Suess Oppenheim by Sabine Baring-Gould — Read

On December the sixteenth, 1733, Charles Alexander, Duke of Wuertemberg, entered Stuttgart in state. It was a brilliant though brief winter day. The sun streamed out of a cloudless heaven on the snowy roofs of the old town, and the castle park trees frosted as though covered with jewels. The streets were hung with tapestries, crimson drapery, and wreaths of artificial flowers. Peasants in their quaint costume poured in from all the country round to salute their new prince. From the old castle towers floated the banners of the Duchy and the Empire -- for Wuertemberg three stag-horns quartered with the Hohenstauffen black lions. The Duke was not young: he was hard on fifty -- an age when a man has got the better of youthful impetuosity and regrets early indiscretions -- an age at which, if a man has stuff in him, he is at his best.

The land of Wuertemberg is a favoured and smiling land. At the period of which we write, it was not so ample as the present kingdom, but fruitful, favoured, and called the Garden of the Empire. For twenty years this Duchy had been badly governed; the inhabitants had been cruelly oppressed by the incompetent Duke Eberhardt Ludwig, or rather by his favourites. The country was burdened with debt; the treasury was exhausted. It had, as it were, lain under winter frost for twenty years and more, and now though on a winter day laughed and bloomed with a promise of spring.