One of the most cherished projects of George the Second was the union by marriage of two of his own children with two of the children of the King of Prussia. Such an alliance would have bound more intimately the descendants of Sophia Dorothea through her son and daughter. The double marriage was proposed to the King of Prussia, in the name of the King of England, by Sir Charles Hotham, minister-plenipotentiary. George proposed that his eldest son, Frederick, should marry the eldest daughter of the King of Prussia, and that his second daughter should marry the same King’s eldest son. To these terms the Prussian monarch would not agree, objecting that if he gave his eldest daughter to the Prince of Wales, he must have the eldest, and not the second, daughter of George and Caroline for the Prince of Prussia. Caroline would have agreed to these terms; but George would not yield: the proposed intermarriages were broken off, and the two courts were estranged for years.
The Prussian princess, Frederica Wilhelmina, has published the memoirs of her life and times; and Ranke, quoting them in his ‘History of the House of Brandenburgh,’ enters largely into the matrimonial question, which was involved in mazes of diplomacy. Into the latter it is not necessary to enter; but to those who would know the actual causes of the failure of these proposed royal marriages the following passage from Ranke’s work will not be without interest:—
‘Whatever be their exaggerations and errors, the memoirs of the Princess Frederica Wilhelmina must always be considered as one of the most remarkable records of the state of the Prussian court of that period. From these it is evident that neither she herself, nor the Queen, had the least idea of the grounds which made the King reluctant to give an immediate consent to the proposals. They saw in him a domestic tyrant, severe only towards his family, and weak to indifferent persons. The hearts on both sides became filled with bitterness and aversion. The Crown Prince, too, who was still of an age when young men are obnoxious to the influence of a clever elder sister, was infected with these sentiments. With a view to promote her marriage, he suffered himself to be induced to draw up in secret a formal declaration that he would give his hand to no other than an English princess. On the other hand, it is inconceivable to what measures the other party had recourse, in order to keep the King steady to his resolution. Seckendorf had entirely won over General Grumbkoo, the King’s daily and confidential companion, to his side; both of them kept up a correspondence of a revolting nature with Reichenbach, the Prussian resident in London. This Reichenbach, who boasts somewhere of his indifference to outward honours, and who was, at all events, chiefly deficient in an inward sense of honour, not only kept up a direct correspondence with Seckendorf, in which he informed him of all that was passing in England in relation to the marriage, and assured the Austrian agent that he might reckon on him as on himself; but, what is far worse, he allowed Grumbkoo to dictate to him what he was to write to the King, and composed his despatches according to his directions. It is hardly conceivable that these letters should not have been destroyed; they were, however, found among Grumbkoo’s papers at his death. Reichenbach, who played a subordinate part, but who regarded himself as the third party to this conspiracy, furnished on his side facts and arguments which were to be urged orally to the King, in support of his statements. Their system was to represent to the King that the only purpose of England was to reduce Prussia to the condition of a province, and to turn a party around him that might fetter and control all his actions; representations to which Frederick William was already disposed to lend an ear. He wished to avoid having an English daughter-in-law because he feared he should be no longer master in his own house; perhaps she would think herself of more importance than he; he should die, inch by inch, of vexation. On comparing these intrigues, carried on on either side of the King, we must admit that the former—those in his own family—were the more excusable, since their sole object was the accomplishment of those marriages, upon the mere suspicion of which the King broke out into acts of violence which terrified his family and his kingdom and astonished Europe. The designs of the other party were far more serious; their purpose was to bind Prussia in every point to the existing system, and to keep her aloof from England. Of this the King had no idea; he received without suspicion whatever Reichenbach wrote or Grumbkoo reported to him.’
The mutual friends, whose interest it was to keep Prussia and England wide apart, laboured with a zeal worthy of a better cause, and not only broke the proposed marriages, but made enemies of the two Kings. A dispute was built up between them touching Mecklenburgh; and Prussian press-gangs and recruiting parties crossed into the Hanoverian territory, and carried off or inveigled the King of England’s Electoral subjects into the military service of Prussia. This was the most outrageous insult that could have been devised against the English monarch, and it was the most cruel that could be inflicted upon the inhabitants of the Electorate.
