Later on, when the German armies sat down before Paris, the Crown Prince allotted some of the large rooms of the Palace of Versailles for a hospital, and himself supervised the arrangements. All through the war, indeed, he showed the keenest interest in the hospital service, and was constant in his visits to the wounded soldiers. Here we may trace the influence of his wife, who eagerly awaited all that he could tell her in his letters about poor men to whom her woman's heart went out with such ardent sympathy. The Crown Prince took pains to supply the patients with interesting reading, and at his suggestion the editor of a Berlin Liberal paper sent many hundreds of copies of it daily to the military hospitals. This, however, was not approved at headquarters, and an order was actually issued by von Roon, forbidding the distribution of the paper. Such incidents illustrate the difficulties with which both the Crown Prince and the Princess had to contend. The presence at Versailles, not only of the King and Bismarck, but of a cohort of German princes with their retinues, as well as numerous diplomatists, Ministers, and other official personages, did not make the Crown Prince's position easier. He had been raised after the fall of Metz to the highest rank in the army, that of General Field-Marshal, the promotion being communicated to him in a letter from his father bearing grateful testimony to his brilliant successes in the field, notably the strategic advance by which he covered the left of the main army and enabled it to overcome Bazaine's forces. But this elevation in rank does not appear to have been of much practical value to him. Naturally both the Crown Prince and the Crown Princess took the keenest interest in the question of the Imperial title. By the end of November, 1870, Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Würtemberg, and Bavaria had all joined the North-German Confederation by treaty. Early in December, the King of Bavaria, in a letter to the King of Saxony which was really written by Bismarck, nominated the King of Prussia as Emperor of Germany, and the North-German Parliament, after voting large supplies for the continuance of the war, adopted by an overwhelming majority an address requesting the King to become Emperor. His brother and predecessor had refused the Imperial crown proffered him by the Frankfort Parliament, on the ground that the legal title was insufficient, but now that the dignity was tendered by the Sovereigns and the people of Germany, it was not possible for the King to refuse.