Fort Cumberland - the story behind the name
Next time you go to Fort Cumberland Maryland, know a story behind this name.
Next time you go there,
you'll remember the story
where King George II
said to his son,
the Duke of Cumberland:
"Here is my son who has ruined me and disgraced himself."
We see that quote everywhere on the internet.
Yet there is no detail on how that scene unfolded
No detail on who was there to see it.
Maybe you should not feel sad for a man named "Butcher Cumberland"
You will, however, see a rather Oedipal estrangement, repeated often through these Kings from Hanover.
There were the 3 Georges. King George I, King George II, KIng George III. They came from the Hanover region of what later became part of a united modern Germany.
There's a story here on this rebuke by the father, King George II.
It is much more than that oft repeated quote.
But first,
a little bit on who did the naming and some of the places with that name.
See link for this map: https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3800.ar143003/
See google map of this in present time with nearby forts too.
How the Name came to be:
Fort Cumberland had different names before it was called Fort Cumberland.
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It was a private company's post, the Ohio Company's. That company was a foreshadowing of Manifest Destiny: to obtain western land.
And the place was referred to as either Wills Creek, or a little later as Camp Mount Pleasant.
When Braddock, Commander-in-Chief, North America, came along, he renamed it Fort Cumberland after the name of the King's son, The Duke of Cumberland, who was Commander in Chief of the Forces.
And that's not the only place named after this 3rd son of King George II. (Frederick, Prince of Wales was the first son. The 2nd son died still born)
Thomas Walker, who was "big" in his time and unknown in ours, named Cumberland Gap after this son long before Daniel Boone walked through it.
Prince William County Virginia is named after this same son.
And that's the story we want to tell.
It's about the 3rd son of King George II:
He is Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, (15 April 1721 – 31 October 1765).
Move aside the more famous story of the Duke:
You know his nickname: The Butcher Cumberland.
That name was gotten for his brutal cleanup campaign of rounding up all the surviving rebels and conspirators after the Battle of the Culloden, 6 April 1746. That defeat ended any hope to bring back the Stuart House to replace the Hanover House to rule England and Scotland under the Bonnie Prince Charlie, Charles Edward Stuart.
Instead fast forward to end of the Duke's power.
The Duke began a losing streak of losing control of his father's homeland. That's why the King rebuked him.
The Duke of Cumberland lost the Battle of Hastenbeck, near Hamelin, on 26 July 1757 in Hanover. By September 1757 Cumberland and his forces had retreated to the fortified town of Stade on the North Sea coast.
That was his father's homeland.
His Dad, King George II, was born there.
King George II still ruled that region in Germany.
This was just no ordinary possession.
It had a beautiful garden - Herrenhausen Gardens - of 250 acres. That's a lot but small compared to the +37000 acres of the Versailles gardens.
But his son lost control of that land to France.
There was no recovery from this failure, except to appeal for a compromised peace and retain the land.
The King gave him discretionary powers to negotiate a separate peace.[47] Hemmed in by French forces led by the Duc de Richelieu, Cumberland agreed to the Convention of Klosterzeven, under which his army was to be disbanded and much of Hanover occupied by French forces, at the Zeven Convent on 8 September 1757.[48].
But then the King disavowed he ever gave such orders for his son to negotiate.
William Pitt who has since been credited for achieving the overall success of the war against France, stood up for the Duke, despite not ever being an ally of the Duke Cumberland.
William Pitt had to say the truth as he knew it.
Pitt asserts that the King had given his son blanket overall authority.
But on losing Hanover to French occupation, King George II remarked "Here is my son who has ruined me and disgraced himself".
That quote is repeated throughout the internet.
We found a contemporary who wrote about this scene - Horace Walpole.
His son was prepared for his father's disapproval. He resigned all military positions.
Amazingly this surprised the father. He tries to get his son to reconsider and not resign.
Horace Walpole writes:
source:
But the most indecent in personal invectives was Baron Munchausen [the Munchausen syndrome named after this guy] the Hanoverian Minister in England—a man reckoned one of their ablest heads, and who had hitherto always comported himself with civility and inoffensively.
He went so far as to call for a Council to examine the Duke’s behaviour; and Lord Hardwicke, to extend the insult, or to divide it amongst many, desired the whole Cabinet Council, not merely the junto, might meet: the affair was too serious.
