It was known that, after the catastrophe of July 1, 1694, the Hanoverian Government seized many of the letters that had passed between the lovers, and these were used against the Princess with crushing effect, to bring about her divorce on Hanover’s own terms. As Leibniz says, “They would never have believed at Celle that she was so guilty had not her letters been produced”.[1] The fate of these letters has long been a mystery. It was known that Duke George William wished them to be sent to Celle to be destroyed, but the Elector Ernest Augustus refused and kept them at Hanover. It was afterwards rumoured that George II., on his first visit to Hanover after his accession to the English throne, burned them with his own hands, to conceal all traces of his mother’s disgrace, but the rumour was unfounded. It now appears that all, or nearly all, of them are in existence, and some are those preserved in the Secret State Archives of Berlin. ----- Footnote 1: Written by Leibniz on the margin of an account of the divorce sent by the Duchess of Orleans to the Electress Sophia (_vide_ Köcher’s _Hist. Zeitschrift_, vol. xlviii., p. 233, note). ----- The exact way in which these letters reached Berlin is unknown, but they have been there a long time. According to the Calendar of the Secret State Archives they were found among the private papers of Frederick the Great at Sans Souci, after his death. The luckless prisoner of Ahlden was his grandmother, her daughter, the second Queen of Prussia, was his mother. It is known that the Queen of Prussia was much interested in the fate of her unhappy mother, she corresponded with her secretly, and at one time sought to obtain her release. It is probable, therefore, that these letters (a part of the incriminating correspondence seized by the Hanoverian Government) were sent to Berlin by order of George I. to convince his daughter, the Queen of Prussia, of her mother’s errors and so disarm her sympathy. After the Queen’s death the letters were not returned to Hanover; they passed into the hands of Frederick the Great, and thence into the safe keeping of the Berlin State Archives.