21

THE WARRIOR QUEEN AND THE PRINCESS BRIDE

Privately, Queen Victoria was preoccupied with Vicky as Fritz’s prospective bride. The queen did not hesitate to promote Vicky, reporting to Fritz’s mother, Augusta, on her oldest daughter’s development: “She has grown a great deal … has a genuine love of art and expresses opinions about it like a grown-up person, with rare good sense.”¹ Queen Victoria’s attention, however, was also diverted to the international scene. In 1853 war broke out, with Britain and France attempting to temper Russia’s ambitions in present-day Turkey. The Ottoman Empire was slowly crumbling, providing Russia an opportunity to seize more territory. From there, Russia might conquer Constantinople. If Russia were allowed to prevail, the consequences to Britain could be catastrophic. A victory would give czarist Russia unfettered access to strategically significant areas, such as the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles. British imperial interests, not least India, would be in jeopardy. Therefore, Queen Victoria closely followed the war, which was fought on the Crimean Peninsula, declaring that “my whole soul and heart are in the Crimea.”²

The queen tried to avoid war when possible, but “when forced to it, [she] became [the Roman war goddess] Bellona incarnate.”³ Like the warrior queen Isabella of Castile and the equally pugnacious Maria Theresa, Victoria wanted to be as close to the action as possible, admitting, “I regret exceedingly not to be a man & fight in the war. My heart bleeds for the many fallen, but I consider that there is no finer death for a man than on the battlefield.”⁴ Ever mindful of war’s sufferings, Victoria did not want the fighting to have been in vain. And thus the queen “never ceased to urge her ministers and her generals [during wartime] … to press forward with dogged resolution and not to slacken their efforts until the final goal of victory was reached.”⁵ So immersed in the crisis was the queen that her secretary of war noted, “You never saw anybody so entirely taken up with military affairs as she is.”⁶

The war was not all glory and honor. Insufficient supplies reached the troops, thousands of soldiers were felled by cholera and dysentery, and some eight thousand were killed. Such setbacks for Britain were disheartening, yet Queen Victoria’s indomitable spirit carried her countrymen during the low points of the Crimean War. She was no different in this respect from Isabella and Maria Theresa. Victoria was determined to strike a confident tone; anything less from the sovereign might have demoralized her subjects, from statesmen to soldiers and commoners.

By 1855 Queen Victoria had become “a one-woman fighting machine.”⁷ This is not to say that the queen was immune from doubt and anxiety. On the contrary, she described herself as “being a good deal worried and knocked up by all that has passed.”⁸ But Victoria refused to be demoralized. The Duke of Argyll recalled how at a “moment of universal depression … there was no sign of depression about the Queen, but a cheerful confidence that her army and her navy would yet recover our position.” Argyll noted that the queen maintained her composure even though she “knew everything” about the war. He was “struck by the Queen’s high bearing under the anxieties of the time,” “proud of the courage and tenacity” of her army despite the setbacks.⁹ For Victoria, to lead by example and aim for victory would ensure that Britain’s best interests prevailed. Victory, and nothing less, had to be the objective.

The British government, under Lord Aberdeen, had been divided over how to deal with Russia’s ambitions. Aberdeen favored negotiations through the European powers, which Queen Victoria supported, whereas the home secretary, Lord Palmerston, who had been foreign secretary, favored a more robust response. This reaction was popular with the British public. After France and Britain went to war, Aberdeen’s management garnered strong criticism and his government was defeated in Parliament. Victoria was initially resistant to the elevation of Lord Palmerston as prime minister. As a foreign secretary, Palmerston had kept the queen in the dark about discussions and decisions on foreign affairs, and she disliked him for it. However, she eventually invited the infirm seventy-one-year-old to become prime minister, recognizing his foreign policy experience, patriotism, and abilities. Palmerston dominated British politics from the time he became foreign secretary in 1830 until he retired after his second term as prime minister in 1865. At the end of the Crimean War, Victoria conceded that he had earned the Order of the Garter, the most prestigious order of chivalry in England.