Through this intermediary, the King tries to prove he did NOT authorize the peace negotiation:
Thither Munchausen brought copies of his own letters to the Duke, to prove that his Royal Highness had acted without authority.
William Pitt, never an ally of the Duke of Cumberland, speaks in the Duke's defense:
Mr. Pitt observed, that they proved the direct contrary; and he, who certainly had never managed the Duke, nor stood on any good terms with him, acted a part nobly honest: when the King told him that he had given his son no orders for this treaty, Pitt replied with firmness, “But full powers, Sir; very full powers.”
Yet this sincerity in a foe could infuse none into a father.
The Duke sees his father, King George II
Two messengers were dispatched to recall the Duke, and, October 12th [1757], he arrived at Kensington.[61]
It was in the evening,
and he [Duke of Cumberland] retired to his own apartment, where Mr. Fox and his servants were attending. He thanked Mr. Fox for being there, and said, “You see me well both in body and mind. I have written orders in my pocket for everything I did.” (He afterwards said, his orders had been so strong, that he had not expected to obtain such good conditions.) He then dismissed Fox, saying, he would send for him again. (The shortness of this interview, he afterwards told Mr. Fox, had proceeded from his determination of seeing nobody alone who could be supposed to advise him, till he had taken the step he meditated.)
At nine,
the hour the King punctually goes to play in the apartment of the Princess Emily, the Duke went to her. The King, who was there, had ordered the Princess not to leave them alone, received him with extreme coldness; and when his Royal Highness went afterwards into the other room where the King was at cards, his Majesty said aloud,
“Here is my son, who has ruined me and disgraced himself,”—and unless this was speaking to him, spoke not a word.
After 2 hours of hanging out, the Duke makes known his resignation:
At eleven,
when the cards were over, the Duke went down to Lady Yarmouth, and told her the King had left him but one favour to ask, which he was come to solicit by her interposition, as he wished to make it as little disagreeable to the King as possible—it was to desire leave to resign everything, the post of Captain-General, and his regiment.[62]
The Countess was in great concern at the request, and said, “Pray, Sir, don’t determine this at once.” He replied, “He begged her pardon; he was not come for advice; he had had time to think, and was determined.” “Then, Sir,” said she, “I have nothing left but to obey.”
Amazingly the King was surprised by this resignation:
The King received the notification with as much real agitation as he had counterfeited before.
The next morning he ordered the Cabinet Council to wait on the Duke, and pay their respects to him.
Lord Holderness went in first, and kissed his hand, but was not spoken to.
Pitt followed; and of him his Royal Highness took most notice, speaking to him at different reprisals with kindness, to mark his satisfaction with Pitt's behaviour.
He said a little to the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Granville, and Lord Anson. Lord Hardwicke was out of town.
Will the Duke reconsider not resigning?
The Duke of Devonshire was sent to the Duke [Cumberland] in private,
to persuade him not to resign. He was inflexible.
Devonshire was sent again to ask from the King as a favour that he would at least retain his regiment;
he need not do the duty;
but his Majesty should not think himself safe in any other hands;
yet even this counterfeit of confidence was an aggravation of the cruelty.
The King had no good choice
The Duke learned that this solicitude about the regiment proceeded solely from the King’s averseness to give it to Prince Edward; as would be expected, and he was not softened by such duplicity.
He even determined[63] never to be employed under his father again,
telling Fox, that no collusion about the treaty should be imputed to him, by his resuming his command.
To Conway he said, he could not, did not hope that the King would do what was necessary to justify him, it was therefore necessary to do all he could to justify himself.
The next day, the Duke visited the Princess, and beginning to mention his resolution of resigning, she rung the bell, and asked him if he would not see the children.
The King thinks maybe his son might forget all this:
When the King found his son’s resentment inflexible,
he thought of nothing but making it as little uncomfortable to himself as possible:
provided the interior face of the palace was not discomposed, he cared little about justifying himself or making any reparation to his son; who, he thought, might as easily forget in the ceremonies of the drawing-room what he had suffered, as his Majesty drowned all sensibility in the parade of that narrow sphere.
He insisted that the Duke should appear as usual at Court, and come to him in a morning.
The Duke acquiesced, saying,
he should always show the utmost respect to the King as his father, but never could serve him more.
