Daughters of the Winter Queen

by Nancy Goldstone

  Louise Hollandine

  … self-portrait at The Hague (© Sotheby’s 2017)

  16

  A Desperate Plan

  ALL THROUGH THE TUMULTUOUS PERIOD following the murder of d’Epinay, which encompassed the Peace of Westphalia and the assassination of Charles I, Louise Hollandine, alone among her sisters, exhibited no inclination to leave her mother’s court. The Hague, a center of both political and artistic activity, full of color and visitors, suited Louisa. Highly focused on developing her aesthetic, she had the freedom to spend hours sketching and painting while her mother, determined to do everything in her power to avenge her brother’s death and regain the throne of England for her nephew Charles II, entertained a steady stream of ambassadors, displaced Royalists, and other politicians. To those who frequented the Winter Queen’s court, this charming daughter, so vivacious in company and yet so serious about her work, must have represented an island of loveliness in the midst of a raging storm.

  In 1649, Sophia, who had not yet left The Hague to go to live with Karl Ludwig in Heidelberg, and who was consequently in a position to observe these events firsthand, remembered one visitor in particular who had clearly fallen under her sister’s spell: the marquis of Montrose. “Being a good general, and a man of great ability, he [Montrose] believed everything to be attainable by his courage and talent, and was certain of re-establishing the young King [Charles II] if his Majesty would appoint him Viceroy of Scotland, and after so signal a service, bestow on him the hand of my sister, Princess Louisa,” she reported. “The commission was granted by the King,” she added.

  Montrose! James Graham, the marquis of Montrose, in love with and engaged to marry Louisa! Americans have never heard of Montrose, but in Britain his name is still synonymous with the romantic ideal of true nobility. Born into a high-ranking Scottish family, gratifyingly handsome, a superb athlete and an even better general, Montrose was also a poet and statesman of no mean ability. His was a spirit that flamed bright and reached far, as these verses, penned when he was younger, attest: “He either fears his fate too much/Or his deserts are small/That dares not put it to the touch/To gain or lose it all.”

  Although a Protestant, Montrose rejected the machinations of the Presbyterian ministers in Scotland against Charles I as self-serving and dangerous. “The perpetual cause of the controversies between the prince and his subjects, is the ambitious designs of rule in great men, veiled under the specious pretext of Religion and the subjects’ Liberties, seconded with the arguments and false positions of seditious preachers,” he argued as early as 1640. “Do ye not know, when the monarchical government [the king] is shaken, the great ones [the nobles] strive for the garland with your blood and your fortunes?” he demanded in a public document addressed to the citizens of Scotland. “Whereby you gain nothing… and the kingdom fall again into the hands of ONE, who of necessity must, and for reason of state will, tyrannize over you,” he warned grimly.*

  But Montrose had done more than simply stand up to Argyll and his Presbyterian cronies (known as the Covenanters, for a document they had drafted that would force the king to accede to all of their religious demands) in fine speeches. He had sworn undying loyalty to Charles I and undertaken almost single-handedly to restore him to the throne by leading the Royalist cause in Scotland. His military exploits in this capacity were legendary. Having been declared an enemy of the state and excommunicated by Argyll, Montrose had been forced to sneak back into his own territory in the Highlands of central Scotland disguised as a servant. There, he had rendezvoused with a bedraggled troop of some 2,300 Irishmen recruited to the Royalist cause by another Scotsman. They had no artillery; three emaciated horses represented their cavalry; and those with muskets had only enough ammunition to fire a single round. As there weren’t enough clubs, pikes, and swords to outfit every soldier, nearly a third of the company would have to resort to throwing rocks when they went into battle.

