Royal Murder Read online

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  At last the stage is set, ready for the entry of the last actor in the tragedy. The year of 1688 was one of special splendour in Hanover; the elector still had a huge income from Sophia Dorothea’s father and his palace was completed, as was his new Italian opera house with its triple set of seats for court, nobility and citizens. The festivities of his court had become so famous that wealthy and noble personages made a habit of visiting it to take part in them.

  In the March of that year the second adventurer in the story arrived upon the scene like a meteor flashing into the Hanoverian firmament. He was Count Philip Christopher von Konigsmark, a handsome soldier of fortune and scion of a distinguished Brandenberg family which had settled in Sweden where his father was a minister general.

  The count was a member of an elite breed, which Thackeray described thus: “In the good old times of which I am treating, whilst common men were driven off by herds, and sold to fight the Emperor’s enemies on the Danube, or to bayonet King Louis’s troops of common men on the Rhine, noblemen passed from court to court, seeking service with one prince or the other, and naturally taking command of the ignoble vulgar soldiery which battled and died almost without hope of promotion. Noble adventurers travelled from court to court in search of employment; not merely noble males, but noble females too; and if these latter were beauties, and obtained favourable notice of princes, they stopped in the courts, became the favourites of their Serene or Royal Highnesses...”

  As a boy Count Philip had spent some time at the court of Zell where he was frequently in the company of the pretty little princess; later he was to claim that even then her beauty and charm had captured his youthful heart. Now he was in Hanover to enjoy the final masquerade of the annual carnival, and Sophia Dorothea, arrayed in the crimson robes of a cardinal, was delighted when he was placed at her table. How the talk of her old playmate must have revived her carefree days before her odious marriage.

  Since his days at Zell the count had built up a distinguished military career, and has been described as “a veteran amongst the most brilliant men of his time, a time when high rank, profuse expenditure and dashing manners gave entrance to society everywhere”.

  The following year Konigsmark returned to Hanover, accompanied by his beautiful sister Aurora and a splendid retinue which he was able to afford thanks to a welcome inheritance. The charm and obvious wealth of this noble couple greatly added to the lustre of the court, and in order to make it permanent the elector offered Konigsmark the highly prized post of Colonel of the Hanoverian Guards, which the Swede accepted gladly.

  In the following months it was quite natural that Sophia Dorothea should enjoy the company of the glamorous brother and sister; in Aurora she found her first congenial friend in Hanover. At the balls and entertainments, which were so frequent at the court, it was protocol that she should be paired with the count as he was the most distinguished nobleman present after the elector and his sons.

  Konigsmark and Prince Charles, a son of the elector, set out for the war against the Turks in distant Morea in the autumn of 1689. During the carnival of 1690 word came that the detachment commanded by the prince had been cut off and that he and Konigsmark were missing. The carnival was cancelled and the court changed into mourning when news came from Istanbul that the prince had been killed; the news of Konigsmark was that he had escaped. It is believed that the shock of the first message, followed by relief of the second, made Sophia Dorothea aware of the depth of her feelings for the count.

  When he returned to Hanover in April he must have been surprised at the warmth of the welcome given him by the young woman who had been the target of his flirtatious flattery. And perhaps he saw for the first time the possibility of a relationship much more intimate than the superficial friendship permitted at court masques and royal picnics, especially as he would now be staying in Hanover. The elector gave him command of the royal guard and Konigsmark occupied a house close to the palace.

  Despite his growing passion for Sophia Dorothea, Konigsmark was not the man to ignore the chance of another conquest. According to the author of the Histoire de la Duchesse d’Hanover when the Countess von Platen sought him out at a ball, “he replied to her overtures that he was overcome by her kindness, and would eagerly avail himself of her permission to visit her that evening”. Konigsmark repaired to her house and found her en deshabille lying on a couch. She rose, and, having long since abandoned any sense of modesty, embraced him and declared the attraction his person had for her, to which avowal the count made a suitable response. At daybreak he retired, and on his return threw himself on his bed; but could not sleep, being overcome by self reproach arising out of the fact that he had succumbed to the charms of an open enemy of the princess.”

  When a rumour of the count’s brief affair with La Platen reached the princess she was so distressed that Konigsmark contritely rejected the favourite with the inevitable result that she became an implacable enemy. At first this did little to reconcile Sophia Dorothea, and it is possible that had the count remained in Hanover she would have dismissed him as an untrustworthy philanderer, but the elector sent Konigsmark on a diplomatic mission and his absence did more for his cause with the princess than his presence.

  It was on this journey that he began his correspondence with Sophia Dorothea, the letters being addressed in care of of her faithful lady-in-waiting from Zell, Elenora von dem Knesebeck whom the lovers were to refer to as La Sentinelle.

  The following excerpt from his first letter gives an indication of the style of the scores which were to follow it: “I am now at an extremity and there is no means of saving myself excepting by a few lines from your incomparable hand; if I was so happy as to receive some I should at least be somewhat consoled: I hope you will not be so uncharitable as to refuse me this favour, since it is you who are the cause of my affliction it is just that you should be the one to comfort it ... If I were not writing to a person for whom my respect is as great as my love I should find better terms to express my passion, but fearing to offend I must stop short, only entreating you not entirely to forget me, and to believe me to be your slave.”

