George William’s company except when absolutely necessary. “I now hardly ever saw his brother except at table, or, to speak more correctly, I sat at table without seeing him at all, having taught myself to turn away my eyes from him altogether, in order to avoid my husband’s reproaches. Indeed, I can say with truth, that for years the Duke of Hanover handed me to dinner without my seeing so much as his shadow,” Sophia observed wryly.
The awkwardness of her situation was somewhat alleviated in November of 1659 with the dukes’ winter sojourn to Italy, an annual holiday that clearly neither brother had any intention of giving up just because one of them was now married. Sophia was by this time pregnant and unable to undertake a long journey, so Ernst Augustus proposed that she instead visit her mother in Holland while he and George William were away. Sophia agreed to this suggestion with alacrity, particularly as “he assured me… that he would never again be jealous, as I had entirely cured him of that fault.” She took her seven-year-old niece Liselotte, Karl Ludwig’s daughter, with her to The Hague as a treat.
In fact, owing to the strained relationship between her own parents, Liselotte was by this time living with her aunt Sophia in Hanover. Karl Ludwig, having obtained his divorce decree from the Diet of Ratisbon (the German governing body) in 1657, had the following year married Louise von Degenfeldt in a quiet ceremony, and by 1659 the couple, along with two children born to Louise, had moved back to Heidelberg. As Charlotte had declined to recognize the legality of the divorce and had adamantly refused to move out, both of Karl Ludwig’s families were now living together in the ancestral castle. (“I have already ousted X [Charlotte] from the upper story and I have given her the old bedroom downstairs,” Karl Ludwig reported to Louise before moving her in.)
As may be imagined, this arrangement was hardly conducive to domestic harmony. Matters were not improved by Karl Ludwig’s strict approach to child rearing, which provoked many scenes. His son was timid by nature and submitted to his father’s authority, but Liselotte, who naturally took her mother’s side over that of Louise, had a strong character and often talked back or refused to retreat if she did not believe she was in the wrong.* To improve his daughter’s manners and education (and punish Charlotte for her unwillingness to surrender her home and position as electress), in June of 1659 Karl Ludwig sent Liselotte to live with Sophia, whose judgment and erudition he trusted more than his first wife’s.
Liselotte’s removal was a great cruelty to Charlotte but an enormous relief to the girl herself, who adored her aunt Sophia and was thrilled to exchange her strict, unhappy home environment for the pleasures of Hanover. She loved the outdoors and was allowed the freedom to run where she chose and was even given her own pony to ride. Where Karl Ludwig, having grown up always having to beg for money, kept a firm hand on the household accounts, famously weighing the butter before serving it, the two dukes, George William and Ernst Augustus, had the means to support a far more lavish lifestyle, and they took full advantage of it. At her aunt’s house, Liselotte ate as much as she liked of the hearty German sauerkraut and sausages that comprised the dukes’ steady diet and was so impressed by their Christmas celebrations that fifty years later she could still describe the scene as though it were taking place in front of her eyes: “The tables were dressed like altars and were laden with all sorts of things for every child, new clothes, silver ornaments, silk, dolls, sweets and all kinds of things,” she recalled with awe.
Sophia was as happy to have her niece at her side as Liselotte was to be with her. “I shall watch over her as though she were my child,” Sophia promised Karl Ludwig in a letter of April 18, 1659. She was especially gratified to be able to bring the girl with her to The Hague, although even here, Duke George William pursued her and threatened to ruin the visit. “I look for your sister here about Wednesday or Thursday,” the queen of Bohemia observed to Karl Ludwig in December 1659. “Her brother-in-law is yet here, you may chance hear of some love and rumors of love, but do not believe it, for there is no show towards it.” Luckily, Sophia managed to convince George William to carry on with his original plan to winter in Italy, so she and Liselotte were able to enjoy themselves in Holland. “After his departure, I spent my time very pleasantly with the Queen my mother, who graciously expressed great pleasure at having me once more with her,” Sophia remembered. “I had also brought my niece… to whom the Queen was passionately attached, the more so, perhaps, because this princess was the only one of her grandchildren that she had seen.”
