However, the country’s mood changed when it heard that the German Kaiser, Queen Victoria’s grandson, had sent a telegram congratulating Kruger, the Boer president, on his success. Victoria gave William ‘a piece of my mind’.96 She told him that ‘as your Grandmother to whom you have always shown so much affection’ she could not refrain from expressing her deep regret at the telegram sent to President Kruger as it was considered ‘very unfriendly towards this country’.97 The Kaiser sent an ameliorative reply, insisting that he had meant no harm to British interests. The Queen privately thought her grandson’s reply ‘lame and illogical’,98 yet for the sake of diplomatic peace wrote accepting his explanation. Chastened by his grandmother’s reprimand, William later took Britain’s side. Indeed, Victoria was given credit for keeping Germany friendly because of her rapport with her grandson; it was old-style family-based politicking that the Queen enjoyed.
In 1899 tensions between the Boers and the Uitlanders reached breaking point. In March, a giant petition containing 21,684 signatures was sent to Queen Victoria, appealing to her and the British government for help in ending Boer injustices. The petition spoke of how there was no liberty of the press; of how British subjects could be expelled at the will of the President; of how they were overtaxed and had practically no say in government; that the police were entirely composed of Boers and behaved in an arbitrary manner; of how they were not allowed to meet together or present petitions. In response, the British government called up the Reserves, mobilised its army and landed in South Africa; on 9 October the Boers declared war.
People in Britain generally supported the war because it was thought it would be an easy one to win. The Boers were farmers and had no regular army and few guns, while the British army was well trained and supplied with plentiful equipment. The 80-year-old Queen took a great interest in the war and was pleased to be told that the British army trounced the Boers and had ‘captured a Boer camp comprising tents, waggons, horses and 2 guns. Boer losses very considerable.’99 The first few weeks augured well. However, to the Queen’s despair, the British were put on the defensive when the Boers attacked ‘with considerable vigour’.100 The next day she heard ‘some very sad news. . . to the effect that the column sent out to guard the left flanks, had met with a disaster. It had been surrounded in the hills and after heavy loss, had to surrender.’101 At first the Boers had the definite advantage: they knew the country; they outnumbered British soldiers; their guns were superior; they were used to the climate; and they wore no uniform making it difficult to distinguish them from civilians.
Queen Victoria felt ‘very low and anxious about the war’102 especially when the first two years brought a series of military disgraces. The Boers besieged the British garrisons at Ladysmith, at Mafeking and at Kimberley, effectively immobilising the soldiers stationed there. The week between 10 December and 17 December 1899 was perhaps the most humiliating – in the space of seven days the British lost three separate battles. They soon learned that a guerrilla force, living among its supporters, cannot easily be defeated. After the first few defeats the Queen wrote to Sir Redvers Buller, commander-in-chief of the forces, that she was ‘naturally terribly anxious, and the sad events of the last days grieved us very much. . . . But the Queen Empress has great confidence in Sir R Buller, and she feels sure that he will retrieve the sad failures of brave men.’103 Buller wanted to ‘let Ladysmith go’; the Queen insisted that it was ‘impossible to abandon’ it’.104 Queen Victoria was so anxious about events in South Africa that she cancelled her annual Christmas holiday at Osborne and remained at Windsor to be in touch with the news. The siege of Ladysmith was to last several months.
Meanwhile, as it became obvious that Buller was incapable of leading the army against the Boers, the government replaced him with Lord Roberts and Lord Kitchener. On 10 January 1900 the two landed at Capetown: Buller was instructed to stay put until they joined him. However, Buller ignored the directive and attempted one last battle – Spion Kop – in which 200 soldiers died and 300 were injured. It was one of the worst defeats of the war.
