16 
Kaspar Hauser. 
He consulted with Major Hennenhofer, who expressed his regret 
that his advice to make away with the infant in the beginning had 
not been followed, and suggested the same sufficient means of 
escape from the present difficulty. But Ludwig could not bring 
himself to sanction the actual murder of the child, and so a third 
person was summoned to the conference, who declared that the 
only safe course to pursue was to set the Prince at liberty and 
proclaim him as the true heir. But this plan did not suit either 
of the chief conspirators, and the result was, that after a long dis- 
cussion between Ludwig and Hennenhofer, the latter started 
immediately for Bavaria, accompanied by the priest, Eschbach, 
and during the night of May 23, 1828, they took the Prince away 
from the underground cell in which he had so long been confined 
and brought him secretly to Nuremberg, where he was taken into 
the city as far as a small square, called Unschlitt-Platz, and left 
there alone, with a letter in his hand. 
It was, no doubt, intended by the conspirators that the youth 
should be picked up as a recruit for the army, which was, at 
that time, in need of all the men it could muster, in which case, 
his identity would be lost forever in the ranks of the common 
soldiery. Should his apparent stupidity and helplessness prevent 
his acceptance for military service, it was almost certain that he 
would be sent as an idiot to some one of the numerous asylums 
for which Nuremberg was noted.