The King of Prussia was not nice of his means for entrapping men, nor careful on whose territory he seized them, provided only they were obtained. The districts touching on the Prussian frontier were kept in a constant state of alarm, and border frays were as frequent and as fatal as they were on England and Scotland’s neutral ground, which derived its name from an oblique application of etymology, and was so called because neither country’s faction hesitated to commit murder or robbery upon it. I have seen in the inns near these frontiers some strange memorials of these old times. Those I allude to are in the shape of mandats, or directions, issued by the authorities, and they are kept framed and glazed, old curiosities, like the ancient way-bill at the Swan at York, which announces a new fast coach travelling to London, God willing, in a week. These mandats, which were very common in Hanover when Frederick, after refusing the English alliance, took to sending his Werbers, or recruiters, to lay hold of such of the people as were likely to make good tall soldiers, were to this effect: they enjoined all the dwellers near the frontiers to be provided with arms and ammunition; the militia to hold themselves ready against any surprise; the arms to be examined every Sunday by the proper authorities; watch and ward to be maintained day and night; patrols to be active; and it was ordered, that, the instant any strange soldiers were seen approaching, the alarm-bells should be sounded and preparations be made for repelling force by force. The Prussian Werbers, as they were called, were wont sometimes to do their spiriting in shape so questionable that the most anti-belligerent travellers and the most unwarlike and well-intentioned bodies were liable to be fired upon if their characters were not at once explained and understood. These were times when Hanoverians, who stood in fear of Prussia, never lay down in bed but with arms at their side; times when young peasants who, influenced by soft attractions, stole by night from one village to another to pay their devoirs to bright eyes waking to receive them, walked through perils, love in their hearts, and a musket on their shoulders. The enrollers of Frederick, and indeed those of his great son after him, cast a chill shadow of fear over every age, sex, and station of life.
In the meantime the two Kings reviled each other as coarsely as any two dragoons in their respective services. The quarrel was nursed until it was proposed to be settled, not by diplomacy, but by a duel. When this was first suggested, the place, but not the time, of meeting, was immediately agreed upon. The territory of Hildesheim was to be the spot whereon were to meet in deadly combat two monarchs—two fathers, who could not quietly arrange a marriage between their sons and daughters. It really seemed as if the blood of Sophia Dorothea of Zell was ever to be fatal to peace and averse from connubial felicity.
The son of Sophia Dorothea selected Brigadier-General Sutton for his second. Her son-in-law (it will be remembered that he had married that unhappy lady’s daughter) conferred a similar honour on Colonel Derschein. His English Majesty was to proceed to the designated arena from Hanover; Frederick was to make his way thither from Saltzdhal, near Brunswick. The two Kings of Brentford could not have looked more ridiculous than these two. They would, undoubtedly, have crossed weapons, had it not been for the strong common sense of a Prussian diplomatist, named Borck. ‘It is quite right and exceedingly dignified,’ said Borck one day, to his master, when the latter was foaming with rage against George the Second, and expressing an eager desire for fixing a near day whereon to settle their quarrel—‘it is most fitting and seemly, since your Majesty will not marry with England, to cut the throat, if possible, of the English monarch; but your faithful servant would still advise your Majesty not to be over-hasty in fixing the day: ill-luck might come of it.’ On being urged to show how this might be, he remarked—‘Your gracious Majesty has lately been ill, is now far from well, and might, by naming an early day for voidance of this quarrel, be unable to keep the appointment.’ ‘We would name another,’ said the King. ‘And in the meantime,’ observed Borck, ‘all Europe generally, and George of England in particular, would be smiling, laughing, commenting on, and ridiculing the King who failed to appear where he had promised to be present with his sword. Your Majesty must not expose your sacred person and character to such a catastrophe as this: settle nothing till there is certainty that the pledge will be kept; and, in the meantime, defer naming the day of battle for a fortnight.’
The advice of Borck was followed, and of course the fight never ‘came off.’ The ministers of both governments exerted themselves to save their respective masters from rendering themselves supremely, and perhaps sanguinarily, ridiculous—for the blood of both would not have washed out the absurdity of the thing. Choler abated, common-sense came up to the surface, assumed the supremacy, and saved a couple of foolish kings from slaying or mangling each other. George, however, was resolved, and that for more reasons than it is necessary to specify, that a wife must be found for his heir-apparent; and it was Caroline who directed him to look at the princesses in the small and despotic court of Saxe Gotha. Walpole was the more anxious that the Prince of Wales should be fittingly matched, as a report had reached him that Frederick had accepted an offer from the Duchess of Marlborough of a hundred thousand pounds and the hand of her favourite grand-daughter, Lady Diana Spencer. The marriage, it was said, was to come off privately, at the duchess’s lodge in Richmond Park.
Lord Delawar, who was sent to demand the hand of the Princess Augusta from her brother, the Duke of Saxe Gotha, was long, lank, awkward, and unpolished. There was no fear here of the catastrophe which followed on the introduction to Francesca da Rimini of the handsome envoy whom she mistook for her bridegroom, and with whom she fell in love as soon as she beheld him.
Walpole, writing from King’s College on the 2nd of May 1736, says: ‘I believe the princess will have more beauties bestowed upon her by the occasional poets than even a painter would afford her. They will cook up a new Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope—that all they have said is true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding, who have heard that it was rude to talk Latin before women, proposed complimenting her in English; which she will be much the better for. I doubt most of them, instead of fearing their compositions should not be understood, should fear they should; they wish they don’t know what to be read by they don’t know who.’