We Two: Victoria and Albert (61 page)

Prince William was now regent in Prussia, following the definitive lapse into dementia of his brother King Frederick William IV. The regent refused all Prince Albert’s impassioned pleas for his nation to join the Franco-British alliance. When the chips were down, William, like his brother the king, preferred to side, tacitly, with Russia, not with their new friend Prince Albert. In this decision, both dynastic and national interests played a part. The tsar of Russia was married to the favorite sister of the king and the regent of Prussia. The Russian state observed the autocratic principles that the kings of Prussia cherished. As Palmerston’s man in Berlin accurately reported to the foreign office, the Prussian government was convinced that it was in Prussia’s best interests to keep its army intact and waste no money on the defense of the Turks. Prussia planned to exploit the weakness of the Crimean combatants once they had tired of battle to begin its campaign of territorial expansion.

Prince Albert was angry and distraught at what he regarded as a personal betrayal as well as a cynical flouting of international law. “That every good German desires the consolidation, perhaps the aggrandisement, of Prussia, is intelligible,” he wrote to Stockmar, “but physical expansion is, or ought to be, the result of moral strength and struggle, and people ought to see that the war with Russia [that is, Prussia’s joining with Britain and France in the war against Russia] would offer many chances to attain the desired object in a way which Europe would regard as consonant with her own interests and those of civilisation. On the other hand, the policy of seeking to embarrass Europe now, in order to fish in troubled waters later on, cannot fail to produce the opposite effects.”

Prince Albert could not have been more tragically wrong. Within a few years of the end of the Crimean War, Prussia was moving to incorporate the Danish provinces of Schleswig and Holstein to the north by force of arms, not argument. By 1862, Bismarck had dissolved the troublesome Prussian assembly and was ruling in the name of his aging sovereign. However “uncivilized,” Bismarck would prove brutally effective. By 1871, Prussia had metamorphosed into the German Empire, having annihilated Austria and France on the battlefield, swallowed up the small German states, and acquired the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine as a fabulous bonus.

Vanity was Albert’s Achilles’ heel, and his wife’s adoration left him vulnerable to men like the kings of Prussia. Seeing himself so superior in mind and morals to the Hohenzollern princes, he underestimated them. That they might define the goal of German unity quite differently, that they were far more ruthless in their subordination of means to ends, and saw him as an instrument of policies of their own seems not to have occurred to him.

Prince Albert died before Bismarck came to power and flaunted his policy of “blood and iron.” But the prince’s misreading of Prussian policy, the Prussian court, and the Prussian royal family was to have tragic consequences for the person he probably loved most in the world: his eldest daughter.

CONSISTENTLY DISAPPOINTED
in his attempts to influence King Frederick William IV and Prince William, Prince Albert still believed he had a trump card: dynastic alliance. Frederick William was childless. William had only one son, also named Frederick William in the confusing Prussian royal tradition, and known in the family as Fritz. Both brothers were old. If Fritz were to marry an English Saxe-Coburg princess and have heirs by her, the next generations of the Prussian royal family would move in the English Saxe-Coburg orbit and have the power to put Prince Albert’s philosophy of government into practice. In his eldest daughter Vicky, Prince Albert saw the perfect instrument for his Prussian policy.

The first big step toward the Prussian alliance was taken in 1851. William, then crown prince of Prussia, his wife, Augusta, his son, Fritz, almost twenty, and his thirteen-year-old daughter, Louise, were warmly invited to come to England to attend the opening to the Great Exhibition. They came and stayed on as Queen Victoria’s guests for some four weeks. Both families were on their very best behavior. The two mothers declared a bosom friendship. The two fathers continued their political and philosophical dialogue.