As casualties and costs escalated, criticism of the conduct of the war mounted. There were demands for an inquiry. The Queen tried to impress upon Salisbury ‘the importance of having no official inquiry into the conduct of the war until it is over. It would only be repeated back to the Boers and to Foreign Countries and would do us a great deal of harm.’105 She urged ‘strongly the necessity of resisting these unpatriotic and unjust criticisms of our Generals and of the conduct of the war’.106 Victoria realised that the War Office was at fault but still felt it was important for her government to show a ‘firm front’ and ‘not let it be for a moment supposed that we vacillate’.107
In April 1900 the dispatches between Lord Roberts and Lord Shaftesbury were published, criticising the errors of judgement of Buller. The Queen was horrified when these appeared in the press and expressed her distaste and dissatisfaction that these had been broadcast while the war was actually going on. In her view, it was
to officially brand as incompetent those whom the men have, like all good soldiers, because they are their Generals, hitherto believed in and followed. The Queen is not so much concerned for the Generals as for the whole discipline and esprit de corps of the Army, which must suffer dangerously by this unprecedented exposure to subordinates of the faults of their superiors.108
No one, the Queen believed, benefited by the publication of the despatches, ‘not the soldiers, whose confidence in their leaders is shaken; not the public, whose trust in the Generals is impaired; not the Generals and superior officers of the Army, who must for the future be prepared for their mistakes to be made the subjects of public censure’.109 Here, the Queen’s political perspicacity was evident but it was a problem that all governments face – that of balancing freedom of information with national security.
Throughout the war, Queen Victoria retained a unique personal interest in her army, and was indefatigable in encouraging her troops and generals by sending them telegrams and letters, in ‘bidding God-speed to regiments on departure, visiting wounded in hospital; . . . and in providing comforts for her solders to eat and wear, working for them herself among her ladies’.110 Certainly, the Queen was gripped by the Boer War. She wrote to the widows and mothers of those killed in action, began an album in which she placed a photograph of every officer killed with the reason for his death, made comforters and caps for the troops and had her staff send a box of chocolates with a picture of herself on the lid to every soldier fighting in South Africa. At her request, 5,818 feather pillows were sent to the hospitals in the Cape. And sitting in a wheelchair, the 82-year-old Queen visited the wounded in Woolwich hospital where she was wheeled up to the ‘bed of each man, speaking to them, and giving them flowers. They seemed so touched, and many had tears in their eyes.’111
Meanwhile, with the arrival of Roberts and Kitchener, the Boer successes were halted. Kitchener employed draconian measures to subdue all the Boers, whether fighters, women or children. He adopted a scorched earth policy destroying farms, burning crops and killing livestock. Millions of horses, cattle and sheep were shot. He rounded up Boer women and children and interned them in concentration camps – the first use of the term – where conditions were abominable. Many of the women and children were already malnourished from the war and were weakened still further in the camps by being deprived of clothes, bedding, cooking utensils, clean water and medicine. Between 20,000 and 25,000 of the 117,000 incarcerated in the camps died from malnutrition, dysentery, typhoid and related diseases. Most of these were children.
By early 1900 the British seemed to be winning. On 16 February 1900 the Queen received a telegram ‘with the most welcome and almost unexpected news of the relief of Kimberley’;112 on 28 February Ladysmith was relieved after a siege of four months; on 17 March Mafeking. Once again, Queen Victoria experienced personal grief when her grandson Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein died of malaria contracted from fighting i
n the Boer War. The Queen could not believe it as ‘it seemed too dreadful and heart breaking. . . . Again and again the terrible thought of this fresh blow and irreparable loss, brought tears to my eyes.’113 A few months earlier, in July, Victoria’s son ‘Affie’, aged 55 years old, died of throat cancer. ‘A terrible day! . . . it is hard at 81. . . . I was greatly upset – one sorrow, one trial, one anxiety, following on another. It is a horrible year. Nothing but sadness and horrors of one kind and another. . . . Felt terribly shaken and broken.’114
The last days of the Queen
By now, Queen Victoria had lost her husband, both her parents, a few aunts and uncles, three of her children – Alice, Leopold and Alfred – and nine grandchildren, some in infancy. 115 Queen Victoria’s health, despite frequent complaints to the contrary, was usually robust. On 23 September 1896 she had reigned for 63 years 7 months, longer than any previous British sovereign. During the last five or six years of her life, however, she became frail. In the mid-1890s she suffered from rheumatism, which made walking difficult, and by the end of the 1890s cataracts greatly diminished her sight. She was barely able to read and was usually wheeled around in a wheelchair. A loss of weight and general sleeplessness pointed to further physical decay. In addition, her once acute memory began to fail. By now, the Queen was feeling ‘very poorly and wretched. . . . My appetite is completely gone and I have difficulty in eating anything.’116 On Sunday 13 January 1901 the Queen wrote in her journal that she had ‘had a fair night, but was a little wakeful. Got up earlier and had some milk. Lenchen came and read some papers.’117 It was the last entry in the Queen’s journal.
