Wilhelm I, a second son nobody expected to rule, became Germany's first emperor
Born a younger son, Wilhelm of Prussia was not supposed to reign. He became king at 63, only because his brother had no children and suffered a disabling stroke. With Otto von Bismarck beside him, he then presided over three wars and, in 1871, was proclaimed emperor of a newly united Germany.
Wilhelm was born in Berlin's Kronprinzenpalais on 22 March 1797, the second son of the future Frederick William III and Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. In the army from 1814, he fought Napoleon with reported courage, won the Iron Cross at Bar-sur-Aube, and served under Blücher at Ligny and Waterloo. As a senior officer he became the royal family's voice for a strong, well-equipped army.
His father made him end a romance with his cousin Elisa Radziwill as an unsuitable match, and in 1829 he married Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, an outwardly steady but unhappy union. When his brother became king in 1840 without children, Wilhelm became heir. In 1848 he put down a Berlin revolt with cannon, earning the nickname Prince of Grapeshot, and had to slip away to England disguised as a merchant before returning to suppress an uprising in Baden. Time in Koblenz among liberal scholars gradually softened his views.
After Frederick William IV's 1857 stroke, Wilhelm became regent in 1858 and king on 2 January 1861, crowning himself at Königsberg. When the liberal Landtag refused funds for an army expansion from 150,000 to 200,000 men, he appointed Bismarck minister president in 1862, a partnership that lasted the rest of his life. Victories over Denmark and Austria made Prussia the leading German state, and after the Franco-Prussian War the German Empire was proclaimed in 1871.
As Kaiser he largely left government to Bismarck. Several failed attempts on his life gave the chancellor grounds to pass the Anti-Socialist Laws. Wilhelm died on 9 March 1888, aged 90, beginning the Year of the Three Emperors; his grandson Wilhelm II later styled him Wilhelm the Great.
Source: Wilhelm I
