Note 223 — APPENDIX B CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN PRINCESS SOPHIA DOROTHEA AND COUNT KÖNIGSMARCK IN THE ROYAL SECRET ARCHIVES OF STATE AT BERLIN (continued 2)

What is here printed as two letters (F 33 and F 34) runs on without break in the Berlin manuscript. It is, however, difficult to believe that the earlier portion is not distinct from the latter, and that the former was not written by ‘la Confidante,’ and the latter by Königsmarck; and I have therefore, though with diffidence, ventured on the arrangement in the text. It must not be supposed that these two letters refer to the assignation which led to the catastrophe of the amour between Sophia Dorothea and Königsmarck. The day of Königsmarck’s disappearance was, no doubt, a Sunday, and the place in which, according to tradition, he was struck down dead was by the door of the Rittersaal, in the Leineschloss at Hanover. But apart from the fact that, according to Rüdiger’s statement (Cramer, vol. i. p. 69), Königsmarck did not leave his lodgings till between 9 and 10 p.m., the body of the letters in the Lund and in the Berlin collection appear to belong to an earlier date than that at which Königsmarck quitted the Hanoverian service (probably about the spring of 1694): and it can hardly be supposed that these two specially incriminating letters were left by the Secretary Hildebrandt to be seized, and that they found their way to Berlin with a series of which they formed no integral part. The Princess, it may be added, was in the habit of playing cards in the Grand Hall as early as 1691 (cf. Wilkins, p. 145).