There was little desire expressed by foreign Princes for an alliance with the daughters of George III, and this reluctance to marry members of the English Royal family must be attributed mainly to the knowledge of European sovereigns and their families of the malady from which the King suffered. Prince Ferdinand of Würtemburg, who was in the Austrian army and had distinguished himself in the taking of Belgrade from the Turks, came over in 1791 to propose a marriage with Princess Augusta, then, to quote Mrs. Papendiek, "certainly the most beautiful creature one could wish to see;" but the King refused his suit, partly because he was "two removes from the Dukedom," and partly because he would not let the younger Princesses marry before the elder.[280] Subsequently Louis Phillippe became engaged to Princess Elizabeth, but he jilted her for Marie Amélie, daughter of the King of Naples; and after this it looked as if all the royal ladies would become old maids. Princess Amelia escaped this fate by contracting a morganatic alliance with General Fitzroy;[281] and at the age of fifty Princess Mary married William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester, who had been held in reserve for Princess Charlotte of Wales in case no other alliance offered. [280] Mrs. Papendiek: _Court and Private Life_. [281] _See supra_, vol. ii, p. 282. Princess Augusta and Princess Sophia remained single; but, when she was forty-eight, Princess Elizabeth conceived a passion for matrimony. Not without difficulty a _parti_ was found for the mature lady, and on April 8, 1818, she was united to the Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg, who, according to all accounts, had an objectionable appearance and a ridiculous manner. "A monster of a man, a vulgar-looking German corporal, whose breath is a compound between tobacco and garlic; he has about £300 _per annum_," so Fremantle described him; but these defects did not deter the middle-aged spinster. "The Princess of Hesse-Homburg will redeem the character of good behaviour in the conjugal bonds, lost or mislaid by her family," wrote Mrs. Trench. "She is delighted with her _hero_, as she calls him. On his way from the scene of the marriage ceremony to the Regent's Cottage, where, to his great annoyance, they were destined to pass the first quarter of the honeymoon, he was sick, from being unused to a close carriage, and forced to leave her for the dickey, and put Baron O'Naghten in his place. He said he was not so much _ennuyé_ at the Cottage as he expected, having passed all his time in his dressing-gown and slippers smoking in the conservatory."[282] The Landgrave was, indeed, a good man, kind-hearted, fond of books, and with more learning than the majority of minor German princes, and he certainly made his wife very happy. "I have so very many things to be thankful for that I ever feel I cannot do too much to prove my feelings both towards God and my excellent husband," the Landgravine wrote to Lady Harcourt on January 21, 1821.