Fritz was enraptured by this introduction to the English royal family. His life at the Prussian court was grim, since his parents quarreled constantly and used their children as weapons against each other. Prince William and Princess Augusta had been forced into marriage. She failed to win his love and trust, and they soon had nothing but contempt for each other. Although Fritz was the essential male child, destined to rule in Prussia, his father favored Louise, seven years younger. Fritz was an obsessively obedient and conscientious child, but he gained no love or praise by being good. His father thought him a weakling. His mother thought he was stupid. Even as a teenager, he was subject to periods of black depression.

In comparison with the Prussian court, Windsor and especially Osborne seemed warm and spontaneous. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were young and happy in each other’s company. They already had seven small sons and daughters and appeared to love them very much. Both the young Prussians were astonished by the free and easy way the English royal children
addressed their parents. Fritz flowered before the warm interest of his English hostess. At six foot two, the young Prussian towered over Victoria, but he was so gentle and insecure that he seemed even younger than Vicky and Bertie. A strong bond of affection and esteem was forged between the Queen and the prince. Fritz also felt privileged to hold long conversations with Prince Albert, who treated him like a man, not a backward child.

Most remarkable of all to Fritz was the eldest child, the Princess Royal. Unlike the repressed and awkward Princess Louise, Vicky, only ten, was charmingly outgoing and had opinions of her own. For once encouraged by her parents to show off, Vicky guided the young Prussian visitors around the exhibition, displaying a mastery of technical details as well as flawless German. Since she was so young, Vicky did not need to be closely chaperoned and could chatter away to the Prussian youth to her heart’s content. The mothers noted how raptly Fritz watched the little girl. Everything was going as planned. As Queen Victoria wrote to King Leopold: “Might this, one day, lead to a union! God knows it would make us
very happy.”

Princess Augusta was almost as keen on the prospect of marriage between Vicky and Fritz as Prince Albert. She was locked in a loveless marriage to a man seventeen years her senior, scorned by her female in-laws, and a virtual pariah in her brother-in-law’s court. Her family’s liberalism linked Augusta ineluctably to England and the Saxe-Coburg school of politics, but ideas meant much less to Augusta than power. She needed a female ally at court and was eager to secure an English bride for her son in no small part because the rest of the Prussian royal family was so fiercely Anglophobic.

Prince William would have preferred a Russian or a German bride for his son. This was the marital policy traditional to Hohenzollern royal princes, and he was a traditionalist to the bone. However, swimming out of his element in liberal, democratic England and agreeably flattered by his English hosts, William was for once prepared to be ruled by his wife. It was unfortunate, in the prince’s view, that Vicky looked so much like her mother and was likely to be dwarfish by Prussian standards. But, on the plus side, Queen Victoria was certainly a devoted wife and not at all a cold fish like his Augusta. Above all, she was one of the legendarily fertile Saxe-Coburg women, a key dynastic consideration. Prince William of Prussia was anxious for grandsons.

Queen Victoria had no love for Prussia. When she was a teenager, she and her mother had quickly repulsed the idea of her making a Prussian marriage. All the same, the Queen did everything she could to marry her oldest daughter into the Prussian royal family largely because she knew
how important the alliance was to her husband. The Queen was also pragmatic. Though Vicky was only ten, one day she must marry. Prussia was one of the great powers, so a Prussian crown prince would be a suitably great match for an English Princess Royal.

But personal sympathy counted more with Queen Victoria even than dynastic politics or pleasing her husband. For all her isolation, she was in tune with the Zeitgeist, and in Northern Europe arranged marriages were going out of style. Love was all the rage, and young people were increasingly free to choose their mates. In her own marriage, the Queen had come under severe pressure to choose her cousin Albert, but all the same she believed that she had made a choice based on compatibility. Her marriage had worked out because she and Albert loved each other. Victoria quickly took Fritz to her heart. He reminded her of the young Albert. He seemed untouched by the notorious promiscuity of the Prussian royal men. She was sure that, unlike his father, he had the makings of a good husband.

