George’s brother Friedrich August, as the next eldest, was furious and canvassed support against his father throughout the courts of Europe. He had particular success with Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a distant cousin who saw the sons’ disaffection with the father as a wonderful opportunity to sow discord in a rival state.
One son who, despite Friedrich August’s promptings, initially stood by his father was Maximilian Wilhelm – known by the family as Max. He was born in 1666 and was six years younger than George. A portrait in the Historisches Museum in Hanover shows him sporting a red silk bow and a white lace jabot. He was a dandy who believed his parents owed him a living – his mother Sophia said he lacked ‘Geist’ (spirit).15 And when Ernst August first raised the issue of primogeniture with his sons at Christmas 1684, Max initially agreed. He was only the third son and he was placated by his father’s offer of financial compensation. He left it to his older brother Friedrich August to rail with tantrums against their parents at the injustice of his position. Max even signed the primogeniture clause in 1687. But when Friedrich August died in battle in 1690 (George’s brother Karl Philipp also died in battle that year), Max, now the second son and the one with most to lose, broke his promise in spectacular fashion.
A contemporary story claims he tried to poison his father with snuff. He certainly contacted Duke Anton Ulrich to aid him in a plot against his father. But his sister Figuelotte discovered the scheme and told their father, after which Max and two of his accomplices, the cousins Joachim and Otto Friedrich von Moltke, were arrested for treason. Sophia, distraught at the loss of two of her sons in battle and anxious not to lose another in familial strife, possibly aided Max in his machinations. Ernst August certainly suspected her of treason, and she was questioned by privy councillor Albrecht Philipp von dem Bussche.16 She wrote frenziedly to Bussche, begging him to tell her husband that she had never wished to ‘plunge the country into a bath of blood and fire’, as Ernst August claimed.17 Max, cowed into submission by his arrest and by the beheading of Otto Friedrich, finally consented officially to the primogeniture.
Max was to remain an embarrassment to George for the rest of his life. He stayed quiet until Ernst August’s death in 1698. Then, easily overcoming his grief for a father he felt betrayed by, he once again reneged on his signing of the primogeniture clause, seeking support for his position from Hanover’s foreign enemies. To Sophia and George’s dismay, his brother Christian Heinrich also turned on George. George was convinced that it was the younger Christian Heinrich who had led Max astray, but it is unclear who influenced whom. Both went into self-imposed exile, leading a desperate Sophia to seek a reconciliation between George and his brothers. Max, a gambler with an expensive lifestyle, played on George’s fears for Hanover’s position on the international stage to gain the maximum financial compensation (Sophia subsidized his already considerable income for the rest of her life). He also exploited a new development that drove the European gossips into a frenzy of speculation: the English succession.
England’s ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 had removed the Catholic Stuart monarch James II from the throne and replaced him with the joint rule of his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband and first cousin, William, Prince of Orange. When Mary died childless in 1694 her sister Anne became William’s heir presumptive. By the end of her childbearing years in 1698 Anne had endured eighteen pregnancies, most of which had resulted in miscarriages, stillbirths or infants who only lived for a few months. Only one child survived infancy – William Duke of Gloucester. In 1694 he was five years old and sickly.
Anne’s tragic childbearing history prompted a succession crisis. The English would not tolerate another Catholic monarch. The next Protestant in line to the throne – though there were over fifty more eligible Catholic candidates – was Sophia. In July 1700 the young Duke of Gloucester died of hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. His death prompted the Act of Settlement of 1701, which acknowledged Sophia and the Protestant heirs of her body as the heirs to England. This historical fluke, resulting from Anne’s misery, was to have drastic implications for George.
But the problem of Max and Christian Heinrich continued, causing further embarrassment to the family. In an act of breathtaking disloyalty, Max converted to Catholicism. The English were naturally appalled. Sophia’s succession to the English throne rested not only on her own Protestantism, but on that of the ‘heirs of her body’. Max’s conversion, as George’s sibling, put in jeopardy the prospect of the Hanoverian assumption of the English throne.
