To such an extent is this despotism carried that when Prince Henry of Prussia was stationed at Kiel, he had to ask his elder brother's permission before he could run up to Berlin, although Kiel is only a few hours' trip from the capital; and, as stated in the previous chapter, Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen and her husband, are kept at Breslau, except when their brother William graciously condescends to permit them to leave their home. Two years ago the emperor, for reasons which can only be surmised, and which were of a personal rather than of a political character—of which more anon—suddenly ordered his only brother Henry off to China, and a little later, possibly with the object of showing to the world that his authority extended to the ladies of his house, as well as to the men, he directed Princess Henry to join her husband at Hong Kong. As the two little boys of the princess are exceedingly delicate, owing possibly to the fact that their parents are first cousins, the poor mother was very reluctant to undertake the trip, but she was forced by the emperor to go, and had scarcely reached Hong Kong before she learnt by cable that both her little ones were prostrated by a terrible attack of diphtheria. She was not, however, permitted to return, but was kept out in China away from her children until late in the spring, and reached home well on towards autumn, to find her little ones—the youngest was but two years old—more delicate than ever, but fortunately alive.
In the memoirs of Bismarck published by Dr. Busch, there is reproduced one of Emperor William's letters, written prior to his accession to the throne, in the course of which he asks the great chancellor whether he approves of his "commanding" (the German word is "befehlen") his brother Prince Henry to make certain inquiries of the late Prince Alexander of Battenberg. William in this letter does not talk of "requesting" his brother, but of ordering him to do this. If then William, as crown prince, already took upon himself the right of ordering his brother and his sisters to do this and to do that, it may be readily imagined that he is not less peremptory in his dealings with them now that he is their emperor and king.
If they disobey him, he has various means of punishment at his command. He can banish them from court for a long term; he can deprive them temporarily, or for all time, of the prerogatives, the privileges, and the honors due to their rank; he can suspend their allowances from the national treasury, or from the family property, or can stop it altogether; he can take from them the control of any estates which they may have inherited, and confide the administration thereof to curators appointed for the purpose; finally, he can subject them to various forms of arrest, as he once did in the case of his brother-in-law, Prince Frederick-Leopold; while in very extreme cases he can place the offending relative under restraint in an asylum for the insane on the pretext of dementia, as has been done in the case of Princess Louise of Coburg, daughter of King Leopold of Belgium, and mother of Princess "Dolly" of Coburg, who is now the wife of Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein.
"Aux arrêts," or confinement to one's quarters, is the most common form of punishment inflicted by Old World monarchs upon those of their kith and kin who have failed to comply with their behests, and there is scarcely a single sovereign or prince of the blood, who has not been subjected to this species of discipline at one time or another of his career. Thus the late Emperor Frederick, prior to his accession to the throne, but long after his marriage, was sentenced to several weeks' detention in his palace under strict arrest, as a punishment for a little joke which he had played during the course of a military inspection.
He had been protesting for a long time against the tightness of the uniforms, and of the belts of the rank and file of the infantry, declaring that it impeded the movements and play of the muscles of the men, to such an extent as to deprive them of more than fifty per cent, of their usefulness. One day, during an inspection of the division of guards at Potsdam, while the troops happened to be standing at ease, he walked along the front rank of the first regiment, accompanied by a number of officers, with whom he had just been discussing this very question of equipment; suddenly, he stopped short in his walk, and extracting a piece of gold from his pocket, dropped it on the ground, and told the men nearest him to pick it up, adding that whoever got hold of it first, might keep it! Several of them made frantic attempts to bend down in order to get the money, but so tight were their uniforms and belts that they found it absolutely impossible to reach, the coin, which Emperor Frederick ultimately picked up himself, and handed to them.
"And how do you expect to win battles with soldiers hampered to such an extent as that in their movements?" he exclaimed contemptuously to the officers around him. "What greater demonstration than this is needed to prove the justice of my argument?"
The incident was reported to the then Minister of War, who immediately
lodged a complaint with Frederick's father, the result being that
"Unser Fritz," at that time Crown Prince of Prussia, was placed by old
Emperor William for several weeks under arrest in his palace!
Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the heir apparent to the ancient throne of the Wittelsbachs, was sentenced by his grandfather, the prince regent, to no less than three months' close arrest in his quarters at Munich, for having left the kingdom without permission, in order to spend three days at Paris, in fair but frail company; while the widowed Duchess of Aosta on one occasion was placed under arrest in her palace of Turin by her brother-in-law, King Humbert, because she had ventured to appear in public on her wheel wearing a pair of bloomers!
Prince and Princess Frederick-Leopold, the latter a younger sister of the Empress of Germany, have both been condemned on several occasions by the kaiser to close confinement in their palace under the most stringent kind of arrest, for having disobeyed his majesty's commands with regard to the management of their household. Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, the brother of the empress, has been subjected to more numerous orders of arrest by his imperial kinsman than any prince of the blood now living.
Severe as are European monarchs nowadays in punishing the disobedience of the members of their families, they do not, however, venture any longer to proceed to such extremities as the father of Frederick the Great, who when the latter was still crown prince, cast his son into prison, and ordered him to be shot, merely because he discovered that he was about to leave the kingdom without his permission for the purpose of undertaking a trip to England; and there is no doubt that the crown prince would have been put to death, and thus shared the fate of his two aids-de-camp, who were beheaded before his very eyes, in the fortress prison of Küstrin, had it not been for the intervention of the ambassadors of Austria, Great Britain, Russia and France in behalf of his royal highness.