Notes
1 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) August 15th 1892.
2 Ibid. August 15th 1892.
3 Rhodes James, The British Revolution, p. 136.
4 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) August 13th 1892.
5 Victoria to Ponsonby, July 26th 1892.
6 Ibid. June 4th 1892.
7 Ibid. July 13th 1892.
8 Victoria to Bertie, August 13th 1892.
9 Bertie to Lord Rosebery, August 14th 1892.
10 Victoria to Gladstone, August 12th 1893.
11 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) January 30th 1893.
12 Ibid. February 19th 1893.
13 Victoria to Gladstone, February 20th 1893.
14 Gladstone to Victoria, February 20th 1898.
15 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) June 3rd 1893.
16 Ibid. June 22nd 1893.
17 Ibid. July 11th 1893.
18 Ibid. July 11th 1893.
19 Memorandum by Salisbury to the Queen, August 8th 1893.
20 Edward Hamilton, September 5th 1905, quoted in Leo McKinstry, Rosebery, Statesman in Turmoil, John Murray, 2005, p. 330.
21 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) July 8th 1893.
22 Ibid. September 6th 1893.
23 Ibid. September 9th 1893.
24 Ibid. September 9th 1893.
25 Ibid. February 28th 1894.
26 Rhodes James, The British Revolution, p. 143.
27 Quoted in Van der Kiste, Sons, Servants and Statesmen, p. 108.
28 Magnus, Gladstone.
29 Reid to Rosebery, March 2nd, 1894 quoted in Leo McKinstry, Rosebery, Statesman in Turmoil, p. 292.
30 Algernon Cecil, Queen Victoria and her Prime Ministers, Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1953, p. 282.
31 McKinstry, Rosebery, Statesman in Turmoil, p. 308.
32 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) February 17th 1894.
33 Victoria to Rosebery, July 13th 1894.
34 Rosebery to Victoria, July 13th 1894.
35 Reid to Rosebery, March 9th, 1894 quoted in Leo McKinstry, Rosebery, Statesman in Turmoil, p. 305.
36 Victoria to Rosebery, July 13th 1894.
37 Rosebery to Victoria, July 13th 1894.
38 Victoria to Rosebery, March 17th 1894.
39 Memorandum by Rosebery, March–April 1894.
40 Victoria to Rosebery, April 9th 1894.
41 Ibid. October 25th 1894.
42 Victoria to Salisbury, October 25th 1894.
43 Victoria to Rosebery, October 30th 1894.
44 Rosebery to Victoria, November 1st 1894.
45 Ibid. November 1st 1894.
46 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W), November 6th 1894.
47 Ibid. May 7th 1895.
48 Quoted in Robert Rhodes James, ‘Earl of Rosebery’, in Blake, The Prime Ministers, p. 159.
49 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) June 22nd 1895.
50 Rhodes James, ‘Earl of Rosebery’, p. 147.
51 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) July 28th 1895.
52 Ibid. August 5th 1895.
53 Ibid. March 10th 1894.
54 I am grateful to the Royal Archives for this information.
55 See Hobsbawm and Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, especially David Cannadine’s chapter for a discussion of this.
56 Glasgow Herald, June 17th 1897, p. 4.
57 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) June 20th 1897.
58 The Belfast News-Letter, June 17th 1897, p. 4.
59 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) June 20th 1897.
60 Ibid. June 21st 1897.
61 Ibid. June 21st 1897.
62 Ibid. June 22nd 1897.
63 Ibid. June 22nd 1897.
64 Ibid. June 22nd 1897.
65 Ibid. June 22nd, 1897.
66 Liverpool Mercury, June 17th 1897, p. 5.
67 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, June 20th 1897, p. 1.
68 The North-Eastern Daily Gazette, June 21st 1897.
69 Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, June 20th 1897, p. 4.
70 Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, June 22nd 1897, p. 6.
71 Freeman’s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, June 22nd 1897, p. 6.
72 Reynolds’s Weekly Newspaper, June 20th 1897, p. 1.
73 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) December 4th 1895.
74 Victoria to Sultan of Turkey, December 28th 1895.
75 Salisbury to Bigge, December 29th 1895.
76 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) April 20th 1894.
