20
A Scandal in Hanover
WHILE BOTH HER OLDER SISTERS were yet alive and were embarking on their separate careers in the Church—Princess Elizabeth to Herford, Louisa to Maubuisson—Sophia, conscious always of her good fortune in having secured a position of material comfort and safety in society, was relishing her early married life in Hanover. Even the jealousy and strife caused by Duke George William’s unwanted attentions could not mar the contentment she enjoyed with Duke Ernst Augustus and their two small sons, George Louis, the elder, and Frederick Augustus, born October 2, 1661. Even better, her husband’s prospects and income were substantially improved in December of that year when the old bishop of Osnabrück died and Ernst Augustus was named bishop in his place.
It might seem odd that a Lutheran duke would be nominated to replace a Catholic bishop, but Osnabrück was one of those territories, like Herford, that had come in for special treatment in the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War.* By the terms of the Peace of Westphalia, in an attempt at fairness, it had been agreed that Protestants and Catholics would alternate ministering to the flock of Osnabrück. Since the previous bishop had been Catholic, this meant that the Lutherans, who held the majority in the surrounding area, would now have their turn. As the bishopric, eighty-five miles west of Hanover, fell within Duke George William’s province, he decided to give it to his youngest brother, to help Ernst out with his growing family expenses. “Three days ago I arrived here… and I find myself in a very pretty house which charmed me when I first saw it,” Sophia wrote to Karl Ludwig on September 29, 1662. She was referring to an estate in Iburg, ten miles south of Osnabrück, which was included as part of the extremely generous compensation package provided by the grateful parishioners to their new bishop. “Everything that strikes the sight is magnificent: plate, furniture, liveries, guards… All these things are trifles compared with the seventy thousand thalers the bishopric gave its Bishop on his arrival,” she exulted.
The years Sophia spent at Iburg were among the happiest of her life. Finally removed from the attentions and constant presence of her husband’s elder brother, she was wealthy enough to support a life of ease and even boasted a prestigious new title: “the Bishopess.” Her duties, which involved attending church regularly, taking the lead in charitable giving, and visiting the sick and the poor, were light and certainly did not intrude greatly on her leisure time. “One cannot live more than once,” she observed to Karl Ludwig in a letter of 1663. “Why vex one’s soul, if one can eat, drink and sleep, sleep, drink and eat?… Tranquility of the spirit is lovely, since from it springs our bodily health… We play at nine-pins, breed young ducks, amuse ourselves with running at a ring or backgammon, talk every year of paying a visit to Italy; and in the meantime things go quite as well as is to be expected for a petty bishop, who is able to live in peace and, in case of war, can depend upon the help of his brothers.”*
Sophia’s easygoing, fundamentally optimistic temperament, so like her mother’s, was not the only characteristic she had inherited from the Winter Queen. She was an avid letter writer (noted for dashing off pages and pages during church sermons, a commendable time-saver, no doubt) and used her voluminous correspondence not simply to keep in touch with relatives and friends but also to promote her family’s political aims. In common with her sister Louisa, Sophia also had her mother’s mischievous sense of humor, bestowing nicknames and employing her considerable wit. A courtier upon whom she had once played a prank noted dolefully that the bishopess “was much addicted to laughing at people to their faces, only her skill in raillery was such that they never found out.” But the great trait she had received from the queen of Bohemia was her fortitude. “Ma tante [my aunt], courageous as a man, is not easily frightened,” Liselotte reported later. “I saw her once, at Klagenberg, issue coolly out of a conflagration, saving herself in a nightgown from the flames which had nearly closed round her in her sleeping chamber, and she then was far advanced in pregnancy; but she only laughed, not being the least frightened. Another time I was with her out in a carriage to which young horses had been harnessed; they of course ran away with us, the coachman thrown off and was much hurt… There was great danger, but ma tante cared not a whit.”
At first glance, Sophia’s circumstances might seem idyllic compared to that of her two older sisters. But married life, particularly within her husband’s family, presented its own challenges. She had barely been wed five years when Ernst Augustus, like his brothers, began openly to take mistresses. “The bonds of holy matrimony had not changed the Duke’s gay nature,” Sophia explained this development delicately in her memoirs. “He wearied of always possessing the same thing.” Not only that, but he expected his wife to facilitate his and his brothers’ infidelities. To this end, in 1664 he invited her to come with him to Italy, where he had a mistress waiting for him in Rome, so that she could respectably bring along two young, very attractive women as ladies-in-waiting to keep his brothers happy.
Sophia dutifully left her children at Heidelberg with Karl Ludwig and started out for Italy on April 24 with one of the ladies in tow (the other went to Holland, where Duke George William followed her) for what would turn out to be a year’s absence. Although she enjoyed sightseeing, the bishopess was not quite so enamored of the charms of Italy as her husband. She had a long sojourn in Venice, which did not impress her (“The Duke asked me if I did not think the town beautiful, and I did not dare to say ‘No,’ though in reality it appeared to me extremely melancholy,” she observed). When she went out in society, her husband, busy with his own pleasures, assigned her an escort to serve as his surrogate. (“As I should have been mortified to remain the only lady unattended by a cavalier in a place where it is the fashion to have one, the Duke chose for me the procurator Soranzo, a very unimportant person.”) In Rome, where she met the pope and an attempt was made to convert her, her husband left her alone every evening to go “play basset” (an Italian game) with his mistress. “I should have been very dull but for the enjoyment of walking in exquisite gardens and the diversion of cards,” she admitted. “It may be imagined how strange I, a German, felt in a country where nothing is thought of but love, and where a lady would consider herself disgraced were she without admirers. I had always learned to look on coquetry as a crime, but according to Italian morality it was esteemed as a virtue.”* When she finally left Rome to begin the journey home, in the early spring of 1665, Ernst Augustus chivalrously escorted her to the gates of the city in the company of his paramour and then left her to travel back to Germany on her own, the mistress “returning alone in the carriage with my husband” to Rome, having arranged “a party to go to the country” to which Sophia had not been invited.
