FREDERICK the Fifth, the father of our present monarch (Christian the Seventh) was a wise, magnificent, liberal prince; the patron of men of genius, science, and learning, and the idol of a grateful people. Suddenly, a marked change took place in his habits and his manners: he lost all relish for those exalted pursuits to which he had been attached, and gave himself up to excessive and continual inebriety, whereby he impaired his faculties, physical and mental, and shortened his days. Whilst the memory of this solitary vice, that sullied his character, is generally known, the secret and powerful cause that led to this melancholy alteration, (except to a few, who, during the life-time of his second queen, dared not give it utterance; and most of whom have since descended to the grave), has remained buried in oblivion. This accomplished monarch had two consorts; the first, and deservedly the best beloved, was the English princess Louisa, daughter of George the Second, by whom he had the wretched and imbecile prince who yet bears the title of king of Denmark; and Sophia Magdalena, married to Gustavus the Third of Sweden, who fell by the hand of Ankarstrom: for his second wife, our favorite monarch, in an evil hour, took Juliana Maria, daughter of Ferdinand Albert, duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle; an unhappy choice that was the source of many and heavy domestic calamities.
Bad passions will obtrude into palaces as well as cottages, and when they chance to obtain full possession of a queen, they are likely to hurry her to acts more atrocious than a female of humble rank, because her power to commit wickedness is so much greater. The events of common life too often exhibit the most lamentable scenes arising from the jealousy and hatred of callous and unfeeling step-mothers who oppress the children of their predecessor. Such was the character of Maria Juliana. She hated the presence of the children of the deceased queen; and, if she had dared, would have quickly sent them to follow their mother to the grave: for the propensities of her nature were mostly of a selfish and ambitious kind., At an early age, in her father's petty court, she was a great dabbler in political intrigues: in her temper sullen, cruel, and vindictive; extremely penurious; forgetful of benefits, but seldom failing to avenge an injury tenfold; above all, a most profound dissembler, and able to wear a smile on her face, and shew all manner of civilities to the person most mortally hated, and whose destruction, at that very moment, she might be planning.
Such was the step-mother whom Frederick the Fifth, placed over the children of Queen Louisa! The king possessed great sensibility, and in spite of all the pretended fondness of his new consort, he soon ascertained that she did not love them. Frederick often indulged his feelings so far, as to have the children brought to him, whom he caressed with every mark of strong affection: on these occasions the crafty step-mother would participate in his affectionate regard of the innocent babes, whilst her black heart cherished the most deadly rancour. Finding herself pregnant, she flattered her ambition with the hope of presenting her lord with a new object of affection, that should not fail to wean his regards from the fair and white haired boy of Louisa, who was the king's darling. Instead, however, of a child calculated to prove a successful rival to the beautiful Christian, the cruel and envious queen brought forth a weakly, deformed, infant; whose appearance was calculated to excite commisseration mingled with disgust, rather than love. This deformed child, contrary to expectation, lived; and as its strength and size encreased, it shewed a disposition the exact reverse of Christian's; and, owing perhaps to organic defects, was cross, sullen, and unmanageable. This was a source of sorrow to the good and humane king, and of unutterable misery to the queen, whose aversion towards Christian increased as she saw the healthy, playful, volatile boy becoming more and more the pride and hope of his fond father, who, nevertheless, did not neglect the deformed Frederick, nor fail to bestow upon him proofs of a regard truly paternal.
At length, to such a pitch did that wicked woman suffer malice and envy to carry her, that, to secure the crown for her deformed son, she resolved to cut off the blooming young Christian by poison. Having determined to commit murder, she soon found, what she believed to be, a favorable opportunity. The young prince happened to be indisposed. The cruel stepmother, under the specious pretext of fondness, was frequent in her visits ere an opportunity of attempting the horrid deed presented itself. At length she found the prince's favorite nurse preparing some gruel for her young charge over a silver lamp, and there was no other attendant in the chamber. She ordered the nurse to go to her closet to fetch her something; and as soon as the door closed she approached the lamp, and instantly infused a mineral poison into the gruel, a small part of which, if it had been swallowed by her unconscious victim, would have occasioned his death.
The nurse in question was named -------, by birth a Norwegian; and had been many years a confidential servant of the royal family. She attended Queen Louisa, at the birth of Prince Christian; she strove to sooth the last moments of her existence, and she really felt towards her children, all the affection of a mother. Having long entertained suspicions of the queen's intentions, she was ever suspicious and watchful of Juliana Maria's proceedings that in any way affected the young prince. At the momententered the apartment, her heart fraught with murder and the poison in her hand, there might, in spite of all her circumspection and self-command, be some peculiar expression imprinted on her countenance, her eye, or tone of voice, that alarmed the worst fears of the faithful and vigilant matron, who, instead of going to the queen's apartments that were in the grand front, went only a few steps and returned softly to the door, and distinctly perceived the queen infusing something from a paper into the gruel, which she appeared to stir in the silver saucepan that contained it; which done, she then replaced it on the lamp-frame in the same position as the nurse had left it.
Horror curdled the blood in the veins of the nurse, as she beheld this scene. Had the queen offered the gruel to the prince, she would have rushed in and torn it from her; but, Juliana, paced the room with a quick and hurried step, her hands clenched together and a strong expression of suppressed misery playing on her stern features. Just then Madame -------- saw a domestic named Wolff, cross the gallery ;* him she beckoned to come near, and in a whisper told him to go to Count Molckte, and give him a ring that she handed to him, and request his excellency to make haste to the apartment of the Crown Prince. She knew that when the count saw that token, it would not fail to fix his attention and produce immediate acquiescence. This done, she re-entered the room, her looks and manner betraying the painful emotions that filled her heart. The queen, without noticing her coming in sooner than she could, if she had gone to the front of the palace, told her to take the gruel to the prince, as it was sufficiently boiled, and would no doubt do him good! Every limb shook with horror as the nurse took up the saucepan :
Why don't you go with it to the prince," said Juliana.. "Pardon me, gracious queen," said the honest-hearted woman, "it is my duty to disobey you." Darting a withering look at the nurse, she exclaimed "How dare you disobey my commands?” The nurse replied not, but, as the tears streamed from her eyes, she looked significantly at the gruel, and mournfully shook her head. Thrown off her guard by passion, the queen ordered the nurse out of the room; who stood immovable as a statue, holding the saucepan in her hand. Equally torn by rage and fear, on seeing her wicked plot thus frustrated, and infamy and ruin suspended over her head, like the sword of Damocles, by a single hair, the queen, ever fertile in resources, took the desperate resolution to accuse the nurse of having attempted to commit the crime she herself came to perpetrate! Sudden as lightning she acted on this diabolical impulse: and turning towards a bell, rang it furiously: a gentleman of the prince's suite entered, and beheld in silent amazement, the scene before him. Go," said Juliana, to M. Guldberg, and tell him to come instantly to me." The gentleman bowed and withdrew.
"Now wretch," said the furious queen, her eyes flashing fire, "thou shalt feel the full weight of my vengeance; thy limbs shall be broken on the wheel for having attempted to poison the crown prince: the proofs of thy guilt are now in thine hands."
