Sorry this one has been taking so long. Hope you enjoy:
1786, Part Deux
In France, the king calls the parlement into session. The purpose of this is with regard to the abolition of serfdom. Serfdom proper – servéege – in France has been illegal since the 14th century. But a nasty little bastardized version of it known as servéege real, still exists. In 1779, Louis, as a relatively new king, passed an edict limiting the existence of this servéege real. However, this has proved rather ineffective, since under the law, the serfs are the rightful owner of the lands they work. And compensation is to be paid to the aristocratic owner who lives in Paris. Since the serfs cannot pay the compensation in most cases, the situation remains as is.
In London, King George III oversees the birth of his first grandchild from his favourite second son, the duke of York and his Prussian bride, Prince Frederick Christian Charles. It’s also going to be the last grandchild from said marriage, since the duke and duchess can barely stand one another. The child’s christening is accompanied by one of the family rows that have come to characterize the Hannoverians. The Prince of Wales – standing proxy for his cousin, the Prince Regent of Denmark – gets into an argument with his father about the heir’s correspondence with the king of Appalachia/duke of Gloucester. The princess of Wales and the queen try to separate the two bickering men, which, although mildly successful, only results in further repressed hostility. The duke of York ends up red-faced and angry, and the duchess in tears: add a screaming baby to the mix and its small wonder that the baby will wind up being neglected by both parents.
The young Prince Regent of Denmark also becomes a father. Though, unlike his British cousin, this is his second child. A daughter was born and died in 1785. Fortunately (or unfortunately if you’re Queen Juliana and her son, the Regent’s half-uncle) the baby is not only male, but healthy. And, due to the Danish kings having an extraordinary lack of originality when it comes to names (only the French Bourbons beat them), since every eldest son since the Reformation has been alternatively Christian or Frederik, nobody is surprised when the boy is named Christian, after his regal (and insane) grandfather.
But this is not all that’s happening in Denmark. The Prince Regent’s sister (since not everyone agrees that she is the king’s daughter), Lovisa’s marriage contract is finalized. Due to her brother going all domestic on his marriage, it was necessary that a foreign match be found. However, thanks to rumours about Lovisa’s dubious paternity, that has become more than a mite difficult. Few kings would be willing to countenance what they would see as a mésalliance, which means that Denmark has to settle for lower down the social scale. Now, thanks to their uncle George in London, Lovisa is marrying another George, the son of the Hereditary Prince of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (brother of Britain’s queen), Erberbprinz Georg Karl Adolf (b.1772). Of course, the duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz had angled for a match with a Danish princess for himself nearly twenty years ago, but the British king had stubbornly refused to assist his brother-in-law. Now, the same king that denied support then, answers his nephew’s appeal to help find a suitable match for Lovisa.
Princess Anton of Saxony, née Princess Sofia Albertine of Sweden, gives birth to a short-lived son, christened Friedrich Adolf August. Unfortunately the boy doesn’t live very long, leaving Prince Anton and his Swedish wife with only their daughter, Ludovika Antoinette (b.1785) as consolation. But, the good news is that Anton and his wife get along rather well. In fact, by the standards of an arranged marriage, they certainly are more ‘in love’ than merely fond of one another. Which comes as a surprise to many, but none more so than the couple themselves.
In the princess’ native Sweden, her brother, King Gustaf is looking at the newly crowned emperor of all the Russias, and liking the idea of rattling his sabre. Especially if the new emperor decides to get his war on against the Turks in the south. Since Peter the Great, Sweden has slowly been losing territory in the Baltic to the Russians – Hell, the Russian capital is built on ground taken from Sweden. But, fortunately, the so-called ‘Age of Liberty’ is over. Gustaf led a coup d’etat against the dominating Swedish estates and restored royal absolutism as the way his kingdom is governed. His young son will not have to bow and scrape to the estates the way Gustaf was forced to. And Gustaf would like to avenge what he sees as losses to Sweden by those same estates.
Rome is plunged into mourning. If the pope had not been willing to acknowledge Charles Edward Stuart as king of England during his life, now that the pretender has breathed his last, Pope Pius VI is willing to grant him that honour in death. Full royal mourning is declared throughout the city – an example followed by several other courts. Courtesy of his brother, the Cardinal-Bishop of Frascati, and wife, Charles and the pope finally made nice their quarrel. While the pope still refused to publically acknowledge Charles and Maria Josefa as king and queen of England, France, Scotland and Ireland, he did acknowledge them privately as ‘your Majesty’ and their children as ‘royal highnesses’. That, and the pope upping Charles’ pension, was enough to smooth the affair over. Little knowing that within three weeks of making up, Charles would breathe his last.
