with their two youngest children,
Princess Anne and
Prince William in the 1860s. From 1836 until his death in 1877, Prince Charles was
colonel-in-chief of the 4. Infantry Regiment, later named "Prinz Carl" after him. In accordance with the Constitution of the Grand Duchy of Hesse, Prince Charles was a member of the
First Chamber of the
Landtag of the Grand Duchy of Hesse from 1834 until a reform of the electoral law in 1849. As a liberal, the prince was long an advocate of giving the Grand Duchy of Hesse a free constitution. At the
March Revolution of 1848, Prince Charles' father, Grand Duke Louis II, was forced to
abdicate and handed over the throne to his son, Prince Charles' older brother, who became Grand Duke Louis III. As a consequence of the
reactionism, Prince Charles was again a member of the First Chamber from 1856 to 1877. in 1864. 1st row from left:
Countess Julia Hauke, Princess of Battenberg;
Princess Elisabeth,
Marie Alexandrovna, Tsarina of Russia;
Princess Alice. 2nd row from left: Prince Charles,
Prince Wilhelm;
Prince Louis;
Prince Gustav of Vasa;
Prince Alexander. As Prince Charles' elder brother, Grand Duke Louis III, and his wife Princess Mathilde of Bavaria, did not have children, Prince Charles was his
heir presumptive. However, Prince Charles never became Grand Duke, partly because he died before his brother, partly because his eldest son, Prince Louis, had already been appointed successor to the throne. In 1862 the son concluded a brilliant marriage, as he married
Princess Alice of the United Kingdom, second daughter of
Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Two years later, his daughter Anna, who had been a confident of her cousin, the young
King Ludwig II of Bavaria, married
Frederick Francis II, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. She died the following year, however, at the age of just 22 years. ==Death and burial==