Among the German princes, the course of whose life was changed by a union of this kind, was Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Saxe Meiningen; born in 1687, the youngest of three brothers, he became, according to the custom of his house, joint ruler of the country, that is to say, the elder brother exercised the rights of sovereignty, but the younger ones received a portion of the revenues of the country. In his youth, this prince had travelled; in the war of succession he had served through some campaigns as an Imperial officer; and at the peace of Rastatt, he quitted the army with the rank of Major-general. A fiery youth, courteous and accomplished, affable as becomes young princes, not without an interest in intellectual pursuits, he had, following the prevailing fashion, zealously collected objects of art and natural curiosities; with a lively disposition and chivalrous demeanour, he was the favourite of the country which he only nominally ruled. Whatever entered into his head, he carried on wilfully and recklessly, with an iron perseverance which might have led him to great things. Then it became his lot to fall in love with Philippine Cesar, the daughter of a Hessian captain, lady of the bedchamber to his sister, the Abbess of Gandersheim; he took her to Holland and married her.
For many years he did not avow his marriage. His life became unsettled; he kept his wife concealed in Amsterdam, and strictly commanded his servants to keep secret his place of residence; he received letters from home in roundabout ways, and was always moving to and fro in the land of his fathers. But when his wife became more precious to him, and sons were born, the stubbornness of his nature was brought forth, he revealed his marriage, and required of his family the recognition of it, and the right of succession for his children.
The displeasure of his proud house now broke out. The recognition was denied. Such a marriage was considered by the Court altogether monstrous, but it was always doubtful whether the decisions of feudal law were competent to declare this marriage invalid. Therefore the Dukes of Saxony met together in 1717, and decided that all unequal unions in their house were to be considered as only morganatic, and the children were never to be allowed the rights of succession.[[48]]
Anthony Ulrich remained firm. He solicited the Imperial court, and strove unweariedly against the council of the country, who took advantage of this quarrel to diminish the revenues of the Duke. But his nature was not easily bent. When in 1722, the last feudal tenant of Altenstein, one Hund von Wenckheim lay dying, and the commissaries of the government were standing by the death-bed to take possession of the vacant fief, Anthony Ulrich rode suddenly into the court of the castle, and in spite of the protest of the councillors, who were also his servants, entered the chamber of the dying man, sang with him the evening song and the penitential hymn, and passed the night, armed with pistols and other weapons, in the castle. As soon as the vassal had closed his eyes, he entered the room, and according to the old usage took possession of the vacant fief, and seating himself in a red velvet arm-chair, said: "I hereby take possession of my third share, without prejudice to the two-thirds of my brothers." He then called in his attendants as witnesses, and according to the prescribed usage, struck his hand forcibly on the table, so that a jug upset, symbolical of the movable property, and caused a chip to be cut out of the door of the chamber of death, and of the dining-room. After this he swore into his service all who had not fled; he then rode out, cut splinters from the oak wood, and bits of turf from the meadows, as further tokens of having taken possession, and went back to Meiningen. But when he returned to the castle, he found the gates closed and guarded by grenadiers, and all his threats and protestations were of no avail.
He afterwards wished to take his wife and children to one of his own possessions, and lead a peaceable life at home. But such was not his happy lot. His brothers obtained a decision from the Imperial high court of judicature, according to which he was not to take his wife and children into the country of his fathers, and if he should venture to do so, he was never to usurp for them the title of princes. He now however went himself to Vienna and so worked there, with the help of large sums of money, and through the medium of his military acquaintances--the Spanish minister, the Marquis of Perlas was his supporter--that the Emperor Charles VI. raised his wife Philippine to the dignity of Princess of the holy Roman Empire, and her sons and daughters to be dukes and duchesses of Saxony, with all the privileges and rights, i.e. those of the succession.
Against this, the whole house of Saxony, and those of Hohenzollern and Hesse, who were interested by the settlement of succession, rose in opposition. At first, however, Anthony Ulrich was victor. His eldest brother died, and the second was a weak man. So he became in 1729, the real ruler of the country. Then he brought his wife and eldest son under the ducal roof at Meiningen. For eleven years the stubborn prince rejoiced in having established his own will. But the struggle with his house had embittered him; and added to restlessness and violence, a litigious spirit had come over him. Peevish and endless were the disputes about the government, and the discord with his brothers and his favourites; the little country was divided into two parties; ministers and officials threw themselves on the one or the other side, and sometimes the machine of government stood still. The Duke lived generally with his wife and children out of the country, at Vienna. The legal proceedings with the agnates about the equality of birth, which still continued, and vexatious quarrels with neighbours, gave him but a gloomy satisfaction. He had gained no trifling knowledge of the forms of public law, and conducted all his suits himself. They seem to have taken up the greater part of his time.
But the victory was to be followed by a sad reverse. The new Emperor of the house of Wittelsbacher, Charles VII., was with very evident reference to Anthony Ulrich's affair, bound on oath not to legitimatize any notorious mesalliances, and to declare the right of inheritance of such children null and void. Therefore the rank given to the Duchess of Meiningen and her children was repealed. Anthony Ulrich had recourse to the Diet. But in vain. This also declared that his application must be refused, and the Emperor Francis I. of Lorraine confirmed this decision.
It was a cruel stroke of destiny. The wife of the Duke had the good fortune not to outlive the last Imperial decision; she died a few weeks previous to it; whilst her husband was fruitlessly setting heaven and earth in motion at Frankfort to ward off this fate. But the two parties quarrelled even over her coffin. The brother, and co-ruler with the Duke, refused to allow the corpse to be buried in the royal hereditary vault, nay even denied her the usual tolling of the bells for royal personages. Anthony Ulrich rushed furiously from Frankfort and commanded the tolling and the burial in the royal vault. Orders and counter orders crossed each other during several weeks; now the tolling began and now it was stopped. As Anthony Ulrich, who had again hastened to Frankfort, had commanded that the coffin should not be deposited anywhere but in the royal burial place, it was kept in a room in the castle covered over with sand; there it remained a year and a half, till in 1746, Anthony Ulrich's last brother died. Then the Duke in order to give satisfaction to his wife even in death, caused his brother's corpse after lying in state, to be placed in the same room next his wife's coffin and like hers to be covered over with sand. There the two coffins remained for a year, when they were both quietly deposited at the same time in the royal burial place.
Now Anthony Ulrich, once the youngest of his family, remained sole ruler and the eldest of his race, but Meiningen was a source of annoyance to him. He could not take his dear children home as Dukes, therefore he went to them at Frankfort. His agnates could scarcely conceal the impatience with which they awaited for his death in order to take possession of the inheritance of the last of the Meiningens. He had passed the greater part of his life in struggle with them; now he would be revenged. Out of spite to them he married at the age of sixty-three a Princess of Hesse-Philippsthal. He had ten children by his first wife and eight by his second. He announced every fresh birth to the agnates on a sheet of the largest royal folio.
He died at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1763. Even in his last testament the stubborn determination breaks forth, of bringing the two sons of his first marriage into the country as co-heirs. All the children of the first marriage died unmarried.