KONIGSBERG TO BERLIN 25 



curred fierce fights in the streets between the masses and 

 the royal troops, in which on the eighteenth of March, 

 eighteen hundred and forty-eight, no less than one hun- 

 dred and eighty-three civilians and twenty soldiers were 

 killed. Though the troops had gained a sad victory, the 

 King, who loved peace with his people above everything 

 else, in the spirit of his lamented mother, the great Queen 

 Louisa, granted the very next day, among other royal 

 favors, the total amnesty of all political offenders, and 

 witnessed in person the funeral of the fallen civilians, 

 whose remains were given solemn burial at Friedrichs- 

 hain, a cemetery described elsewhere. 



The following letter from H. E. H. Prince Frederic 

 "William, son of the reigning King's brother, William, 

 and later father of the present Emperor of Germany, to 

 Eduard Baeyer, an intimate of his youth, was recently 

 published by the ever well-informed ' ' Konigsberger Har- 

 tungsche Zeitung." This letter is a part of the communi- 

 cations concerning this friendship, as appeared in an ar- 

 ticle by Mrs. Emma Ribbeck, nee Baeyer, in the 

 " Deutsche Rundschau," a periodical of great influence. 

 What to the translator seems to emphasize the weight of 

 the following lines is the fact, which no German reader 

 will overlook, that they were written on the very birth- 

 day anniversary of the Prince's illustrious father, the 

 great William the First. During his reign, which fol- 

 lowed that of Frederick William IV., all Germany cele- 

 brated the twenty-second of March. But let us read the 

 letter, which bears rhetorical proof of great excitement 

 under which the august writer labored: 



Potsdam, March 22, 1848. 

 My Dear, Good Baeyer:— This very moment I received 

 your dear letter, the first one since I left Berlin. You will 

 easily imagine how I feel. What I have experienced since 

 last Saturday has aged me many a year, and I am moved 

 to confess that everything seems to have been but a bad 

 dream— a nightmare. The terrible scenes of last Sunday, 

 the heroic deeds of our troops on Saturday, all that I wit- 



