Daughters of the Winter Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  Again, it was Karl Ludwig alone among the family who had witnessed Charles’s trial and execution, and brought back a lock of the king’s hair for his mother, which she had set in a ring and wore every day to remind her of the manner of his death. Although as a German elector, he had heretofore striven to maintain friendly relations with Parliament and stay neutral in the civil war against the king, whose impetuous behavior he condemned, the barbarity of his uncle’s decapitation had torn the mask of sobriety off the Puritans’ intentions, and Karl Ludwig had fled London for The Hague, no doubt concerned for the safety of his own head. He continued to blame Queen Henrietta Maria for her role in convincing her husband to initiate a civil war over his own more sedate advice—he absolutely refused to write her a letter of condolence despite his mother’s entreaties—but he switched sides and offered his allegiance to Charles II. “Dearest brother,” eighteen-year-old Sophia wrote to Rupert on April 13, 1649, “my brother the Elector is now here, and cares no more for those cursed people in England, for he has paid his duty to the King [Charles II].”

  And so was the queen of Bohemia’s family brought together again. Even Edward penned a heartfelt condolence letter to his mother—“I should die happy if I could steep my hands in the blood of those murderers!” he fumed—and was forgiven. But this time the sorrow was lightened by hope. For by October of 1649, Karl Ludwig, for the first time in thirty years, had entered triumphantly into Heidelberg and reclaimed his birthright.

  And with the Elector Palatine’s return, the conditions of the Treaty of Westphalia became generally known, not simply to the immediate family but to their extended relations in Berlin, where Princess Henrietta Maria was still a guest. There, her aunt the dowager electress of Brandenburg, with the single-minded clarity that had allowed her to survive for so long and through so many challenges, focused in on the one clause she considered most pertinent out of the myriad terms in that complicated peace agreement: the 10,000-thaler dowry allotted to her favorite niece.

  THERE WAS NO NEED to cast around for a potential suitor. The dowager electress already had the perfect candidate in mind.

  His name was Siegmund Rakoczy. The Rakoczys were the ruling family in Transylvania, having taken over the realm after the death of Bethlen Gabor, who had been the king and queen of Bohemia’s ally against the emperor thirty years before, at the start of the war. As a second son, Siegmund’s official title was prince of Siebenbürgen but he was in line for the throne should his older brother die without heirs. Even better, he was just the right age—four years older than Henrietta—Protestant, wealthy, and in the market for a bride. The empress dowager knew that an imperial dowry of 10,000 thalers, while respectable, wasn’t sufficient in itself to draw the prince’s attention, but her niece had other attributes that might be of interest to a young man looking to marry. Taking the initiative, she played her best card and sent the prospective bridegroom a portrait of Henrietta, most likely one that had been painted for just this purpose by Gerrit van Honthorst.

  The empress dowager knew what she was about. The painting arrived and Siegmund immediately compared it to those he had already received from the other applicants for the position, most of whom were daughters of the regional nobility as depicted by local artists. Honthorst earned his stripes with this one: there was no contest. At a subsequent council meeting the prince was extremely forceful with both his family and prominent members of the ruling aristocracy about his choice of a bride. The upshot of this discussion was that an emissary was sent to Karl Ludwig (in his role as paternal head of the family) in Heidelberg in 1650 with a formal offer for Henrietta’s hand in marriage.

  Karl Ludwig, unsure of what to do and not wanting to be bothered with the tedium or expense of the negotiation, passed the emissary on to Berlin to treat with the dowager empress, and it was at this point that Henrietta evidently became aware of the machinations taking place on her behalf. “I wish your Highness could have seen the dearest niece when her name was mentioned, turning pale and the tears coming into her eyes,” the dowager electress wrote with satisfaction to Karl Ludwig, of the Transylvanian ambassador’s arrival at her court.

