THE PRUSSIANS IN HANOVER.

Colonist, Volume IX, Issue 939, 25 September 1866, Page 3

THE PRUSSIANS IN HANOVER.

The following is an extract from a private letter, dated Hanover, July 8 :—

For some time past I, and not I alone sorely, have read with impatience and distaste the imperfect, inaccurate, and totally false accounts and telegrams of the proceedings of the last three weeks in this part of Germany. I havT3 not thought of contradicting them publicly, hoping every day for contradiction from abler quarters ; but, in the absence of these, I must really tell you something of what has been passing here. In the first place, it is entirely false (as intimated or insinuated in the Saturday Review) that his Majesty the King fled from Hanover, leaving the Queen and Princesses exposed to the humiliation of a Prussian occupation of the capital. The King did not fly ; he went, after deliberate counsel, with his son, the Crown Prince, to join his army at Gottingcn, and try to effect a junction with his allies, the Bavarians. It has been written and rumoured that the Queen and Princesses had abandoned the capital and their people, and soiight refuge with her Majesty's father. lamin a position to state that such a step was never contemplated by her Majesty —indeed, almost all Hanover might bear witness that her Majesty and the two Princesses drove, unguarded, into the town the morning after the King's departure for his army, and walked for some time on the Theater Platz, telling everyone to whom they spoke the glorious fact of his Majesty's departure for his post of duty, and of her intention of abiding in her palace, from which, I may noticct she even dismissed every sentinel, from a tender and womanly wish of keeping them from Prussian insult, and also sending every man to swell the army of the King. I cannot write to you of military or political events, but I may briefly and inadequately advert to the entirely unworthy, meagre, and false accounts which have hitherto been published of the battle of Langensalza—a battle, if not decisive, yet most glorious for the Hanoverian valour of fifty years back. The numbers on both sides have been ridiculously falsified. lamin a position to get certified for your satisfaction, if you please, that the real numbers were as follows:—The Prussians, 17,000 (infantry), of which number 14,000 belonged to the regular Prussian standing field ai-my, the remaining 3,000 only being Landwehr. They had four batteries, of six guns each, and three squadrons of cavalry. The Hanoverians had not over 16,000 fighting men. The Prussian troops were armed with the needle gun, the Hanoverians with the old-fashioned Brown Bess. Do not let it be omitted that the blind King and his son were in the front of the army all the time of the action—that the bullets flew around them, and that all the privations of the troops were shared by their Eoyal leaders, they both wanting food and sleeping on the ground. This is not an unimportant fact in this I9th century, when war is so much made by proxy. The troops almost worshipped their King. My language may seem enthusiastic, but I only say what I hear said by the soldiers and officers here. But what I do indeed desire to write you of, because it has come under my immediate view, is the conduct of her Majesty the Queen in this crisis—a conduct the more noble and judicious from the fact that her

lifo hitherto has not been of a kind to call forth these or like efforts. When the Prussian General Falken- : stein waited on .her Majesty.for the (tocher)-painful purpose .of "formally announcing to her that hercapitel was henceforth under Prussian rule, those only who witnessed the interview can do justice to the feeling and dignity with which the announcement was received. This General himself told a friend that he retired from her Majesty's presence without having had presence of mind enough to say the words he had prepared himself to say to her. Another Prussian General has seen the Queen since. Her only desire to him was, that every possible good treatment should be secured for her subjects who had fallen under his control. I must not allow myself to try your patience by dwelling on what I could with perfect truth say of this Queen's domestic virtues and her perfections in her family, and of the devotion with which she is regarded by those who surround her; but these are facts which should not be entirely unknown to the outer world at a juncture like the present. From her private purse I saw her send, in her own drawing-room, in a private manner, 8,000 thalers, by a private hand, to her son the Crown Prince, " to give to the army with her love;" and also sinoe the battle of Langensalza, her Majesty has established sixteen additional beds at the Henrietta Stift for the wounded soldiers; and it would do your heart good to see her give up her time, and open her heart to the officers who flock from the army to pay their duty to their beloved Queen. Of her firmness, of her goodness, of her tender womanliness, all those who surround her Majesty would be only too eager to bear their testimony.