"May God forgive you, queen,” said the astonished woman, "as I can pardon you for my death, if I am the humble means of saving the son of my beloved mistress." Just then Count Molckte entered the room. "Behold in that wicked woman," said the pale and passion-torn queen, "a wretch whom I have detected in the very act of administering poison to the crown prince! Call in the guards! when the king returns he will order her to be put to the severest torture, to force her to confess by whom she has been suborned to the commission of this horrible crime." The count heard the queen in respectful silence: In a grave and severe tone, he said, "I wish to speak with your majesty alone: shall I attend your majesty in your own apartment or order Madame to withdraw?" Little suspecting that this minister had long kept a watchful eye over her conduct; and was in possession of other evidence of a criminating tendency, besides that of the nurse, who stood calm and undaunted amidst this storm of guilty passion-Juliana exclaimed, "What! are you too, count, an enemy to the crown prince, and the accomplice of this trembling culprit?" "How can your majesty harbour such a thought he coolly replied-my son would not succeed to the throne if the crown prince were no more." Count Molckte was a man of keen penetration, and perfectly a courtier. His looks implied more than his words: the abashed and guilty queen, awed and confounded, said, "If your excellency pleases let the woman retire."
The count then took the saucepan from her hand, and the nurse went into the prince's bed-room. What passed between count Molckte and Juliana, can only be surmised: but in less than an hour he went to the prince's room, and after paying his compliments, told him that his favorite nurse must go immediately to Norway. He was so affected at the news, that clinging round her neck the fond boy said, "Then I'll go to Norway too: you shall not take away my mother." It was in vain the count strove to pacify him. "I'll apply to my father," said he in an angry tone, "I am sure he will not suffer this mother to be taken away from me." The count appeared embarrassed and retired: he soon came back again, when, calling the nurse into an anti-room, he artfully strove to convince her that she had been deceived, and that the queen had merely stirred the gruel to keep it from burning. The nurse shook her head, saying, "Will your excellency allow me to carry the gruel to the prince's apothecary?-Yes." said the subtle minister, "you may." She ran for the saucepan, but found it empty and perfectly clean! More alarmed than ever, and fearful that the count had entered into the queen's hostile views against the crown prince, she secretly determined to address the king on the danger which awaited his darling boy.
The insidious minister, reading in her ingenuous countenance what was passing in her mind; whilst he applauded her courage and fidelity, told her he meant to have sent her home to Norway merely to secure her from the queen's power: but he now wished her to remain, assuring her if she pledged herself by a solemn oath to secrecy, she should be safe from the effects, of the queen's dislike, and remain in attendance on the crown prince; at the same time pledging himself in the most solemn manner for the perfect safety of the prince. To these terms, for the sake of continuing her attendance, the faithful nurse assented. The wicked queen, humbled and defeated, abstained from visiting the prince's apartments. The same day she was reported to be indisposed, and went the next to Hirschholm palace.
But the affair did not end here: The king (Frederick the Fifth,) was then absent at a small hunting lodge called Jagersprest, situated near the palace of Charlottenborg. Thither the gentleman repaired, whom the queen had commanded to call Mr. Guldberg: he obtained an audience, and told the astonished king, not only what he had seen and heard in the antichamber of the prince-but many important circumstances besides. It is not in language to express the agonising feelings excited by this intelligence, for his own life was less dear to Frederic than that of his darling son: he applauded the conduct of his informer; and such was his haste to return to Christianborg Palace, that he fell down stairs and broke his leg. The agitation of his mind produced a fever that nearly proved fatal.
As soon as his fractured limb was set, he caused the Norwegian nurse and count Molckte to be summoned before him, taking precautions to prevent any previous intercourse. The result was that he had no cause to doubt the guilt of Juliana, or that the life of the crown prince had been preserved by the courage and fidelity of his nurse, whom he liberally rewarded. From this moment he never co-habited with his guilty queen: but the thoughts of her wickedness, and the danger of his son and heir, preyed continually on his feeling mind. As a resource, a sad resource it proved, this excellent king gave himself up to drinking: and count Molckte being at once master of the queen, and the favorite minister of the king, was de facto AUTOCRAT of Denmark, exercising the sovereign authority in the name of his master,, who rapidly became but the shadow of what he. had formerly been. Juliana secretly intended to make Mr. Guldberg minister, who was a man of great talent and cool judgment: but this detection foiled her plans, and forced her to bow to the man whom she hated and feared.
It was by this means count Molckte acquired that unlimited power, which, during the latter part of the reign. of Frederic the Fifth, he exercised in a way so despotic as to procure him the ironical appellation of "Koning Molckte." This is generally the case with AUTOCRACIES: Some favorite governs the AUTOCRAT, who thereby governs the state, frequently reducing the autocrat himself to a mere cipher. Few indeed have been the number of absolute monarchs, who were not themselves as far from being free as the meanest of their slaves. But, to quit this digression: though the mind of the mild and benevolent monarch, Frederic the Fifth, was thus clouded, he was never happy except the crown prince was in his presence. As he grew in years, Christian became more and more the favorite of the king and people. In the wildest sallies of his father, the prince had more command over him than any other person; and he often had influence enough to prevent him, when tipsy, from lavishing away his treasures on the companions of his cups; and even of inducing him to retract those improvident gifts when sober.
In one of these fits, the king made count Molckte a present of the magnificent palace of Hirschholm and all its costly furniture! The crown prince, hearing of this lavish act, went to his study, and taking in his hand a plan of the palace, carried it to count Molckte, saying, “Content yourself with this, I beseech your excellency, and believe me, unless you possess the crown, the palace of Hirschholm shall never be your's.”
See other comment for: hilarous batshit insanity of it all, but now I'm intrigued by the 1818 date, because between Juliana as the evilest stepmother of them all, and the "weakly, deformed infant" her son - just who was reigning in Denmark at the time? Because while Juliana and her son were both dead (son Frederik, because of course that's his name, having died in 1805), wiki tells me Frederik's son, i.e. Juliana's grandson, Christian Frederik (of course), was already heir presumptive of the Danish throne (as of 1815), and would eventually become King of Denmark (in 1839), because Caroline Matilda's son, who succeeds Christian the Insane, dies without a son of his own.
Now, wiki also says there was mutual distrust and tension between the cousins, but still, isn't it somewhat tactless to present the grandmother of the future King as the evilest and his father as deformed? Talk about the free press. Unless the author of this batshittery is actually a cunning propagandist who doesn't want Juliana's line to make it to the throne? ...Nah, I'm probably overthinking it.
See other comment for: hilarous batshit insanity of it all, but now I'm intrigued by the 1818 date
I was also intrigued by this date! Because the first thing I thought of was: 1814-1818 is when Moltke's son is prime minister! And he doesn't come off too well in this; I mean, my reading is that JM bribes him to let her kill the kid.
But since the thing was written in English by a John Brown, especially since it opens "FREDERICK the Fifth, the father of our present monarch (Christian the Seventh)," I think this must be a British translation of some older Danish source, and that it was written precisely because Christian was king.
Let me see what I can find out.
In December last, a pause occurred in the execution of the work, during which the Author endeavoured to procure, from various sources, those authentic and original facts which were essential to complete his work and distinguish it from a mere compilation.
Me: Well, they're certainly "original", all right! Original to this work.
The Swedes are eminent for hospitality and every social virtue ; and their character has been wilfully assailed, or casually misunderstood, by British tourists. In the hour of persecution, Mr. Brown found a secure and most agreeable asylum there.
Okay, interesting. Mr. Brown moved to Sweden when Christian VII was king and was really grateful to him?
