or Albertine branch of the family, by the descendants of which the Saxon throne is still occupied.

It is not easy to trace the arrangement by which, on losing the electorate, now the kingdom of Saxony, the Ernestine branch acquired the several duchies still pos sessed by its descendants. It would be still more difficult to follow out the laws of succession-the intermarriages, etc., leading to the redistribution or interchange of territory, in consequence of which these different duchies came into the possession now of this, now of that member of the family. The custom of dividing and subdividing their inheritance among their sons seems long to have prevailed with these Saxon dukes. Thus the dukedoms of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, of Saxe-Meiningen, of Saxe-Hildburghausen, and of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld were, on the death, in 1679, of Ernest the Pious, duke of Saxe-Gotha-Coburg, and great-grandson of the last elector of the Ernestine branch, John Frederick the Magnanimous, divided severally among his sons. Of these, the eldest, Frederick, inherited the duchies of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, while that of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld fell to the share of the youngest, John Ernest, the immediate ancestor of our Prince.

Francis Joseph, son and successor of John Ernest, had four sons, of whom the eldest, Ernest Frederick, succeeded him as reigning duke in 1764; while the third, Fred erick, having greatly distinguished himself in the Aus trian service, was made a field-marshal, and commanded the allied armies in the Netherlands for some time in the beginning of the French Revolutionary war.*

*An interesting notice of this generation of the family, and particu

Ernest Frederick was succeeded, in 1800, by Francis Frederick, his eldest son, who died in 1806, leaving three sons and four daughters.

the

1. Ernest, the father of our Prince, who succeeded his father as Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, under the title of Ernest I. To this inheritance, by a family arrangement made in 1825, on the death of Frederick IV., last male descendant of Frederick, duke of Saxe-Gotha Altenburg, eldest son of Ernest the Pious above mentioned, and confirmed in November, 1826, he added the duchy of Gotha. But, in accordance with the same arrangement, he had to surrender the duchy of Saalfeld to the Duke of Meiningen-Saxe-Altenburg being, at the same time, separated from the duchy of Gotha, and given to the Duke of Hildburghausen, who assumed the former title, Hildburghausen itself being also added to the territory of the Duke of Meiningen.

2. Ferdinand George, who married the heiress of the Prince of Kohary in Hungary, and whose son became King Consort of Portugal by his marriage with Queen Donna Maria II. of that kingdom.

3. Leopold, the late King of the Belgians.

Duke Francis also left four daughters.

1. Sophia, who, after refusing many eligible proposals of marriage of her own rank, married, in 1804, Count Mensdorff-Pouilly, who, emigrating from France at the Revolution, attained high rank and distinction in the Austrian service. The greatest intimacy and friendship existed in youth between her sons, all distinguished in

larly of the field-marshal, will be found in Appendix A., et seqq., containing the Reminiscences of the King of the Belgians.

the Austrian service,* and their cousin Prince Albert,† and an interesting account of his recollections of the Prince, by Count Arthur Mensdorff, will be found in a subsequent chapter.

2. Antoinette, married, in 1798, to Duke Alexander of Würtemberg, brother to the Empress Mother of Russia (mother to the Emperors Alexander and Nicholas), who had a very influential position in Russia, and lived there for many years.

3. Julie, the third, married, at fifteen, to the late Grandduke Constantine of Russia. But this marriage was not a happy one, and in 1802 she left Russia, fixing her residence finally at Elfenau, near Berne, in Switzerland,+ where, it will be seen, the Prince, in the course of a pedestrian tour, paid her a visit in September, 1837, as he also did on several occasions afterward.

4. Victoire Marie Louise, the youngest daughter, married, first, the Prince of Leiningen; and, secondly, the Duke of Kent, as whose widow, and as the mother of our Queen, she lived for the remainder of her life in England, beloved by her family and friends, and endeared, by her many virtues and innumerable acts of kindness, to the whole British nation.

Ernest I., eldest son of Duke Francis by Augusta, daughter of Prince Henry XXIV. of Reuss-Ebersdorff, was born in 1784, and, as already mentioned, succeeded

* One of them, Count Alexander Mensdorff, is now [1866] Minister for Foreign Affairs at Vienna.

+ See Appendix A.

For more detailed accounts of his sisters and family, see Reminis cences of the King of the Belgians, Appendix A.

his father in 1806 as reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

The dukedom was at that time in the occupation of the French, and the new duke and other members of the family were objects of great suspicion to the French government. The reminiscences of his brother, the King of the Belgians, which will be found in Appendix A., at the end of the volume, will give a good idea of the difficulties with which Duke Ernest had, in consequence, to contend at his accession and for many years afterward; nor was it till the emancipation of Germany in 1813 from the oppressive domination so long exercised over her by Napoleon that he can be said to have come fairly into possession of his inheritance.

A marriage with a Russian grand-duchess had originally been in contemplation for the young duke; but this was broken off in 1812, and in 1817 he married the Princess Louise, daughter, by his first wife, a Princess of Mecklenburg Schwerin, of Augustus,* last reigning duke but one of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. By her he had two sons, Ernest, the present reigning duke, born at the Ehrenburg, the Ducal Palace at Coburg, on the 21st of June, 1818, and Albert, the subject of the following memoir, born at the Rosenau, a charming summer residence belonging to the duke about four miles from Coburg, on the 26th of August, 1819.

In a Memorandum written in 1864, the Queen gives the following account of the duchess:

*He married, secondly, the Princess Caroline of Hesse Cassel, born in 1768, daughter of William, ninth Elector of Hesse, and of Wilhelmina of Denmark. She was the Duchess of Gotha so constantly mentioned in the following pages, and died February 28, 1848.

"The princess is described as having been very handsome, though very small; fair, with blue eyes; and Prince Albert is said to have been extremely like her. An old servant who had known her for many years told the Queen that when she first saw the Prince at Coburg in 1844, she was quite overcome by the resemblance to his mother.

"She was full of cleverness and talent; but the marriage was not a happy one, and a separation took place in 1824, when the young duchess finally left Coburg, and never saw her children again. She died at St. Wendel in 1831, after a long and painful illness, in her 32d year.

"The Duchess Dowager of Gotha, her stepmother, writes to the Duke the following account of her on the 27th of July, 1831:

"The sad state of my poor Louise bows me to the earth. . . . . The thought that her children had forgotten her distressed her very much. She wished to know if they ever spoke of her. I answered her that they were far too good to forget her; that they did not know of her sufferings, as it would grieve the good children too much.'

"The Prince never forgot her, and spoke with much tenderness and sorrow of his poor mother, and was deeply affected in reading, after his marriage, the accounts of her sad and painful illness. One of the first gifts he made to the Queen was a little pin he had received from her when a little child. Princess Louise (the Prince's fourth daughter, and named after her grandmother) is said to be like her in face.