Ferdinand of Brunswick

“ CAROLINE, AMELIA ELIZABETH, of Brunswick - Wolfenbüttel (1768–1821) , queen of George IV, second daughter of Duke Charles William Ferdinand of Brunswick and the Princess Augusta of England, sister of George III, was born 17 May 1768. ”

“ His Majesty was not content with these, Herr Meyen was told; and they were to be remodelled into a more distinct condition. The instant Herr Meyen stept out, I was called in. His Majesty was standing with his back to the fire; and said:—
KING. "'Come nearer [Roden comes nearer] . Prince Ferdinand [of Brunswick, whom we generally call DUKE and great, to distinguish him from a little Prussian Prince Ferdinand] has told me much good of you: where do you come from?'
RODEN. "'From Soest' [venerable "stone-old" little Town, in Vellinghausen region] . ”

“ As this position was strong, Prince Ferdinand employed all his strategy to draw the maréchal from it. With this view he had quitted his camp on the Weser, and marched to a place named Hille, leaving, however, General Wangenheim with a body of troops entrenched on the plain of Todtenhausen. Then detaching his nephew (known among us as the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick) with six thousand men, he gave him orders to make a detour towards the French left, and thus cut off their communication with Paderborn. ”

“ The estrangement of Frederick and Ferdinand in 1766 led to the duke’s retirement from Prussian service, but there was no open breach between the old friends, and Ferdinand visited the king in 1772, 1777, 1779 and 1782. After 1766 he passed the remainder of his life at his castle of Veschelde, where he occupied himself in building and other improvements, and became a patron of learning and art, and a great benefactor of the poor. ”

“ Ferdinand drove to the uttermost the advantages of his victory. The Union being destroyed and the Bohemian revolution crushed, attention was turned to the hereditary lands of the elector palatine. The Spanish troops and the army of the League invaded the Rhenish Palatinate, which was defended by Frederick’s remaining adherents, Christian of Brunswick and Count Ernst von Mansfeld, but after several battles it passed completely into the possession of the imperialists. ”

“ My connection [174] with him, and the letter I brought from the Duchess of Brunswick, have procured me invitations, which I should otherwise have had but a small chance of receiving. I passed a day lately at a very pleasant villa, about six miles from Berlin, belonging to the King’s brother, Prince Ferdinand. He is married to a sister of the Princess of Hesse Cassel’s. The Princess of Prussia was there at the same time, and Prince Frederick of Brunswick, with his Princess, who is remarkably pretty. I have the honour of supping sometimes with Prince Frederick, who lives constantly at Berlin. ”

“ The first five generations of the House of Brunswick contain eight as high as grade (7) , but none of these were distinguished sufficiently to be mentioned in Lippincott's. Only two, Ferdinand and his father, Ferdinand Albert II., were noted as generals. ”

“ Hong Kong 24 March 1869.
BRÜNNOW, Ernst Philipp Ivanovitch, Count de. b. Dresden 31 Aug. 1797; Russian envoy and minister in London 1840 to 8 Feb. 1854 and 4 Feb. 1861 to July 1874; raised to the rank of Count, April 1871. d. Darmstadt 11 April 1875. Illust. News of the World iii, (1859) , portrait.
BRUNSWICK and LUNEBURG, Karl Friedrich August Wilhelm Herzog von. b. Brunswick 30 Oct. 1804; lived at Vauxhall in London 1809–15; laid foundation stone of Vauxhall bridge 1814; entered on exercise of his authority as Duke of Brunswick 30 Oct. 1823; fled to England 7 Sep. ”

“ Her present Majesty, Alexandrina Victoria, was born May 24th, 1819, and ascended the throne June 20th, 1837, as representing her father, the Duke of Kent, fourth son of George HI. On February 10th, 1840, it being the general etiquette for the Brunswick family to intermarry amongst themselves, she was married to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg, who received an allowance from the nation of £30,000, to compensate him for becoming the husband of his wife. The Queen, more sensible than others of the arduous position of a Prince Consort, wished her loyal husband to have £100,000 a year. ”

