Coburg Conspiracy
by Richard E. Sotnick
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Book Summary Information
Author: Richard E. SotnickEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-02-12
ISBN: 0955712505
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Publishing Services
Book Reviews of Coburg Conspiracy
Book Review: A Top-Notch Read
Summary: 5 Stars
The other reviewers aren't exaggerating - this is a five starrer.
The term "Coburg conspiracy" refers to two different things. Firstly, the Coburg dynasty's attempt - orchestrated by Leopold of Belgium and his mother - to turn itself from a minor German ducal family into one of the most powerful dynasties in Europe. Suffice to say, they succeeded.
The second "conspiracy" surrounds Prince Albert's paternity. (Warning: I'm about to give away some of the story, so if you want it to all be a suprise, please stop reading now!)
I'd always thought the stories of Prince Albert's illegitimacy were bunkum, because of the strong resemblance he bore to his Belgian cousins - the descendants of his Uncle Leopold (whom he resembled even more than he did his father and brother). In particular, I'd seen pictures of Leopold's grandson Albert of Belgium in middle age, where he looked the image of the prematurely-aged Prince Albert in his last few years. I had also seen a picture of Albert of Belgium as a young man, where with his serious, thoughtful, melancholic expression, he looked the spitting image of the stiff, formal, humourless young Prince Albert. If Prince Albert bore such a strong resemblance to a Coburg cousin who was only his first cousin once removed, why would anyone suggest he wasn't a Coburg at all?
Everything, however, falls into place if Sotnick's theory - that Albert was illegitimate, but that his father was probably his `uncle' Leopold - is correct (which would make the two Alberts uncle and nephew). According to Sotnick, Albert's parents' marriage didn't break down when his mother fell in love with another man when Albert was five, but broke down while she was pregnant with him. Sotnick also says that a year-and-a-half after Albert's birth, his father humiliatingly "returned" his wife to her father - a strange thing to do to the mother of his two sons. He conveniently waited until both her father and uncle were dead and she had inherited the duchy of Gotha and great wealth until he divorced her, and pretty much kept the lot (including her children, whom she never saw again). Sotnick finds it strange that Louise submitted to such a bad deal without a fight - unless, of course, she felt she'd done something to deserve it.
Funnily enough, he seems to be unaware that David Duff put forward the exact same theory in his 1972 work `Albert and Victoria'. Certainly, he makes no mention of it - and though one of Duff's other books is listed in the bibliography, this one is not.
Duff quotes a historian, Gerald Hamilton, as having written that when he was in Coburg in 1932, he was taken to view the ducal archives, and saw documents about Albert's parents' separation that left him "in no doubt" that Louise had an affair, and that Baron von Meyern, sometimes put forward as a candidate, was Albert's father. Duff, however, puts forward Leopold as more likely, writing, "It seems scarcely credible that, with Prince Leopold a guest in her house, Duchess Louise could have been taking Baron von Meyern as her lover. That would have been hard to hide from a man as astute as Leopold and he certainly had too many plans for the Coburgs to have countenanced it. So what, then, was the answer to the rumour that [Lord] Melbourne only agreed to the marriage of Victoria and Albert when he learned that Albert was not the son of Duke Ernest? Melbourne may have turned to Leopold for enlightenment. Leopold may have told half of the truth and used the name of the Chamberlain as a necessary convenience. Meyern was known to be fond of the ladies."
Duff also writes that all Queen Victoria's letters to Leopold are preserved, except for those in 1862, the year after Albert's death - perhaps suggesting that she found out after Albert's death that Leopold had been his father. He also notes that in his official biography of Prince Albert, Sir Theodore Martin wrote that Leopold was not in Coburg at the time of Albert's conception, but stayed in England after his first wife's death (1817) and didn't leave until 1820. As Duff points out, "Both Sir Theodore, and Queen Victoria who worked in close concert with him, knew better than that."
Of course, none of this proves anything. But if another historian independently reached the same conclusion as Sotnick, this gives it extra credibility.
As is unfortunately often the case, the book as quite a few typos. There are also two minor factual errors: Sotnick writes that "Alfred's daughter Marie married Ferdinand, King of Romania, whose son Carol became King of Yugoslavia" - actually, their eldest son Carol became King of Romania, and it was their daughter Marie (Mignon) who became Queen of Yugoslavia. He also writes that this same Alfred inherited the duchy of Coburg, and that when he died without an heir (his only son died in 1899, the year before he did) the claim passed to his brother Leopold: "But before he could collect his prize, Leopold died, and in 1905 the duchy passed to his son Carl Edward." Leopold had actually died back in 1884, while his wife was pregnant with this son, Carl, who inherited Coburg when Alfred died in 1900.
It doesn't, however, seem worth lopping off a star for this - maybe half a star, if that were possible - so I'm still giving it five stars. It really does deserve them.
Summary of Coburg Conspiracy
At the dawn of the nineteenth century, the Duchy of Coburg, ruled by the Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield (later Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) family, was a small, impoverished German fiefdom with no political influence, and little prospect of improving its lot. Less than fifty years later, the family had transformed its position. Their finances were healthy and they held, or were closely related to, many of the crowns of Europe. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the genes of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family ran in no fewer than thirteen royal families. Just how did they achieve this astonishing turnaround?Queen Victoria's marriage to Prince Albert, and the subsequent marriages of their many, highly eligible, offspring, is well known. But Richard Sotnick gives a new twist to the story by concentrating on the earlier, less well-documented period, when the most astute of the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha family - Leopold, Prince Albert's uncle and subsequently King of the Belgians, and his mother, the Dowager Duchess Augusta - worked behind the scenes. Richard Sotnick draws on contemporary family documents, most in the original German and only made available to the public since the reunification of Germany. He tells of Prince Albert's mother, the tragic Luise, whose scandalous divorce resulted in her being exiled for life and banished from her sons. And he explores the rumours around Albert's paternity, proposing three plausible candidates for his fatherhood.Genealogy Books
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