The foundation on which his power rested was taken away; men at once began to speculate on his fall.

The noble presence of the Crown Prince, his cheerful and kindly manners, his known attachment to liberal ideas, his strong national feeling, the success with which he had borne himself on the uncongenial field of battle, all had made him the hope of the generation to which he belonged.

Who was so well suited to solve the difficulties of internal policy with which Bismarck had struggled so long?
Hopes never to be fulfilled! Absent from his father's deathbed, he returned to Berlin a crippled and dying man, and when a few weeks later his body was lowered into the grave, there were buried with him the hopes and aspirations of a whole generation.
His early death was indeed a great misfortune for his country.

Not that he would have fulfilled all the hopes of the party that would have made him their leader.

It is never wise to depend on the liberalism of a Crown Prince.