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The princess who fled Romanov Russia
00:34:50
Helen Rappaport examines the life of Queen Victoria's little-known aunt, Princess Juliane of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfled, who fled an unhappy marriage to a Russian grand duke for a life of her own choosing
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- [00:00]
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- [01:45]
Podcast Host
Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. Born in 1781, Princess Juliane of Saxe Coburg Saalfeld grew up in a world convulsed by the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, and her own life proved to be as tempestuous as the age that she inhabited. Wed to Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich of Russia, aged just 14, their deeply unhappy marriage pushed Julie to make an audacious bid for freedom in defiance of the social expectations placed on women of her social class. Now her little known story has been brought to life by historian Helen Rapoport, who joins Danny Bird to discuss her new book, the Rebel Romanov.
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Danny Bird
Let's start with the heart of it all. What drew you to the story of Princess Julian of Saxe Coburg?
- [02:42]
Helen Rapoport
Well, she was actually quite a difficult subject to find because she's so lost to history. So I mean, I wouldn't even say forgotten by History. She was never really known or registered by history. And so I came across her when I decided to take a look at the siblings of Queen Victoria's mother, Victoire, who was Julie's younger sister. Because I was fascinated by the fact that this fairly obscure and impoverished German duchy produced so many children who made very dynastically auspicious and strategically useful marriages. And of course, the one that gets overlooked, I mean, first of all, there's Leopold, Prince Leopold, her brother, who married Princess Charlotte of Wales. There's Victoire, who married the Duke of Kent. They're the better known two. But actually Julie, she had a very auspicious marriage way back in 1796 to a Russian grand duke who was the brother of Alexander I. But she'd been completely overlooked.
- [03:51]
Danny Bird
And could we go a little bit more into her background? Cause as you've mentioned, she came from a relatively minor European royal family. Yet as you've mentioned, one that would go on to play a major role in reshaping post Napoleonic Europe. What was it about them that distinguished them?
- [04:06]
Helen Rapoport
What distinguished them? Well, I think what distinguished them was their very ambitious mother. And it's a very interesting thing. People often talk about Queen Victoria as being the great matchmaker grandmama of Europe, the one who interfered and organized many of the matches of her children, grandchildren, even great grandchildren. But in she had a precursor, and the precursor was Auguste of Saxe Coburg Saalfeld, who was Julie's mother, who found herself, as I said, married to a rather impoverished duke who wasn't very good at managing finances. And what do you do when you're in a situation of a country where the coffers are practically empty and you can't get enough money coming in to pay off your debts? Well, you do something which many did in that period in the 18th and 19th century, you marry off your children to the best bidder. And fortunately for Auguste of Saxe Coburg, the minute her children were out of the cradle, she was plotting and pushing to see them all very strategically and successfully married off. The whole thing began with Julie. This is why she's far more significant to history than people realize or know, when in fact, just. They just don't know. Because in 1795, Catherine the Great was eager to marry off her second grandson, Grand Duke Konstantin Pavlovich. He was the brother of Alexander, the future Tsar. And she had sent scouts out in Europe looking for suitable brides. And German princesses were particularly popular in that period. And one of her emissaries was in Coburg, Auguste husband Franz was heir to the title of the duchy, to the dukedom. But at that time they were still in waiting, as it were, for the title. And so they had even more reason to try and do something strategic and useful financially in terms of marrying their children off well. And at that time, Catherine the Great was looking for a bride, a suitable, innocent, whiter than white, untainted bride for her second grandson. Constantine and her emissary in Coburg went to visit Auguste in France and met the three charming daughters who were all very young, and he sent a message back to Catherine and saying that these three very pretty young daughters, one of whom might be a suitable candidate. So extraordinarily, now this is 1795 in the days of the old post roads and travel by carriage, long, long journeys. Catherine invited Auguste of Saxe Coburg to take her three pretty daughters to St Petersburg to be inspected. Now that was a hell of a long journey by coach. Can you imagine? It took them 40 days traveling along the post roads of Europe, all the way up from Coburg and across, all the way north to St Petersburg. And so I really still can't get my head around what it must have felt like for Julie and her two sisters arriving in this fantastic capital out of provincial Coburg. It must have been an extraordinary moment for them.
