The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) by Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

M >> Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy >> The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria Hungary, Volume I. (of 2)

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20

[Illustration: _SCENE IN DUKE ERNEST GUNTHER'S QUARTERS_
_After a drawing by Oreste Cortazzo_]

Of the bachelorhood days of the kaiser's other brother-in-law, Duke
Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, already mentioned several times
in these pages, especially in connection with the anonymous letter
scandal, the least said the better. A hard-drinking, dissipated, and
somewhat coarse-mannered cavalry officer, he has often been a source
of perpetual anger to the kaiser and of distress to his sister, the
excellent empress. He managed to get his name involved in all sorts of
unsavory speculations on the stock exchange and in gambling scandals,
invariably, it is true, as a victim; while at least three foreign
footlight favorites were expelled from Germany by the police on
account of the scandals created by his association with them. On one
occasion, he even had the audacity to appear at Charlottenburg with a
notorious American "_demi-mondaine_" seated beside him on the box of
his drag, although his sister, the empress, was present at the races,
as well as a large number of ladies of the court and many great
dignitaries. Seeing the servants of his coach arrayed in the familiar
liveries of his house, they all naturally imagined that the
lady beside the duke was one of his sisters, either Princess
Frederick-Leopold or Princess Fedora, and accorded to her the homage
which would have belonged by right to either of these two princesses,
but which was totally misplaced when conceded to a woman of such
unenviable notoriety as the fair stranger who sat beside the duke.
Needless to add that the emperor was furious when he heard of the
affair, and after giving orders for the immediate expulsion of the
woman, directed the prince to leave Berlin, and to remain at his
castle of Prinkenau until he had expiated his gross and flagrant
breach of the proprieties.

Duke Ernest-Gunther was a suitor for the hand of quite a large number
of princesses, and among those to whom he proposed were the daughters
of the Prince of Wales and of the latter's brother, the Duke of
Coburg, his suit being rejected with touching unanimity in each
instance, in consequence of his unenviable reputation. Yet strangely
enough, as stated previously, he seems to have developed into
an exemplary husband, although his marriage was contracted under
circumstances which, verged on a tragedy; for his wife, a mere
seventeen-year-old girl, just issuing from the school-room when he
made an offer for her hand, was literally flung into his arms by both
her parents, who were determined to separate from each other, and who
had been informed by Emperor Francis-Joseph of Austria, and by King
Leopold of Belgium, that no such step could be tolerated until after
the marriage of little Princess "Dolly," the only daughter of this
ill-matched couple. The betrothal took place in due course at Vienna.
But before the marriage could follow, the young girl's mother, namely,
Princess Louise of Coburg and of Belgium, deliberately eloped from the
Austrian capital with her husband's chamberlain, the Hungarian Count
Keglewitch; and what was worse, took her daughter with her. The trio
fled to Nice, where they were visited by King Leopold, who after
endeavoring in vain to persuade the princess to return to her husband
at Vienna, discarded her in hot anger, declaring that she was no
longer his daughter!

The next act in the drama was a challenge issued by Prince Philip of
Coburg against Count Keglewitch, who left Nice for the encounter: the
duel was fought in the army riding-school at Vienna, the commander of
the metropolitan garrison and the minister of war acting as seconds
to Prince Philip, although duelling is strictly forbidden by law in
Austria, as it is in Germany. Prince Philip received a painful wound
in the hand, and the count forthwith left to rejoin the princess at
Nice. The publicity given to this duel had the unfortunate result,
however, of calling attention to the presence of poor little Princess
Dorothy at Nice with her misguided mother and the count, and the
princess having been warned by the Austrian authorities and the French
police that her daughter would be taken from her by force unless she
relinquished her hold upon the child, she sent her back to Vienna,
whence the girl was immediately dispatched to Dresden and placed under
the care of the mother and the unmarried sister of the German empress,
with whom she remained until her marriage.

Shortly after her departure from Nice, her mother was forced to take
flight in consequence of the persecution to which she was subjected by
her creditors; and with a shamelessness that can only be explained on
the score of an unbalanced mind, she deliberately returned to Austria
with her lover, and coolly took up her residence at his castle near
Agram, where the count actually made preparations for a siege, in
order to resist by force any attempt on the part of the authorities to
take the princess from him.

