Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen Volume II Part 13

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE EASTERN QUESTION--APPROACHING WAR--GROSS INJUSTICE TO PRINCE ALBERT--DEATH OF MARIA DA GLORIA.

The return of the Court to England was hastened by what had disturbed the peace of the stay in the North. The beginning of a great war was imminent. The Eastern Question, long a source of trouble, was becoming utterly unmanageable. Russia and Turkey were about to take up arms.

Indeed, Russia had already crossed the Danube and occupied the Princ.i.p.alities.

Turkey, in a fever-heat, declared war against Russia, crossed the Danube, and fought with desperate valour and some success at Oltenitza and Kalafat; but matters were brought to a crisis by the nearly utter destruction of the Turkish fleet at Sinope, one of the Turkish ports on the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea. The French and English Governments uttered a practical protest by informing the Czar, that if his fleet in the south made any further movement against the Turks, the English and French fleets already in the Dardanelles would immediately enter the Black Sea and take active steps in defence of their ally.

In the meantime there had been some commotion in the English Cabinet.

Lord Palmerston suddenly resigned, and as quickly resumed office. The ostensible cause of difference between him and his colleagues was the new Reform Bill; but the real motive is believed to have been the Government's tactics with regard to the threatened war. These changed all at once, the change coinciding with the return of Lord Palmerston to office, and suiting the fighting mood of the people. He was once more the favourite of the hour, and in the popular pride and confidence in him, a great injustice was done to another. Startled and angered by Lord Palmerston's withdrawal from the Government, the old clamour about Court prejudice and intrigue, and German objections to Liberal statesmen, broke out afresh, and raged more hotly than ever.

Prince Albert was openly mentioned as the hostile influence "behind the throne," and in the Cabinet of which he was a member, against the man who was prepared to a.s.sert the dignity of England in spite of all opposition; the man who had uniformly sided with the weak, and spoken the truth of tyrants, let them be in ever so high places; the man at the same time who had approved of the _coup d'etat_. The most unfounded charges of unfaithfulness to English interests, and personal interference for the purpose of gaining his own ends, and working into the hands of foreign Governments, were brought against the Queen's husband. His birth as a German, and his connection with the King of the Belgians and the Orleans family, were loudly dwelt upon. It was treated as an offence on his part that he should attend the Cabinet counsels of which he was a member, and be in the confidence of the Queen, who was his loving wife. He was attacked alike by Liberals and Protectionists; a.s.sailed, with hardly an a.s.sumption of disguise, both in public and private, and in many of the princ.i.p.al newspapers. The man who little more than two years before, at the time of the Great Exhibition, had been hailed as a general benefactor, and praised as the worthiest of patriots, was now almost the best-abused man in England, pursued with false accusations and reproaches equally false.

"One word more about the credulity of the public," wrote Prince Albert to Baron Stockmar; "you will scarcely credit that my being committed to the Tower was believed all over the country; nay, even 'that the Queen had been arrested!' People surrounded the Tower in thousands to see us brought to it."

All this ingrat.i.tude and stupidity must have been galling to its object, in spite of his forbearance, and, if possible, still more exquisitely painful to the Queen, who had felt a natural and just pride, not merely in her husband's fine qualities, but in her people's appreciation of them. The Prince wrote in the same letter, "Victoria has taken the whole affair greatly to heart, and was exceedingly indignant at the attacks." And the Queen wrote with proud tender pain to Lord Aberdeen, "In attacking the Prince, who is one and the same with the Queen herself, the throne is a.s.sailed; and she must say she little expected that any portion of her subjects would thus requite the unceasing labours of the Prince."

This unscrupulous accusation was grave enough to demand a refutation in Parliament, which Lord Aberdeen and Lord John Russell were ready to give as soon as the House should meet.

