New York Times bestselling author Helen Rappaport shares the unhappy, dynastic marriage of Louise (Luise) of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg to Ernst I, then Duke of Saxe-Coburg.
The story of Julie of Saxe-Coburg’s ruthless exploitation as an innocent bride, in order to fulfill the dynastic ambitions of her family is not an isolated one. In the wider Saxe-Coburg family, other young women also fell foul of the cold-blooded marriage brokering that characterized European royal matchmaking during the 18th–19th centuries.
Another pretty ingénue, a similar gentle, impressionable romantic spirit like Julie, was Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Born in 1800 at the imposing Friedenstein palace in Gotha, she married – she thought – for love in 1817, only to be betrayed by her profligate, unfaithful husband – Julie’s brother Ernst – who was more than twice her age.
In the same year – 1817 – that Julie and Ernst’s youngest brother, Leopold, made a spectacular marriage to Charlotte, Princess of Wales, the libidinous Ernst, despite a string of mistresses and already dogged by sexual scandal, finally found himself a young, untainted, and trusting Coburg bride in 16-year old Louise. More importantly, she was the sole heiress of the wealthier duchy of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Their union was to be a highly strategic coming together of two of the Ernestine branches of the ancient Wettin dynasty that had ruled the German states of Saxony and Thuringia since the 10th century. Ernst stood to gain a lot by marrying into this wealthier duchy and he had his eye in particular on the prize of the prestigious city of Gotha.
The marriage was initially happy, with a dewy-eyed Louise completely entranced by her new life at the Ehrenburg Palace and the pretty Schloss Rosenau. She quickly satisfied the dynastic expectations required of her by producing two handsome sons: Ernst in June 1818 and Albert the following August. From the moment of Albert’s birth, Louise was made aware that his future was already set in stone: he was intended to be a match for his cousin, Princess Victoria, heir to the British throne, who had been born three months before him.
Very much like Julie in Russia, Louise soon found herself isolated in the marriage and alone at a court fuelled by intrigue. Like Julie, too, she had been ill-prepared emotionally for marriage to a domineering and immoral husband. It is no surprise, therefore, that Louise’s husband’s neglect of her and pursuit of other women prompted her flirtations with male courtiers, notably an equerry named Alexander von Hanstein.
Despite her growing unhappiness, Louise was a devoted mother. She was also much loved and admired by the citizens of Coburg who called her a ‘Princess of Hearts’ for her charity work in the city. But in 1824, Ernst, despite his own infidelities, took it into his head that Louise had been unfaithful, though any misconduct was unproven at the time. Nevertheless, her little boys were taken from her on the basis of this trumped-up charge and Louise was summarily banished to the obscure town of Sankt Wendel in Saarland near the French border. She continued to protest her innocence, but Ernst refused to allow her access to her sons even after their divorce in 1826. He did very well out of it, retaining the vast fortune Louise had brought to the marriage, and laying claim to the title of her childless uncle, to whom she was heir. In 1826, Ernst acquired Gotha in exchange for ceding Saalfeld to Saxe Meiningen and now enjoyed the enhanced title of Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.
Eventually the heartbroken and discarded Louise achieved a happy remarriage, to Baron Hanstein, who had followed her into exile. But then tragedy struck in February 1831. Louise had suffered from intermittent stomach pain for several years and traveled to Paris with von Hanstein to consult with top gynecologists who diagnosed cancer of the womb. Sadly, there was nothing they could do for her, and she died in Paris in August at the age of only 30. It has recently been argued that she may have contracted cervical cancer caused by the Human Papillomavirus, transmitted to her by Ernst who had suffered repeated infections with venereal disease.
The heartbreak of Louise’s enforced abandonment of her two young sons, Ernst and Albert, had a very deep and lingering impact on the five-year-old Prince Albert, who would carry the lingering memory of his beautiful lost mother with him into his marriage with Queen Victoria in 1840. Albert’s horror at the treatment of his mother and the sexual license of his father, Duke Ernst I, and brother, Ernst II, would have a profound impact on his attitudes to women, sex, and the marriage of his own children. He kept his mother’s memory very close: one of his first gifts to Victoria was a most treasured possession – a little pin that Louise had given to him as a child. The couple chose to name their fourth daughter Louise in her honor.
Five years after his marriage and the death of his father Ernst, Albert who had never ceased to remember Louise with ‘much tenderness and sorrow’ sought out her burial place in the village of Pfeffelbach, about 11 miles northeast of Sankt Wendel, where she had been secretly buried in December 1832. The crypt in which she was interred was in a state of disrepair and dilapidation and he wanted to rebury her somewhere more fitting for her status. But as a divorced wife, any kind of public reburial ceremony for Louise was unthinkable. So, during the night of 10 June, 1846, her coffin was removed from the crypt at Pfeffelburg and taken to Coburg where it was secretly placed in the Moritzkirche under the supervision of officials sent by Duke Ernst II. In a somber ceremony, held at midnight and lit only by twelve large candelabra and in a church swathed in black drapes, Louise’s oak coffin was carried by its ten iron handles down into her family vault. Prince Albert, who was unable to be there, sent a wreath of orange blossom. In 1860, Louise’s coffin was moved again – to the grand Saxe-Coburg-Gotha mausoleum at Glockenberg.