The queen, meanwhile, busied herself with buoying the spirits of her soldiers and their families by visiting the wounded. She wrote of the “touching sight—such fine men, and so brave and patient! so ready to go back and ‘be at them again.’ … I feel so much for them, and am so fond of my dear soldiers—so proud of them!”¹⁰ One positive aspect of the war was the improvement in the care for and treatment of sick and wounded soldiers, as well as the founding of modern nursing by Florence Nightingale.

So moved was Queen Victoria by the heroism and sacrifice during the Crimean War that she instituted the Victoria Cross (VC). In 1857, in Hyde Park during a warm day before a crowd of thousands, the queen, on horseback, pinned the first VC medals on sixty-two men. The VC was (and is) open to soldiers of any rank. From its inception, the VC has been awarded “For Valour,” the highest decoration for bravery that any soldier of the British Empire (or Commonwealth today) could attain, taking precedence over every British military decoration and order.

As the Crimean War dragged on, Queen Victoria invited her ally Emperor Napoléon III of France and his wife, Empress Eugénie, to pay a state visit to England in April 1855. The excursion, which took place at Windsor Castle, was a huge success. Victoria was flattered by the flamboyantly mustachioed emperor, whom she found to be “a very extraordinary man … possessed of indomitable courage … and great secrecy,”¹¹ while the beautiful Spanish-born Eugénie succeeded in impressing the stolid Prince Albert, who was usually impervious to female charms. Eugénie also delighted Queen Victoria, who found the empress amiable and not the intriguer she was supposed to be. So well did the two women get along that they became lifelong friends. Though the dowdier and plump Victoria could never compete in looks with the svelte and ultrachic Eugénie, observers were struck by the queen’s commanding presence and innate sense of royalty. When Victoria and Albert paid a return visit to Paris, people watched a brief but telling scene at the opera. After the national anthems were played, Victoria showed she knew she was queen by instinctively sitting down without looking first that a chair was there for her. In contrast, the empress, who was not born a royal, nervously searched for a chair before she sat.

Eugénie’s success with the British royal family extended to the Princess Royal. Vicky was dazzled by the empress’s elegance. Accompanying her parents to France in August 1855, Vicky thoroughly enjoyed herself. The visit included a magnificent reception at Marie Antoinette’s former home, Versailles. Also present was the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck. Years later, Bismarck would return to Versailles for an auspicious occasion that would affect Vicky directly.

Flush from her trip to Paris, Vicky returned with her parents to Balmoral, unaware that a life-changing event was about to take place. Prince Frederick of Prussia, who had never forgotten her, was set to visit, intent on deciding if his future marital happiness lay with Queen Victoria’s eldest daughter. Still somewhat shy and unsure of himself because of his conflicted childhood, Fritz nevertheless cut a dashing figure. Standing over six feet tall with dark blond hair and a trim mustache, the twenty-four-year-old Prussian prince was bound to set Vicky’s heart a flutter. Vicky herself, nearly fifteen, was a pretty adolescent. A petite five foot two, Vicky bore a close resemblance to Victoria but with softer features. She also resembled her mother in temperament. Opinionated, temperamental, and headstrong, the princess was forthright but could be sweet as well. She was also coquettish. On the first evening, Fritz found himself more captivated by her than ever. When Vicky briefly squeezed his hand, Fritz knew he was in love. He hesitatingly approached her parents and stuttered something about wishing to belong to the family. Vicky’s parents were pleased, for the couple’s marriage meant “the allying of their own happy island kingdom with the increasingly powerful but resolutely illiberal Prussia.”¹² Though it was agreed that Vicky was too young to be engaged, her parents conceded that “something would have to be told her and that he [Fritz] had better tell her himself!”¹³

