Garibaldi died at Caprera on the 2nd of June.
The Egyptian war broke out, and among the officers who sailed with the troops under Sir Garnet Wolseley in August was the Duke of Connaught. The Duchess and her little daughter were with the Queen at Balmoral, where anxious days were spent as mother and wife waited for the news of battle. Successive telegrams announced that an attack was determined on, that the army had marched, that fighting was going on, and that the enemy had been routed with heavy loss at Tel-el-Kebir. The Queen wrote in her journal "How anxious we felt I need not say, but we tried not to give way…. I prayed earnestly for my darling child, and longed for to-morrow to arrive. Read Korner's beautiful, 'Gebet vor der Schlacht,' 'Vater ich rufe Dich,' ('Prayer before the Battle,' 'Father, I call on Thee'). My beloved husband used to sing it often…."
At last came the welcome telegram, "A great victory, Duke safe and well," and a further telegram with details and the concluding sentence, "Duke of Connaught is well and behaved admirably, leading his brigade to the attack," and great was the joy and thankfulness.
In the meantime the Duke and Duchess of Albany had been expected on their first visit after their marriage, and were met at Ballater. When their healths were drunk with Highland honours, the happy Queen asked her son to propose another toast "to the victorious army in Egypt" coupled with the Duke of Connaught's name, and the health was drunk in the hearing of his proud wife and his unconscious infant in her nurse's arms.
In November the Queen reviewed the troops returned from Egypt in St. James Park, and afterwards distributed war medals to the officers and men.
On the 4th December her Majesty opened the New Law Courts. She was received by the judges and the representatives of the Bar. Lord Chancellor Selborne was raised to the rank of an earl, and knighthood was conferred on the Governors of the Inns of Court.
The Duke of Connaught, accompanied by the Duchess, went to fill a military post in India.
We have seen that Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, her Majesty's fourth and youngest son, who was born on the 7th of April, 1853, had a delicate childhood and boyhood. He suffered from a tendency to haemorrhage on the slightest provocation. Ailments in the joints are apt to accompany such constitutional weakness, and one of Prince Leopold's knees was affected. As he grew up he was again and again brought to the brink of the grave by sudden and violent fits of indisposition. It is hardly necessary to say that the precariousness of Prince Leopold's health, combined as it was with an amiable disposition and intellectual gifts, only served to endear him the more to his family and friends.
The bodily weakness which set the Duke of Albany apart from his elder brothers and from lads of his age, which prevented his being regularly trained either as a soldier or a sailor, in the two professions which have been long held fit for princes, made him peculiarly the home-son of the Queen, and caused him to be much longer associated with her than he might otherwise have been, in her daily life and in her public appearances during the later years of her reign.
It did not follow from this circumstance that Prince Leopold relinquished an independent career or led an idle life. In 1872, when he was in his twentieth year, he matriculated at Oxford, where he kept his terms with credit alike to his original abilities and his conscientious diligence. His honourable and pleasant connection with his university remained a strong tie to the end of his short life, and it was doubtless in relation to Oxford that he came sensibly under the influence of Mr. Buskin.