The Duke of Cumberland submits his defense for review:
When these essential forms were adjusted, the Duke sent for Munchausen, and said, “Mr. Privy-councillor, I hear the King has sent for opinions of Hanoverian Generals on my conduct; here are the opinions of the Hessian Generals, and of the Duke[64] of Wolfenbuttle. As the King has ordered the former to be deposited among the Archives of Hanover, I hope he will do me the justice to let these be registered with them. Take them, and bring them back to me to-morrow.”
Munchausen returned with them the next day,
and with a message from the King that his Majesty had been better informed,
and thought better of his Royal Highness than he had done;
and then Munchausen falling prostrate to kiss the lappet of his coat,
the Duke with dignity and anger checked him,
and said, “Mr. Privy-councillor,
confine yourself to that office;
and take care what you say,
even though the words you repeat should be my father’s;
I have all possible deference for him,
but I know how to punish anybody else
that presumes to speak improperly of me.”
On the 15th [of September 1757], the Duke resigned all his commands.
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Go to page 60
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Horace indicates he was not there
by stating he learned of this by the "best of authorities."
Horace Walpole concludes:
I have dwelt minutely on the circumstances of this history,
having learned from the best authorities,
and being sure that few transactions deserve more to be remembered.
A young Prince, warm, greedy of military glory, yet resigning all his passions to the interested dictates of a father’s pleasure, and then loaded with the imputation of having acted basely without authority: hurt with unmerited disgrace, yet never breaking out into the least unguarded expression; preserving dignity under oppression, and the utmost tenderness of duty[65] under the utmost delicacy of honour—this an uncommon picture—for the sake of human nature, I hope the conduct of the father is uncommon too!
When the Duke could tear himself from his favourite passion, the Army, one may judge how sharply he must have been wounded.
When afterwards the King, perfidiously enough, broke that famous convention, mankind were so equitable as to impute it to the same unworthy politics, not to the disapprobation he had pretended to feel on its being made.
In a former part of this history, I have said with regard to his eldest, that the King might have been an honest man, if he had never hated his father, or had ever loved his son—what double force has this truth, when it is again applied to him on his treachery to the best son that ever lived!
Considering with what freedom I have spoken of the Duke’s faults in other parts of this work, I may be believed in the just praise bestowed on him here.
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Source of Horace Walpole?
Memoirs of the reign of King George the Second
Volume 3 , 1757 TO 1760, page 60 to 62
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Here are street markings showing partial footprint of Fort Cumberland Maryland:
This is a movable picture. Use your touchscreen or mouse to navigate.
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Compiled and authored by Jim Moyer, published on Wix and Facebook on 4/11/2021, 4/18/2021
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For more stories see
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Other links found in the course of this research
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Another interesting source
The New Monthly Magazine, Volume 146,
printed in London 1870
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About that Baron Munchausen
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is a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe in his 1785 book Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia.
The character is loosely based on a real baron, Hieronymus Karl Friedrich, Freiherr von Münchhausen.
Born in Bodenwerder, Electorate of Hanover, the real-life Münchhausen fought for the Russian Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1735–1739.
Upon retiring in 1760,
[We think this was when King George II died 25th October 1760]
he became a minor celebrity within German aristocratic circles for telling outrageous tall tales based on his military career.
After hearing some of Münchhausen's stories, Raspe adapted them anonymously into literary form, first in German as ephemeral magazine pieces and then in English as the 1785 book, which was first published in Oxford by a bookseller named Smith.
The book was soon translated into other European languages, including a German version expanded by the poet Gottfried August Bürger.
The real-life Münchhausen was deeply upset at the development of a fictional character bearing his name, and threatened legal proceedings against the book's publisher.
Perhaps fearing a libel suit, Raspe never acknowledged his authorship of the work, which was only established posthumously.
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Source Wikipedia
Illustrated by Gustave Dore
Source of above
Illustrated by Gustave Dore
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Fictions, Lies and Baron Munchausen's Narrative,
by Sarah Tindall Kareem, U of California, LA
Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia (1785) is a collection of incredible stories attributed to a Hanoverian Baron but really written by Rudolf Erich Raspe.
Since its first publication, Munchausen had gradually become synonymous with pathological lying, a fate sealed in 1951 with coinage of the name "Munchausen Syndrome," for a psychological disorder characterized by the patient's fabrication or exaggeration of physical symptoms.