  But those were not tears of modesty or joy. They were of fear. It wasn’t that Henrietta didn’t want to get married. She knew it was the best choice both for her and her family. If she did not wed, she would remain a financial burden on those she loved most dearly for the rest of her life. But Transylvania! Siegmund’s hometown of Sarospatak, where she would live, was so far from Berlin that no one she or anyone else she knew had ever been there.* To marry a prince of Transylvania was equivalent to a sentence of exile. Even the dowager electress, while celebrating the fitness and generosity of Siegmund’s offer—Henrietta, she knew, would want for nothing for the rest of her life—could not help but acknowledge that the distance was not optimal (although this in no way stopped her from strongly supporting the match). “Since the conditions appear so favorable I do not hesitate to recommend it to your Highness’s best consideration, and I must say if it were not so far off it would be in my opinion an excellent thing,” she continued in her letter to Karl Ludwig.

  Shy, obedient Henrietta did her best to be brave but it is clear that she was praying that fate would somehow intervene and she would not have to go through with the marriage. “If she sacrifices herself for her relations, she feels sure they will be too kind to abandon her, should she have need of them,” Princess Elizabeth, still in Berlin, informed Karl Ludwig. “These words were accompanied with such torrents of tears that they made me pity her,” she added. Henrietta herself wrote to her eldest brother, whom she, like her younger sister Sophia, called Papa. “The highly honored Elector and gracious Herr Vater [father]… It seems rather too far away to be pleasant, and though I might have a little more money by it, I do not love myself so much that for the sake of that I would go so far from all my relations; besides I am used to doing with a little,” she pleaded.

  But the diplomatic machinery of an alliance of state had been thrown into gear, and plans for the wedding moved relentlessly forward. There was simply too much evidence in the groom’s favor to call a halt to the proceedings. Even given the need to woo by long distance, the prince could not have been more considerate. “I envy the fate of this letter, which will see your charming countenance sooner than I shall; though there are no words which would translate my feelings fully, I comfort myself that this will be the interpreter of my love,” was the note Siegmund attached to the beautiful watch set in diamonds that his ambassador presented to Henrietta as an engagement gift. And although Transylvania was too far away for anyone in the family to actually meet the prospective bridegroom themselves, they had reports from reliable witnesses as to Siegmund’s eligibility. The prince lived in his own castle, and not with his mother, and “keeps always two hundred men-at-arms and fifty gentlemen in his suite, and his household is served on vessels of silver,” Princess Elizabeth confirmed to Karl Ludwig in a letter of December 24, 1650, adding that the governor of Lusatia had personally informed her that “the marriage was spoken of and everyone considered it very advantageous and by the Silesians from the frontier he was considered the richest and most desirable match that could be found amongst the Protestants.”

  That settled it. Even the queen of Bohemia, who had been deliberately excluded from the negotiations for fear she would “not consent out of crossness,” as Princess Elizabeth put it, remembering the military aid Transylvania had brought to her husband’s struggle against the emperor, approved of her daughter’s impending marriage. There remained only the expense of the wedding, which would be held by proxy (again, it was too far for the bridegroom to make the trip to Berlin himself). Karl Ludwig was petitioned for funds many times—“Your daughter [Henrietta] says that if your Highness would give her a little something that she may appear among strangers without shame, she hopes not to be obliged to importune you any more, and she will repay it at a future time,” Princess Elizabeth implored—but in the end it was the do
wager electress of Brandenburg and her son Frederick William who bore most of the cost.

  The wedding was a three-day affair that began with a great feast on May 13, 1651. Henrietta’s wedding dress was embroidered with silver thread and lace from Holland; her train was held aloft by four maids of honor whose silver gowns were sewn from somewhat less expensive material. From her fond aunt, the bride received two silver candelabra and a hand basin, also of silver, as useful gifts with which to start her new life. Henrietta’s meager trousseau—six nightgowns, three day-dresses, a dozen undergarments, and some embroidered handkerchiefs were all her eldest sister had been able to scrape together—was happily supplemented by the proxy’s handsome gifts of jewels, golden chains, pearls, and sumptuous gowns befitting her status as the wife of one of the richest men in Transylvania. The marriage contract was signed on May 14, after which a Protestant service was performed. Finally, on May 15, the new princess of Transylvania bade a tearful farewell to her family, climbed into a coach-and-six provided by her husband, and, accompanied by a small entourage, began the long journey to Sarospatak.