- [07:49]
Danny Bird
Researching a figure like Julie must have been quite the adventure, especially given the historical period and the various royal courts and locations involved. How did you begin piecing together her life and the world she lived in?
- [08:00]
Helen Rapoport
The big, big challenge of this book, and I sometimes can't quite believe I pulled it off actually, was the German. The huge amount of German I was faced with in order to do Julie's story, I think if it hadn't been for the fact that all the aristocracy at that time, particularly the Russian aristocracy, but also the Germans and the European aristocrats in general, all spoke immaculate French and they tended even to write to each other in French as their first language. So you'll get Russians writing to each other in French, even though they are Russian natives. They. That was the sort of lingua franca of the aristocratic classes at the time. And this meant, thank goodness, huge swathes of letters I needed were in French, particularly the letters written by Julie's closest friend in Russia, who was the wife of Alexander I, a fellow German, Louise of Baden, only she was known as Elizabeth in Russia. Most of her letters were in French and it was invaluable, but there was a huge amount of German language material that I had to access in the Staatsachiv in Coburg. And worse than that, it was in that awful, squiggly Kurentschrift old German, which was a complete nightmare because I couldn't read it. I had to get a man who can, basically. And there's no way around it. You need a top of the tree specialist to deal with that kind of very difficult archival material.
- [09:45]
Danny Bird
You also refer to Julie as an unjustifiably neglected footnote in history. But to what extent was that obscurity of her own making? And what purpose do you think it served?
- [09:56]
Helen Rapoport
Well, that's a very interesting point. Because of the circumstances in which she left Russia. She left a marriage in which she had been deeply unhappy and had suffered psychological and physical abuse. So she never ever wanted to attract attention to herself. And also just because of the social mores of the time, here she is, a Russian grand duchess, leaves Russia, still married to her husband, who she's left in Russia. And for 20 years she was in this awful limbo of not being able to get a divorce. So pretty much any other woman of that status at the time would have been a social pariah. But the extraordinary thing with Julie was her wonderful personality. Her tragic situation. Situation transcended the kind of judgmental attitudes of the times. And she did have friends and she did have people who went to see her. She wasn't a social outcast, but she voluntarily hid herself away. As such, she went and found herself a lovely home at a place called Elfernau outside Berne, and lived a very quiet, fairly withdrawn life. Although she did, you know, she did pay visits to royal relatives from time to time. But as such, a lot of her obscurity was self imposed and self contrived. Because one thing that comes across very clearly in her letters after she fled Russia and was desperate to get a divorce is that she was terrified of scandal and being pushed beyond the pale into obscurity, the obscurity of social rejection. So in that sense, history wasn't terribly aware of her because she was basically in Russia as the wife, the active present wife of a grand duke for only about five years.
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- [12:22]
Helen Rapoport
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Helen Rapoport
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Helen Rapoport
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- [12:53]
Danny Bird
If we could zone in a little bit on her time in Russia. How did she find life at the Romanov Court in St. Petersburg and was she embraced by her in laws?
