With the aid of Mademoiselle d’Aumale, the marquise burned every letter she ever received from the king. “We will leave as little as possible about myself,” she averred. “Now I can never prove that I have been in favor with the King and that he did me the honor to write to me.”
Madame de Maintenon spent the rest of her life in seclusion at Saint-Cyr, aging gracefully and dying with scarcely a gray hair on April 15, 1719, at the age of eighty-three. Her passing went largely unremarked except by her old nemesis, Liselotte, who wrote, “I just learned that…die alte Schump ist verreckt,” employing a rude phrase one might use to describe the horrible death of an old animal.
In 1794, during the French Revolution, as Saint-Cyr was being transformed into a military hospital, workers in the chapel came across Madame de Maintenon’s tomb. Seeing the name, they broke the coffin to bits and tied a rope around the perfectly preserved corpse, intending to drag it through the courtyard to unceremoniously set it ablaze. Mercifully, the young officer in charge had a conscience and a sense of history. He tossed the vitriolic mob a fistful of coins and exhorted them to get drunk, suggesting they could burn the body the following day. While the workers were gone, a grave was dug in an obscure corner of Saint-Cyr’s garden and the mutilated corpse of the secret queen of France was relaid to rest.
But not for long. In 1805, the school became a military academy and the marquise’s remains were ordered to be exhumed and desecrated by General Duteuil, who referred to her as “the fanatic who caused the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,” erroneously ascribing far too much influence to her regarding Louis XIV’s persecution of the Protestants. Madame de Maintenon’s remains were tossed into an old packing case and shoved in a corner of the bursary, where the students, aware of its contents, over time appropriated the marquise’s bones as relics. After thirty years, all but the largest bones had disappeared.
In 1836, the academy’s commanding officer alerted the authorities to the scandal and received permission to erect a monument to la Maintenon in what had been Saint-Cyr’s chapel. During its construction, the workers fortuitously found remnants of the marquise’s original coffin and black burial gown, as well as some of the embalming spices, the heel of one shoe, and a small ebony cross. These relics were placed in an oaken coffin with the few remaining bones and buried under a black marble cross with the simple inscription, HERE LIES MADAME DE MAINTENON, with the years of her birth and death.
Unfortunately, she was not to rest peacefully. The marquise’s marble sarcophagus was reduced to rubble when Saint-Cyr was damaged by German bombs in World War II during the summer of 1944. The exposed bones were removed to Versailles and reinterred there. In April 1969, 250 years after Madame de Maintenon’s death, her remains were transported once again to Saint-Cyr, where they received a sixth, and final, burial.
SOPHIA DOROTHEA OF CELLE
1666–1726
HEREDITARY PRINCESS OF HANOVER (1682–1694)
When Sophia Dorothea of Celle learned that she would be compelled to wed her unattractive and obnoxious twenty-two-year-old first cousin George Ludwig, son of the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (a duchy in Hanover), she pitched a fit and declared, “I will not marry the pig snout!”
But the dark-haired, doe-eyed sixteen-year-old had little choice in the matter. Sophia Dorothea was the legitimized love child of the duke of the tiny neighboring duchy of Celle and his luscious mistress Eléanore Desmier d’Olbreuse. Her father, George William, had been the heir to the prestigious duchy of Hanover, but it came with strings attached: the mannish bluestocking of a bride that his father had preselected for him, Princess Sophia, daughter of the Palatine king of Bohemia.
So George William cut a deal with his younger brother, Ernst Augustus. If Ernst Augustus would agree to wed Sophia instead, George William would cede him his rights to inherit Hanover and promise never to marry anyone else. Ernst Augustus accepted this arrangement, but Sophia, who had been in love with George William, was furious at being foisted off on his brother. And her jealousy of the woman George William preferred instead never abated.
The daughter of a marquis, Eléanore Desmier d’Olbreuse hailed from a French Huguenot family that had been forced into hiding during the reign of Henri III. She endured a terrifying childhood, always one step ahead of the persecuting Catholics, and had witnessed firsthand the burning of heretical Protestants, the fires fanned by the incendiary sermons of the Jesuit Père Bourdaloue. Her family ultimately settled in Breda in Holland, where they were taken under the wing of another refugee, the princess of Tarente. It was there that the penniless young Eléanore met George William of Brunswick-Lüneburg and the pair fell in love.
