His original selection by the Emperor had much reference to his military services. The efforts of Louis XIV. to get possession of the Palatinate, after the death of the Palatine Louis, had caused the formation of the German Confederacy to resist the aggression of France—an aggression not checked till the day when Marlborough defeated Tallard, at Blenheim. Louis was hurried into the war by his minister, Louvois, who was annoyed by his interference at home in matters connected with Louvois’s department. It was to make the confederation more firm and united that Ernest Augustus was created, rather than elected, a ninth Elector. The three Protestant Electors were those of Saxony, Brandenburg, and Hanover; the three Roman Catholic, Bohemia, Bavaria, and the Palatinate; and the three spiritual Electors, the Prince-Archbishops of Metz, Trèves, and Cologne.
The history of the creation of the ninth Electorate would not be complete without citing what is said in respect thereof by the author of a pamphlet suppressed by the Hanoverian government, and entitled ‘Impeachment of the Ministry of Count Munster.’ It is to this effect: ‘During the war between Leopold I. and France, at the close of the 17th century, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, and administrator of Osnabrück, father of George I., had been paid a considerable sum of money on condition of aiding the French monarch with ten thousand troops. The Emperor, aware of the engagement, and anxious to prevent the junction of these forces with the enemy, proposed to create a ninth electorate, in favour of the Duke, provided he brought his levies to the imperial banner. The degrading offer was accepted, and the envoys of Brunswick-Luneberg received the electoral cap, the symbol of their master’s dishonour, at Vienna, on the 19th of December 1692. From the opposition of the college and princes, Ernest was never more than nominally an Elector, and even his son’s nomination was with difficulty accomplished in 1710. It was in connection with this new dignity that Hanover, a name till then applied only to a principal and almost independent city of the Dukedom of Brunswick, became known in the list of European sovereignties.’
But while the Court of Hanover was engaged in the important or trivial circumstances which have been already narrated, a notable individual had been pursuing fortune in various countries of Europe, and had made his appearance on the scene at Hanover, to play a part in a drama which had a tragical catastrophe—namely, Count Königsmark.
CHAPTER VI.
THE KÖNIGSMARKS.
Count Charles John Königsmark’s roving and adventurous life—The great heiress—An intriguing countess—‘Tom of Ten Thousand’—The murder of Lord John Thynne—The fate of the count’s accomplices—Court influence shelters the guilty count.
The circumstance of the sojourn of a Count Königsmark at Zell, during the childhood of Sophia Dorothea, has been before noticed. Originally the family of the Königsmarks was of the Mark of Brandenburgh, but a chief of the family settled in Sweden, and the name carried lustre with it into more than one country. In the army, the cabinet, and the church, the Königsmarks had representatives of whom they might be proud; and generals, statesmen, and prince-bishops, all labouring with glory in their respective departments, sustained the high reputation of this once celebrated name. From the period, early in the seventeenth century, that the first Königsmark (Count John Christopher) withdrew from the imperial service and joined that of Sweden, the men of that house devoted themselves, almost exclusively, to the profession of arms. This Count John is famous as the subduer of Prague, in 1648, at the end of the Thirty Years’ War. Of all the costly booty which he carried with him from that city, none has continued to be so well cared for by the Swedes as the silver book containing the Mœso-Gothic Gospels of Bishop Ulphilas, still preserved with pride at learned Upsal.
John Christopher was the father of two sons. Otho William, a marshal of France, a valued friend of Charles XII., and a gallant servant of the state of Venice, whose government honoured his tomb with an inscription, Semper Victori, was the younger. He was pious as well as brave, and he enriched German literature with a collection of very fervid and spiritual hymns. The elder son, Conrad Christopher, was killed in the year 1673, when fighting on the Dutch and imperial side, at the siege of Bonn. He left four children, three of whom became famous. His sons were Charles John, and Philip Christopher. His daughters were Maria Aurora (mother of the famous Maurice of Saxony) and Amelia Wilhelmina. The latter was fortunate enough to achieve happiness without being celebrated. If she has not been talked of beyond her own Swedish fireside, she passed there a life of as calm felicity as she and her husband, Charles von Loewenhaupt, could enjoy when they had relations so celebrated, and so troublesome, as Counts Charles John and Philip Christopher, and the Countess Maria Aurora, the ‘favourite’ of Augustus of Poland, and the only royal concubine, perhaps, who almost deserved as much respect as though she had won greatness by a legitimate process.
It was this Philip Christopher who was for a brief season the playfellow or companion of Sophia Dorothea, in the young days of both, in the quiet gardens and galleries of Zell. It is only told of him that, after his departure from Zell, he sojourned with various members of his family, travelled with them, and returned at intervals to reside with his mother, Maria Christina, of the German family of Wrangel, who unhappily survived long enough to be acquainted with the crimes as well as misfortunes of three of her children.
In the year 1682, Philip Christopher was in England. The elder brother, who had more than once been a visitor to this country, and a welcome, because a witty, one at the Court of Charles II., had brought his younger brother hither, in order (so it was said) to have him instructed more completely in the tenets of the Protestant religion, and ultimately to place him at Oxford. In the meantime Charles John lodged Philip with a ‘governor,’ at the riding academy, near the Haymarket, of that Major Foubert, whose second establishment (where he taught ‘noble horsemanship’) is still commemorated by the passage out of Regent Street, which bears the name of the French Protestant refugee and professor of equestrianism.
The elder brother of these two Königsmarks was a superb scoundrel. He had led a roving and adventurous life, and was in England when not more that fifteen years of age, in the year 1674. During the next half-dozen years he had rendered the ladies of the Court of France ecstatic at his impudence, and had won golden opinions from the ‘marine knights’ of Malta, whom he had accompanied on a ‘caravane,’ or cruise, against the Turks, wherein he took hard blows cheerfully, and had well-nigh been drowned by his impetuous gallantry. At some of the courts of southern Europe he appeared with an éclat which made the men hate and envy him; but nowhere did he produce more effect than at Madrid, where he appeared at the period of the festivities held to celebrate the marriage of Charles II. with Maria Louisa of Orleans. The marriage of the last-named august pair was followed by the fiercest and the finest bull-fights which had ever been witnessed in Spain. At one of these Charles John made himself the champion of a lady, fought in her honour in the arena, with the wildest bull of the company, and got dreadfully mauled for his pains. His horse was slain, and he himself, staggering and faint, and blind with loss of blood, and with deep wounds, had finally only strength enough left to pass his sword into the neck of the other brute, his antagonist, and to be carried half-dead and quite senseless out of the arena, amid the approbation of the gentle ladies, who purred applause upon the unconscious hero, like satisfied tigresses.