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THE COUNTESS LEONORA CHRISTINA ULFELDT.* Lv 1615, Christian IV., King of Denmark, contracted a morgan- atic marriage with Kirstine Munk, a lady of an ancient and noble Danish family, who bore him a daughter in 1621, at the Castle of Frederiksberg. The child was called Leonora Christina, she was betrothed at eight years old to Corfitz Ulfeldt, at fifteen she was married to him, and entered on a life as disastrous and as miserable as if she had been an acknowledged royal princess. Of this life, of which twenty-one years, nine months, and eleven days were passed in prison in the Blue Tower at Copenhagen, Leonora Christina left a narrative, written with quaint and touching simplicity, which came into the possession of Count Johann Waldstein, one of

• Memoirs of Leonora Christina, Daughter of Christian IV. of Denmarl. Written during her Imprisonment in the Eine Tower at Copenhagen, 1663-1685. Translated by F. E. Bannbtt. London : Henry O. King and Co.

her descendants, was published by him in the original Danish,

and has been admirably translated from an authentic German. version into English by Miss Bennett. It is likely that many English readers know no more of Leonora Christina than her brief appearance in English history in the reign of Charles I[. and the-

reference to her in Madame de Motteville's Memoirs, and that they are unacquainted with the incidents of her husband's career. Corfitz Ulfeldt, the son of the Chancellor of the Realm of Den- mark, was poor, clever, and ambitions. He won royal favour very early, and his marriage with the king's daughter was a sure road to wealth and greatness. Christian was much attached to the girl, and during his life everything went well with Ulfeldt.

What sort of wife the fortunate favourite had married appears-

in the following passage of her autobiography—addressed to- Otto Sperling, an old friend and subsequently a fellow-prisoner,-

in which the writer always speaks of herself in the third person:—

" The winter after hor marriage she was with her husband at Moen, and as she knew that her husband's father had not left him aBy wealth, she asked him concerning his debts, and conjured him to conceal nothing- from her. He said to her, If I tell you the truth, it will perhaps frighten you.' She declared it would not, and that she would supply what was needful from her ornaments, provided he would assure her that he had told her everything. He did so, and found that she was not afraid to deprive herself of her gold, silver, and jewels, in order to pay a sum of 36.000 rim-dollars. On April 1637, she went with her husband to Copenhagen. in obedience to the order of the King, who made him Governor of Copenhagen ; and he was again obliged to incur debt in purchasing a house, and in setting up a larger establishnpent. There would be no end were I to tell you all the mischances that befell her during the happy period of her marriage ; but since I am assured that this history will not be seen by any one, and that you will not keep it after having read it, I will toll you a few points Her husband' loved and honoured her, enacting the lover more than the husband. She• spent her time in shooting, riding, tennis, in learning drawing in good earnest, in playing the viol, the flute, the guitar, and she enjoyed a happy life. She knew well that jealousy is a plague, and that it injures the mind which harbours it. Her relations tried to infuse into her head' that her husband loved elsewhere, especially M. E., and subsequently Anna, who was then in her house The love borne to our lady by her husband made him tell her all, and afterwards he went but rarely to his sister's (Anna) apartments ; but our lady betrayed' nothing of the matter, visited her more than before, caressed this lady- more than any other, and even made her considerable presents. (Anna remained in her house as long as she lived.)"

Ulfeldt was also made Chancellor of the Exchequer and a member of the Great Council, entrusted with several high diplomatic mis- sions, and created by the Emperor of Germany, Ferdinand III., a Count of the German Empire. In 1643 he was made Lord High Steward of Denmark, and there his prosperity stopped. The story of his misdeeds is briefly and well told in the introduction to the autobiography ; and there runs a strange thread of romanca through the details of his dishonest policy, grasping greed, and unpatriotic revenge. It is supplied by the jealous hatred.

of a woman. Fredrik III. having succeeded his father, Christian.

IV., Sophia Amalie, the plain, clumsy Saxon he had married, incited him (he had never liked Ulfeldt) to deprive his beautiful„ clever, popular half-sister of the precedence and the titles their father had granted her, and she was driven from the Court by this device. Then Ulfeldt's many enemies got their innings, and he.

and Leonora were accused of a plot for poisoning the King and Queen. He insisted on a judicial investigation; his accusers- were convicted of perjury ; one of them was executed, but Ulfeldt was not quite cleared. His enemies contrived to keep up the.

