On the eleventh day of June, in the year 1815, Prince William received his first communion, all the Royal family being present. The next day, he and his father, the King, departed to join the army.

At Merseburg they were stopped by a courier. A great battle had been fought near Brussels, the English under the Duke of Wellington, the Prussians under General BlÜcher, the brave commander who had wept when he had given up the keys of LÜbeck.

"Napoleon is conquered!" announced the courier as he handed the despatches to the King.

The English call the battle "Waterloo," the Prussians, "La Belle Alliance."

Old BlÜcher had proved his words by fighting. The English had fought steadily, BlÜcher having promised to come if he heard the firing. The French, who had defeated him a few days before, were in a position to render this well-nigh impossible. But when the cannon sounded, the brave old Prussian thought only of his promise.

"Forward, children, forward!" he cried to his soldiers.

"We cannot, Father BlÜcher," they answered. "It is impossible."

"Forward, children, forward!" the old man repeated. "We must. I have promised my brother, Wellington. I have promised, do you hear? It shall not be said that I broke my word. Forward, children, forward!"

And so they came to Waterloo and the Allies conquered Napoleon.

"The most splendid battle has been fought. The most glorious victory won," wrote old BlÜcher. "I think the Napoleon story is ended."

In triumph, the Allies entered Paris, and Napoleon, throwing himself on the protection of the English, was banished to the Island of St. Helena.

"Alas," wrote a great Frenchman, "had Napoleon made a friend of Queen Louisa at Tilsit this might never have happened, for then would Frederick William have refused to join the Allies."

Napoleon had valued Magdeburg above a hundred Queens, but one Queen had conquered him, and Europe was free from the man who had warred with it for twenty years.

"But," the Queen of Prussia once wrote, "we may learn much from Napoleon; what he has done will not be lost upon us. It would be blasphemous to say that God has been with him, but he seems to be an instrument in the hands of the Almighty to do away with old things that have lost their vitality, to cut off, as it were, the dead wood which is still externally one with the tree to which it owes its existence. That which is dead is utterly useless—that which is dying does but draw the sap from the trunk and give nothing in return."

"I did, indeed, enjoy the sight of Napoleon," the mother of Goethe told Marianne's Bettina Brentano. "He it is who has enwrapped the whole world in an enchanted dream, and for this mankind should be grateful, for if they did not dream they would have got nothing by it, and have slept like clods as they hitherto have done."

After Napoleon had stirred up Europe with his wars, things changed, and the ways of the world became what we call "Modern Times," and for this even the poor Prussians thanked him, for many things improved and liberty came more and more to the people. They spoke their own language, they drew closer together, and, in their war against a foe, they learned to love their Fatherland.