Speculation piled upon speculation. Reports spread that not only had Max converted, but Christian Heinrich too. William III was furious and demanded confirmation from Philipp Adam Eltz, a Hanoverian diplomat, as to the truth of the rumours. Eltz, embarrassed, confirmed that Max had indeed converted, but said that to the best of his knowledge Christian Heinrich remained a Protestant.
More promisingly for chances of harmony in the Hanoverian court, after the debacle of Max’s treachery of 1692 and Sophia’s possible role in its execution, husband and wife were reunited in the spring of 1693. The reason was joy. Emperor Leopold, desperate for Hanoverian troops to fight against the hegemony of Louis XIV of France, had finally agreed to confer the electoral cap on the House of Hanover. It was a long-awaited prize, and an expensive one. For the wars he undertook on the Emperor’s behalf and the palaces he built to reflect the glory of his house, Liselotte records that Ernst August paid a million thaler, an astronomical sum.
The arrival of this tiny bonnet, wrought with crimson velvet and ermine, was celebrated with a magnificent gala at the Leineschloss. Everyone at court wore new clothes and everyone attended; immediate and extended family, courtiers and mistresses. Most colourful of all was Ernst August’s mistress, Klara Platen, weighed down by the magnificence of her jewels. Although great affection still existed between Ernst August and Sophia, the love affair of the early years of their marriage was long gone.
Whilst his brothers caused havoc, the couple’s eldest son, George, was being carefully groomed as the fulfilment of his parents’ ambitions. With the establishment of primogeniture everything would rest on George’s ability to be an excellent soldier and statesman. In 1675, when he was only fifteen, he fought bravely by his father’s side in his first battle at Conzbrücke, helping to drive back the French. Ernst August wrote fondly to Sophia: ‘Your Benjamin was worthy of you, he stuck to my side through thick and thin.’18
Of all of their children George was the one most suited to military life, and he found that he excelled at it because he loved it. He was also an able scholar, fluent in French and Latin, with some Italian and Dutch. He diligently studied history and geography, the subjects that would improve him as a soldier. His diplomatic skills were honed by visits to France and to England in 1680, he sat in council meetings and enjoyed his father’s full confidence from 1688, accompanying Ernst August on several diplomatic visits to Berlin. George became intimately acquainted with his father’s ministers: with the trusted Otto Grote, President of the Chamber (and a contemporary of Melusine’s father at the university of Helmstadt); with the lawyer Ludolf Hugo, who oversaw the smooth conclusion to the issues of primogeniture and gaining of the electoral cap;19 and with Friedrich Wilhelm von Görtz, who would form part of George’s intimate circle when he became ruler of Hanover and king of Great Britain. George was already well acquainted with another of his father’s privy councillors, his former tutor, Abrecht Philipp von dem Bussche.
During George’s 1680 visit to his Stuart cousins in England the gossips chattered that, as the heir to Hanover, he was there to view the young Princess Anne as a possible bride. Sophia certainly considered it. Later speculation suggested that Anne and George’s subsequent frosty relationship was due to his rejection of her. But there was probably little foundation to the rumours. Anne and her uncle King Charles II greeted George as a cousin rather than as a potential bridegroom. Three years later the princess made a love match
with her marriage to the extremely dull Prince George of Denmark. Charles II drolly declared of her fiancé: ‘I have tried him drunk and I have tried him sober and there is nothing in him.’ But the reason a union between Princess Anne and George was not seriously pursued was that Ernst August and Sophia, and probably George too, had already decided that the only marriage he could possibly contemplate was to his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea of Celle.
In 1675 George William eventually married his mistress, with the blessing of the Holy Roman Emperor, and their daughter Sophia Dorothea’s illegitimacy was revoked. Although George William stressed again and again his promise to uphold the convention, Ernst August was alarmed at Sophia Dorothea’s engagement to August Frederick, the heir of the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. When George William eventually died, he feared, the might of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel’s army would be employed to uphold Sophia Dorothea’s birthright. Conveniently the heir was killed in battle and Ernst August and Sophia determined that Sophia Dorothea would have to marry George.