Fritz was allowed to give Vicky a token of his affection. The heather-clad hills around Balmoral provided the romantic backdrop for him to let her know his intentions. After they dismounted their horses, Fritz picked a sprig of white heather for Vicky and kissed her. He then told her that he hoped she would always be with him in Prussia, to which she happily acceded. When she returned to Balmoral, Vicky burst into Queen Victoria’s room and both mother and daughter embraced excitedly. Vicky assured her parents that “she would improve” and “would conquer herself” and “hoped to be like” her mother. “My joy, my gratitude to God knows no bounds!”¹⁴ wrote the queen. “Victoria is greatly thrilled,” wrote Prince Albert to Baron Stockmar.¹⁵ And in a letter to King Leopold, the queen wrote of Fritz: “He is a dear, excellent, charming young man, whom we shall give our dear child to with perfect confidence. What pleases us greatly is to see that he is really delighted with Vicky.”¹⁶ After Fritz’s departure for Prussia, Albert told Stockmar, “The young people are ardently in love with one another, and the purity, innocence, and unselfishness of the young man have been on his part equally touching.”¹⁷ Albert was correct in relating Fritz’s unselfishness, for the eager groom agreed to wait until Vicky was seventeen before they could marry.

For Victoria, there was no doubt that a strong marriage was in store for Vicky and Fritz. The queen expressed her confidence on the matter in letters to Fritz’s mother: “I find [Vicky] very good company and this important event in her life has now brought us even closer together.”¹⁸ “The young people are as happy as can be here! Fritz is unbelievably in love and shows such a touching faith in our child, which from some one so young was altogether unexpected and is, indeed, very flattering and delightful for Vicky. Her love and trust in him grow daily and yet she is very placid and sensible in herself. We can see from this fact that here is a relationship, not only of great passion, but based on real trust and understanding such as should assure lasting happiness for them both!”¹⁹

Victoria’s euphoria over the engagement knew no bounds. “Vicky’s joy and simple unaffectedness are quite charming,” reported the queen to Princess Augusta. Queen Victoria added Vicky’s quote: “Instead of being estranged from you dear Mama, this has brought me closer to you!”²⁰

Now that her future was settled, Vicky underwent a regime of tutorials from her father preparing her for her great destiny: to help Fritz usher Prussia into a more democratic phase. While Victoria saw to Vicky’s trousseau, Albert honed his favorite child’s mind. One hour each evening the teenager eagerly listened to her father, who confided to Fritz that “I put her through a kind of general catechizing, and in order to give precision to her ideas, I make her work out certain subjects by herself, and bring me the results to be revised. Thus she is now engaged in writing a short Compendium of Roman History.”²¹ Heavy emphasis was placed on her future country and dynasty: Prussia and the Hohenzollerns. It was a daunting regimen for a prospective young bride, but the highly intellectual Vicky thrived on it. Her tutorials were more demanding than the preparations Catherine of Aragon had to undergo before departing for England and were certainly a far cry from the inadequate education Marie Antoinette received before leaving for France. Prince Albert’s lessons combined with the Princess Royal’s penetrating mind were bound to have a positive effect on Prussia’s future. Albert was pleased with his favorite daughter’s progress, admitting that “Vicky is very reasonable, she will go well prepared into the labyrinth of Berlin.”²² By the time Vicky’s wedding day arrived, she was indeed as prepared a princess as ever was set to become a reigning consort. It was an incredibly weighty burden; Vicky’s “special mission” was fraught with “seriousness and difficulty,” as Stockmar presciently noted.²³

In the midst of Vicky’s engagement, the Crimean War ended in 1856, with Russia’s defeat. Thereafter, imperial Russia no longer dominated the Black Sea. With the hostilities ceased and Russia now weakened, Victoria could focus on her daughter’s future. The queen was on an emotional roller coaster during Vicky’s engagement. The realization that her daughter was set to leave the family nest for the unknown in Berlin unsettled Victoria. The fact that she was pregnant for the ninth time exacerbated her stress, as Victoria was never at ease being enceinte. Furthermore, the possessive queen felt a twinge of jealousy toward her eldest child, on whom Prince Albert was lavishing such attention. The ongoing difficulties with her exasperating heir, Bertie, who was as listless as ever, aggravated the situation. The patient and forgiving Albert answered his wife’s emotional fragility with sympathy. Queen Victoria, in turn, rewarded her husband for his years of loyalty and hard work by creating him Prince Consort in 1857.