During this trying winter, the Queen heard of the melancholy death of her sister queen and girlish acquaintance, who had become a kinswoman by marriage--Maria da Gloria. The two queens were the same in age-- thirty-four--and each had become the mother of eight children, but there the similarity ceased. At the birth of her last child--dead born--the Queen of Portugal ended a life neither long nor happy, though she had been fortunate in her second husband. Queen Maria da Gloria lacked Queen Victoria's reasonableness and fairness. The Queen of Portugal started on a wrong course, and continued with it, notwithstanding the better judgment of her husband. She supported the Cabrals--the members of a n.o.ble Portuguese family, who held high offices under her government--in ruling unconst.i.tutionally and corruptly. She consented to her people's being deprived of the liberty of the press, and burdened with taxes, till, though her private life was irreproachable, she forfeited their regard. In 1846 civil war broke out, and the Cabrals were compelled to resign; the Count of Soldanha and his party took the place of the former ministers. But the insurrection spread until it was feared the Queen and her husband would be driven out of the country. Suddenly the tide turned; the better portion of the army declared for the Queen, her cause was upheld by the English Government, and peace and the royal authority were restored. But in spite of a pledge that the Cabrals should be excluded from the Government, the elder brother again became Premier, with the old abuse of power. A second revolution was accomplished by Soldanha, to whose control Maria da Gloria had to yield, much against the grain. She was succeeded by her eldest son, Don Pedro, still a minor, with the King-Consort his father for regent, an arrangement which proved satisfactory to the distracted kingdom.

A different event was the premature death of perhaps the most beautiful, and the most fortunate, in the eyes of the world, of the Queen's fair bridesmaids. Lady Sarah Villiers, who had become a princess by her marriage with the son of one of the richest, most aristocratic subjects in Europe, Prince Nicholas Esterhazy--of diamond notoriety, died at Torquay in her thirty-second year.

When Parliament met in January, 1854, the Prince was triumphantly vindicated by the leaders on both sides, but it was not till his death that his character was done full justice to. In the meantime the cloud had broken, and the royal couple rejoiced unaffectedly. The Queen wrote to Baron Stockmar that there was "an immense concourse" of people a.s.sembled, and they were very friendly when she went to the House of Lords. The anniversary of the marriage was hailed with fresh grat.i.tude and gladness, and with words written to Germany that fall pathetically on our ears to-day. "This blessed day is full of joyful, tender emotions," are her Majesty's words. "Fourteen happy and blessed years have pa.s.sed, and I confidently trust many more will, and find us in old age as we are now, happy and devotedly united. Trials we must have; but what are they if we are together?"

It was on this occasion that there was a family masque, of which Baroness Bunsen, who was present, has given a full description. She tells how, between five and six o'clock in the evening, the company followed the Queen and the Prince to a room where a red curtain was let down. They all sat in darkness till the curtain was drawn aside, "and the Princess Alice, who had been dressed to represent 'spring,'

recited some verses taken from Thomson's "Seasons," enumerating the flowers which the spring scatters around, and she did it very well, spoke in a distinct and pleasing manner, with excellent modulation, and a tone of voice like that of the Queen. Then the curtain was drawn up, and the whole scene changed, and the Princess Royal represented 'summer,' with Prince Arthur lying upon some sheaves, as if tired with the heat of the harvest work; the Princess Royal also recited verses.

Then again there was a change, and Prince Alfred, with a crown of vine-leaves and a panther's skin, represented 'autumn,' and recited also verses and looked very well. Then there was a change to a winter landscape, and the Prince of Wales represented 'winter,' with a white beard and a cloak with icicles or snow-flakes (or what looked like such), and the Princess Louise, warmly clothed, who seemed watching the fire; and the Prince also recited well a pa.s.sage altered from Thomson.... Then another change was made, and all the seasons were grouped together, and far behind, on high, appeared the Princess Helena, with a long veil hanging on each side down to her feet, and a long cross in her hand, p.r.o.nouncing a blessing on the Queen and Prince in the name of all the seasons. These verses were composed for the occasion. I understood them to say that St. Helena, remembering her own British extraction, came to utter a blessing on the rulers of her country; and I think it must have been so intended, because Helena the mother of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, was said to have discovered the remains of the cross on which our Saviour was crucified, and so when she is painted she always has a cross in her hand. But grandpapa understood that it was meant for Britannia blessing the royal pair. At any rate, the Princess Helena looked very charming. This was the close; but when the Queen ordered the curtain to be drawn back, we saw the whole royal family, and they were helped to jump down from their raised platforms; and then all came into the light and we saw them well; and the baby, Prince Leopold, was brought in by his nurse, and looked at us all with big eyes, and wanted to go to his papa, Prince Albert. At the dinner-table the Princesses Helena and Louise and Prince Arthur were allowed to come in and stand by their mamma, the Queen, as it a was festival day.... In the evening there was very fine music in St. George's Hall, and the Princess Royal and Princess Alice, and the Prince of Wales and Prince Alfred, were allowed to stop up and hear it, sitting to the right and left of the chairs where sat the Queen and Prince Albert and the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent."