“Her shape and humor make me think of my poor Henriette,” the Winter Queen observed wistfully of the little girl.
And then, five months later, on May 28, 1660, Sophia fulfilled the purpose for which she had initially been recruited to Hanover by giving birth, after an extremely difficult delivery in which it was feared that either she or the child would die, to a son. “Great was the joy of the Duke and of all of his subjects when our son was born alive,” she exclaimed. She and Ernst Augustus decided to name the child George, after their benefactor, the older brother who had made their happiness possible.
And then, just at the moment when it seemed that Sophia’s life could not be more complete, as though it had been sent as an unlooked-for christening gift, came the astounding news that Charles II had been restored to the throne of England.
IT SHOULD COME AS no surprise that Charles II’s cynical sacrifice of Montrose, intended to help him secure more advantageous terms in his negotiations with Scotland, had not achieved the desired effect. In fact, once his longtime nemesis had been dispatched, Argyll and the Covenanters had only increased their demands on the young sovereign. In order to be recognized as king of the Scots, Charles II had been instructed not only to swear to uphold Presbyterian rule in Scotland but to promise that it would also be imposed on England. Catholicism was to be outlawed in Ireland as well as in Scotland and England. Personally, Charles (who, like his father, was an Episcopalian) was to abstain from dancing and other forms of revelry, endure long sermons, and dismiss all but nine members of his retinue on the grounds that the rest were not considered sufficiently godly by the Presbyterian ministry. He was to take the oath of the Covenant and never issue a decree or conduct an action contrary to the interests or desires of the Scottish church. Although Charles, by his own admission, “perfectly hated the Presbyterians and all their ways,” he nonetheless submitted to all of these terms on the advice of, among others, the prince of Orange and Queen Christina of Sweden, who told him to promise whatever was necessary and then just go back on his word later, “so that he may be in a capacity to recover all in the end.”*
Nor had the humiliation ended with his arrival in Scotland. The Covenanters kept him under close watch, restricting his movements and subjecting him to more sermons. When, in an effort to prevent the alliance, Cromwell had crossed the border at the head of a large force and defeated the Scottish army in battle, Charles was forced to sign a declaration repudiating his parents and attributing the loss to God’s punishment for his sins or face the prospect of being handed over to Cromwell for execution. Even his coronation was preceded by a lengthy public apology for perceived transgressions committed by his father and grandfather. “I think I must repent too that ever I was born,” he observed wearily after making the required denunciation.
With his crown had come at last the promised Scottish army with which he hoped to invade and conquer England, but alas, Charles was no better at warfare than his father. He was soundly defeated by Cromwell at Worcester, about a hundred miles northwest of London, and just barely escaped with his life. There had followed an urgent flight from the pursuing Parliamentarian soldiers. Charles was hidden at great risk to those who sheltered him and passed from safe house to safe house by his loyal Catholic subjects (the same people he had sworn to persecute in order to obtain the Scottish throne) until he was finally smuggled out of England.
From this point on, his prospects took a steep decline, a misery made worse by the reality of Cromwell’s spectacular rise. Charles could only watch helplessly from abroad as his father’s executioner took command of England, forcibly dissolving Parliament (hilariously, Cromwell also found representative government very difficult to work with) and instead establishing a Protectorate, under which facade he ruled as sovereign in all but name. Aided by a handpicked House of Commons under the direction of a radicalized former leather seller who went by the name of Praise God Barebone, laws were passed forbidding theater (players were whipped), dancing, sports on Sundays, and Christmas feasts. Fines were imposed for swearing, gambling, and other sinful activities. Catholics were persecuted, bishops deposed, and the Book of Common Prayer prohibited. All this was held in place by Cromwell’s undeniable military abilities, his strong army, and its many victories. This also made him an exceedingly attractive ally, and he was recognized by all the foreign powers as the legitimate ruler of England, a state of affairs that put them at odds with Charles, who was thus forced into exile and abject poverty. Lacking friends or support, constantly on the run, Charles, depressed and beaten, was without hope. Cromwell had prepared for every contingency. He seemed invincible.
