1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Rupprecht

RUPPRECHT, Crown Prince of Bavaria (1860-), eldest son of King Louis III., was born May 18 1869 at Munich. In 1899 he visited India and in 1902-3 undertook a journey round the world, of which he gave some account in his Reiseerinnerungen aus Ostasien (1905). In 1906 he was appointed to the command of the I. Bavarian Army Corps. At the outbreak of the World War he was commander of the Bavarian troops (the VI. German Army) and led them to victory in the great battles fought in Lorraine (Aug. 20-22 1914). In the following Oct. he was placed in command on the German front in Artois and southern Flanders, and, after having been advanced to the rank of field-marshal, was entrusted in the spring of 1917 with the chief command of the Northern Group of Armies on the

western front. Prince Rupprecht's first wife, a daughter of Duke Karl Theodor of Bavaria and sister of the Queen of the Belgians, died in 1912. In 1918 he was betrothed to Princess Charlotte, afterwards Grand Duchess of Luxemburg, but at the end of the war the betrothal was annulled. Prince Rupprecht renounced his claims to the Bavarian throne at the time of his father's abdication (Nov. 1918), and in 1919 he offered to stand his trial before a Court of Justice for State Affairs, if such a court, as had been contemplated, were instituted. In a letter written in 1917, but published only in 1921 in the press, Prince Rupprecht declared his disapproval of the foreign and military policy of Germany during the World War, and expressed the well-founded opinion that it was doubtful whether the Hohenzollern dynasty would survive the war.

It may be noted that through his mother, the Archduchess Maria-Therese of Austria-Este, Prince Rupprecht is the descendant of the Stuarts and might, therefore, pose as the &ldquo;legitimist&rdquo; claimant of the British Throne.