Tea at Trianon: Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, November 23, 2020

Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

The younger sister of Louise, Queen of Prussia. From Royal Foibles:

Born a daughter of Charles ll, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz and Princess Frederica of Hesse-Darmstadt, she was the paternal niece of George lll’s consort, Queen Charlotte. Shortly after her mother’s death when she was 4, her father married her maternal aunt, Charlotte. Alas, she too died on Frederica’s father after only a year of matrimony. Despairing that he could not provide a mother for his offspring, the Grand Duke sent Frederica and her siblings to be reared and educated under the auspices of their maternal grandmother. It was perhaps while a student of the renown Swiss female tutor, Salome de Geliou, that Princess Frederica became imbued with the, at that time, advanced notion of a woman’s self worth that, in the author’s opinion, was among the reasons for her notoriety later in life.

At fifteen her father and King Frederick William lll of Prussia arranged the marriages of Frederica’s older sister Louisa to Prussia’s Crown Prince Frederick William and of Frederica to the Crown Prince’s little brother, Prince Frederick Louis Karl, more commonly known as Louis. Despite having three children with his wife, Prince Louis openly preferred the company of mistresses. It’s rumored that Princess Frederica retaliated by having an affair with his uncle, Prince Louis Ferdinand. Their marital debacle ended in 1796 when Prince Louis died of diphtheria while on active military duty.

By the next year Fredericka became unofficially engaged to her British cousin Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge. The betrothal ended when his mother and fiancé’s aunt convinced King George lll to veto the match. Perhaps Queen Charlotte believed the rumor concerning Frederica’s affair? Regardless of her reasons, this thwarted betrothal was the first occasion in which Charlotte displayed the animosity toward her niece that would blow up into open hostility in just a few years time. (Read more.)