But in the seventeenth century, even the invincible were subject to bacteria, and Cromwell came down with a urinary tract infection that quickly turned septic. On September 3, 1658, at the age of fifty-nine, the lord protector of England died, leaving the realm to his eldest son, Richard. It is astonishing how quickly Richard, who had neither his father’s commanding presence nor his military experience, botched it up and was forced out of office by both the army, who refused to follow him, and by a much-reduced and divided Parliament, who greatly feared the army. By the early spring of 1660, England was in turmoil.
Faced with the prospect of military rule, and resentful of the many years of imposed Puritan values and behavior, the mood of the realm swung definitively in favor of restoring Charles II to the throne. By this time the exiled monarch had been away from England so long that nobody knew much about him, which definitely added to his appeal. He wasn’t familiar enough to be despised as were the other alternatives, which made him the most attractive option by default. This popular bias was underscored on March 15, 1660, by a Royalist sympathizer who took a ladder and a can of paint to the spot where Parliament had replaced a statue of Charles I with a damning inscription celebrating his execution and labeling him a tyrant, and effaced it, jubilantly tossing his hat into the air and shouting, “God bless King Charles the Second!”
Charles was now nearly thirty years old. The many setbacks he had weathered made him sensible of his good fortune, and he leaped at this opportunity. He entered into secret negotiations with General Monk, Cromwell’s successor as commander of the English army, to assure him of his goodwill. More important, he penned a masterful letter to Parliament promising amnesty for those who had fought against the Crown. “We do assure you upon our royal word that none of our predecessors have had a greater esteem of Parliaments than we have in our judgment as well as from our obligation,” he wrote from Breda on April 14, 1660. “We do believe them to be so vital a part of the constitution of the kingdom, and so necessary for the government of it, that we well know neither prince nor people can be in any tolerable degree happy without them. And therefore you may be confident that we shall always look upon their counsels as the best we can receive, and shall be as tender of their privileges, and as careful to preserve and protect them, as of that which is most near to Ourself, and most necessary to our own preservation.”
That did it. The document was made public in the House of Commons on May 1, and “the house upon reading the letter, ordered £50,000 to be forthwith provided to send to His Majesty for his present supply; and a committee chosen to return an answer of thanks to His Majesty for his gracious letter; and the letter be kept among the records of the Parliament; and in all this not so much as one No,” reported the famous English diarist Samuel Pepys. “Great joy all yesterday at London, and at night more bonfires than ever, and ringing of bells, and drinking of the King’s health upon their knees in the streets,” he added.
In that instant, Charles II was restored to his throne. And not a moment too soon for the queen of Bohemia.
IT HAD BEEN TWO and a half years since Louise Hollandine had deserted both Protestantism and her mother, and in that time the Winter Queen had struggled every day to keep up a genteel front despite her straitened circumstances. Although in the wake of her daughter’s departure, the States General of Holland had out of sympathy voted to provide her with a monthly stipend of 10,000 livres, this only covered basic living expenses. She needed far more than that to pay back the debts she had incurred over the past dozen years, when Cromwell had cut off her income along with her brother’s head, and she naturally turned to Karl Ludwig for financial aid. But Karl Ludwig, with two families to support and a tendency toward extreme caution, not to say miserliness, steadfastly resisted her entreaties. His solution was for her to sell her jewels, a suggestion that she rejected as adamantly as he refused her entreaties to provide for her.*
Charles II
The result of this standoff between mother and son was a series of increasingly insistent dunning letters, followed by equally aggrieved responses. “You sent me one seven thousand for living,” the queen of Bohemia complained to Karl Ludwig. “I had not lacked fine bread and candles if you had helped me as you promised. But sixteen thousand guilders could not do it, living as I do, much less than I should, which made me, in a manner, beg the State’s assistance; and as it is, I cannot give my servants their wages.” “I very well remember that your Majesty seldom wrote to me but on money subjects since I was in Germany, which I do not blame your Majesty for, but only I am sorry that often times I could not answer you but with my leg,” he shot back.
