September 23, 1781: Birth of Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. Part I.

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Duke Franz Friedrich of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Empress Catherine II of Russia, Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia, Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Leopold II of Belgium, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Princess Juliane Henriette Ulrike of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (September 23, 1781 – August 12, 1860), also known as Grand Duchess Anna Feodorovna of Russia was a German princess of the ducal house of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (after 1826, the house of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) who became the wife of Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich of Russia.

Family

Princess Juliane was the third daughter of Franz Friedrich, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Countess Augusta Caroline Reuss of Ebersdorf. She was named in honour of her grand-aunt, Queen Juliane Marie of Denmark and Norway. Juliane Marie was born a Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and was one of the 17 children of Ferdinand Albert II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and his wife Antoinette Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1696–1762), youngest daughter of his first cousin Louis Rudolph, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and his wife Princess Christine Louise of Oettingen-Oettingen, she was queen of Denmark and Norway between 1752 and 1766, second consort of King Frederik V of Denmark and Norway.

Juliane Marie of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel sister, Sophie Antoinette of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld’s paternal grandmother. Sophie Antoinette of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel married Ernst Friedrich, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld on April 23, 1749 at Wolfenbüttel. Among her notable great-grandchildren were Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, his wife and cousin, Queen Victoria oftheUnitedKingdom, Ferdinand II of Portugal, Empress Carlota of Mexico and Leopold II of Belgium. Her eldest son was Franz Friedrich, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld father of Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the subject of this blog entry, bring her family information full circle.

Marriage Plans

Empress Catherine II of Russia began to search a suitable wife for her second grandson, Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich after the marriage of her eldest grandson, Grand Duke Alexander, with Louise of Baden in 1793. The empress spoke of pride about the young grand duke as an enviable match for many brides in Europe, as he was the second in line to succession to the Russian Empire.

Soon a marriage offer arrived from the court of Naples: King Ferdinand I of the Two-Siciles and Queen Maria Carolina, the thirteenth child of Empress Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Franz I, (and a sister of France’s queen consort, Marie Antoinette) suggested a marriage between the Grand Duke and one of their many daughters, which the Empress immediately rejected.

In 1795, her General, Baron Andrei von Budberg-Bönninghausen was sent in a secret mission to the ruling European courts, to find a bride for Constantine. He had a huge list of candidates, but during his trip became ill and was forced to stay in Coburg. He was attended by the Ducal court doctor, Baron Stockmar, who, once he knew the real intention of his trip, drew the general’s attention to the daughters of Duke Franz. Budberg wrote to Saint Petersburg that he found the perfect candidates, without visiting any other courts.

After a little consideration, Empress Catherine II consented. Juliane’s mother, Duchess Augusta Caroline, once she knew that one of her daughters would be a Grand Duchess of Russia, was delighted with the idea: a marriage with the Imperial Russian dynasty could bring huge benefits for the relatively small German Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

However, in Europe there were other views; for example, Charles-François-Philibert Masson, in his Secrets Memoirs of the court of Saint-Petersburg wrote about the unenviable role of German brides in the Russian court: Young touching victim, which Germany sends as a tribute to Russia, as did Greece who sent their maids to the Minotaur…

Life in Russia

Juliane, along with her mother and two elder sisters, Sophie and Antoinette, travelled to Saint Petersburg at the request of Empress Catherine II of Russia. After the first meeting, the Empress wrote: “The Duchess of Saxe-Coburg was beautiful and worthy of respect among women, and her daughters are pretty. It’s a pity that our groom must choose only one, would be good to keep all three. But it seems that our Paris give the apple to the younger one, you’ll see that he would prefer Julia among the sisters…she’s really the best choice.”

However, Prince Adam Czartoryski, in his Memoirs, wrote: Constantine was given an order by the Empress to marry one of the princesses, and he was given a choice of his future wife. This point of view was confirmed by Countess Varvara Golovina, who also wrote: After three weeks, the Grand Duke Constantine was forced to make a choice. I think that he did not want to marry anyone at all.

After the young Grand Duke chose Juliane, she began her training as a consort. On February 2, 1796, the 14-year-old German princess took the name of Anna Fyodorovna in a Russian Orthodox baptismal ceremony and 24 days later, on February 26, she and Constantine were married.