Discussions concerning the venue for the wedding ceremony became contentious. The Prussian royal family believed that the wedding should take place in their country. Queen Victoria was indignant. Her imperiousness came through as she declared emphatically that “it is not everyday that one marries the eldest daughter of the Queen of England. The question therefore must be considered as settled and closed.”²⁴ Victoria won. Vicky and Fritz were married on January 25, 1858, at the Chapel Royal in London’s St. James’s Palace. The seventeen-year-old bride, her hair encircled by orange blossoms, was dressed in white silk trimmed with English Honiton lace. The queen wore a lilac gown and velvet train. Vicky had earlier in the day given her mother a brooch with a message stating that she hoped to be worthy of being the queen’s child. The bride and groom spoke their vows clearly and left the chapel to the strains of Felix Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. They spent their two-day honeymoon at Windsor Castle, during which touching messages were exchanged between mother and daughter. Vicky sent her mother a note on her wedding day, saying: “I cannot let this day close, which has brought me so much happiness without one more word to you, one more word of the deepest tenderest love.”²⁵ On the morning after her wedding day, Vicky read a letter Victoria sent her in which the mother discussed matrimony as

a very solemn act, the most important and solemn in every one’s life, but much more so in a woman’s than in a man’s. I have ever looked on the blessed day which united me to your beloved and perfect Papa—as the cause … of my own happiness (a happiness few if any enjoy) … . You have also the blessing of a dear, kind, excellent husband … . Let it be your study & your object to make his life and his home a peaceful and happy one and to be of use to him and be a comfort to him in every possible way. Holy and intimate is this union of man and wife as no other can be, and you can never give your parents more happiness and comfort than when they know and see that you are a truly devoted, loving and useful wife.²⁶

It was a maternal letter that mirrored similar ones written by Empress Maria Theresa to Marie Antoinette. Two days after the wedding, Queen Victoria visited the newlyweds at Windsor and was pleased with what she saw, noting in her journal: “The great happiness of the 2 dear young people, their simple, pure love & affection for one another is truly delightful”—though it was “quite strange” to observe Vicky “walking off with Fritz” at bedtime .²⁷

The day of Vicky’s departure for Prussia (February 2) was heart-wrenching. The weather—dark and bitterly cold—matched the mood of the British royal family, who now saw their happy family unit being broken up. Copious tears were shed. Upon leaving England, Vicky wrote her father, “I miss you dreadfully dear Papa, more than I can say.”²⁸ On that sad day, the queen wrote to Vicky that “it is cruel, very cruel—very trying for parents to give up their beloved children, and to see them go away from the happy peaceful home.” She added, “Dearest, dearest child, may every blessing attend you both. Continue as you have begun in private and public, and you will be happy and succeed in all you undertake!”²⁹ To King Leopold, Victoria confided of Vicky’s departure from the family nest: “The blank she has left behind is very great indeed.”³⁰

The letters between Victoria and Vicky echoed the correspondence between Maria Theresa and Marie Antoinette two hundred years earlier. Motherly advice poured forth from the pen of Queen Victoria as it had from that of Empress Maria Theresa. One letter from Victoria was so similar in tone to Maria Theresa’s letters to Marie Antoinette that it could almost have been written by the empress herself. “How right your sometimes not very patiently and kindly listened to Mama was,” went Victoria’s letter, “when she told you, you could do every thing, if you would but take pains, control yourself and conquer all little difficulties—as you had such great qualities, such a heart of gold!”³¹ And in another letter Victoria reminded Vicky: “Only remember that the better you become acquainted with the family and court the more you must watch yourself and keep yourself under restraint. No familiarity … . You know, dearest, how necessary it is to have self control, tiresome as it may be. Kindness, friendliness and civility but no familiarity except with our parents (in-law).”³²

