ssness and violence, a
litigious spirit had come over him. Peevish and endless were the
disputes about the government, and the discord with his brothers and
his favourites; the little country was divided into two parties;
ministers and officials threw themselves on the one or the other side,
and sometimes the machine of government stood still. The Duke lived
generally with his wife and children out of the country, at Vienna. The
legal proceedings with the agnates about the equality of birth, which
still continued, and vexatious quarrels with neighbours, gave him but a
gloomy satisfaction. He had gained no trifling knowledge of the forms
of public law, and conducted all his suits himself. They seem to have
taken up the greater part of his time.

But the victory was to be followed by a sad reverse. The new Emperor of
the house of Wittelsbacher, Charles VII., was with very evident
reference to Anthony Ulrich's affair, bound on oath not to legitimatize
any notorious mesalliances, and to declare the right of inheritance of
such children null and void. Therefore the rank given to the Duchess of
Meiningen and her children was repealed. Anthony Ulrich had recourse to
the Diet. But in vain. This also declared that his application must be
refused, and the Emperor Francis I. of Lorraine confirmed this
decision.

It was a cruel stroke of destiny. The wife of the Duke had the good
fortune not to outlive the last Imperial decision; she died a few weeks
previous to it; whilst her husband was fruitlessly setting heaven and
earth in motion at Frankfort to ward off this fate. But the two parties
quarrelled even over her coffin. The brother, and co-ruler with the
Duke, refused to allow the corpse to be buried in the royal hereditary
vault, nay even denied her the usual tolling of the bells for royal
personages. Anthony Ulrich rushed furiously from Frankfort and
commanded the tolling and the burial in the royal vault. Orders and
counter orders crossed each other during several weeks; now the tolling
began and now it was stopped. As Anthony Ulrich, who had again hastened
to Frankfort, had commanded that the coffin should not be deposited
anywhere but in the royal burial place, it was kept in a room in the
castle covered over with sand; there it remained a year and a half,
till in 1746, Anthony Ulrich's last brother died. Then the Duke in
order to give satisfaction to his wife even in death, caused his
brother's corpse after lying in state