When Dr Short had gone, Charlotte wrote to her father, thanking him for breaking the news so sensitively and asking him what she ought to do.
His answer, such as it was, came on Christmas Day, when most of the royal family was gathered at Windsor Castle. Soon after his arrival the Regent led his daughter into Princess Mary’s apartment and asked Princess Mary to follow them.
As soon as the Prince had shut the door, he began by reassuring Charlotte. There was nothing to worry about while he was alive. After his death, however, her mother might claim that ‘Willikin’ was the true heir to the throne.
Charlotte could not dismiss the idea. Her mother, she told them, had always preferred the boy to her. She had slept with him in her bed for the first few years of his life, and even after that he had always slept on a small bed in her bedroom.
The Prince took in what his daughter said and then seemed to change the subject. He asked if Charlotte had had any particular relationship with anyone when the 18th Hussars were stationed in Windsor.
Charlotte did not stop to think. Without caution, without even asking a few questions to find out how much her father knew already. She started to tell him about Charles Hesse, and as he listened sympathetically, she opened up and told him the whole story – or almost the whole story. She admitted that Hesse had ridden beside her carriage, that they had exchanged letters and presents, that she had seen him in her mother’s apartments in Kensington Palace, and even that she and Hesse had been locked in her mother’s bedroom and told to enjoy themselves.
But then, as though caution had at last caught up with her, she added, ‘God knows what would have become of me if he had not behaved with so much respect to me.’
Her father spoke in sorrow without a hint of anger. ‘My dear child, it is Providence alone that has saved you.’
It looked as though he believed her, even though he knew that the rest of the world would not. But she cannot have been telling the whole truth. By her own admission to Mercer, she still cared about her hussar because she had been ‘so intimate’ with him. Besides, judging by his subsequent record with other ladies, including royalty, Charles Hesse was not the sort of man to be respectful when locked up alone with a lady in a bedroom.
For no apparent reason, the Prince asked if the Duke of Brunswick knew about Captain Hesse.
Charlotte said no, and then added that the Duke had warned her about her mother and had said he was sure that ‘Willikin’ was her child.
As if by way of finding out who the father might be, the Prince then asked how much Charlotte knew about her mother’s lovers; the answer, surprisingly, was quite a lot. She was able to name most of the men mentioned in ‘the delicate investigation’, although the only one she felt sure about was Captain Manby.
After that the Prince brought the conversation to an end. But there was still nothing but sadness and sympathy in his voice. Charlotte, he said, had done wrong in her relationship with Hesse. She had let him down, she had let herself down and, what was worse, she had let her country down. But he had not come to reproach her. His job now was to save her.
The Prince went back to London. His bewildered daughter ate Christmas dinner with the rest of the family, and then Princess Mary led her back into her apartment to continue the kindly interrogation.
Princess Mary asked if Charlotte’s mother was in favour of her marriage to the Hereditary Prince of Orange. Charlotte said that she had not been to start with, because she hated the House of Orange, but that by the time the engagement was broken off she had learned to accept it.
The topic turned to Hesse again. Did Charlotte really not realise what her mother was up to when she organised their romance? By the implications in her questions, Princess Mary made it clear that in this at least she agreed with her brother. The Princess of Wales was making sure that, if she ever needed it, she would have enough evidence to discredit her daughter.
Charlotte went back to Cranbourne Lodge haunted by what she described as ‘a presentiment of evil’. Next day, Princess Mary, who was compiling a memorandum of all these conversations, called on her accompanied by the Queen.
This time all they wanted to know was who Charlotte thought was the father of ‘Willikin’. Charlotte’s best guess was Captain Manby, but she also said that there was just a chance that it was her father. She was too young at the time to remember for sure, but she thought there were two or three nights when her mother stayed at Carlton House after she had moved to Blackheath. The Queen and her daughter left Cranbourne Lodge even more dismayed than they had meant to make Charlotte.
Clearly Charlotte did not know about the Mrs Austin who came over regularly to Blackheath to visit ‘Willikin’, and she seems to have forgotten the findings of the two ‘investigations’. The Princess of Wales had never said that she was the mother of ‘Willikin’, or that her husband was his father. It was the Douglases who had said that she said it, and the Douglases had been proved to be perjurers. If Charlotte had only remembered that, she might just have wondered whether her father’s story was true or not.
Charlotte’s father had succeeded in frightening her. Yet at the same time she was confused by his uncharacteristic sympathy and kindness. Mercer and Earl Grey both said that they thought he was trying to make her feel insecure, so that she would be easier to manipulate when he renewed his attempts to make her marry the Hereditary Prince of Orange.
For the next few weeks, however, the Prince Regent did nothing to follow up his success. At the beginning of January he went to Brighton. Throughout the month the only time Charlotte heard from him was on her nineteenth birthday, when he sent her a note explaining that an attack of gout prevented him from attending her little party.
But Mercer and Earl Grey had worried her with their suspicions. On 17 January, when she was dining at Frogmore, she asked her uncle Frederick, the Duke of York, if he thought her father still wanted to marry her to the young Prince of Orange.