doubt, and he and Leonora, who was disguised as his valet, left Copenhagen secretly and at night on Jnly 14, 1651, having sent away the most valuable part of their furniture and movable pro- perty, and placed abroad their amassed capital. From the hour of this impolitic flight the history of the pair is disastrous ; on Ulfeldt's side " treasons, stratagems, and spoils," on Leonora's. entire unselfish devotion to him, with all the suffering entailed by it, and by the bitter animosity of her powerful enemy the Queen. There does not appear to be any room for doubt that Ulfeldt was a traitor in the fullest sense of the word, and though Count Waldstein ingeniously pleads for him " that a woman so highly gifted, of so noble sentiments, as Leonora appears to us, would

never have been able to cling with a love so true, and so enduring through all the changes of life, to a man who was unworthy of it,". —that argument is not convincing to readers of historical bio-

graphies. When Ulfeldt followed Carl Gustav of Sweden to the war with Denmark, against his wife's advice, she records only her an- xiety, no blame of him, and no incidents of the strife, which ended. in the triumph of Sweden, the loss by Denmark of one-third of her ancient territory, and the extortion of the severest terms the neutral Powers would allow, in negotiations conducted by Ulfeldt. Then came a brief triumph. Ulfeldt obtained freedom to live in. Denmark unmolested, restitution of his property, and indemnity for his loss of income. Carl Gustav gave him rich estates and a title, and he and Leonora with their children went to reside at Malmo. But Ulfeldt soon began to cabal against Carl Gustav, and conspired with the citizens of Malmo against Swedish dominion. He was seized, examined, defended in writing by his wife (for he was suddenly afflicted with the loss of speech) in a remarkably skilful and vigorous manner. The verdict was " Not Proven," but he escaped before it was given, and after undergoing a brief arrest at Copenhagen, they obtained permission to retire to the Island of Fyen, where the only estate they were permitted to retain was situated. In 1662 Ulfeldt got leave to go abroad for his health, and availed himself of the opportunity to pursue his revenge. Instead of going to Spa, he went to Amsterdam, Bruges, and Paris, where he schemed to raise up enemies for Denmark in Louis XIV. and the Elector of Brandenburg. The Elector promptly betrayed him, and evidence having been laid before the High Court of Appeal in Copenhagen, judgment was given in his absence. Ulfeldt was condemned to an ignominious death as a traitor, his property was confiscated, his descendants were for ever exiled from Denmark, and a large reward was offered for his apprehension. He was safe enough all this time at Bruges, with his devoted wife ; but in the following spring, 1663, she was per- suaded to leave him, to go to England, in order to induce Charles II., her cousin once removed on her father's side, to pay 20,000 "pacatoons" (we don't pretend to understand the currency), which Ulfeldt had incautiously lent him when he was " the Pretender " at the Hague. Ulfeldt, who seems never to have understood that other people were as likely as himself to be dishonest and treacherous when profitable reason should arise, expected Charles to pay this money, and sent his wife to claim it, and this parting proved to be their last. She describes the journey in one of the most quaint, simple, and affecting passages in her autobiography. The story is soon told, and it is confirmed in every respect by the extracts con- tained in the Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the reign of Charles II., 1663-64 :—

" The Danish Government, hearing of her presence in England, thought that Ulfeldt was there too, or hoped, at any rate, to obtain possession of important documents by arresting her, and demanded her extradition. The British Government ostensibly refused, but, under- hand, it gave the Danish Minister, Petcum, every assistance. Leonora was arrested at Dover, where she had arrived on her way back, dis- appointed in the object of her journey. She had obtained enough of fair promises, but no money ; and by secretly giving her up to the Danish Government, Charles IL in an easy way quitted himself of the debt, at the same time that he pleased the King of Denmark, without violating political propriety. Leonora was conducted to Copenhagen, whore she was confined in the Blue Tower,—a square tower, surmounted by a blue spire, which stood in the court of the royal castle, and was used as a prison for grave offenders. As soon as Ulfeldt heard that sentence had been passed on him at Copenhagen, he left Bruges. The arrest of Leonora was a still greater blow to him. He had to flee from place to place, pursued by Danish agents demanding his extradition, until he reached Basle, where he passed under a feigned name, until a quarrel between one of his sons and a stranger caused the discovery of his secret. He left Basle, alone, at night, in a boat descending the Rhine ; but he never reached his destination. He was labouring under a violent attack on the chest, and the night air killed him. He died in the boat, 20th February, 1664. The boatmen, concluding from the gold and jewels which they found on him that he was a person of con- sequence, brought the body on shore, and made the matter known in Basle, from whence his sons came and buried him under a tree in a field ;—no one knows the spot."

