THE EARLY YEARS OF HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE CONSORT. 1819-1841. CHAPTER I. The Saxe-Coburg Family.-Birth and early Infancy of the Princes.Birth of Princess Victoria.-Letters from the Duchess of Coburg, and from the Dowager Duchesses of Coburg and of Gotha. PRINCE ALBERT was descended from the Ernestine, or elder branch of the great Saxon family. That branch had, however, lost its birthright in the course of the 16th century. Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, had been the protector of Martin Luther, and was one of the first to embrace the doctrines of the Reformed Church, of which he was the most powerful supporter. His immediate successors adhered to the same religious opinions, and after the defeat of John Frederick the Magnanimous by Charles V., at Mühlberg, in 1547, they paid the penalty of their devotion to the Protestant faith in the forced surrender of their inheritance to the younger, B or Albertine branch of the family, by the descendants of which the Saxon throne is still occupied. It is not easy to trace the arrangement by which, on losing the electorate, now the kingdom of Saxony, the Ernestine branch acquired the several duchies still possessed by its descendants. It would be still more difficult to follow out the laws of succession-the intermarriages, etc., leading to the redistribution or interchange of territory, in consequence of which these different duchies came into the possession now of this, now of that member of the family. The custom of dividing and subdividing their inheritance among their sons seems long to have prevailed with these Saxon dukes. Thus the dukedoms of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, of Saxe-Meiningen, of Saxe-Hildburghausen, and of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld were, on the death, in 1679, of Ernest the Pious, duke of Saxe-Gotha-Coburg, and great-grandson of the last elector of the Ernestine branch, John Frederick the Magnanimous, divided severally among his sons. Of these, the eldest, Frederick, inherited the duchies of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, while that of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld fell to the share of the youngest, John Ernest, the immediate ancestor of our Prince. Francis Joseph, son and successor of John Ernest, had four sons, of whom the eldest, Ernest Frederick, succeeded him as reigning duke in 1764; while the third, Frederick, having greatly distinguished himself in the Austrian service, was made a field-marshal, and commanded the allied armies in the Netherlands for some time in the beginning of the French Revolutionary war.* * An interesting notice of this generation of the family, and particu Ernest Frederick was succeeded, in 1800, by Francis Frederick, his eldest son, who died in 1806, leaving three sons and four daughters. 1. Ernest, the father of our Prince, who succeeded his father as Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, under the title of Ernest I. To this inheritance, by a family arrangement made in 1825, on the death of Frederick IV., the last male descendant of Frederick, duke of Saxe-GothaAltenburg, eldest son of Ernest the Pious above mentioned, and confirmed in November, 1826, he added the duchy of Gotha. But, in accordance with the same arrangement, he had to surrender the duchy of Saalfeld to the Duke of Meiningen-Saxe-Altenburg being, at the same time, separated from the duchy of Gotha, and given to the Duke of Hildburghausen, who assumed the former title, Hildburghausen itself being also added to the territory of the Duke of Meiningen. 2. Ferdinand George, who married the heiress of the Prince of Kohary in Hungary, and whose son became King Consort of Portugal by his marriage with Queen Donna Maria II. of that kingdom. 3. Leopold, the late King of the Belgians. Duke Francis also left four daughters. 1. Sophia, who, after refusing many eligible proposals of marriage of her own rank, married, in 1804, Count Mensdorff-Pouilly, who, emigrating from France at the Revolution, attained high rank and distinction in the Austrian service. The greatest intimacy and friendship existed in youth between her sons, all distinguished in larly of the field-marshal, will be found in Appendix A., et seqq., containing the Reminiscences of the King of the Belgians. the Austrian service, and their cousin Prince Albert,† and an interesting account of his recollections of the Prince, by Count Arthur Mensdorff, will be found in a subsequent chapter. 2. Antoinette, married, in 1798, to Duke Alexander of Würtemberg, brother to the Empress Mother of Russia (mother to the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas), who had a very influential position in Russia, and lived there for many years. 3. Julie, the third, married, at fifteen, to the late Grandduke Constantine of Russia. But this marriage was not a happy one, and in 1802 she left Russia, fixing her resi dence finally at Elfenau, near Berne, in Switzerland, where, it will be seen, the Prince, in the course of a pedestrian tour, paid her a visit in September, 1837, as he also did on several occasions afterward. 4. Victoire Marie Louise, the youngest daughter, married, first, the Prince of Leiningen; and, secondly, the Duke of Kent, as whose widow, and as the mother of our Queen, she lived for the remainder of her life in England, beloved by her family and friends, and endeared, by her many virtues and innumerable acts of kindness, to the whole British nation. Ernest I., eldest son of Duke Francis by Augusta, daughter of Prince Henry XXIV. of Reuss-Ebersdorff, was born in 1784, and, as already mentioned, succeeded * One of them, Count Alexander Mensdorff, is now [1866] Minister for Foreign Affairs at Vienna. † See Appendix A. For more detailed accounts of his sisters and family, see Reminiscences of the King of the Belgians, Appendix A. his father in 1806 as reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. The dukedom was at that time in the occupation of the French, and the new duke and other members of the family were objects of great suspicion to the French government. The reminiscences of his brother, the King of the Belgians, which will be found in Appendix A., at the end of the volume, will give a good idea of the difficulties with which Duke Ernest had, in consequence, to contend at his accession and for many years afterward; nor was it till the emancipation of Germany in 1813 from the oppressive domination so long exercised over her by Napoleon that he can be said to have come fairly into possession of his inheritance. A marriage with a Russian grand-duchess had originally been in contemplation for the young duke; but this was broken off in 1812, and in 1817 he married the Princess Louise, daughter, by his first wife, a Princess of Mecklenburg Schwerin, of Augustus,* last reigning duke but one of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. By her he had two sons, Ernest, the present reigning duke, born at the Ehrenburg, the Ducal Palace at Coburg, on the 21st of June, 1818, and Albert, the subject of the following memoir, born at the Rosenau, a charming summer residence belonging to the duke about four miles from Coburg, on the 26th of August, 1819. In a Memorandum written in 1864, the Queen gives the following account of the duchess: * He married, secondly, the Princess Caroline of Hesse Cassel, born in 1768, daughter of William, ninth Elector of Hesse, and of Wilhelmina of Denmark. She was the Duchess of Gotha so constantly mentioned in the following pages, and died February 28, 1848. |