  The impatient bridegroom and his family met her halfway, at Breslau. Karl Ludwig had evidently commanded her to describe the manner in which she, as his sister, was treated by her in-laws, much as James I had once demanded that his daughter Elizabeth maintain her dignity as a princess of England among her husband’s family. Henrietta hurried to set his mind at rest. “Because your Highness has bidden me to give an account of my position here I must say that both the Frau Mother and the reigning Princess [wife of Siegmund’s elder brother] have greatly caressed me… and my lord is very good to me and sees that I have nothing to complain of except being so far from all my relations,” she wrote bravely upon her arrival. “I wish I could have been so happy yesterday, that your Highness might have seen me in my Hungarian dress; I looked so pretty in it, my lord’s mother could not express how delighted she was. Yet it is not at all a splendid dress, but quite bürgerlich [bourgeois], and all the women have one like the peasants, which would not please your Highness,” she continued apologetically, striving for honesty. “But the men are very fine and mostly courteous people, amongst whom my lord is not the least well bred, as some had said and written of him. I wish my lord could be so happy as to be known to your Highness, for I feel sure you would like your brother-in-law,” she recovered hastily.

  The relief of the family upon receipt of this letter must have been very great. So, after all, they had done the right thing: Henrietta, while no doubt homesick, was nonetheless in good hands. And perhaps someday in the future Karl Ludwig would have need of an ally in Transylvania, and Henrietta and her husband, and maybe even her children, would arrive in state and be welcomed on a family visit, and they would all see each other again.

  But this was not to be. Because, as had happened the last time she had taken a long journey, fragile Henrietta Maria fell ill soon after arriving in Transylvania. But this time there was no Princess Elizabeth, who knew her well enough to take great care, to nurse her. Instead, Henrietta, no doubt trying to please her husband and his family, exerted herself to go with them when they made their annual summer excursion to the Rakoczy country palace. By the time her mother-in-law realized her mistake and brought her back to Sarospatak, Henrietta was very sick indeed. “I found no fault in him [Siegmund] but that he loves me too much,” she managed to scrawl in one of her regular reports to Karl Ludwig in August 1651. But she could not go on. “I am so weary that I can scarcely support myself upon my legs, and must beg leave to end this,” she confessed.

  Tragically, this would be her last letter home. For on September 18, 1651, twenty-five-year-old Henrietta Maria, beautiful daughter of the Winter Queen, died, most likely of a bacterial infection. Sometime between eight and nine on that sorrowful morning, far from all whom she loved, removed from every familiar face or surrounding, every affectionate word or gesture that might have brought a measure of comfort or soothed her terror, sweet, gentle Henrietta took her last breath. That she died a princess, obediently upholding the family honor, must have seemed of small moment to her anguished relations when they heard the terrible news.

  Although they were together only a few short months, her new young husband, too, had truly loved her and was overcome with grief at her passing. “I hold my life for nothing worth,” he wrote in despair in the letter announcing her death. He was evidently in earnest, for less than six months later, he too was dead—of fever compounded, it was said, by a broken heart.

  Sophia

  Karl Ludwig, Elector Palatine

  14

  Royal Sense and Sensibility

  IN THE PERIOD IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING the execution of Charles I in January 1649, while her sister Henrietta was yet alive and the negotiations for the disastrous Transylvanian marriage had barely commenced, clever eighteen-year-old Sophia, still at her mother’s court at The Hague, found herself at the center of an unaccustomed swirl of political activity. The presence of the royal fleet had lured her penniless first cousin the Prince of Wales—now, in the aftermath of his father’s death, designated King Charles II—to Holland to take advantage of his sister Mary’s and her husband, William, prince of Orange’s hospitality, and with Charles II came an entire court of some 300 dispossessed followers, as well as loyal champions who hurried to pay homage to the young monarch. Happily for Sophia, this swarm of visitors for a time also included her eldest brother, Karl Ludwig, whom she, like Henrietta, adored.

