ns? It is their only opportunity, and I think, by God! they are
quite right to use it." Eventually, however, Parliament increased the
Duke of Kent's annuity by L6000. The subsequent history of Madame St.
Laurent has not transpired.

IV

The new Duchess of Kent, Victoria Mary Louisa, was a daughter of
Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and a sister of Prince Leopold.
The family was an ancient one, being a branch of the great House of
Wettin, which since the eleventh century had ruled over the March of
Meissen on the Elbe. In the fifteenth century the whole possessions of
the House had been divided between the Albertine and Ernestine branches:
from the former descended the electors and kings of Saxony; the latter,
ruling over Thuringia, became further subdivided into five branches,
of which the duchy of Saxe-Coburg was one. This principality was very
small, containing about 60,000 inhabitants, but it enjoyed independent
and sovereign rights. During the disturbed years which followed the
French Revolution, its affairs became terribly involved. The Duke was
extravagant, and kept open house for the swarms of refugees, who fled
eastward over Germany as the French power advanced. Among these was the
Prince of Leiningen, an elderly beau, whose domains on the Moselle
had been seized by the French, but who was granted in compensation
the territory of Amorbach in Lower Franconia. In 1803 he married the
Princess Victoria, at that time seventeen years of age. Three years
later Duke Francis died a ruined man. The Napoleonic harrow passed over
Saxe-Coburg. The duchy was seized by the French, and the ducal family
were reduced to beggary, almost to starvation. At the same time the
little principality of Amorbach was devastated by the French, Russian,
and Austrian armies, marching and counter-marching across it. For years
there was hardly a cow in the country, nor enough grass to feed a
flock of geese. Such was the desperate plight of the family which, a
generation later, was to have gained a foothold in half the reigning
Houses of Europe. The Napoleonic harrow had indeed done its work, the
seed was planted; and the crop would have surprised Napoleon. Prince
Leopold, thrown upon his own resources at fifteen, made a career for
himself and married the heiress of England. The Princess of Leiningen,
struggling at Amorbach with poverty, military requisitions, and a
futile husband, developed an independence of character and a tenacity of