The bishop of Osnabrück would have done well to forgo this last taste of the delights of Italy in order to accompany his wife home on schedule. For on March 15, 1665, the eldest of the four brothers, the duke of Celle, died unexpectedly, and Duke John Frederick, the heavyset middle brother, who had come home from Italy in time to be at his older brother’s deathbed, seized all of his property. Faced with this emergency, Ernst Augustus hurried to Hanover, where he found his brother George William (not the strongest personality) “in a state of utter consternation, the tears standing in his eyes,” Sophia reported. “My husband not only reassured him with advice, but also raised troops to support his claim.” Under the circumstances, Duke John Frederick, “reflecting that a civil war would utterly ruin the country,” backed down and ceded the duchy of Celle, by far the largest and most profitable property in the inheritance, to George William, the eldest surviving brother, contenting himself with the second-best territory, the duchy of Hanover. Ernst Augustus remained bishop of Osnabrück but also received the county of Diepholz, thirty-five miles to the north, as a reward from George William for standing loyally by him in the conflict.
They patched it up that time, but thus began a period when all the carefully constructed legal contracts guaranteeing Sophia’s rights and those of her children to inherit turned out to be so many sheets of parchment that could be rewritten or superseded altogether by new compacts made with other interested parties. Such are the vagaries of lines of succession: no matter how firm the legality of the claimant or how seemingly ironclad the agreement, life has a way of interfering.
NO SOONER HAD ERNST Augustus and Sophia resolved their difficulties with John Frederick than they were confronted with a new, subtler—and ultimately more dangerous—problem. Duke George William had fallen in love.
Her name was Eléonore d’Olbreuse, and she was the lady-in-waiting he had followed to Holland when she refused to go to Italy with Sophia. Eléonore came from an undistinguished family of French Huguenots, but what she lacked in birth she more than made up for in charm. “She was grave and dignified in manner,” Sophia recalled when she first met her. “Her face was beautiful, her figure tall and commanding. She spoke little but expressed herself well.” Forty-one-year-old George William was utterly smitten with twenty-four-year-old Eléonore, but she was holding out for marriage, and this, of course, he had sworn never to do as part of the written contract by which his brother had taken his place as Sophia’s bridegroom.
To help him out, Sophia and Ernst Augustus agreed to what was known as an “anti-contract of marriage,” whereby George William gave Eléonore a monetary settlement and promised never to leave her or wed anyone else, basically recognizing her as his official mistress. “Hoping to touch the Duke, the lady began to weep, saying that, had she married a simple gentleman, she would at least have borne the title of Madame, and ended by entreating to be called Duchess of Celle,” Sophia recalled. This, however, was out of the question, as neither by birth nor lawful marriage could Eléonore claim such a prestigious title. But Duke George William, used to creative thinking when it came to affairs of the heart, came up with the ingenious solution that she should be called Madame de Harburg (after the piece of property he had settled on her). This compromise was accepted, and the legalities were concluded in November 1665. “Though it will be said that I have dispensed with standing in a church before a priest, I can feel no regret, because I am the happiest of women… The Duke has plighted his troth to me before his whole family, who also signed the contract in which he binds himself to take no wife but me,” Eléonore observed in a letter of March 14, 1666. The newly anti-married couple’s joy was enhanced on September 15, 1666, by the birth of a daughter, whom they christened Sophie Dorothea out of respect and gratitude to Sophia, who had helped make this arrangement possible.
However, the next year appeared yet a new romantic entanglement that could not be dismissed so easily—the marriage of John Frederick (now duke of Hanover) to Edward and Anna de Gonzaga’s daughter Bénédicte, on November 25, 1667. Bénédicte, as a descendant of the same family as Sophia herself, was of higher birth than her husband and was married to the duke of Hanover by a priest in a church. Since John Frederick was older than Ernst Augustus, if Bénédicte, his legitimate wife, had a son, that child would take priority over Sophia’s offspring as heir to Duke George William’s property, despite the existence of a previous contract.
Duke George William and his anti-wife, Eléonore
Thus began the race for a son. Sophia already had three—the third, Maximilian, had been born on December 13, 1666, but children died frequently in the seventeenth century, so she kept going. On October 2, 1668, she had a daughter, Sophia Charlotte, known as Figuelotte, followed on October 9, 1669, by a fourth son, Karl Philipp. Bénédicte struck back in 1671 with a daughter. Sophia retaliated with her fifth boy, Christian Henreich, on September 29. In 1672 and 1673, two more daughters were born to Bénédicte. It was clearly only a matter of time before she produced a boy. For good measure, Sophia gave birth to her sixth son, Ernst Augustus, on September 17, 1674, and held her breath.
And then nature intervened definitively in the bishopess’s favor. On December 18, 1679, the male-heir-producing contest ended abruptly when the overweight John Frederick succumbed at the age of fifty-four to the excesses of his lifestyle. (“He died as a true German should, glass in hand,” Sophia noted by way of a eulogy.) As John Frederick had failed to produce a son, all of his property went to Ernst Augustus.
Sophia was suddenly duchess of Hanover.