So Ulfeldt's troubled, mischievous life came to an end, after his wife's captivity had begun, a captivity so cruel that one cannot read its details, in the simple language of the sufferer, without a shudder. The prison in which Leonora Christina passed twenty- one years of ingeniously-contrived and carefully-sustained misery, which was, however, surmounted by her great-mindedness and her sound practical piety, formed a portion of the royal palace. Her half-brother and his wicked wife looked from their windows upon the bars which shut her into a horrid den, with an attendant who was told she was a sorceress, whom to torture was to do God service. When sentence was passed upon her husband, and in his absence they had to decapitate a wooden effigy of him, the Queen demanded of the King that the figure should be placed in the doorway of Leonora's dungeon, so that it might fall into the room. The weak tyrant was not sufficiently brutal to consent to that, but the Queen's victim was tortured nearly as effectively as if he bad done so, for her attendant cried out to her, "Madam, they are bringing your husband!"

so that the captive started up, with a ray of hope, to behold the procession of ignominy. The happy thought of the Paris mob who carried Madame de Lamballe's head to the Temple for Marie Antoinette to see was hardly an advance on this choice device of a Queen of Denmark. Her Majesty, it seems, instructed the prisoner's attendant to induce Leonora to ask for anything she wished for (of her own property), telling her that the Queen would send it to her. The Countess asked for her perfume-case- the stench in her prison being dreadful—and the Royal lady sent her a tin box containing some fluid of peculiarly offensive odour. The painful interest of this narrative is carried to its height when the prisoner addresses her children,—so passionately loved and longed for throughout those hopeless years,—in terms of profound tenderness and resignation, seeking to reconcile them to the horror of her fate, and ever dwelling on the husband so beloved in life and death. She must have been a woman of high intel- lectual gifts and many accomplishments ; the ingenuity with which she contrived occupation for herself in her prison, when sedulously deprived of every appliance, the care with which she tended her health and maintained her faculties in perfect order, keeping always the even balance of her just and powerful mind, the absence of passion and severity in her judgments, her pre- science, borne out by the events, her calm charitableness, make up a character which would have been uncommon under the most ordinary circumstances. Her quick sense of humour, not to be quenched by any duration or rigour of suffering, finds constant quaint expression, especially in the history of her dealings with the ignorant attendant, who never forgot that she was a witch. Leonora relates with infinite fun how she used to obtain silence and freedom from interruption by practising on this belief, and investing the most ordinary household functions with a mysterious formula. Some of these stories are terribly pathetic with all their gaiety, one in particular, in which she tells how she contrived to raise herself and Christen up to the little window, so that they could see some rope-dancers who were performing their antics in the courtyard before the King and Queen. She criticises the performance merrily, and adds, " I could see the faces of the King and Queen : they were standing in the long hall, and I wondered afterwards that they never turned their eyes to the place where I stood. I did not let the woman perceive that I saw them."

Leonora Christina wrote some fine poems on religions subjects, of which the simplest firmest faith in the supreme fatherhood of God, and resignation even to the point of joyful acquiescence in His dear divine will, are the key-note. The spiritual training of that long imprisonment proves itself, not only in the captive's writings, but in her conduct when, after the sudden death of Fredrik and the reduction of her cruel enemy to dowagerhood, the new Queen, the Electoral Princess of Saxony, and the Lady Augusta of Gliicksburg, visited her in her dungeon :—

" Her Majesty supported herself against the folding table," she writes, "so soon as she had greeted me. Lady Augusta ran up and down into every corner, and the Electoral Princess remained at the door. Lady Augusta said, Fye ! What a disgusting room this is ! I could not live a day in it ; I wonder that you have been able to endure it so long I' I answered, ' The room is such as pleases God and his Majesty, and so long as God will I shall be able to endure it.'"

Her remorseless enemy still hindered the good women about the young King from prevailing with him to set her free, though the Landgravine of Hesse, the young Queen's mother, went to her son-in-law when the Queen was iu the pains of childbirth, and won his promise that if his wife should give him a son he would release the guiltless captive. The Queen was safely delivered of a boy, but the Queen Dowager forbade her son to keep his promise, and the 'zither women could only obtain somewhat better lodging and personal treatment for Leonora. In February, 1685, Queen Sophia Amalia died, sitting on a chair, after a vain effort to speak to her son, and then hope came to Leonora, to whom the young Queen had been, secretly, most kind. She was warned that her release was near, but that she would not be allowed to speak to her good friend. Her autobiography ends thus :—

" King Fredrik IIL ordered my imprisonment on August 8, A.D. 1663 ; King Christian V. gave me my liberty on May 18, 1685. God bless my most gracious King with all righteous blessing, and give his Majesty health. This is finished in my prison. On May 19, at ten o'clock in the morning, I left my prison. To God be honour and praise. He graciously vouchsafed that I should recognise His divine benefits, and never forget to record them with gratitude. Dear children ! this is the greatest part of the events worth mentioning which occurred to mo within the doors of my prison. I live now in the hope that it may please Gad and the King's Majesty that I may myself show you this record, written at Hamm, June 2, where I am awaiting the return of the King's Majesty from Norway."

Leonora Christian lived at Maribo until 1698, when she died. She divided her time between devotion and literature, and her eldest daughter, Catherine Casetta, then a childless widow, resided with her. To her pions care the world owes the preservation of this remarkable autobiography, in the English version of which we gratefully recognise a valuable addition to the tragic romance of history.