Ultimately, both were captured by strategy, and while the princess was
conveyed under police escort to Vienna, and lodged at the request of
her husband in a lunatic asylum, on the sworn statements of two court
physicians concerning her insanity, the count was placed under close
arrest at Agram on the charge of grossly immoral conduct, unbecoming
an officer and a gentleman. Before he had been very long in the
military prison, this charge was changed to one of forgery; for it was
discovered that there were notes in circulation at Vienna and Paris
to the extent of more than a million dollars, which the count had
negotiated, and which bore the forged signature of Princess Louise's
sister, the widowed Crown Princess Stephanie of Austria.

The count of course denied that he had forged the signature, but
as the fact remains that he negotiated the notes, and that Princess
Louise, who, failing himself, can alone have been the culprit, is
officially declared insane, and legally irresponsible, he has had to
bear the brunt of the affair, and is now, after having undergone the
terrible ceremony of military degradation, working out a sentence of
five years' penal servitude in a fortress; doubtless comparing his
fate with that of the celebrated Baron Trench, who was imprisoned
for years in the dungeons of Spandau, and of Magdeburg, for having
compromised the fair name of the sister of Frederick the Great by
indiscreet attentions.

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.
Loesinger, 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 mesalliance, 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 mesalliance 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
mesalliance 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 mesalliance; 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 mesalliance, 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.

Naturally, all this has served to render Prince Adolph and his wife
extremely unpopular throughout the length and breadth of Germany; and
when a short time ago there was a question of appointing the prince
as regent of the Duchy of Brunswick in succession to Prince Albert
of Prussia, who is tired of the post, or as a stadtholder of
Alsace-Lorraine in the place of Prince Herman Hohenlohe, the press
throughout Germany, and even in Prussia, raised its voice in protest
against the emperor's forcing his brother-in-law into places for which
he was in no sense of the word fitted, either by his talents, his
administrative skill, his tact, or his intellectual abilities.

CHAPTER IX

Although Germany's young crown prince has until now been more or less
of a stranger to court functions and gaieties at Berlin, his time
being absorbed by his studies at the military academy of Ploen, and his
holidays spent in travel and Alpine expeditions, yet, as he is about
to celebrate his majority, and has passed from the stages of boyhood
to those of manhood, he will be from henceforth a personage of the
utmost importance--second only in rank to the emperor.

Destined, in course of time, to succeed to the throne and to the
immense responsibilities of his father, and to become virtually the
autocratic ruler of a nation of fifty million people, as well as the
absolute master of the greatest military power on the face of the
globe, every scrap of information concerning this youth must naturally
be of vast interest, not only to his future subjects, but also to
the entire civilized world. Under the circumstances, therefore, it is
satisfactory to be able to say truthfully that Germany's future kaiser
is a fine, healthy-minded, healthy-bodied lad, disposed to take an
extremely serious view of his duties and his obligations, and who,
thanks to the excellent education which he has received both from his
parents and his teachers, seems destined to prove a wise as well as a
popular monarch.

It seems but the other day that the young crown prince, as a chubby
ten-year-old lad, was being introduced by his father to the officers
and men of the first regiment of Foot Guards at Potsdam, to which,
in accordance with traditional usage, he was appointed on his tenth
birthday as lieutenant. There may be some of my readers who were
present on that occasion, and who may remember the spectacle presented
by the little fellow, vainly endeavoring to keep step with the giant
strides of these huge grenadiers, the tallest men in the German army,
during the march-past that followed the ceremony. Since then there
have been so many portraits of the crown prince published, as he
appeared at that time, that this taken in conjunction with the rapid
flight of years, renders it difficult to realize that he is now no
longer a little boy, but a youth considerably taller and almost as
broad and stalwart as his father, whose best friend he has become.

William and his eldest boy are fondly devoted to each other. To the
crown prince, his father is in every sense of the word "William second
to none;" while the kaiser himself is entirely wrapped up in his heir.
For the last few years the emperor has given every spare moment that
he could snatch away from his multifarious occupations to the task of
instilling his ideas and views into the crown prince. In talking
and reasoning with him, he has treated the lad as far older than his
years, has discussed with him, in fact, as if he were a man; and it
is due to this that Germany's future emperor is at the present moment
remarkably mature for his age, and really in a position to view
matters with a degree of experience and knowledge that are unrivalled
in so young a man. As a general rule, young people are unwilling to
accept the advice of their elders, or to benefit by their experience,
convinced that their seniors are behind the spirit of the age, and in
no sense of the word up to date. But with the German crown prince this
is different: he is so imbued with the idea that his father is wiser
and better than anyone else in the world, that he is willing and glad
to accept the paternal recommendations and to benefit by paternal
advice.