However, because George William had pledged never to wed another as part of the jettisoning of Sophia of Bohemia, he could not offer Eléanore anything more than a morganatic marriage. From her vantage, it was better than being his mistress, but it voided any rights their future offspring might have. Still, the princess of Tarente encouraged the twenty-six-year-old Eléanore to accept George William’s offer. She loved him, she had nothing to bring to the match herself, and she wasn’t getting any younger.
The morganatic marriage was celebrated in September 1665, and little Sophia Dorothea, for all intents and purposes illegitimate, was born the following year. It was not until 1676, when she was ten years old, and her uncle Ernst Augustus and her aunt Sophia had plenty of boys to inherit their duchy (meaning that her parents no longer posed a dynastic threat), that they begrudgingly permitted the marriage of George William and Eléanore to be fully legitimized. This action retroactively removed the stain of bastardy from their daughter, but some people would never let Sophia Dorothea forget her roots.
She grew up to resemble Walt Disney’s Snow White, with fair skin, luscious dark hair, and pouty red lips. And she enjoyed an idyllic childhood in Celle, living in a castle straight out of an illustrated fairy tale. Celle was full of sylvan woods and groves and charming cottages with thatched roofs. One can practically imagine her romping with spotted fawns, fluffy bunnies, and chirping bluebirds.
By the time Sophia Dorothea reached her mid-teens, her father and his brother Ernst Augustus had become determined to eventually unite their separate Hanoverian duchies by wedding Sophia Dorothea to the oldest son of Ernst Augustus and Sophia. In that way, their eldest son (the fathers were thinking way ahead) would one day inherit the entire duchy of Hanover, and become a powerful player on the Central European stage.
A good deal of baggage accompanied the match between Sophia Dorothea of Celle and George Ludwig of Brunswick-Lüneburg. The prospective mothers-in-law still detested each other. Sophia, a Machiavellian termagant, remained jealous of the sweet-tempered Eléanore, whom she had always considered to be a nobody from nowhere, an impoverished refugee who had bewitched the man she should have married with her dark good looks and her grace on the dance floor.
The marriage was doomed even before the vows were taken on November 22, 1682. George Ludwig couldn’t get past the fact that his gorgeous wife had been born a bastard, and Sophia Dorothea couldn’t get past the fact that her husband was just a bastard, period. He was fond of two things, neither of which included her: war and ugly women. In fact, he took not one but two hideous mistresses. One of them, the married and morbidly obese Sophia Charlotte von Kielmannsegg, was purported to be the daughter of his father’s mistress, most likely making her George Ludwig’s half sister. George Ludwig’s other inamorata, Ehrengard Melusine von der Schulenberg, who was as tall, angular, and bone-thin as Sophia Charlotte was roly-poly, had been one of his mother’s ladies-in-waiting.
In between George Ludwig’s martial campaigns and his extramarital affairs, he and Sophia engaged in domestic altercations of the sort that involved physical violence and flying crockery. Nonetheless, somehow they managed to produce two children: in 1683 a son, George Augustus, who would grow up to be George II of England, and in 1687 a daughter, also named Sophia Dorothea, who would become the mother of Frederick the
Great.
But after six years of marriage, Sophia Dorothea, Hereditary Princess of Hanover, had had enough of her husband’s infidelities, as well as having her complaints about them shrugged off by both her parents and his. By that time she had done her duty as a royal spouse by producing an heir, and she decided to reward herself by commencing her own romance, heedless of the consequences. She was graceful and lively, with a stunning figure, even after giving birth to two children. She was quick-witted and clever, accomplished in all the womanly arts—music and singing, needlework and dance. She loved to have a grand old time. She deserved to be loved.
Unfortunately, no one else except her paramour, Philipp Christoph, Count von Königsmark, thought so. Sophia Dorothea’s royal romance cost her absolutely everything she held dear. Although her behavior had certainly contributed to her downfall, the punishment hardly fit the crime, especially when her husband remained free to cat about with his own pair of mistresses.
The Hereditary Princess lost her freedom. In 1694, Sophia Dorothea was divorced from her husband by mutual consent. But then she was banished from Hanover. However, a simple exile wasn’t enough for her vindictive in-laws. At the age of twenty-eight, Sophia Dorothea was incarcerated within the moated castle at Ahlden, where she remained until her death, thirty-two years later.
