George I Read online

  Tim Blanning

  * * *

  GEORGE I

  The Lucky King

  Contents

  Genealogical Table

  GEORGE I

  1. Hanover

  2. The Hanoverian Succession in England

  3. Court, Country and Family Matters

  4. Whigs and Tories

  5. The Sinews of Power and Foreign Policy

  6. Conclusion

  Illustrations

  Notes

  Further Reading

  Picture Credits

  Follow Penguin

  Penguin Monarchs

  THE HOUSES OF WESSEX AND DENMARK

  Athelstan Tom Holland

  Aethelred the Unready Richard Abels

  Cnut Ryan Lavelle

  Edward the Confessor James Campbell

  THE HOUSES OF NORMANDY, BLOIS AND ANJOU

  William I Marc Morris

  William II John Gillingham

  Henry I Edmund King

  Stephen Carl Watkins

  Henry II Richard Barber

  Richard I Thomas Asbridge

  John Nicholas Vincent

  THE HOUSE OF PLANTAGENET

  Henry III Stephen Church

  Edward I Andy King

  Edward II Christopher Given-Wilson

  Edward III Jonathan Sumption

  Richard II Laura Ashe

  THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK

  Henry IV Catherine Nall

  Henry V Anne Curry

  Henry VI James Ross

  Edward IV A. J. Pollard

  Edward V Thomas Penn

  Richard III Rosemary Horrox

  THE HOUSE OF TUDOR

  Henry VII Sean Cunningham

  Henry VIII John Guy

  Edward VI Stephen Alford

  Mary I John Edwards

  Elizabeth I Helen Castor

  THE HOUSE OF STUART

  James I Thomas Cogswell

  Charles I Mark Kishlansky

  [Cromwell David Horspool]

  Charles II Clare Jackson

  James II David Womersley

  William III& Mary II Jonathan Keates

  Anne Richard Hewlings

  THE HOUSE OF HANOVER

  George I Tim Blanning

  George II Norman Davies

  George III Amanda Foreman

  George IV Stella Tillyard

  William IV Roger Knight

  Victoria Jane Ridley

  THE HOUSES OF SAXE-COBURG & GOTHA AND WINDSOR

  Edward VII Richard Davenport-Hines

  George V David Cannadine

  Edward VIII Piers Brendon

  George VI Philip Ziegler

  Elizabeth II Douglas Hurd

  1

  Hanover

  George I (or ‘Georg Ludwig’, as he should be known until his accession in 1714) was not the most exciting of the eleven Hanoverians to have reigned in the United Kingdom, but he was probably the most important. He was certainly the luckiest.

  When he was born, on 28 May 1660, his prospects were very modest. His father, Ernst August, was the youngest of the four sons of the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and the best he could hope for was to become the Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück. As this benefice was non-hereditary, Ernst August would have nothing to pass on to his son apart from pride in an ancient lineage. Tracing back to the eighth century, the Guelphs of Brunswick had enjoyed one period of glory in the mid twelfth century – under Duke Henry ‘the Lion’ (1129–95) – but that had ended in disaster. Confined subsequently to north-west Germany and the region between the Weser and Elbe rivers, they compounded their misfortunes by repeatedly dividing their territories among their male offspring. It was Georg Ludwig’s first stroke of luck that his father, uncles and cousins agreed to impose primogeniture on future generations, a sensible move from which he himself proved to be the ultimate beneficiary, thanks to a series of early deaths among his relations. Resisted tenaciously by the disinherited dukes, it was not until 1705 that all the Brunswick-Lüneburg lands were finally united. Although ‘Brunswick-Lüneburg’ remained the correct appellation, the composite principality would from now on be almost always known as ‘Hanover’, after its capital city.

