The Prince of Wales was on a visit to Germany, ostensibly to witness the manoeuvres of the Prussian army, but with a more delicate mission behind. He was bound, while not yet twenty, to make the acquaintance of the Princess Alexandra of Denmark, not quite seventeen, with the probability of their future marriage—a prospect which, to the great regret of the Prince Consort, got almost immediately into the newspapers. The first meetings of the young couple took place at Speyer and Heidelberg, and were altogether promising of the mutual attachment which was the desired result.
On the 18th of October the King of Prussia was crowned at Könisburg—a splendid ceremonial, in which the Princess Royal naturally, as the Crown Princess, bore a prominent part.
On the return of the Court to Windsor, Prince Leopold, then between eight and nine years of age, was sent, with a temporary household, to spend the winter in the south of France for the sake of his health.
Suddenly a great and painful shock was given to the Queen and the Prince by the news of the disastrous outbreak of typhoid fever in Portugal among their royal cousins and intimate friends, the sons of Maria de Gloria. When the tidings arrived King Pedro's brother, Prince Ferdinand, was already dead, and the King ill. Two more brothers, the Duke of Oporto and the Duke of Beja, were in England, on their way home from the King of Prussia's coronation. The following day still sadder news arrived—the recovery of the young king, not more than twenty-five, was despaired of. His two brothers started immediately for Lisbon, but were too late to see him in life. The younger, the Duke of Beja, was also seized with the fatal fever and died in the course of the following month. The Queen and the Prince lamented the King deeply, finding the only consolation in the fact that he had rejoined the gentle girl-wife for whose loss he had been inconsolable.
CHAPTER XXXV.
THE DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.
The news of the terrible mortality in the Portuguese royal family, especially the death of the King, to whom the Prince was warmly attached, had seriously affected his health, never strong, and for the last few years gradually declining, with gastric attacks becoming more frequent and fits of sleeplessness more confirmed. At the same time the Prince's spirit was so unbroken, his power of work and even of enjoyment so unshaken, while the patience and unselfishness which treated his own bodily discomfort as a matter of little moment had grown so much the habit of his mind, that naturally those nearest to him failed in their very love to see the extent of the physical mischief which was at work. Nevertheless there is abundant evidence that the Queen was never without anxiety on her husband's account, and Baron Stockmar expressed his apprehensions more than once.
Various causes of care troubled the Prince, among them the indisposition contracted by the Princess Royal at the coronation of her father-in-law, the King of Prussia, and the alarming illness at Cannes of Sir Edward Bowater, who had been sent to the south of France in charge of Prince Leopold. After a fortnight of sleeplessness, rheumatic pains, loss, of appetite, and increasing weakness, the Prince drove in close wet weather to inspect the building of the new Military Academy at Sandhurst, and it is believed that he there contracted the germs of fever. But he shot with the guests at the Castle, walked with the Queen to Frogmore and inspected the mausoleum there, and visited the Prince of Wales at Cambridge afterwards.
Then the affair of the Trent suddenly demanded the Prince's close attention and earnest efforts to prevent a threatened war between England and America. In the course of the civil war raging between the Northern and Southern states the English steamer Trent sailed with the English mails from Savannah to England, having on board among the other passengers several American gentlemen, notably Messrs. Mason and Slidell, who had run the blockade from Charlestown to Cuba, and were proceeding to Europe as envoys sent by the Confederates to the Courts of England and France. A federal vessel fired on the English steamer, compelling her to stop, when the American Captain Wilkes, at the head of a large body of marines, demanded the surrender of Mason and Slidell, with their companions. In the middle of the remonstrances of the English Government agent at the insult to his flag and to the neutral port from which the ship had sailed, the objects of the officer's search came forward and surrendered themselves, thus delivering the English commander from his difficulty.
But the feeling in England was very strong against the outrage which had been committed, and it was only the most moderate of any political party who were willing to believe—either that the American Government might not be cognisant of the act done in its name, or that it might be willing to atone by honourable means for a violation of international law—enough to provoke the withdrawal of the English ambassador from Washington, and a declaration of war between the two countries.