her husband does not appear to have shared. Military career During the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, Louis commanded the Hessian cavalry in support of the Austrian side. The Austrians were defeated in the War, and the Hessian grand duchy was in jeopardy of being awarded as the spoils of war to victorious Prussia, which annexed some of Austria's other allies (Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau). Hesse-Darmstadt appears to have been spared this fate only by a cession of territory and the close dynastic kinship between its ruler and the Emperor of Russia (Alexander II's consort, Empress Maria Alexandrovna, was the sister of Hesse's Grand Duke Louis III and of Prince Charles). In the Franco-Prussian War Prince Louis fought on the side of Prussia and the North German Confederation; commanding the 25th Division. He was credited with courageous military service, especially at the Battle of Gravelotte, which also afforded him the opportunity of mending the previous war's grievances with the House of Hohenzollern by fighting on the same side as his brother-in-law and future emperor, Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia. He had good relationship with Frederick William and his wife Victoria, the Princess Royal, all of his lifetime. He also visited him on his deathbed in 1888. Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine In March 1877, Louis became heir presumptive to the Hessian throne when his father died and, less than three months later, found himself reigning grand duke upon the demise of his uncle, Louis III. A year and a half later, however, Grand Duke Louis was stricken with diphtheria along with most of his immediate family. He recovered; but his four-year-old daughter Marie succumbed, along with his wife of 16 years. From then on, he reigned and raised his five surviving children alone. His daughter Alix married Tsar Nicholas II two years after his death in 1894. Second marriage Grand Duchess Alice having died in 1878, Louis IV contracted a morganatic marriage on 30 April 1884 in Darmstadt (on the eve of the wedding of his eldest daughter, for which Queen Victoria and other relatives of his first wife were gathered in the Hessian capital) with Countess Alexandrine Hutten-Czapska (3 September 1854 – 8 May 1941), daughter of Count Adam Hutten-Czapski and Countess Marianna Rzewuska. She was the former wife of Aleksander von Kolemin, the Russian chargé d'affaires in Darmstadt. But the couple, facing objections from the Grand Duke's