APPENDICES.

APPENDIX A.

REMINISCENCES OF THE KING OF THE BELGIANS.

IN the preceding chapters little has been said of the Prince's family. The wish has been to confine this memoir to what more immediately concerned the Prince himself; and therefore, beyond the slight allusion to them in the opening chapter, no mention has been made of any members of the family except those-his father, grandmothers, and brother-with whom his own early life was naturally identified.

Yet his immediate ancestors for two, if not three generations, had been so mixed up with the stirring events which marked the close of the last and the opening of the present century, that some notice of them from one who has himself borne a prominent part in the European history of these latter times will not be out of place here. The Prince's greatgrand-uncle, the Field-marshal Prince Friedrich of Saxe-Coburg, had commanded with distinction and success in the Netherlands at the commencement of the French Revolutionary War; his father commanded a corps toward its close; while his uncle Leopold, after greatly distinguishing himself in the latter campaigns against Napoleon, has for the last four-and-thirty years, as King of Belgium, earned for himself, by the consummate ability and prudence with which he has passed through times of the greatest difficulty and danger, the character of the most sagacious as well as the most enlightened sovereign of Europe.*

In 1862, with a view to this memoir, the Queen applied to the king for some account of his recollections of the Prince and of his family; and his majesty, responding to that appeal, has related his reminiscences in the following letters. * It will be seen that this was written while the king was still alive.

Though they extend back to times long anterior to the Prince's birth, and his memoir has, therefore, properly no concern with them, yet they will be read with interest, and no apology is made for giving them almost at full length :

His wife

"My recollections," the king writes, "go as far back as the Urgrossvater, Herzog Franz Josias. He was very much looked up to. A tall, powerful man. He had lost an eye at tennis, formerly much played on the Continent. was a Princess of Schwarzburg Sondershausen. I am, however, not quite certain about it. These people I, of course, never saw. The children of this Duke Francis Josias were: Ernest Friedrich, who became the reigning duke - Prince Christian, who served in the Austrian army, but retired and lived at Coburg, where he died—and Prince Friedrich Josias, who entered the Austrian army rather young, and served in the Seven Years' War. He was shot through the hand during that war when he was colonel of the Anspach Cuirassiers. He was liked and protected by the Empress Maria Theresa, and important commands were confided to him. He made himself a great name during the Turkish campaign. The Emperor Joseph, who commanded in person a strong army in the direction of Servia, failed completely, and lost also great part of his army by sickness. Prince Friedrich commanded a comparatively small army of some 20,000 men in Moldavia and Wallachia, when he was joined by a small Russian force under Suwaroff. They beat the Grand Vizier, and conquered both principalities. For this very brilliant campaign he was made a field-marshal, and got the Grand Cordon of Maria Theresa.

"At this time the French attacked the Netherlands, where Duke Albert of Saxe Teschen* (the Prince's godfather) commanded, Heaven knows, very indifferently, and lost, with the battle of Jemappes, the whole of the Netherlands. Prince Friedrich was now sent there, and gained one of the most important battles of modern history-that of Neerwinden, near Tirlemont. Poor King Louis Philippe commanded a division there under Dumouriez. This battle forced the French to evacuate the Netherlands, and disorganized them

He was married to the Archduchess Maria Christina, daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, and built the Palace of Laeken when Governor of the Netherlands. The line of Saxe Teschen is extinct.

so much that, after the junction of the English and Dutch auxiliaries, the Allies might have marched to Paris, as was done after Waterloo. Unfortunately, the English government took it into its head to try to conquer Dunkirk, an object of very secondary importance. The Duke of York, never successful in war, was beaten by General Houchard. This discomposed matters a good deal. The Prince Friedrich was for peace, seeing the difficulties of the position; but the Austrian minister, Count Mercy d'Argenteau, opposed this rather wise idea. Things got worse, and Prince Friedrich, declining the responsibility, retired to Coburg. A Colonel Witzleben wrote recently, at my expense, a life of the fieldmarshal, which must be in your library. There was a fourth brother. I can not recollect his name now. He served in the Saxon army, and was killed, very young, in the Seven Years' War. He seems to have been romantic. There existed somewhere an inscription by him: 'Tout par amour, rien par force.' For some time one could not learn what had become of him, as he was not recognized on the field of battle. There were two sisters; the Margravine of Anspach, very handsome, but not very happy with her flighty husband, having no child; and the Duchess of Mecklenburg Schwerin, mother of all the generations of Schwerin. She lived long and much beloved. Duke Ernest Friedrich was a good-natured, easy, and well-meaning man, who must have been good-looking in his younger years. He married a Princess of Braunschveig Wolfenbuttle, who, in a great monarchy, would most certainly have played a great part, perhaps not of the mildest, like her sister Queen Ulrique of Denmark.* She ruled every thing at Coburg, and treated that little duchy as if it had been an empire. She was very generous, and in that respect did much harm, as she squandered the revenues in a dreadful manner. The duke stood very much in awe of his imperious wife. I dare not say any thing against her, having been her great favorite. The duke died in 1800, and she in 1801. The children were our dear and benevolent father, Prince Ludwig, and Princess Caroline.