- [13:02]
Helen Rapoport
I think it's incredibly hard to just get your head around the fact that there she was aged 14, taken to Russia, told she's going to marry a Russian grand duke. She has no language, no friends. Her mother once Julie of the three was selected mother and the two daughters took the coach back home. She's completely isolated and friendless. Thank goodness for her sister in law Elizabeth, who took her under her wing and did help and protect her. So it was unbelievably bewildering. On top of that, she was obliged in order to marry Constantine, to convert to Russian Orthodoxy. So the minute she arrived she had to take very complex instruction in old church Slavonic ritual and ceremony and had to go through this terrifying ceremonial at the Winter palace of her formal conversion. Imagine a 14 year old girl being taken to this enormous palace with all the bling and ceremony and priests and incense. It must have been really quite frightening for her. So I think her experience of Russia was very difficult for her. She had had no time really to prepare for the idea of being there. And of course she ends up in Russia in the dead of winter when it's perishing cold. And by February of the following year she's only been in Russia what, three or four months, she's married off and really I think she lived a pretty isolated life during the marriage to Konstantin and it was a matter of sitting with Catherine the Great until Catherine the Great died and going through the evening playing card games and being bored to tears kind of ritual. And then after Catherine died, pretty much she was left alone a lot because Constantine was a career soldier and the next thing we know he went off to war.
- [15:01]
Danny Bird
You've mentioned that she had an abusive marriage and I was wondering if you could delve a little bit further into that relationship. How did her Marriage to Constantine shape her life trajectory.
- [15:12]
Helen Rapoport
I don't think we really know quite the levels of abuse she suffered because she said very, very little. What we know about Julie and what happened to her in that marriage has come down through people who were witness to his cruelty and to his terrible bad behavior. Things her mother intimated in letters, including, I think, the fact that he infected her with venereal disease. I'm pretty sure he did because she had to go off and take a cure. But the impression you get very quickly. And she never said a word to her parents. She knew the prosperity of Saxe Coburg rested on her sending regular money home. Her father was always leaning on her to send him money. But she did suffer because everyone who knew Constantine has testified to his brutality, his appalling brutality with his soldiers, for a start. I mean, I don't like imposing labels on anyone retrospectively in historical terms, but he was, I would say, verging on the sadistic and certainly extremely brutal, perhaps psychopathic. I think he certainly, from all the testimony of his Swiss tutor, La Harpe, very famous tutor who tutored him and Alexander, he had problems with attention, that is, attention deficiency of some kind, or he couldn't concentrate on anything. He was very restless and impatient and was just a terrible pupil. He couldn't really be taught. He was uncontrollable. And even Catherine admitted that her grandson was out of control and even once confined him to house arrest for bad behavior. But as I said, I mean, there were some extremely cruel things he did to Julie, which I find hard to consider without thinking, this is a behaviour not of a normal person. For example, he knew she was frightened of mice and one day he locked her in her room and got the servants to release a cage load of mice into the room so you could hear her screaming from outside. I mean, that's not normal behavior, is it? I mean, there were other instances I mention in the book. So I would love someone to give me an in depth psychiatric assessment of Constantine because he was a very disturbed and disturbing personality. And yet he did have a soft side. He could sometimes be incredibly kind and sweet and gentle and eventually he begged, you know, later he begged Julie for a divorce while she was begging for one as well. He married again and had what seems to have been a very happy marriage with his second wife. But there was a kind side to him. But I don't think Julie saw it.
- [18:10]
Danny Bird
Julie lived through a time of seismic geopolitical and cultural change. How does her story reflect the broader societal currents of early 19th century Europe?
- [18:20]
Helen Rapoport
Well, as I've said, what was to me so fascinating was there she is from Saxe Coburg, right in the heart of all the French incursions, backwards and forwards across Europe in that period. So her family were directly affected when Napoleonic forces came to Saalfeld because their title was actually Saxe Coburg, Saalfeld. And they had another little area of territory that was detached from Saxe Coburg that was part of the duchy. Then they later gave it up. But the family, during the French invasions, the family went and lived at their small house, I wouldn't call it a palace at Saalfeld. And a whole battle raged in the valley below. So Julie was very aware of all the toing and froing during the Napoleonic Wars. And of course she was very close to Alexander after he became czar. Even though she had left Russia by then, she stayed in touch with Alexander. In fact, it was Alexander who came to the throne after his father was murdered, who gave her permission to get away from Constantine basically to leave Russia. And Alexander was back and forth, of course, a lot for all the various battles and treaties and Tilsit and the various negotiations with Napoleon. So she did from time to time meet up with Alexander. And she was very aware also when she lived in Switzerland that there was quite a strong nationalist movement in the region called Vaux V A U D where Bern was located. And there were lots of sort of local insurgency and nationalist struggles going on there that she was aware of. But she kept away from it all, though there was at one time a threat that even her estate might be attacked by rebels. So generally she was very aware of all the coming and going and friends thrones going and how her friends, the King and Queen of Prussia, had to flee to safety at one point during the wars. So she could see all that going on. But she did very deliberately try and keep herself away from the political life of Europe, Europe at the time.
