had helped her in the management of her most private affairs and had acted as an intermediary between her and her ministers Death of Prince Henry of Battenberg. singular ability and success. His successor was Sir Arthur Bigge. The following year, 1896, was marked by a loss which touched the queen even more nearly and more personally. At his own urgent request Prince Henry of Battenberg, the queen’s son-in-law, was permitted to join the Ashanti expedition, and early in January the prince was struck down with fever. He was brought to the coast and put on board her majesty’s ship “Blonde,” where, on the 20th, he died.
In September 1896 the queen’s reign had reached a point at which it exceeded in length that of any other English sovereign; but by her special request all public celebrations of the fact were deferred until the following The Diamond Jubilee. June, which marked the completion of sixty years from her accession. As the time drew on it was obvious that the celebrations of this Diamond Jubilee, as it was popularly called, would exceed in magnificence those of the Jubilee of 1887. Mr Chamberlain, the secretary for the colonies, induced his colleagues to seize the opportunity of making the jubilee a festival of the British empire. Accordingly, the prime ministers of all the self-governing colonies, with their families, were invited to come to London as the guests of the country to take part in the Jubilee procession; and drafts of the troops from every British colony and dependency were brought home for the same purpose. The procession was, in the strictest sense of the term, unique. Here was a display, not only of Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, but of Mounted Rifles from Victoria and New South Wales, from the Cape and from Natal, and from the Dominion of Canada. Here were Hausas from the Niger and the Gold Coast, coloured men from the West India regiments, zaptiehs from Cyprus, Chinamen from Hong Kong, and Dyaks—now civilized into military police—from British North Borneo. Here, most brilliant sight of all, were the Imperial Service troops sent by the native princes of India; while the detachments of Sikhs who marched earlier in the procession received their full meed of admiration and applause. Altogether the queen was in her carriage for more than four hours, in itself an extraordinary physical feat for a woman of seventy-eight Her own feelings were shown by the simple but significant message she sent to her people throughout the world: “From my heart I thank my beloved people. May God bless them.” The illuminations in London and the great provincial towns were magnificent, and all the hills from Ben Nevis to the South Downs were crowned with bonfires. The queen herself held a great review at Aldershot; but a much more significant display was the review by the prince of Wales of the fleet at Spithead on Saturday, the 26th of June. No less than 165 vessels of all classes were drawn up in four lines, extending altogether to a length of 30 m.
The two years that followed the Diamond Jubilee were, as regards the queen, comparatively uneventful. Her health remained good, and her visit to Cimiez in the spring of 1898 was as enjoyable and as beneficial as before. In May 1899, after another visit to the Riviera, the queen performed what proved to be her last ceremonial function in London: she proceeded in “semi-state” to South Kensington, and laid the foundation stone of the new buildings completing the Museum—henceforth to be called the Victoria and Albert Museum—which had been planned more than forty years before by the prince consort.
Griefs and anxieties encompassed the queen during the last year of her life. But if the South African War proved more serious than had been anticipated, it did more to weld the empire together than years of peaceful The queen’s last year. progress might have accomplished. The queen’s frequent messages of thanks and greeting to her colonies and to the troops sent by them, and her reception of the latter at Windsor, gave evidence of the heartfelt joy with which she saw the sons of the empire giving their lives for the defence of its integrity; and the satisfaction which she showed in the Federation of the Australian colonies was no less keen. The reverses of the first part of the Boer campaign, together with the loss of so many of her officers and soldiers, caused no small part of that “great strain” of which the Court Circular spoke in the ominous words which first told the country that she was seriously ill. But the queen faced the new situation with her usual courage, devotion and strength of will. She reviewed the departing regiments; she entertained the wives and children of the Windsor soldiers who had gone to the war; she showed by frequent messages her watchful interest in the course of the campaign and in the efforts which were being made throughout the whole empire; and her Christmas gift of a box of chocolate to every soldier in South Africa was a touching proof of her sympathy and interest. She relinquished her annual holiday on the Riviera, feeling that at such a time she ought not to leave her country. Entirely on her own initiative, and moved by admiration for the fine achievements of “her brave Irish” during the war, the queen announced her intention of paying a long visit to Dublin, and there, accordingly, she went for the month of April 1900, staying in the Viceregal Lodge, receiving many of the leaders of Irish society, inspecting some 50,000 school children from all parts of Ireland, and taking many a drive amid the charming scenery of the neighbourhood of Dublin. She went even further than this attempt to conciliate Irish feeling, and to show her recognition of the gallantry of the Irish soldiers she issued an order for them to wear the shamrock on St Patrick’s Day, and for a new regiment of Irish Guards to be constituted.
In the previous November the queen had had the pleasure of receiving, on a private visit, her grandson, the German Emperor, who came accompanied by the empress and by two of their sons. This visit cheered the queen, and the successes of the army which followed the arrival of Lord Roberts in Africa occasioned great joy to her, as she testified by many published messages. But independently of the public anxieties of the war, and of those aroused by the violent and unexpected outbreak of fanaticism in China, the year brought deep private griefs to the queen. In 1899 her grandson, the hereditary prince of Coburg, had succumbed to phthisis, and in 1900 his father, the duke of Coburg, the queen’s second son, previously known as the duke of Edinburgh, also died (July 30). Then Prince Christian Victor, the queen’s grandson, fell a victim to enteric fever at Pretoria; and during the autumn it came to be known that the empress Frederick, the queen’s eldest daughter, was very seriously ill. Moreover, just at the end of the year a loss which greatly shocked and grieved the queen was experienced in the sudden death, at Windsor Castle, of the Dowager Lady Churchill, one of her oldest and most intimate friends. These losses told upon the queen at her advanced age. Throughout her life she had enjoyed excellent health, and even in the last few years the only marks of age were rheumatic stiffness of the joints, which prevented walking, and a diminished power of eyesight. In the autumn of 1900, however, her health began definitely to fail, and though arrangements were made Death of the queen. for another holiday in the South, it was plain that her strength was seriously affected. Still she continued the ordinary routine of her duties and occupations. Before Christmas she made her usual journey to Osborne, and there on the 2nd of January she received Lord Roberts on his return from South Africa and handed to him the insignia of the Garter. A fortnight later she commanded a second visit from the field-marshal; she continued to transact business, and until a week before her death she still took her daily drive. A sudden loss of power then supervened, and on Friday evening, the 18th of January, the Court Circular published an authoritative announcement of her illness. On Tuesday, the 22nd of January 1901, she died.
Queen Victoria was a ruler of a new type. When she ascended the throne the popular faith in kings and queens was on the decline. She revived that faith, she consolidated her throne; she not only captivated the affections of the multitude, but
