(right) and
Albert, shortly before her exile from court in 1824. The engagement to the then Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld took place on December 20, 1816. On 31 July 1817 in
Gotha, 16-year-old Louise married her 33-year-old kinsman
Ernst III, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, (later
Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha), after he failed to win the hand of one of the
Russian Grand Duchesses. Louise was considered "young, clever, and beautiful". Their marriage, which was obviously arranged for political reasons, began to fall into crisis after the birth of their first son,
Ernst, who inherited his father's lands and titles, and a year later her second son
Albert was born, who was later the husband of
Queen Victoria. The couple grew apart. The succession secured, there were no further children and Louise apparently found other solace in men besides her husband. The problem with this was that while Ernest saw no issue with his own infidelity, as was typical for the time, he took great issue with his wife following suit. Husband Ernst had several mistresses and Louise had an affair with chamberlain Gottfried von
Bülow in 1823 and a liaison with traveling stable master Maximilian Alexander von Hanstein in the summer of 1824. The marriage was unhappy because of Ernst's infidelities and the couple separated in 1824.
Sankt Wendel, in the
Principality of Lichtenberg, was assigned as her new residence (it was an exclave of Saxe-Coburg und Gotha; see Sotnick on this period), and Louise was forced to leave her two sons behind. Biographer
Lytton Strachey noted in 1921: "The ducal court was not noted for the strictness of its morals; the Duke was a man of gallantry, and it was rumored that the Duchess followed her husband's example. There were scandals: one of the Court Chamberlains, a charming and cultivated man of Jewish extraction, was talked of; at last there was a separation, followed by a divorce." ==Post-divorce==