At a quarter before eight, nineteen minute guns were fired in the park, the walls of the pavilion were suddenly drawn up, revealing the funeral car and its sacred burden. Instantly the troops presented arms for the last time to their late commander, and the drums beat "a long and heavy roll, increasing like the roll of thunder." The words "to reverse arms" were then given, and the funeral procession began to move. First came battalion after battalion of infantry, commencing with the rifles, the bands playing "The Dead March in Saul," the trumpets of the cavalry taking up "the wailing notes." "As the dark mass of the rifles appeared, and the solemn dead march was heard, the people were deeply affected, very many of both sexes to tears…. Great interest was felt as the Duke's regiment, the 33rd, passed." Squadrons of cavalry were succeeded by seventeen guns; the Chelsea Pensioners, old men, like him whose remains they followed, to the number of eighty three—his years on earth; one soldier from every regiment in her Majesty's service, to say that none had been left out, when their leader was borne to his grave; standards and pennons; deputations from public bodies—Merchant Taylors' Company, East India Company, and the deputation from the Common Council of London, joining the procession at Temple Bar; more standards, high officials, Sheriffs, and Knights of the Bath; the Judges, members of the Ministry, and Houses of Parliament; the Archbishop of Canterbury; the Lord Mayor of London carrying the City Sword; His Royal Highness Prince Albert, attended by the Marquesses of Exeter and Abercorn— Lord Chamberlain and Groom of the Stole; the Great Banner, borne by an officer, and supported by two officers on horseback; the Field- marshals' batons—each carried by a foreign officer of high rank— which every country in Europe, except France and Austria, had entrusted to the care of the Great Duke. To the imposing scene to-day France, like an honorable enemy, sent a representative; but Austria, still smarting under the affront to Haynau, was conspicuous by absence. The English Field-marshal's baton was borne on its cushion by the Duke's old comrade in arms, the Marquis of Anglesey. The Duke's coronet followed. Then the pall-bearers—eight generals in mourning coaches. At length the huge funeral car, heavily wrought and emblazoned and inscribed with the names of the Duke's battles, drawn by twelve horses, with five officers on horseback, bearing the banneroles of the lineage of the deceased, riding on either side. On the car was placed the coffin, and on the coffin rested the hat and sword of the dead commander…. Every emotion, save that of solemn awe, was hushed. The massive structure moved on its course with a steady pressure, and produced a heavy dull sound, as it ground its path over the road…. But the car, apart from its vast size, passed unnoticed, for on its highest stage rested a red velvet coffin, which contained all that was mortal of England's greatest son. It seemed that a thousand memories of his great and long career were awakened at the sight of that narrow tenement of so great a man…. The voice which had cried "Up, Guards, and at them!" at the critical moment on the afternoon of that rainy Sunday at Waterloo, thirty-seven years before, was silent for ever. The sagacious and skilled brain which had planned so well the defence of London from the threatened outbreak of the Chartists, would plan no more for Queen and country. No longer would the shouting crowd press round him on every gala, and strangers watch patiently near the Horse Guards for one of the sights of London— the eagle face of the conqueror of him who conquered Europe.
"No more in soldier fashion would he greet,
With lifted hand, the gazer in the street."
Wellington was making his way from the Horse Guards for the last time, attended by such a mighty multitude as seldom waits on the steps of Kings, hardly ever with such mute reverence as they gave him that day. The "good grey head" of "the last Great Englishman" was about to be laid in the dust, and his best epitaph was Tennyson's line—
"One that sought but duty's iron crown."
Behind the car came the chief mourner, accompanied by his younger brother, with cousins and relatives to the last degree of kindred, and friends filling a long train of mourning coaches. Then followed what moved the people more than all the splendour, because it came like a touch of homely nature appealing to all, in a familiar part of the life that was gone, the late Duke's horse, led by John Mears, his aged groom. The horse might have been "Copenhagen," which had borne the Duke in the thick of his greatest battle, and died long since at Strathfieldsaye, so eagerly did the crowds gaze on it. More carriages and troops closed the march.
And she was not absent who had held the dead man in such high esteem, whom he had so loved and honoured. From two different points—as if she were reluctant to see the last of her old friend—from the balcony of Buckingham Palace, where the Royal Standard floated half-mast high, as the funeral passed up Constitution Hill, and again from the windows of St. James's Palace, as the melancholy train went down St. James's Street, the Queen, surrounded by her children and her young cousins from Belgium, looked down on the solemn pageant.
Nearly twenty thousand privileged persons—many of them of high rank, filled St. Paul's, black-draped and gas-lit on the dark November day. After the funeral company were seated, the body, which had been received at the west entrance by the Bishop of London and the other clergy of the Cathedral, was carried up the nave to the chanting of "I am the Resurrection and the Life." The spurs were borne by one herald, the helmet and crest by another, the sword and target by a third, the surcoat by a fourth, the foreign batons by their foreign bearers, the English baton by Lord Anglesey.
Among the psalms and anthems, a dirge accompanied by trumpets was sung, "And the King said to all the people that were with him, rend your clothes and gird you with sackcloth and mourn. And the King himself followed the bier. And they buried him; and the King lifted up his voice and wept at the grave, and all the people wept. And the King said unto his servants, Know ye not that there is a prince and a great man fallen this day in Israel."
An affecting incident occurred, when, at the conclusion of this dirge, the body was lowered into the crypt to the "intensely mournful" sound of "The Dead March in Saul." As the coffin with the coronet and baton slowly descended, and thus the great warrior departed from the sight of men, a sense of heavy depression came on the whole assembly. Prince Albert was deeply moved, and the aged Marquess of Anglesey, the octogenarian companion in arms of the deceased, by an irresistible impulse stepped forward, placed his hand on the sinking coffin that contained the remains of his chief in many battles, and burst into tears.
"In the vast Cathedral leave him;
God accept him, Christ receive him."