  A second inheritance of immense value bequeathed by his father, whom he succeeded in 1698, was the status and title of ‘Elector of the Holy Roman Empire’. This should have been a straightforward bargain: in return for Emperor Leopold I granting the promotion in 1692, Ernst August had supplied him with 9,000 troops, 500,000 talers in cash and agreement to join the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV.1 Alas, many years were to pass and much more money had to be spent before the grant of the title was recognized by the other electors, who were understandably reluctant to add to their number. There were eight of them, three ecclesiastical – the Archbishops of Mainz, Trier and Cologne – and five secular – Bohemia, Saxony, the Palatinate, Bavaria and Brandenburg. As the name suggests, it was their right to elect the Holy Roman Emperor, a right that was still very much alive, even though in practice a Habsburg had always been chosen for the past two and a half centuries. It was not until 1708 that Georg Ludwig finally gained admission to the electoral college, by which time the total bill had grown to about 2,000,000 talers.

  It says a good deal for the prosperity of the Guelph lands, and the efficiency of their administration, that Ernst August was able to raise the funds needed for this exercise. Moreover, it was accompanied by lavish expenditure on his court. Admittedly, he was starting from a low base. Hanover had only been the capital since 1636 and the ducal residence was a converted monastery – ‘a terrible, filthy dump’ was the verdict of Ernst August’s duchess, Sophia, even after its conversion to a ‘palace’.2 Hemmed in by the River Leine and private dwellings, the site resisted improvement. Ernst August did his best, creating a new assembly room (Rittersaal) and one of the grandest opera houses north of the Alps, big enough to seat 1,300 and equipped with all the latest stage machinery. It was opened in 1689 in a blaze of representational display, the first work to be performed being Agostino Steffani’s specially commissioned Henrico Leone (Henry the Lion), an operatic reminder of past greatness and present ambition.3 Opera was a taste acquired by Ernst August on one of his many visits to Venice, his favoured playground. According to his wife he was ‘besotted’ with the city and fell into a deep depression if unable to visit for any reason.4 The Foscari Palace on the Grand Canal was rented on a long lease, a fleet of gondolas was hired and subscriptions taken out for all the main opera houses. The enormous sums required by these annual trips were raised by the simple expedient of hiring out Hanoverian soldiers to the Republic of Venice for its wars against the Turks.5 Their involuntary sacrifices – most never saw Hanover again – allowed Ernst August to balance his books, enjoy himself and pass on to his son sound finances.6

  So cramped was the space in the centre of Hanover that the palace there could have no garden. Amends were made by the creation outside the town of one of the great formal gardens of Europe: Herrenhausen. Chiefly responsible was Ernst August’s long-lived wife Sophia (1630–1714). By the time she had finished, the main garden was 450 metres wide and 800 metres long, bounded on three sides by canals and covering an area as large as the whole town of Hanover.7 An eclectic mixture of Dutch, French and Venetian influences, it included spectacular water features, a great number of statues and a garden theatre still in use today.8 A justly celebrated bird’s-eye view of the gardens dating from 1708 also shows a (surprisingly modest) palace, stables and orangeries. Herrenhausen performed two main functions. It provided a welcome relief from the foetid air of downtown Hanover, especially during the summer months, and it proclaimed to visitors the splendour of the newly promoted Electors of Hanover. As Sophia proclaimed: ‘only with the Herrenhausen gardens
can we flaunt ourselves’.9

  When he died in 1698, Ernst August bequeathed Herrenhausen to his widow as her personal property. With a characteristic blend of generosity and shrewdness, she passed it straight on to her son Georg Ludwig – but only on the condition that he paid for its upkeep. By all accounts – and there are many – she was a truly remarkable woman. Highly intelligent, resourceful, good-natured, down to earth and blessed with a sharp sense of humour, she charmed everyone she met. As her mother was the ‘Winter Queen’, Elizabeth of Bohemia (née Stuart, the daughter of James I of England), she had been brought up in the school of hard knocks, enduring poverty and insecurity during the family’s long exile in the Dutch Republic. Originally, she had been earmarked as a bride for Ernst August’s elder brother Georg Wilhelm, but after an ‘indisposition’ (presumably a venereal infection) had rendered the latter temporarily unable to procreate, she had to be switched, a decision she accepted with the cheery observation ‘if one doesn’t have what one loves, one has to love what one has’.10 In the same vein was the advice she gave to her daughter Sophia Charlotte, when about to be married to the Crown Prince of Brandenburg, not to allow a marital quarrel to become a crisis, or, as she put it: ‘don’t make a thunderclap out of a fart’.11

