FRIEDRICH W1LIIELM NICOLACS KARL. 



355 



he went to Italy, where he spent four months 

 in the company of painters, sculptors, archae- 

 ologists, and statesmen, and first met Pope Pius 

 IX, for whom he always retained a feeling of 

 veneration. 



He was now ordered to serve with the dra- 

 goons, and his commander, Col. von Griesheim, 

 was instructed to subject him to the actual 

 labors and duties of a soldier's life. In 1854 

 he was appointed a member of a commission 

 to test the Mini6 rifle, and shortly afterward 

 he was nominated to the command of the Sec- 

 ond Landwehr Guards. 



In 1855 Col. von Moltke became adjutant to 

 the prince, who had attained the rank of colo- 

 nel, and in September of that year, in company 

 with Mcltke, he visited England, and before 

 his return he became betrothed to the princess 

 royal. In May, 1856, he again visited Eng- 

 land, and in August of this year went to Mos- 

 cow as the representative of the Prussian royal 

 house at the coronation of the Emperor Alex- 

 ander II. The following December, on return- 

 ing from a visit to England, he visited Paris 

 for the first time. The Empress Eugenie, in a 

 letter to a friend, described the prince as tall 

 and handsome, slim and fair, and commented : 

 "They are an imposing race, these Germans. 

 Louis calls them the race of the future. But 

 we have not come to that." 



He married Princess Victoria on Jan. 'J5, 

 1858. On becoming Cro \vn-Prince, when his 

 father succeeded to the throne of Prussia on 

 the death of King Friedrich Wilhelra IV, he 

 was sworn in a member of the King's Council, 

 and was appointed on the commission for the 

 reorganization of the army. After the disso- 

 lution of the Chamber of Deputies and the 

 abolition of the liberty of the press in 1863, 

 the Crown-Prince protested against the meth- 

 ods of the Bismarck ministry, which he de- 

 clared to be " both illegal and injurious to the 

 state and the dynasty." The King demanded 

 a retraction of his sentiments on pain of being 

 recalled to Berlin and deprived of his military 

 command. The prince replied that he could 

 not retract his speech, that he was ready, if 

 required, to lay clown his commission in the 

 army and resign his seat in the Council of State, 

 saying, " If I am not allowed to speak my mind, 

 I must naturally wish to dissever myself en- 

 tirely from the sphere of politics." 



Domestic legislation in Prussia was over- 

 shadowed in 1864 by a war with Denmark, 

 arising out of the disputed succession to the 

 duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. The Crown- 

 Prince had at this time attained the rank of 

 lieutenant-general in the army without having 

 ever seen a battle, but the outbreak of the 

 Danish war sent him to the field of real war- 

 fare as an officer on the staff of Field-Marshal 

 Wrangel. He was engaged at the battle of 

 Dfippel, and in the subsequent operations of 

 the Prussian and Austrian forces in the brief 

 campaign that resulted in the defeat of Den- 

 mark, displaying courage and energy, and on 



his return to Berlin he was nominated to the 

 general command of the Second Army Corps. 



In the war with Austria Prince Friederich 

 was placed in command of the Second Army 

 Corps, forming the left wing of the force in 

 Sik-sia. He was also appointed general of infant- 

 ry and military governor of Silesia during the 

 continuance of hostilities. The Second Army 

 Corps was intended to play a secondary part, 

 but when Saxony was occupied without opposi- 

 tion, and the armies were concentrated for the 

 invasion of Bohemia, the burden on the Crown- 

 Prince's shoulders was largely increased. By 

 three days' fighting he successfully carried his 

 army from the frontier to the Elbe, defeating 

 four of the six army corps opposed to him. He 

 fought spirited engagements at Trautenau and 

 Nachod, coming up to the latter place at a 

 critical moment in support of Gen. Steinmetz. 

 Fighting continued until June 29, when the 

 prince with his army took possession of Skal- 

 itz. During this brief campaign, the soldiers 

 under the Crown- Prince had captured five 

 colors, two standards, twenty guns, and 8,000 

 prisoners. The great battle of Sadowa or 

 Koniggratz was fought on July 3, 1866. The 

 opportune arrival of the Crown Prince with 

 his army, which was fifteen miles away at the 

 beginning of the engagement, gave the victory 

 to the Prussians after one of the most san- 

 guinary battles of modern times. For this 

 victory the prince received the Order of Merit 

 on the field of battle, and shortly after the 

 close of the war was appointed president of a 

 military commission to analyze and formulate 

 the experiences of the war. The prince de- 

 scribed his recollections of the war in a pri- 

 vately printed work entitled " Erinnerungen 

 aus dem Kriege." 



In October, 1869, the Crown-Prince, accom- 

 panied by Prince Ludwig of Hesse, journeyed 

 by way of Vienna, Venice, Athens, and Con- 

 stantinople to Egypt, to attend the opening of 

 the Suez Canal. 



The outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 

 1870, found the Crown-Prince in command of 

 one of the three divisions of the German army, 

 consisting of the armies of Bavaria, Wurtemberg, 

 and Baden, and the Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh 

 North German Corps, numbering in all about 

 200,000 men. The first military triumph of 

 the war was his victory on Aug. 4, 1870, over 

 a portion of Marshal MacMahon's forces sta- 

 tioned at Weissenbourg. Alsace was now 

 open to the prince, the roads to Strasburg and 

 Bitsch were seized, and in his further advance 

 toward the passes of the Vosges he encoun- 

 tered the main body of the army of MacMahon 

 at Worth. This battle, which lasted fifteen 

 hours, terminated in a decisive victory for the 

 prince, the French losses being 10,000 killed 

 or wounded, and 6,000 prisoners. By the 

 llth of August, the Crown-Prince had crossed 

 the Vosges and occupied the town of Xancy. 

 He detached the Baden division of his army, 

 which captured Hagenau, and besieged Stras- 



