Читать книгу The Public Life of Queen Victoria - John McGilchrist - Страница 4

Table of Contents

THE GREATEST OF THE MODERN COBURGS.

Romantic Career of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the Queen’s Uncle—his Continuous, Kind, and Fatherly Care of his Orphaned Niece—The Duchy of Coburg held by Napoleon—Sufferings of the Ducal Family—A Temptation resisted—The Tide turned—Leopold’s Popularity in England—Betrothal and Marriage to the Princess Charlotte of Wales.

PRINCE LEOPOLD OF SAXE-COBURG.

Born in the year 1790, Prince Leopold was a soldier and in the saddle when he was fifteen years of age. In 1805, that war broke out between Napoleon and Austria, in which the power of the Kaiser was so near being destroyed. The health of the Duke Francis, Leopold’s father, was fast failing him, and the tremendous sorrows and sufferings inflicted by the victorious French upon Germany, hastened the rapidity of his descent to the grave. Ernest, the eldest son, and Leopold hurriedly left Coburg to join the Russian army in Moravia. Their only other brother was already in an Austrian regiment of Hussars. Ere Leopold could flesh his sword, Austerlitz had been fought and lost, and Austria was thoroughly crippled. He returned to Coburg to witness his father’s death. The French were in possession of the town and Duchy, and when they learned that the new Duke was with their Prussian foe, they appointed a military intendant, a M. Vilain—in nature as well as in name, so Leopold afterwards recorded. The Ducal family were reduced to such straits, that they depended for their very sustenance upon the clandestine benefactions of the Governmental subordinates, surlily winked at by their French masters. The Duchess set off on a journey to Warsaw to endeavour to propitiate Napoleon; but she was permitted to proceed no farther than Berlin, as Napoleon hated such visits. She returned baffled to Coburg, which remained “une possession Française.” The Peace of Tilsit, among its other provisions, “reintegrated” Coburg; but, through the greed and treachery of Prussia, the stipulated arrangements were never fulfilled. On the ratification of the Peace, Duke Ernest came to Coburg for the first time to assume his Ducal power and dignity.

As a matter of policy, Leopold, with other German Princes, now visited Napoleon at Paris, where he was courteously received. On his return from Paris, early in 1808, he nearly died of scarlet fever. After a very tardy and painful recovery, he went, at the end of the year, to the Congress of Erfurth, to which he had been summoned by the Czar Alexander. He tried there to secure to his brother his undiminished territorial possessions, and succeeded in making such a favourable impression upon Napoleon that he would have done so, but for the impolitic excessiveness of his brother’s claims, and the apathetic manner in which the Czar supported them. The war with Russia came on, in which he eagerly desired to serve against the French; but Napoleon caused it to be known that if he did so his brother would be held responsible; so he had to abide in inglorious and detested ease. Napoleon made him tempting offers to enter his service, and would have been more incensed at his persistent refusal than he was, but for the friendly intercession of Josephine and Queen Hortense, her daughter, who were both very friendly to the young Prince.

Meanwhile he turned his eminent talents for diplomacy to good account. He persuaded Bavaria to return to his brother portions of Coburg territory which that state unjustly held, and removed the galling pain of the Bavarian flag floating over villages within four English miles of the town of Coburg itself.

THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.