  But Montrose was daring, he had surprise on his side, and he knew the surrounding area well. Moreover, the Irish were career soldiers and they were desperate. He fell with his ragtag force on the city of Perth, and although outnumbered four to one, succeeded in taking the town as well as all of the enemy’s artillery, arms, ammunition, and supplies. From there he had launched a brilliant series of attacks against Argyll’s personal lands, prompting his enraged adversary to offer a reward of 20,000 Scottish pounds for Montrose’s head. By the winter of 1645, Argyll and his clan, the Campbells, had put together two armies of sufficient strength to trap Montrose’s small regiment of men between them and crush it. But in a truly astonishing feat of military genius, Montrose, unable to move either forward or backward, chose instead to go—up. For two days he led his men, without food, in the dead of January, over the Lochaber mountains to Loch Ness, struggling through the snow and ice, then doubled back behind Argyll’s men and overwhelmed the superior Campbell force in a surprise flanking assault. An onlooker memorialized the resulting struggle in verse:

  Heard ye not! heard ye not! how that whirlwind, the Gael [Montrose];—

  To Lochaber swept down from Loch Ness to Loch Eil—

  And the Campbells, to meet them in battle-array,

  Like the billow came on,—and were broke like its spray!

  Long, long shall our war-song exult in that day…

  Though the bones of my kindred, unhonor’d unurn’d

  Mark the desolate path where the Campbells have burn’d,—

  Be it so! From that foray they never return’d!

  But after Rupert was defeated in England, and the king had given himself over to the Scottish army, Argyll insisted that Charles I order Montrose to lay down his arms and leave Scotland, and Charles had been forced to comply. Montrose, following the king’s command, had sailed to France to confer with Queen Henrietta Maria. Then came word of Charles I’s execution. Devastated, Montrose swore “before God, angels, and men, that I will dedicate the remainder of my life to avenging the death of the royal martyr, and re-establishing his son upon his father’s throne,” and wrote in a condolence letter to Charles II that “I never had passion on earth so great as that to do the King your father service.”

  This, then, was the caliber of man who knelt at Louisa’s feet in the summer of 1649 and declared his love for her. True, at thirty-eight, he was a decade older than she was, and he was not of as high a rank as her former suitor the elector of Brandenburg. But as marital consolation prizes went, the marquis of Montrose was in a class by himself.

  There was just one little thing he had to do before they could wed. He had to reprise his earlier exploits and win Scotland for Charles II.

  THE VIOLENT OVERTHROW OF a legitimate authority, such as occurred at the time of the beheading of Charles I, is almost always accompanied by a struggle for power, as various factions compete for influence over the policies of any potential successor. This was especially true in the case of Charles II, who was only eighteen when his father died and obviously in need of experienced counsel to navigate the difficult path ahead. The problem was that even among his staunchest supporters, there was intense disagreement on how to proceed in the wake of the crisis. Almost immediately, two distinct camps emerged, one originating at his mother’s court in France, the other at his aunt’s in The Hague, each with its own plan for reclaiming the English throne. In the year that followed the king’s execution, the rivalry between these two circles grew so acute that it would not be an exaggeration to characterize the conflict as in some form a contest for the young heir’s soul.

  Marquis of Montrose

  At the heart of the argument was what to do about Scotland. Argyll was still in power and in March 1649 he sent an embassy to The Hague with an offer for Charles II. If the young king would promise to uphold the covenant and thereby place himself under the authority of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, Scotland would recognize him as king and fight to return him to the throne of England. As part of this deal, Charles would also be required to “abandon
the Marquis of Montrose, as a man unworthy to come near his person, or into the society of any good men, because he is excommunicated,” explained an observer with firsthand information about the Scottish propositions.

  One of the chief advisers to Queen Henrietta Maria was another Scotsman, the duke of Hamilton, long a rival to the marquis of Montrose, and he strongly counseled both Charles II and his mother to accept Argyll’s terms. But the opposing faction, led by the queen of Bohemia, argued just as strenuously against this alliance on the grounds that it had been Argyll and his Covenanters who had treacherously handed Charles I over to Cromwell for a bribe of £100,000 after the king had surrendered to the Scottish army and so were not to be trusted or dealt with on principle. The queen of Bohemia’s faction proposed instead to send Montrose and as large a force as he could muster to Scotland, as their intelligence indicated that Argyll was very unpopular and that the opposition clans could be rallied to rise up in favor of Charles II. Indeed, an envoy, arriving later by ship, “in the name of the whole kingdom, did intreat and press Montrose, earnestly, to go to Scotland… for his presence was able to do the business, and would undoubtedly bring twenty thousand together for the King’s service; all men being weary and impatient to live any longer under that bondage [Argyll’s], pressing down their estates, their persons, and their consciences.”

