Royal Romances: Titillating Tales of Passion and Power in the Palaces of Europe (20 page)

Unbeknownst to the duke, Baroness von Platen then plied the guards with alcohol, getting them drunk. She ordered them to wait in the shadows and to seize anyone she instructed them to, swearing them to secrecy upon pain of death by hanging. As the night dragged on, the soldiers dozed off, sleepy with wine and the lateness of the hour. Two women kept a close vigil on the light that shone through the crack at the bottom of the door to Sophia Dorothea’s apartments: Baroness von Platen and Eleonore de Knesebeck.

The princess’s lady-in-waiting urged the lovers to part before daylight so the count could safely make his getaway in the dark. Although they were reluctant to leave each other’s arms, the sexually sated von Königsmark departed her apartment with a light heart, intending to return the following night, when they would make their flight. He crept noiselessly down the long corridor, retracing the steps he had taken to Sophia Dorothea’s rooms. But when he reached a door that he had specifically left unbolted and found it locked, he
became suspicious. Historians disagree on whether or not he instinctively drew his sword at this point, as some scholars believe he may have been unarmed. Most men, even in a swashbuckling era, might not wear a sword belt to a tryst.

The count was ambushed by the elector’s guards, clouted on the head with the flat of a blade. Stunned, he fought back, wounding two of his assailants. In the burgeoning light, the halberdiers recognized the victim as their commander, but, goaded by the countess, they repeatedly stabbed Königsmark with their swords. Baroness von Platen personally avenged his spurning her for Sophia Dorothea by kicking the dying man in the face with the toe of her brocaded slipper.

But then, stung with shock and remorse, she became hysterical and tried to revive him. Unsuccessful, she spun the news of his demise by informing Ernst Augustus that the Swede had forcibly resisted arrest. But what was to be done with his battered corpse, whose blood was leaching into the floorboards where it lay?

With time of the essence before the entire palace awoke and bustled about its business, it is believed that the elector and his mistress hid Count von Königsmark’s body within the walls or under the flooring of a small room on the same level of the palace, after first covering it with quicklime to neutralize the stench of decay and hasten decomposition. The official lie was that the count had simply disappeared into the night. After all, the man was a known rake; he probably kept bad company!

The following day Sophia Dorothea awoke filled with optimism and waited breathlessly for her lover. However, she became anxious when she heard rumors that he had been killed in a duel with a Count Lippe. She tried to see the elector, but Baroness von Platen informed her that she and her lady-in-waiting must stay within their apartments. The princess assumed that all would be revealed in the evening, after her son and daughter were brought in to say good night to her. But neither the children nor Königsmark ever came. Instead, the person who arrived to greet her was her dragon of a mother-in-law. The duchess Sophia informed the princess that she was now under house arrest.

Sophia Dorothea’s rooms were searched, turning up scores of incriminating billets-doux.
As soon as the prime minister of Hanover, who happened to be Baron von Platen, showed them to Sophia Dorothea’s father, he all but disowned her. The duchess Sophia and her husband were even more delighted that Duke George William had done nothing to defend his daughter, because it meant that Ernst Augustus could punish her and still keep her lands in Celle and her dowry.

The elector commanded George Ludwig to return home from Berlin, where he was visiting his sister, and dispatched Baron von Platen to cross-examine Sophia Dorothea. She defiantly demanded to know why she was being kept like a criminal.

Baron von Platen stammered something about the possibility of an illegitimate pregnancy, then told the princess that her in-laws knew everything about her romance with Count von Königsmark. “Is he locked up, too?” Sophia Dorothea asked. The prime minister told her that the Swede had died two weeks earlier.

Sophia Dorothea fainted. Baron von Platen coldly stood by. When the princess revived, she exclaimed, “Murderers; they have murdered him. A family of murderers…! Have pity and let me go. I can’t stay here any longer.”

Under intense interrogation, the princess denied that the romance had been sexual. But the Hanoverian court accepted the admission that there had been any liaison at all as a confession of adultery. It also didn’t matter to them that the affaire de coeur had begun well after Sophia Dorothea’s children were born, meaning, therefore, that her son and daughter were clearly legitimate. The official statement issued from the Leine Palace was that the Hereditary Princess was formally separating from her husband, “with whom she was no longer on good terms.”

