Читать книгу The Public Life of Queen Victoria - John McGilchrist - Страница 3

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ANCESTRY.

Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, the Protector of Luther—Staunch Protestantism of the Queen’s Saxon Forefathers—House of Saxe-Coburg—A Saxon Desperado of the Middle Ages—A Fighting Hero of the Eighteenth Century—The Queen’s Grandmother a Woman of Extraordinary Excellence—Great Alliances in the Marriages of her Uncles and Aunts.

Queen Victoria is, through her mother, descended—and her children are descended by the double line of both their parents—from the great, good, and glorious Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony early in the sixteenth century, who was one of the first to embrace the principles of Luther’s Reformation, and whose name still stands out so nobly and brightly as the staunch and courageous protector of the great Reformer. The Ernestine branch of this great Saxon house, from which the Queen and the Prince Consort both derived their descent, have ever, though at great cost and injury to themselves at many periods of their history, remained true to the principles thus early adopted by their common ancestor; and they have ever considered it as the brightest glory of their race, that they can proudly point to this unquestionable fact. When one of the most distinguished members—if, indeed, he was not the most illustrious scion—of this family, the Queen’s maternal uncle, Leopold, King of the Belgians, made a journey into Scotland, to allay the pangs of the bereavement which he had suffered in the untimely death of his young wife, the Princess Charlotte, he paid a visit of a few days’ duration to Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. While there, an aged and reverend Scottish divine was presented to the Prince. The clergyman, in the course of the interview, made complimentary reference to this fact in the descent of the Prince. Prince Leopold, in reply, stated that this was the first notice which had been taken of the circumstance in his presence since the day of his first arrival in England, and that he felt more honoured by it than by any other tribute which had been paid to him and his family.

“A GLIMPSE OF SAXON HISTORY.”

The curious in such matters, those for whom the minute particularity of authenticated genealogical detail possesses a charm, with which the compiler of these pages acknowledges that he is himself affected, but which it would be unfair to such of his readers as do not share this taste to minister to at excessive length—such we refer to the Reverend Edward Tauerschmidt’s “Brief Historical Account of the Dukedom and Ducal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.” There they will find the full pedigree, with no link wanting, which connects Her Majesty, and equally her first cousin and spouse, by the links of twenty-five generations, with the Saxon Earl Theodoric, or Dideric, of the House of Bucizi, who is recorded to have died in the year of our Lord 982. We content ourselves with proceeding at a leap to the reign of Frederick the Benignant, Elector of Saxony, who was thirteenth in descent from Earl Theodoric, and died in 1464. In a most fascinating article which was contributed by Mr. Carlyle to the January number of the Westminster Review for the year 1855, entitled, “A Glimpse of Saxon History,” a most romantic incident of this Elector’s reign is narrated with the writer’s customary graphic power. This potentate had a “fighting captain” in his employ, by name Kunz von Kaufungen. Fighting for his master, he was captured, and being a warrior of importance, was amerced in the heavy ransom of a sum equal to 2,000 English pounds. This he paid, but expected to be indemnified by Frederick. This expectation, for some reason, was not fulfilled. Kunz, exasperated, swore to be avenged. On the 7th of July, 1455, Kunz entered the town of Altenburg, at the head of a party of thirty men. Having bribed one of the servants to treachery, they obtained admission into the Electoral castle, from which they carried off Frederick’s two sons, the Princes Ernest and Albert. The Electress soon discovered her loss, and the desperadoes had not proceeded far on their several ways (they had divided into two bands, each having one of the children), ere they were hotly pursued. Kunz himself headed that moiety of his force who bore with them Ernest, the elder boy and the more valuable hostage. The pursuers caused alarms to be rung from the village spires, and amongst others of the peasantry who were aroused, was a rough charcoal-burner, who, encountering the party of Kunz, “belaboured him with the poking-pole” which he used in his vocation, and to such effect that he vanquished the abductor, rescued the boy, and had the happiness of restoring him to the arms of his agonised mother. When asked, wonderingly and admiringly, how he dared to attack so formidable a foe, he replied to his fair and grateful querist, “Madam, I drilled him soundly with my poking-pole.” From that day he was known by no other name than the Driller—der Triller. Kunz was consigned to the block, while the Driller, and deliverer, was offered any reward he chose to name. This true man—a mediæval “Miller of the Dee”—asked no other recompense than “only liberty to cut, of scrags and waste wood, what will suffice for my charring purposes.” This was at once granted, along with the freehold of a snug farm, and an annual and ample allowance of corn from the barns of the Electors. All was secured to him and his posterity by formal deed, and his descendants to this day enjoy the privileges so valiantly earned by their ancestor four centuries ago. From the two princes so rescued, descended respectively the Ernestine and the Albertine branches of the Saxon house. The Queen is—as her husband was—twelfth in descent from the little Prince Ernest, who became the progenitor of the former line.