The Empress Catherine II died nine months later, on November 6, 1796. By virtue of her wedding, she was awarded with the Grand Cross of the Imperial Order of Saint Catherine and the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem.

This union, in connection with the wedding of her brother Leopold who had married Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales, daughter of King George IV of the United Kingdom, made the little Duchy of Saxe-Coburg the dynastic heart of Europe. In addition, thanks to relations with the Russian Empire, Saxe-Coburg was relatively safe during the Napoleonic Wars. However, on a personal level, the marriage was deeply unhappy. Constantine, known to be a violent man and fully dedicated to his military career, made his young wife intensely miserable.

This day in history, December 17, 1905: Death of King Leopold II of the Belgium.

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Archduchess of Austria, Baroness Vaughan, Caroline Lacroix, Congo Free State, French Prostitute, King of the Belgians, Leopold II, Leopold II of Belgium, Marie Henriette of Austria, The Congo

Yesterday I featured Leopold I on the anniversary of his birth, today I feature his son, Leopold II on the anniversary of death.

Leopold was born in Brussels on April 9, 1835, as the second but eldest surviving son of Leopold I of the Belgians and his second wife Louise-Marie of Orléans the eldest daughter of the future Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, and of his wife Maria Amalia of the Two Sicilies.

The French Revolution of 1848 forced Louis Philippe to flee to the United Kingdom. The British monarch, Queen Victoria, was Leopold II’s first cousin, as Leopold’s father and Victoria’s mother were siblings. Louis Philippe died two years later, in 1850. Leopold’s fragile mother was deeply affected by the death of her father, and her health deteriorated. She died of tuberculosis that same year, when Leopold was 15 years old.

Leopold II, King of the Belgians

On August 22, 1853, at the age of 18, he married Marie Henriette of Austria in Brussels. Marie Henriette was one of five children from the marriage of Archduke Joseph of Austria, Palatine of Hungary, and Duchess Maria Dorothea of Württemberg, the daughter of Duke Ludwig of Württemberg (1756–1817) and Princess Henriette of Nassau-Weilburg (1780–1857). Marie Henriette was a cousin of Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria, and granddaughter of Leopold II, Holy Roman Emperor, through her father.

Marie Henriette was lively and energetic, and endeared herself to the people by her character and benevolence, and her beauty gained for her the sobriquet of “The Rose of Brabant”. Four children were born of this marriage, three daughters and one son, also named Leopold.

The younger Leopold died in 1869 at the age of nine from pneumonia after falling into a pond. His death was a source of great sorrow for King Leopold. The marriage became unhappy, and the couple separated completely after a last attempt to have another son, a union that resulted in the birth of their last daughter Clementine. Marie Henriette retreated to Spa in 1895, and died there in 1902.

Marie Henriette of Austria

Leopold II had many mistresses. In 1899, in his sixty-fifth year, Leopold took as a mistress Caroline Lacroix, a sixteen-year-old French prostitute, and they remained together for the next decade until his death. Leopold II lavished upon her large sums of money, estates, gifts, and a noble title, Baroness Vaughan. Owing to these gifts and the unofficial nature of their relationship, Caroline was deeply unpopular among the Belgian people and internationally. She and Leopold II married secretly in a religious ceremony five days before his death.

Their failure to perform a civil ceremony rendered the marriage invalid under Belgian law. After the king’s death, it was soon discovered that he had left Caroline a large fortune, which the Belgian government and Leopold’s three estranged daughters tried to seize as rightfully theirs. Caroline bore two sons who were probably Leopold’s; the boys would have had a strong claim to the throne had the marriage been valid.

Leopold II and Caroline Lacroix

Leopold II was the founder and sole owner of the Congo Free State, a private project undertaken on his own behalf. He used Henry Morton Stanley to help him lay claim to the Congo, the present-day Democratic Republic of the Congo. At the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, the colonial nations of Europe authorized his claim by committing the Congo Free State to improving the lives of the native inhabitants. Leopold ignored these conditions and ran the Congo using the mercenary Force Publique for his personal gain.

He extracted a fortune from the territory, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the native population to harvest and process rubber. He used great sums of the money from this exploitation for public and private construction projects in Belgium during this period. He donated the private buildings to the state before his death, to preserve them for Belgium.

