Official Mistress
Around the end of the century, Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, had met the vivacious and beautiful Princess Lubomirska, and after the dissolution of her marriage, he used Ursula's relations with the Cardinal-Primate to meet her.
In 1700 she became Augustus's official mistress (Mätresse), replacing Countess Maximiliane Hiserle of Chodau, known to history as Countess Esterle. Augustus the Strong sent Ursula to Saxony and presented her to the Dresden court. The courtiers were impressed by the beautiful, charming and high-spirited princess. On 21 August 1704 she gave birth a son, Johann Georg, later the Chevalier de Saxe, who was named for the king-elector's father.
Only five days after her son's birth, on 26 August 1704, Ursula was created Reichsfürstin (“Princess of the Empire” or “Imperial Princess”) of Teschen by Emperor Leopold I. This title was only honorific, because only national Princes had seats and votes in the Reichstag.
Read more about this topic: Ursula Katharina Of Altenbockum
Famous quotes containing the words official and/or mistress:
“We were that generation called “silent,” but we were silent neither, as some thought, because we shared the period’s official optimism nor, as others thought, because we feared its official repression. We were silent because the exhilaration of social action seemed to many of us just one more way of escaping the personal, of masking for a while that dread of the meaningless which was man’s fate.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)
“A mistress never is nor can be a friend. While you agree, you are lovers; and when it is over, anything but friends.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)