THE QUEEN’S SAXON ANCESTORS.

The parent stock had boasted among other meritorious or distinguished representatives the names of Conrad the Great, Otho the Rich, Henry the Illustrious, three Fredericks, dubbed respectively the Serious, the Warlike, and the Benignant; whilst, as disparaging sets-off, either demerit or misfortune was indicated, in the instance of other Electors, by these sobriquets—the Oppressed, the Degenerate, the Severe, and, strangest of all, Frederick-with-the-Wounded-Cheek. This habit of designating the successive Electors by their moral or other peculiarities, or by the incidents or accidents of their careers, was continued but for a few generations of the Ernestine branch of the bifurcated line. It contained a Magnanimous Frederick, and a Fiery Ernest, after whose death, in 1675, this pleasing plan of picturesque designation no longer meets the eye of the student.

The chivalrous protection which Frederick the Magnanimous—or the Wise, as he is sometimes also denominated—spread as a buckler over Luther and the Lutherans cost him his birthright. The bigoted Charles V. diverted, in 1547, the Electoral dignity from the Ernestine to the Albertine branch, and the fortunes of the house cannot be said to have been fully restored until the Treaty of Tilsit, in 1807, ratified as its main provisions were by that of Vienna, seven years later.

Coming down to more recent times, and to the Queen’s more immediate ancestry, we find the old spirit which these brave Saxon princes represented in the stirring mediæval and Reforming days, abundantly maintained in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and notably so on the field of battle, in the great wars with which the names of Frederick the Great, Maria Theresa, Suwarow, and Napoleon are associated. Francis Josias was twenty-second of the line, and the Queen’s great-great-grandfather. His great-grandson, the late King Leopold, says of him, that he was “much looked up to.” He was a tall and powerful man, but disfigured by having lost an eye at tennis, a game then very popular on the Continent. One of his grandsons, a Prince Frederick Josias, served with distinction in the Seven Years’ War, in one of the battles of which he was shot through the hand. He was subsequently employed in high positions by the Empress Maria Theresa, and made a great name for himself against the Turks. Suwarow and he extricated the Emperor Joseph, the son of the Empress, from utter failure, and conquered the Principalities. He afterwards fought against Dumouriez in the Netherlands, and gained the battle of Neerwinden, in 1793, near Tirlemont; “one of the greatest battles of modern history,” says his nephew, King Leopold, a most competent authority on the subject. He says that, but for the inaction of the Dutch contingent, and the insane attempt of the Duke of York to conquer Dunkirk, the allies, after this victory, which cleared the Netherlands of the French, might as easily have marched upon Paris as the forces of Wellington and Blucher did after Waterloo.

The Queen’s grandfather, suffering early in life from exceedingly bad health, was cast in a much less energetic mould, but his character was eminently benevolent and loveable, and he had a knowledge and love of the fine arts, which Prince Albert, in the highest degree of all his descendants, inherited. The Queen’s grandmother, who was of the Reuss-Ebersdorff family, was equally warm-hearted, possessed a powerful mind, and “loved her grandchildren most tenderly.” We shall have much to say of her in subsequent pages.

THE HOUSE OF SAXE-COBURG.

Of the Queen’s aunts, one, after declining many eligible offers in her own princely rank, married Count Mensdorff-Pouilly, a French emigrant of the Revolution, who entered the Austrian service, and became the father of the well-known Austrian statesman, Count Arthur Mensdorff, who was the bosom friend of Prince Albert from his earliest infancy until his untimely death. A second married the reigning Duke of Wurtemburg, and occupied for many years a very influential position in Russia, her husband being brother of the Empress Catherine (the second of that name), and maternal uncle of the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas. The third daughter of the house herself became a Russian Grand Duchess; she was wedded at the age of fifteen to the Grand Duke Constantine. The marriage was an inharmonious one, and in 1802 the young pair agreed to separate. Both husband and wife were acquitted of all blame; Leopold, the brother of the latter, attributes the sad event to “the shocking hypocrisy of the Empress-mother,” in the absence of which “things might have gone on.” The Queen’s mother, who was christened Victoire (or Victoria) Marie Louise, was the youngest of the four sisters. Besides Duke Ernest, the father of Prince Albert, the Queen had two other maternal uncles. One was Frederick George, who married a great heiress, the Hungarian Princess of Kohary. His son became the consort of Donna Maria II. of Portugal; his grandson, the present King of Portugal, is the Queen’s first cousin once removed, and the second cousin of her children. Her other uncle was the late King of the Belgians, whose career is a portion of the history of our grandfathers’, our fathers’, and our own times, and is so intimately associated with the life and fortunes of Her Majesty as to merit separate treatment in a succeeding chapter, and elsewhere incidentally in the course of our narrative.