WILLIAM I. (1797-1888), king of Prussia and German em peror, second son of Frederick William III. of Prussia and Louise, a princess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, was born at Berlin on March 22, 1797, and received the names of Wilhelm Friedrich Ludwig.
After the battle of Jena he spent three years at Konigsberg and Memel. On Jan. 1, 1807 he received an officer's patent, and on Oct. 3o, 1813 was appointed a captain. William accompanied his father in the campaign of 1814, and early in 1815, received the iron cross for personal bravery shown at Bar-sur-Aube. He took part in the entry into Paris on March 31, 1814, and afterwards visited Lon don. He joined the Prussian army in the final campaign of the Napoleonic wars, and again entered Paris. He was made a colonel and member of the permanent military commission at 20, a major-general at 21, and commander of a division in 1820. During the following nine years he mastered the Prussian military system and studied closely those of the other European States. In 1825 he was promoted lieutenant-general, and commander of the corps of guards. On June II, 182q he married Augusta (d. Jan. 1, 1890), daughter of Charles Frederick, grand duke of Saxe-Weimar, a lady of liberal tendencies and Catholic sympathies, whose con siderable influence at court was generally exerted against that of Bismarck. By this lady William had two children: the crown prince Frederick William (b. 1831) who succeeded him as Frederick III. (q.v.) and the Princess Louise (b. 1838) who in 185o married the grand duke of Baden.
On the death of his father in 184o—the new king, Frederick William IV., being childless—Prince William, as heir presumptive to the throne, received the title of prince of Prussia. He was also made lieutenant-governor of Pomerania and appointed a general of infantry. In politics he was decidedly conservative. On the outbreak of the revolution of 1848 he saw that some concessions were necessary, but urged that order should first be restored. Generally held responsible for the bloodshed in Berlin on March 18 (and hence nicknamed the "Cartridge Prince," although actually no longer in command of the guards), William was so hated for his supposed reactionary views that the king entreated him to leave the country for some time. He went to London, where he formed intimate personal relations with the leading English statesmen. Returning to Berlin, on June 8 he took his seat in the Prussian national assembly, and spoke expressing belief in constitutional principles. In 1849 he conducted the army which crushed the revolutionary movement in Baden. At the beginning of the campaign an unsuccessful attempt was made on his life. In Oct. 1849 he was appointed military governor of the Rhine land and Westphalia. In 1854 he was promoted field-marshal and made governor of the fortress of Mainz. On Oct. 7, 1858 he became regent for his brother, succeeding him on Jan. 2, 1861.
The political events of William's regency and reign are told elsewhere. (See GERMANY : History.) William was not a ruler of the intellectual type of Frederick the Great; 'but he believed intensely in the "God of battles" and in his own divine right as the viceregent of God so conceived. He believed also in the ultimate
union of Germany and in the destiny of Prussia as its instrument ; and held that whoever aspired to rule Germany must seize it for himself. But an attitude so alien to the Liberal temper of contemporary Germany was tempered by shrewd common sense, and wisdom in his choice of advisers. Thus as regent he called the Liberals into office on Bismarck's advice, though later he did not hesitate to override the Constitution when parliament refused supplies for the new armaments. From Sept. 1862, when Bismarck took office as minister president, William's personality tends to be obscured by that of his masterful servant. Yet he was no cipher. His prejudices, indeed, were apt to run athwart the minister's plans; as in the Schleswig-Holstein question, when the king's conscience regarding the claims of the Augustenburg prince threatened to wreck Bismarck's combinations. But, as Bismarck put it, the annexation of the duchies gave him "a taste for con quest," and in the campaign of 1866 the difficulty was to restrain the king, who wished to enter Vienna in triumph.
In 1870-71 again it was Bismarck and not the king that gave the determining impulse. King William's attitude was strictly correct ; and the excitement which it aroused in France was due to Bis marck's editing of the Ems telegram. On the French declaration of war all Germany rallied round the king of Prussia, and when, on July 31, he quitted Berlin to join his army, he knew that he had the support of a united nation. It was during the siege of Paris, at his headquarters in Versailles, that he was proclaimed German emperor (Jan. 18, 1871). On March 21, he opened the first imperial parliament of Germany; on June 16, he entered Berlin at the head of his troops.
After that period the emperor left the destinies of Germany almost entirely in the hands of Bismarck. In his personal history the most notable events were two attempts upon his life in 1878, on the second of which he was seriously wounded. Until within a few days of his death the emperor's health was remarkably robust; he died at Berlin, March 9, 1888.
William I.'s military writings were published in 2 vols. at Berlin in 1897. Of his letters and speeches several collections have appeared: Politische Korrespondenz Kaiser Wilhelms I. (1890) ; Kaiser Wilhelms des Grossen Briefe, Reden and Schriften (2 vols., 1905) , and his correspondence with Bismarck (ed. Penzler, Leipzig, 'goo). A large number of biographies have appeared in German, of which may be Mentioned L. Schneider's Aus dem Leben Kaiser Wilhelms (3 vols., 1888; Fr. trans., 1888) ; Oncken, Das Zeitalter Kaiser Wilhelms (2 vols., 1890-92) ; F. Delbrdck, Die Jugend des Kdnigs Friedrich Wilhelm IV. von Preussen and des Kaisers u. Kdnigs Wilhelm I., Tagebuchblatter (1907) ; E. Marcks, Kaiser Wilhelm I. (Leipzig, 1897; 5th ed. 1905). In English have appeared William of Germany, by Archibald Forbes (1888), a translation of Edouard Simon's The Emperor William and his Reign (2 vols., 1886). See also GERMANY.