The year 1878 opened brightly for the Crown Princess, for in February her eldest daughter, Princess Charlotte, was married to Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Meiningen. Prince Bismarck, however, excused himself from appearing at the ceremony on the pretext of ill-health.
It was at this marriage, the first of the Crown Princess’s family weddings, that her brother, the Duke of Connaught, made the acquaintance of his future wife.
In the month of May came the attempted assassination of the Emperor by a youth called Hodel. The Emperor then had a marvellous escape, but on June 2, which happened to be a Sunday, the aged Sovereign was driving down Unter den Linden when, from an upper window of an inn called “The Three Ravens,” Nobeling, a Socialist, fired two charges of buckshot into the Emperor’s head and shoulders. Violent hæmorrhage set in, and for some hours it was said, first, that he was dead, and secondly, that if not dead he could not survive the day.
The Crown Prince and Princess were then in England, and the news reached them at Hatfield, where they were staying with Lord and Lady Salisbury. Within a very short time of the receipt of the telegram, they started for Berlin, finding on their arrival that the Emperor had recovered sufficiently to sign an order conferring the Regency on the Crown Prince.
The Regency was hardly more than titular, for the old Emperor stipulated that his son was only to “represent” him, and that the government was to be carried on as before in accordance with the Emperor’s known views. As to that, Bismarck had his own ideas, and he succeeded in overcoming the Crown Prince’s natural hesitation at accepting such a position.
Nevertheless, it was an extraordinarily sudden and dramatic change in the whole position of the Crown Prince and Princess. In the first place it absolutely put an end to the plan, which had been seriously discussed and on the whole approved by Bismarck, that the Crown Prince should become Governor-General or Lieutenant-Governor of Alsace-Lorraine. Obviously this scheme was no longer practical. The Emperor was old and his wound was serious; the accession of his son seemed imminent.
It is curious to recall that, so far back as January, 1862, Queen Augusta, speaking to Prince Hohenlohe, had observed: “The King and I are old people: we can hardly hope to do more than work for the future. But I wish we could look forward to a happier state of things for our son.” She was destined to live thirty years longer, and to survive the son to whom she ever proved herself a loyal and devoted mother, while her husband, whom even then she described as old, was destined to live more than another quarter of a century—almost as long, in fact, as the son who succeeded him for so tragically brief a reign.
But now, in 1878, it seemed as if the Crown Prince, even in the unlikely event of his father’s recovery from his wound, must become virtual ruler of the German Empire.
A very few days, however, made it clear that Bismarck was determined to allow the new Regent as little authority as possible beyond that conferred by the signing of State documents, and that he was to have no practical influence on foreign politics. But fortune, then as always, seemed to single out Bismarck for special favour, for in the all-important matter of Russo-German relations the Crown Prince was far easier to manage, in so far as any management of him was necessary, than the old Emperor, who was fondly attached to his nephew, the Tsar Alexander II.
Those months, during which the Crown Prince exercised in theory a power which he certainly did not possess in reality, were among the most trying of all the trying months the Crown Princess ever passed through, the more so that the Berlin Congress, which she and the Prince had gone to England to avoid, opened on June 13. Among those who sojourned in Berlin during those eventful days, and whose presence must have been a pleasure to the Princess, were Lord and Lady Salisbury.