AND SO SHE, ERNST Augustus, and their large brood moved back to the house that Sophia and her husband had first shared with George William as newlyweds. It was much too cramped for them now, and Ernst Augustus began at once to renovate the old castle into a much grander residence. They had also to make improvements to the town to accommodate a much larger court, as many of the members of John Frederick’s government and household wished to stay on and serve the new duke of Hanover. It was in this way that Sophia made the acquaintance of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who had been in charge of John Frederick’s library and literary correspondence, among other duties. She and Ernst Augustus kind of inherited him along with the books.
Like Descartes, Leibniz is a towering figure in mathematics and philosophy, and the similarities do not end there. Both men were essentially self-taught. True, Leibniz did not get to lie in bed all morning reading; he had to get up and attend extremely mediocre classes (“At school I… should, without doubt, have made the usually slow progress,” he noted), but his father had been a professor of philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and Leibniz had gained access to his library. By his own account, while still a child, Leibniz was able to puzzle out the words from the engravings in a book of history by Livy, which he read and reread until he understood it in full. In this way, by the age of twelve, he was fluent in Latin and was well on his way to mastering Greek.
He entered the University of Leipsic intending to study history, which he loved, when (thanks to Princess Elizabeth, who had made it her mission in life to introduce her friend’s books to Berlin and the surrounding communities) he came across Descartes’s work and was immediately hooked. Although he would later have problems with many of Descartes’s conclusions, it was by these books that Leibniz first came to the study of mathematics, a field to which he had never before been exposed. Overwhelmed by the power and beauty of the subject, just as Descartes had been, and with it the potential of logic to remake philosophical thought, he instantly switched his major. But being of a more practical bent than Descartes, he also attended lectures in jurisprudence, and at the age of twenty-one, he graduated with a doctorate in law.*
He would spend the next decade in Frankfort-on-the-Main and then Paris, supporting himself as a sort of journeyman lawyer and scholar. Again like Descartes, everywhere he went, he exchanged ideas and inventions with the most accomplished scholars of the period, who were in turn impressed by his brilliance. “Having experienced the good fortune, wherever I came, that persons of gentility wished to make my acquaintance and enjoy my society, I have had… not so much a deficiency as a super-abundance of distinguished friends,” he reported. He visited London in 1673, met the chemist Robert Boyle, and was nominated to the Royal Society. He corresponded with Spinoza about lenses; made improvements to Pascal’s adding machine that allowed the device to multiply, divide, and perform square-root functions; and invented the binary system, which three centuries later would allow for the development of the computer. In 1677, he shared a detailed explanation of his discovery of calculus in a letter to Isaac Newton (a favor the English scientist did not return), predating the publication of Newton’s Principia by several years. “I suspect that what Newton wished to conceal respecting the method of drawing tangents, is not very different from these discoveries of my own,” Leibniz would later observe.
He had wished to stay in Paris and attach himself to the Sun King’s court, but Louis XIV failed to extend him an offer, so (again like Descartes) he had to look elsewhere. Duke John Frederick, who had heard of Leibniz when he first came out of school and who was looking to attract capable men into his service, had already asked him to come to Hanover twice over the years. In 1676, the duke made a third overture, and this time Leibniz, who had not the resources to stay on in France, accepted. Three years later John Frederick was dead and the new duke of Hanover took over as Leibniz’s employer.
Although Ernst Augustus valued Leibniz’s counsel, the duke was no intellectual; it was Sophia who impressed the philosopher. “Madam [Sophia]… is a great genius,” Leibniz observed to a correspondent. “She loves rare and extraordinary thoughts in which there is something fine, curious and paradoxical.” Sophia was equally delighted to have a friend of Leibniz’s abilities at court. She engaged him in long philosophical discussions, encouraged and supported his many projects, and employed him to tutor her daughter Figuelotte. She was more than just a patron to Leibniz; both she and Figuelotte were active participants in the development of his philosophical arguments, as Princess Elizabeth had once been with Descartes. “Monsieur Leibniz must have a very high degree of intelligence to make him such an agreeable companion,” Liselotte wrote in wonder from France after Sophia had praised the philosopher to her niece. “It is seldom that scholars are clean and do not smell bad, and that they have a sense of humor.”*
One of the most important projects Sophia worked on with Leibniz was the plan to unify Catholics and Protestants based on fundamental Christian principles to which all could agree. It was this progressive undertaking that led to the correspondence with Louisa and Madame de Brinon. “I do not concern myself… with those sectarian controversies which distinguish Luther or Calvin from the Pope,” Leibniz explained to Sophia, who heartily concurred with these ideas. “I only want to speak at present of the essential truths of religion and piety, disfigured in an appalling manner by the sectarian spirit of those inclined to condemnation, which goes as far as to pervert the idea of God.” But Sophia’s interests were by no means limited to matters of the spirit. She also encouraged Leibniz’s quest to construct a universal language based on mathematical principles that could be used to express abstract philosophical thought, and helped him research a massive genealogy of her husband’s ancestors, a study in which Ernst Augustus was deeply interested.
Leibniz
But there was one project of her husband’s of which Leibniz approved that Sophia actively opposed, and this was to mandate the law of primogeniture. It was Ernst Augustus’s ambition to elevate the dignity of his line by convincing the emperor to expand the number of German electors from eight to nine and then award the prestigious ninth electorship to Hanover. To do this, it would be necessary to consolidate all of the family property into one hand in perpetuity, which in turn meant altering the rules of family inheritance. So, whereas formerly the duke of Hanover had divided up his property among his male heirs, Ernst Augustus now proposed to cut out all of his younger sons from his will and instead leave his entire estate to George Louis, who would then become elector after his father’s death.
