He now became inspector-general of the 3rd "army inspection," and a
little later inspector of cavalry, and in the latter post he was largely
instrumental in bringing the German cavalry to the degree of perfection
in manoeuvre and general training which it gradually attained in the
years after the war. He never ceased to improve his own soldierly
qualities by further study and by the conduct of manoevres on a large
scale. His sternness of character kept him aloof from the court and from
his own family, and he spent his leisure months chiefly on his various
country estates. In 1872 and in 1882 he travelled in the Mediterranean
and the Near East. He died on the 15th of June 1885 at Klein-Glienicke
near Berlin, and was buried at the adjacent church of Nikolskoe. His
third daughter, Princess Louise Margareta, was married, in March 1879,
to the duke of Connaught.
FREDERICK HENRY (1584-1647), prince of Orange, the youngest child of
William the Silent, was born at Delft about six months before his
father's assassination on the 29th of January 1584. His mother, Louise
de Coligny, was daughter of the famous Huguenot leader, Admiral de
Coligny, and was the fourth wife of William the Silent. The boy was
trained to arms by his elder brother, Maurice of Nassau, one of the
first generals of his age. On the death of Maurice in 1625, Frederick
Henry succeeded him in his paternal dignities and estates, and also in
the stadtholderates of the five provinces of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht,
Overysel and Gelderland, and in the important posts of captain and
admiral-general of the Union. Frederick Henry proved himself scarcely
inferior to his brother as a general, and a far more capable statesman
and politician. During twenty-two years he remained at the head of
affairs in the United Provinces, and in his time the power of the
stadtholderate reached its highest point. The "Period of Frederick
Henry," as it is usually styled by Dutch writers, is generally accounted
the golden age of the republic. It was marked by great military and
naval triumphs, by world-wide maritime and commercial expansion, and by
a wonderful outburst of activity in the domains of art and literature.
The chief military exploits of Frederick Henry were the sieges and
captures of Hertogenbosch in 1629, of Maastricht in 1632, of Breda in
1637, of Sas van Ghent in 1644, and of Hulst in 1645. During the greater
part of his administration the alliance with France against Spain had
been the pivot of Frederick Henry's foreign policy, but in his last
years he sacrificed the French alliance for the sake of concluding a
separate peace with Spain, by which the United Provinces obtained from
that power all the advantages for which they had for eighty years been
contending. Frederick Henry died on the 14th of March 1647, and was
buried with great pomp beside his father and brother at Delft. The
treaty of Muenster, ending the long struggle between the Dutch and the
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