Queen Victoria (19 page)

On the 10th of March the Court left London for the Isle of Wight. At Spithead lay the magnificent fleet, under the command of Sir Charles Napier, which was under orders to sail for the Baltic. Through the twenty ships, all but three propelled by steam, the Queen and Prince were conveyed in the
Fairy
from Portsmouth to Osborne. The next day, in the same yacht, they returned to witness the departure of the first division of the squadron for the North. The
Fairy
led for some miles, and then stopped while the fleet passed by, saluting as it went. The Queen, in a letter to Baron Stockmar, expresses her own feelings in these words, “I am very enthusiastic about my dear Army and Navy, and wish I had two sons in both
now
. I know I shall suffer much when I hear of losses among them.”

During the progress of the War the thoughts of the Queen and Prince never strayed from the sailors and soldiers; the success of their arms was a source of deep pride and joy, but these feelings were saddened by the tales of loss, suffering, famine, and disease, which arrived from the Camp before Sebastopol. The winter was one of unusual severity, and the hardships caused by its rigour at home increased the sympathy felt by all classes, as each mail brought news of the sufferings of the troops on the bleak hills of the Crimea. To Lord Raglan at the close of the year the Queen wrote: “The sad privations of the Army, the bad weather, and the constant sickness are causes of the deepest concern and anxiety to the Queen and Prince. The braver her noble troops are, the more patiently and heroically they bear all their trials and sufferings, the more miserable we feel at this long continuance. The Queen trusts that Lord Raglan will be
very
strict in seeing that no
unnecessary
privations are incurred by any negligence of those whose duty it is to watch over their wants… Lord Raglan cannot think how much we suffer for the Army, and how painfully anxious we are to know that their privations are decreasing… The Queen cannot conclude without wishing Lord Raglan and the whole of the Army, in the Prince’s name and her own, a happy and
glorious
New Year.”

In the summer of 1854, the Queen and Prince received a visit from their young relatives, the King of Portugal and his brother the Duke of Oporto, the sons of the late Queen Donna Maria de Gloria, whom Her Majesty had known from her childhood. With the Queen and Prince they went to Ascot Races, and were present at the opening of the new Crystal Palace at Sydenham. On the 4th of September, in response to a very cordial invitation from the Emperor Napoleon, Prince Albert left Osborne for Boulogne, to inspect the encampments of French troops which had been formed in the vicinity. In the mutual liking and esteem which resulted from this visit began a lasting friendship, drawn closer by the tie of common sorrow which still unites the widowed Queen and the widowed and now childless Empress of the French.

Parliament, which had been opened by the Queen in person on the 12th of December, after a short but stormy and exciting session, in which the conduct of the Ministry was severely criticised, adjourned till the 23rd of January, 1855, when it re-assembled. The attacks on the Ministry were pressed with such energy, that Lord Aberdeen and his colleagues were forced to retire. Though the Queen’s difficulties and anxieties were at length somewhat alleviated by the formation of a Ministry under Lord Palmerston, yet the criticism of public men grew more and more bitter. There was little brightness in the position of things: the brilliant victories of Alma and Inkermann had produced no tangible result; Sebastopol still defied, and under Todleben grew stronger to defy, the attacks of a force which, exposed to the rigour of a Scythian winter, was daily thinned by sickness and privation.

On the 2nd of March, 1855, the Emperor Nicholas died at St. Petersburg, and was succeeded by the Emperor Alexander II. A week later began the series of deliberations between the Powers of Europe for the restoration of peace, which resulted in the abortive labour of the Vienna Conference. The war in the Crimea still continued. It was on the day following the receipt in England of the news of the death of the Czar, that the Queen with the Prince visited the military hospitals at Chatham, where the wounded soldiers, who had been conveyed home, were lying. The visit made a great impression upon Her Majesty, who urged upon the Secretary for War the necessity for more military hospitals, and for better arrangements for the treatment of their inmates. The great establishment at Netley was the result of this direct intervention of the Sovereign.