“ Other works, mostly of a sacred character, including two settings of the Passion, also belong to the Brunswick period. Frederick the Great, at that time crown prince of Prussia, heard the singer in Brunswick in 1735, and immediately engaged him for his private chapel at Rheinsberg. There Graun remained for five years, and wrote a number of cantatas, mostly to words written by Frederick himself in French, and translated into Italian by Boltarelli. On his accession to the throne in 1740, Frederick sent Graun to Italy to engage singers for a new opera to be established at Berlin. ”

“ That during the one hundred and fifty-seven years the Brunswick family have reigned over the British Empire, the policy and conduct of the majority of the members of that family, and especially of the various reigning members, always saving and excepting her present Majesty, have been hostile to the welfare of the mass of the people. This will be sought to be proved at length by a sketch of the principal events in the reign of each monarch, from August 1st, 1714, to the present date. ”

“ The thronging spear-tips and the swaying crests of Otho's two hundred knights flashed in the sun, and the giant form of the big Brunswicker strode out before his following. The sight of his dreaded master almost awed the Bishop of Constance into submission, but the voice of young Frederick's stanch friend and comrade, Berard, Archbishop of Bari, rang out clear and quick.
"Tell thy master, Otho of Brunswick," he said, "that Constance gates open only at the bidding of their rightful lord, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, Emperor of the Romans and King of Sicily. ”

“ Early in November Pitt and his colleagues received a refusal from the Duke, but now they sent through Malmesbury an offer to subsidize a corps of 20,000 or 30,000 Austrians in that quarter. These, along with the British, Hanoverian, and Hessian troops, when marshalled by Brunswick, might surely be trusted to stay the French advance. The crisis was momentous. Brunswick well understood that in reality the fate of North Germany was at stake; for the French, if masters of the Rhine and Ems valleys, could easily overrun the northern plain, including his own duchy. ”

“ See Brown, John.
Brunswick (404) , a N. German duchy, made up of eight detached parts, mostly in the upper basin of the Weser; is mountainous, and contains part of the Harz Mts.; climate and crops are those of N. Germany generally. Brunswick (101) , the capital, a busy commercial town, once a member of the Hanseatic League, and fell into comparative decay after the decay of the League, on the Oker, 140 m. SW. of Berlin; an irregularly built city, it has a cathedral, and manufactures textiles, leather, and sewing-machines. ”

“ It would be as dangerous as it would be useless. You would only incur the enmity of the Duke of Brunswick, and you know how important it is for the sovereigns of Germany to maintain their friendship at a time when the foreign princes want to invade our land. ”

“ Brunswick, the Prussian Commander-in-Chief, hated the French emigrants as much as he did the Revolution; and even the generals who did not originally share Brunswick's dislike to the war recovered their old jealousy of Austria after the first defeat, and exerted themselves only to get quit of the war at the first moment that Prussia could retire from it without disgrace. The very enterprise in which Austria had consented that the Court of Berlin should seek its reward-the seizure of a part of Poland-proved fatal to the coalition. ”

“ Brunswick is an old and rather ugly town, with large and gloomy houses, an old church in full Gothic style, and a town hall even more Gothic. It is a great relief to find something really old after a succession of little capitals rebuilt without character or historical memory, with their tawdry modern ornamentation. I noticed a magnificent breed of 200 post horses and draught and military horses; they are splendid, strong and vigorous animals; I do not know whether the district produces them or if they are brought from Mecklenburg. ”

“ Surely some one might have been found worthy to play the part of a Buckingham to the successor of Charles—some intimate of the prince, who, acquainted with his tastes and inclinations, might have visited Brunswick as a stranger, and, without betraying the actual nature of his mission, might have acquired a sufficient knowledge of the manners and character of the princess to frame an adequate report. ”

“ The Governor of the Military College, Sandhurst.
149. Afterwards first King of the Netherlands.
150. “The Duke of Brunswick is very-near being a handsome man; his figure is light and graceful; and were it not that he carries his head ill, he would be a noble-looking creature. His eyes are deep sunk in his head, more so than I ever saw in any one, and his brows are remarkably prominent, with shaggy eyebrows. This circumstance gives him a sombre expression, and indeed the whole cast of his countenance is gloomy, but his features are regular ”