Leopold II (young and old)

Leopold II’s administration of the Congo was characterised by murder, torture, and atrocities, resulting from notorious systematic brutality. The hands of men, women, and children were amputated when the quota of rubber was not met. These and other facts were established at the time by eyewitness testimony and on-site inspection by an international Commission of Inquiry (1904). Reports of deaths and abuse led to a major international scandal in the early 20th century, and Leopold was forced by the Belgian government to relinquish control of the colony to the civil administration in 1908.

On December 17, 1909, Leopold II died at Laeken, and the Belgian crown passed to Albert, the son of Leopold’s brother, Philippe, Count of Flanders. His funeral cortege was booed by the crowd. Leopold’s reign of exactly 44 years remains the longest in Belgian history. He was interred in the royal vault at the Church of Our Lady of Laeken in Brussels.

On this day, July 21, 1831: Enthronement of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as the first King of the Belgians.

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Belgium's National Day, George IV, George IV of the United Kingdom, King Leopold I of Belgium, King of the Belgians, King Philippe of the Belgians, Kingdom of Belgium, Leopold II of Belgium, Louis-Philippe of France, Louise Marie of Orleans, Princess Charlotte of Wales, Willem I of the Netherlands

Today is Belgium’s National Day. 🇧🇪

On this day, July 21, in 1831, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (a maternal uncle of Queen Victoria and paternal uncle of her husband Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) was sworn in as the first King of the Belgians.

Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Leopold was born in Coburg in the tiny German duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld in modern-day Bavaria on December 16, 1790. He was the youngest son of Franz, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and Countess Augusta of Reuss-Ebersdorf. In 1826, Saxe-Coburg acquired the city of Gotha from the neighboring Duchy of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg and gave up Saalfeld to Saxe-Meiningen, becoming the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

On May 2, 1816, Leopold married Princess Charlotte of Wales at Carlton House in London. Charlotte was the only legitimate child of the Prince Regent (later King George IV) and Caroline of Brunswick, daughter of Carl-Wilhelm-Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick, and Princess Augusta of Great Britain (daughter of King George II of Great Britain and Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach). This meant that Princess Charlotte of Wales was second in line to the British throne.

Princess Charlotte of Wales

Princess Charlotte had been engaged Willem, Hereditary Prince of Orange (later King Willem II of the Netherlands). This engagement came about through pressure from her father the Prince Regent. Princess Charlotte found the Hereditary Prince of Orange distasteful but after initially accepting him, Charlotte soon broke off the intended match in favor of Leopold. This resulted in an extended contest of wills between her and her father. Though the Prince Regent was displeased, he found Leopold to be charming and possessing every quality to make his daughter happy, thus approving of their marriage. The same year Leopold received an honorary commission to the rank of Field Marshal and Knight of the Order of the Garter.

The marriage ceremony was held May 2, 1816. On the wedding day, huge crowds filled London; the wedding participants had great difficulties in travelling. At nine o’clock in the evening in the Crimson Drawing Room at Carlton House, with Leopold dressing for the first time as a British General (the Prince Regent wore the uniform of a Field Marshal), the couple were married. The only mishap was during the ceremony, when Charlotte was heard to giggle when the impoverished Leopold promised to endow her with all his worldly goods.

On November 5, 1817, after having suffered a miscarriage, Princess Charlotte gave birth to a stillborn son. She herself died the next day following complications. Leopold was said to have been heartbroken by her death.

Following a Greek rebellion against the Ottoman Empire, Leopold was offered the throne of an independent Greece as part of the London Protocol of February 1830. Though initially showing interest in the position, Leopold eventually turned down the offer on May 17, 1830. The role would subsequently be accepted by Prince Otto of Bavaria in May of 1832 who ruled until he was finally deposed in October 1862.

At the end of August 1830, rebels in the Southern provinces (modern-day Belgium) of the United Netherlands rose up against Dutch rule. The rising, which began in Brussels, pushed the Dutch army back, and the rebels defended themselves against a Dutch attack. International powers meeting in London agreed to support the independence of Belgium, even though the Dutch refused to recognize the new state.