As she grew old and lonely at Ahlden, her ex-husband went on to become king of England. Queen Anne had died without issue in 1714, and by Great Britain’s 1701 Act of Settlement, the crown had to pass to her nearest Protestant relation. That would have been George Ludwig’s mother, the duchess Sophia, who was a granddaughter of the first Stuart king, James I. But Sophia had passed away just weeks before Anne did, making George Ludwig, elector of Hanover, the next British monarch. Dropping his middle name, he became George I and thus began the dynasty of England’s House of Hanover that would rule until the death of Queen Victoria in 1901.
Consequently, as Sophia Dorothea remained behind the moated walls of Castle Ahlden, there was no queen of England during the reign of George I. He never remarried. Instead, his Hanoverian mistresses, primarily Melusine, acted as his hostesses.
On November 13, 1726, at the age of sixty, Sophia Dorothea died of a fever as a complication of liver failure and an accumulation of sixty gallstones. In her extremis she had scrawled a letter to George, cursing him from the grave. At the news of her death, the court of Hanover went into mourning, but George sent word to Germany that no one was to wear black, and he celebrated her demise by attending the London theater that night.
George destroyed her will, in which she had left all her property to their children, appropriating it for himself, and commanded all of her personal effects at Ahlden to be burned. He still despised Sophia Dorothea so much that he refused to allow her coffin to be interred, and it sat around in a dank chamber for two months until his mistress, the superstitious Melusine, claimed to see the princess’s unfettered spirit flying about in the guise of a bird. Finally, George commanded Sophia Dorothea’s body to be buried in the family crypt at Celle.
On June 19, 1727, George was making one of his return visits to Hanover when he received a mail delivery. Upon reading his late wife’s ghostly missive he turned pale, recalling the prediction made decades earlier by a fortune-teller: that if he were in any way responsible for his wife’s demise, he would expire within the year. Collapsing with the words, “C’est fait de moi”—I am done for—he was dead within three days.
The new king of England (and elector of Hanover), George and Sophia Dorothea’s son, ordered Hanover’s records unsealed. He discovered 1,399 pages of love letters (representing only a fraction of those exchanged) between his mother and Count von Königsmark. George II opposed the ill treatment and emotional torture his father had inflicted upon his mother. Had Sophia Dorothea not predeceased her husband, her son would likely have liberated her from Ahlden and installed her as the dowager queen of England.
In any event, the Georgian apple didn’t fall far from the paternal tree. George II also took mistresses, although at first he did his best to respect the feelings of his wife by not flaunting his liaisons.
Few mourned the passing of George I, but Sophia Dorothea’s grave became a cult destination. Visitors still leave floral tributes and pity the soul who endured such a weighty punishment for her royal romance.
SOPHIA DOROTHEA OF CELLE AND
PHILIPP CHRISTOPH VON KÖNIGSMARK (1665–1694)
On March 1, 1688, a sophisticated Swedish mercenary, Philipp Christoph, Count von Westerwyk and Steghorn as well as Count von Königsmark, swaggered into Hanover’s Leine Palace. He made a low bow to the twenty-one-year-old, chestnut-haired, cherry-lipped Sophia Dorothea and inquired, “Does Your Serene Highness remember that I was her page at the Court of Celle?” She was metaphorically swept off her feet.
Flooded with nostalgia for her lost and happy youth, Sophia Dorothea said nothing. But she smiled. They had indeed met before—years earlier, at her father’s court, where the count’s father, a war hero, had brought him for military training. Back then, the sixteen-year-old Philipp and fifteen-year-old Sophia Dorothea had enjoyed a puppy-love crush. The steamiest it had gotten at the time was when the pair spelled the words “forget me not” in the condensation on the palace’s 383 windows.
The Duke of Hanover, Ernst Augustus, offered the twenty-two-year-old count a job as a colonel of the guard, which landed him in the third rank of court hierarchy. Sophia Dorothea’s young brothers-in-law thought he was a totally cool guy—a soldier-courtier-adventurer who had traveled the world! With ample opportunity to excel in his two favorite skills—fighting and flirting—Königsmark was in his element, the very embodiment of a seventeenth-century gallant.