- [20:37]
Danny Bird
How does Julie's quest for autonomy compare to other women in royal and noble families during that era?
- [20:43]
Helen Rapoport
Well, I think it's quite extraordinary how many women dared to run away from a marriage twice in that period and a marriage to a Russian grand duke. I'm trying to think, who else would. I can't think of any. Any other young brides who didn't just grin and bear it, you know, lie back and think of England kind of thing. You know, they were married off into these dreadful dynastic unions in which many were miserably unhappy and they just had to put up with it. But Julia was always very strong willed and her own person, Constantine, had made her life a misery within months of them marrying. And in 1799, on a claim of needing to visit her sick mother, she begged to be allowed to go back to Coburg. And she hadn't been to see her family in all that time. And Constantine was away in Italy campaigning with Kutuzov. So the Tsar allowed her to go, but she was commanded back. The poor woman was commanded eventually to go back in the autumn of 1799, because even her family, her own Saxe Coburg family, when she turned up and begged them not to make her go back to Russia, they said, you've got to go back for the honor of the family. If you don't go back, they're gonna ask for their money back. You know, basically, we're gonna lose the income we get from the Romanovs. So she very dejectedly returned in 1799 and then endured another three years until, of course, Tsar Paul was murdered. Which is when she appealed again to Alexander, who let her leave on the condition. And I guess this partly explains the sense of her being obscure. Alexandra allowed her to. That she lived quietly in Coburg, which she did for a very short while, and then went to Switzerland.
- [22:43]
Danny Bird
Her departure from Russia nevertheless must have been such a turning point. And I was wondering, despite the obscurity, was there any sense of a scandal?
- [22:51]
Helen Rapoport
It was so quiet, so unobtrusively done. There were rumblings at court, and it has been suggested the evidence is thin, but I do think she was having an affair by the time she left. Cause she was so miserable. I mean, Constantine had had mistresses galore anyway. But when she left, it was very, very quietly. It was just after the Tsar had been murdered in 1801. She got in a carriage with a couple of ladies and waiting and went. Because, you see, the Russian people never really saw her or knew who she was. She was stuck in the Winter palace or the Marble palace or out at Gatchina, was the worst place where she had to endure the horrible militaristic regime of Tsar Paul out there. So the scandal, if there was one, and as I say, there's not a huge amount of evidence, but there was a scandal rumbling at court that she had taken a lover. Definitely. But it's been very hard to get any hard evidence on it.
- [23:53]
Danny Bird
And of course, I think you reference in the book that she kept a diary which has gone missing, but I think her brother Leopold references it in a letter to Queen Victoria. Is that correct?