Queen Maria Josefa retires to her brother-in-law’s villa at Monte Albano as soon as all the formalities are over. Her husband designated in his will that their son would come of age at 18 (in 1791), and that until then, his mother is to be regent. Granted, this is a departure from English tradition since the regency powers were usually vested in the Privy Council, but the Stuarts haven’t ruled England for nearly a century, and besides, Mary of Modena was regent for James III – so the precedent is there. At first, Maria Josefa doesn’t want the job. She attempts to resign it over to her prelate brother-in-law, Prince Henry Benedict. But Henry is far too busy with his papal responsibilities (and he’s got quite a bit of those), and so, hands it back to Maria Josefa. And the once Bavarian princess takes to it with an unnerving knack of skill, causing one contemporary to remark ‘if only we had known sooner that the queen rules better than the king, we would’ve sent her to muster the armies of England and Scotland’.
However, there’s not much ‘ruling’. Especially since outside of the various Stuart residences, they are barely acknowledged as kings by anyone (unless that person’s got a grudge against Britain). Although, surprisingly enough, Friedrich II, King of Prussia (grandson, nephew and then cousin of successive British kings) offers his condolences to the queen on her husband’s demise. Even offering to take the now king, James IV and his brother, into the Prussian army. While this may sound odd on the surface, it’s not as strange as it sounds. Friedrich, der alte Fritz, has never really forgiven Britain for dropping him in the Seven Years’ War, which has led to him taking such anti-British stances as congratulating the duke of Gloucester on his elevation to the kingship – despite referring to him as the roi des Iroquois – and sending a gold sword to the Earl Washington with the inscription ‘from the greatest general in Europe to the greatest general in the world’. Plus, at one point, Fritz was willing to consider a match between his sister, Princess Anna Amalie and Charles Edward. Of course, the match went nowhere, but the mere fact that he was willing to consider allying with his uncle in London’s greatest domestic threat shows that there was no love lost between Berlin and London (and that was before the Seven Years’ War).
France’s clergy sees two interesting events occur. The first, and more important, is the retirement of the incumbent, Yves Alexandre de Marbeuf, from the bishopric of Autun. The king’s response is mixed. Marbeuf is a general opponent to anything smacking of the Enlightenment – which means that he tends to fall in with the Provence-Party at court. And if Marbeuf were to be retiring to his abbey at Bec, that would be fine. But, the pope has seen fit to promote Marbeuf. To archbishop of Lyons. At first, this might seem somewhat overdue, since Marbeuf has been a bishop for the last twenty years, but for the king, it’s slightly more headachy than that. The archbishop of Lyons is the Primate of Gaul (i.e. France). At the moment, the only thing that Louis has to be thankful for is that his Holiness didn’t send a cardinal’s hat alongside the promotion.
Well, not the only thing, since Marbeuf’s successor in the bishopric is none other than the king’s pet cleric, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand. This is one of the rare instances where the queen and Provence are in agreement, since both regard Talleyrand as little better than a viper. Provence remarks that ‘he [Talleyrand] will join you. As long as it will suit him’. But, the queen, despite what some of the wags say, is not entirely stupid. As she wrote to her brother, the Emperor, when he recommended she promote a certain pro-Austrian person at court, it would do no good, ‘since how can I take a position in which I know the king will not support me?’
But that’s the first interesting event. The second is admittedly far removed from the political scene. At the seminary in Aix-en-Provence, Joseph Buonaparte, eldest son of a Corsican nobleman, is ordained as a priest following five years in the seminary. How does this remotely factor into things? The same Marbeuf who has just become Archbishop of Lyons, is nephew to the French Governeur of Corsica, Charles Louis de Marbeuf, marquis de Cargèse (d.1786). Said governor is friends with several of the native nobility, including Joseph-Giuseppe’s now widowed mother, Maria Letizia Buonaparte, née Ramolino. The governor has been acting as protector/patron to Letizia and her eight surviving children. It is thanks to the governor that her eldest son was able to attend the seminary, and her second son, the strangely named Napoléon, is currently at the military academy at Brienne. Although, with her benefactor now deceased, Letizia needs to look to her other friends, namely the intendant, Claude François de Boucheporn.
Boucheporn would be high in favour with the king if only he could get to court. He is a man like Turgot, who has helped, over his tenure of the island for the last decade, to improve the development of agriculture, forestry and industry in Corsica through his ordonnances. Now (in 1785) he’s been replaced, and sent to become Intendant of the généralité of Pau, Auch and Bayonne. However, he is still able to pull strings – after all, it is thanks to his (monetary) vouching that Napoléon was accepted at Brienne, as much as it is thanks to the late Cargèse’s influence, and the eldest daughter, Marie Anne, at the St. Cyr School for Girls.
