Shortly afterwards, in 1832, Prince Charles returned to Hesse, where he joined his father's army and became a general in the infantry.

[1] In December 1835 at Fischbach Castle in Silesia, Prince Charles was engaged to his second cousin Princess Elisabeth of Prussia.

She was also a niece of King Frederick William III of Prussia and her sister was the future Queen Marie of Bavaria.

[1] The couple moved into the Prinz-Carl-Palais at Wilhelminenstraße 34 in Darmstadt, a residence they had built in Neoclassical style by the architect Georg Moller from 1834 to 1836.

As a liberal, the prince was long an advocate of giving the Grand Duchy of Hesse a free constitution.

On 19 March 1877, Queen Victoria received a telegram from her daughter Alice, wife of Charles' son Louis, saying that they "feared the worst".

[4] Prince Charles was buried at the Altes Mausoleum at Park Rosenhöhe in Darmstadt, one of the burial sites of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt.