“I have a son,” he writes joyfully. “Ah! how I shall love him; I already wish I could write and tell him so.... If I come back from this war I shall say to him: ‘Be welcome: I am sure I am going to love you with all my heart!’” The Prince had suffered too severely from the harshness of his father to be willing to imitate it. All his children were brought up with the greatest affection, but he was never able to refrain from showing a marked preference to the eldest, Prince Charles, suitor to our young Princess. He taught him what he knew so well himself--“to fight like a gentleman.” The little Prince, while still a child, was led to battle by his father. “I had a slight skirmish at the outposts with the Prussians,” he says, “and, jumping into the saddle with him as we galloped along, I took his little hand in mine. At the first shot I ordered I said to him: ‘It would be charming, my Charles, if we had a little wound together.’ And he laughed, and swore, and became excited, and spoke quite judiciously!” After having been at Strasburg[114] for four years, Prince Charles entered the Austrian service, at the age of sixteen, as second lieutenant of engineers. He would have preferred the artillery, but chose the engineers to please his father. At the moment when the negotiations for Hélène’s marriage were begun war had just broken out between Austria and Prussia, on the question of the succession in Bavaria, and the two Princes de Ligne were with the Austrian army. The Elector of Bavaria, Maximilian-Joseph, had died on the 30th of December 1777 without male issue. Notwithstanding the indisputable rights of the Elector-Palatine, several other princes raised pretensions to the succession. The most formidable of these pretenders was the Emperor Joseph II. Barely had the Elector closed his eyes when the Austrian troops marched on the Bavarian frontier. This caused great uneasiness in Prussia, and the young Duc des Deux-Ponts, urged on and supported by Frederick the Great, protested before the Germanic Diet against Austria’s designs. The Elector of Saxony followed his example, and while this serious discussion was going on Joseph and Frederick went, the one into Silesia, the other into Bohemia, to take command of the large armies they had raised. They remained thus in presence of each other for several months. Marie-Thérèse, who feared war, carried on secret negotiations to stop it. Joseph, on the contrary, anxious for a contest with the great Frederick, urged it on with all his might.[115]