Anne Stuart, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, died on this day in 1714, thus bringing to and end the Protestant branch of the Stuart dynasty, which had ruled England and Ireland for 111 years, and Scotland for 343 years.

Queen Anne by Le Marchand. Photographed at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), 2016.

Born the daughter of James Stuart, Duke of York, the second son of Charles I, and Anne Hyde, daughter of Charles II’s minister the Earl of Clarendon, in 1665, she likely never expected to succeed to the throne.

Although her father was Catholic, she and her elder sister Mary were raised in the Church of England, to which their mother belonged.  After their mother’s death, James married Mary of Modena, who gave birth to their half-brother, also James, who superseded them in the line of succession.  When James II (who had succeeded his childless brother Charles II in 1685) was deposed, however, the infant James was excluded from the succession, as were all Catholics.  Mary and her husband William of Orange took the throne in 1688 as Mary II and William III, the only joint monarchs in British history.  They too were childless, so Anne became heiress to the throne.

In the meantime, Anne had married Prince George of Denmark, who came to live in England.  Poor Anne endured 17 pregnancies, most of them difficult, of which only one resulted in the birth of a living baby that survived its infancy.  This was William, created Duke of Gloucester by William and Mary.  Tragically, he died aged 11 in 1700.  This left Anne herself as the last living Protestant Stuart.  As such, she succeeded William III on his death in 1702, becoming Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland, then of Great Britain and Ireland subsequent to the 1707 Acts of Union.

By the 1701 Act of Settlement it had already been determined that Anne would be succeeded by her nearest Protestant relative, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, who was a grand daughter  of James I through his only daughter Elizabeth, who had married the Elector Palatine, briefly also King of Bohemia.  Sophia, however, predeceased Anne by 2 months, so it was her son who succeeded Anne as George I, the director ancestor of the present queen, Elizabeth II.

On this day, 24 January, occurred the birth of the future Frederick II, called the Great, King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.  The year was 1712, the last full year of the reign of his grandfather, Frederick I, the first king not only of his name, but of the kingdom of Prussia, which until a decade before had been only a duchy.

Two baby princes had already been born to Frederick I’s heir, Frederick William, and his consort, Sophia Dorothea of Hannover, whose own father would soon become king of England.  Both of the little princes had been sickly and died in infancy.  Only baby Frederick’s elder sister, Wilhelmina, had survived of the the crown princely couple’s early brood.  This pair of children would be close for their rest of their lives.

The newly born Frederick was puny, but proved to be quite hardy.  In the end, he lived to be 74, which was a very respectable age in the Versailles Century.

Frederick the Great in old age.  Credit: Wikipedia.

In maturity, he would be a statesman, general, writer, philosopher, art collector, composer, dog lover, devoted friend, doting brother and uncle, and neglectful husband.  Here at Versailles Century, we consider him fascinating and he’s one of our favourite historical characters.

On this day in 1796, Catherine the Great, Empress and Autocrat of all the Russias, died in St. Petersburg at the age of 67.

Catherine the Great a few years before her death.

She had been found sprawled on the floor of her bathroom on the morning of 16 November.  She was moved to her bedroom, where her doctor examined her and determined that she’d had a stroke.  Having slipped into a coma, she never recovered consciousness and died on the evening of the 17th.

Known to history as Catherine the Great, she’d been born in 1729 as Princess Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, one of the most insignificant of the numerous insignificant German statelets at that time.  The Empress Elizabeth (r. 1741-1761) summoned her to Russia in 1744 to marry her nephew and heir, the future Peter III.  The marriage was unhappy and remained unconsummated for years.  Both parties were unfaithful and the paternity of their son, the future Emperor Paul, has always been in doubt.  On Elizabeth’s death at the end of 1761, Peter became emperor, but made himself unpopular in short order.  Within months of the late Empress’s funeral, Catherine organized a coup d’état, assumed the throne — to which she had no actual claim, of course — as empress regnant, not merely regent for her young son, and eliminated all her rivals, including Peter.  She ruled with great energy, enlarging Russia’s territory by a third, building enthusiastically, collecting art on a grand scale, corresponding with the great thinkers of the day, writing voluminously, and taking numerous lovers.  Her last lover, Platon Zubov, later helped to assassinate the Emperor Paul, who had done all he could to undo his mother’s work, even going so far as to decree that no woman should ever again sit on the Russian throne.

I first read Catherine’s memoirs when I was a teenager.  She had written them in French, but my local library had a copy of the English translation edited by Dominique Maroger and translated by Moura Budberg.  I later found and purchased a copy at a local secondhand bookstore (see below).  I believe it’s the original Canadian edition.  It has followed me through 4 countries and sits on a shelf in my bedroom to this day.  It’s a very lively book and Catherine’s voice comes through very clearly.  Unfortunately, she stopped writing, literally in mid-sentence, just as she was beginning to describe a conversation with the Empress Elizabeth shortly before her death which started with that monarch saying, “I insist that you tell me the truth about everything I am going to ask you.”

Cover of Catherine the Great’s memoirs, published in Canada by Hamish Hamilton, Ltd, in 1955.

Have you read this book?  If so, what did you think?  Please comment below, on the Versailles Century Facebook page, or in the Versailles Century gallery on Instagram.

The great golden gate of Versailles: On this fateful day 227 years ago, Louis XVI and his family were escorted through it by the mob on their way to Paris, never to return.  Thus ended what I call THE VERSAILLES CENTURY (1682-1789).

The golden gate seen from inside the Cour d’honneur, which is how the King and his family would have seen it on 6 October, 1789, except that it had been broken off its hinges shortly before.  You can just make out the great stables through the grille.

The mob had burst through the gate shortly before midnight on 5 October, howling for the Queen’s blood.  Marie-Antoinette barely managed to escape from her bedroom through a secret passage to the King’s room. The advance of the mob had been delayed just long enough while they massacred the Swiss guards on duty outside the Queen’s room.