Princess Louise is now under strict restraint in an asylum for the insane near Dresden, and inasmuch as both her father, King Leopold of the Belgians, and her husband, have declined to pay any of her debts, public sales of her belongings, even of her dresses and her under-garments, were permitted to take place at Vienna and at Nice for the benefit of her creditors. It is only fair to the unfortunate princess to state that her entire married life has been one of uninterrupted misery, owing to the brutality and drunken habits of her husband, who is noted as one of the most dissolute princes in all Europe. In fact if court gossip at Berlin and Vienna is to be believed, the princess first became enamored of Count Keglewitch when the latter, in attendance on the princely couple as their chamberlain, interfered one day to protect her from the blows of her husband.
It was amidst circumstances such as these that Princess Dorothy was married to Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, neither her father nor her mother being present at her marriage; the reigning Duke of Coburg, as chief of the Coburg family figuring in the place of her parents, and giving her away at the altar. That with such a father, such a mother, and with a husband of such a past reputation for dissipation and wildness, the little princess should have found happiness in marriage, is, to say the least, surprising. But the duke seems devoted to his little wife, while she on her side is completely wrapped up in her husband, and thinks him perfect, in every way.
Yet another brother-in-law of the kaiser who is a conspicuous figure at the Court of Berlin, is Prince Adolphus of Schaumburg-Lippe, married to Princess Victoria, the least attractive and least popular of William's sisters. After several flirtations of a rather sensational character with young Count Andrassy, and several other gay diplomats and noblemen, which were a source of amusement to the court, although of great concern to her mother, she ultimately fell in love with Prince Alexander of Battenburg, who at the time had just been forced to abandon the throne of Bulgaria, and who was certainly one of the handsomest and most fascinating of European princes. The prince, who was at the time, to put matters plainly, out of a job, being without fortune or future, was persuaded by his relatives, notably by his brother Henry, who had married Princess Beatrice of England, to apply for her hand; this he did, on the understanding that his marriage to her would facilitate his restoration to the German army, from which he had resigned on ascending the throne of Bulgaria; for as a general of the Prussian army, he anticipated retrieving the prestige and fame which he had lost as ruler of Bulgaria.
Prince Bismarck, however, set his face strongly against the match on the ground that it would impair the friendly relations between the Courts of Berlin and St. Petersburg, Prince Alexander being for personal reasons an object of the most intense animosity to the late czar. Indeed, it was this hatred on the part of the late Emperor of Russia that had rendered it impossible for Prince Alexander to retain his throne of Bulgaria. Old Emperor William, supported his chancellor in the matter, and while the late Emperor Frederick, at that time merely crown prince, remained quite passive, the cause of Princess Victoria and Prince Alexander was strongly championed by Empress Frederick and Queen Victoria. The controversy continued even after the death of old Emperor William, and finally, in face of the persistent hostility in the matter displayed by Prince Bismarck, and by the present kaiser, it was arranged that the couple should be married, not in Germany, but in England, at Windsor Castle, and that they should make their home elsewhere than in Germany. This, however, did not meet the views of Prince Alexander, who thus saw all his ambition for a military career in the German army frustrated instead of promoted by the union. So at the very last moment, within a few days of the date appointed for the wedding at Windsor, and after all the trousseau had been purchased and the wedding presents bought, he deliberately jilted his royal fiancee, and married at Nice, an actress named Mlle. Lösinger, an offspring of the valet and the cook of the old Austrian General Faviani.
The prince, it may be remembered, subsequently abandoned the title and status of a Prince Battenberg, secured the title of Count Hartenau from his father's old friend and comrade, the Emperor of Austria, as well as a colonelcy in the Austrian army, and died as major-general in command of a brigade at Gratz.
It was more than a year after this, that Princess Victoria found a husband in the insignificant-looking and inoffensive Prince Adolph of Schaumburg-Lippe, son of Prince George of that ilk, the prince at that time serving as Captain of Hussars at Bonn. Soon afterwards, Emperor William learning that Prince Waldemar of Lippe was dying, took advantage of the fact that he was rather weak-minded to induce him to sign a species of will bequeathing the regency of the principality at his death to Prince Adolph of Schaumburg-Lippe, the next heir to the throne of Lippe; his brother Alexander of Lippe being an incurable lunatic. On the strength of this document, which was of a purely personal character, and which was neither ratified by the legislature of the principality of Lippe, nor recognized by the federal council of the German empire, Prince Adolph, with the assistance of a couple of Prussian regiments, coolly took possession of the principality of Lippe, proclaimed himself regent, and assumed the reins of government.
According to the laws of Germany governing the succession of its sovereign houses, the regency in such a case as that presented by the principality of Lippe, should have fallen to the lot of the nearest living agnate. The latter happened to be Count Ernest of Lippe, chief of the Beisterfeld branch of the Lippe family. Prince Adolph, however, and his brother-in-law, Emperor William, took the ground that Count Ernest was debarred from the regency, and from succession to the throne on the death of the crazy Prince Alexander, by the fact that sometime in the early part of the last century one of his male ancestors had contracted a mésalliance, and thus brought a plebeian strain into the family. This contention was accepted neither by the people of Lippe, nor by the count; they appealed to the tribunals of the empire, and to every reigning family of Germany in turn, the entire non-Prussian press, as well as many newspapers in Prussia itself, espousing their cause.
Finally, the emperor and his brother-in-law were forced by popular clamor to consent to bring the matter before a tribunal of arbitration, composed of the principal judges of the Supreme Federal Court at Leipzig, presided over for the occasion by the dean and veteran of German sovereigns, King Albert of Saxony. The tribunal, after due deliberation, rendered a decision against the emperor and Prince Adolph; directing the latter to at once surrender the regency and the Lippe estates, which are immensely valuable, yielding an income of eight hundred thousand dollars, to Count Ernest of Lippe, on the ground that if a mésalliance such as the one contracted by the count's eighteenth-century ancestor were to be considered sufficient to invalidate his rights to the regency and to the succession to the throne, as the nearest living male relative of the crazy reigning prince, half the thrones of Germany would have to be vacated by their present occupants.
It was pointed out by the arbitrators that if the contention of Prince Adolph and the kaiser were admitted, the Grand Duke of Baden would have to abandon his throne; the branch of the Baden family to which he belonged being descended from a prince of Baden who contracted a mésalliance at the close of the last century; that all the children of the emperor himself would be barred from succession to the throne of Germany, since the great-grandfather of the present Empress of Germany was the offspring of a terrible mésalliance; while last, but not least, Prince Adolph himself was descended from a prince of Lippe who towards the close of the last century, fell in love with and married the daughter of a mere writ-server, whose blood flows in the veins of the emperor's brother-in-law.
Emperor William and Prince Adolph bitterly resented the setback to which they were subjected by this decree of the King of Saxony; and although they were forced to yield in the present instance, they threatened to reopen the entire question should anything untoward happen to the present regent, Count Lippe, for they insist that under no circumstances can any of his sons be permitted to inherit either his rights or his honors, owing to the fact that his wife, the Countess of Lippe, is also the issue of a mésalliance, her mother having been an American girl, a native of Philadelphia, who married Count Leopold Wartensleben. On the strength of this, Prussian authorities, military as well as civilian, while directed to accord to the Count of Lippe the honors due to the regent of a German sovereignty, are forbidden to recognize in any way either the count's consort or his children, on the ground that these can only be regarded as morganatic, and as such debarred from the tokens of respect due to full-fledged members of a sovereign house.