John Brown (died c. 1829) was an English historian and miscellaneous writer. He laboured on a history of Bolton; went to London to advocate the claims of his friend, Samuel Crompton, the inventor; but committed suicide, seemingly in despair at his lack of success in life.
Very little is known of his early life, except that he travelled widely in northern Europe and mixed in European politics. Drawing on his experiences, he wrote several works on international law, including Mysteries of Neutralization (1806). He showed a strong interest in European monarchs, and published Anecdotes and Characters of the House of Brunswick (1821) and Northern Courts (1818).
Okay, the Brunswick volume is bound to have good stuff.
OMG, we are not disappointed!
SDC was framed! G1 was the worst person who ever lived and his wife was beautiful, virtuous, and innocent, and it was all a conspiracy! The letters were forged!
The partiality of Whig historians, gave a lustre to Sophia, Electress of Hanover, the mother of George the First, which her real character did not deserve : and the same bias led them altogether to omit the name of his oppressed consort, whom he had, as a despot, consigned to a prison, without any other or better reason than his will and his power. Over the savage injuries inflicted on this greatly injured woman, the iron hand of the tyrantdrew a veil, which, for a time, covered and concealed the victim of lust and cruelty, and the injustice by which she was oppressed. But still,the fate of that high-minded, beautiful, and accomplished Princess, deserted, as she was, by all her relations, and by all her former associates, excited a powerful sympathy amongst the liberal and cultivated of polished society, in every nation of Europe.
For a time, indeed, her savage and brutal husband (George the First ) appears to have had the field to himself ; and he filled every court, where so petty a prince as he then was had any influence, with the most degrading accusations against his hapless wife ; and if she had been as guilty as the denunciations of her oppressor were coarse and vehement, she would, indeed, have forfeited all claim to respect, but not to sympathy, because, however bad she might have conducted herself, the adulteries of her husband were still more disgusting and notorious, and not a breath of slander had rested on her fame, till after her ill-fated marriage with that mercenary and ambitious Prince : to whose vices, therefore, her own aberrations were solely to be attributed.
Her oppressor, though he could hermetically close his pale and blighted victim in a lonely castle, and for ever debar her of the presence of her children, could not deprive her of disinterested advocates, who had the sense and humanity to consider, that she had not had a fair or an open trial, -that her coarse, vindictive, gross, and sensual husband, was the absolute master and mover of the tribunals by which she is said to have been degraded and divorced, and that her judges were as completely his servants as his lacqueys or valets ; that her character, previous to marriage, had not only been free from reproach, but was known to be of the most amiable order.
That the match was forced upon her, who was every way its victim, and had originated entirely in the avarice of her husband, who was her own first cousin, and whose claim to her hand was so enforced by his father and mother, that there was no possibility of a refusal ; although the notorious debaucheries, and deep-rooted profligacy of her husband were so gross, that all the courts of Europe resounded with recitals of his licentious amours, and general profligacy of character. When these facts were publicly known, every reflecting person admitted the probability that the fair captive, and unhappy mother, had been falsely accused, and unjustly sentenced, through the power and the malice of a guilty husband.
That the Electoral Prince, her gaoler and oppressor, had pretensions to personal courage, did not justify his having, on many occasions, exercised his valour by beating his beauteous wife, and dragging her along by her dishevelled locks, to gratify his concubines, who were the instigators and the spectators of those outrages; nor did his ambition to shine as a first- rate intriguer, warrant his having selected the character of his unhappy consort as the object which, by circumvention, by subservient and venal diplomatists, by stratagems of all kinds of the sap and mine process, he sought to demolish.
In defiance of every artifice, the baseness of hispersonal character, and the grossness of his propensities, spread rapidly with his vituperations against his wife, and his own reputation suffered in a still greater degree than that of the calumniated Princess. That her husband was a man of coarse taste and dissolute habits there can be no doubt ; and none, that he married, solely from motives of state policy, a beautiful and virtuous young Princess, whom he never loved, and whose life he began to render miserable as soon as the marriage ceremony had been performed ; yet, it is more than probable, that his minions and his concubines, seeing his aversion to his wife, fabricated the most atrocious calumnies against her, forged, or caused to be forged, a variety of letters, tending to prove the unhappy Princess had been false to her profligate lord, and they suborned and disciplined a host of false witnesses to give support to their calumnies. Where the heart is violently predisposed to think well or ill, it eagerly adopts whatever conforms to its prejudices.
The Prince had deeply and irreparably injured his wife ; and, too often is it seen, that an oppressed person has no foe so inveterate as that by whom a great injury has been inflicted; and the heart most prone to the commission of crime, is often the least capable to forgive. Thus situated, it is no wonder that GEORGE the FIRST, when Electoral Prince of Hanover, too readily received every report that was discreditable to his neglected, insulted, forsaken wife ; nor, that his attendant courtiers found it their surest way to his favour to vilify her character, and strive, by all practicable means, to pursue the unhappy lady to utter ruin.
According to the united testimony of German, Dutch, French, and English authors, never was a young and beautiful woman more cruelly treated, nor her morals exposed to worse pollution.
It was even asserted, by a Dutch anonymous author, that the malice of her dissolute husband hurried him to the infamous expedientof throwing his own wife, and the mother of his son and heir, in the way of profligate but accomplished chevaliers, in order, if successful in their attempts upon her honour, they might betray their victim, and hand her over to punishment, to infamy, and ruin. This, however, is so extravagant a flight of matrimonial depravity, that it exceeds the bounds of credibility, and must be imputed to the universal indignation excited by the gross depravity, and unrelenting cruelty of her worthless husband.
It is not the intention of the Editor to draw any comparison between the personal characters and conduct of the consorts of the first and the fourth George, who have sat on the English throne ; but there is the closest possible analogy between the conspiracies of which those Princesses were the victims.
Okay, this explains the chapter I saw in the table of contents that was called "The Secret History of the Corrupt Practices of the Duchess of Kendal" (that's Melusine, Cahn, Katte's "aunt" and G1's mistress).
Yep, Brown/his source thinks G1's half-sister the Countess Platen was his mistress and proves that G1 couldn't even be faithful to his mistress, much less his wife.
This whole volume is just about how terrible G1 and his supporters were, and how wonderful SDC was.
I'm all for a feminist take that doesn't apply a double standard and vilify her infidelity while overlooking his...but this is not that.
Also, the whole volume purports to be a collection of memoirs by other people; whether it's really that or just stuff he made up and put quotation marks around, I couldn't say. But there's this whole thing that's supposed to be written by SDC in her prison and looks like the fakest literary production ever??
Selena, if you have a desire to be entertained by more batshittery in this vein, I'll link you, but I see no history here. What even was this guy doing with his life??
ETA: Speaking literally, I meant to add that Wikipedia tells me that he exposed labor conditions of children working in cotton mills. Which is good! But maybe he should have stuck to that instead of writing history or "history". Except then we wouldn't have gotten all this entertainment.
ETA 2: Also meant to add that my current working hypothesis is that this work was drafted when Brown was living in Sweden, well before 1818 (and before Christian VII died), and only published when he came back to England and found a London publisher. And that Brown had a huge mancrush on Christian, in much the way that Zimmermann had one on Fritz. Discuss. :P
Hee, this is hilarious. Not that I am a huge fan of George I and his treatment of his wife, but it's so over the top that no one could take it seriously. Hmm, interesting to see "sensual" used in a negative sense. Also, I wonder if he was a Jacobite since he is so against George I?
