For the present, everything at Hanover seemed shaping itself for the benefit of the Hereditary Prince George Lewis, as the representative of that principle of primogeniture which, in his father’s eyes, was of paramount importance for the future of the Brunswick-Lüneburg line, but which brought many tears into the eyes of his mother. The principle in question was by no means a new one in the history of the House of Brunswick. It already obtained in the elder branch, and in the younger had been established for Lüneburg-Celle and for Calenberg-Göttingen individually. Unless it were secured, the Brunswick-Lüneburgers could never hope to hold a more than subordinate position among the Princes of the Empire; no dream of a Ninth Electorate was worth dreaming; and any calculation as to further possibilities would have been more baseless than a fabric of the air. But, while this was understood by Ernest Augustus, and doubtless also by his eldest son, it is not wonderful that the next brother, Frederick Augustus, should have bitterly resented the consequences which followed for himself, and that his mother Sophia should have been full of sympathy with his trouble. After obtaining legal advice, Prince Frederick Augustus communicated his grievance to the willing ears of his kinsman, Duke Antony Ulric, at Wolfenbüttel; and, in the same quarter, the Duchess Sophia was lamenting the quarrel which had already taken place between her husband and their second son. ‘Poor Gussy’ (Arm Gustchen), she wrote in December, 1685, ‘is altogether cast out; his father will no longer give him any maintenance. I cry about it all night long; for one child is as dear to me as another; I am the mother of them all, and I grieve most for those who are unhappy.’ Finally, a protest on the part of Antony Ulric was presented to Sophia at Herrenhausen, and forwarded by her to her husband, who was, according to his wont, enjoying himself at Venice. The pressure was applied in vain; and, though ultimately, through the good offices of George William, an understanding was patched up between his brother and the hot-tempered Antony Ulric, Prince Frederick Augustus was left to his own devices. He followed the example of his elder brother by taking service with the Emperor and fighting against the Turks; but he was still intending to institute a suit at Vienna for the recovery of his rights, when, in January, 1691, he fell in a skirmish at Chemetzvar, near St. Giorgy, in Transylvania. After a heroic struggle, the fourth of Sophia’s sons, Charles Philip, had likewise fallen in battle against the Turks at Pristina, in Albania, almost exactly a year before Frederick Augustus. Charles Philip seems to have been his mother’s favourite boy—possibly because of a natural disfigurement (of the head) which had from the first aroused her loving pity; and the tragic details of his dying, covered with wounds, on the battlefield, went to her heart. She fell seriously ill, and even a visit to Carlsbad in the spring of the year failed completely to restore her to health. We may so far anticipate the chronological sequence of events as to note that, after the death of Frederick Augustus, the third brother, Maximilian William, who had at first acknowledged the principle of primogeniture, entered the lists against it. He was joined in his resistance by the fifth, Christian, who was likewise in the Imperial service, and who afterwards (in July, 1703), as Major-General in the Imperial army, met with his death by being drowned in the Danube near Ehingen. When the news of his death came, those around his mother feared for her health—as she could not find the relief of tears. In Maximilian’s quarrel, his mother’s sympathies were again on his side, though, to judge from passages in the correspondence of Sophia Dorothea, he was of a more or less flighty disposition; and, when his father had not unnaturally declined to pay him his appanage, she attempted to obtain some pecuniary support for him at the Danish or at the English Court. Like his brother, he took the officious Antony Ulric into his confidence, and communications were opened with Danckelmann, the powerful Minister of the Elector of Brandenburg, who, with the distinct purpose of thwarting the designed consolidation of the Celle-Hanover dominions, kept up the tension existing between his and the Hanoverian court, and that notwithstanding the marriage, in 1684, of the daughter of Ernest Augustus, Sophia Charlotte to the Electoral Prince—from 1688, Elector Frederick III of Brandenburg. A plot was now hatched, of which the precise object remained in some measure obscure, but as to whose progress the quick-witted Sophia Charlotte contrived to send sufficient information to her father. On December 5th, 1691, Prince Maximilian William was arrested at Hanover, together with the chief agents of his design; and one of these, the Master of the Hunt (Oberjägermeister), von Moltke, with whom Danckelmann had been in communication, had shortly afterwards to pay the penalty of death for the high treason laid to his charge. Prince Maximilian himself was allowed to depart unharmed, after renouncing all claims to the Succession, except in the case of his elder brother’s dying without leaving a son. Although he did not keep his oath very scrupulously, he refrained from any open violation of it during the lifetime of his father, expending his energy in the military service of Venice and of the Emperor. He commanded the first line of cavalry at Blenheim, and survived till 1726, having missed the reversion of the see of Osnabrück by a late conversion to the Church of Rome.