The King's Mistress: The True & Scandalous Story of the Woman Who Stole the Heart of George I (5 page)

Such revered and newly resurrected ancestors prompted a flurry of portraiture and architecture as the dead were brought into play to enhance the glory of the House. In 1664, when Sophia and Ernst August had embarked on their grand tour of northern Italy and France, they had noted how at Versailles and in the Veneto Louis XIV and the Italian princes had exploited architecture and decoration for their own propaganda. Now, twenty years later, the duke and duchess made use of the lesson. Fresh ancestral portraits were commissioned. At the Leineschloss, most prominently in the newly decorated presence chamber, the ducal family were observed by the multitude of German, Roman and Byzantine heroes they claimed as their own. Hanover’s link to ancient Rome and the glory of medieval Germany was celebrated not only in portraiture, but in the classical simplicity of Palladian architecture.

The Hanoverian ruling house allowed Leibniz incredible freedom to follow his own intellectual pursuits, and he seems to have formed a warm and genuine friendship with Sophia. Yet he had travelled in London and Paris and felt himself far too urbane for the ‘provincial’ Hanoverians, despite Sophia’s and Ernst August’s efforts to make their court a magnet for European intellectuals. He complained: ‘Everything that so confines me both mentally and physically derives from my not living in a large city like Paris or London’ and he lamented the absence of men from whom he could ‘learn’. Perhaps he was frustrated and bored with his research into the family’s history. He further complained against the injustice of the divine right of kings: ‘It is just as seemly for those whom God has granted intellect but no power to give advice, as it is befitting to those who have been granted power to
listen to that advice . . . Where the intellect is greater than the power, the one holding the former may consider himself to be oppressed.’ But although frustrated with his position, he did find happiness in Sophia’s garden.

Today the Gallery is one of only two buildings from the palace to survive Allied bombing during the Second World War. It was originally designed to house the delicate plants during the harsh north German winters. But Sophia, adamant that the main palace was not grand enough for all the balls and parties she hosted, turned it into a Festival Hall, a glorious confection she hoped would rival Versailles. It is a beautiful building, decorated with elaborate stucco work and filled with glorious classically themed frescos by the Venetian artist Tommaso Giusti. Light floods through the windows and bounces off the ornamental chandeliers to bathe the room in gold. It was in this room that Sophia danced a Polonaise with Peter the Great in 1697 as the Tsar journeyed throughout Europe visiting his royal brothers and sisters. Here the Tsar ogled Ernst August’s gaudily attired mistress Klara Platen: Sophia maliciously wrote to Liselotte that Peter singled Klara out ‘because of her colourful appearance: thick paint was all the range in Muscovy’. And it was in a suite off this room that Sophia lived.

Even opera was drafted to serve the Hanoverian claim to the electoral cap. Johann Friedrich’s theatre was transformed into the most magnificent opera house in northern Europe. The chosen production for its inauguration in 1689, Steffani’s
Enrico Leone
was an orgy of operatic theatricality. This elaborate five-hour marathon of a production served to show the family’s tenuous link to the twelfth-century hero Henry the Lion and his English wife Matilda. The production of 1689 kicked off the Carnival with an array of mythical characters – Amazons, fauns, nymphs and devils in abundance. Live horses appeared on stage. The thrilling libretto by Ernst August’s Italian secretary, Hortensio Mauro, induced Sophia to call
him ‘notre Apollon’ – our Apollo.
Enrico Leone
delighted first the court, and then the general public who were admitted free of charge.

But no matter how much dazzle, glamour and elegance Ernst August and Sophia may have been able to import into their principality, electoral status could only be achieved if Ernst August could prove to the Emperor that his dominions were vigorous enough to provide effective aid to the Habsburgs. To this end he was determined to establish primogeniture in Hanover (thus ensuring that his dominions would remain united after his death rather than being divided piecemeal amongst his sons) and sought the Emperor Leopold’s approval. It was granted in 1683 and Ernst August finally announced it to his children at Christmas the following year. George would get everything; his brothers received no lands, only financial compensation. It split the family irrevocably.

