... Sir Robert Peel has informed Lord Aberdeen that he had mentioned to your Majesty the suggestion of the King of Prussia to confer the Order of the Black Eagle2 upon the Prince of Wales, immediately after the christening of his Royal Highness. Lord Aberdeen therefore abstains from troubling your Majesty with any observations on this subject.
Footnote 2: Founded by Frederick I. in 1701.
Lord Fitzgerald to Queen Victoria.
DISASTERS IN AFGHANISTAN
8th January 1842.
Lord Fitzgerald, with his most humble duty to your Majesty, begs leave humbly to inform your Majesty that despatches have been this day received at the India House from the Earl of Auckland, Governor-General of India, which most officially confirm to too great an extent the disastrous intelligence contained in the public journals of yesterday, the particulars of which the editors of these journals had received by express messengers from Marseilles.3
This intelligence is of a most painful character, and though the details which have arrived do high honour to the courage and the gallantry of your Majesty's forces, as well as of the East India Company's Army, yet the loss sustained has been very great, and many valuable officers have fallen the victims of a widespread conspiracy which seems to have embraced within its confederation the most warlike tribes of the Afghan nation.
Lord Fitzgerald begs leave most humbly to lay before your Majesty an interesting despatch from Lord Auckland, comprising the most important details of the late events in Afghanistan.
It is very satisfactory to Lord Fitzgerald to be enabled humbly to acquaint your Majesty that Lord Auckland has decided on waiting the arrival of his successor, Lord Ellenborough, and states to Lord Fitzgerald that he will feel it to be his duty to remain in his [Government], in the present critical state of affairs, until he is relieved by the new Governor-General.
All of which is most humbly submitted to your Majesty, by your Majesty's most dutiful Subject and Servant,