In November 1830, a National Congress was established in Belgium to create a constitution for the new state. Fears of “mob rule” associated with republicanism after the French Revolution of 1789, as well as the example of the recent, liberal July Revolution in France, led the Congress to decide that Belgium would be a popular, constitutional monarchy.

Search for a monarch

Enthronement of King Leopold I of the Belgians

The choice of candidates for the position was one of the most controversial issues faced by the revolutionaries. The Congress refused to consider any candidate from the Dutch ruling house of Orange-Nassau. Some Orangists had hoped to offer the position to King Willem I or his son, Willem, Hereditary Prince of Orange, which would bring Belgium into personal union with the Netherlands like Luxembourg. The Great Powers also worried that a candidate from another state could risk destabilizing the international balance of power and lobbied for a neutral candidate.

Eventually the Congress was able to draw up a shortlist. The three viable possibilities were felt to be Eugène de Beauharnais, a French nobleman and stepson of Napoleon; Auguste of Leuchtenberg, son of Eugene; and Louis, Duke of Nemours who was the son of the French King Louis-Philippe. All the candidates were French and the choice between them was principally between choosing the Bonapartism of Beauharnais or Leuchtenberg and supporting the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe. Louis-Philippe realized that the choice of either of the Bonapartists could be first stage of a coup against him, but that his son would also be unacceptable to other European powers suspicious of French intentions. Therefore Louis, Duke of Nemours refused the offer. With no definitive choice in sight, Catholics and Liberals united to elect Erasme Louis Surlet de Chokier, a minor Belgian nobleman, as regent to buy more time for a definitive decision in February 1831.

Leopold of Saxe-Coburg had been proposed at an early stage, but had been dropped because of French opposition. The problems caused by the French candidates and the increased international pressure for a solution led to his reconsideration. On April 22, he was finally approached by a Belgian delegation at Marlborough House to officially offer him the throne. Leopold, however, was reluctant to accept at first.

Accession

On July 17, 1831, Leopold travelled from Calais to Belgium, entering the country at De Panne. Traveling to Brussels, he was greeted with patriotic enthusiasm along his route. The accession ceremony took place on July 21, on the Place Royale in Brussels. A stand had been erected on the steps of the church of Saint Jacques-sur-Coudenberg, surrounded by the names of revolutionaries fallen during the fighting in 1830.

King Leopold I of the Belgians

After a ceremony of resignation by the regent, Leopold, dressed in the uniform of a Belgian lieutenant-general, swore loyalty to the constitution and became king. The enthronement is generally used to mark the end of the revolution and the start of the Kingdom of Belgium and is celebrated each year as the Belgian national holiday.

Second marriage

Princess Louise-Marie of Orléans

On August 9, 1832 King Leopold I of the Belgians married Princess Louise-Marie of Orléans, who was twenty-two years younger than the King, she was the eldest daughter of the future Louis-Philippe I, King of the French, and of his wife Maria Amalia of the Two Sicilies.

Louise and Leopold had four children, including Leopold II of Belgium and Empress Carlota of Mexico. Although never faithful to Louise, Leopold respected her and their relationship was a harmonious one.

Prince Louis Philippe, Crown Prince of Belgium (July 24, 1833 – May 16, 1834)
King Leopold II of the Belgians (April 9, 1835 – December 17, 1909)
Prince Philippe, Count of Flanders (March 24, 1837 – November 17, 1905)
Princess Charlotte of Belgium, (June 7, 1840 – January 19, 1927), consort of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico.

Sadly, Queen Louise-Marie died of tuberculosis in the former Royal palace of Ostend on October 11, 1850 at the age of 38. Leopold was again a widower at the age of 59. The Queen’s body was brought to Laeken, and a memorial was erected in Oostende. She is buried beside her husband in Royal Crypt of the Church of Our Lady of Laeken.

Photo of King Leopold later in life.

Leopold died in Laeken near Brussels on December 10, 1865, aged 74. His funeral was held on 16 December. He is interred in the Royal Crypt at the Church of Notre-Dame de Laeken, next to Louise-Marie. He was succeeded by his son, Leopold II, aged 30, who ruled until 1909.

The current King of the Belgians, Philippe, is Leopold I’s great-great-great-grandson.