BAYAB.WS ROYAL FORTUNES.
[Ora account of the reigning families of Germany-, last week, had a leading object, and the narrative was constructed with a view to that object, necessarily passing by episodes that might otherwise have tempted us as corroborating our general proposition, or as presenting matter of peculiar interest. There is one section of the subject which was necessarily excluded by the plan of our, paper, but it is too interesting to be entirely passed over we refer to the fortunes of the house of Bavaria, especially of its Princesses.] The founder of the royal hotu3e of Bavaria was Duke Luitpold of Wittels- bach, who lived in the beginning of the tenth century, and whose sons ac4- quired some territory on the Eastern borders of the Rhine, and became Counts Palatine of Wittelsbach. But, like all the other royal families of Germany, the descendants of Luitpold, through the nonexistence of a law Of primogeniture, soon split into numerous branches ; and it was not until the latter end of the eighteenth century that they were reduced to the two lines still existing—the Electoral house of Bavaria, and the Palatine family of Dear-Pouts. By the grace of Napoleon I, the Elector Maximilian Joseph, head of the first-named family, was made a King, in the year 1805, and re- ceived together with his title a considerable increase of territory from the great dispenser of Continental thrones. It is with this Maximilian, the first
King of Bavaria, that the modern and the interesting history of the royal house of Wittelsbach begins.
Elector Maximilian married twice : first, a Princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, by whom he had four children, two sons and two daughters ; and secondly, a Princess of Baden, by whom also he had four children, all daughters. The individual fortunes of these three Princes and six Princesses illustrate in a singular manner the intimate and widespread connexions of the royal families of Europe. It is the four daughters of the second marriage that chiefly exhibit this marriage system. The two eldest of them, twin-sisters, born on the 13th November 1801, are now the Queens of Prussia and of Saxony ; and the other two, also twin-sisters, born on the 27th January 1805, are the all-influential Archduchess Sophie, mother of the Austrian Emperor, and the Queen-dowager of Saxony. Thus, the daughters of the house of Bavaria have given fair promise to be for the Kings and Princes of Europe what the sons of the house of Coburg are to the Queens and Princesses. And in both cases the connecting medium of royalty was sought in a family of third-rate influence; for the house of Bavaria, at the time when these matrimonial connexions were formed, was as poor as the house of Coburg is even now.
After Maximilian had been, as we have said, created King of Bavaria by the Emperor Napoleon, his chief object became to marry his children, espe- cially. his daughters, into powerful houses, so as to gam by family alliances
influence fluence which he could not hope to acquire by the mere strength of a newly-gained title. Accordingly, he offered the eldest of his daughters, the Princess Augusta, to Eugene de Beauharnais, the adopted son of the French Emperor, who had just before been made Vice-King of Italy and Grand Duke of Frankfort. This marriage having been concluded, the King managed, after much diplomatic maneeuvering, to unite his second daughter, Princess Caroline, to the Emperor Francis of Austria, then fifty years old. The Emperor had already buried three wives, the last of them only seven months before this union with Princess Caroline. To find a husband for the next Princess, Elizabeth, was a still more difficult task for the King of Bavaria ; as we learn from the Memoirs of the Prussian General Wol- zogen ; who, in the year 1819, came with his pupil, the Crown Prince (the
resent King) of Prussia, in the course of his European travels to Munich. King Maximilian of Bavaria," says Herr von Wokagen, "received me in the most friendly manner, and invited me to a private dinner. He there and then confessed to me that the dearest wish of his heart consisted in marrying one of his daughters to the Crown Prince of Prussia. But this wish fulfilled, he said, he would die contentedly, (dean seirde er ruing terberi.) Having sent for the Princesses, they all were in turn presented to me; and although I observed to his Majesty that my sole duty consisted in giving instruction in the art of war to Prince Frederick William, and not to seek a wife for him, his Majesty smiled, and dismissed me in the most gra- cious manner." So much royal perseverance could not remain unrewarded, and accordingly, a few years after this interview with the worthy Herr von Wolzogen, the Crown Prince of Prussia was married to Princess Elizabeth. Her twin-sister, Amilie, had been united, a short time before, to Prince John of Saxony, who eventually became King. Maximilian of Bavaria now had only to seek husbands for the remaining two daughters; and he easily found them in Archduke Francis of Austria, who married Princess Sophie and Prince Frederick Augustus of Saxony, who married Princess
Marie, twin-sister of Sophie. Sophie was Queen of Saxony even before the elder sister, Amelie, wife of Prince Frederick Augustus's younger bro- ther. Through such well-timed calculations, all the daughters of King Maximilian of Bavaria became consorts to some of the most powerful princes of Europe : one a temporary Queen of Italy, another an Empress of Austria, another an Emperor's mother, another a Queen of Prussia, and the remaining two successive Queens of Saxony.
These influential connexions of the house of Bavaria were kept up by the successors of King Maximilian I, but not 80 much personally as by their daughters and the other Princesses of the family. For whereas the female members of the house invariably married great Princes, the two sons of the first King were not so ambitious in their matrimonial aspirations. The eldest son Louis, who ascended the throne in 1825, married a Princess of Saxe-Altelnburg ; but, as is well known, he had other less regular con- nexions among whom the far-famed Lola Montez. The only brother of King Louis, Prince Charles, united himself to a Mademoiselle Sophie Bolley, daughter of a French officer, who was ennobled under the title of Baroness of Beyersdorf. This latter union is said to be a very happy one ; and Prince Charles and his wife spend their days in a secluded little château on the banks of the Lake of Tegern in the Bavarian Alps. King Louis abdicated in 1848; and his son Maximilian H, who had married in 1842 Princess Frederika, first cousin of the King of Prussia, succeeded him on the throne. The eldest sister of this present King is married to the Grand Duke of Hesse; his brother Otto, King of Greece, is united with a Princess of Oldenburg; the next brother, Luitpold, has a daneiter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany ; Princess Adelgond is married to the Duke of Modena, and Princess Hildegarde to the Archduke Albert of Austria. The royal house of Bavaria, therefore is intimately connected with the leading P'rin.ns of Germany and the North of Italy ; chiefly with the families of Austria, Prussia, Saxony,. Hesse, Oldenburg, Tuscany, and Modena. Bavaria is the principal connecting link between the Protestant and the Catholic families of the sovereigns of Europe.
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