In 1812 Napoleon’s frightful war with Russia broke out. Napoleon summoned the subject and enfeebled German Princes to Dresden. Duke Ernest was compelled to go, and Leopold also was cited to the gathering, but he went to Vienna, and then to Italy, to keep out of the way. It would have been now most dangerous to decline the French service, and he was determined at all costs not to enter it. “Germany,” said he, “was, at the beginning of 1812, in the lowest and most humiliating position; Austria and Prussia sunk to be auxiliaries; everybody frightened and submissive, except Spain, supported by England.” But Napoleon’s reverses in Russia soon followed, and they electrified all Germany into new courage. The Duke of Coburg posted off to Berlin to endeavour to stimulate the perplexed, vacillating, and timorous Prussian King into manly and decided action. The other brother, Ferdinand, went to Vienna on a similar errand. Leopold hied him to Munich to stir up the Crown Prince of Bavaria, afterwards King Louis. They were all moderately successful, and Leopold hastened to Kalisch, in Poland, being the first German Prince to join the Army of Liberation. He was equally honoured and gratified by being appointed a Major-General by the Czar. He was present at the hard-fought but indecisive battles of Lutzen and Bautzen. There followed an armistice, and a conference at Prague, with a view to a definite settlement. This the Prince attended. He was the only person admitted to the presence of the Emperor of Austria, and spent much of his time with the plenipotentiaries Metternich, Humboldt, Ansted, Gentz, and others. The negotiations broke off, and hostilities were resumed. At the decided defeat which the French general Vandamme sustained, shortly before the crowning victory of Leipsic, Leopold commanded all the allied cavalry, and distinguished himself the more that he was the only general in the field who knew the country. He was present, and in high command, at Leipsic, where Germany was finally freed. After the fight, the Grand Duke Constantine accompanied him to Coburg, visiting the relatives of the wife from whom he was now separated, and who lived and died in retirement in Switzerland. Amongst others they visited the future Duchess of Kent, then Princess of Leiningen, her first husband being still alive. Shortly afterwards Constantine and Leopold rejoined the army in Switzerland, where Leopold tried hard, but ineffectually, to effect a reconciliation between his sister and her husband. Leopold subsequently entered Paris at the head of the cavalry; his eldest brother procured the evacuation of Mayence by its French garrison. The three brothers all met in Paris, from which Leopold proceeded, in the suite of the Czar, to the great triumphant gathering of the Allied Sovereigns in London. Now for the first time he met his future bride, the Princess Charlotte, only child of the Prince Regent, and heir to the throne. His splendid continental career already propitiated her, as it did all the British people, in his favour. The project of a matrimonial union between the gallant young general and the still more youthful princess was warmly taken up by the leading men in power, including Wellington, his brothers, and Castlereagh. The Prince Regent alone was opposed to the project. He was irritated by his daughter’s repugnance to the Prince of Orange, who was destined by him to be his son-in-law, and by her recent flight from Carlton House to the residence of her mother. Leopold, however, decidedly succeeded in winning the affections of the lady herself, and the nation was delighted at the project. The Dukes of York and Kent, too, warmly encouraged his suit. On his return home he found that his youngest sister had been unexpectedly left a widow, and he arranged the guardianship and pecuniary affairs of the future mother of England’s Queen. At the Congress of Vienna, whither he went to plead the cause of his brother, his amazing sagacity and tact induced the negotiators to make a very satisfactory arrangement of frontier. This he settled, to the great chagrin of Humboldt, the Prussian envoy, who, with the Prussian Court and people generally, seems to have been extremely spiteful towards the little principality, their near neighbour.

A ROYAL MARRIAGE.

Leopold was not at Waterloo—fought so near the capital of his future kingdom. He was posted in Alsace in command of an army of observation, which, of course, was never needed for action. Leopold went alone to Paris, with the leave of the Czar, still animated by the purpose of advancing his brother’s pretensions; Prussia having failed to carry out the rectifications of frontier enacted at Vienna the year before. He succeeded in this object, and hopes of the highest nature were engendered about an affair still nearer to his heart. Wellington and Castlereagh treated him with marked and significant deference. And through the kind intervention of the good-hearted and simple-minded Duke of Kent, he received from his ladye-love some pleasant tokens of continued affection and renewed pledges of staunch fidelity. He was strongly recommended to repair to England and renew and prosecute his wooing in person; but he very astutely declined, thinking it unwise to “brave” the Prince Regent. He went, instead, to Vienna, to act as groomsman at the wedding of his brother Ferdinand with the great Hungarian heiress whose love he had won; and from thence to Berlin, persistently to enforce his brother’s twice recognised and sanctioned rights. At Berlin he received a welcome invitation to England from the Regent, and a most satisfactory letter of “explanation” from Lord Castlereagh. He arrived in London in February, 1816. Castlereagh at once took him to Brighton, where the Regent was. He received his daughter’s wooer most graciously. The old queen and her three daughters posted after Leopold from London, and in a family council the marriage was definitely agreed on. The young couple were married in May, amid the joyful acclamations of the whole nation.