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Updated: July 21, 2025
He gained friends elsewhere, and finally settled in Darmstadt, where he still found women's hearts susceptible, in spite of his small, weak frame, his great long neck, and his calfless legs, of which he writes: "And, oh, my calves, they might have done honour to a poodle!"
Soon she plunged into excesses almost as bad as her husband’s.” In 1769 they were divorced. Frederick William married a Princess of Darmstadt. The second marriage was no happier than the first. The Princess did not retaliate, though she did not lack incentives to do so. The Prince lapsed back into his dissolute habits. Apart from many passing fancies, he had a recognized mistress-in-chief.
Less than a year after Goethe’s departure from Strassburg, we find him reading aloud to the Darmstadt circle the story of poor Le Fevre from Tristram Shandy. This is reported in a letter, dated May 8, 1772, by Caroline Flachsland, Herder’s fiancée.
Gibraltar, the defence of which had been confided by an inexplicable negligence to fifty men, was torn away for ever by a handful of British seamen from the crown of the Catholic kings; Catalonia, Arragon, the kingdom of Valentia, made ripe for insurrection by the Prince of Darmstadt, were on the eve of escaping from their allegiance.
While his religious confederates were shedding their blood for their faith and their liberties, the Landgrave of Darmstadt was won over by the Emperor's gold. But William of Cassel, every way worthy of his ancestor who, a century before, had defended the freedom of Germany against the formidable Charles V., espoused the cause of danger and of honour.
Affairs stood thus, when, shortly after Louis's accession to the throne of Bavaria, negotiations having for object the settlement of a commercial treaty took place between him and William, king of Wurtemberg. This example was imitated by Prussia, which at first merely formed a union with Darmstadt; afterward by Hesse, Hanover, Saxony, etc., by which a central German union was projected.
Saxony and Hesse Darmstadt had already been gained over by Ferdinand; Lower Austria, on which side a powerful diversion had been looked for, had made its submission to the Emperor; and Bethlen Gabor had concluded a truce with him. By its embassies, the court of Vienna had induced Denmark to remain inactive, and to occupy Sweden in a war with the Poles.
The high Generalcy, Soubise, Hildburghausen, Darmstadt, mount in the highest haste; everybody mounts, happy he who has anything to mount; the grenadiers tumble out of the Schloss; dragoons, artillery tumble out; Dauphiness takes wholly to her heels, at an extraordinary pace: so that Seidlitz's hussars could hardly get a stroke at her; caught sixty and odd, nine of them Officers not of mark; did kill thirty; and had such a haul of equipages and valuable effects, cosmetic a good few of them, habilatory, artistic, as caused the hussar heart to sing for joy.
The misunderstandings between France and Sweden were now at last adjusted, and the old treaty between these powers confirmed at Hamburg, with fresh advantages for Sweden. In Hesse, the politic Landgravine Amelia had, with the approbation of the Estates, assumed the government after the death of her husband, and resolutely maintained her rights against the Emperor and the House of Darmstadt.
It was in 1867 that the emperor and empress received the czar, the sultan, the Crown Prince of Prussia, Princess Alice of Hesse Darmstadt, and many other crowned heads and celebrities. It was a year of fêtes and international courtesies. But in Paris itself there was a strange feeling of insecurity, a fearful looking for something, society knew not what.
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