  Both Ernst August and Sophia enjoyed a generally good relationship with their eldest son and heir, Georg Ludwig. The former called him ‘my Benjamin’ and thought well enough of him to take him campaigning at the age of fifteen, while Sophia assured her correspondents that behind a reserved exterior her son was a sensitive, sincere and often jolly young man.12 Perhaps their most important legacy was a tolerant attitude towards religion. Sophia was the daughter of a Calvinist father and an Anglican mother, was married to a Lutheran, had been educated in the latitudinarian atmosphere of the Dutch court and was a lifelong friend of the ecumenical philosopher Leibniz, so had a famously relaxed attitude to doctrinal differences. She told the British envoy, Lord Strafford, that, for her, all branches of Christianity were equal so long as they were directed against the ‘antichrétien universal’, by which she meant the pope.13 Her cousin, King James II of England, complained to her brother (the Elector of the Palatinate) that she had no religion at all, although it should be borne in mind that, as a zealous Catholic convert, James did set the piety bar very high.14

  Against this supportive and enlightened upbringing has to be set a disastrous choice of bride for Georg Ludwig in 1682. It stemmed from the dynasty’s determination to consolidate all the Brunswick-Lüneburg territories under one reigning prince. To this end, Ernst August’s older brother, Georg Wilhelm, had agreed not to marry. This well-laid plan was then derailed when he fell in love with a French Huguenot lady, Eléonore d’Olbreuse, who became his mistress in 1664 and gave birth to a daughter, Sophia Dorothea, two years later. Once the latter had been legitimized in 1674 and her parents had married in 1676, she became heiress to Georg Ludwig’s duchy of Celle. The only solution to this conundrum was for the two first cousins to get married and unite their inheritances. As Georg Ludwig had given an early indication of heterosexual enthusiasm by impregnating the governess of his sister when only sixteen, and as Sophia Dorothea grew up to be an attractive, shapely blonde with an engaging personality, the way seemed clear. However, there was much heart-searching over what was clearly a mésalliance between a scion of the oldest dynasty in the Holy Roman Empire and the offspring of minor French gentry.15

  Awareness that the duchy of Celle was larger and more populous than Hanover helped Georg Ludwig to overcome the ‘repugnance’ he felt at marrying so far down the social scale. As his mother explained: ‘he would marry a cripple if he thought it was to his advantage, because his conduct will always be governed by the interest of his dynasty’.16 It was not, however, a solid foundation on which to build a marriage. Although two children were produced, it was not long before indifference and then hostility became apparent. Sophia Dorothea was a vivacious, light-hearted, irresponsible teenager, only sixteen when she married. Although only twenty-two, Georg Ludwig was old beyond his years, taciturn, serious, anything but fun-loving. Often away at the wars, when he returned he spent most of his waking hours hunting. His strong sexual drive was satisfied by ladies of the court, especially by Baroness Melusine von der Schulenburg, the daughter of a Brandenburg nobleman of ancient lineage. Their relationship began no later than 1691, for she gave birth to their daughter in January 1692.17

  It was deemed quite normal for a male prince to take a mistress – indeed, even some of those who were not that way inclined felt obliged to follow the fashion – but absolutely not acceptable for a married princess to stray. In 1689 Sophia Dorothea made the acquaintance of Count Philipp Christoph von Königsmarck, a handsome young officer who had just entered Hanoverian service. His was a family with a scandalous past and a notorious future. In 1682 his elder brother had narrowly escaped the gallows in London for complicity in the murder of Thomas (‘Tom of Ten Thousand’) Thynne, his rival in love; his beautiful sister Aurora was to become the mistress of Augustus the Strong of Saxony-Poland and the mother of the Maréchal de Saxe, the most successful French general of the eighteenth century. For his part, Philipp Christoph certainly shared the family’s taste for dangerous liaisons. He wrote his first love letter to Sophia Dorothea in 1690 while campaigning in Flanders and consummated their relationship in 1692.18

  In a court and town the size of Hanover, their affair could not be kept secret, especially not in view of the intensity of their passion, expressed in hundreds of letters. What exactly happened in Hanover on the night of 11–12 July 1694 will never be known. According to the most probable scenario, Königsmarck went to the palace late at night for a tryst with the princess, was intercepted and hacked to death. His body was then weighted with stones and thrown into the River Leine, never to be seen again. The assassins were two high-ranking courtiers, Wilken von Klencke and Philip Adam von Eltz, and two less reputable characters, Johann Christoph von Stubenvol and Nicolò di Montalban. The main perpetrator was probably the last-named, an Italian priest and notorious rake who lived by his wits at the court as librettist, building project manager and general factotum.