Some of the graceful figures in the pretty masque were given, with modifications, by the sculptor's art. Four are reproduced in the engravings in this book, that of the Princess Royal at page 146, that of Princess Alice at page 190, that of the Prince of Wales at page 153, and that of Prince Alfred at page 224, Volume First.

On the 7th of February Baron Brunnow, who had been Russian amba.s.sador in England for fifteen years, quitted London. Notes were dispatched on the 27th from London and Paris to St. Petersburg, calling on Russia to evacuate the Princ.i.p.alities, a summons to which the Czar declined to reply. War was declared in a supplemental gazette, and on the 31st of March the declaration was read, according to ancient usage, from the steps of the Royal Exchange by the Sergeant-at-Arms of the City of London, to a great crowd that wound up the ceremony by giving three cheers for the Queen. Part of the troops had already embarked, their marching and embarkation being witnessed by mult.i.tudes with the utmost interest and enthusiasm. The chief sight was the departure of the Guards, the Grenadiers leaving by gaslight on the winter morning, the Fusiliers marching to Buckingham Palace, where at seven o'clock the Queen and the Prince, with their children, were ready to say good-bye.

"They formed line, presented arms, and then cheered us very heartily, and went off cheering," the Queen wrote to the King of the Belgians.... "Many sorrowing friends were there, and one saw the shake of many a hand. My best wishes and prayers went with them all." It was a famous scene, which is remembered to this day. Another episode was that of the d.u.c.h.ess of Cambridge and her daughter, the Princess Mary, taking leave of the brigade with which the Duke of Cambridge, the only son and brother, left.

Her Majesty and the Prince started for Osborne in the course of the next fortnight, to visit the superb fleet which was to sail from Spithead under Sir Charles Napier. "It will be a solemn moment," the Queen wrote again to Lord Aberdeen; "many a heart will be very heavy, and many a prayer, including our own, will be offered up for its safety and glory." In spite of the bad weather, which marred the arrangements, the Queen sailed from Portsmouth in the _Fairy_, and pa.s.sing the _Victory_, with its heroic a.s.sociations, went through the squadron of twenty great vessels, amidst the booming of the guns, the manning of the yards, and the cheers of the sailors. The following day the little _Fairy_, with its royal occupants, played a yet more striking part. At the head of the outward-bound squadron, it sailed with the ships for several miles, then stopped for the fleet to pa.s.s by, the Queen standing waving her handkerchief to the flag-ship. Her Majesty was, as she said, "very enthusiastic" about her army and navy, and wished she had sons in both of them, though she foresaw how she would suffer when she heard of the losses of her brave men. If she had not sons in either service, her cousin, the Duke of Cambridge, was with the Guards for a time, and her young nephews, Prince Victor of Hohenlohe and Prince Ernest Leiningen, were with their ships. The Queen paid the same compliment of giving a farewell greeting to the second division of the fleet.

When the address to the Throne in reply to the Queen's message announcing the declaration of war was presented, her Majesty and the Prince were accompanied to the House for the first time by the Prince of Wales, a boy of thirteen.