A union between the first cousins George and Sophia Dorothea had become imperative to the promotion of the state. Hanover and Celle were already acting as one, sharing a single diplomat to represent their interests.20 Sophia was obliged to overcome her distaste for Sophia Dorothea’s initial illegitimacy. She wrote avariciously of her agreement to the marriage: ‘if it is gilded with 100,000 crowns [thaler] a year in our full control we may shut our eyes to take it . . .’ By 1681 the details of the marriage contract had been decided. Sophia Dorothea, destined to become one of the most pitiful of Europe’s princesses, brought the promise of a unified Celle and Hanover, a dowry of 100,000 thaler, as well as an income of 4,000 thaler per annum to her future in-laws. She would have no financial independence; her income was to be under George’s control.21 Although George was undoubtedly attracted to his bride, Sophia noted that his desire to improve the fortunes of their house was so great that he would ‘marry a cripple’.22
The pair were married at Celle on 22 November 1682. The bride was sixteen years old, her husband twenty-two.
Unlike his bride, George had some sexual experience by the time of his marriage. An affair with his sister Figuelotte’s under-governess in 1676 produced a son, to his mother’s horror. His father was equally apoplectic, but only because he feared scandal – the girl came from a good Heidelberg family. George never acknowledged the child, as he would never formally acknowledge any of his illegitimate children. After the initial shock of George’s first sexual foray, Ernst August took it upon himself to arrange a mistress for him, urged by his own maîtresse en titre, Klara Platen. The woman was Maria Katharine von Meysenbug, Klara’s younger sister.
Ernst August had allowed Klara, who was eighteen years younger than Sophia, to become a considerable force at court. Their affair had begun in the 1670s, and although he continued to have numerous other romantic adventures, it would endure until his death. Her compliant husband, Franz Ernst von Platen, was rewarded for accommodating the affair with political office – he eventually became Hanover’s first minister in 1693.
Klara was exquisitely opulent, with a wide, generous mouth and beautiful hands. She dressed superbly, maddeningly copying Sophia’s taste to vex her. Clothes always looked better on Klara, whereas Sophia’s frame appeared too small to support the rich furs she favoured. Ambitious, scheming and hungry for wealth, which she used her position to gain, Klara was eventually accepted by Sophia as an annoying fixture.
It was typical of Klara to push her sister into George’s arms, largely to extend her own power base. Maria Katherine was five years older than George, mature enough to be exotic but young enough to have the freshness and beauty of youth. Ernst August and Klara believed she was the perfect means of controlling George. But the affair quickly fizzled out and Maria Katherine subsequently married Johann von dem Bussche, a Hanoverian army officer. George’s split from Maria Katherine frustrated Klara immensely, and from the outset she was Sophia Dorothea’s enemy.
Some historians have speculated that George’s next serious romantic attachment was to his half-sister, Sophia Charlotte von Platen. She was Klara’s daughter by Ernst August and was acknowledged and accepted by the family, even by Sophia, who liked her enormously.23 Illegitimacy was not a stigma in Hanover and illegitimate children had the right to bear their father’s arms, although crossed by the bar sinister. Whether or not they would go on to become lovers later in life, they certainly were not at the beginning of the 1680s: Sophia Charlotte was only born in 1675. But, whatever the truth, George showed her a lifelong devotion. He gave her every honour; after the death of his father this illegitimate half-sister was treated as a sister. As king of Great Britain he gave her lands, titles and income.
Despite its eventual breakdown, the early years of the marriage between George and Sophia Dorothea were relatively companionable. Sophia Dorothea’s looks were perfectly in accord with contemporary taste. She was pleasingly plump, with a pretty face, creamy skin, beautiful hands and cascades of dark curls. And although the European gossips later reported that George had found her distasteful from the start, he was initially attracted to her. Sophia, perhaps guilty of a little embellishment, wrote of the ‘grand passion’ that George had formed for his bride. But their personalities were terribly mismatched. The brothers Ernst August and George William were only concerned that the marriage of their children should elevate their house. They did not consider the consequences of uniting the serious, responsible, hardworking and occasionally dour George to a frivolous young girl. Sophia Dorothea, the doted-on, spoilt only child of parents still completely in love, was shockingly ill-prepared for life as a future duchess.