The Duke did not know, but he felt that, even if he did, she had nothing to worry about. None of the other members of her family would allow her to marry against her will. Besides, he explained, there was an important congress being held in Vienna. Many new alliances were being made. Wellington and Castlereagh could easily come back with better offers from other princes.
Charlotte thanked him politely. She knew much more about the Congress of Vienna than he realised. She had just received a letter from her other uncle Frederick, the Duke of Brunswick. In it, as in any letter to a niece, ‘the Black Duke’ reported his family news and told her that he had seen the Grand Duchess Catherine, who spoke warmly of her and sent her best wishes. But he also gave a detailed report on the progress at the Congress of Vienna. He outlined the conflicting interests, described the various proposals under discussion and listed the possible consequences of each; and he gave his own opinion on the agreements that he thought would be best for Britain. For a Princess whose own family was still treating her as a child, it was good to be reminded that the ruling families in the rest of Europe regarded her as an intelligent adult and respected her as a future queen.
On the day after her dinner at Frogmore, Charlotte received another, much less welcome, letter from Europe. It came in a package delivered secretly through Cornelia Knight. It was a letter from Prince August of Prussia, and it was accompanied by the miniature portrait and the ring that she had given to him.
Military duty, he told her, prevented him from confessing the deep feelings that she had inspired in him, and he was sending back her charming portrait because keeping it would only serve to make his sense of regret even worse.
It was as kind a way of saying goodbye as he could manage, and it may have been true. Perhaps his duty did come first. Perhaps Charlotte really had aroused feelings that the Prince had not known since his parting from Madame Récamier. If she did, he never knew them again. When he died, aged sixty-three, Prince August was still unmarried.
Charlotte wrote to Mercer. ‘If anything was further wanted
to decide the affair, this does it.’
She was surprised by how calmly Miss Knight was taking it, given that it brought ‘termination’ to one of her ‘favourite schemes’. Indeed, like Miss Knight, who returned the compliment, Charlotte was surprised and pleased by how well she was taking it herself. ‘I know I feel satisfied with myself, & that is one step, & a great one, to getting comfortable if not happy again.’
Two days later it was clear that Charlotte had already set her mind, if not her heart, on marrying Prince Leopold. At another dinner with the Duchess of York, she decided to find out if the Duchess really was as much in favour of Leopold as her aunt Sophia said she was.
Charlotte opened the conversation by asking the Duchess of York her opinion of the Prince of Orange. The Duchess did not like him; neither did she approve of the manner in which the Prince Regent had been forcing him on Charlotte. In her opinion, her father ought to invite several princes to London and let Charlotte make a choice.
Charlotte then mentioned Prince Leopold.
The Duchess ‘colored beyond anything’, and said, ‘I beg as a favour you will never let it be known you mentioned him to me, for as I happen to be nearly related to him, particularly intimate with him, like him very much, and am in constant correspondence with him, it would be directly said that I managed this match.’
Charlotte knew that she had at least two allies in the royal family. A week earlier, when it had not mattered so much, Princess Mary had abandoned her enigmatic attitude and ‘launched forth vehemently’ in praise of Leopold, partly because of his reputation as a man of the highest character, and partly because he came from a very old family. Then the Duke of York revealed himself as an ally, although, like Mercer, he advised Charlotte to keep quiet for the time being.
It was good advice. No proposal was likely to succeed with the Regent if it contradicted one of his own. But now that she had made up her mind, Charlotte did not feel inclined to wait. She persuaded Mercer that it would do no harm if ‘the Leo’, as she now called him, were to come over uninvited, and on 3 February she wrote to Mercer asking her to make it happen.
Before you named it I was hourly going to propose to you what certainly nothing could have authorised me or prompted me to have done, but our long intimacy & your kind affection for me. It was this, whether you thought you could by any means send him a hint that his presence at this moment in England would be of service to his views if they were the same as 6 months ago.
Next day, as if in justification, she wrote:
As I care for no man in the world now, I don’t see what it signifies as to my marrying one day sooner or later except for escaping the present evils that surround me. I don’t see what there is against my connecting myself with the most calm & perfect indifference to a man who, I know, has the highest & best character possible in every way, & is extremely prepossessing in his figure and appearance & who certainly did like me.
A few days later, however, the Prince Regent revealed his hand, proving not only that Mercer and the Duke of York were giving good advice but also that Mercer and Earl Grey had been justified in their suspicions after Christmas.
The Prince summoned Mercer and her father to Brighton, ostensibly to discuss their attempts to recover Charlotte’s letters from Captain Hesse. If those letters were to fall into the wrong hands, particularly her mother’s, he said, she would be ruined. He therefore appointed Lord Keith officially as his representative with instructions to interview Captain Hesse and find the letters.
After that the Prince turned abruptly to the possibility of a marriage with the Hereditary Prince of Orange. For Charlotte, he said, this was now ‘the only means of saving her reputation, getting out of her mother’s hands, and making herself quite happy’.
Mercer answered without a hint of respect. ‘It is not actually necessary to marry one man’, she said, ‘to apologise for writing love letters to another’.