  While he was with his aunt, Charles II agreed to reject Argyll’s terms and instead concurred with the plan to send Montrose to Scotland. But in June he left The Hague to go to Breda, about fifty miles south, to meet with his mother’s advisers. The queen of Bohemia, worried that, once out of her sight, the young king would vacillate, sent Montrose to Breda as well to ensure that her nephew stayed true to his former commitment. “My Lord,” she wrote to the marquis on June 24, “I have found that the Prince of Orange will again extremely press the King to grant the Commissioners’ desires, and so ruin him through your sides. I give you this warning of it, that you may be provided to hinder it… For God’s sake leave not the King as long as he is at Breda; for without question there is nothing that will be omitted to ruin you and your friends and so the King at last.” Then again on July 4, hearing that Queen Henrietta Maria’s counselors continued to induce Charles II to accept Argyll’s terms, she urged Montrose, “I do not desire you should quit Brussels while there is danger of change… I can add nothing but my wishes that you may persuade the King for his good.”*

  The Winter Queen’s strategy worked: Montrose’s presence at Breda secured the king’s commitment to the Scottish expedition. On June 22, 1649, Charles II formally commanded Montrose to raise a force and invade Scotland in his name. Knowing his aunt’s doubts, to reassure both her and his Scottish champion, the young king gave his word not to betray their trust. “Montrose: Whereas the necessity of my affairs has obliged me to renew your former trusts and commissions concerning the Kingdom of Scotland; the more to encourage you unto my service, and render you confident of my resolutions, both touching myself and you, I have thought to signify to you, that… I will not do anything that shall be prejudicial to your commission,” Charles pledged in a private letter just before leaving for France to consult with his mother personally at her court in St. Germain. Yet even with this written guarantee, the queen of Bohemia, who shared the same disparaging view of her sister-in-law as did her eldest son Karl Ludwig, fretted. “I pray God keep the King in his constancy to you and his other true friends and servants,” she affirmed to Montrose in a letter of August 4. “Till he be gone from where he is [Queen Henrietta Maria’s court at St. Germain], I shall be in pain.”

  Montrose, having received his orders, left the king’s side to begin the process of gathering an army of sufficient strength to achieve his objectives. He came back to Holland in August to confer with the Winter Queen at her hunting lodge at Rhenen (which also gave him the opportunity to visit Louisa and say good-bye), but by September he was in Hamburg and then Denmark and Sweden on a whirlwind tour of northern Europe to gain allies and purchase supplies. To encourage him and remind him of the steadfastness of his commitment, on January 12, 1650, Charles II sent Montrose the blue ribbon signifying the Order of the Garter, England’s highest chivalric honor, and reiterated his command “to proceed vigorously and effectively in your undertaking… We doubt not but all our loyal and well-affected subjects of Scotland will cordially and effectually join with you, and by that addition of strength either dispose those who are otherwise minded to make reasonable demands to us in a Treaty, or be able to force them to it by arms, in case of their obstinate refusal.”

  But the queen of Bohemia had been right to worry; these commands were all for show. For while he was with his mother, she and the duke of Hamilton had convinced Charles to ally himself with Argyll and accept the Covenanters’ terms, particularly after Argyll had offered the king not only the support of the realm but a hefty bribe of £300,000 if he agreed to sign a treaty—“otherwise, to give him no money at all,” as an English observer familiar with these proceedings noted. Although the decision was made in January, it was judged best to let Montrose go on with his mission as a way to keep the pressure on Argyll and ensure that Charles II received the best possible terms (the “reasonable demands” alluded to in his letter awarding the ribbon of the Garter) during the negotiations.