Too late for that. He's writing in the G4 era, by which time no one takes the Jacobites seriously anymore, and Hannover bashing is more likely to come from Whigs, see my comment below.
Well, Lehndorff found him hot and charming, so clearly Christian must have had some attractions. Then again, that was when he was young and travelling, which he wouldn't have been in time for John Brown, though I note that wiki entry doesn't give us a birth date. What I do think is that he had a hate-on, which works almost as well. Because:
It is not the intention of the Editor to draw any comparison between the personal characters and conduct of the consorts of the first and the fourth George, who have sat on the English throne ; but there is the closest possible analogy between the conspiracies of which those Princesses were the victims.
cahn, this refers to one of the better known scandals of the Regency (well, end of Regency, technically) period. Poor old G3 became very old in his madness, remember. When still compos mentis, he'd forced his son, future G4, aka the Prince Regent, aka "Prinny", to marry that standard bride for British princes until the 20th century, a German princess, another Caroline, this despite the fact Prinny was already married morganatically to Mrs. Fitzherbert, btw. Unsurprisingly, Prinny and this Caroline loathed each other. She didn't stay long, just long enough for the two of them to produce Charlotte, Prinny's sole legitimate child, doomed to die young and in childbirth (along with the babe) years later. When G3 had his second, final descend into mental illness, and Prinny became Prince Regent for good, he of course used the opportunity to ensure his unwanted wife remained far away from Britain. When G3 died decades later, though, Caroline, who had lived back in Germany how she wanted to (good for her!) wanted the pay off for this marriage, i.e. the coronation as Queen. While newly, finally G4 just wanted a divorce and did not want her as Queen. Because the Hannover Cousins are like that, he literally locked her out of Westminster Abbey. As in, had the door closed in front of her face during the coronation.
Now, early on, up to and including G3's first mental crisis, which ended with him making a recovery (aka the story covered in Alan Bennet's play The Madness of George III, which as a film got named "The Madness of King George" so American viewers would not get confused and wonder whether they'd missed parts I and II), future G4 aka Prinny had done what all the Hannover Princes before him had done, flirted and sided with the opposition, which at this point were the Whigs. However, later on Prinny threw in his lot with the Tories, which meant the Whigs discovered Prinny-bashing as a way to have a go at the government. And he really gave him an golden opportunity with his behavior towards his wife at the coronation. And when with wanting to divorce her when she refused to (not out of love for him, but for wanting to become Queen of England, which had been the point of this whole charade of a marriage for her), which meant a trial ensued. Basically, the Whig press, which had never cared for Caroline before and had ridiculed her along with her in-laws if they thought of her before, suddenly discovered her as the second Catherine of Aragorn and an innocent martyr, a woman done wrong by the (semi)German oaf she was married to (and who was supported by a Tory government).
Now, Brown very intentionally drawing this parallel while claiming he doesn't makes me suspect the entire work is exactly this kind of political propaganda, especially if Brown was into the laudable cause of social reforms and trying in vain to make it in the capital. He might have hoped to find some rich Whig sponsors this way, or he might have done it for free because he loathed the government, and taking shots at the entire Hannover dynasty this way was one safe way to express it. Let's not forget, with the exception of G3 during his sane days, none of the Hannover cousins were popular, and G3's sons in particular were loathed. One reason why Victoria left such a mark in the public consciousness is that she (and Albert) practically reinvented the monarchy and how people saw it, presenting an impeccably devoted married couple with adorable children instead of aged libertines screwing around. This kind of talk strikes me as basically the equivalent of the Hogarth drawings when it comes to caricaturing the Hannovers.
Mind you, if John Brown did stay in Sweden for a while, he might also have gotten in touch with members of the Königsmarck family, because let's not forget SDC's murdered lover here - it's not like Team Hannover are maligned innocents here (just not the evilest etc.). Though given some of the actual letters ended up in Sweden - where Ulrike stole them and mailed them to Fritz - , the claim that there are all forged to slander innocent SDC strikes me as particularly ironic coming from an Hannover attacker, given that the later Hannovers (all descendend from SDC) tried that claim as well.
Well, they're certainly "original", all right! Original to this work.
While he may or may not have heard stories in Sweden or Denmark or both, I do think all the claims of translations and compilations are a literary device, because that was extremely popular back then. (Though more in the 18th century than in the 19th.) Let's not forget, two later 18th century bestsellers, Les Liasons Dangereuses and Sorrows of Young Werther, employ the literary device of being actual compilations of actual letters, commented on by "editors". However, thsese books were clearly marked as fiction, and Brown is marketing this as history, which puts it more into the category of those anti Marie Antoinette pamphlets written pre and during the French Revolution which also claim to be accurate reports on her utter depravity etc. In conclusion: my money is on John Brown writing this as political propaganda, only to discover it doesn't make his name nor does he win sponsors this way.
Well, Lehndorff found him hot and charming, so clearly Christian must have had some attractions. Then again, that was when he was young and travelling, which he wouldn't have been in time for John Brown, though I note that wiki entry doesn't give us a birth date.
True, though Christian was only 19 when Lehndorff met him, which means he could have still had some attractions 20 years later, at least enough to inspire pity. And Fritz was neither young nor attractive when Zimmermann developed his crush! But more seriously, yeah, I think Brown is going on stories that arose in Denmark during Christian's reign but predate Brown's time there.
This kind of talk strikes me as basically the equivalent of the Hogarth drawings when it comes to caricaturing the Hannovers.
Oh, god, yes. Exactly.
However, thsese books were clearly marked as fiction, and Brown is marketing this as history
Yeah, I'm familiar with the conceit of documents in fiction (even Tolkien did it!), and marketing your history as letters that you totally sent when the events were happening, but this was more of a fake documents I allegedly found on the continent but am not even making an effort to make them look historical.
What I do think is that he had a hate-on, which works almost as well.
Yeah, the SDC/G1 take clearly smacks of his tendency for hate-ons.
In conclusion: my money is on John Brown writing this as political propaganda, only to discover it doesn't make his name nor does he win sponsors this way.
Oh, speaking of the next generation and their distrust and tension, Danish Wikipedia says Christian's son Frederik VI disliked Moltke's son the 1814-1818 prime minister! Until he didn't:
Immediately after the change of government in 1784, Frederik VI, as a young crown prince, had "formal disgust" for Moltke and felt vivid distrust of him. But this highly youthful attitude gradually changed. Moltke's thoroughly honorable character earned him far too great a reputation with everyone, whether they shared his opinions or not, for Frederik VI not to come to look at him differently over the years. When Moltke became chancellor of the Order in 1808 as the oldest Knight of the Elephant, a certain rapprochement was brought about between him and the king, who then also gave him the title of privy councilor, and when the state's position in every respect in the year 1813 developed into complete despair, Moltke was among the men Frederik VI sought advice from.
He appears to have been exactly like his father, except more bookish: nice, full of integrity, ultra-conservative. They both stepped down when they refused to work with Struensee, and opposed any reforms that benefitted the peasants too much.
Oh, interesting:
In the year 1792, when his father died, it was he who came to inherit the county of Bregentved. According to a tradition in the family, his older brother Christian Magnus Moltke was actually destined to follow his father as count; but old Moltke had excluded him from it on account of his sympathies for the ideas of the French Revolution.
