It was in the following spring, on May 24, 1663, that Leonora Christina, much against her own inclination, left her husband—as it proved, not to see him again alive. Ulfeldt had on many occasions used his wealth in order to gain friends, by lending them money—probably the very worst method of all. It is proved that at his death he still held bonds for more than 500,000 dollars, or 100,000l., which he had lent to various princes and noblemen, and which were never paid. Amongst others he had lent the Pretender, afterwards Charles II., a large sum, about 20,000 patacoons, which at the time he had raised with some difficulty. He doubted not that the King of England, now that he was able to do it, would recognise the debt and repay it; and he desired Leonora, who, through her father, was cousin of Charles II., once removed, to go to England and claim it. She describes this journey in her Autobiography.
The Danish Government, hearing of her presence in England, thought that Ulfeldt was there too, or hoped at any rate to obtain possession of important documents by arresting her, and demanded her extradition. The British Government ostensibly refused, but underhand it gave the Danish minister, Petcum, every assistance. Leonora was arrested in Dover, where she had arrived on her way back, disappointed in the object of her journey. She had obtained enough and to spare of fair promises, but no money; and by secretly giving her up to the Danish Government, Charles II. in an easy way quitted himself of the debt, at the same time that he pleased the King of Denmark, without publicly violating political propriety. Leonora’s account of the whole affair is confirmed in every way by the light which other documents throw upon the matter, particularly by the extracts contained in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the reign of Charles II., 1663-64.
Leonora was now conducted to Copenhagen, where she was confined in the Blue Tower—a square tower surmounted by a blue spire, which stood in the court of the royal castle, and was used as a prison for grave offenders (see the engraving). At this point the Memoir of her sufferings in the prison takes up the thread of her history, and we need not here dwell upon its contents.
As soon as Ulfeldt heard that the Brandenburg Government had betrayed him, and that sentence had been passed on him in Copenhagen, he left Bruges. No doubt the arrest of Leonora in England was a still greater blow to him. The Spanish Government would probably have surrendered him to the Danish authorities, and he had to flee from place to place, pursued by Danish agents demanding his extradition, and men anxious to earn the reward offered for his apprehension, dead or alive. His last abode was Basle, where he passed under a feigned name, until a quarrel between one of his sons and a stranger caused the discovery of their secret. Not feeling himself safe, Ulfeldt left Basle, alone, at night, in a boat descending the Rhine; but he never reached his destination. He was labouring under a violent attack on the chest, and the night air killed him. He breathed his last in the boat, on February 20, 1664. The boatmen, concluding from the gold and jewels which they found on him that he was a person of consequence, brought the body on shore, and made the matter known in Basle, from whence his sons came and buried him under a tree in a field—no one knows the spot.
Meanwhile the punishment of beheading and quartering had been executed on a wooden effigy in Copenhagen. His palace was demolished, and the site laid out in a public square, on which a pillar of sandstone was erected as an everlasting monument of his crimes. This pillar was taken away in 1842, and the name was changed from Ulfeldt Square to Greyfriars Square, as an indication of the forgetting and forgiving spirit of the time, or perhaps rather because the treason of Ulfeldt was closely connected with the ancient jealousy between Danes and Swedes, of which the present generation is so anxious to efface the traces.
His children had to seek new homes elsewhere. Christian, who killed Fuchs, became a Roman Catholic and died as an abbé; and none of them continued the name, except the youngest son Leo, who went into the service of the German Emperor, and rose to the highest dignities. His son Corfits likewise filled important offices under Charles VI. and Maria Theresa, but left no sons. His two daughters married respectively a Count Waldstein and a Count Thun, whose descendants therefore now represent the family of Ulfeldt.
Leonora Christina remained in prison for twenty-two years—that is, until the death of Sophia Amalia, the Queen of Fredrik III. This King, as well as his son Christian V., would willingly have set her at liberty; but the influence of the Queen over her husband and son was so strong that only her death, which occurred in 1685, released Leonora.
The Memoir of her life in prison terminates with this event, and her after-life does not offer any very remarkable incidents. Nevertheless, a few details, chiefly drawn from a MS. in the Royal Library at Copenhagen, recently published by Mr. Birket Smith, may serve to complete the historical image of this illustrious lady. The MS. in question is from the hand of a Miss Urne, of an ancient Danish family, who managed the household of Leonora from 1685 to her death in 1698. A royal manor, formerly a convent, at Maribo, on the island of Laaland, was granted to Leonora shortly after her release from the Blue Tower, together with a sufficient pension for a moderate establishment.
‘The first occupation of the Countess,’ says Miss Urne, ‘was devotion; for which purpose her household was assembled in a room outside her bed-chamber. In her daily morning prayer there was this passage: “May the Lord help all prisoners, console the guilty, and save the innocent!” After that she remained the whole forenoon in her bedchamber, occupied in reading and writing. She composed a book entitled the “Ornament of Heroines,” which Countess A. C. Ulfeldt and Count Leon took away with them, together with many other rare writings. Her handiwork is almost indescribable, and without an equal; such as embroidering in silk, gold embroidery, and turning in amber and ivory.’
It will be seen from Leonora’s own Memoir that needlework was one of her principal occupations in her prison. Count Waldstein still possesses some of her work; in the Church of Maribo an altar-cloth embroidered by her existed still some time ago; and at the Castle of Rosenborg, in Copenhagen, there is a portrait of Christian V. worked by Leonora in silk, in return for which present the King increased her annual pension. Miss Urne says that she sent all her work to Elizabeth Bek, a granddaughter of Leonora, who lived with her for some years. But she refused to send her Leonora’s Postille, or manual of daily devotion, which had been given Leonora on New Year’s Day, in the last year of her captivity, by the castellan, Torslev, who is mentioned in Leonora’s Memoir, and who had taught her to turn ivory, &c. This book has disappeared; but amongst the relics of Leonora Christina, the Royal Library at Copenhagen preserves some leaves which had been bound up with it, and contain verses, &c., by Leonora, and other interesting matter.