Ernst Augustus
As laudable as such an ambition might appear, it was not perhaps the optimal arrangement for a man who had brought six sons into the world. Turmoil ensued. All five of George Louis’s younger brothers, as they grew up and came of age, protested vociferously, and when they refused to sign the necessary papers, Ernst Augustus withdrew all monetary support and threw them out of the house. In retaliation, they plotted against him. “I cry about it all night long; for one child is as dear to me as another,” Sophia wrote. “I am the mother of them all, and I grieve most for those who are unhappy.”
But there was nothing she could do about it, as Sophia had long since lost all influence with her husband. Once they moved to Hanover, Ernst Augustus no longer had time to visit Italy as often as he had in the past, so he married his mistress to one of his underlings, the obliging Monsieur Platen, and installed her at his home court, which was so much more convenient. Madame Platen had a nicer château than Sophia, more expensive jewels, and flashier gowns. She entertained lavishly, maintained spies among the household servants to keep her informed, and exercised vigilance in keeping Ernst Augustus’s attentions from wandering. Sophia was afforded the pretense of respect as the legitimate duchess, but it was Madame Platen’s court. Although Sophia cannot have liked this situation, she did not complain but simply spent more and more time alone at her private estate of Herrenhausen, a beautiful old château just outside Hanover, where she designed a series of magnificent gardens.
Alas, having to deal with her husband’s overweening mistress was by no means the worst of Sophia’s problems. That distinction was reserved for Duke George William’s anti-married companion, Eléonore d’Olbreuse.
IN THE YEARS FOLLOWING her contractual agreement with George William, Eléonore too had tried—and failed—to produce a son. She did give birth to several daughters but they all died in infancy except her firstborn, Sophie Dorothea. Thus, Sophie Dorothea, a pretty little girl, grew up the only child of two doting parents.
Although in the beginning Eléonore had accepted the compromise title of Madame de Harburg, over the years she had begun to resent it, and it soon became the fondest desire of her heart that she and her daughter be legitimized. She knew that she could coax the aging Duke George William, who adored her and had remained true to her, to support her in this ambition; it was simply a matter of finding the right strategy.
And then Louis XIV embarked on his military campaign to annex large portions of Germany and the Netherlands. There was a rush to claim allies, and Eléonore realized that the Sun King had provided exactly the ammunition she needed. George William was a loyal supporter of the emperor; certainly the troops and money he had raised in defense of imperial property was worth the small favor of a decree of legitimacy. The emperor—it was a new one by this time, Leopold, who knew nothing about the complicated inheritance arrangements between Ernst Augustus and his elder brother—presented with this remarkably easy and inexpensive way to reward a valued ally, issued the desired edict, allowing George William to “enter into Christian matrimony with the high-born lady Eléonore de Harburg.” Eléonore now styled herself duchess of Celle, which put her on the same footing as her sister-in-law.
Sophia’s ire when she discovered she had been outmaneuvered in this way was very great. “The Duke of Celle would no longer listen to reason, as he was completely in the leading-strings of his wife… who daily embittered him more and more against us,” she reported grimly in her memoirs. “When this fine marriage between the Duke of Celle and Madame de Harburg became known, those who had formerly esteemed the Duke refused to believe it,” she fumed. “The Duchess of Orléans [Liselotte] wrote that she could not refrain from telling me that Madame de Harburg had written to tell friends in France that she was married to the Duke of Celle and hoped soon to present him with an heir. The Duchess of Orléans added that, though she knew this to be untrue, still she thought it only right to inform me, so that I might put a stop to reports so damaging to the Duke of Celle; for if this prince had ever meditated committing such a piece of folly, she was sure he would give up the idea could he hear the derision which it excited at the French Court.” But of course Sophia could not shut down these rumors, as they were true. She had now to worry not only that Eléonore would produce a son who would disrupt the long-standing inheritance arrangements between Ernst Augustus and his elder brother but also that her niece Sophie Dorothea, who had been legitimatized by her parents’ marriage, would wed someone who would claim the duke of Celle’s property (promised to Sophia’s family after his death) in her name.
And all this at a time when the duchess of Hanover was doing her best to get her own children prosperously settled in life. Toward that end, she sent her eldest son, twenty-year-old George Louis, to England in December of 1680 as a possible suitor to Princess Anne, the duke of York’s younger daughter. Rupert, who was still alive, acted as sponsor to his nephew and took it upon himself to arrange the match. Consequently, Sophia’s son was warmly received at court by Charles II. “He remembered you very well… The next day I saw the princess of York, and I saluted her by kissing her, with the consent of the King,” George Louis dutifully if somewhat unenthusiastically reported home to his mother in a letter of January 10, 1681. But the reluctant wooer had arrived just as a Catholic plot was uncovered, and he took fright at his hosts’ methods of resolving political crises. “They cut off the head of Lord Stafford yesterday, and made no more ado about it than if they had chipped off the head of a pullet,” George Louis continued, and left the kingdom as soon as he could.*
Negotiations for the match nonetheless persisted in a desultory fashion into the next year, when they were abruptly superseded by a new and pernicious threat. On the morning of September 14, 1682, a spy at the court of the duke of Celle who was loyal to Madame Platen, Ernst Augustus’s mistress, smuggled through a message that Eléonore had secretly arranged to wed Sophie Dorothea to the son of the neighboring duke of Wolfenbüttel and that the engagement was to be made public the very next day on the occasion of Sophie Dorothea’s sixteenth-birthday feast.