Re his bookishness, Wikipedia tells me:
It has been said above that in his youth Moltke studied eagerly at several universities. The love he felt for scientific studies found expression, among other things, in a German translation he prepared of Quintilian's 10th book (published 1776) and in some reviews he wrote in the Leipziger gelehrte Zeitung. Later, when he became head of the great royal library, he thereby had an opportunity to benefit science in another way, and he had in several respects real merit in the organization and expansion of the library. In his youth it had evidently been classical philology that had interested him, but it has become our natural history museums that the memory of him has been most strongly attached. He gave the university the natural history collection that his father had left behind, and which he himself increased, and in addition to donating 10,000 reigsdalers during his lifetime for the purchase of natural history works for the university, he determined in his will 60,000 reigsdalers to promote the natural history studies at the University. At the same time, his will testified to his gentle, humane mind by the considerable bequests in a benevolent direction which it contained.
OH HEY. I was looking something up, and I just read 3 sentences in Danish without needing translation help! Granted, they were from a biographical dictionary, but this is 3 more sentences than I could do a month ago. :DDD
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cahn
Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-01 06:54 pm (UTC)FREDERICK the Fifth, the father of our present monarch (Christian the Seventh) was a wise, magnificent, liberal prince; the patron of men of genius, science, and learning, and the idol of a grateful people. Suddenly, a marked change took place in his habits and his manners: he lost all relish for those exalted pursuits to which he had been attached, and gave himself up to excessive and continual inebriety, whereby he impaired his faculties, physical and mental, and shortened his days. Whilst the memory of this solitary vice, that sullied his character, is generally known, the secret and powerful cause that led to this melancholy alteration, (except to a few, who, during the life-time of his second queen, dared not give it utterance; and most of whom have since descended to the grave), has remained buried in oblivion. This accomplished monarch had two consorts; the first, and deservedly the best beloved, was the English princess Louisa, daughter of George the Second, by whom he had the wretched and imbecile prince who yet bears the title of king of Denmark; and Sophia Magdalena, married to Gustavus the Third of Sweden, who fell by the hand of Ankarstrom: for his second wife, our favorite monarch, in an evil hour, took Juliana Maria, daughter of Ferdinand Albert, duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttle; an unhappy choice that was the source of many and heavy domestic calamities.
Bad passions will obtrude into palaces as well as cottages, and when they chance to obtain full possession of a queen, they are likely to hurry her to acts more atrocious than a female of humble rank, because her power to commit wickedness is so much greater. The events of common life too often exhibit the most lamentable scenes arising from the jealousy and hatred of callous and unfeeling step-mothers who oppress the children of their predecessor. Such was the character of Maria Juliana. She hated the presence of the children of the deceased queen; and, if she had dared, would have quickly sent them to follow their mother to the grave: for the propensities of her nature were mostly of a selfish and ambitious kind., At an early age, in her father's petty court, she was a great dabbler in political intrigues: in her temper sullen, cruel, and vindictive; extremely penurious; forgetful of benefits, but seldom failing to avenge an injury tenfold; above all, a most profound dissembler, and able to wear a smile on her face, and shew all manner of civilities to the person most mortally hated, and whose destruction, at that very moment, she might be planning.
Such was the step-mother whom Frederick the Fifth, placed over the children of Queen Louisa! The king possessed great sensibility, and in spite of all the pretended fondness of his new consort, he soon ascertained that she did not love them. Frederick often indulged his feelings so far, as to have the children brought to him, whom he caressed with every mark of strong affection: on these occasions the crafty step-mother would participate in his affectionate regard of the innocent babes, whilst her black heart cherished the most deadly rancour. Finding herself pregnant, she flattered her ambition with the hope of presenting her lord with a new object of affection, that should not fail to wean his regards from the fair and white haired boy of Louisa, who was the king's darling. Instead, however, of a child calculated to prove a successful rival to the beautiful Christian, the cruel and envious queen brought forth a weakly, deformed, infant; whose appearance was calculated to excite commisseration mingled with disgust, rather than love. This deformed child, contrary to expectation, lived; and as its strength and size encreased, it shewed a disposition the exact reverse of Christian's; and, owing perhaps to organic defects, was cross, sullen, and unmanageable. This was a source of sorrow to the good and humane king, and of unutterable misery to the queen, whose aversion towards Christian increased as she saw the healthy, playful, volatile boy becoming more and more the pride and hope of his fond father, who, nevertheless, did not neglect the deformed Frederick, nor fail to bestow upon him proofs of a regard truly paternal.
At length, to such a pitch did that wicked woman suffer malice and envy to carry her, that, to secure the crown for her deformed son, she resolved to cut off the blooming young Christian by poison. Having determined to commit murder, she soon found, what she believed to be, a favorable opportunity. The young prince happened to be indisposed. The cruel stepmother, under the specious pretext of fondness, was frequent in her visits ere an opportunity of attempting the horrid deed presented itself. At length she found the prince's favorite nurse preparing some gruel for her young charge over a silver lamp, and there was no other attendant in the chamber. She ordered the nurse to go to her closet to fetch her something; and as soon as the door closed she approached the lamp, and instantly infused a mineral poison into the gruel, a small part of which, if it had been swallowed by her unconscious victim, would have occasioned his death.
The nurse in question was named -------, by birth a Norwegian; and had been many years a confidential servant of the royal family. She attended Queen Louisa, at the birth of Prince Christian; she strove to sooth the last moments of her existence, and she really felt towards her children, all the affection of a mother. Having long entertained suspicions of the queen's intentions, she was ever suspicious and watchful of Juliana Maria's proceedings that in any way affected the young prince. At the momententered the apartment, her heart fraught with murder and the poison in her hand, there might, in spite of all her circumspection and self-command, be some peculiar expression imprinted on her countenance, her eye, or tone of voice, that alarmed the worst fears of the faithful and vigilant matron, who, instead of going to the queen's apartments that were in the grand front, went only a few steps and returned softly to the door, and distinctly perceived the queen infusing something from a paper into the gruel, which she appeared to stir in the silver saucepan that contained it; which done, she then replaced it on the lamp-frame in the same position as the nurse had left it.
Horror curdled the blood in the veins of the nurse, as she beheld this scene. Had the queen offered the gruel to the prince, she would have rushed in and torn it from her; but, Juliana, paced the room with a quick and hurried step, her hands clenched together and a strong expression of suppressed misery playing on her stern features. Just then Madame -------- saw a domestic named Wolff, cross the gallery ;* him she beckoned to come near, and in a whisper told him to go to Count Molckte, and give him a ring that she handed to him, and request his excellency to make haste to the apartment of the Crown Prince. She knew that when the count saw that token, it would not fail to fix his attention and produce immediate acquiescence. This done, she re-entered the room, her looks and manner betraying the painful emotions that filled her heart. The queen, without noticing her coming in sooner than she could, if she had gone to the front of the palace, told her to take the gruel to the prince, as it was sufficiently boiled, and would no doubt do him good! Every limb shook with horror as the nurse took up the saucepan :
Why don't you go with it to the prince," said Juliana.. "Pardon me, gracious queen," said the honest-hearted woman, "it is my duty to disobey you." Darting a withering look at the nurse, she exclaimed "How dare you disobey my commands?” The nurse replied not, but, as the tears streamed from her eyes, she looked significantly at the gruel, and mournfully shook her head. Thrown off her guard by passion, the queen ordered the nurse out of the room; who stood immovable as a statue, holding the saucepan in her hand. Equally torn by rage and fear, on seeing her wicked plot thus frustrated, and infamy and ruin suspended over her head, like the sword of Damocles, by a single hair, the queen, ever fertile in resources, took the desperate resolution to accuse the nurse of having attempted to commit the crime she herself came to perpetrate! Sudden as lightning she acted on this diabolical impulse: and turning towards a bell, rang it furiously: a gentleman of the prince's suite entered, and beheld in silent amazement, the scene before him. Go," said Juliana, to M. Guldberg, and tell him to come instantly to me." The gentleman bowed and withdrew.
