Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/240

 and the crushing of poor Denmark left a feeling of soreness and resentment which did not subside for many a year. The war took place in 1864; it was not till 1867 that there was a friendly meeting between the King of Prussia and the Prince and Princess of Wales. Princess Alice wrote from Darmstadt in October of that year:—

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Another marriage in the Royal Family still further complicated the Schleswig-Holstein question from the domestic point of view, for in 1866 Princess Helena, the Queen's third daughter, married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, the second son of the German claimant of the Duchies. The Queen gave her daughter away. The Princess and her husband have made their home in England.

It was in this year that the war between North and South Germany, headed respectively by Prussia and Austria, about the disposal of the Schleswig-Holstein Duchies, had the effect of bringing the Queen's two sons-in-law, Prince Frederick William of Prussia and Prince Louis of Hesse, into the field of battle on opposite sides. This was a severe trial. The Princess Alice's letters showed that it caused her intense anguish. She, like her father, longed for the unity of Germany under the headship of Prussia, and was quite ready to submit to the sacrifices this would entail on the smaller German Princes; but this war of brother against brother, and friend against friend, was a thing which she felt to be too fearful to contemplate. In this hour of great trial, the love and