“The Princess at first displayed only some coldness towards her husband, but Fräulein von Knesebeck by degrees inspired her with such dislike to him that she begged from her father permission to return to her parents’ home. Her father was displeased, and warned the Princess to place confidence in her husband. But her dislike of her husband was so intensified by the machinations of Fräulein von Knesebeck…. Her corrupter, Fräulein von Knesebeck, was arrested at the wish of the Duke George William.”

There was no mention of adultery in the full formal statement, and little mention of Königsmark, as the Hanoverians did not want the Swedes to come snooping around looking for him. But by now his mysterious disappearance was a hot topic of gossip in every court in Europe.

After her brother’s disappearance, Aurora von Königsmark received a sealed packet bearing Sophia Dorothea’s coat of arms from the count’s secretary, Hildebrand, which had been covertly passed to him by Eleonore de Knesebeck at the behest of her mistress. The parcel bore the words, “To Countess Aurora von Königsmark, to be kept sealed until claimed by the Hereditary Princess. If, however, it is not reclaimed, it is to be burnt without being opened and without its contents being read.” The package undoubtedly contained the lovers’ correspondence.

Aurora also received several trunks containing her brother’s wardrobe and personal effects: two hundred suits and uniforms, forty-seven fur-lined coats, seventy-one sabers, a hundred and two watches, and eighty-seven military decorations.

Unfortunately, Hildebrand had not been able to remove all of his master’s papers. A search ordered by the vengeful Baroness von Platen revealed Sophia Dorothea’s letters. The secretary had seen Count von Königsmark take great care of a parcel tied with a yellow ribbon and locked in a box. Ironically, if the count had been less of a romantic and had burned these letters, he would have saved his beloved Sophia Dorothea years of anguish.

Baroness von Platen took the letters to the elector, who had them deciphered. As the pair of them read the decoded correspondence, the duke became livid. He might have been able to forgive the adulterous liaison (such affairs were de rigueur in royal courts; after all, his relationship with the Baroness von Platen was doubly adulterous, and his son, Sophia Dorothea’s husband, had
two
mistresses). What he couldn’t forgive was the lovers’ plot to flee to the enemy state of Wolfenbüttel. Adultery might break a commandment, but fleeing into enemy territory with the dowry money that Ernst Augustus believed to be rightfully his,
that
was high treason! The elopement to another state would have raised a number of thorny issues with regard to her dowry, compelling Sophia Dorothea’s in-laws to sue for
the continued payment of the installments. Money trumps sex every time.

Sophia Dorothea categorically refused to return to her marital home, so George Ludwig sued her for divorce. A religious high court, composed of four churchmen and four laymen, was established to hear the proceedings. Although they knew that the verdict was a foregone conclusion, given the identities of the parties and the families connected with the suit, the men were intent on being fair-minded and impartial, thoroughly reviewing all the documents as though it were any other case.

The duchess of Celle tried to protect her daughter by cautioning her not to consent to everything so willingly. Sophia Dorothea’s own lawyer endeavored to impress upon her the immorality of the clause forbidding her to remarry while George Ludwig would be free to do so. But the princess just wanted to get it all over with as quickly as possible, and both dukes—her father-in-law and her father, who had all but disowned her—were duplicitous enough to make her believe that the divorce decree might put an end to her incarceration. Surely Sophia Dorothea could not have imagined that, after consenting to all of the terms of the divorce, she would never be allowed to see her children again.

In her divorce petition, using the royal “we,” Sophia Dorothea confirmed the spouses’ mutual loathing: “We still adhere to our oft-repeated resolution never to cohabit matrimonially with our husband, and that we desire nothing so much as that separation of marriage requested by our husband may take place.”

The court found Sophia Dorothea guilty of “malicious desertion,” rather than adultery, so that her in-laws could still collect her dowry, despite the dissolution of her marriage. She and George Ludwig were divorced by decree dated December 28, 1694. By this document Sophia Dorothea also forfeited her title of Hereditary Princess of Hanover. All traces of her existence were expunged from the government documents, and her name was omitted from the Sunday prayers offered for the royal family. To mention her name was anathema.