“ Danish A, though of the 16th century, does not mention the ring.
(3.) A Flemish broadside, which may originally have been of the 15th century, relates the adventures of the Duke of Brunswick in sixty-five stanzas of four long lines: reprinted in von der Hagen's Germania, VIII, 359, and Hoffmann's Niederländische Volkslieder, No 2, p. 6; Coussemaker, No 47, p. 152; abridged and made over, in Willems, O. v. L., p. 251, No 107. The duke, going to war, tells his wife to marry again if he stays away seven years. She gives him half of her ring. ”

“ Hohenlohe, who commanded the left wing, lost no opportunity of opposing his superior; the suggestions of officers of real ability, like Scharnhorst, chief of the staff, fell unnoticed among the wrangling of pedants and partisans. Brunswick, himself a man of great intelligence though of little resolution, saw the true quality of the men who surrounded him. "Rüchel," he cried, "is a tin trumpet, Möllendorf a dotard, Kalkreuth a cunning trickster. The generals of division are a set of stupid journeymen. Are these the people with whom one can make war on Napoleon? ”

“ King Ferdinand, his sovereign, notwithstanding the ambition of universal conquest absurdly imputed to him by the French writers, had no design to extend his acquisitions beyond what he could permanently maintain. His treasury, never overflowing, was too deeply drained by the late heavy demands on it, for him so soon to embark on another perilous enterprise, that must rouse anew the swarms of enemies, who seemed willing to rest in quiet after their long and exhausting struggle ”

“ Among these may be specially mentioned the recognition of Otto of Lüneburg, the heir of the Guelfs, as Duke of the new duchy of Brunswick (see also page 331) . Frederick’s friendship with the Guelfs, following closely upon his alliance with England, clearly marks his departure from his ancestors’ policy. Even the towns were conciliated by the renewal of their privileges. Only the Duke of Austria, the brother-in-law of Henry VII., still remained unappeased. He was proscribed in the diet of 1236 and his territories invaded. ”

“ I am happy to hear that you are safely arrived at Brunswick, and that the compliments of the nobility and gentry of the duchy, on your auspicious marriage, &c., are now at an end. It is really a hard task to receive graciously a crowd of people you never saw, were you ever so fatigued or indisposed. ”

“ Yet in one point this might well be done did space permit; for no more careful account can anywhere be found than that he gives of the brilliant qualities which made the Duke of Brunswick's at that time one of the foremost names of Europe. On the whole, however, the Prussian writer deliberately decides that the dukes mind was just one of that class which fails under the test of very serious responsibility; and this verdict will hardly be disputed by any English reader. The events of his more famous campaign of 1792 shattered effectually such political and military reputation as he had won ”

“ The hostilities began almost as soon as Ferdinand II of the House of Habsburg had been elected Emperor. He was the product of a most careful Jesuit training and was a most obedient and devout son of the Church. The vow which he had made as a young man, that he would eradicate all sects and all heresies from his domains, Ferdinand kept to the best of his ability. Two days before his election, his chief opponent, Frederick, the Protestant Elector of the Palatinate and a son-in-law of James I of England, had been made King of Bohemia, in direct violation of Ferdinand's wishes. ”

“ For now that the house of Brunswick is firmly established upon the throne and that peace prevails in the land, it will become less easy for you every year to understand how men felt when Englishmen were in arms against Englishmen, and when he who should have been the shield and the protector of his subjects had no thought but to force upon them what they most abhorred and detested. ”

“ Forced to retire from Freyburg on the 15th, he afterwards attacked them on the 29th of October and defeated them by a turning movement. They had 40,000, he 30, 000. The Austrian contingent suffered most. In the western theatre Ferdinand held his own and had his usual successes. His part in the war was to defend only, and he never failed to show high qualities as a general. Thus, nowhere had Frederick's enemies succeeded in crushing his defences. For seven years the little kingdom of Prussia had held her ground against the three great military powers, France, Austria, and Russia. ”