George’s brother Friedrich August, as the next eldest, was furious and canvassed support against his father throughout the courts of Europe. He had particular success with Duke Anton Ulrich of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, a distant cousin who saw the sons’ disaffection with the father as a wonderful opportunity to sow discord in a rival state.

One son who, despite Friedrich August’s promptings, initially stood by his father was Maximilian Wilhelm – known by the family as Max. He was born in 1666 and was six years younger than George. A portrait in the Historisches Museum in Hanover shows him sporting a red silk bow and a white lace jabot. He was a dandy who believed his parents owed him a living – his mother Sophia said he lacked ‘Geist’ (spirit).
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And when Ernst August first raised the issue of primogeniture with his sons at Christmas 1684, Max initially agreed. He was only the third son and he was placated by his father’s offer of financial compensation. He left it to his older brother Friedrich August to rail with tantrums against their parents
at the injustice of his position. Max even signed the primogeniture clause in 1687. But when Friedrich August died in battle in 1690 (George’s brother Karl Philipp also died in battle that year), Max, now the second son and the one with most to lose, broke his promise in spectacular fashion.

A contemporary story claims he tried to poison his father with snuff. He certainly contacted Duke Anton Ulrich to aid him in a plot against his father. But his sister Figuelotte discovered the scheme and told their father, after which Max and two of his accomplices, the cousins Joachim and Otto Friedrich von Moltke, were arrested for treason. Sophia, distraught at the loss of two of her sons in battle and anxious not to lose another in familial strife, possibly aided Max in his machinations. Ernst August certainly suspected her of treason, and she was questioned by privy councillor Albrecht Philipp von dem Bussche.
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She wrote frenziedly to Bussche, begging him to tell her husband that she had never wished to ‘plunge the country into a bath of blood and fire’, as Ernst August claimed.
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Max, cowed into submission by his arrest and by the beheading of Otto Friedrich, finally consented officially to the primogeniture.

Max was to remain an embarrassment to George for the rest of his life. He stayed quiet until Ernst August’s death in 1698. Then, easily overcoming his grief for a father he felt betrayed by, he once again reneged on his signing of the primogeniture clause, seeking support for his position from Hanover’s foreign enemies. To Sophia and George’s dismay, his brother Christian Heinrich also turned on George. George was convinced that it was the younger Christian Heinrich who had led Max astray, but it is unclear who influenced whom. Both went into self-imposed exile, leading a desperate Sophia to seek a reconciliation between George and his brothers. Max, a gambler with an expensive lifestyle, played on George’s fears for Hanover’s position on the international stage to
gain the maximum financial compensation (Sophia subsidized his already considerable income for the rest of her life). He also exploited a new development that drove the European gossips into a frenzy of speculation: the English succession.

England’s ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688 had removed the Catholic Stuart monarch James II from the throne and replaced him with the joint rule of his Protestant daughter Mary and her Dutch husband and first cousin, William, Prince of Orange. When Mary died childless in 1694 her sister Anne became William’s heir presumptive. By the end of her childbearing years in 1698 Anne had endured eighteen pregnancies, most of which had resulted in miscarriages, stillbirths or infants who only lived for a few months. Only one child survived infancy – William Duke of Gloucester. In 1694 he was five years old and sickly.

Anne’s tragic childbearing history prompted a succession crisis. The English would not tolerate another Catholic monarch. The next Protestant in line to the throne – though there were over fifty more eligible Catholic candidates – was Sophia. In July 1700 the young Duke of Gloucester died of hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. His death prompted the Act of Settlement of 1701, which acknowledged Sophia and the Protestant heirs of her body as the heirs to England. This historical fluke, resulting from Anne’s misery, was to have drastic implications for George.

But the problem of Max and Christian Heinrich continued, causing further embarrassment to the family. In an act of breathtaking disloyalty, Max converted to Catholicism. The English were naturally appalled. Sophia’s succession to the English throne rested not only on her own Protestantism, but on that of the ‘heirs of her body’. Max’s conversion, as George’s sibling, put in jeopardy the prospect of the Hanoverian assumption of the English throne.