Unlike Marie Antoinette, who underwent a lengthy wait before consummating her marriage and earning her husband’s love, Vicky’s new life mirrored Catherine of Aragon’s early married days with Henry VIII. Like Catherine, Vicky basked in her husband’s devotion and hoped that she might soon give her husband an heir. Queen Victoria was grateful that the huge changes Vicky went through in so short a time went smoothly. Years later, she wrote to Vicky of the dread she had felt at sacrificing an innocent daughter to marriage: “That agonizing thought … of giving up your own child from whom all has been so carefully kept & guarded, to a stranger to do unto her as he likes, is to me the most torturing thought in the world … . While I feel no girl could go to the altar (and would probably refuse) if she knew all, there is something very dreadful in the thought of the sort of trap she is being led into.”³³

When Vicky arrived in Berlin, she was heartened by the cheers from her husband’s countrymen. But the celebrations ended quickly, and Vicky was shocked when she began living in the Berlin Schloss. Instead of comfortable rooms, as in England, the newest member of Prussia’s royal house had to contend with old accommodations, which had neither grandeur nor coziness. The place was excessively cold, so Vicky had to bundle up. Simple touches that she had taken for granted, such as cupboards, were lacking; there was no place for the fine trousseau her mother had so carefully chosen. The princess could not heed her mother’s counsel to exert self-control; she did not hesitate to question why things were not so or why they did not measure up to English standards.

Vicky was equally aghast over her new husband’s family. The nastiness of their quarrels bewildered her. She was shocked by the Hohenzollerns’ lack of education, their single-mindedness about all things military, and their overweaning sense of superiority. The Hohenzollerns, in turn, found Queen Victoria’s daughter too opinionated and gave no allowances for Vicky’s inexperience, naïveté, and youth. Instead, her indiscretion, though not meant to be ill-mannered, quickly marked Vicky as headstrong. Her in-laws’ overwhelming impression was that she needed to be checked. To make matters worse, Fritz’s family was jealous of Vicky’s intelligence. The volatile mixture of personalities and expectations pointed to difficult times ahead for Prussia’s newest princess.

Back home, her mother had succeeded admirably as wife, mother, and queen. Whatever doubts there may have been in 1837 at the accession of the eighteen-year-old queen had dissipated by the time Victoria was forty. As a wife, she could still be impetuous and obstinate with Albert, but few royal marriages could compete with theirs. Mutually faithful, Victoria and Albert also worked in tandem for the kingdom’s good. Britain had finally come to appreciate Albert’s qualities, but his unceasing hard work took its toll on his health. Albert continued as Victoria’s indispensable helpmate and, in the process, became increasingly overworked and plagued by ill health. In 1851, he had reported to his grandmother, “I am more dead than alive from overwork.”³⁴

As a mother on a personal level and to the nation, Victoria had done exceedingly well by giving birth to nine children, including sons. A strict, demanding matriarch who loved her children, the queen kept a close eye on their development, never hesitating to correct them and push them to be morally upright members of society. Above all, notwithstanding some elements of republicanism in Britain, Victoria was respected as a monarch at home and abroad. As for Britain itself, it was a first-rate power, its empire still expanding. The Victorian era was in full bloom, the queen having given her name to a period that was to last many decades.

In faraway Berlin, meanwhile, Vicky could only hope that her life might come to reflect her mother’s in some measure. Would Vicky, along with Fritz, be able to steer Prussia toward the liberalism of which her parents dreamed? Would relations between Vicky’s native and adopted countries flourish into the twentieth century? Such were the hopes and aspirations of Vicky and her parents.