The twenty-eight-year-old Sophia Dorothea was indeed granted her wish to leave the Leine Palace, but not in the manner she might have hoped for. She lost custody of her children and was banished to
the castle of Ahlden, where she was to be immured, along with a tiny retinue (in the employ of Baroness von Platen), for the remainder of her days.

For the first four years of her exile at Ahlden, Sophia Dorothea was denied all visitors or correspondence. But since George Ludwig still feared the fortune-teller’s prediction that he would die within a year of his ex-wife’s demise if he had any responsibility for it, after the first year of imprisonment Sophia Dorothea was permitted to take local carriage rides, because a doctor warned that being kept solely indoors was endangering her health. After four years, she was finally allowed visitors, but when her son, George, tried to see her, his father punished him. Their daughter, who had wed the tyrannical king of Prussia, was forbidden by her husband to liberate her. For years, Sophia Dorothea dressed up every day and night for the ghost of her lover, who still dwelled in her imagination, as the silhouettes of fashion changed over the thirty-two years of her imprisonment—from 1694 to 1726. But as time went on and she was allowed to mingle with the townsfolk of Ahlden, Sophia Dorothea became their Lady Bountiful, taking an active interest in their welfare.

On the death of the duke of Celle in 1705 and the duchess in 1722, Sophia Dorothea became the richest heiress in Europe, but a lot of good it did her behind the walls of Ahlden. Even a fraction of that fortune would once have allowed her to ride off into the sunset with Count von Königsmark. Now that she had the funds, Sophia Dorothea dreamed of escaping her prison. She had placed a considerable amount of her fortune in a Dutch bank, but she needed a financial adviser. Her daughter, the queen of Prussia, recommended a Count von Bahr, then withdrew her suggestion after hearing some negative reports about him. Sophia Dorothea ignored the warning and, under his name, invested every penny she owned in Holland. Bahr stole it all.

So there was no escape from Ahlden, but as time went on, justice was served in one way or another. Thanks to the aid of a friend, Sophia Dorothea’s former lady-in-waiting Eleonore de Knesebeck was able to escape from the fortress of Schwarzfels, where she had been imprisoned for abetting the exchange of the lovers’ correspondence.

In 1698, Ernst Augustus died and George Ludwig became the new elector of Hanover. He demanded the immediate dismissal from court of Baroness von Platen. Two years later, as the baroness lay dying of a venereal illness that had left her blind and disfigured for the last six years of her life, she swore she saw Count von Königsmark’s ghost, and confessed to her complicity in his murder.

L
OUIS
XV

1710–1774

R
ULED
F
RANCE
: 1715–1774

F
or the second time in a row the successor to the French throne was little more than a toddler. His father, who had died by the time the child ascended the throne, was Louis, the duc de Bourgogne, and later dauphin of France, although he never lived to wear the crown himself. Louis XV’s mother was Marie-Adélaïde of Savoy, the precocious grandniece of Louis XIV and dress-up doll of Madame de Maintenon.

The boy’s rakish great-uncle, Philippe II, the duc d’Orléans, served as his regent until 1723, when Louis XV attained his majority. The duc may have been quite the debaucher, but he was a good steward, nearly balancing the budget by 1721, after inheriting a huge debt from Louis XIV in 1715.

Louis XV received a fairly comprehensive education from his tutors. He was a curious, if shy, youth, an avid reader particularly interested in the sciences. Toward the end of his reign he founded departments in physics and mechanics at the Collège de France.

In 1721, at the age of eleven, Louis was betrothed to his three-year-old first cousin, the Infanta of Spain Mariana Victoria, and the following year he was crowned at Reims. In 1723, the king’s majority was declared by the Parlement of Paris, the region’s judicial body, formally ending the regency. The duc d’Orléans was retained as prime minister until he dropped dead of a massive stroke on December 1. As the years passed, concern arose over the young king’s frail health and his ability to produce an heir. By 1725, with the security of the monarchy at stake, France couldn’t wait for the Infanta to grow up, so the search began for a more viable bride.