77 Victoria to Princess Victoria, December 29th 1890.
78 Ibid. May 25th 1894.
79 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) November 26th 1894.
80 Ibid. June 2nd 1896.
81 O’Connor to Victoria, May 31st 1896.
82 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) June 3rd 1896.
83 Victoria to Salisbury, May 29th 1898.
84 Ibid. May 29th 1898.
85 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) November 17th 1895.
86 Ibid. November 18th 1895.
87 Ibid. January 22nd 1896.
88 Salisbury to Victoria, April 8th 1896.
89 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) September 3rd 1898.
90 Ibid. September 5th 1898.
91 Victoria to Kitchener, April 9th 1898.
92 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) November 25th 1899.
93 Ibid. March 26th 1899.
94 Ibid. December 4th 1894.
95 McKinstry, Rosebery, Statesman in Turmoil, p. 399.
96 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) January 5th 1896.
97 Victoria to William, January 5th 1896.
98 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) January 10th 1896.
99 Ibid. October 22nd 1899.
100 Ibid. October 30th 1899.
101 Ibid. October 31st 1899.
102 Ibid. December 14th 1899.
103 Victoria to Buller, December 15th 1899.
104 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) December 16th 1899.
105 Ibid. January 11th 1900.
106 Victoria to Balfour, February 4th 1900.
107 Ibid, February 4th 1900.
108 Bigge to Wolseley, April 22nd 1900.
109 Ibid, April 22nd 1900.
110 Buckle, The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol. 3, 1896–1901.
111 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) March 22nd 1900.
112 Ibid. February 16th 1900.
113 Ibid. October 29th 1900.
114 Ibid. July 31st 1900.
115 Sigismund, Waldemar, Albert Victor Christian, Alexander, Frederick, Mary, Alfred, Christian Victor, Frederick Harold.
11
6 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) November 5th 1900.
117 Ibid. January 13th 1901.
Conclusion
At 6:30pm, Tuesday 22 January 1901, Queen Victoria died in her bedroom at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She had reigned for 63 years 7 months. On her death she was surrounded by her immediate family; the only one absent was her eldest daughter, Vicky, who was herself dying of cancer. Long before her death, Victoria had written instructions as to how her funeral was to be organised. She wanted a number of mementoes inside her coffin: Albert’s dressing gown, his cloak and a caste of his hand; a lock of John Brown’s hair, a photo of him and the wedding ring of John Brown’s mother. Victoria, who had always seen herself as a soldier’s daughter and as leader of the United Kingdom’s armed forces, wanted a military funeral. And, after wearing black since 1861, she wanted her funeral to be in white.
On Friday 1 February 1901, the Queen’s coffin, draped in a white and gold cloth and pulled by eight white horses, left Osborne and was placed on the ship Alberta. At sea, 18 battleships and 12 cruisers lined her route to Portsmouth. The next day, which was bitterly cold, the coffin made its way to Paddington where it was placed on a train and taken to Windsor. The funeral was held in St George’s Chapel; on 4 February her body was taken to Frogmore Mausoleum to rest beside Albert. Tens of thousands of soldiers and sailors conveyed the queen’s coffin – more troops than those who took part in the original British Expeditionary Force in 19141 to its final resting place. The new King, Edward VII, and the German Emperor, both dressed as admirals of the British navy, were joined by a great number of foreign nobles, nearly all of whom were related to the late Queen.
The Queen certainly ‘rescued the royal line . . . Victoria was their strong Princess who replenished not only the nurseries of Windsor but also the thrones of Europe’.2 Not surprisingly, Victoria was widely acknowledged as the Grandmother of Europe. Her nine children, 36 grandchildren and 37 great grandchildren occupied most of the European thrones. All her children, with the exception of Princess Louise, married into European royalty with the result that nearly every European monarch or consort was related to Queen Victoria in some way or another: the Emperor of Germany was a grandson; the Empress of Russia a granddaughter. Other relatives included King George of Greece, King Christian of Denmark, King Carlos of Portugal, Crown Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, Prince Ferdinand of Romania, the King of Norway, the Queen of Spain and the King of France. Victoria, by dint of her personality and her relationship with them, had often prevented the heads of these countries from quarrelling with each other. Unfortunately for Europe, the Queen’s death weakened these familial bonds – the First World War was a war between three cousins, all related to Queen Victoria: Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany and George V of Britain.
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