"In our family," the king says in another letter, “a prominent character was my grandmother. She was of the old Brunswick stock, sister of Duke Ferdinand and of the Queen

* A third sister was married to Frederick the Great.

Ulrique of Denmark, and of the mother of Frederick William the Second. Her niece was the distinguished Duchess of Weimar, some years regent for her son, the first grand-duke. She was, in fact, too great a person for a small dukedom; but she brought into the family energy and superior qualities above the minute twaddle of these small establishments.

"My poor father, suffering comparatively early in life from bad health, was the most amiable and humane characterbenevolence itself. Stockmar was always so struck with it. His great love and knowledge of every thing connected with the fine arts was inherited by Albert. No one else in the family possessed it to the same degree.

"My beloved mother* was in every respect distinguished; warm-hearted, possessing a most powerful understanding, she loved her grandchildren most tenderly.

"Without meaning to say any thing unkind of the other branches of the Saxon family, ours was more truly intelligent and more naturally so, without affectation, or any thing pedantic about it."

Continuing in subsequent letters his account of the family, the King of the Belgians goes on to say, that in his grandfather's time, "owing to the love of display, and the generous disposition of the duchess, the affairs of the duchy had already become a good deal involved. His father

succeeded in 1800, when the events consequent on the French Revolution had driven most of the principal people of the adjacent states into emigration; and the hospitality which was extended to them under the somewhat old-fashioned management of the Ober-marshal von Wangenheim, a man much resembling George IV. in his love of display, soon exhausted the resources of the duchy. A Mons. de Kretschmann, who had a high character as an administrator, was consequently brought from Beireuth to manage the duchy matters. He certainly effected great improvements; but he also caused much trouble and agitation-not forgetting his own interests—one consequence of which was, to produce a quarrel between the duke and his uncle the field-marshal, as well as with his brother Louis, both of whom for some time refused to attend the court. All this was a source of much

She was Augusta Caroline Sophia, eldest daughter of Henry XXIV., reigning Count Reuss Ebersdorff.

vexation to the duke-the kindest and most benevolent of men-and for some years seriously affected his health."

About this time the king's eldest brother Ernest (the father of our Prince) went to Berlin, and there formed a lasting friendship with Frederick William III. and his queen. It was also in the course of the same year (1803?) that the next brother Ferdinand, "who had already for some years held honorary rank in the Austrian service, joined somewhat unwillingly Rosenberg's regiment of light horse."

Of his sisters the king says that, in 1795, the Empress Catharine, "being anxious for the marriage of the Grandduke Constantine, procured through M. de Budberg, distinguished both as a minister and a general, a visit from the three princesses of Saxe-Coburg, who were all undoubtedly very handsome. The grand-duke fancied most Julie, the youngest of the three, very pretty, but still a mere child, being only fifteen years of age.' "How strangely," the king proceeds, "do things often come to pass! If the grandduke's choice had fallen on Antoinette (the second sister), she would have suited that position wonderfully well. I know much of all this from Constantine himself. He told me that the empress-mother, looking to the two younger sons, did not wish the 'ménages' of the two elder brothers to succeed. He himself was dreadfully 'taquin;' and, 'comme surcroît de malheur,' the then Grand-duke Alexander and his wife were Aunt Julie's great friends, and supported her in the little domestic squabbles. Without the shocking hypocrisy of the empress-mother, things might have gone on. The grand-duke admired his wife extremely; and with an amiable husband, generous-hearted as she was, she would have been an excellent wife. She felt unhappy, and ended, without a formal separation, by leaving Russia in 1802. He always wished for a reconciliation, and went with me in January, 1814, to Elfenau, near Berne, but she could not bring herself to consent to this reconciliation. The consequence was, finally, a divorce much approved of by the empressmother."

The grand-duchess, however, felt painfully, the king adds, the neglect to which she was subjected for many years afterward.

Antoinette, the second sister, married, in 1798, Duke Alex