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 Geo
rge 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.
Daughters of the Winter Queen Page 37