  But Karl Ludwig was eager to reclaim his property under the terms of the Treaty of Westphalia, and all of her other brothers were away. Charles II had named Rupert lord high admiral (an impressive title for a very small navy, as by this time the royal fleet was down to five seaworthy vessels) and sent him to pirate ships along the Spanish coast to capture loot for the royal treasury. Maurice, considered too experienced a warrior in these troubled times to stay home and chaperone his mother’s court, had been named vice admiral, under Rupert, and was out accompanying him on this fund-raising expedition. Edward was of course still in France living the life of a privileged married aristocrat, and Philip was by now in Italy under disgruntled contract to the Venetians. (“Unworthy pantaloons” was how he had contemptuously described his employers to his brother Rupert in a letter of the previous fall.) And so, in the summer of 1649, Sophia found herself alone at The Hague with her mother and elder sister Louisa, once again without the fond but stern protection of a male member of the family.

  In fact, Karl Ludwig had no sooner climbed on his horse and trotted out of town in the direction of Heidelberg than rumors and intrigues began swirling around the Winter Queen’s youngest daughter. The chief plot, sponsored by her mother’s close friend William, earl of Craven*—an extremely wealthy admirer upon whom the queen of Bohemia was financially dependent—involved Charles II and had been in the works even before his father’s execution. (This was the same Lord Craven who had participated in and helped fund Karl Ludwig’s one disastrous military campaign during which the youthful Rupert had been captured.) “An old Englishman [he was forty-one at the time], Lord Craven took an interest in me,” Sophia volunteered later in her memoirs. “There was an idea that I might some day marry the Prince of Wales [Charles II], who was a year my senior. My friends hoped for success, because the English desired for their prince a wife of his own religion, and at that time there were no Protestant princesses of birth superior to mine for him to choose amongst.”

  For most young women in Sophia’s position, the prospect of being wed to Charles II, by right of birth the king of England, would have been irresistible. At twenty, Charles, with his long, coal-black hair and strong, lean body, made for an extremely attractive marital candidate; he was described by a courtier who knew him as “very well made; his swarthy complexion agreed well with his large bright eyes… his figure extremely fine.” He was also exceedingly tall—just over six feet—and energetic, particularly, apparently, when it came to lovemaking, as he had already fathered two
children by two different women, out of wedlock.

  But having lived through the scandal associated with d’Epinay and watched Princess Elizabeth’s and Louisa’s various engagements fall by the wayside, Sophia had the benefit of their experience and had learned to be prudent. “My manners and behavior had been so carefully watched over by my two elder sisters that I was even more commended for conduct than for beauty,” she recalled. Shrewdly, Sophia sized Charles up as “a prince richly endowed by nature, but not sufficiently so by fortune to allow him to think of marriage.” Despite being “much courted by the English nation [the Royalists who had fled with Charles II to The Hague], who took endless trouble to please me,” Sophia also could not help but “notice other signs of weakness on the King’s part.” For example, “he and I had always been on the best of terms, as cousins and friends, and he had shown a liking for me with which I was much gratified,” she reported. “One day, however, his friends Lord Gerit and Somerset Fox, being in want of money, persuaded him to pay me compliments on the promenade. Among other things he told me that I was handsomer than Mrs. Berlo [one of the women with whom he had fathered an illegitimate child; now there’s a flattering comparison], and that he hoped to see me in England. I was surprised by this speech, and learned afterwards that Somerset Fox’s object was to induce me to ask Lord Craven for money for the King, which he meant to share with his comrade, Lord Gerit. I was highly offended; but the Queen [of Bohemia, her mother], who had noticed his Majesty’s marked attentions, was just as much delighted, and blamed me for not going to the promenade on the following evening. I made the excuse of a corn on my foot, which prevented me from walking. My real reason, however, was to avoid the King, having sense enough to know that the marriages of great kings are not made up by such means,” she concluded sagely.