"Now wretch," said the furious queen, her eyes flashing fire, "thou shalt feel the full weight of my vengeance; thy limbs shall be broken on the wheel for having attempted to poison the crown prince: the proofs of thy guilt are now in thine hands."
"May God forgive you, queen,” said the astonished woman, "as I can pardon you for my death, if I am the humble means of saving the son of my beloved mistress." Just then Count Molckte entered the room. "Behold in that wicked woman," said the pale and passion-torn queen, "a wretch whom I have detected in the very act of administering poison to the crown prince! Call in the guards! when the king returns he will order her to be put to the severest torture, to force her to confess by whom she has been suborned to the commission of this horrible crime." The count heard the queen in respectful silence: In a grave and severe tone, he said, "I wish to speak with your majesty alone: shall I attend your majesty in your own apartment or order Madame to withdraw?" Little suspecting that this minister had long kept a watchful eye over her conduct; and was in possession of other evidence of a criminating tendency, besides that of the nurse, who stood calm and undaunted amidst this storm of guilty passion-Juliana exclaimed, "What! are you too, count, an enemy to the crown prince, and the accomplice of this trembling culprit?" "How can your majesty harbour such a thought he coolly replied-my son would not succeed to the throne if the crown prince were no more." Count Molckte was a man of keen penetration, and perfectly a courtier. His looks implied more than his words: the abashed and guilty queen, awed and confounded, said, "If your excellency pleases let the woman retire."
The count then took the saucepan from her hand, and the nurse went into the prince's bed-room. What passed between count Molckte and Juliana, can only be surmised: but in less than an hour he went to the prince's room, and after paying his compliments, told him that his favorite nurse must go immediately to Norway. He was so affected at the news, that clinging round her neck the fond boy said, "Then I'll go to Norway too: you shall not take away my mother." It was in vain the count strove to pacify him. "I'll apply to my father," said he in an angry tone, "I am sure he will not suffer this mother to be taken away from me." The count appeared embarrassed and retired: he soon came back again, when, calling the nurse into an anti-room, he artfully strove to convince her that she had been deceived, and that the queen had merely stirred the gruel to keep it from burning. The nurse shook her head, saying, "Will your excellency allow me to carry the gruel to the prince's apothecary?-Yes." said the subtle minister, "you may." She ran for the saucepan, but found it empty and perfectly clean! More alarmed than ever, and fearful that the count had entered into the queen's hostile views against the crown prince, she secretly determined to address the king on the danger which awaited his darling boy.
The insidious minister, reading in her ingenuous countenance what was passing in her mind; whilst he applauded her courage and fidelity, told her he meant to have sent her home to Norway merely to secure her from the queen's power: but he now wished her to remain, assuring her if she pledged herself by a solemn oath to secrecy, she should be safe from the effects, of the queen's dislike, and remain in attendance on the crown prince; at the same time pledging himself in the most solemn manner for the perfect safety of the prince. To these terms, for the sake of continuing her attendance, the faithful nurse assented. The wicked queen, humbled and defeated, abstained from visiting the prince's apartments. The same day she was reported to be indisposed, and went the next to Hirschholm palace.
But the affair did not end here: The king (Frederick the Fifth,) was then absent at a small hunting lodge called Jagersprest, situated near the palace of Charlottenborg. Thither the gentleman repaired, whom the queen had commanded to call Mr. Guldberg: he obtained an audience, and told the astonished king, not only what he had seen and heard in the antichamber of the prince-but many important circumstances besides. It is not in language to express the agonising feelings excited by this intelligence, for his own life was less dear to Frederic than that of his darling son: he applauded the conduct of his informer; and such was his haste to return to Christianborg Palace, that he fell down stairs and broke his leg. The agitation of his mind produced a fever that nearly proved fatal.
As soon as his fractured limb was set, he caused the Norwegian nurse and count Molckte to be summoned before him, taking precautions to prevent any previous intercourse. The result was that he had no cause to doubt the guilt of Juliana, or that the life of the crown prince had been preserved by the courage and fidelity of his nurse, whom he liberally rewarded. From this moment he never co-habited with his guilty queen: but the thoughts of her wickedness, and the danger of his son and heir, preyed continually on his feeling mind. As a resource, a sad resource it proved, this excellent king gave himself up to drinking: and count Molckte being at once master of the queen, and the favorite minister of the king, was de facto AUTOCRAT of Denmark, exercising the sovereign authority in the name of his master,, who rapidly became but the shadow of what he. had formerly been. Juliana secretly intended to make Mr. Guldberg minister, who was a man of great talent and cool judgment: but this detection foiled her plans, and forced her to bow to the man whom she hated and feared.
It was by this means count Molckte acquired that unlimited power, which, during the latter part of the reign. of Frederic the Fifth, he exercised in a way so despotic as to procure him the ironical appellation of "Koning Molckte." This is generally the case with AUTOCRACIES: Some favorite governs the AUTOCRAT, who thereby governs the state, frequently reducing the autocrat himself to a mere cipher. Few indeed have been the number of absolute monarchs, who were not themselves as far from being free as the meanest of their slaves. But, to quit this digression: though the mind of the mild and benevolent monarch, Frederic the Fifth, was thus clouded, he was never happy except the crown prince was in his presence. As he grew in years, Christian became more and more the favorite of the king and people. In the wildest sallies of his father, the prince had more command over him than any other person; and he often had influence enough to prevent him, when tipsy, from lavishing away his treasures on the companions of his cups; and even of inducing him to retract those improvident gifts when sober.
In one of these fits, the king made count Molckte a present of the magnificent palace of Hirschholm and all its costly furniture! The crown prince, hearing of this lavish act, went to his study, and taking in his hand a plan of the palace, carried it to count Molckte, saying, “Content yourself with this, I beseech your excellency, and believe me, unless you possess the crown, the palace of Hirschholm shall never be your's.”
Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-02 07:45 am (UTC)Now, wiki also says there was mutual distrust and tension between the cousins, but still, isn't it somewhat tactless to present the grandmother of the future King as the evilest and his father as deformed? Talk about the free press. Unless the author of this batshittery is actually a cunning propagandist who doesn't want Juliana's line to make it to the throne? ...Nah, I'm probably overthinking it.
Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-02 09:52 pm (UTC)I was also intrigued by this date! Because the first thing I thought of was: 1814-1818 is when Moltke's son is prime minister! And he doesn't come off too well in this; I mean, my reading is that JM bribes him to let her kill the kid.
But since the thing was written in English by a John Brown, especially since it opens "FREDERICK the Fifth, the father of our present monarch (Christian the Seventh)," I think this must be a British translation of some older Danish source, and that it was written precisely because Christian was king.