Madame Platen made haste to communicate this clandestine intelligence to Ernst Augustus, who at once saw the danger to his own prospects. The duke of Wolfenbüttel, a distant relation, had made it clear that he did not want his cousin Ernst Augustus’s house promoted to the powerful position of elector, and so he had allied himself with Eléonore, who was also in competition with her brother- and sister-in-law. This engagement was the result. Ernst Augustus knew how fond George William was of his only child. Eléonore would easily convince him to go back on his obligations to his younger brother in order to provide Sophie Dorothea with a substantial dowry of lands and income. Hanover’s loss would become Wolfenbüttel’s gain.
There was only one sure way to keep that property in the family, and that was to wed George Louis to Sophie Dorothea. And there was only one person Ernst Augustus knew who was clever and capable enough to achieve that goal on advantageous terms (not to mention such short notice)—his wife. He called Sophia in and told her to make the match.
This was a bitter pill for the duchess of Hanover to swallow. No imperial decree was ever going to convince Sophia that her future daughter-in-law had not been born out of wedlock, that she was being asked not only to condone but actually to negotiate the marriage of her firstborn son with the child of a deceitful woman of vastly inferior breeding and rank, a mésalliance that would expose the entire family to the amused disdain of friends and enemies alike. If it had been up to Sophia, it is highly likely she would have let the engagement with Wolfenbüttel stand, property or no property.
But it was not up to Sophia. Ernst Augustus was in charge and she was a loyal wife, so she ordered her carriage at once. The roads were in such terrible condition from a recent rainstorm that she had to drive all night to get to Celle before the birthday celebrations began. She made it to the ducal palace so early in the morning that George William was still in his dressing gown. The servant who opened the door tried to get her to wait until the household had arisen, but she brushed by him on the grounds that this was a casual family visit and surprised the duke in his bedroom. His wife, who was still asleep in the adjoining room, heard her sister-in-law’s voice and got up hurriedly to investigate. Eléonore saw at once that something was up, but she couldn’t formally receive the duchess of Hanover without dressing, an exercise that took considerable time and effort in the seventeenth century, so she had to be content with listening through the open door. Aware of this, to prevent his French wife from interfering, Sophia rifled through the many tongues in which she was fluent and chose to converse with George William in Dutch, a language that she knew Eléonore had failed to acquire. Then she offered to marry her eldest son to Sophie Dorothea.
George William was delighted. A match with George Louis was superior on every level to one with the son of the duke of Wolfenbüttel. Sophie Dorothea would have a more prestigious title if Hanover became an electorate, and whatever dowry he gave her would stay in the family. Best of all, there would be no unpleasantness between himself and his younger brother, whom he genuinely loved and was grateful to for his many years of support. Mindful of the extent of the favor being offered to his daughter, he settled a whopping annual income of 100,000 thalers on her, which sum in its entirety was to be controlled by Ernst Augustus and George Louis, a telling indication of how great was the disparity in rank between bride and groom.
It was all over before Eléonore had had time to have her hair pinned in place. She sobbed in protest, as did her daughter, who had awakened that morning expecting to announce her engagement to one man, only to be told she was marrying her first cousin, whom she had been taught by her mother to resent.* But George William, buttressed by Sophia, was adamant for once, and when the duke of Wolfenbüttel and his son arrived later that morning, they found a sullen-faced Sophie Dorothea sitting down to her celebratory birthday breakfast in the company of her family. Informed of the change of bridegroom, the rejected suitor and his parent instantly turned around and went back to Wolfenbüttel without even bothering to stay to eat.
George Louis and Sophie Dorothea were married two months later, on November 21, 1682. The groom was apparently no more enchanted with his bride than she was with him, but even at twenty-two, George Louis was a practical man. In a letter to Liselotte, Sophia wrote that her son “does not care much for the match itself, but one hundred thousand thalers a year have tempted him as they would have tempted anybody else.” On this happy note, Sophie Dorothea moved to Hanover to begin her wedded life.
Sophie Dorothea
DESPITE THE RELUCTANCE OF both of its principals, the marriage, in the beginning, at least, went pretty well (probably because George Louis, who was in charge of Hanover’s military operations, was often away soldiering). Everyone—Sophia included—treated Sophie Dorothea with kindness. Ernst Augustus made a special effort to look after his daughter-in-law, even inviting her to accompany him on one of his holidays to Italy, which he could now afford again as a result of her generous dowry. Sophie Dorothea’s position at court was made even more secure the following year on October 30, 1683, when she gave birth to a son, whom the couple named (what else) George.
With her eldest son’s future settled, Sophia was able to turn her attention to a matter in which she was deeply, passionately interested: choosing the appropriate husband for her daughter, Figuelotte. As the one girl among her mother’s many boys, Figuelotte was very close to Sophia, and above all the duchess of Hanover had ambitions to see her only daughter married well—very well. She even considered a nuptial alliance with the French royal family, emulating her niece the duchess of Orléans. Except Sophia set her sights even higher, suggesting fifteen-year-old Figuelotte as a suitable match for forty-five-year-old Louis XIV after the death of his first wife. (This was before the Sun King invaded the Palatinate and revoked the Edict of Nantes.*) But if the episode with Eléonore and Sophie Dorothea had taught the duchess of Hanover anything, it was that it behooved her to arrange an honorable and advantageous match for her daughter quickly, before something worse could be forced on her.