^[87] Earlier rumours of a change of faith on his part had sorely vexed his mother, to the unconcealed amusement of her niece, the Duchess of Orleans; but his letters to Sophia, and the references to him in hers to Leibniz, give a pleasing impression of his frank and open nature, although, impulsive as he was, he seems to have been deficient in filial piety as in other qualities showing moral depth.^[88]

Sophia’s youngest son, Ernest Augustus, destined when the time came (1715) to succeed to the see of Osnabrück, formerly held by his father, and also to be created Duke of York and Albany, was still in his boyhood at the critical stage which we have now reached in the history of his House. His birth in 1674, which for a time endangered her life, had elicited from his mother the confession that she already had boys enough; and, inasmuch as there was some difficulty in finding a godfather for him as the latest-born of so large a family, his eldest brother George Lewis was called upon to undertake the responsibilities of the office. The special bond thus established between the two brothers held out firmly so long as their lives endured; indeed, the Duchess of Orleans regrets that, instead of waiting upon his mother, the Prince followed about his elder brother ‘like a spaniel’ (1707). While it is impossible not to respect the loyal devotion of the younger of the pair, the affectionate return made to it on the part of the elder, ‘serious’ as he always was in manner, should not be overlooked by those who desire to form a fair estimate of the character of George I. Ernest Augustus’ childhood was spent under his mother’s eye; and, in 1687, the good Duchess of Orleans undertook to introduce his elder brother Christian and himself at the French Court, where, for the better part of two years, the two Princes, and Ernest Augustus in particular, by his charming manners and quickness, did credit to their descent. In 1689, they started on the indispensable Italian tour; and, in 1693, Prince Ernest Augustus received the baptism of fire equally necessary to this masculine brood in the battle of Neerwinden (Landen), where three sons of the Duchess Sophia—George Lewis, Christian, and Ernest Augustus—were engaged. In August, 1714, the Duchess of Orleans makes a very curious remark concerning him, which suggests that there was a notion at the time of passing over the Electoral Prince (afterwards George II) in the English Succession.^[89] The correspondence of Ernest Augustus, which covers the years 1703 to 1726, reveals a simple and soldier-like character, thoroughly loyal and singularly modest. His elder brother, King George I, actually died in his arms at Osnabrück, and Ernest Augustus, as Sir Henry Wotton might have written, ‘liked it not, and died,’ little more than a year later (August 14th, 1728).

Of Sophia Charlotte, her parents’ only daughter, the ‘Figuelotte’ of a delightful babyhood, and during life the darling and in many respects the semblance of her mother, it will be more convenient to speak in our next chapter. Her youth had been happier than Sophia’s, from whom she had inherited, together with her black hair, to which her blue eyes offered a charming contrast, a rare healthiness of mind, as well as, seemingly, of body, inexhaustible high spirits, and a rapidity of apprehension which made her in her early girlhood a linguist such as her mother and her mother’s brothers and sisters had been in their generation. In 1679, she accompanied her mother on a visit to the French Court, where her natural charms, and above all the brightness of her intelligence, made so pleasing an impression that it was at the time thought likely that she might return thither as the bride of one of the Princes of the House of France. But at Hanover she soon seemed intent upon very different interests; and she had become the pupil of Leibniz before her destiny called her to give her hand to the widowed Electoral Prince Frederick of Brandenburg (September, 1684). ‘It is fortunate,’ wrote her mother, ‘that she does not care for externals.’ The parting went very near to the heart of the Duchess Sophia, who was now, more than ever, left alone to support the dynastic endeavours and suffer from the domestic troubles of the House of Hanover, while meeting the responsibilities of her own title to the English Succession.