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CHAPTER ONE

A PUMPERNICKEL STATE

When Princess Charlotte wrote of her forthcoming marriage to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, she noted that 'he seems vastly fond of his family who are exceedingly united.' United they indeed were, by the straitened circumstances in which they had been forced to live thanks to the economic difficulties endured in that region from the late eighteenth century. Most people tended to use the abbreviated form 'Saxe-Coburg' rather than 'Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld', which was

one of five ducal houses of the Ernestine branch of the House of Saxony, the others being Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, Saxe-Meiningen, Saxe-Hildburghausen and Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

These and other smaller states in the central region operated as little more than fiefdoms and prior to 1806 were governed by a plethora of knights, counts, margraves, burgraves, bishops, abbots, dukes and barons. Together they made up the German-speaking territories of the Holy Roman Empire that had ruled over much of central and western Europe since the ninth century. But their repeated political fragmentation had ensured that they shared little sense of a cohesive national identity until German nationalism took root after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. For centuries these disparate German territories were thus embroiled in endless dynastic infighting over the division of the lands between their various heirs and control of the borders between them until the piecemeal introduction of the rule of primogeniture gradually brought the worst disputes under control; in Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld's case this came in 1747.

After Napoleon's conquest of Germany in 1806 many of the smallest statelets were absorbed by the larger ones and faded into insignificance, thus greatly simplifying the political map. SaxeCoburg-Saalfeld remained a third- or fourth-league state by status: below the imperial electorates like Hanover and the grand duchies like Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt, poorer than some bishoprics and imperial cities, but above the smaller principalities such as the junior Reuss line from which Julie's mother Auguste came.

The region in which Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was located languished as a patchwork of small duchies and principalities of limited wealth and little political clout, haunted always by the prospect of losing their autonomy through annexation, which preyed on the minds of Leopold's parents. Therefore, the five Saxe-Coburg states remained politically stagnant, always the clients rather than the peers of the larger powerful states such as Prussia, Hanover, Saxony and Württemberg, to whom, when their financial resources failed, they often hired out their armies and married off their daughters.

Even in the 1840s the complex history of this region still defeated those attempting to present a succinct account for the British public when Leopold's nephew Prince Albert married Queen Victoria and questions were asked about his dynastic credentials. It was admitted that little was known about Saxe-Coburg beyond 'the simple fact that such a principality exists'. The literary scholar and politician John Frederick Stanford was obliged to note that as with all the other German duchies, its early history was 'extremely complicated' and most people made no attempt to unravel it.

Throughout the eighteenth century the German prince or duke had been, by and large, little more than a gentleman farmer, albeit on the large scale. Julie's Russian husband Konstantin would later remark disparagingly that his brother-in-law Duke Ernst II reigned 'over six peasants and two village surgeons'. Princess Marie of Edinburgh (later queen of Romania), who grew up there in the 1870s, was rather more charitable. Coburg was 'a small town where

Gemütlichkeit [warmth and friendliness] played a greater part than elegance...a town of simple burghers, uncritical and loyal', with an 'old-world simplicity'. The Coburg court or Residenz, which formed the microcosm of the Saxe-Coburg state, was, despite its old-world Teutonic charm, exceedingly narrow in its aspirations: pedantic, traditionalist and lacking political debate or cultural innovation. Its dukes 'cherished a blighting etiquette, and led lives as dull as those of the aged and torpid carp in their own stewponds'.

In order to maintain their government and army, not to mention their personal lifestyle, Saxe-Coburg's rulers had squeezed the peasantry through heavy taxation to compensate for the limited revenue derived from local industry. Covering around 400 square miles and with a population of 57,266 (in 1812), Saxe-Coburg was about one and a half times the size of the Isle of Wight. The land was fertile enough; located in a sheltered valley between two ranges of hills, it produced corn, flax, wine and rich pasture for fattening cattle. But the duchy's manufactures were modest, its best offerings being 'pots, hats, and peltry [animal skins]', as well as vitriol, potash, pitch and Prussian blue pigment.

Saxe-Coburg had an imposing castle, the Veste, built on the site of a tenth-century fortress on a hilltop above a dense beechwood that dominated the landscape for many miles in every direction. But it was cold, comfortless and infested with rats and the ducal family found it too forbidding to live there. Between 1543 and 1547 Duke Johann Ernst (1521-53) had drained the treasury to construct a grand palace—the Ehrenburg—on the site of a Franciscan friary in the town itself.* When Julie's grandfather the 4th duke, Ernst Friedrich (1724-1800), inherited the title in 1764 under the duchy's newly introduced law of primogeniture, he remained based in the better-known walled town of Coburg on the River Itz and kept the Saalfeld residence for official purposes only. His intention was to enhance the duchy's prospects, but by then it was already in economic decline.