Political exigencies were pressing. As usual, war loomed. Prince Henry's death, therefore, delayed the marriage but a few days. Frederick possessed a sweet and lovable nature. His letters, to this day, strangely win the reader's heart. To the stricken sister, mourning the loss of her idolized brother, the tenderness of Prince Frederick was balm. Her bridegroom had been her dead brother's friend. To loyal-hearted Elizabeth Stuart that memory was far more precious than the diamond rose-wreath crown which her lover brought her from the Palatinate. Yet the glittering coronet it may be seen to-day in Munich was very beautiful. Clear, sparkling, as if made of ice shot through by sunlight, it seems a fit ornament for a young "Winter Queen."
The bridal journey to the Palatine was a triumphal progress. Elizabeth and Frederick were like two children newly escaped from school. They cast convention to the winds. The court chamberlain was in despair. But the two happy lovers only laughed at him and his "precedents." They said they would make new precedents, and they did. In Nörnberg they invited themselves to a burgher wedding. The bride was a Welser, a distant cousin of Philippine Welser. Both Elizabeth and her husband danced at this wedding until after midnight. Prince Frederick, indeed, danced so heartily, says an old chronicler, "that he did twirl some of the maidens with him clean out into the street."
About this time died the Emperor Matthias, successor of Ferdinand I. The Protestant Union earnestly wished to prevent the election of the Catholic Ferdinand, King of Bohemia, as emperor. An opportune uprising of Protestants in Bohemia served as a pretext for placing Frederick of the Palatinate, head of the Protestant Union, upon the throne of Bohemia. The whole world knows the story of that brief, brilliant, winter reign of Frederick and Elizabeth in Bohemia.
The Stuart "Queen of Hearts" was more popular in Bohemia than her Calvinistic husband. Rich presents of money and plate were made to her. A delegation of the wives of the most prominent citizens waited upon her in Prague. Behind them slowly moved nine large wagons loaded with gifts. Among other presents was a baby's entire outfit, including a stately cradle made of ebony and ornamented with gold and precious jewels. The cradle was needed, for Elizabeth bore thirteen children.
The king and queen were too unconventional to please the stiff Bohemian nobility. The young royal couple gave mortal offence once to the entire court by coasting down hill with a lot of school children. The conspicuous costume worn by his majesty on that unfortunate day seems to have been an added injury to court etiquette. He wore, we are told, "a satin fur-trimmed pelisse and a large white hat with long, floating yellow plumes."
But days of childish gayety were well-nigh passed for Frederick and Elizabeth. Sorrow, humiliation, poverty awaited them. Ferdinand II. was triumphantly elected. One of the new emperor's first acts was to confiscate Frederick's principality of the Rhine Palatinate and make it over to a Bavarian Prince. His next act was to send a force under Tilly to regain the Bohemian throne. Frederick made no resistance worthy of the name. Instead, he fled with his family.
Never was royal fall more humiliating. Landless, penniless, almost friendless, Frederick and Elizabeth suddenly found themselves the laughing-stock of Europe. It was a brutal age, a vulgarly coarse age. Minor incidents often show most clearly the progress of civilization. To-day a woman dragged down by her husband's fall is screened.
Not so in Elizabeth Stuart's time. The press of that day lampooned her more unmercifully than it did her unfortunate consort. Cruel cartoons, picturing her in a beggar's dress were scattered broadcast. King James I. offered his daughter an asylum in England, but she answered proudly: "My place while I live is by my husband's side. I shall never forsake him."
So intense was Elizabeth's love for her husband that it practically crowded out all other love except the love for her dead brother. Even of her children she said: "I love them more because they are his than for themselves or for my own comfort." For three days after Frederick's death Elizabeth neither spoke nor ate nor wept. To the day of her own death, her room, sometimes a pitifully poor room for a king's daughter and a king's wife, was draped in black in memory of her husband.
The eldest daughter of Elizabeth and Frederick also an Elizabeth was a diligent student of philosophy. Descartes honored her with his friendship. For many years she corresponded with the great philosopher. In youth, this Elizabeth was very pretty a vivacious, black-haired, brown-eyed beauty, with a slender aquiline nose which tried her sorely by turning unbecomingly red at times. The poverty-stricken Palatine princesses, living as poor relations, first at this court, then at that, kept up courage by sharpening their wits on one another. One day when the annoying nose was blushing, Elizabeth's next younger sister, Louise, said: "Come, it is time to attend the audience of our cousin, the Queen," and Elizabeth answered aggrievedly: "Do you expect me to go with this nose?" To which quick-witted Louise replied: "Do you expect me to wait until you grow another one?"