In the middle of the worry, the season was gay as if no life-blood was drained in strong currents from the country; and Varna, with its cholera swamps, where the troops had encamped on Turkish soil, was not present to all men's minds. The Queen set an example in keeping up the social circulation without which there would be a disastrous collapse of more than one department of trade. On May-day, Prince Arthur's birthday, there was a children's ball, attended by two hundred small guests, at Buckingham Palace. Sir Theodore Martin quotes her Majesty's merry note, inviting the Premier to come and see "a number of happy little people, including some of his grandchildren, enjoying themselves." Among the grandchildren of Lord Aberdeen were the young sons of Lord Haddo--sinking under a long wasting illness--George, sixth Earl of Aberdeen, who, when he came to man's estate, served as an ordinary seaman in a merchant ship, where his rank was unsuspected, and who perished by being washed overboard on a stormy night; and the Honourable James Gordon, who died from the bursting of his gun when he was keeping his terms at Cambridge.

The Queen honoured Count Walewski, the French amba.s.sador, by her presence at one of the most brilliant of costume b.a.l.l.s. A great Court ball was followed by a great Court concert, at which Lablache sang again in England after an interval of many years. Among the visitors to London in June were poor Maria da Gloria's sons, Coburgs on the father's side, young King Pedro of Portugal, and his brother, the Duke of Oporto, fine lads who were much liked wherever they went.

The Queen and the Prince spent her Majesty's birthday at Osborne, and commemorated it to their children by putting them in possession of the greatest treasure of their happy childhood--the Swiss cottage in the grounds, about a mile from the Castle, in which youthful princes and princesses played at being men and women, practised the humbler duties of life, and kept natural history collections and geological specimens, as their father and uncle had kept theirs in the museum at Coburg. Another great resource consisted of the plots of ground--among which the Princess Royal's was a fair-sized garden, ultimately nine in number, where the amateur gardeners studied gardening in the most practical manner, and had their tiny tool-house, with the small spades and rakes properly grouped and duly lettered, "Prince Alfred" or "Princess Louise," as the case might be. A third idea, borrowed like the first from Coburg, was the miniature fort, with its mimic defences, every brick of which was made and built, and the very cannon-b.a.l.l.s founded, by the two sons destined to be soldiers--the Prince of Wales and Prince Arthur.

Before the end of the season cholera broke out in London. Among its victims was Lord Jocelyn, eldest son of Lord Roden, and husband of Lady f.a.n.n.y Cowper. He had been on guard at the palace, and died after an illness of not more than two hours' duration in the drawing-room of his mother-in-law, Lady Palmerston.

The Queen came up to town to prorogue Parliament in person. Afterwards her Majesty and the Prince spent his birthday at Osborne, when one of the amus.e.m.e.nts, no doubt with a view to the entertainment of the children as well as of the grown-up people, was Albert Smith's "Ascent of Mont Blanc," which was then one of the comic sights of London.

Early in September Prince Albert, in compliment to the alliance between England and France, went, by the Emperor's invitation, to visit the French camp at St. Omer, and was absent four or five days.

The Prince's letters were as constant and lover-like as ever.

On the 15th of September the Court arrived at Balmoral, and the same day the Queen received the news of the sailing of the English and French soldiers for the Crimea. An anxious but brief period of suspense followed. Six days later came the tidings of the successful landing, without opposition, in the neighbourhood of Eupatoria.

Lord Aberdeen came on a visit to Balmoral, and had just left when the glad tidings arrived of the victory of the Alma, followed immediately by a false report of the fall of Sebastopol.

During this year's stay in the north, her Majesty met for the first time a remarkable Scotchman whom she afterwards honoured with her friendship. Both the Queen and Dr. Macleod describe the first sermon he preached before her, on Christian life. He adds, "In the evening, after _daundering_ in a green field with a path through it which led to the high-road, and while sitting on a block of granite, full of quiet thoughts, mentally reposing in the midst of the beautiful scenery, I was roused from my reverie by some one asking me if I was the clergyman who had preached that day. I was soon in the presence of the Queen and Prince, when her Majesty came forward and said with a sweet, kind, and smiling face, 'We wish to thank you for your sermon.'

She then asked me how my father was, what was the name of my parish, &c.; and so, after bowing and smiling, they both continued their quiet evening walk alone." [Footnote: Life of Dr. Norman Macleod.]

