occupied for many years a very influential position in Russia, her husband being brother of the Empress Catherine (the second of that name), and maternal uncle of the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas. The third daughter of the house herself became a Russian Grand Duchess; she was wedded at the age of fifteen to the Grand Duke Constantine. The marriage was an inharmonious one, and in 1802 the young pair agreed to separate. Both husband and wife were acquitted of all blame; Leopold, the brother of the latter, attributes the sad event to “the shocking hypocrisy of the Empress-mother,” in the absence of which “things might have gone on.” The Queen’s mother, who was christened Victoire (or Victoria) Marie Louise, was the youngest of the four sisters. Besides Duke Ernest, the father of Prince Albert, the Queen had two other maternal uncles. One was Frederick George, who married a great heiress, the Hungarian Princess of Kohary. His son became the consort of Donna Maria II. of Portugal; his grandson, the present King of Portugal, is the Queen’s first cousin once removed, and the second cousin of her children. Her other uncle was the late King of the Belgians, whose career is a portion of the history of our grandfathers’, our fathers’, and our own times, and is so intimately associated with the life and fortunes of Her Majesty as to merit separate treatment in a succeeding chapter, and elsewhere incidentally in the course of our narrative.

CHAPTER II.

THE GREATEST OF THE MODERN COBURGS.

Born in the year 1790, Prince Leopold was a soldier and in the saddle when he was fifteen years of age. In 1805, that war broke out between Napoleon and Austria, in which the power of the Kaiser was so near being destroyed. The health of the Duke Francis, Leopold’s father, was fast failing him, and the tremendous sorrows and sufferings inflicted by the victorious French upon Germany, hastened the rapidity of his descent to the grave. Ernest, the eldest son, and Leopold hurriedly left Coburg to join the Russian army in Moravia. Their only other brother was already in an Austrian regiment of Hussars. Ere Leopold could flesh his sword, Austerlitz had been fought and lost, and Austria was thoroughly crippled. He returned to Coburg to witness his father’s death. The French were in possession of the town and Duchy, and when they learned that the new Duke was with their Prussian foe, they appointed a military intendant, a M. Vilain—in nature as well as in name, so Leopold afterwards recorded. The Ducal family were reduced to such straits, that they depended for their very sustenance upon the clandestine benefactions of the Governmental subordinates, surlily winked at by their French masters. The Duchess set off on a journey to Warsaw to endeavour to propitiate Napoleon; but she was permitted to proceed no farther than Berlin, as Napoleon hated such visits. She returned baffled to Coburg, which remained “une possession Française.” The Peace of Tilsit, among its other provisions, “reintegrated” Coburg; but, through the greed and treachery of Prussia, the stipulated arrangements were never fulfilled. On the ratification of the Peace, Duke Ernest came to Coburg for the first time to assume his Ducal power and dignity.

As a matter of policy, Leopold, with other German Princes, now visited Napoleon at Paris, where he was courteously received. On his return from Paris, early in 1808, he nearly died of scarlet fever. After a very tardy and painful recovery, he went, at the end of the year, to the Congress of Erfurth, to which he had been summoned by the Czar Alexander. He tried there to secure to his brother his undiminished territorial possessions, and succeeded in making such a favourable impression upon Napoleon that he would have done so, but for the impolitic excessiveness of his brother’s claims, and the apathetic manner in which the Czar supported them. The war with Russia came on, in which he eagerly desired to serve against the French; but Napoleon caused it to be known that if he did so his brother would be held responsible; so he had to abide in inglorious and detested ease. Napoleon made him tempting offers to enter his service, and would have been more incensed at his persistent refusal than he was, but for the friendly intercession of Josephine and Queen Hortense, her daughter, who were both very friendly to the young Prince.

Meanwhile he turned his eminent talents for diplomacy to good account. He persuaded Bavaria to return to his brother portions of Coburg territory which that state unjustly held, and removed the galling pain of the Bavarian flag floating over villages within four English miles of the town of Coburg itself.

In 1812 Napoleon’s frightful war with Russia broke out. Napoleon summoned the subject and enfeebled German Princes to Dresden. Duke Ernest was compelled to go, and Leopold also was cited to the gathering, but he went to Vienna, and then to Italy, to keep out of the way. It would have been now most dangerous to decline the French service, and he was determined at all costs not to enter it. “Germany,” said he, “was, at the beginning of 1812, in the lowest and most humiliating position; Austria and Prussia sunk to be auxiliaries; everybody frightened and submissive, except Spain, supported by England.” But Napoleon’s reverses in Russia soon followed, and they electrified all Germany into new courage. The Duke of Coburg posted off to Berlin to endeavour to stimulate the perplexed, vacillating, and timorous Prussian King into manly and decided action. The other brother, Ferdinand, went to Vienna on a similar errand. Leopold hied him to Munich to stir up the Crown Prince of Bavaria, afterwards King Louis. They were all moderately successful, and Leopold hastened to Kalisch, in Poland, being the first German Prince to join the Army of Liberation. He was equally honoured and gratified by being appointed a Major-General by the Czar. He was present at the hard-fought but indecisive battles of Lutzen and Bautzen. There followed an armistice, and a conference at Prague, with a view to a definite settlement. This the Prince attended. He was the only person admitted to the presence of the Emperor of Austria, and spent much of his time with the plenipotentiaries Metternich, Humboldt, Ansted, Gentz, and others. The negotiations broke off, and hostilities were resumed. At the decided defeat which the French general Vandamme sustained, shortly before the crowning victory of Leipsic, Leopold commanded all the allied cavalry, and distinguished himself the more that he was the only general in the field who knew the country. He was present, and in high command, at Leipsic, where Germany was finally freed. After the fight, the Grand Duke Constantine accompanied him to Coburg, visiting the relatives of the wife from whom he was now separated, and who lived and died in retirement in Switzerland. Amongst others they visited the future Duchess of Kent, then Princess of Leiningen, her first husband being still alive. Shortly afterwards Constantine and Leopold rejoined the army in Switzerland, where Leopold tried hard, but ineffectually, to effect a reconciliation between his sister and her husband.