  How much did the elector and his family know? Nothing is certain because they knew how to keep a secret – if there was one. The official line was that Königsmarck had simply disappeared, left Hanover, gone somewhere else, who knew where, none of our business, nothing to do with us. There was no body, so no evidence of any crime. But of course tongues wagged, and would have wagged even harder if they had known about the payments made to Montalban. Although deeply in debt and eking out a living on an annual salary of 200 talers, in the same year the princely sum of 15,000 talers was credited to his account with the court Treasury.19 So the elector, Ernst August, whose authorization for this payment would have been needed, was at least an accessory after the fact. There is no evidence that his son was an accomplice at any level: he was in Berlin at the time of the murder, although that proves nothing.20 What is certain is that he chose never to see his wife again.

  Although the correspondence uncovered by a search of Sophia Dorothea’s apartments provided unequivocal evidence, she was divorced not for adultery but for her refusal to cohabit with her husband. She was then returned to her father, Duke Georg Wilhelm of Celle, who in effect placed her under house arrest in a manor house at Ahlden, a small village in the depths of the Lower Saxon countryside. There she remained for the next thirty-two years until her death in 1726, living in a confinement that was comfortable but isolated and closely guarded. Despite frequent pleas, she was never permitted to see her two children, aged ten and seven at the time of her disgrace.

  So mismatched was the unhappy couple that constant cohabitation might only have made a bad situation worse. In the event, the neglected wife had both motive and opportunity to look elsewhere for affection, because her husband was away at the wars so often and for so long. This dimension needs to be stressed, for, of all the kings of England, the most militari
zed was George I, a professional soldier for most of his adult life. This was his métier, as it was for any German prince not disqualified by physical or psychological limitations. George had neither: although a bit on the short side, he was strong, tough, courageous and a good horseman. There were plenty of wars for him to fight. In 1661, one year after George’s birth, Louis XIV had taken personal control of French policy and set off in search of military gloire. For most of the rest of his long reign he was at war or preparing for war, the main target being the Habsburg territories in the Holy Roman Empire. At the other end of Europe, a reinvigorated Ottoman Empire had embarked on a fresh wave of expansion in the Balkans, which in 1683 took them to the very gates of Vienna.

  All that made work for the fighting man to do, and Georg Ludwig started young. He saw action for the first time on 11 August 1675, at the age of fifteen, when he fought alongside his father at the Battle of the Bridge of Konz, at the junction of the Saar and Moselle rivers. An episode in the long-running conflict between Louis XIV and the Dutch Republic, this was a sharp engagement involving around 30,000 troops and ending in the complete rout of the French army. Across the Holy Roman Empire, contemporaries celebrated this first humbling of the ‘Sun King’. Although highly improbable, it was reported that Louis had torn his hair and cried, ‘Varus, Varus, give me back my legions!’, imitating the Roman Emperor Augustus’s reaction to the news of Herman the German’s victory in the Teutoburg Forest in AD 9. It was also hailed as a triumph for the house of Brunswick-Lüneburg, for the army was commanded by Georg Wilhelm and his brother Ernst August.21

  Georg Ludwig went campaigning in each of the next three years too, until the war ended with the treaties of Nijmegen of 1678–9. Less than a year after his marriage in November 1682 he was off to the wars again, this time to fight in a battle of world-historical significance. On 11–12 September 1683 a multinational force commanded by King John Sobieski of Poland-Lithuania comprehensively defeated the Turkish army that had been besieging the Habsburg capital for the past two months. The courier who rushed back across the Holy Roman Empire to Hanover was just able to gasp out the glad tidings before dropping down dead (probably not in conscious imitation of Pheidippides, who expired after running the 26 miles and 385 yards from Marathon to Athens in 490 BC).22