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  Some of the letters which passed between the couple were printed in The Love of an Uncrowned Queen by W.H. Wilkins, MA, of Clare College Cambridge, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, which was published in 1903.

  “My researches were made from love of the work,” he wrote. “In my quest I followed as closely as possible the footsteps of Sophia Dorothea during her life. I visited Zell where she was born, Hanover where she lived during her unhappy marriage and Ahlden where for more than thirty years she was imprisoned. To Hanover I went again and again, and I also visited Berlin and Dresden, but it was not until 1897 that I lighted by chance, while turning over old volumes in a second-hand bookshop at Leipzig, upon the fact that an unpublished correspondence between Sophia Dorothea and Konigsmark existed. For a long time I could not find where these letters were deposited and went in vain search to Upsala, but at least I learned they were reposing in the library of the little university of Lunde in Sweden. To Lunde accordingly I went and with permission of the university authorities carefully examined the manuscripts.”

  These letters had found their way into Sweden through Konigsmark’s sister Amalie, Countess Lowenhaupt, who married a Swedish nobleman.

  Other letters were found in Berlin. After the death of Konigsmark Hanoverian agents seized many of the letters which had passed between the lovers and these were used to convince Sophia Dorothea’s parents of their daughter’s guilt. Her father asked for them to be sent to Zell so he could destroy them but the elector refused. Later they were found among the papers of Frederick the Great. Sophia Dorothea’s daughter was his mother, and it is thought that George Lewis, when he had become George I of England, sent them to her to undermine the sympathy she felt for her mother. Wilkins wrote that the letters in Berlin were similar to those he saw at Lunde, the handwriting, style and ciphers b
eing identical. Some of the Berlin letters were replies to some held at Lunde and vice versa. The Lunde collection was made up of six hundred and seventy-nine sheets, one hundred and twenty-nine of them being written by Sophia Dorothea and the remainder by the grandiloquent count. They were written mostly in French, with a few pages in German, and unfortunately shed little light on the events which led up to the tragedy, rather they were full of jealous reproaches and passionate avowels.

  When Konigsmark returned to Hanover he continued to write to the princess, the following example giving an indication that at this stage the count was still pursuing a lady who on the surface at least showed reluctance to become his lover: “For God’s sake, do not show me any coldness! I fancied that when you left the room you would not deign to look at me. How that seeming affront stung me! I am not the cause of what happened yesterday, you must blame the stars that rule our lives — you must blame them and not me, for I love and adore you, and think only, day and night, of how to please you. Behold my face, my conduct, my steps, my looks — do you think I fail in the least trifle? Do you notice any signs of weariness? Alas! Far from that, I love you more than ever. My passion upsets my reason, and that is why I cannot conceal what I feel. Adorable one, I will love thee to the tomb! Tonight thou shalt be mine — yea, though I perish.”

  At last Sophia Dorothea admitted her feelings to the count and underlined them by finally committing herself to paper. The significance of this caused Konigsmark to write while on a journey to the frontier: “Were you to see me you would say to yourself: Is it possible for a man to be so sad? This is merely the result of this absence. My noble travelling companion could tell you the state in which he sees me daily. I hide the cause from him, as you may well believe. You will not perhaps believe it, but, on the word of a gentleman, I have been many times so beside myself that I thought I should faint.”

  Though the count’s letters followed the extravagant and flowery style of his day, he sometimes included a playful or amusing touch. In one he wrote to Sophia Dorothea while she was visiting Zell that he had not given up feminine companionship in her absence, indeed there was one lady so like herself that he spent as much time as possible in her company. He added to the confession that he had an inkling that his feelings were reciprocated but he would not mention her name in case it should arouse feelings of jealousy.

  If the princess was puzzled by this frank admission, she soon saw it as a piece of teasing when a letter from one of her ladies-in-waiting mentioned that Count Konigsmark must indeed be bored to spend so much of his time playing with children; he would spend hours building houses out of playing cards to amuse Prince George and little Princess Sophia Dorothea, the lady who was so like her mother.

  The couple became lovers early in 1692, the princess allowing her heart to rule her head when Konigsmark gave her the choice of sharing his passion or seeing him volunteer for active service in Morea. After this they enjoyed secret assignations in Hanover through the connivance of Elenore von dem Knesebeck whose official duty it was to act as chaperone whenever her mistress received a visitor.

  Sometimes separation heightened the intense love they felt for each other. In June Konigsmark had to spend some time with his regiment under George Lewis in Flanders, on another occasion the princess visited Zell. Here her mother discovered the cause of her daughter’s new found lightness of heart, and fearful of the consequences implored her to break off the dangerous relationship. Sophia Dorothea was so impressed by her mother’s concern and her portrayal of the ruin it could lead to that she wrote a panic-stricken letter to the count begging him to marry — marry anyone suitable for his situation in life! — so that they would be both placed beyond temptation and peril.