  It was an act of almost unfathomable perfidy. By April 12, 1650, when Montrose and his small force landed at the very northern tip of Scotland, the king’s acquiescence to the Covenanters’ terms was already widely known throughout the realm, and it was understood that Charles II had chosen Argyll over Montrose. Consequently, there would be no general uprising against the current government—no 20,000 Scottish troops would appear to rendezvous with the Royalist expedition. Instead, Argyll’s troops would be waiting for him. Only Montrose did not know that he and his men were walking into a trap.

  Argyll

  He might yet have succeeded—or at least held out—had the expedition gone as planned, but he had lost half his army, a thousand men, when their ships went down in a storm during the crossing. These he was forced to replace with green recruits from the island of Orkney, men who had never fought in battle before. Besides the Orkney conscripts, he had only some 500 experienced Danish and German troops, as well as fifty officers, nearly all of them friends and former comrades-in-arms, who made up his cavalry.

  Still, Argyll took no chances. He sent no less than three armies this time to destroy his rival. On April 27, the Covenant divisions ambushed Montrose and his men at the pass at Caithness, on the northern coast. Over two hundred cavalry, sent from the first army, thundered down on their prey. The Orkney recruits panicked and fled and were cut down and massacred by soldiers and guns from the other two Covenant forces. Montrose’s remaining 550 men were easily surrounded, overwhelmed, and compelled to surrender. As it became clear they were trapped, Montrose’s men convinced him to try to get away to find reinforcements. Montrose, bleeding profusely from a number of wounds, escaped into the wilderness with a pair of his officers.

  For two days they stumbled, lost, through the unfamiliar terrain. They separated to improve their chances of finding aid. His loyal companions were never heard from again and it is presumed that they perished of starvation. Montrose himself was reduced to gnawing his gloves to survive before happening upon an isolated farm, where he was given bread, milk, and a change of clothing to hide his identity. But he had a price on his head, and the next day he was spotted and given up by a laborer hoping to claim the reward (much to his disappointment, the informer ended up being paid in oatmeal). The day after he was taken, on May 1, 1650, Charles II officially signed the Treaty of Breda with the Scottish Covenanters. Four days later, Charles again wrote to Montrose, commanding him to lay down his arms as required by the treaty.

  But by this time, Montrose, still in his peasant clothes, bleeding and ill from his untended wounds, was in the hands of one of Argyll’s generals. In a chilling re-creation of the last journey of Christ, in this condition he
was paraded south through Scotland all the way to Edinburgh. “The 7th of May, 1650, at Lovat, he sat upon a little shelty horse, without a saddle, but a quilt of rags and straw, and pieces of ropes for stirups,” recorded an eyewitness. “His feet fastened under the horse’s belly with a tether; a bit halter for a bridle; a ragged old dark reddish plaid; a montrer cap, called magirky, on his head [to further humiliate him, a sort of Scottish crown of thorns]; a musketeer on each side… Thus conducted through the country, near Inverness… where he desired to alight, he called for a draught of water, being then in the first crisis of a high fever.” By May 18 he was outside Edinburgh, where he was transferred to an executioner’s cart in which a special chair had been installed; he was bound with rope to this mock throne, and another demeaning form of headgear, this time the hangman’s own red cap, placed on his head.

  He was condemned to the gallows, after which his body was sentenced to be quartered, yet a further humiliation, as by right of birth and honor he ought to have been beheaded; hanging and quartering was for thieves and villains. On Tuesday, May 21, 1650, he was brought to the marketplace on High Street, where a scaffold had been erected. He was allowed a last speech—“I am sorry if this manner of my end be scandalous to any good Christian here. Doth it not often happen to the righteous according to the way of the unrighteous? Doth not sometimes a just man perish in his righteousness, and a wicked man prosper in his wickedness and malice?” he asked. Then, as a final indignity, his arms were tied behind his back and he struggled up the gibbet in this awkward position, “where, having freely pardoned the executioner, he desired him that, at the uplifting of his hands, he could tumble him over, which was accordingly done by the weeping hangman…”