Sophia Dorothea’s in-laws went out of their way to welcome her. Sophia, although ‘maddened’ by her dizziness and often inappropriate behaviour, did her best to make herself agreeable. Liselotte wrote to Sophia on 7 August 1692, complaining of her own daughter-in-law, ‘the most disagreeable person in the world’.24 But, she continues, ‘Your Grace’s daughter-in-law is only half as bad as ours, and moreover pleasant and kind as a person, which ours certainly is not. No wonder, then, that I find it more difficult to make the effort for ours than Your Grace for hers.’25 By contrast, the notoriously lecherous Ernst August, who found her extremely attractive, sought out his niece’s company as much as possible. George’s brothers were equally entranced, with Karl Philipp playing the courtly lover and Friedrich August calling her the bellissime. Figuelotte, perhaps tired of being the only girl amongst so many men, adored her sense of fun and style. (Sophia found her new daughter-in-law so pernicious an influence on young Figuelotte that she comforted herself, when her only daughter left Hanover in October 1684 to marry Friedrich Wilhelm of Brandenburg-Prussia, that at least Sophia Dorothea could no longer turn her head with frivolities.) There were rumours that Max seriously tried to have an affair with her – Sophia Dorothea felt his advances went too far, beyond the bounds of flirtatious behaviour allowed, even encouraged in court circles – but this may have been part of the allegations of treason later brought against him.
Sophia Dorothea was pregnant by the spring of 1683; in December she gave birth to a boy, Georg August, who would eventually become George II of Great Britain. Hans Kaspar von Bothmer, first gentleman of her household, records in his memoirs how eager the princess was that George should return from campaign in time for the baby’s birth. Three years later a daughter followed, named Sophia Dorothea after her mother. She had been conceived during an Italian holiday, when Sophia Dorothea travelled with her father-in-law to see George, who had once again been on campaign with his troops in the service of the Emperor against the Turks (part of the cunning Ernst August’s jostling for the electoral cap).
If George had spent more time in Hanover then perhaps the marriage might not have broken down so quickly, if at all. But from 1688 he put himself at his father’s disposal to fight in the Palatinate war on the side of the Emperor against the French. (This war broke Liselotte’s heart,
as she saw the troops of the French royal family she had been forced to marry into break up the beloved home of her childhood.) The spoilt, fragile and bored Sophia Dorothea craved attention, and George, either at war or immersed in affairs of state, refused to satisfy what he saw as her unreasonable emotional demands.
She was still young and very immature. Her chief pleasure seems to have been trumping Countess von Platen in the fashion stakes. George had his mother as a perfect wifely role-model. Sophia was completely at one with his father regarding the promotion of their house; her behaviour, although occasionally idiosyncratic, was always exemplary; and she turned a blind eye to Ernst August’s many affairs. George’s tempestuous wife was Sophia’s antithesis. Sophia Dorothea’s lady-in-waiting, Eleonore von dem Knesebeck, tells us that the princess was unhappy a mere four years into her marriage, even before the couple’s daughter was born. Whilst George, ever conscientious, threw himself into war abroad and administration at home, domestically they plodded on without either finding a serious antidote to their miserable situation. George had no preferred mistress at the end of the 1680s and beginning of the 1690s. If he did have a mistress at all, she was too insignificant for her name to have been recorded. At this point Melusine enters the story.
4.
The Mistress
Women signify nothing unless they are the mistress of a prince or a first minister, which I would not be if I were young . . .
– Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough
Melusine arrived in Hanover in 1690 at exactly the right time. George’s marriage to Sophia Dorothea was crumbling and the primogeniture decision had created fury and suspicion within the ducal family while they were still grieving the deaths of Karl Philipp and Friedrich August on the battlefield. Within this febrile atmosphere Melusine and George met, shortly after she entered Sophia’s service. From then on, when George was in Hanover, they were constantly in one another’s company.
The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I Page 4