However, the original 1785 Narrative presents Munchausen as an ironic narrator and promoter of skepticism.
As this essay will suggest, Munchausen morphs, starting in the late 1780s from a figure of illusionism to a figure of delusion, indeed, even more strikingly, from embodying an illusionism proffered as a cure for delusion, to a figure who is literally symptomatic of pathological delusion.
Prior to this shift, the Narrative plays to . . . readers' susceptibility to plausible representation. The anonymous preface to the Narrative portrays Munchausen telling his stories as an antidote to a credulity presumed to be his readership's default mindset. By 1792, the Narrative presumes skepticism to be its readership's default orientation, and the Baron's role consequently changes. In 1785, Munchausen emobodies, in his deadpan presentation of absurdities, the novelty of fictionality . . .
By 1792, fictionality, the tonic for credulity, is itself taken for granted and thus the Baron depends upon a new trick to engage his readership's attention. . .
The Baron's new insistence that his stories are true increases the Narrative's popularity; however, this renewed popularity comes at a price. The Baron's shift from storyteller to liar drastically alters his personal . . .
From prescribing skepticism, he shifts to belligerently demanding that his readers believe him.
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HOUSE OF HANOVER SUCCESSION QUESTION
After the act to deny any Catholics access to the throne after Queen Anne, succession came down to Sophia.
Sophia of Hanover (born Princess Sophia of the Palatinate; 14 October 1630 – 8 June 1714[a]) was the Electress of Hanover by marriage to Elector Ernest Augustus, and later the heiress presumptive to the thrones of England (later Great Britain) and Ireland under the Act of Settlement 1701. She died less than two months before she would have become queen. Consequently, it was her son George I who succeeded her first cousin once removed, Anne.
Ernest Augustus succeeded in having the House of Hanover raised to electoral dignity in 1692. Therefore, Sophia became Electress of Hanover, the title by which she is best remembered. A patron of the arts, Sophia commissioned Herrenhausen Palace its gardens and sponsored philosophers, such as Gottfried Leibniz and John Toland.
The Act of Settlement provided that the throne would pass to the Electress Sophia of Hanover – a granddaughter of James VI and I and a niece of King Charles I – and her descendants, but it excluded "for ever" "all and every Person and Persons who ... is are or shall be reconciled to or shall hold Communion with the See or Church of Rome or shall profess the Popish Religion or shall marry a Papist". Thus, those who were Roman Catholics, and those who married Roman Catholics, were barred from ascending the throne. The Act did not even mention the concept of marriages involving heirs to the throne and members of non-Christian faiths because that would have been unthinkable in eighteenth century Great Britain.
Forum discussing line of succession:
Today assumptions are often made about how closely related Anne and George I were. Jacobites liked to emphasise how distant the Hanover family connection was, as well as George’s ‘alien’ German ways.
Historians have often followed this, even suggesting that there were between thirty and fifty people more closely related to Anne disbarred from the succession by the Act of Settlement of 1701 because of their Catholicism.
In fact the number who stood between Anne and George were very few. There were only six living people with a closer kinship to Anne than George. The reason for this is partly because of the extraordinary poor health of the Stuarts.
Anne herself, of course, was the end of a line of Stuart descent
About the last Stuart, Queen Anne
In sixteen years, she had seventeen pregnancies: twelve were either miscarried or stillborn, having died weeks before in her womb. Of all her children, only one survived to 11 years of age before he died as well. There would have been nothing more heart-breaking than seeing Anne and her husband mourning together over a tiny empty cot. Sometimes they wept uncontrollably together. Other times they would just sit in silence, staring at nothing. It must have been unimaginably awful.
Parliament searched desperately through the Stuart family tree looking for a more suitable candidate than the Catholic son of James II and his second wife, Mary of Modena – James Francis Edward Stuart. But with fifty of Anne’s Catholic relatives standing in a long queue to claim the throne, they needed to be quick. One by one they went through the list crossing names off, even the names of those who had a legitimate claim to the throne were discarded in their frantic attempt to find a Protestant heir. Until the name Sophia Electress of Hanover finally popped up. She was the granddaughter of James I through his daughter Elizabeth and as such, she had Stuart blood running through her veins and she was a Protestant.
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