Prince Albert too was agreeably impressed by Fritz. The Prussian prince showed a pleasing readiness to listen and learn. Here was the Prussian disciple that Albert had always dreamed of finding, a young mind he could form, and in this way, shape Prussian politics in years to come. Following the example of his uncle Leopold, Prince Albert looked to the future and assessed the dynastic odds. King Frederick William was mad and in very bad health. The current regent, Prince William, Fritz’s father, would probably come to the throne in his early sixties. Fritz was likely to become king while still a young man. It was true that, like his uncle and father, Fritz was weak and indecisive and not especially bright; a soldier, not a scholar. But Albert saw this weakness as a possible asset. Vicky had strength and brains enough for two, and she would be guided by her father. Together, Prince Albert believed, King Frederick and Queen Victoria of Prussia would change the destiny of Europe.

When in the spring of 1855 his wife intimated that their eldest daughter had reached puberty, Albert was ready to act. He invited the young heir to the Hohenzollern dynasty to come to Balmoral to join the English royal family during their annual Scottish retreat. Given the hatred with which Prussia was viewed in wartime Britain, the British cabinet had to be apprised of the Prussian prince’s coming so that his safe passage could be assured. Palmerston and his cabinet strongly advised against the visit. They could smell a Prussian dynastic alliance in the air, and they were deeply opposed to it. However, they had no power to forbid the Queen to receive a visitor on her private estate.

Fritz had been eager for an invitation to England to press his suit. Once
at Balmoral, he was somewhat frustrated to find how much time he was expected to spend out deerstalking and talking constitutional theory with Prince Albert. He would much have preferred staying close to the royal English ladies, but Vicky was no longer a child and hence was subject to close chaperoning. The young suitor was obliged to watch the girl from across the room and exchange odd snatches of conversation with her at lunch and in the evenings. But it was enough.

Now twenty-four, Fritz had had ample opportunities for sexual exploration both as an army officer and as a university student. His uncles wanted nothing better than to introduce him to their mistresses and favorite houses of pleasure. His aunts wanted nothing better than to find him a German or Russian wife. But Fritz stubbornly remained a romantic: It was his one form of rebellion. For four years, the image of little Vicky burned in his heart. He had found her perfection when she was only ten. Now he saw that she had become the woman of his dreams, and her close resemblance to her mother was delightful in Fritz’s eyes. His destiny had long been intertwined with Vicky’s, and he was glad.

Full of earnest resolve, Prince Frederick requested a private audience with the Queen and the prince. He declared his love and admiration for them, and expressed a strong desire to become part of their family. He asked for their eldest daughter’s hand. Victoria and Albert consented at once, embracing the young suitor. All three wept for joy. The Queen and the prince stipulated that the engagement must be kept secret and unofficial until Vicky was confirmed at sixteen, and thus came of age. The Queen insisted that the marriage could not be celebrated for more than two years, after the bride had turned seventeen. The Queen, the prince, and Fritz then ran off to write letters to family members, key cabinet ministers, and Baron Stockmar, informing them of the secret engagement.

“It is
not
politics, it is
not
ambition, it was my heart,” wrote Fritz of his marriage proposal. “[Fritz] is a dear, excellent, charming young man, whom we shall give our dear child to with perfect confidence,” wrote the Queen in a letter to her uncle King Leopold. “What pleases us greatly is to see that he is really delighted with Vicky.” Queen Victoria had been terribly afraid that her daughter would not be pretty enough to please the tall, handsome young German.

The Queen and the prince’s idea was that Vicky should not be told of Fritz’s proposal for months or even years. As Albert expressed it to his confidant Stockmar: “The event you are interested in reached an active stage this morning after breakfast. The young man laid his proposal before us with the permission of his parents and of the King; we accepted it for our-selves,
but requested him to hold it in suspense as regards the other party till after her Confirmation. Till then all the simple unconstraint of girlhood is to continue undisturbed.” But perhaps unsurprisingly, the young man was rather anxious to disturb Vicky’s girlish unconstraint and to know if she could return his love. Finally the royal parents agreed that, after all, something needed to be said to Vicky and that Fritz was probably the best person to say it.