The Prince said nothing. Emboldened by her own impatient impudence, Mercer went on, ‘The last time Princess Charlotte talked to me about it, she said that so far from repenting the step she had taken, she would rather continue to suffer all the restraint and privations she had these last six months than marry the Prince of Orange.’
The Prince did not seem to be convinced, or else he did not want to be. Mercer left the meeting frustrated. No matter what anyone thought or said, the Regent was clearly determined to have his own way.
Having heard from several aunts as well as Mercer that the ‘Orange match’ was on again, Charlotte wrote to her father. It was a humble and respectful letter, but it was firm. Although she accepted that she could not marry ‘as the rest of the world do’, she was not prepared to do so without ‘esteem and regard’. As a result, a marriage with the Hereditary Prince of Orange was out of the question.
Her father wrote back. Charlotte, he said, was only refusing the Prince of Orange because she had been exposed to ‘the council and advice of mischievous, false and wicked persons’. She could not afford to say no. Once her letters to Captain Hesse were exposed, she would not be in a position to marry anyone.
Charlotte sent a copy of this letter to Mercer. On 26 February, after she had received Mercer’s answer, she wrote again, ‘I remain firm & unshaken, & no arguments, no threats shall ever bend me to marry this detested Duchman. You are quite right in your letter of today that my letter had not convinced. I begin almost to despair of what will.’
On the same day, up at the castle, Charlotte read her father’s letter to the Queen. The Queen, unusually for her, burst into tears. The Queen wrote to her eldest son. Several of his brothers and sisters wrote to him as well. The Prince Regent was at bay in Brighton.
And then came the news that brought all negotiations in Brighton, Windsor, London, Vienna and anywhere else in Europe to a standstill. On 1 March Napoleon had escaped from the island of Elba. He had landed in France. His old army was rallying round him.
The Congress of Vienna broke up. The nations of Northern Europe made ready to go back to war.
Amid the anxiety on every other front, the emergency brought one relief to Charlotte. Captain Hesse came home to rejoin his regiment. Mercer and her father found and confronted him. He convinced them that all letters had been burned. The trunk that contained them was empty. With but two exceptions, every present that he had ever received from Charlotte was returned to Mercer. One exception was a turquoise ring, which he first said was still in his baggage and then said had been lost when he was wearing it round his plume in battle. The other was the watch. But Charlotte did not think that either of these was significant enough to be incriminating. The matter was at an end. The little hussar was no longer a threat.
On 14 May Mercer received a letter from Leopold. It was the answer to the one she had sent him much earlier, but it had taken a long time to reach her. It had been written in Vienna on 28 April. Leopold had little hope of going back to England now. He was about to rejoin the Russian army and take up his old command. But if Mercer could assure him that he would be welcome to the Princess, he would do all that he could to come.
Mercer wrote back. She did not dare to give him that assurance. Making suggestions was as much as she could risk. If she was caught negotiating a royal marriage, she would never be allowed to see Charlotte again.
But on 2 June, before her letter reached him, Leopold wrote another to Mercer. After thinking about it, he had decided not to risk coming to England uninvited. If he did, he might offend the Regent, and without the Regent’s goodwill, his dream could never be fulfilled.
But by then Leopold would not have been able to come to England anyway. Napoleon had assembled 125,000 men in northern France. Further north, along the border, the allies were waiting. In another two weeks they would be fully prepared for a combined invasion. Meanwhile, if Napoleon struck first, they were almost ready to receive him. The Austrians were to the east of Strasbourg, in a long line between Basle and Worms. The Russians were in the centre, north-west of Frankfo
rt. The Prussians were south-west of them, below Namur and Liege. The British, Dutch, Hanoverians and Brunswickers were to the west between Brussels and the sea.
And most of the men who had played leading parts in Charlotte’s short life were with them. Leopold was with the Russians in the centre; August was with Blücher’s Prussians; Charles Hesse, George FitzClarence, the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Brunswick were with Wellington beyond Brussels.
No matter what route Napoleon chose, at least one of them would be in harm’s way.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Waterloo
LATE IN THE afternoon of 20 June 1815 a rumour began to spread through the great London mansions of Mayfair and St James’s. Nathan Rothschild, the banker, had received a report through his many agents on the continent and had sent a messenger to the Prime Minister.
Some said he had then gone down to the Stock Exchange with an expression of deep melancholy on his face. Since everyone was sure that he would be the first to know if anything had happened to the army, the brokers feared the worst and started to sell. When prices fell, Rothschild stepped in and bought. But that, if it was true, was the only indication that the news was good.
Charlotte was by then living at Warwick House again – although not even with the same limited freedom that she had known before. The entrance had been blocked. The only way in or out of Warwick House now was through Carlton House and the courtyard that divided them.
When the rumour reached her, Charlotte asked for a message to be sent to the Colonial Office. It was addressed to Lord Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, and it asked him to send on any news to her as soon as it reached him, even if it came in the middle of the night – ‘the Princess being exceedingly anxious to receive tidings and particularly to know the fate of some of her friends.’
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