Let me see what I can find out.
In December last, a pause occurred in the execution of the work, during which the Author endeavoured to procure, from various sources, those authentic and original facts which were essential to complete his work and distinguish it from a mere compilation.
Me: Well, they're certainly "original", all right! Original to this work.
The Swedes are eminent for hospitality and every social virtue ; and their character has been wilfully assailed, or casually misunderstood, by British tourists. In the hour of persecution, Mr. Brown found a secure and most agreeable asylum there.
Okay, interesting. Mr. Brown moved to Sweden when Christian VII was king and was really grateful to him?
Ah, okay, here's his Wikipedia page.
John Brown (died c. 1829) was an English historian and miscellaneous writer. He laboured on a history of Bolton; went to London to advocate the claims of his friend, Samuel Crompton, the inventor; but committed suicide, seemingly in despair at his lack of success in life.
Very little is known of his early life, except that he travelled widely in northern Europe and mixed in European politics. Drawing on his experiences, he wrote several works on international law, including Mysteries of Neutralization (1806). He showed a strong interest in European monarchs, and published Anecdotes and Characters of the House of Brunswick (1821) and Northern Courts (1818).
Okay, the Brunswick volume is bound to have good stuff.
OMG, we are not disappointed!
SDC was framed! G1 was the worst person who ever lived and his wife was beautiful, virtuous, and innocent, and it was all a conspiracy! The letters were forged!
The partiality of Whig historians, gave a lustre to Sophia, Electress of Hanover, the mother of George the First, which her real character did not deserve : and the same bias led them altogether to omit the name of his oppressed consort, whom he had, as a despot, consigned to a prison, without any other or better reason than his will and his power. Over the savage injuries inflicted on this greatly injured woman, the iron hand of the tyrantdrew a veil, which, for a time, covered and concealed the victim of lust and cruelty, and the injustice by which she was oppressed. But still,the fate of that high-minded, beautiful, and accomplished Princess, deserted, as she was, by all her relations, and by all her former associates, excited a powerful sympathy amongst the liberal and cultivated of polished society, in every nation of Europe.
For a time, indeed, her savage and brutal husband (George the First ) appears to have had the field to himself ; and he filled every court, where so petty a prince as he then was had any influence, with the most degrading accusations against his hapless wife ; and if she had been as guilty as the denunciations of her oppressor were coarse and vehement, she would, indeed, have forfeited all claim to respect, but not to sympathy, because, however bad she might have conducted herself, the adulteries of her husband were still more disgusting and notorious, and not a breath of slander had rested on her fame, till after her ill-fated marriage with that mercenary and ambitious Prince : to whose vices, therefore, her own aberrations were solely to be attributed.
Her oppressor, though he could hermetically close his pale and blighted victim in a lonely castle, and for ever debar her of the presence of her children, could not deprive her of disinterested advocates, who had the sense and humanity to consider, that she had not had a fair or an open trial, -that her coarse, vindictive, gross, and sensual husband, was the absolute master and mover of the tribunals by which she is said to have been degraded and divorced, and that her judges were as completely his servants as his lacqueys or valets ; that her character, previous to marriage, had not only been free from reproach, but was known to be of the most amiable order.
That the match was forced upon her, who was every way its victim, and had originated entirely in the avarice of her husband, who was her own first cousin, and whose claim to her hand was so enforced by his father and mother, that there was no possibility of a refusal ; although the notorious debaucheries, and deep-rooted profligacy of her husband were so gross, that all the courts of Europe resounded with recitals of his licentious amours, and general profligacy of character. When these facts were publicly known, every reflecting person admitted the probability that the fair captive, and unhappy mother, had been falsely accused, and unjustly sentenced, through the power and the malice of a guilty husband.
That the Electoral Prince, her gaoler and oppressor, had pretensions to personal courage, did not justify his having, on many occasions, exercised his valour by beating his beauteous wife, and dragging her along by her dishevelled locks, to gratify his concubines, who were the instigators and the spectators of those outrages; nor did his ambition to shine as a first- rate intriguer, warrant his having selected the character of his unhappy consort as the object which, by circumvention, by subservient and venal diplomatists, by stratagems of all kinds of the sap and mine process, he sought to demolish.
In defiance of every artifice, the baseness of hispersonal character, and the grossness of his propensities, spread rapidly with his vituperations against his wife, and his own reputation suffered in a still greater degree than that of the calumniated Princess. That her husband was a man of coarse taste and dissolute habits there can be no doubt ; and none, that he married, solely from motives of state policy, a beautiful and virtuous young Princess, whom he never loved, and whose life he began to render miserable as soon as the marriage ceremony had been performed ; yet, it is more than probable, that his minions and his concubines, seeing his aversion to his wife, fabricated the most atrocious calumnies against her, forged, or caused to be forged, a variety of letters, tending to prove the unhappy Princess had been false to her profligate lord, and they suborned and disciplined a host of false witnesses to give support to their calumnies. Where the heart is violently predisposed to think well or ill, it eagerly adopts whatever conforms to its prejudices.
The Prince had deeply and irreparably injured his wife ; and, too often is it seen, that an oppressed person has no foe so inveterate as that by whom a great injury has been inflicted; and the heart most prone to the commission of crime, is often the least capable to forgive. Thus situated, it is no wonder that GEORGE the FIRST, when Electoral Prince of Hanover, too readily received every report that was discreditable to his neglected, insulted, forsaken wife ; nor, that his attendant courtiers found it their surest way to his favour to vilify her character, and strive, by all practicable means, to pursue the unhappy lady to utter ruin.
According to the united testimony of German, Dutch, French, and English authors, never was a young and beautiful woman more cruelly treated, nor her morals exposed to worse pollution.
It was even asserted, by a Dutch anonymous author, that the malice of her dissolute husband hurried him to the infamous expedientof throwing his own wife, and the mother of his son and heir, in the way of profligate but accomplished chevaliers, in order, if successful in their attempts upon her honour, they might betray their victim, and hand her over to punishment, to infamy, and ruin. This, however, is so extravagant a flight of matrimonial depravity, that it exceeds the bounds of credibility, and must be imputed to the universal indignation excited by the gross depravity, and unrelenting cruelty of her worthless husband.
It is not the intention of the Editor to draw any comparison between the personal characters and conduct of the consorts of the first and the fourth George, who have sat on the English throne ; but there is the closest possible analogy between the conspiracies of which those Princesses were the victims.
Okay, this explains the chapter I saw in the table of contents that was called "The Secret History of the Corrupt Practices of the Duchess of Kendal" (that's Melusine, Cahn, Katte's "aunt" and G1's mistress).
Yep, Brown/his source thinks G1's half-sister the Countess Platen was his mistress and proves that G1 couldn't even be faithful to his mistress, much less his wife.
This whole volume is just about how terrible G1 and his supporters were, and how wonderful SDC was.
I'm all for a feminist take that doesn't apply a double standard and vilify her infidelity while overlooking his...but this is not that.
Also, the whole volume purports to be a collection of memoirs by other people; whether it's really that or just stuff he made up and put quotation marks around, I couldn't say. But there's this whole thing that's supposed to be written by SDC in her prison and looks like the fakest literary production ever??
Selena, if you have a desire to be entertained by more batshittery in this vein, I'll link you, but I see no history here. What even was this guy doing with his life??
