At Christmas 1809, the Prussian royal family was finally able to return to Berlin. They were greeted by delighted citizens. Louise had just given birth to her final child, Prince Albert. Her recovery was slow, and she planned to go to Mecklenburg for her health.
On 20 June 1810, she wrote to her sister Frederica and her brothers Georg and Charles at Mecklenburg, “Just a word to you, my dear ones, to express the joy which fills my whole heart. I am coming to you on Monday afternoon, 25th June, between four and five o’clock, and I can stay in Neu Strelitz until Thursday evening. Then the good King, who is making this pleasure possible for me, will appear in person and stay till the Monday following. Then, alas, I shall have to take leave of you again. […] When I think of being with you for eight whole days in Mecklenburg, especially when I think of seeing my good grandmamma, I feel so uplifted that I get quite frightened about it. Positively, I have to skimp myself in the matter of happiness, because so often when I have indulged in delightsome expectations, everything has gone awry.”1
She added, “I beg you, let this visit be quite unceremonious. Prohibit all formal calls on the part of the nobility and everything that makes for restraint. For decency’s sake, I suppose I must hold a reception on one of the days.”2
On 25 June, Louise set out from Charlottenburg with Countess Voss. At the border, she was met by her family, who escorted her to the capital. Three days later, her husband, King Frederick William, joined the family. Louise took great delight in showing the various rooms of her ancestral castle. That same day, she penned a short note, “My dear father, I am very happy today as your daughter and the wife of the best of husbands. — Louisa. Neu Strelitz, 28th June, 1810.”3
That evening, Louise began to feel the first symptoms of a cold. She became feverish and was obliged to stay in her room to rest. Her regular physician was on leave, and so her father’s physician examined her. He advised bleeding the Queen. Meanwhile, the weather had become very hot. King Frederick William was reluctant to leave his sick wife, but he promised to be back within a week. Upon his return to Berlin, he too became feverish.
Louise sent him a message telling him not to return immediately. In response, he sent a famous Berlin physician, Heim, to see her. He diagnosed her with an inflammation of the lungs, which was progressing. He advised the King to return to Mecklenburg to be with Louise when the crisis hit.4 For several days, Queen Louise was critically ill until there was nothing more to be done.
Louise was being supported by her sister, Frederica, and Countess Voss. The Countess kept a diary, detailing Louise’s last days.
18 July
My poor Queen is very ill today; each time that I went to her, I thought her worse and more altered. Heim sent a courier to the King in the morning, and a little later, I sent Hoffmann to him, and wrote to him again that the Queen was still worse. I sat by her bedside till midnight. Oh! My poor Queen, she was terribly ill.5
19 July
Ah! What an unhappy, dreadful day! I hoped in vain all night that the King would come; at one o’clock, I went to my room for a moment; I was called back hastily, as the Queen’s condition was getting worse every moment. She could hardly breathe at all, then sickness came on, and repeated fainting. At last, about five o’clock, the King arrived, but the Queen had already the mark of death upon her brow. And yet how she received him! With what joy she embraced and kissed him, while he wept bitterly! The Crown Prince and Prince William had come with him; the poor Queen tried to speak to them as much as was still possible to her; she wanted so to talk to the King, and could not. So it went on, and she grew constantly weaker. The King sat on the edge of the bed, and I knelt beside it; he tried to warm the Queen’s cold hands, then held one, and put the other into my hands, that I might rub it warm.
It was about nine o’clock; the Queen had turned her head gently to one side, and looked fixedly up to heaven. With her great eyes wide open, and looking upwards, she said, “I am dying; oh! Jesus, help me!” It was a moment such as no one could ever forget. I begged the King to close her eyes, for the last breath had flown. The sobs and tears of the unhappy King, of the children, and all who knelt around, were terrible. The ways of God are inscrutable and holy, but they are hard to follow. The King, the children, the country, the Court, all, yes, all, have lost in her everything in the world. I do not speak of myself, but oh! My sorrow is great.
The King charged Schilden and me to see to everything which has to be done in the Queen’s room, and to the watching by her, and all other matters. The master of the household and Countess Truchsess kept watch the first night in the room where our guardian angel, our departed Queen, lay; the second night the officers kept watch, and the third night the gentlemen-in-waiting, with officers also in the antechamber and a waitingwoman always with the lady-in-waiting. Herr von Buch went away immediately to take the news to Berlin; soon after arrived the Prince and Princess of Orange, the Princess of Hesse and the Countess Brandenburg; then Countess Tauenzien, Gaudy and Wrangel, some of whom had to go to Strelitz, to be lodged in the palace there.6
Her husband later wrote about her final moments, “I was dismayed to see how her appearance had changed as a result of the constant spasmodic attacks and other causes of suffering. She was very weak and had been in pain since midnight. As soon as she became aware of my presence, her features expressed the liveliest satisfaction. ‘Dear one,’ she said, ‘how glad I am to see you. How good it is to have you here again.’ Then she added, ‘It is better for us to be together.’ It is a comfort to us both.’ She kissed me several times, drawing me close to her breast. For some time afterwards, and at intervals until the end, she raised her hands to her lips, kissed them and put them into mine. The holding of her hands seemed to soothe her. The doctors. Princess Solms, Frau von Berg, and others had been constantly requested to hold her hands. She asked me if I had come in the new coach. I said ‘No, in the usual open carriage’. She was quite concerned and said, ‘You travelled thus during the night after your attack of fever ‘. I said I was sorry I could not do more for her. She answered, ‘It is enough that you are here.'”
