Now the Bussche family was a numerous one, and held a high position in Hanover. If Palmblad had read the letters carefully, and had possessed any knowledge of Hanoverian affairs, he would have seen from the context that the Bussche mentioned was _not_ the man who died in 1688, but Philip Albert Bussche, a privy councillor and prominent minister, who later was president of the divorce court which pronounced judgment on the Princess. Thus the statement that the letters began in, or before, 1687 and extended over a period of six years is absolutely incorrect, and the endeavour to cast a slur upon the legitimacy of the Princess’s daughter, afterwards Queen of Prussia, is consequently abortive. There exists no shred of evidence to show that Königsmarck was in Hanover in 1685 (he was in England), nor, indeed, until 1688, a year after the birth of the Princess’s daughter. And it will be seen from the letters themselves that the _affaire_ between Königsmarck and the Princess did not assume an intimate footing until the end of 1691 or the beginning of 1692; until then the borderland had not been crossed. Whatever were his later relations with the Princess, he was neither at Hanover nor Celle when her children were born, and there is no doubt as to their legitimacy. Palmblad’s slur on the birth of the Queen of Prussia is as gross a fabrication as the Jacobite lie of calling George II. “the little Königsmarck”. The whole theory, which can only have been invented to gratify Palmblad’s hatred of the House of Prussia, therefore falls to the ground; and it is no wonder that, starting from so false a chronological point, he finds it “impossible” to arrange the letters in any order of date. I have dwelt fully on Palmblad’s introduction and extracts not because of its merit, which is little, nor its size, which is infinitesimal, but because it has hitherto been practically the only publication which deals with these letters, and students and historians have had no other criterion whereby they might test their genuineness. There were the original letters at Lund, it is true; but the few authorities such as Schaumann and Köcher,[62] who have passed adverse judgment on this correspondence, never took the trouble to go there and examine the manuscripts personally, but founded their theories on Palmblad’s version. Yet it is obviously impossible to pronounce a fair judgment on a correspondence of this kind without seeing the original manuscripts, and with no knowledge of it save a few fragmentary extracts and an introduction full of chronological and other errors. It is only by examining the whole correspondence in the original manuscripts, and comparing it with contemporary documents, that a just idea of its value can be gained. ----- Footnote 62: Against the adverse opinion of these authorities may fairly be set Thackeray and Carlyle, who accept the letters as genuine. But, like Schaumann and Köcher, they never saw the originals. -----