In March the Queen instituted the "Albert Medal," as a decoration for those who had saved life from shipwreck and from peril at sea, and for the first time during five-years revisited the camp at Aldershot and reviewed the troops. She was accompanied by Princess Helena and the Princess Hohenlohe, who was on a visit to England.
Queen Amélie died at Claremont on the 24th of March, aged eighty-three years.
On the 25th of May Prince Alfred was created Earl of Ulster, Earl of
Kent, and Duke of Edinburgh.
The Princess Mary of Cambridge was married to the Prince of Teck on the 12th of June, in the presence of the Queen, in the parish church of Kew, where the bride had been confirmed, "among her own people." Parliament granted her an annuity of five thousand pounds.
Another marriage, that of Princess Helena, was celebrated in St.
George's Chapel, Windsor, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Bishop of London, on the 7th of July. The bridegroom was supported by
Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein and Prince Edward of Saxe-
Weimar. The bride entered between her Majesty and the Prince of Wales.
The usual eight noble bridesmaids followed. Prince Christian was in
his thirty-sixth, Princess Helena in her twenty-first year. Their home
has been first at Frogmore and afterwards at Cumberland Lodge.
While the German war which had Schleswig-Holstein for a bone of contention was still only threatening, the Crown Princess of Prussia lost a fine child, Prince Sigismund.
Afterwards the Queen had the pain of seeing her married children, with their unfailing family affection, inevitably ranged on different sides in the war. Princess Alice trembled before the fear of a widowhood like her mother's as the sound of the firing of the Prussian army, which lay between the wife at home and the husband in the field, was heard in Darmstadt. The quiet little town fell into the hands of the enemy, and was at once poverty and pestilence stricken, small-pox and cholera having broken out in the hospitals, where the Princess was labouring devotedly to succour the wounded. In such circumstances, while the standard of her husband's regiment lay hidden in her room, Princess Louis's third daughter was both. Happily peace was soon proclaimed. In honour of it the baby, Princess Irene, whose godfathers were the officers and men of her father's regiment, received her name.
This year Hanover ceased to be an independent state, and became annexed to Prussia.
Dr. Norman Macleod has a bright little picture of an evening at Balmoral in 1866. "The Queen sat down to spin at a nice Scotch wheel while I read Robert Burns to her, 'Tam o' Shanter,' and 'A man's a man for a' that'—her favourite."
Her Majesty sent her miniature with an autograph letter to the American citizen, Mr. Peabody, in acknowledgment of his magnificent gift of model lodging-houses to the Working people of London.