On the eighteenth of March, Munich found itself in a state of siege. Ten thousand troops were in arms to put an end, if possible, to the uprising. Many deputations waited on the King and on the States Assembly, which had convened in the meantime, while the greater part of the people who had taken no part in the disturbance waited anxiously for developments. But King Ludwig was unable to crush the rebellion; neither was he able to reconcile himself to a new system of government. Two days later Munich was startled by an unexpected event. A proclamation was issued by the sovereign, announcing his abdication, after a reign of twenty-three years, in favor of his eldest son, to whom he left the task of carrying out the reforms demanded by the people. Dumbfounded at this unforeseen step, the Bavarians, loyal still to the house of Wittelsbach, were much affected, and many felt remorseful at having rebelled against their King, who, in spite of his faults, had been a good sovereign and done much for his country. After his abdication, Ludwig spent the remainder of his life as a private citizen, partly in Bavaria, partly in Italy and the south of France, interesting himself still in art and plans for the further improvement of Munich. He soon regained all his old popularity, and felt no regrets for the rank and honors he had renounced. He died in February, 1868; but some years before that event, an equestrian statue of him was erected in Munich by the grateful people of that city.
Chapter IV
The Wittelsbach Sisters
These stirring events naturally had not been without their influence on Duke Max and his family, although the relations between them and the new sovereigns were no less cordial and intimate than they had been with the former ones.
At the time when Duke Max bought Possenhofen the Crown Prince had acquired the castle of Hohenschwangen in that same region and set a force of artists and architects at work to make it an ideal home for his bride. Prince Maximilian had spent the greater part of his youth in travel, and during a visit to the court of Berlin had first seen his future wife, then but four years of age. She was a daughter of Prince Karl of Prussia, and when he again met the Princess Marie as a lovely girl of sixteen, he fell in love with her on the spot. In the Autumn of 1841 he made a formal offer for her hand, and the marriage took place on the fifth of October, 1842.
Like the ducal family, the youthful pair spent most of the year at Hohenschwangen, the two princes hunting and riding together, while a close friendship developed between the Crown Princess and the Duke’s young daughters, which was in no way interrupted by her becoming Queen of Bavaria.
These daughters, the Wittelsbach sisters, were tenderly attached to one another and there was a strong family resemblance between them. Four had inherited their parents’ good looks, and Hélène, the oldest, while not so beautiful as the rest, was clever and clear-headed like her mother. Elizabeth and Maria both had a share of the family eccentricity; but of all the eight children, Maria was the only one endowed with Duke Max’s high spirits and cheerful, sunny nature. She also possessed to a marked degree the distinguished bearing and grace of movement so characteristic of the whole race, while added to the gentle sweetness of Elizabeth’s face, whom she much resembled, was an expression of strength and firmness unusual in one so young.
The five sisters were brought up in the simplest manner, without regard to etiquette, and often walked about the streets of Munich without attendants of any kind. The Duke was much away from home and concerned himself little with his children’s education, except as to music, sport, and out-of-door exercise; but Ludovica was constantly with her daughters, and devoted her whole life to fitting them for the positions she was ambitious they should occupy.
Elizabeth was famous for her beauty and Hélène for her cleverness, while Maria was endowed with almost an equal share of both. She was warm-hearted, sweet-tempered, and incapable of falsehood, but very impulsive and unable to adapt herself to people; and the Duchess’s methods of education did little to modify her independence of speech and action. Like Elizabeth, she was a passionate lover of nature and of animals; but she was bolder and less sensitive than her sister and early developed a love of danger and excitement. The happy days of childhood soon passed, however, and one by one the sisters left the home nest. In 1854 Elizabeth became Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary, to the bitter disappointment of Hélène, who had been selected as bride of Francis Joseph. The Emperor preferred her younger sister, however, and in 1858 Hélène consoled herself with the enormously wealthy Hereditary Prince of Thurn and Taxis, and went to Regensburg to live. Ludwig, the eldest son, had renounced his right of succession the preceding year to marry an actress in Augsburg, making Karl Theodore, then in his twentieth year, the future head of the house. Although the court of Possenhofen was seemingly of small importance, it enjoyed universal respect, and the Catholic royal houses of Europe were glad to ally themselves with it.
In the Autumn of 1858 a messenger arrived from the King of Naples desiring to know whether the Duke and Duchess would consent to an alliance between their daughter Maria, then eighteen years old, and his eldest son. The two families were scarcely acquainted personally, and the young people had never seen each other, yet the Duke and Duchess returned an unconditional acceptance of the offer. To be sure, the Neapolitan Prince was considered a good match, being a Bourbon on his father’s side and a member of the royal house of Sardinia on his mother’s, and the heir, moreover, to an ancient and important kingdom in fair Italy.
On the twenty-second of December, King Ferdinand’s minister, Count Ludolff, arrived in Munich with a formal proposal of marriage, and after receiving the young princess’s consent, presented her on a velvet cushion a portrait of her future husband, a rather pleasant-looking young man in the uniform of a hussar. Two weeks later the marriage took place by proxy, as was the custom of the time. On the evening of the eighth of January, 1859, Maria Sophia Amalia, Duchess in Bavaria, was solemnly united in wedlock to Francis Maria Leopold, Duke of Calabria and Crown Prince of the Two Sicilies, in the court chapel at Munich. All the members of the royal house were present with the entire diplomatic corps and many nobles and high officials of the State. King Maximilian and Queen Marie led the bride to the altar, where the bridegroom’s brother, Prince Leopold (the present Regent of Bavaria), represented him in his absence. Following this ceremony the King and Queen held a reception, during which crowds gathered outside the palace windows, eager for a glimpse of the little bride who had gone about among them all her life so gayly and familiarly.