So she did not insist on royalty but instead arranged a marriage with the elector of Brandenburg’s eldest son (also named Frederick, like his father). Sixteen-year-old Figuelotte and twenty-seven-year-old Frederick were married in October of 1684 in a splendid ceremony in the gardens at Sophia’s estate at Herrenhausen. This union was not without political calculation—the elector of Brandenburg (still Frederick William, Louisa’s old beau) opposed expanding the number of imperial electors to include Hanover; it was hoped that his son’s marriage would change his mind. (Alas, it did not.) But Sophia did have the satisfaction of seeing Figuelotte well established as a future electress in Berlin, which was not so far away that she and her daughter weren’t able to visit each other once or twice a year.
Unfortunately, no sooner was Figuelotte’s marriage successfully launched than George Louis’s began to disintegrate. Although Sophie Dorothea gave birth on March 16, 1687, to a daughter,* by that time she and her husband were barely on speaking terms. George Louis found Sophie Dorothea carping and difficult, and instead took a shy, quiet, good-natured nineteen-year-old saddled with the impressively extravagant name of Ermengarde Melusine von Schulenburg as his official mistress. He then openly set her up in her own apartments in Hanover and proceeded to ignore his wife.
This was precisely the position that Sophia was in with Ernst Augustus and Madame Platen (now Countess Platen, her tactful husband having been promoted in the duke of Hanover’s service). But Sophia, who had had the experience of watching Charlotte, Karl Ludwig’s wife, lose everything—her home, her position, her children—simply ignored her rival and devoted her time to her many political and philosophical projects, her massive international correspondence, and her dealings with ambassadors and other visiting dignitaries. Sophie Dorothea did not have her mother-in-law’s intellectual resources or talents. Eléonore had not provided her daughter with the sort of rigorous education that Sophia had insisted on for Figuelotte. As a result, Sophie Dorothea did not care for books and had few interests outside of jewels and clothing. Her life was appallingly dull. “Here is my day,” she once wrote in a letter from Hanover. “I played cards… all afternoon. I rested a long time on my bed. I went for a walk with my women. I supped and I am going to bed.” Sophie Dorothea did not have the example of a mistress in her father’s life because her mother had been the mistress, and by the time the duke of Celle married, he was already in late middle age and was content to be monogamous. Consequently, Sophie Dorothea was so outraged and upset with George Louis that she caused scenes and made herself ill. Even Sophia felt sorry for her and confronted her son, remonstrating with him to respect his wife and pay more attention to her, but her words had little effect.
This strained atmosphere between Sophie Dorothea and George Louis, a minor annoyance at most for all but the two principals, was completely overshadowed the following year by two seminal events that jolted the court. The first was the death, in April 1688, of Frederick William, elector of Brandenburg, which promoted Figuelotte and her husband to power in Berlin and caused a change of policy much more favorable to Hanover. The second was the overthrow in December of James II, the Catholic king of England, by his Protestant son-in-law, William of Orange.
IT WAS AGAIN LOUIS XIV—or, rather, his aggressive foreign policy and persecution of the Huguenots—that was the catalyst for this unlikely coup. In the years following the Sun King’s first invasion of the Netherlands, William, prince of Orange (the baby once pictured as Erichthonius in the painting by Louise Hollandine, who had been brought up by his grandmother Amelia de Solms after Amelia had successfully vanquished William’s mother, Mary) had emerged as Louis’s foremost adversary. A stalwart warrior possessed of an almost legendary courage, William was absolutely determined to save Holland from French domination. When the Dutch had been forced to flood their own cities as a last resort against invasion, it was suggested to William that he instead sue for peace. “No,” he replied firmly. “I mean to die in the last ditch.” When Charles II had arranged, over his younger brother’s objections, to marry James’s eldest daughter, Mary, to William in 1677, Louis XIV protested strongly. “You have given your daughter to my mortal enemy,” he accused James.
Then, in 1685, Charles II died without siring a legitimate heir and was succeeded by James, who had managed to overturn the Test Act, originally passed to ensure the primacy of the Anglican religion. Suddenly, England had an openly Catholic king who was far more tolerant of religious differences than the majority of his subjects. “It is a melancholy prospect that all we of the Church of England have,” James’s younger daughter Anne, who had married the brother of the king of Denmark and remained in London, lamented to her sister, Mary, who lived at The Hague with her husband, William. “All sectaries may now do as they please. Everyone has the free exercise of their religion on purpose, no doubt to ruin us,” she sighed. It was suspected that James, who having been brought up at his mother’s court in St. Germain was very close to the French, would ally with Louis XIV and impose Catholicism on the kingdom. These fears intensified to a critical point on June 10, 1688, when James’s second wife gave birth to a son and heir,* who took precedence over James’s two reliably Anglican daughters, and Parliament realized that it might have to deal with not just one Catholic king, but two.
What happened next (fittingly for the realm that produced William Shakespeare) was a plotline straight out of King Lear. James’s two daughters, jealous of their father’s new son, participated in a conspiracy to dethrone their parent. William was surreptitiously invited by the Anglican majority to take over the English government. He accepted and set about recruiting men and arms for an invasion. James of course noticed the buildup but Mary assured him that the force was being raised for use in the Netherlands. Anne did her part by promoting rumors questioning the legitimacy of her half brother. James, a fond parent who had always treated his daughters with love and generosity, never doubted their loyalty. It was only when William’s fleet of fifty-two warships carrying an invasion force of some 15,000 men landed on the southwest shore of England on November 4, 1688, and Anne and her husband left London to meet them that the king learned the truth. “God help me! My own children have forsaken me in my distress,” James cried out when he discovered the treachery. He fled to France with his wife and small son, only just barely eluding the Dutch soldiers sent to apprehend and imprison him. By Christmas, William and Mary were ensconced in London and, in a unique power-sharing arrangement, were crowned together at Westminster on April 1, 1689.