- [24:01]
Helen Rapoport
Oh, the tragedies. Oh, the tragedies of Lost documents. Every historian knows this, but in Julie's case, she had a very long correspondence with Louise, that is Elizabetta, the Tsaritsa, Alexander's wife, very long. And she opened her heart to her. But they each agreed that they would destroy each other's letters. So all that correspondence, and they had to smuggle letters in and out because of the Palestration going on in Russia. Everything was opened and read and the surveillance was pretty bad. So we've lost all the correspondence between those two women who are key women in the story, of course, but also Julie's private papers, there are virtually none. And she kept a diary when she was in Russia, which Leopold. Oh, God, this broke my heart. There's a mention in his diary, I think, or a letter to Queen Victoria even, where he said this was in the 1860s after Julie's death, that he'd recently been reading Julie's diary about her time in Russia. I bet you. I bet you Leopold destroyed it because it was probably full of her misery. But just imagine how differently I could have told her story, or not say differently, but how much debt and context I could have given her story if those letters had not been destroyed, if the diary had survived. Luckily, I mean, I have plenty of material from elsewhere. But in terms of Julie's real, deep down personal life, it's extraordinary. She would write very, very long letters to Leopold, to one or two friends, to her sisters, and she would ramble on in a weird mixture of French and German, swapping mid sentence between the two languages. So her letters are a complete grammatical nightmare. She would go on and on about this, that, the other family, this, that religion, the whole caboodle. She never really went into great personal detail about her inner thoughts, her inner feelings. And I found that so frustrating. I found myself saying, oh, for God's sake, Julie, tell me how you're feeling.
- [26:18]
Danny Bird
Julie's most renowned niece is none other than Queen Victoria. And she wasn't the only family member to marry into the Romanovs. Victoria's granddaughter, Alexandra of Hesse, would go on to become the last Russian empress. Did Julie's experiences shape Victoria's attitude towards the Russian imperial family? Do you think?
- [26:34]
Helen Rapoport
I love Victoria, but in many cases, some of the people in her life, she had a kind of fantasy vision of them. She knew the bare bones of Julie's tragic story. She knew how lovely she was, she'd seen the portraits and in fact, of course, Queen Victoria commissioned the last portrait, the last image we have of Julie, which was painted in 1848 by Winterhalter as a gift for her mother, Victoire, and I think it's at Highgrove, actually. Victoria had met her grandmother, had met Julie's mother, because Auguste came over to inspect her very pretty little May Blossom, as she called her, when Victoria was a small child. And so she remembered Granny Auguste from Saxe Coburg. But the funniest and saddest thing is Victoria was terribly eager to meet Julie and she didn't actually finally meet her till she and Albert went to Saxe Coburg, to Coburg itself, on a visit, a family visit, in 1845. But when she married Albert in 1840, she had wanted to invite her as well. But of course, Julie wouldn't travel, she wouldn't go to Victoria's coronation or her wedding. She was quite reticent about kind of not being on public display, but going into big gatherings of royal relatives. But she did meet Victoria and Albert in 1845. And, of course, Victoria waxed lyrical about lovely Auntie Julie, and waxed even more lyrical when Albert took her to Rosenau, which Julie often went to. She and her mother often spent time there because it was one of the family homes. So she had a kind of romantic fantasy idea of Julie, but she didn't know the truth of her story because it was kept from her.
- [28:28]
Danny Bird
And, of course, Prince Albert was her nephew as well.
- [28:31]
Helen Rapoport
Yes, Prince Albert actually visited Julie at her home in Switzerland, at Elphenau, and was very taken with her. And, you know, he went a couple of times with his brother Ernst to, in the 30s when they were doing the grand tour.
- [28:47]
Danny Bird
Lastly, Helen, what do you hope readers will take away from this book?
- [28:51]
Helen Rapoport
Well, I think it's just really the hope that they will find Julie's story as moving and interesting and unusual and unconventional as I did. And it's always a joy to restore to history someone who's been overlooked or forgotten or underrepresented. I spent a very long time chasing down mary seagull over 20 years before I was able to write her story. And one or two other subjects have been very elusive. I just hope people get a sense, especially of how brutally ruthless the whole European marriage market for the aristocracy, for young women of the aristocracy was. And that, you know, being married off to a Russian grand duke or azar was far from being glamorous. It could be absolutely terrifying, as in Julie's case. So I just hope they see a side of actually Saxe Coburg and Russian history of the period that. That's new to them.
- [29:57]
Podcast Host
That was Helen Rappaport, whose book the Rebel Romanov is out now, published by Simon and Shuster. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Jackson Bateman.