Soon after his arrival at court, he and Sophia Dorothea excited both admiration and envy at a costume ball. She was gowned as Flora, the goddess of spring. Königsmark was the ultimate Rosenkavalier in a suit of pink-and-silver brocade. All eyes were upon them as they danced the minuet, and, save one opinion, everyone was charmed by their elegance. What a lovely couple they made, with their clouds of dark hair, delicate features, and divine grace on the parquet. The lone dissenter was the blowsy Clara Elisabeth von Meysenburg, Baroness von Platen, the mistress of Sophia Dorothea’s father-in-law, the Duke of Hanover.
Count von Königsmark remained in Hanover for two years. While there is no evidence to indicate that he and Sophia Dorothea were doing anything more serious than flirting, it was clear that they were captivated by each other. The count wrote romantic letters to Sophia Dorothea recalling their shared childhood memories—his having promised as a youth to serve her, body and soul, reminding her about all those moist “forget me nots” on the frosty windowpanes. Königsmark had never forgotten Sophia Dorothea, and he wanted to be her hero, avenging the cruel mistreatment she suffered at her philandering husband’s hands. With characteristic recklessness, he wrote about challenging George Ludwig to a duel.
The count’s military appointment afforded the would-be lovers the proximity required to act upon their desires. But Sophia Dorothea was fearful of violating her marriage vows and tried to keep her old crush at arm’s length. And Baroness von Platen, monstrous in every way, coveted the dashing Swedish mercenary and detested Sophia Dorothea for having ensnared his fancy.
It was easy to understand what women saw in Count Philipp Christoph von Königsmark. His dark curly wig framed the face of a true sensualist. His manners were courtly and refined, which, for a career military man, was saying something. And his international reputation as a lothario may have been something of a titillation as well.
Baroness von Platen seduced Königsmark, even though it was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, for the rakish Swede was ambitious—and the baroness, being the Duke of Hanover’s lover as well, had inside access to the corridors of power. But Königsmark’s true, albeit unrequited, passion was Sophia Dorothea. Denied the woman he really wanted and unable to evade the clutches of the one he didn’t, he was trappe
d in a romantic purgatory. In order to escape it, in January 1690 the count asked to join the expedition to the Pelopponese, under the leadership of the duke’s twenty-one-year-old son, Charles.
Around this time, Sophia Dorothea and her handsome mercenary began to correspond. Königsmark became ill in the Balkans and, in a letter from April 1690, begged Sophia Dorothea to cure him by sending a few encouraging lines. “I am on the verge of death now, and the only thing that can save me is a word from the incomparable princess.” He declared himself her slave.
The campaign was a disaster. The Hanoverians, including the young prince, were sliced to ribbons by the Turks. Of the eleven thousand men who sallied forth, Königsmark was one of the 130 who returned. By then, he had begun to fall genuinely in love with the princess. Developing an attack of the faithfuls, he dropped the Baroness von Platen cold. She swore to avenge her wounded ego.
After Königsmark decided to devote himself entirely to Sophia Dorothea, the pair embarked on a full-blown romance, complete with clandestine trysts and secret signals. For example, a letter from Königsmark to Sophia Dorothea written in December 1692, reads, “I am shaved. I look fine, and one could sing ‘The knight is a conqueror.’ We will recognize each other by the usual signal, I shall whistle ‘The Spanish Follies’ [an aria by Corelli] from a distance.”
They employed a loyal confidante, the count’s sister Aurora, as a go-between. Every morning from Celle, the princess would entrust her precious correspondence to a faithful postilion or lackey, or to a traveler who had no idea he was carrying such incendiary material. Copious numbers of passionate letters were exchanged, nearly fourteen hundred of which still survive. The lovers wrote in code, ascribing nicknames or numbers to the principal players. But the correspondence was eventually intercepted by Baroness von Platen’s spies, who had little difficulty decoding the cipher. Sophia Dorothea’s mother, the Duchess of Celle, was “the Pedagogue,” whose sage advice was never heeded; her father was “the Scold.” George Ludwig, Sophia Dorothea’s husband, was “the Reformer.” Baroness von Platen was “the Fat Girl.” Königsmark was “Thyrsis,” a shepherd out of classical poetry, and Sophia Dorothea called herself the “Clumsy Heart,” which encapsulated her naive, reckless abandon. Another encryption technique the lovers used was the insertion of a prearranged group of letters before each syllable, similar to Pig Latin.
Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe Page 13