No. 122.
FREDERICK, KING OF BOHEMIA.
By Honthorst.
BORN 1596, DIED 1632.
Brown and gold slashed dress. Blue mantle. Blue ribbon. Ruff.
THE family history of Frederick, Elector Palatine, afterwards King of Bohemia, bears so materially on the public history of the time, and the events of the Thirty Years’ War, that we must be held excused if we go back some three generations to notice circumstances which tended not only to shape the career of this Prince, but to influence the destinies of all Germany.
Jacqueline de Longwy, wife of Louis de Bourbon, Duke of Montpensier, was secretly but deeply devoted to the Reformed faith, and she contrived, contrary to her husband’s wishes, to effect a union between her eldest daughter and the Prince of Sedan, a zealous Calvinist.
Enraged beyond measure, the Duke forced his youngest daughter Charlotte into a convent, but not before the girl (then only eighteen years of age) had, at her mother’s instigation, signed a protest against this compulsory step, at the same time declaring her strong predilection for the religion of her mother. Charlotte remained for seven years (during which time the Duchess of Montpensier died) at Jouarre in Normandy, where she became Lady Abbess.