Yet with all this the lad is not a prig, nor is he forward or
presumptuous. True, he has a keen sense of his own dignity, but it
takes the form of an extreme simplicity, and of an absolute lack of
affectation, since he is intelligent enough to realize that his rank
and position are sufficiently assured to render it unnecessary that he
should call attention thereto either by his manner or by his speech.
He is modest too, very frank, particularly courteous to old people,
boyishly chivalrous to women, and firmly convinced that there is no
member of the fair sex in the entire world who is so ideally perfect
in appearance, as well as in character, as his mother.

I would not for all the world that this description of the crown
prince should in any way convey the impression to my readers that he
is a milksop or an overgrown child! Devoted to every form of sport, a
splendid gymnast, a clever oarsman, a skilful driver and a bold rider,
an excellent shot, he is in every sense of the word a manly young
fellow, who, however, has been kept free from all contact with the
darker sides of life, and who still retains, therefore, mingled with
the experience of a grown man, much of the innocence and freshness of
mind of a mere boy. Indeed, he is a son of whom any father and mother
might well be proud!

Fair-haired and blue-eyed, with the down of a blond moustache upon his
upper lip, the young prince is a typical Hohenzollern, and resembles
his grandfather, Emperor Frederick, more than he does his father. He
is passionately devoted to everything military, and keenly relishes
the idea that the six months following the attainment of his majority
are to be devoted to military duties at Potsdam, for although he has
held a commission of lieutenant of the first regiment of Foot Guards
since his tenth year, he is only now about to be called upon to fulfil
the duties of his rank with the regiment.

It will be in every sense of the word an arduous training, for the
first regiment of Guards being considered all the world over as the
crack corps of the German army, and as the embodiment of military
perfection in every sense of the word, its officers, realizing that
it is, so to speak, the star phalanx of Germany, are engaged, morning,
noon and night, in maintaining it at its proper standard, and there
are no officers anywhere in Europe who are so hard worked as those
of the first regiment of Prussian Guards;--that regiment which in the
days of Frederick the Great's father was composed entirely of giants,
recruited, or rather purchased often, at a cost of several thousand
dollars apiece, from all parts of the world!

The prince must be on the drill grounds and the manoeuvre fields as
early as four o'clock in the morning, returning for a sort of luncheon
towards ten or eleven; he must devote his afternoon to military
studies of one kind or another; while from four o'clock till seven his
time will be taken up by barrack-room inspections, company reports,
and the other thousand and one duties incidental to regimental life
in Germany. In the case of the crown prince the work will be
exceptionally heavy, as he is expected to acquire in the course of six
months an experience which other subalterns take years to obtain. At
the end of the term in question he is to go to Bonn, there to take
his seat, like his father before him, on the benches of the celebrated
university as an ordinary student.

From his eighteenth birthday the crown prince will have an
establishment and a civil list of his own. He will have his court
marshal, who will be at the same time the treasurer, governor, and
chief officer of his household. He will have his aids-de-camp, who
will, as far as possible, be young men of his own age and alive to the
responsibilities of their office; he will also have a palace of his
own, stables of his own, and his own shooting. Indeed the forest of
Spandau has already been for some time past strictly preserved in view
of his coming of age.

This particular forest has from time immemorial been assigned as the
particular game-park of the heir to the crown. The crown prince is
to make his home in the so-called "Stadtschloss" at Potsdam, where
he will occupy the same suite of apartments that was tenanted by his
parents during the alterations that recently took place at the "Neues
Palais." This palace was erected at the close of the seventeenth
century, and contains, among other objects of interest, the furniture
used by Frederick the Great, the coverings of which were nearly all
torn to shreds by the claws of his dog; his writing-table covered with
ink-stains, his library filled with Trench books, music composed by
himself, etc. The various halls and rooms are kept nearly in the same
manner, indeed, as when he used them. Adjoining his bedroom there is
a small cabinet, where he used to dine alone or with Voltaire, without
attendants, everything coming through the floor on a dumbwaiter, the
king himself placing the dishes on the table.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20