Sophia of course had been good friends with William’s mother, Mary, and had known William as a child. She had even brought Liselotte to play with him when she and her niece went to visit the queen of Bohemia at The Hague. But the duchess of Hanover had divided loyalties. Sophia also knew James and had heard the whole story of Mary’s and Anne’s betrayal from Liselotte, who met the deposed English king and his family in France. Both Sophia and Liselotte were steadfast in their belief that James’s little son was legitimate and that his daughters had behaved badly. William, who was in the process of arranging a grand European military confederacy against Louis XIV that included Holland, England, the empire, Spain, and Brandenburg, worried that Ernst Augustus might be influenced by his wife to side with France. He sent a special ambassador to the court of Hanover to try to convince the duke to join his alliance and to pass along any information the envoy thought relevant.
The ambassador was very impressed with his hosts. “This court is as splendid as any in Germany; genius and civility reign here,” he raved in his first report dated July 26, 1689. “The Duchess Sophia is a woman of incomparable spirit, kindness, cultivation, and charm.” But it didn’t take the English envoy long to ascertain that the French were doing all they could to keep Ernst Augustus and George William from joining the coalition against Louis XIV. “To show us he doth not want money, he [Ernst Augustus] bought a jewel of forty thousand crowns from a Jew of Amsterdam, or else it was a present, for by that channel the French money comes,” the ambassador observed sagely.
William knew what had to be done to persuade Ernst Augustus to engage militarily against France. He threw his support behind the duke’s campaign to have Hanover raised to an electorate. On the strength of his promise, the duchies of Hanover and Celle joined in the alliance led by England. It took a little time, but the emperor, who relied strongly on William’s troops and expertise in the field (and who no longer had to worry about opposition from the elector of Brandenburg), allowed himself to be convinced, although he exacted a stiff price. Ernst Augustus and George William together had to pay 500,000 thalers a year and supply 9,000 soldiers to the imperial armies. But it was worth it to the duke of Hanover, who rushed to Berlin to receive the messenger bearing the imperial decree. On December 20, 1692, the English ambassador was able to report with relief that “a courier is come hither with the welcome news that the electoral bonnet [symbol of the office, rather like a cardinal’s hat] was given on the 9th.” Sophia, like her daughter, was now an electress, the highest-ranking title in Germany.
It was all going so well. And then a handsome young cavalry officer rode into town.
HIS NAME WAS PHILIP Christoph von Königsmarck. He was a Swedish count of good family, wealthy in his own right, with property in Sweden and an estate in Hamburg. He had been a friend of Sophia’s fourth son, Karl Philipp, who much to his mother’s distress had fallen in battle; for this reason Königsmarck was immediately accepted in Hanover and made a colonel in the guard. Engaging, well-built, brave, and an excellent dancer, the Swedish count quickly became a favorite at court. Countess Platen was so impressed that she thought to marry him to her daughter.
But Königsmarck had eyes only for Sophie Dorothea, and she for him. Theirs was a love story right out of Tolstoy. She, a young and beautiful woman, mother of two children, unhappily married to a man indifferent to her charms; he, the gallant officer used to seducing women who threw himself at her feet. It was possible in the seventeenth century for a married woman to carry on a discreet affair and get away with it, but theirs was not the sort of passion that could be kept hidden for long. Like Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky, each had been hit by a thunderbolt. He went into debt and turned down wealthy matches and promotions just to be near her; she risked everything to be alone with him.
Königsmarck
When they could not be together, which was frequently the case, they wrote almost daily, pages of love letters, seeking solace in each other’s words. One of her ladies-in-waiting and one of his sisters acted as go-betweens for this illicit correspondence. They took the precaution of writing in cipher and, feeling themselves safe from discovery, poured out their hearts. “I am in the depths of despair at finding so little opportunity of speaking to you,” he wrote. “I dare not even admire the eyes that give me life. For pity’s sake let me see you alone… Oh! How dearly it costs me to love you!” The letters left little doubt that the affair had been consummated. “Why do not the hours shut up into moments? What would I not give for twelve o’clock to strike?” he yearned. “I shall embrace tonight the loveliest of women. I shall kiss her charming mouth. I shall worship her eyes, those eyes that enslave me… I shall hold in my arms the most beautiful body in the world.” After three years of this, he urged Sophie Dorothea to leave George Louis and run away with him.
But this Sophie Dorothea did not feel they could do without money, and Königsmarck was seriously in debt, having neglected his property and career to stay by her side. As her husband controlled all of her finances, she turned instead to her father, who had always been so generous with her, and (without, of course, telling him the real reason for her request) asked him to settle an independent income or property on her. Unfortunately, George William, who was already providing 100,000 thalers a year plus helping to pay for the new electorate, was strapped for cash. Sophie Dorothea, used to having her way, vented her anger and frustration with her father in her letters to her lover. For his part, Königsmarck attributed the difficulties they had meeting to Countess Platen, who still considered him a fine match for her daughter. “My greatest grudge is against La Platen, and on her I will avenge myself, for to her I attribute all my misfortunes,” he fumed. He turned down the countess’s daughter with disdain, thereby making an enemy of the most powerful woman at court, not perhaps the ideal strategy for a man carrying on a clandestine affair with the reigning prince’s son’s wife, a treasonable offense.