  Marriage to an unloved spouse had not removed temptation from Sophia Dorothea so why she thought it would have such an effect on someone like Konigsmark we do not know, but such dramatic pleas and ultimatums give the impression of two children playing an exciting make-believe game, unaware or careless of menacing forces in the background.

  To the suggestion that he should marry the count replied: “At last the tragic day which I have so much feared has arrived! I must marry, since you wish it done. I must follow your wishes; you will it so — that is enough, my death warrant is signed by the hand I adore. I should never have expected so fatal a sentence signed by you. But of what can I complain? I must remember that I have loved you a year. I ought to have known the sex better than to believe all you have said to me, but alas! as I was weak enough to believe it, I must now be firm enough to bear all the consequencies.”

  The tone of this letter ended the princess’ plan and the relationship continued with dozens more letters passing between the couple. These letters were to be their bane, mainly because of Konigsmark’s carelessness. When he was away he would number them so that his royal mistress would know if a letter had gone astray, but as he often forgot the number of the previous letter the system only added to the confusion. Intervals between the arrival of letters were often inexplicably erratic; sometimes Sophia Dorothea would realise by the content of one letter that the one before it had never arrived and, most sinister of all, there were signs of tampering.

  Once Konigsmark wrote to Prince Ernest, the youngest of the elector’s sons and the count’s special friend, and the letter was delivered to and partly read by George Lewis. This postal error alarmed Konigsmark because he had written some coarse jokes at the expense of the von Platens, yet the incident did not make him realise the perils of his correspondence with Sophia Dorothea.

  Soon friends were warning the count of his danger. A court flirtation was acceptable provided it went no further, than whispered words at a ball or languishing glances at receptions, but to take the princess as a lover was a deadly insult to the royal house, even though her husband had no use for her. Aurora Konigsmark repeatedly warned her rash brother, as did one of his best military friends, as this letter to the princess in the autumn of 1693 shows: “What will you say, Madam, when you learn that they did not let me go through the day without the misfortune I dreaded? Marshal Podevils was the first to tell me to beware of my conduct because he knew on good authority I was watched . . . Prince Ernest has told me the same thing; he is not quite so guarded as the other, for he admitted that the conversation I had from time to time with you might draw upon me very serious and unpleasant consequences.”

  At this time Konigsmark was suffering an economic setback as the result of continuing in the service of the elector in order to be close to the princess. Sweden had come into conflict with Hanover, and Konigsmark was warned by the King of Sweden that if he continued his loyalty to the elector his estates at home would be confiscated. When this happened a large portion of his income dried up which meant he could no longer afford to gamble like a gentleman or keep up his extravagant retinue. Yet he must have found compensation in Sophia Dorothea’s promise that she would devote herself to him for the rest of her life if she could escape from Hanover to some safe refuge. Sweden would have been an ideal haven had not Konigsmark fallen out with the king. The only other possible place they could elope to was Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel whose duke, Anthony Ulrich, had a grudge against Hanover and would have been delighted to shelter its runaway princess — or so he claimed years later when he said that he had expected the fugitives to seek sanctuary with him.

  Konigsmark realised the difficulties of trying to escape without money for bribes and livelihood, and now that he was relatively poor it would have to come from the princess. She appealed to her mother for an allowance and the Duchess of Zell, aware that despite the immense marriage settlement and dowry her daughter was not allowed money of her own, told her that she would do what she could.

  In the spring of 1694 the duchess consulted James Cresset, the English envoy to the duchy, about investing money for Sophia Dorothea in the newly-established English Funds. But there was delay over this because the Duke of Zell’s finances had long been embarrassed by the large sums he had paid to
the elector.

  Though nothing definite had been arranged for the elopement by the beginning of 1694, it seemed that Fortune was going to unexpectedly remember her favourite soldier. Konigsmark’s old friend Duke Frederick Augustus unexpectedly inherited the electoral throne of Saxony through the death of his brother. He owed the count a huge “debt of honour” and Konigsmark hurried to Dresden to claim it.

  Frederick Augustus had to admit that he was not yet in a position to pay, but meanwhile he would do everything in his power to help and offered him the post of major general in his army. Not only would this help financially, but the transfer of his services from Hanover would be the first step to a reconciliation with the King of Sweden.

  At last the count had something to celebrate, but in doing so he committed the biggest blunder in his indiscreet career. The riotous court at Dresden was a byword even in those days of aristocratic debauchery and Konigsmark plunged into its revels with the new elector. While drunk he boasted too freely about his amorous conquests and let two forbidden names past his lips — the Electoral Princess Sophia Dorothea and Countess von Platen. After such an affront to Ernest Augustus and George Lewis the count’s companions wondered if he would dare to set foot in Hanover again, for without doubt spies would have hastened there with news of his indiscretion.

  Yet in June Konigsmark did return. On his arrivel he drew a month’s pay to which he was entitled and made plans to sell his house. He ordered his steward to collect a train of fifty-two horses and mules, a fine carriage and a number of extra servants to convey his household and furniture to Dresden. This was done, and the wagons were ready to set out when, on the night on Sunday July 1, Count Konigsmark left his house at ten o’clock in the evening and disappeared.