The French court is also seeing a change – though not so much in the political sphere. The king has been spending less time with la belle Polignac, who seems to have contented herself with serving the queen.
The king’s mistress, Gabrielle de Polastron (b.1749) had dark hair, very pale skin, big eyes neat nose, the expression of one of Raphael’s long-suffering Madonnas (as the painter Vigée-Lebrun described her). After meeting the king, the ruinous cost of maintain oneself at Versailles put la Polignac’s already dire financial circumstances under further strain. Enamoured and dazzled by the beauty, the king settled many of the outstanding debts, as well as finding an appointment for her husband. (Who fortunately had the good sense to follow the example of the Marquise de Pompadour’s husband rather than that of the Marquise de Montespan).
But the Polignacs were a large and rapacious family, and Gabrielle ensured that no one entered the king’s exclusive circle without her say so. Even the queen resented this (in spite of her friendship with Gabrielle), and remarked on this to her mother, that ‘a favourite has never seen such a meteoric rise in such a short time’. In 1780, the year of the queen of Hungary died, la Polignac’s cuckolded husband was raised to the rank of duke. When the Mesdames objected to this, the king reminded them that la Polignac spent less in her entire tenure as his mistress than what their father’s most famed – Madame de Pompadour – had spent in one year. In 1782, the prince de Guémené declared bankruptcy, and in the ensuing scandal, his wife had had to vacate her post as gouvernante des enfants de France (governess to the royal children). Despite Gabrielle not being of sufficient rank to hold the post, she was appointed to the position, with a dozen-room suite of apartments thrown in for free. Even by the standards of Versailles’ excessiveness this was considered scandalous. But, the pornographic pamphlets that accompanied this were the tipping point. La Polignac was accused of not only being the king’s mistress (her youngest two children, Julie (b.1780) and Camille (b.1781) were openly regarded as the king’s), but also the queen’s lesbian lover, engaging in ménage à trois with the royal couple.
So, in 1785, la Polignac was politely requested to sojourn abroad for a time. She went to England, where she was friends with the Tory circle surrounding the duchess of Devonshire. And in that time, a new favourite slipped into the king’s bed: the Princesse de Ligne, born Helena Apollonia Massalska (b.1763). The princesse de Ligne is the daughter of a Radziwiłł (through whom she is cousin to the king of Prussia) and a Massalska, married into one of the most prestigious families in the Austrian Netherlands.
And now she is mistress to the king of France. Even though the queen disparages her, remarking ‘there is a faint look of the farm about her’, she accepts the princesse de Ligne at the reception of the new favourite. Antoinette’s own friendship with Gabrielle is also seemingly reaching its denouement, although whether this is simply because the queen is following her husband’s lead, or because the queen herself is genuinely tired of la Polignac (quite possible, considering how she has spoken of the favourite to her sister in Parma), and returning to her friendship with the pious widow, the Princesse de Lamballe.
Spain sees yet another royal marriage and the creation of a new duke: the Infante Antonío Pascual (b.1755), fourth son to King Carlos III (since his retarded brother, Felipe, died in 1777). As a wife he gets the third daughter of Prince Xavier of Saxony – Maria Anna Violante (b.1770) – and he gets created duque de Montalban, conde d’Alcantara in a ceremony mimicking his brother’s a few years earlier.
But Carlos III also becomes the first Borbon king of Spain to visit his kingdom of Aragon. He stays for a month in the kingdom’s capital of Barcelona. However, his dad, Felipe V, having given the remains of the royal palace away to a monastic order, means that the king has no official seat in the town. Then again, considering that Aragon sided with the Habsburgs against the Borbons in the War of the Spanish Succession at the beginning of the century, it’s no surprise that Felipe had no real love for the place. So, for now, Carlos sets up shop in the Viceroy’s Palace while awaiting the arrival of the ship carrying his new daughter-in-law.
This is also his grandson and eventual heir, the Infante Carlos Clemente’s political debut. The prince and pregnant princess of Asturias and their children (including their two youngest boys) have been left in Madrid, whilst the king, the duke and duchess of Peñafiel, and his grandson travel to Barcelona to receive the new duchess of Montalban. The Aragonese go even wilder when the duke and duchess of Montalban get married in the city’s cathedral. But the king’s got other plans for Peñafiel and Montalban. Something he and his minister, Aranda, have cooked up. But they’re still working out the kinks in the idea.
