Leonora Christina Ulfeldt - Travels and Adventures

Travels and Adventures

She shared in his renown and initial successes, both at home and abroad. He held the lordships of Egeskov, Hirschholm Urup, Gradlitz and Hermanitz. In 1641 he was made a count (Reichsgraf) by the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand III. During most of the 1640s her husband's power and stature grew and she was, in many ways, the first lady of a Danish court that had no queen. Her marriage to Ulfeldt seems to have been a happy one, at least compared to the marriages of her sisters.

At the accession to the throne in 1648 of her half-brother, the couple's position was threatened by the resentment of her husband's dominance by Frederick III and, especially, by his queen, Sophie Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who now became Leonora Christina's relentless enemy. This situation might have been caused both by Leonora’s inability to give up her leading position in the court, and by some forms of malice to which she exposed the queen.

At Ulfeldt's disgrace in 1651, she followed him to Amsterdam and Stockholm. They became fugitives, often wandering about to elude capture. She sometimes spent weeks disguised as a man, once fending off arrest from Danish pursuers at gunpoint, and another time the caresses of an infatuated barmaid, the latter proving the more difficult escape. At her insistence, she shared Ulfeldt's exile and expeditions, while he engaged in intrigues with Denmark's enemies for some years, hoping either to return to Copenhagen in power or to humiliate those who held power there. Despite having been made Count of Sölvesborg in Sweden for treasonous services, he was discovered engaged in double treachery and, in 1659, imprisoned. His wife publicly defended him. They escaped separately to Copenhagen where he was promptly arrested, and she shared his harsh imprisonment in the castle Hammershus on the isle of Bornholm 1660-1661, until they ransomed themselves by deeding over most of their properties.

When Ulfeldt was again being sought for treason by the Danes, Leonora Christina went to England to solicit repayment from King Charles II of money her husband had loaned him during his exile. The King repaid his debt by welcoming the Countess (his cousin) to his table, then having her arrested as she boarded a ship to leave England, whereupon he turned her over to Denmark in 1663.