On the 16th of April, 1855, occurred the memorable visit of the Emperor Napoleon with the Empress to these shores, an event remarkable from the fact that it arose out of an alliance so unforeseen that the whole traditionary policy of Europe was based upon the assumption of its impossibility. The success of the visit was, however, great and enduring. The Imperial visitors, after an enthusiastic welcome in the course of their journey from Dover through London, arrived at Windsor Castle in the evening, where they were received by the Queen and the Royal Family, and lodged in the principal suite of rooms on the north side, which had been before, by a strange irony of fate, tenanted by the Emperor Nicholas and by King Louis Philippe. The pleasing impression made upon the Queen by her first conversation with the Emperor was confirmed during the course of the visit. Her Majesty notes that her guest was “very quiet and amiable and easy to get on with… Nothing can be more civil or amiable or more well-bred than the Emperor’s manner - so full of tact.” On the afternoon of the 17th a review was held in the Great Park, where the Queen, accompanied by the Empress, the Emperor and Prince Albert being on horseback, reviewed a body of cavalry, composed of the 2nd Life Guards, the Royal Horse Guards, the Carabiniers, and a troop of Horse Artillery, under the command of Lord Cardigan. In the evening there was a ball in the Waterloo Gallery, of which the Queen writes: “How strange to think that I, the grand-daughter of George III, should dance with the Emperor Napoleon, nephew of England’s greatest enemy, now my nearest and most intimate ally, in the
Waterloo
Room
, and this ally only six years ago living in this country an exile, poor and unthought of.” “Strange indeed!” writes Sir Theodore Martin, “and none could have been so deeply impressed by the contrast as the Emperor himself, when he looked round at the portraits, with which the room is panelled, of the great statesmen and soldiers, the struggle and glory of whose lives it had been to hold his famous ancestor in check.” A view of this historic room is given opposite page 136.

Another ceremony which must have called up strange thoughts in the minds of the spectators took place next day, when at a Chapter of the Order of the Garter, held in the Throne Room, the Sovereign invested the Emperor with the insignia of the Order. The last knight who had been invested by the Sovereign in person, in a full Chapter of the Order at Windsor, was King Louis Philippe. On the following day the Queen with her Imperial guests and the whole Court moved to Buckingham Palace, whence the Emperor and Empress paid a visit to the City of London, and in the evening, with the Queen and Prince Albert, to the Royal Italian Opera. The reception of the Imperial visitors on these occasions showed how cordially the alliance between the two Powers was welcomed by all classes of their subjects. The welcome was no less apparent the following day when the newly-opened Crystal Palace at Sydenham was visited. The next day the Emperor and Empress took leave of the Queen, and, escorted by Prince Albert as far as Dover, returned to France.

Of the visit the Queen has noted in her Journal: “It went off so well - not a hitch or
contretemps
- fine weather, everything smiling; the nation enthusiastic, and happy in the firm and intimate alliance and union of two great countries, whose enmity would be fatal. We have war now, certainly, but war which does not threaten our shores, our homes, and internal prosperity, which war with France ever must do… I am glad to have known this extraordinary man… I believe him to be capable of kindness, affection, friendship, and gratitude. I feel confidence in him as regards the future.” That the esteem was mutual may be inferred from an extract from the letter written to the Queen by the Emperor on the 25th of April, in which he says, “I feel it to be my first duty again to assure you how deep is the impression left upon my mind by the reception, so full of grace and affectionate kindness, vouchsafed to me by your Majesty. Political interests first brought us into contact, but today, permitted as I have been to become personally known to your Majesty, it is a living and respectful sympathy by which I am, and shall be henceforth, bound to your Majesty. In truth, it is impossible to live for a few days as an inmate of your home without yielding to the charm inseparable from the spectacle of the grandeur and the happiness of the most united of families. Your Majesty has also touched me to the heart by the delicacy of the consideration shown to the Empress; for nothing pleases more than to see the person one loves become the object of such flattering attentions.”

On the 18th of May, 1855, in the centre of the Horse Guards Parade, the Queen with her own hand presented to the officers of the Army of the Crimea, and to a portion of the noncommissioned officers and privates of regiments which had been engaged in the East, who had returned to this country on leave or disabled by their wounds, the war medals they had deserved by their gallant service. The Queen herself best describes this touching ceremonial in a letter of the 22nd of May to the King of the Belgians. “Ernest will have told you what a beautiful and touching sight and ceremony (the first of the kind ever witnessed in England) the distribution of the medals was. From the highest prince of the blood to the lowest private, all received the same distinction for the bravest conduct in the severest actions, and the rough hand of the brave and honest private soldier came for the first time in contact with that of their Sovereign and their Queen. Noble fellows! I own I feel as if they were my own children - my heart beats for them as for my nearest and dearest! They were so touched, so pleased - many, I hear, cried; and they won’t hear of giving up their medals to have their names engraved upon them, for fear that they should not receive the identical one put into their hands by me! Several came by in a sadly mutilated state. None created more interest or is more gallant than young Sir Thomas Trowbridge, who had at Inkermann one leg and the foot of another carried away by a round shot, and continued commanding his battery till the battle was over…