“All this time, the spasms of pain in the chest continued. Her respiration was difficult. Sometimes there was a convulsive catching of the breath, but generally it came with a moaning sound. Yet her voice was clear as from time to time she cried ‘Air, more air’. When I told her that Fritz and William had come, she again looked pleased and demanded to see them immediately. When they appeared, she said, ‘How glad I am to see you, my dear Fritz’. And then she repeated the same words to William.
“It was suggested that she might get some rest if left alone with her attendants, so I went to my room. Very soon, Heim came and gave me details of the illness, remarking that although there was a possibility, there was little likelihood of improvement. She had asked him and the other doctors if she were in danger. They had then thought it best to reassure her. Now, however, there was imminent danger, and Heim thought it might be well if I were to see her alone, confirm what the doctors had said, but add that no one could accurately foretell the issue of a severe illness, and ask if she had any wishes to express. A quarter of an hour later, I went to her and found her slightly easier.
“I knelt beside her bed, kissed her hand and said, ‘I do not think it can be God’s will to part us. You are my one source of happiness. Apart from you, life has no attraction for me. You are the only friend I have, the only being whom I can trust without reserve.’ ‘You have Hardenberg,’ she interposed, but I continued, ‘If it is not God’s will to restore you, I pray that He may take me too’. I asked if she had any wish to express, and she said ‘ No’; if there were anything she was anxious about, she said, ‘Your happiness and the upbringing of the children’.
“It was not possible for me to speak thus without sometimes showing what I felt, and though I had been as careful as I could, she became excited and uneasy, and said, ‘Now do not give way or pity me, or I shall certainly die’. But it was on this occasion that she kissed me for the last time, and pressed my hand lovingly when I said I hoped she was not vexed with me. The spasms of pain were not equally severe, but the feeling of oppression was constant. She dreaded each fresh attack and often repeated, ‘I am suffering terribly. Air, more air.’ To Heim, she used almost the same words as she had done to me. ‘The King is very good, but there must be no giving way, or I know I shall die.’ He tried to calm her, and she turned to me and said, ‘Do not be afraid, I am not going to die’. But the deathly pallor, the moisture on her brow, and all the alarming symptoms were on the increase. Her fingers became icy cold and had to be constantly rubbed with hot towels. Like everyone else, I did my best, sometimes trying to warm her hands with my breath.
“The left one I held in mine until the end came. All endeavours to relieve her were in vain. Her head moved about restlessly. When told that it might relieve her to raise her arms, she replied, ‘It would kill me. I am dying from the head downwards. Lord Jesus, forsake me not!’ And at the last, when the terrible spasms had nearly choked her breath, she exclaimed, ‘Lord Jesus, shorten this.’ A few convulsive movements followed, and then she was gone, and I closed the poor sightless eyes.
“The meaning of God’s mysterious dispensations is not to be fathomed by man. As far as possible, he must endure with Christian resignation. Her sufferings ended at nine o’clock. At a quarter to eleven came Charlotte and Charles. But they could only kneel by the lifeless body and weep for the death of the dearest of mothers. She died the death of the righteous. God grant her eternal happiness. It is we who are to be compassionated. Time may allay my grief, but it can never pass away.”7
Louise died on 19 July 1810 at the age of 34, leaving behind her husband and seven young children. Charlotte and her brother Charles arrived two hours after their mother’s death. They had learned of her death en route from a passing farmer.8 After their mother’s death, the children were sent out into the garden to pick flowers for a wreath.9
Louise’s sister, Frederica, later wrote, “Nothing more terrible could have happened to me, but since it was God’s definite will, I will still thank him that, on my sad journey through life, I carry with me the comforting certainty of having been of use to her until the angel closed her beautiful eyes forever. I can tell you nothing more about my grief and my pain than that I almost died from it. […] She was the dearest and best thing in the world to me, and nothing can surprise me except that I haven’t truly died.”10
Frederica blamed Louise’s death on Napoleon, and she wrote, “When she [Louise] went to Tilsit to see Emperor Napoleon, she wrote to me, ‘It is as if I were going to my death.’ He certainly had a part in it.”11
Louise’s sister, Therese, wrote to her other siblings, “Louise, Louise, you angel, you our pride, our happiness. It’s already possible here on earth that she has been taken from us. Oh George, Oh Frederica – what a loss! If only I could have shared your care. Could have said something to this lovely angel. Did she still think of us with love? Oh, tell me everything, everything. Was her end gentle? […] She was everything, the sunshine that enlivened everything.”12
A few months later, Louise was interred in a mausoleum at Charlottenburg. The marble tomb is the work of the Queen’s favourite sculptor, Rauch.
- Queen Louisa of Prussia by Mary Maxwell Moffat p.291-293
- Queen Louisa of Prussia by Mary Maxwell Moffat p.291-293
- Queen Louisa of Prussia by Mary Maxwell Moffat p.295
- Queen Louisa of Prussia by Mary Maxwell Moffat p.296
- Sixty-nine years at the Court of Prussia, from the recollections of the mistress of the household p.202
- Sixty-nine years at the Court of Prussia, from the recollections of the mistress of the household p.202-204
- Queen Louisa of Prussia by Mary Maxwell Moffat p.297-300
- Die Preußin auf dem Zarenthron by Marianna Butenschön p.38-39
- Queen Louise of Prussia by Constance Wright p.231
- Friederike von Preußen by Carolin Philipps p.221-222
- Friederike von Preußen by Carolin Philipps p.224
- Therese von Thurn und Taxis by Carolin Philipps p.308
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