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 righ
t, 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 an
d 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.”
Daughters of the Winter Queen Page 38
