Mower County Transcript

The Future Great.

Now that everybody is talking of Prince Alexander of Bulgaria, it may be of interest to note that this maternal grandfather, Count Hauck, was a man of very obscure parentage. Sixty years ago, Hauck entered the service of Count Bruhl, the head of the museum at Dresden, as a copying clerk. After a few months he went to Warsaw, and though a man of no particular attainments, started a small paper devoted to military matters. This brought him under the notice of the Grand Duke Constantine, who was then Governor of Warsaw, and gave his son a commission in the Russian army. With such patronage young Hauck, though of small education, was rapidly advanced, and a few years after was raised to the rank of Colonel and created a Count. It is a mystery even now what services he rendered to the Grand Duke to entitle him to such exceptional favors. However, he did not enjoy his good fortune long, as in the Polish insurrection of 1830 he was among the first victims, being shot dead as he was on the point of leaving his house. Hauck's services to the Grand Duke seem to have been of such a special character that after his death his daughter was brought up at the expense of the Russian Government by the influence of her father's late patron. When hardly out of her teens she made the acquaintance of Prince Alexander of Hesse-Darmstadt, the brother of the late Empress of Russia, who, in spite of the remonstrances of his relatives, insisted upon marrying her. This mesalliance compelled him to relinquish his position at the Imperial Court and return to Darmstadt with his wife, who was created Princess of Battenberg. The history of this family is most extraordinary, seeing that one of the offspring of this union—Prince Alexander of Bulgaria—has just set Europe at defiance in Eastern Roumelia, whilst another has married the youngest daughter of the Queen and the third Her Majesty's granddaughter, the daughter of the Grand Duke of Hesse.