ETA: Speaking literally, I meant to add that Wikipedia tells me that he exposed labor conditions of children working in cotton mills. Which is good! But maybe he should have stuck to that instead of writing history or "history". Except then we wouldn't have gotten all this entertainment.
ETA 2: Also meant to add that my current working hypothesis is that this work was drafted when Brown was living in Sweden, well before 1818 (and before Christian VII died), and only published when he came back to England and found a London publisher. And that Brown had a huge mancrush on Christian, in much the way that Zimmermann had one on Fritz. Discuss. :P
Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-03 07:36 am (UTC)Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-03 07:37 am (UTC)Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-03 07:44 am (UTC)Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-03 07:46 am (UTC)Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-03 07:36 am (UTC)It is not the intention of the Editor to draw any comparison between the personal characters and conduct of the consorts of the first and the fourth George, who have sat on the English throne ; but there is the closest possible analogy between the conspiracies of which those Princesses were the victims.
Now, early on, up to and including G3's first mental crisis, which ended with him making a recovery (aka the story covered in Alan Bennet's play The Madness of George III, which as a film got named "The Madness of King George" so American viewers would not get confused and wonder whether they'd missed parts I and II), future G4 aka Prinny had done what all the Hannover Princes before him had done, flirted and sided with the opposition, which at this point were the Whigs. However, later on Prinny threw in his lot with the Tories, which meant the Whigs discovered Prinny-bashing as a way to have a go at the government. And he really gave him an golden opportunity with his behavior towards his wife at the coronation. And when with wanting to divorce her when she refused to (not out of love for him, but for wanting to become Queen of England, which had been the point of this whole charade of a marriage for her), which meant a trial ensued. Basically, the Whig press, which had never cared for Caroline before and had ridiculed her along with her in-laws if they thought of her before, suddenly discovered her as the second Catherine of Aragorn and an innocent martyr, a woman done wrong by the (semi)German oaf she was married to (and who was supported by a Tory government).
Now, Brown very intentionally drawing this parallel while claiming he doesn't makes me suspect the entire work is exactly this kind of political propaganda, especially if Brown was into the laudable cause of social reforms and trying in vain to make it in the capital. He might have hoped to find some rich Whig sponsors this way, or he might have done it for free because he loathed the government, and taking shots at the entire Hannover dynasty this way was one safe way to express it. Let's not forget, with the exception of G3 during his sane days, none of the Hannover cousins were popular, and G3's sons in particular were loathed. One reason why Victoria left such a mark in the public consciousness is that she (and Albert) practically reinvented the monarchy and how people saw it, presenting an impeccably devoted married couple with adorable children instead of aged libertines screwing around. This kind of talk strikes me as basically the equivalent of the Hogarth drawings when it comes to caricaturing the Hannovers.
Mind you, if John Brown did stay in Sweden for a while, he might also have gotten in touch with members of the Königsmarck family, because let's not forget SDC's murdered lover here - it's not like Team Hannover are maligned innocents here (just not the evilest etc.). Though given some of the actual letters ended up in Sweden - where Ulrike stole them and mailed them to Fritz - , the claim that there are all forged to slander innocent SDC strikes me as particularly ironic coming from an Hannover attacker, given that the later Hannovers (all descendend from SDC) tried that claim as well.
Well, they're certainly "original", all right! Original to this work.
While he may or may not have heard stories in Sweden or Denmark or both, I do think all the claims of translations and compilations are a literary device, because that was extremely popular back then. (Though more in the 18th century than in the 19th.) Let's not forget, two later 18th century bestsellers, Les Liasons Dangereuses and Sorrows of Young Werther, employ the literary device of being actual compilations of actual letters, commented on by "editors". However, thsese books were clearly marked as fiction, and Brown is marketing this as history, which puts it more into the category of those anti Marie Antoinette pamphlets written pre and during the French Revolution which also claim to be accurate reports on her utter depravity etc. In conclusion: my money is on John Brown writing this as political propaganda, only to discover it doesn't make his name nor does he win sponsors this way.
Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-03 08:59 pm (UTC)True, though Christian was only 19 when Lehndorff met him, which means he could have still had some attractions 20 years later, at least enough to inspire pity. And Fritz was neither young nor attractive when Zimmermann developed his crush! But more seriously, yeah, I think Brown is going on stories that arose in Denmark during Christian's reign but predate Brown's time there.
This kind of talk strikes me as basically the equivalent of the Hogarth drawings when it comes to caricaturing the Hannovers.
Oh, god, yes. Exactly.
However, thsese books were clearly marked as fiction, and Brown is marketing this as history
Yeah, I'm familiar with the conceit of documents in fiction (even Tolkien did it!), and marketing your history as letters that you totally sent when the events were happening, but this was more of a fake documents I allegedly found on the continent but am not even making an effort to make them look historical.
What I do think is that he had a hate-on, which works almost as well.
Yeah, the SDC/G1 take clearly smacks of his tendency for hate-ons.
In conclusion: my money is on John Brown writing this as political propaganda, only to discover it doesn't make his name nor does he win sponsors this way.
Interesting, could be!
Re: Mirror mirror on the wall: Who's the evilest of them all?
Date: 2023-03-03 10:18 pm (UTC)Immediately after the change of government in 1784, Frederik VI, as a young crown prince, had "formal disgust" for Moltke and felt vivid distrust of him. But this highly youthful attitude gradually changed. Moltke's thoroughly honorable character earned him far too great a reputation with everyone, whether they shared his opinions or not, for Frederik VI not to come to look at him differently over the years. When Moltke became chancellor of the Order in 1808 as the oldest Knight of the Elephant, a certain rapprochement was brought about between him and the king, who then also gave him the title of privy councilor, and when the state's position in every respect in the year 1813 developed into complete despair, Moltke was among the men Frederik VI sought advice from.
He appears to have been exactly like his father, except more bookish: nice, full of integrity, ultra-conservative. They both stepped down when they refused to work with Struensee, and opposed any reforms that benefitted the peasants too much.
Oh, interesting:
In the year 1792, when his father died, it was he who came to inherit the county of Bregentved. According to a tradition in the family, his older brother Christian Magnus Moltke was actually destined to follow his father as count; but old Moltke had excluded him from it on account of his sympathies for the ideas of the French Revolution.
Re his bookishness, Wikipedia tells me:
It has been said above that in his youth Moltke studied eagerly at several universities. The love he felt for scientific studies found expression, among other things, in a German translation he prepared of Quintilian's 10th book (published 1776) and in some reviews he wrote in the Leipziger gelehrte Zeitung. Later, when he became head of the great royal library, he thereby had an opportunity to benefit science in another way, and he had in several respects real merit in the organization and expansion of the library. In his youth it had evidently been classical philology that had interested him, but it has become our natural history museums that the memory of him has been most strongly attached. He gave the university the natural history collection that his father had left behind, and which he himself increased, and in addition to donating 10,000 reigsdalers during his lifetime for the purchase of natural history works for the university, he determined in his will 60,000 reigsdalers to promote the natural history studies at the University. At the same time, his will testified to his gentle, humane mind by the considerable bequests in a benevolent direction which it contained.
OH HEY. I was looking something up, and I just read 3 sentences in Danish without needing translation help! Granted, they were from a biographical dictionary, but this is 3 more sentences than I could do a month ago. :DDD