My Own Affairs. Princess of Belgium Louise

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       Princess of Belgium Louise

      My Own Affairs

      Published by Good Press, 2021

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066185893

Table of Contents

       CHAPTER I Why I Write this Book

       CHAPTER II My Beloved Belgium; my Family and Myself; Myself—as I Know Myself

       CHAPTER III The Queen

       CHAPTER IV The King

       CHAPTER V My Country and the Days of my Youth

       CHAPTER VI My Marriage and the Austrian Court—the Day after my Marriage

       CHAPTER VII Married

       CHAPTER VIII My Hosts at the Hofburg—the Emperor Francis Joseph and the Empress Elizabeth

       CHAPTER IX My Sister Stéphanie Marries the Archduke Rudolph, who Died at Meyerling

       CHAPTER X Ferdinand of Coburg and the Court of Sofia

       CHAPTER XI William II and the Court of Berlin—The Emperor of Illusion

       CHAPTER XII The Holsteins

       CHAPTER XIII The Courts of Munich and Old Germany

       CHAPTER XIV Queen Victoria

       CHAPTER XV The Drama of my Captivity and my Life as a Prisoner—The Commencement of Torture

       CHAPTER XVI Lindenhof

       CHAPTER XVII How I Regained my Liberty and at the Same Time was Declared Sane

       CHAPTER XVIII The Death of the King—Intrigues and Legal Proceedings

       CHAPTER XIX My Sufferings during the War

       CHAPTER XX In the Hope of Rest

       INDEX

CHAPTER I

       Why I Write this Book

       Table of Contents

      As the eldest daughter of a great man and a great King, whose magnificent intelligence has enriched his people, I owe nothing but misfortune to my royal origin. Ever since I was born I have suffered and been deceived. I have idealized Life too much.

      In the evening of my days I do not wish to remain under the cloud of the false impression which is now prevalent concerning me.

      Without desiring to allude too much to the past, and to retrace the road of my Calvary, I should like at least to borrow a few pages from my memories and reflections, inspired by events which have destroyed thrones in whose proximity I once lived. The Emperor of Austria, the German Emperor, the Tsar of Bulgaria were all familiar figures to me.

      Driven to Munich by the War, then to Budapest, taken prisoner for a brief space by Hungarian Bolshevists, I have survived the European tempest, and I have seen all those who disowned and crushed me, beaten and punished.

       And I trembled every day for my poor Belgium, so strong in her courage and her travail, but so unjust to me—oh no, not the people—the good people are naturally heroic and indefatigable. I refer to certain of their leaders, who have been misled on my account, and who are also, perhaps, too fond of money. Unjust themselves, they all equally violated justice by illicit interests which had the appearance of legality, as well as by the false attitude which appeared merely to be forgetfulness, but which was actually ingratitude.

      My father has not yet had a monument erected to him in the country which he esteemed so highly; his Government has remembered the follies of his old age rather than its privileges, and his memory has suffered accordingly.

      But what is past is past. My memory remains faithfully and affectionately attached to my native land; my sole thought is to love and honour her.

      It is of Belgium that I wish to speak before passing on to the Courts of Vienna, Berlin, Munich and Sofia, and to the many doings which these names recall, certain of which deserve better knowledge and consideration.

      I have never entertained any feelings for Belgium other than those of imperishable affection. The most painful of my reflections during the horrible war was that she was more to be pitied than I was.

      On the day when I was being searched by Hungarian Bolshevists at Budapest I heard one of them say to another—having proved for himself the simplicity to which I was reduced: "Here is a king's daughter who is poorer than I am." I have thought of the unhappy women of Ypres, of Dixmude, of France, Poland, Servia, and elsewhere—unfortunate creatures without fire or bread through the crime of war, and I have wept for them and not for myself.

      More than one of them, perhaps, envied my position before 1914; little did they realize that I should have preferred theirs!

      Married at seventeen, I expected to find in marriage the joys that a husband and children can give. I have had bitter proof to the contrary.

      Rupture was inevitable where my own intimate feelings were concerned and those who surrounded me. I was too independent to make use of what was offensive to me.

      Honours are often without honour, however high they may seem to be. Save for rare exceptions, fortune and power only develop in us the appetite for pleasure and urge us to depravity. Those whom La Bruyère calls "the Great" easily lose the knowledge of human conditions. Life is to them no longer the mysterious proof of the existence of a soul which will be eventually rewarded or punished according to its deserts. Religion seems to them only a mask or an instrument.

      Led to judge their fellow-creatures through the flatteries, calculations, ambitions and treacheries by which they are surrounded, they arrive, through mistrust of human nature, at a state of indifference to God, and they accommodate His laws to their needs in the assurance of adjusting themselves