He was dragged by in a Bath-chair, and when I gave him his medal, I told him I should make him one of my aides-de-camp for his very gallant conduct, to which he replied, ‘I am amply repaid for everything.’ One must love and revere such soldiers as those.”

On the 18th of August, 1855, the Queen and Prince Albert, accompanied by the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, left Osborne for Boulogne and Paris, to return the visit of the Emperor and Empress of the French to England. No English Sovereign had visited the French capital since the coronation of the infant Henry VI at Paris in 1422. In 1688, James II, it is true, had sought the protection of Louis XIV, and was lodged by him in one of his palaces, but he was a fugitive and an exile, and the throne of England was occupied by his son-in-law. In 1815, four centuries after the expulsion of the Plantagenets, the generals of an English army, which had given the first Emperor Napoleon his final overthrow, and stormed the defences of Paris, occupied its gates and palaces as conquerors. They restored to his throne the heir of the Bourbons, Louis XVIII, whose great-grandfather had waged war against England for the restoration of the heir of the Stuarts. Fifteen years later his brother, Charles X., fled again to England, and the throne of France was occupied by a Bourbon of the House of Orleans. He, in his turn, eighteen years afterwards, fled to the shores of England, and there remained the guest of the English Queen. His fallen sceptre was seized by the nephew of the great Emperor whom the English arms had overthrown in 1814, and who had died a prisoner on an English island. The new ruler had lived in exile under the protection of the English laws; he had borne himself as a citizen of the land of his refuge, and, when the safety of its capital was menaced, had enrolled himself as a special constable for its defence. He was now absolute Sovereign of the French people, and the State visit of the Queen of England to the French Emperor in his own capital was, therefore, from every point of view a most remarkable event.

The Queen and Prince on their arrival passed through Paris to St. Cloud, which had been placed at their disposal by the Emperor, and here they were received by the Empress. The next day being Sunday was kept as a day of rest, and on Monday the Royal party, under the guidance of Prince Napoleon, inspected the Palais des Beaux-Arts, a portion of the Great Exposition de l’lndustrie. On Tuesday a visit was paid to Versailles, and next day was devoted to a further examination of the Palais de 1’Industrie. On Thursday the Queen and Prince were conducted over the Louvre, with its multifarious treasures of art, and in the evening the Municipality of Paris gave a magnificent ball in the Hdtel de Ville, which had been decorated with a brilliance and splendour surpassing all previous experience. On Friday, after again visiting the Palais de 1’Industrie, the Queen was present at a review of forty-five thousand troops in the Champ de Mars, and exceedingly admired the appearance and equipment of the battalions. After this, as the Queen wrote in her Journal, “We drove straight to the Hotel des Invalides, under the dome of which Napoleon lies, late as it was, because we were most anxious not to miss this, perhaps the most important act of all in this very interesting and eventful time. It was nearly seven when we arrived. All the Invalides - chiefly of the former, but some of the present, war - were drawn up on either side of the court into which we drove… There were four torches which lit us along, and added to the solemnity of the scene, which was striking in every way. The church is fine and lofty. We went to look from above into the open vault… the coffin is not yet there, but in a small side chapel de St. Jerome. Into this the Emperor led me, and there I stood, at the arm of Napoleon III, his nephew, before the coffin of England’s bitterest foe; I, the grand-daughter of that King who hated him most and who most vigorously opposed him, and this very nephew, who bears his name, being my nearest and dearest ally! The organ of the church was playing ‘God save the Queen’ at the time, and this solemn scene took place by torchlight, and during a thunder-storm. Strange and wonderful indeed! It seems as if in this tribute of respect to a departed and dead foe, old enmities and rivalries were wiped out, and the seal of Heaven placed upon that bond of unity which is now happily established between two great and powerful nations. May Heaven bless and prosper it!”