“From the highest Prince of the blood to the
lowest private, all received the same distinction
for the bravest conduct in the severest actions....
Noble fellows! I own I feel for them as though
they were my own children.... They were so touched,
so pleased! Many, I hear, cried, and they won’t
hear of giving up their medals to have their names
engraved upon them for fear that they may not receive
the identical ones put into their hands by me.
Several came by in a sadly mutilated state.”
One of these heroes, young Sir Thomas Trowbridge,
who had had one leg and the foot of the other carried
away by a round shot at Inkermann, was dragged in
a Bath-chair to the Queen, who, when she gave him his
medal, offered to make him one of her Aides-de-Camp,
to which the gallant and loyal soldier replied, “I
am amply repaid for everything.” Poor fellow!
I wonder if he continued to say that all his mutilated
life?
Whenever during this war there was a hitch, or halt,
in the victorious march of English arms, any disaster
or disgrace in the Crimea, the attacks upon the Prince-Consort
were renewed,—there were even threats of
impeachment;—but when the “cruel war
was over,” the calumnies were over also.
They were always as absurd as unfounded. Aside
from his manly sense of honor the Prince had by that
time, at least, ten good reasons for being loyal to
England—an English wife and nine English
children.
The Emperor and Empress of France visit Windsor—They
are entertained by the City of London—Scene
at the Opera—The Queen returns the Emperor’s
call—Splendor of the Imperial Hospitality.
The Queen’s kind heart was really pained by
the sudden death of the Czar, her sometime friend
and “brother”—whose visit to
Windsor was brought by the startling event vividly
to her mind—yet she turned from his august
shade to welcome one of his living conquerors, the
Emperor Napoleon, who, with his beautiful wife, came
this spring to visit her and the Prince. She
had had prepared for the visitors the most splendid
suite of apartments—among them the very
bedroom once occupied by the Emperor Nicholas.
It was the best “spare room” of the Castle,
and the one generally allotted to first-class monarchs—Louis
Philippe had occupied it. What stuff for ghosts
for the bedside of Louis Napoleon did he and the Czar
supply! A few days before the Emperor and Empress
arrived, the Queen had a visit from the poor ex-Queen,
Marie Amelie. There is a touching entry in Her
Majesty’s diary, regarding this visit. By
the way, I would state that whenever I quote from
Her Majesty’s diary, it is through the medium
of Sir Theodore Martin’s book, and by his kind
permission.
The Queen wrote: “It made us both so sad
to see her drive away in a plain coach, with miserable
post-horses, and to think that this was the Queen
of the French, and that six years ago her husband was
surrounded by the same pomp and grandeur which three
days hence would surround his successor.”