Then came Charles II’s extraordinary reversal of fortune and, with it, the prospect of a brighter future. Ever her nephew’s loyal supporter, the Winter Queen had been with Charles at Breda when he composed his astute missive to Parliament and had shared in the glory of his reception at The Hague, where the English fleet was sent to convey their sovereign home to London. According to Pepys, who was among those who made the voyage, the very first thing the English ambassadors did upon debarking in Holland on May 14, 1660, was to pay their respects to the royal family by making a special trip “to kiss the Queen of Bohemia’s hands.” Three days later, Pepys himself was part of another entourage who met the queen, “who used us very respectfully; her hand we all kissed. She seems a very debonaire, but plain lady,” he commented. (He meant her dress, which reflected her poverty, not her face. Pepys was merciless in his judgments of the clothing worn by others, especially his superiors, as reflecting their relative standing at court. Thus the Winter Queen’s insistence upon keeping her jewels.) On May 24, the day of Charles’s departure for England, she came aboard ship to see him off and “dined in a great deal of state, the Royal company by themselves in the coach, which was a blessed sight to see.” By September, in yet another sign of favor, Parliament voted to restore her annual allowance of £10,000, along with those for Charles’s sisters.
But the good news was tempered as always by tragedy. Also in September 1660 came word that her nephew Henry, the little boy who had sat sobbing on Charles I’s knee the day before his execution and bravely promised he would not be made king before his brothers, had died of smallpox at the age of twenty. He was followed to the grave on Christmas Eve of the same year by his sister Mary, princess of Orange, who had accompanied Charles II to England and who fell victim to the same disease. The Winter Queen, who had been almost a second mother to Mary, felt her loss keenly and wept over her orphaned son, ten-year-old William III, prince of Orange, who had been left at The Hague with his grandmother, Amelia de Solms. Then too, after the jubilation of Charles’s restoration, The Hague seemed lonely and provincial. “This place is very dull now, for there is very little company,” the queen of Bohemia lamented in a letter of February 15, 1661. Rupert, who had been recalled by Charles II to England, visited her at this time and confirmed her low spirits. “I found the poor woman very much dejected,” he confided to a friend.
And so, after forty years of residence, the Winter Queen decided to leave her adopted homeland, this time for good. Karl Ludwig again reluctantly invited her to Heidelberg, thinking that in this way he might at least rid himself of the unwanted Charlotte, who was continuing to hang around. “When your Majesty is here, it will be but one family; for nobody will dare to contest against anything that shall be for your service and convenience: and if any trouble should have been that way, those that would control might in better manners [Charlotte] quit the house to your Majesty than you to them; which myself would not have refused,” he assured her. But when he discovered that his mother had no intention of taking on his marital problems but instead wanted him to make ready a separate residence for her in Frankenthal, which was hers legitimately through her dowry, he went to great lengths to dissuade her. “Sure your Majesty hath forgot in what condition the house of Frankenthal is in, when you were pleased to write of preparing it for you,” he exclaimed in mock consternation. “For no preparation would have made that fit for your living in it, but a whole new building, which to do on a sudden, or in a few years, my purse was never yet in a condition for it… As for the accidents fallen out in my domestic affairs, it is likely they had not happened if your Majesty had been present,” he added loftily if somewhat hypocritically.
She was saved by the ever loyal Lord Craven, whose fortune and estates had been returned to him with the restoration of the monarchy. It was he who insisted that she come to live with him in London, pointing out that she stood a much better chance of securing the funds necessary to pay off her Dutch creditors if she were around to lobby Parliament personally for the money, an argument that made so much sense that the States General not only let her go but made available one of their own ships to transport her.