Of course they were watched; of course people knew. Sophie Dorothea herself confided in Figuelotte, who in turn must have told her mother, as Sophia made it a point to bring up Königsmarck whenever she was with her daughter-in-law. Possibly she was trying to get Sophie Dorothea to confess, or was trying to find a way to determine how far the affair had gone. “The Electress talks about you every time I walk out with her… I know not whether she does it through friendship for you or because she thinks it pleases me; in either case it is the same,” Sophie Dorothea informed her lover innocently. “She praises you so highly that were she younger I should be jealous.” The count’s friends were far more blunt in their warnings. “Marshal Podevils was the first to tell me to beware of my conduct, because he knew on good authority that I was watched,” Königsmarck admitted. “Prince Ernest [Sophia’s youngest son] has told me the same thing; and he is not quite as guarded as the other, for he admitted that the conversations I had from time to time with you might draw upon me very unpleasant and serious consequences… Nothing has touched me to the quick so much as to find that our affair is in everyone’s mouth,” he concluded glumly.
But they couldn’t stop, and in his frustration, Königsmarck, while visiting Dresden in May 1694, much to the amusement of the court of Saxony, reputedly made several highly indiscreet remarks, such as that the Countess Platen “bathed in milk and then gave it away as a dole to the poor”; he also commented on the greed and general unattractiveness of George Louis’s mistress, Ermengarde. These cutting observations unfortunately found their way back to Hanover, where they made Countess Platen furious and Ermengarde cry. George Louis was so incensed that he had a violent altercation with his wife and had to be pulled off her by servants. Sophie Dorothea in turn demanded a divorce and flew to Celle. Her parents, who alone seem to have been ignorant of the affair, sent her back to her husband at the end of June, but by that time she had arranged to have Königsmarck meet her in Hanover so they could run away together, Sophie Dorothea not having the courage to leave on her own.
It was a fatal mistake. Both Sophia and George Louis were away, Ernst Augustus was sick in bed, and Countess Platen was in charge and primed for payback. A rendezvous was set for Sunday, July 1; the couple intended to finalize their plans and leave by separate routes the next morning. As soon as night had fallen, Königsmarck, disguised in old clothes and a brown cloak, slipped out of his apartments and made his way to the royal palace. He whistled outside Sophie Dorothea’s windows and was let in by the trusted lady-in-waiting. They had clearly gotten away with this many times before, but on this occasion the Countess Platen’s spies were on the lookout and informed their mistress. She in turn went to Ernst Augustus and broke the news that his daughter-in-law was at that very moment committing treason with the Swedish count he had so generously taken into his service.
The elector was too ill to confront the pair directly so he instead authorized his mistress to give the order to have Königsmarck arrested. The countess sent a company of four guardsmen armed with spears and axes and instructed them to wait outside Sophie Dorothea’s rooms all night if necessary until her lover emerged, to ensure that he did not get away. There is no eyewitness account of what occurred next, but circumstances would indicate that the guardsmen were a little overzealous in the performance of their duty. It’s likely that Königsmarck, an experienced warrior, put up a good fight and that in the struggle his captors went ahead and killed him, which definitely counts as one way of making sure that he did not escape. In any event, Königsmarck disappeared that evening and was never seen again.
That the murder had not been premeditated may be inferred by the utter ineptitude of the subsequent cover-up. Königsmarck’s absence was noted fairly quickly, and the sister who had passed letters back and forth between the lovers at once suspected foul play. Ernst Augustus was at first assiduous in avoiding any mention of Königsmarck. “I have been told his sister raves like Cassandra, and will know what is become of her brother; but at Hanover they answer, like Cain, that they are not her brother’s keeper,” an official in Saxony snickered. When just ignoring the problem proved unsuccessful, Ernst Augustus then let it be known that he had had the Swedish count’s servants interrogated and they had volunteered the information that their master “had often gone away at night without leaving any message, and remained away for days at a time, and so there was no ground for instituting inquiries.”
But what the court did do within days of the episode was search Königsmarck’s rooms and there find a trove of letters in Sophie Dorothea’s handwriting. The cipher she employed seems to have been of small protection, as it was broken quickly and copies of the decrypted correspondence distributed to Ernst Augustus, Sophia, George Louis, and her parents, the duke and duchess of Celle. At once, the focus was off the missing count and on the great crime of Sophie Dorothea’s infidelity. “They would never have believed at Celle that she was so guilty had not her letters been produced,” Leibniz reported solemnly.
All this time, Sophie Dorothea was frantic—not for herself but for her lover. He had left her rooms that fateful night and she had had no word after that as to his subsequent whereabouts. She sent a note over to his rooms the next morning when she did not hear from him as planned, but it was never acknowledged. Instead, she had been confined to her rooms by order of the elector and her children were not brought to visit her as was customary. She must have known her affair had been discovered—the complicit lady-in-waiting was soon arrested—but the court maintained its determined silence on Königsmarck’s disappearance both privately and publicly. It would be months before she came to understand that he was dead.
By that time she had been charged with desertion and on December 28, 1694, was sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of her life. She would never again see her children or her father, who, stunned at the harsh words she had for him in her letters, severed all ties with her. She was confined at a castle in the lonely village of Ahlden, about twenty miles north of Hanover. Over time, her heartbroken mother was permitted to visit. Other than that she was allowed outside only under escort and even then only to go to the local church or for a six-mile carriage ride to a bridge to the west that marked the boundaries of her small world. She spent the next thirty-two years in captivity, until finally released by death. It was observed that she sometimes wore her diamonds when she took her drive.
Thus was the crime of murder successfully shielded from prosecution by the public scandal of a princess’s infidelity. Months later, Ernst Augustus felt confident enough to issue the ingeniously disingenuous explanation through an envoy that, “as to the Question whether he [Königsmarck] was alive or dead no positive answer could be given, since after the best enquiry that could be made they were able to make no true discovery, which left a very strong suspicion that he is rather dead than living.”