REVIEW IN WINDSOR PARK: CHARGE OF THE 5TH AND 7TH DRAGOON GUARDS.
the route, and every effort was made to respect the Queen’s incognito. The Royal party arrived at Baden-Baden at half-past three in the afternoon of the 27th, and the Queen drove immediately to the Villa Hohenlohe, which was to be her residence during her stay. As for her suite, they were lodged at the Hotel Europe. On the 30th her Majesty, the Princess Beatrice, and suite, left Baden-Baden by special train for Darmstadt, where they were received by the Grand Duke and the elder Princesses of Hesse. A carriage drawn by four horses was in waiting to convey the Royal party to the Castle, where the Queen occupied the Assembly Chamber, whilst apartments were allotted to the Princess Beatrice in the Clock Tower. The Prince and Princess of Wales, who had left Marlborough House three days before, arrived at Darmstadt on the 29th. On the 31st the Queen and Princess Beatrice, accompanied by the Grand Duke of Hesse, proceeded at half-past four to the mausoleum on the Rosenhöhe, where Princess Alice was buried. On the morning of the same day the Queen, with the Prince and Princess of Wales, and Princess Beatrice, the German Crown Prince, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, and the Hereditary Grand Duke of Baden, attended the confirmation of the Princesses Victoria and Elizabeth, daughters of the Grand Duke of Hesse. The Queen and Princess Beatrice then returned to Baden on the 1st of April. On April the 16th, on her return from Baden, her Majesty arrived at Laeken, and was received at the railway station by the King and Queen of the Belgians and Mr. Lumley, the British Minister. After visiting the park and grounds of the Palace, and partaking of luncheon, the Queen left for Flushing. On April the 17th her Majesty and suite left Flushing for Queenborough, en route for Windsor, where she arrived in safety, to find the station thronged with residents, who had gathered to welcome her on her return, while crowds of kindly spectators lined the way to the Castle. She returned just as the electoral crisis was over, to find the Ministry she had thought so stable overthrown, and public opinion not only clamouring for the dismissal of Lord Beaconsfield from office, but for the return of Mr. Gladstone to power. On the 27th of April she gave Lord Beaconsfield his farewell audience, and for the next fortnight was deeply absorbed in transacting the business incidental to the formation of a new Ministry amidst distracting intrigues which were not altogether friendly to the new Ministers.
On the 20th of May the Queen and the Princess Beatrice left Windsor for Balmoral, and the Prince and Princess of Wales discharged her Majesty’s social duties during her absence. On her way to her Highland home the Queen took part in a ceremony of which she was, in fact, the promoter. During a terrific storm on the 16th of February, a Swedish ship had been thrown on the rocks near Peterhead. The Coastguard succeeded in flinging a rocket over the wreck, but the crew were apparently unable to understand the working of the apparatus. And so, in all human probability, the vessel would have been lost with all souls but for the bravery of George Oatley, one of the Coastguard. Oatley, disregarding every appeal to the contrary, resolved to swim out to the distressed ship. After a fierce conflict with the angry waves he gained the vessel, fixed the rocket appliance, saw the crew safely conveyed ashore, and was himself the last to take his place in the cradle. The Duke of Edinburgh having recommended him for the Albert Medal of the First Class, her Majesty presented it in person on the 22nd of May. The interesting ceremony took place at Ferry Hill Junction, where a platform had been erected for the occasion along the side of the line. The Queen and Princess Beatrice were greeted with the heartiest cheers as they left the saloon. Captain Best, R.N., Commander of the coastguard division to which the hero of the day belonged, having introduced him to her Majesty, the Queen attached the medal to Oatley’s breast, and expressed the pleasure it afforded her to decorate him for his gallant conduct. She then resumed her seat in the train, and her journey was continued. The Court returned to Windsor on the 23rd of June.
On the 13th of July a General Order was issued by the Duke of Cambridge, by command of the Queen, conveying her congratulations to the Volunteers on the completion of the twenty-first year of their existence, and expressing her regret that she was unable to hold a review of the citizen soldiers in Windsor Great Park. On the afternoon of the following day her Majesty reviewed 11,000 regular troops in Windsor Great Park. This was a brilliant affair, the 5th and 7th Dragoon Guards winding up the display with a most dashing charge. On the 19th of July the Queen and the Princess Beatrice left Windsor and took up their quarters at Osborne where, on the 28th, her Majesty received a party of eight officers and men of the 24th Regiment, who brought with them the colours of that corps, which had been rescued from the hands of the Zulus by two ensigns at the cost of their lives. Her Majesty inspected the colours, and spoke with brief and simple eloquence of the bravery and loyalty of the regiment, touching with manifest emotion on the death of the ensigns who had sacrificed their lives for their standards. Curiously enough, Indian telegrams published about this time in the newspapers showed that at the battle of Maiwand the majority of the officers of the 66th Regiment were killed in the vain attempt to defend their colours; in fact, the regiment lost 400 out of its strength of 500 in this action. The attention of military men was thus drawn to the practice of carrying colours into action, and it was argued that it was one more honoured in the breach than the observance. History hardly records a case where a regiment has been rallied on its colours. On the other hand, a hundred fights besides Isandhlwana and Maiwand testify that many valuable lives have been lost in defending them. Nor are colours necessary as incentives to bravery, for the Rifle regiments (whose record is one of unsullied glory) never carried any colours, though they fought fully as well as the regiments that encumbered themselves with flaunting banners.[166] On the 21st of August the Queen crossed over to Portsmouth, and inspected the 1st battalion of the Rifle Brigade previous to its departure for India. The regiments were not drawn up in line in spick and span order, but were visited by her Majesty as they sat at mess in undress uniform on board the troopship, and, as she made a minute inspection of their quarters, the novelty of the scene apparently interested and amused her very much. The exceptional honour thus conferred on the Riflemen was due to the close connection of the corps with the Royal Family.[167]
On the 26th of August the Court went to Balmoral, from whence, just before Parliament was prorogued, she addressed to the Ministry a strong Memorandum drawing attention to the frequency with which railway accidents were occurring, and urging that steps should be taken to provide travellers with better security for safety. In October she held many anxious consultations with Lord Granville and Lord Hartington on the state of Ireland, where the increase in outrages, such as the savage murders of Mr. Boyd and Lord Mountmorres[168] gave her great pain. The result was that Lord Hartington, when he arrived in London from Balmoral on the 11th of October, was immediately visited by Mr. Gladstone and Lord Granville, and in political circles it was soon rumoured that the Irish Government was about to prosecute the leaders of the Irish Land League. On the 10th of October the Queen and Princess Beatrice went to spend a few days amidst the snowdrifts of the Glassalt Sheil. The Court returned to Windsor on the 17th of December, to find the world—for a time at least—talking of something else besides Irish outrages.
Lord Beaconsfield had just published his last brilliant and audacious political novel, “Endymion,” in what one of its characters describes as “the Corinthian style, in which the Mænad of Mr. Burke was habited in the last mode of Almack’s.” The town was in raptures over a burlesque of Society, which blended together into amusing personalities such opposite characters as Cardinal Wiseman and Cardinal Manning; Lord Palmerston and Sidney Herbert; Poole the tailor, and Hudson the railway king; which made Prince Bismarck tilt with Napoleon III. at the Eglinton Tournament; which idealised the author as Endymion, Lady Beaconsfield as Imogen, and Napoleon III. as Prince Florestan; which travestied Lady Palmerston as Zenobia, caricatured Thackeray cleverly but spitefully as Mr. St. Barbe, and George Smythe cleverly but not spitefully as Waldershare.