By the middle of May 1661, all was in readiness. Sophia, accompanied by her two inseparable dukes, was at Rotterdam to see her mother off when a letter arrived from Charles II requesting that she not sail for England. He knew very well that as a member of the royal family, his aunt deserved an income and to live in the royal apartments at Whitehall, and he did not want the expense. This ungenerous communication the queen of Bohemia, who was coming as Lord Craven’s guest and not her nephew’s, happily chose to ignore, noting to Rupert in a letter of May 19 that she “was already shipped, and had taken farewell of all at the Hague, public and private,” and that if she didn’t go she “would be supposed disaffected to the King, which would make me despised in all places… I go, I thank God He has given me courage. I shall not do as a poor niece, but will resolve all misfortunes.”
Her calculated risk paid off: she was at Lord Craven’s house in Drury Lane by May 24 and was allowed to remain, Charles II bowing to the inevitable and settling an annuity of £12,000 on her. In fact, he was fond of his aunt, and took her to the opera on July 2 as a mark of favor, which settled any lingering doubts among the court as to her being welcome. “I am glad your Majesty has so much reason to be satisfied with the King your nephew, which must be still more pleasant to him,” Sophia wrote in a letter of August 14, 1661, in response to her mother’s description of these events.
And now, at last, the queen of Bohemia was happy, back in the bustling, longed-for city that she had left half a century before as a vulnerable young bride still mourning the death of her beloved older brother Henry. The annuity bestowed by Charles II was sufficient to allow her a degree of financial independence, and she made plans to lease a house in town from the earl of Leicester at the beginning of the year so as not to impose too long on Lord Craven’s hospitality. She even wrote to Princess Elizabeth, whom she had not seen in years, inviting her to come to London to share the new house with her. Although her eldest daughter did not take her up on this kind offer, Rupert, her favorite son—she signed her letters to him “I love you ever, my dear Rupert”—had pledged himself to Charles II’s service and was expected in London by the end of the year, so she would not be completely bereft of family.
He only just made it in time. On January 29, 1662, the Winter Queen moved into her new quarters and soon afterward began coughing up blood. Charles sent his own doctors and belatedly offered an establishment within the royal palace of Whitehall, but it was too late. She was too ill to be moved. He and Rupert were with her at the end; she made her son executor of her will and made her nephew promise to send the annuity he had assigned her to her Dutch creditors and continue it until the debt was paid in full. She died early in the morning of February 13, 1662, at the age of sixty-five, one day shy of what would have been her forty-ninth wedding anniversary.
Although the court went into mourning, to many of those surrounding Charles II, who had not known her in her youth and beauty and were unfamiliar with her story, the queen of Bohemia was simply an old woman who had clung to the margins of power by virtue of her rank. “My royal tenant is departed; it seems the fates did not think it fit that I should have the honor, which indeed I never much desired, to be the landlord of a Queen,” the earl of Leicester shrugged in a letter to a friend. But this does the Winter Queen a disservice. Rather, she should be remembered for the admiration she inspired, which was captured in this poem, written in 1620 by her close friend the English ambassador Sir Henry Wotton:
On His Mistress, the Queen of Bohemia
You meaner beauties of the night,
That poorly satisfy our eyes
More by your number than your light;
You common people of the skies;
What are you when the moon shall rise?
You curious chanters of the wood,
That warble forth Dame Nature’s lays,
Thinking your passions understood
By your weak accents; what’s your praise,
When Philomel her voice shall raise?
You violets that first appear,
By your pure purple mantles known
Like the proud virgins of the year,
As if the spring were all your own;
What are you when the rose is blown?
So, when my mistress shall be seen
In form and beauty of her mind,
By virtue first, then choice, a Queen,
Tell me if she were not designed
The eclipse and glory of her kind?
She was buried in Westminster Abbey in the royal vault near her father. It was the closest she had been to him since she was sixteen.