I forget now the wonderful escapes from tight corners in the field, the glowing descriptions of the valour of the Carlists, the number of times that Staff Officers had asked for my advice as to the conduct of the war, and the many other extraordinary tarradiddles that I poured, night after night, into the willing ears of my astounded and bewildered fellow cadets. One curiosity, however, may be mentioned. Amongst the most energetic of Don Carlos’s officers was his sister, Princess Mercedes, who personally commanded a cavalry regiment for some considerable time during the war.
The rest of my stay at Woolwich was uneventful. I did manage to get through the examination at the end of the term, but this was chiefly owing to the generous help of those cadets in my term who personally coached me in such subjects as I had missed. A year afterwards, at the end of the fourth term, the Royal Regiment of Artillery was short of officers. The numbers of cadets in the A Division leaving the “Shop” was not sufficient to fill the vacancies. Some eight extra commissions were offered to the fourth term cadets who were willing to forgo their opportunities of qualifying for the Royal Engineers by remaining for another term. A gunner was good enough for me, and I was duly gazetted to the regiment.
I am just here reminded of an incident which took place on the day on which His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge attended the Academy to bestow the commissions and present the prizes on the breaking-up day. The Prince Imperial of France had been a cadet with us. On that particular occasion he was presented with the prize for equitation, of which he was very proud. He was a good sport. He was very keen on fencing, but he had been taught on the French lines, and, as the French system was different from our English system he did not enter his name for the fencing prize. But he said that he would like to have a go with the foils against the winner of the prize. I had happened to win it. The little encounter was arranged as an interlude in the athletic exhibition forming part of the day’s function. We masked. We met. I was just starting to do the ceremonial fencing salute which generally preceded the actual hostilities, when he came to the engage, lunged, and had it not been for the button of the enemy’s foil and my leather jacket, there would have been short shrift for J. M. G. He quickly called “One to me.” Then I quickly lunged, got home, and called out, “One to me.” Next instant we both lunged again, with equal results. We would have finished each other’s earthly career if there had been no buttons and no leather jackets. The referee sharply called “Dead heat. All over.” We shook hands in the usual amicable way and had a good laugh over the bout.
We parted on that occasion on our different roads in life—he shortly afterwards to meet his untimely end in the wilds of South Africa. Later on I remember attending his funeral. His death was indeed a sad blow to his mother, the Empress Eugénie, whose hopes had been centred on him her only son. I well remember, as a youngster, when visiting Madrid with my mother, looking forward to be taken to see her mother, the Countess of Montijo, who, with my grandmother, had been lady-in-waiting to Her Majesty Queen Christina.
Just lately I was at Jeréz again, when the ex-Empress Eugénie motored from Gibraltar to Seville, accompanied by her nephew the Duke of Alba. They stopped for luncheon at the Hotel Cisnes. I had the honour of a conversation with her. Her brightness and her memory were quite unimpaired though in her ninety-fifth year. She recollected the incident of the fencing bout at which she had been present. Now she has passed away to her rest.
Gazetted Lieutenant, Royal Artillery, March, 1876, I was ordered to join at the Royal Artillery Barracks, Woolwich, in April.
CHAPTER V
MY MEETINGS WITH KING ALFONSO
While the exiled Prince Imperial was at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich another exiled Royal Prince, in the person of Alfonso XII, father of the present King and the successful claimant in the great Carlist struggle, who came to his own in 1875, was undergoing training in the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. I came to know him intimately during his stay in England owing to the fact that the Count of Mirasol, whose sister married my eldest brother, was his tutor and factotum.