Love affairs of the Courts of Europe

by Thornton Hall

M. Dujarrier, the most brilliant of them all, young, rich, and handsome, fell head over ears in love with her and asked her to be his wife. But the cup of happiness was scarcely at her lips before it was dashed away. Dujarrier was challenged to a duel by Beauvallon, a political enemy; and when Lola was on her way to stop the meeting she met a mournful procession bringing back her dead lover's body, on which she flung herself in an agony of grief and covered it with kisses. At the subsequent trial of Beauvallon she electrified the Court by declaring with streaming eyes, "If Beauvallon wanted satisfaction I would have fought him myself, for I am a better shot than poor Dujarrier ever was." And she was probably only speaking the truth, for her courage was as great as the love she bore for the victim of the duel.

As a child Lola had shocked her puritanical Scottish hosts by declaring that "she meant to marry a Prince," and unkindly as fate had treated her, she had by no means relinquished this childish ambition. It may be that it was in her mind when, a year and a half after the tragedy that had so clouded her life in Paris, she drifted to Munich in search of more conquests.

Now in the full bloom of her radiant loveliness—"the most beautiful woman in Europe" many declared—mingling the vivacity of an Irish beauty with the voluptuous charms of a Spaniard—she was splendidly equipped for the conquest of any man, be he King or subject; and Ludwig I., King of Bavaria, had as keen an eye for female beauty as for the objects of art on which he squandered his millions.

It was this Ludwig who made Munich the fairest city in all Germany, and who enriched his palace with the finest private collection of pictures and statues that Europe can boast. But among all his treasures of art he valued none more than his gallery of portraits of fair women, each of whom had, at one time or another, visited his capital.

Such was Ludwig, Bavaria's King, to whom Lola Montez now brought a new revelation of female loveliness, to which his gallery could furnish no rival. At first sight of her, as she danced in the opera ballet, he was undone. The next day and the next his eyes were feasting on her charms and her supple grace; and within a week she was installed at the Court and was being introduced by His Majesty as "my best friend."

And not only the King, but all Munich was at the feet of the lovely "Spaniard"; her drives through the streets were Royal progresses; her receptions in the palace which Ludwig presented to her were thronged by all the greatest in Bavaria; on Prince and peasant alike she cast the spell of her witchery. As for Ludwig, connoisseur of the beautiful, he was her shadow and her slave, showering on her gifts an Empress might well have envied. Fortune had relented at last and was now smiling her sweetest on the adventuress; and if Lola had been content with such triumphs as these the story of her later life might have been very different. But she craved power to add to her trophies, and aspired to take the sceptre from the weak hand of her Royal lover.

Never did woman make a more fatal mistake. On the one hand was arrayed the might of Austria and of Rome, whose puppet Ludwig was; on the other hand was a nation clamouring for reforms. Revolution was already in the air, and it was reserved to this too daring woman to precipitate the storm.

Her first ambition was to persuade Ludwig to dismiss his Ministry, to shake himself free from foreign influence, and to inaugurate the era of reform for which his subjects were clamouring. In vain did Austria try to win her to its side by bribes of gold (no less than a million florins) and the offer of a noble husband. To all its seductions Lola turned as deaf an ear as to the offers of Poland's Viceroy. And so strenuous was her championship of the people that the Cabinet was compelled to resign in favour of the "Lola Ministry" of reformers.

So far she had succeeded, but the price was still to pay. The reactionaries, supported by Austria and the Romish Church, were quick to retaliate by waging remorseless war against the King's mistress; and, among their most powerful weapons, used the students' clubs of Munich, who, from being Lola's most enthusiastic admirers, became her bitterest enemies.

To counteract this move Lola enrolled a students' corps of her own—a small army of young stalwarts, whose cry was "Lola and Liberty," and who were sworn to fight her battles, if need be, to the death. Thus was the fire of revolution kindled by a woman's vanity and lust of power. Students' fights became everyday incidents in the streets of Munich, and on one occasion when Lola, pistol in hand, intervened to prevent bloodshed, she was rescued with difficulty by Ludwig himself and a detachment of soldiers.