PORTSMOUTH.
During the spring of the year the wounded from the Crimea had been pouring in. In February the Queen presented Miss Florence Nightingale with a jewel, somewhat resembling the badge of an Order of Knighthood, for her services at Scutari. On the 16th of April her Majesty went to Chatham with her husband to visit these victims of the war. She passed through the wards much affected by the sight of some of the more ghastly wounds, speaking kind and comforting words of sympathy to those who had suffered most severely. The Camp at Aldershot was also visited on the 18th of April, and 14,000 troops were reviewed, her Majesty riding along the line whilst the men presented arms. Next morning was a field day, and the Queen appeared on the ground on horseback, wearing a Field-Marshal’s uniform, with the Star of the Garter over a dark-blue riding-habit. On the 23rd of April the splendid fleet
SIR DE LACY EVANS.
at Spithead was reviewed. The spectacle was one of surpassing magnificence, and upwards of 100,000 persons witnessed it, crowding every spot from which a view could be obtained between Fort Monckton and Southsea Castle. The Solent was alive with yachts and craft of all kinds, decked with bunting, which fluttered gaily in the light breeze. The Queen’s yacht left Portsmouth Harbour at noon, steamed down and returned through the double line of war-ships. As the yacht rounded the Royal George and Duke of Wellington they opened a Royal salute, and their yards were suddenly manned, as if by magic, with seamen, each trying to cheer louder than his comrade. This manœuvre was repeated in succession by every ship in the fleet, and the effect was imposing and impressive. A mimic attack on Southsea Castle followed, and at night the whole fleet was suddenly and simultaneously illuminated with blue lights from yards and portholes.
“Our army,” Prince Albert wrote, in April, “has begun to return, and it will require redoubled exertions to keep up its organisation.” In fact, already an active party in the Cabinet had begun to demand heavy retrenchment on military expenditure. The Queen had long been convinced that hurried retrenchments led to wasteful panic expenditure, and was very much concerned when she heard what was being mooted in the Ministry. Hence she wrote to Lord Palmerston expressing her strong feeling that retrenchment should be moderate and gradual. “To the miserable reductions of the last thirty years,” she says, “is entirely owing our state of helplessness when the war began;” and surely, she urged, Ministers were not going to forget the lesson taught by our sufferings in the Crimea. What, however, was most seriously wanted was a new military system which would properly utilise the money already voted for the army, and prevent it from being jobbed into the hands of incompetent persons with powerful family interest. Sir De Lacy Evans, on the 4th of March, made an effort to persuade the House of Commons to abolish the purchase system, which he described as “a stain upon the service and a dishonour to England,” and Lord Goderich warmly advocated the application of some effective tests of competence to candidates for commissions. But though everybody sympathised with Evans, nobody would help him to carry out his ideas. In the abstract, said Lord Palmerston, purchase was bad. No one would propose such a system if we were establishing an army for the first time. It existed only in the British army, but, then, it did exist, and it had existed so long that it was hard to get rid of it without injustice to individuals,[284] and great expenditure in compensation. Yet the highest estimate made of the value of commissions did not exceed £8,000,000—less than half the sum voted every year by the House of Commons for the troops; and even that sum would have had to be paid, not at once, but over a long series of years, under any scheme, to release an army which had been pawned to its officers. Prince Albert, in conjunction with Lord Hardinge, drew up a plan for a new military organisation, which, however, did not touch questions of patronage or promotion. On the 19th of May the Queen laid the foundation stone of the great military hospital at Netley, the first of the kind in England, and an institution which we owe entirely to her Majesty. “Loving my dear, brave army as I do,” she writes to King Leopold, “and having seen so many of my poor sick and wounded soldiers, I shall watch over this work with maternal anxiety,”[285] A visit from Prince Frederick William of Prussia brought sunshine into the Royal household, and gladdened the heart of the Queen’s eldest daughter, who was supremely happy at once again meeting her betrothed. It was during this visit that the Princess met with an accident, on the 25th of June, that might have ended fatally. She was sitting at her table in Buckingham Palace, reading a letter, when the sleeve of her dress caught fire from a candle. Luckily Miss Hildyard and Miss Anderson (who were in the room at the time) promptly rolled the Princess in the hearthrug and extinguished the flames, though her arm was severely burnt from below the elbow to the shoulder.
On the 8th of July the Queen again went to Aldershot to review a great body of Crimean troops, the Royal party including the King of the Belgians and Prince Oscar of Sweden. Unfortunately the weather somewhat marred the grandeur of the spectacle, but it became fair enough ere the day was done to admit of the regiments forming in three sides of a square round the Queen’s carriage. Then the officers who had been under fire, with four men from each company and troop, stepped forward, and her Majesty, rising, addressed them a few words of welcome and thanks. She told them to say to their comrades that she had herself watched anxiously over their difficulties and hardships, and mourned with deep sorrow for the brave men who had fallen in their country’s cause. When she ceased to speak, the cry of “God save the Queen” burst forth from every lip. The air was black with helmets, bearskins, and shakoes, which the men tossed up with delight. Flashing sabres were waving and glancing along the lines, and on every hillside crowds caught up the cheering that rose from the serried and glittering ranks of the army. Unhappily the day was saddened by a strange and melancholy occurrence. Lord Hardinge was seized with a fit whilst talking to the Queen. “He fell forward,” says Prince Albert, “upon the table before which he was standing. I assisted him to the nearest sofa, where he at once resumed what he was saying with the greatest clearness and calmness, merely apologising that he had made such a disturbance. When he was moved to London it was found his right side was paralysed.” Next day the Guards and Highlanders arrived, and were received by the Queen and enthusiastic crowds in the Park. “They marched past in fours,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “preceded by their colonels on horseback and their bands, in heavy marching order. Certainly they looked as if they had done work; their uniforms were shabby, many having almost lost all colour, their bearskins quite brown, and they themselves, poor fellows, though they seemed happy, and were laughing as they marched along, were very thin and worn.”[286] Lord Hardinge’s career was now closed. On the 9th of July he resigned, and on the 24th of September he died. On the 12th of July the Cabinet accordingly advised the Queen to appoint her cousin, the Duke of Cambridge, Commander-in-Chief, in succession to Lord Hardinge, and her Majesty was gratified to find that the arrangement was one which was highly popular with the troops. Thus the intention of Wellington was fulfilled, and the army again passed under the direct command of a Prince of the Blood Royal.
The Prince and Princess of Prussia paid a visit to England in August, arriving on the 10th and leaving on the 29th, by which time the Court had retired to Osborne. On the 30th, after spending two days in Edinburgh, the Queen and her family arrived at Balmoral. “We found the house finished,” writes the Queen in her Diary, “as well as the offices, and the poor old house gone!”[287] It was a stormy, tempestuous holiday, but the Queen made the best of it. On the 21st of September Sir James Clark introduced Miss Florence Nightingale to the Queen, who was greatly charmed with her, and with whom her Majesty held grave consultations as to the reforms that were needed in military hospitals. The coronation of the Czar at Moscow, on the 7th of September, was attended by Lord Granville as the Queen’s representative, and when his reports reached Balmoral, Prince Albert, in a letter to Stockmar, said that they regarded these as “an apotheosis and homage paid to the vanquished, and which cannot fail to inspire both worshipper and worshipped with dangerous illusions in regard to the real state of things.”