Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/578

 unveiled by the Emperor William II on 18 Oct. 1903, opposite the statue of her husband in the open space outside the Brandenburg gate at Berlin.

 VINCENT, CHARLES EDWARD HOWARD, generally known as Sir Howard Vincent (1849–1908), politician, born at Slinfold, Sussex, on 31 May 1849, was second and eldest surviving son of the five sons of Sir Frederick Vincent (1798–1883), eleventh baronet, sometime rector of Slinfold, Sussex, and prebendary of Chichester Cathedral, by his second wife, Maria Copley, daughter of Robert Young of Auchenskeoch. His father was succeeded in the baronetcy by William, his elder son by his first wife. Of Vincent's younger brothers, Claude (1853-1907) was under-secretary of the public works department in India, and Sir Edgar, K.C.M.G., was M.P. for Exeter from 1899 to 1906. Howard Vincent, one of whose godfathers was Cardinal Manning, then archdeacon of Chichester, was an extremely delicate child, although in manhood his activity and vitality were exceptional. At Westminster school he made no progress, but being sent to travel in France and Germany he acquired an interest in foreign languages. At Dresden in 1866 he caught a glimpse of the Seven Weeks' war. In November of the same year he passed into Sandhurst, and in 1868 obtained a commission in the royal Welsh fusiliers. In 1870 he was refused permission to go out as a correspondent to the Franco-German war; but next year, as a special correspondent of the 'Daily Telegraph,' he succeeded in getting to Berlin. After carrying despatches for Lord Bloomfield [q. v.], the British ambassador, to Copenhagen and Vienna, he went on to Russia to study the language and the military organisation of the country. He published in 1872 a translation of Baron Stoffel's 'Reports upon the Military Forces of Prussia,' addressed to the French 