The Court returned from Balmoral by Edinburgh. At Hull, and again at Grimsby, the Queen and the Prince inspected the docks, of which he had laid the foundation stones.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE BATTLE OF INKERMANN--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE--THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS.

In the beginning of November England heard with mingled triumph and pain of the repulsed attack on the English at Balaclava on the 25th of October, and of the charge of the Light Brigade.

The number of the English soldiers in the field fell lower and lower.

The Queen wrote to King Leopold, "We have but one thought, and so has the nation, and that is--Sebastopol. Such a time of suspense, anxiety, and excitement, I never expected to see, much less to feel."

On the 13th of November telegrams arrived with the news of the battle of Inkermann, fought against terrible odds on the 5th.

The Queen wrote herself to Lord Raglan to tell of her "pride and joy"

at receiving the intelligence of "the glorious, but alas! b.l.o.o.d.y victory of the 5th." She conferred upon him the baton of a Field- Marshal. Her Majesty also addressed a kind and sympathising letter to the widow of Sir George Cathcart.

The Queen wrote with high indignation to the King of the Belgians after the battle of Inkermann: "They (the enemy) behaved with the greatest barbarity; many of our poor officers who were only slightly wounded were brutally butchered on the ground. Several lived long enough to say this. When poor Sir G. Cathcart fell mortally wounded, his faithful and devoted military secretary (Colonel Charles Seymour) ... sprang from his horse, and with one arm--he was wounded in the other--supported his dying chief, when three wretches came and bayoneted him. This is monstrous, and requisitions have been sent by the two commanders-in-chief to Menschikoff to remonstrate...."

The winter of 1854-55 was a sorrowful and care-laden time. Little or no progress was made in the war, while in the meanwhile the sufferings of the soldiers from a defective commissariat, a rigorous climate, and the recurring ravages of cholera, were frightful. The very winds and waves seemed to fight against the allies and to side with "Holy Russia." Never had the Black Sea been visited by such storms and wrecks.

From the palace to the cottage, women's fingers worked eagerly and unweariedly knitting comforters and m.u.f.fatees to protect the throats and wrists of the shivering men. We have heard that the greatest lady in the land deigned thus to serve her soldiers. We have been told of a cravat worked in crochet by a queen's fingers which fell to the share of a gallant young officer in the trenches--the same brave lad who had carried, unscathed, the colours of his regiment to the heights of the Alma.

The hospitals were in as disorganised a state as the commissariat, and Mr. Sydney Herbert, well-nigh in despair, had the bright inspiration of sending to the seat of war Florence Nightingale, the daughter and co-heiress of a Derbyshire squire, with a staff of nurses.

Such reformation of abuses was wrought by a capable devoted woman, such order brought out of disorder, such comfort and consolation carried to wounded and dying men, that the experiment became a triumphant success. Many were the stories told of the soldiers'

boundless reverence for the woman who had left country and friends and all the good things that wealth and rank can command to relieve her fellow-creatures; how one of them was seen to kiss her shadow on the wall of his ward as she pa.s.sed; how the convalescents engaged in strange and wonderful manufactures of gifts to offer to her.

A second large instalment of nurses was sent out after the first, the latter led by Mary Stanley, daughter of the Bishop of Norwich, and sister of the Dean of Westminster, who had already been a sister to the poor in her father's diocese.

The Queen wrote again to Lord Raglan, "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 the Prince. The braver her n.o.ble troops are, the more patiently and heroically they bear all their trials and sufferings, the more miserable we feel at their 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.

"The Queen heard that their coffee was given them green instead of roasted, and some other things of this kind, which have distressed her, as she feels so anxious that they should be as comfortable as circ.u.mstances can admit of. The Queen earnestly trusts that the large amount of warm clothing sent out has not only reached Balaclava, but has been distributed, and that Lord Raglan has been successful in procuring the means of hutting for the men. 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."

No sooner had Parliament rea.s.sembled than Mr. Roebuck brought forward his famous motion for the appointment of a committee to inquire into the state of the army and the management of the War Department of the Government.