The next two years were spent by the young princess with her mother at Pretsch. It was a beautiful spot, surrounded by woods and looking down the fertile valley of the Elbe, and hard by was the little town of Wittenberg, one of the cradles of the Reformation. Luther and Melancthon lived at Wittenberg; their houses are still shown, and it was here that Luther publicly burned the Papal bull; an oak tree marks the spot. Caroline must often have visited Wittenberg; she was about twelve years of age at this time, and advanced beyond her years, and it may be that much of the sturdy Protestantism of her later life was due to her early associations with the home of Luther and Melanchthon. In 1696 Caroline was left an orphan by the death of her mother, and was placed under the care of her guardians, the Elector and Electress of Brandenburg, at Berlin. FOOTNOTE TO BOOK I, CHAPTER I: [2] The last of the Margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach, Christian Frederick Charles Alexander, was born at Ansbach in 1736. He was the nephew of Queen Caroline, and married first a princess of Saxe-Coburg, and secondly the Countess of Craven (_née_ Lady Elizabeth Berkeley), who called herself the “Margravine of Ansbach and Princess Berkeley”. Having no heirs he sold his Margravate to the King of Prussia in 1791, and came to live in England with his second wife. He bought Brandenburg House, and was very beneficent and fond of sport, being well known on the turf. He died at a ripe old age in the reign of George IV. In 1806 Ansbach was transferred by Napoleon from Prussia to Bavaria, an act which was confirmed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and with Bavaria it has since remained. Occasionally some members of the Bavarian royal family visit Ansbach and stay at the palace, but it has long ceased to be a princely residence. CHAPTER II. THE COURT OF BERLIN. 1696–1705. The Court of Berlin, where Caroline was to spend the most impressionable years of her life, was queened over at this time by one of the most intellectual and gifted princesses in Europe. Sophie Charlotte, Electress of Brandenburg, who in 1701, on her husband’s assumption of the regal dignity, became first Queen of Prussia, was the daughter of that remarkable woman, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, and granddaughter of the gifted and beautiful Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, daughter of James the First of England. These three princesses--grandmother, mother and daughter--formed a trinity of wonderful women.