Speculation piled upon speculation. Reports spread that not only had Max converted, but Christian Heinrich too. William III was
furious and demanded confirmation from Philipp Adam Eltz, a Hanoverian diplomat, as to the truth of the rumours. Eltz, embarrassed, confirmed that Max had indeed converted, but said that to the best of his knowledge Christian Heinrich remained a Protestant.

More promisingly for chances of harmony in the Hanoverian court, after the debacle of Max’s treachery of 1692 and Sophia’s possible role in its execution, husband and wife were reunited in the spring of 1693. The reason was joy. Emperor Leopold, desperate for Hanoverian troops to fight against the hegemony of Louis XIV of France, had finally agreed to confer the electoral cap on the House of Hanover. It was a long-awaited prize, and an expensive one. For the wars he undertook on the Emperor’s behalf and the palaces he built to reflect the glory of his house, Liselotte records that Ernst August paid a million thaler, an astronomical sum.

The arrival of this tiny bonnet, wrought with crimson velvet and ermine, was celebrated with a magnificent gala at the Leineschloss. Everyone at court wore new clothes and everyone attended; immediate and extended family, courtiers and mistresses. Most colourful of all was Ernst August’s mistress, Klara Platen, weighed down by the magnificence of her jewels. Although great affection still existed between Ernst August and Sophia, the love affair of the early years of their marriage was long gone.

Whilst his brothers caused havoc, the couple’s eldest son, George, was being carefully groomed as the fulfilment of his parents’ ambitions. With the establishment of primogeniture everything would rest on George’s ability to be an excellent soldier and statesman. In 1675, when he was only fifteen, he fought bravely by his father’s side in his first battle at Conzbrücke, helping to drive back the French. Ernst August wrote fondly to Sophia: ‘Your Benjamin was worthy of you, he stuck to my side through thick and thin.’
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Of all of their children George was the one most suited to military life, and he found that he excelled at it because he loved it. He was also an able scholar, fluent in French and Latin, with some Italian and Dutch. He diligently studied history and geography, the subjects that would improve him as a soldier. His diplomatic skills were honed by visits to France and to England in 1680, he sat in council meetings and enjoyed his father’s full confidence from 1688, accompanying Ernst August on several diplomatic visits to Berlin. George became intimately acquainted with his father’s ministers: with the trusted Otto Grote, President of the Chamber (and a contemporary of Melusine’s father at the university of Helmstadt); with the lawyer Ludolf Hugo, who oversaw the smooth conclusion to the issues of primogeniture and gaining of the electoral cap;
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and with Friedrich Wilhelm von Görtz, who would form part of George’s intimate circle when he became ruler of Hanover and king of Great Britain. George was already well acquainted with another of his father’s privy councillors, his former tutor, Abrecht Philipp von dem Bussche.

During George’s 1680 visit to his Stuart cousins in England the gossips chattered that, as the heir to Hanover, he was there to view the young Princess Anne as a possible bride. Sophia certainly considered it. Later speculation suggested that Anne and George’s subsequent frosty relationship was due to his rejection of her. But there was probably little foundation to the rumours. Anne and her uncle King Charles II greeted George as a cousin rather than as a potential bridegroom. Three years later the princess made a love match with her marriage to the extremely dull Prince George of Denmark. Charles II drolly declared of her fiancé: ‘I have tried him drunk and I have tried him sober and there is nothing in him.’ But the reason a union between Princess Anne and George was not seriously pursued was that Ernst August and Sophia, and probably George too, had already decided that the only marriage he could
possibly contemplate was to his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea of Celle.

In 1675 George William eventually married his mistress, with the blessing of the Holy Roman Emperor, and their daughter Sophia Dorothea’s illegitimacy was revoked. Although George William stressed again and again his promise to uphold the convention, Ernst August was alarmed at Sophia Dorothea’s engagement to August Frederick, the heir of the Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. When George William eventually died, he feared, the might of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel’s army would be employed to uphold Sophia Dorothea’s birthright. Conveniently the heir was killed in battle and Ernst August and Sophia determined that Sophia Dorothea would have to marry George.