In these circumstances it was the Crown Prince who came forward as the mediator between the King and his Minister; it was the Crown Prince who supported Bismarck against his father. What really clinched the matter with the King was Bismarck’s threat to resign. At the critical Council of War there was a dramatic scene. The King turned to the Crown Prince and said, “You speak, in the name of the future;” and when he found that his son agreed with Bismarck he gave in, and consented, as he himself described it, to bite into the sour apple.
Nevertheless, the terms of peace were not at all bad for Prussia. Her great object, namely, the dissolution of the Germanic Confederation, was secured; she obtained a considerable accession of territory, including Schleswig and Holstein, Hanover, the Electorate of Hesse, and other territories, which covered more than 1300 square miles, with a population of over four millions. Moreover, in August, 1866, on the invitation of the King of Prussia, the Northern States of Germany concluded a treaty of alliance, offensive and defensive. Thus was established the North-German Confederation, which was joined by Saxony in the following October, and formed an important step on the way to a united German Empire. Altogether the Confederation consisted of twenty-two States, and the first meeting of the Deputies was held at Berlin on February 24, 1867.
It was suggested that the Crown Prince should become Governor-General of Hanover, thus newly annexed to Prussia. It was thought that this plan would to a great extent console Hanover for losing her status as a kingdom, especially as the Crown Princess was closely related to the dispossessed monarch, King George V. The Crown Prince, however, insisted on arrangements which would have made Hanover altogether too independent to be agreeable to Bismarck, and so the idea was not carried out.
On the close of the war of 1866, the Crown Prince and Princess proceeded to Haringsdorf, a little village on the shores of the Baltic, to which the Princess and her children had been sent on account of the cholera, which was then very prevalent in Potsdam.
While there the Princess still busied herself with plans for the care of the wounded in the war. She had already assigned a great part of the palace at Potsdam for the nursing of wounded officers, and a little later on she proceeded with her husband on a long visit to Silesia. There they greatly improved the organisation of the war hospital at Hirschberg. Everything was under their personal supervision, and, thanks to their energy and kindly encouragement, the work was undoubtedly much more efficiently done than it would otherwise have been.
The Crown Prince had ridden with his father over the stricken field of Königgrätz, doing what they could to succour the wounded and the dying. How deeply the horrors of war had been impressed on the Prince’s mind is shown by the words he wrote in his diary on the night of the battle: “He who causes war with a stroke of the pen knows not what he is calling up from Hades.”
As for the Crown Princess, though she had been spared the sight of the worst horrors, she had nevertheless seen enough to enable her, with her eager, imaginative sympathy, to share in the fullest degree her husband’s intense feeling. She never felt she could do enough to mitigate the sufferings of the soldiers, both on the battlefield and afterwards in the weary months of convalescence in hospital. This autumn she organised an enormous bazaar at the New Palace in aid of the wounded, to which contributions came from all over the world. The Crown Prince himself went round collecting money for the soldiers, and the whole enterprise brought in a large sum for the fund.
The years that followed up to the outbreak of the war with France were not very eventful.
At the beginning of 1867, the Crown Prince and Princess stayed a while at Dover, where they met Princess Alice and her husband, who went back with them to stay for a few weeks in Berlin. They afterwards went together to Paris, at the invitation of the Emperor and Empress of the French, in order to visit the great International Exhibition then being held there. The Crown Prince had served as president of the Prussian Committee for the Exhibition. Their stay in France gave great pleasure to the Crown Princess; the two sisters visited many philanthropic centres, and made an exhaustive survey of French art. It was on this visit to Paris that the Crown Princess first conceived the idea of the School of Design in Berlin which now bears her name, for she was greatly impressed by the imaginative fertility of the Parisian craftsmen, and by the perfection of their work.
The Crown Princess left Paris before her husband. Princess Alice wrote to her mother on June 9: “Dear Vicky is gone. She was so low the last days, and dislikes going to parties so much just now, that she was longing to get home. The King [of Prussia] wished them both to stop, but only Fritz remained. How sad these days will be for her, poor love! She was in such good looks; every one here is charmed with her.”