Augusta Reuss-Ebersdorf

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Auguste Reuss of Ebersdorf as Artemisia, 1775, painted by Johann Heinrich Tischbein, sen., called: the Kasseler.
Auguste Reuss of Ebersdorf as Artemisia, 1775, painted by Johann Heinrich Tischbein, sen., called: the Kasseler.

Countess (later Princess) Augusta Caroline Reuss of Ebersdorf (German: Gräfin Reuß zu Ebersdorf) (b. Ebersdorf, 19 January 1757- d. Coburg, 16 November 1831), was by marriage a duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld.

She was the fourth of seven children of Count Heinrich XXIV Reuss of Ebersdorf and his wife Karoline Ernestine of Erbach-Schönberg.

In Ebersdorf on 13 June 1777 Augusta married Franz Frederick Anton, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. She bore him ten children; some of them played important roles in European history: Victoria, Duchess of Kent and the King Leopold I of Belgium.

Countess Augusta is the grandmother of many notable monarchs of Europe, including both Queen Victoria (through her mother Victoria) and her husband, Prince Albert (through his father Ernst), King Consort of Portugal Ferdinand II (through his father Ferdinand, 4th Prince of Kohary), and also Empress Carlota of Mexico and her brother Leopold II of Belgium (through their father Leopold I who was elected King of the Belgians on 26 June 1831.)

The House of Reuss became princes on 9 April 1806, and all the surviving members of the Ebersdorf-Lobenstein line (including Augusta) bore the title Prince(ss) Reuss of Ebersdorf (German: Fürst/Fürstin Reuß zu Ebersdorf, Jüngere Linie) . Augusta died on 16 November 1831, aged seventy-four, and five months after the election of her son Leopold as King of the Belgians.