Only a few days after one of the simple, merry evenings at Balmoral, a telegram broke into the happiness of the household, saying that the Duke of Wellington was dead. "One cannot think of this country without the Duke," wrote the Queen. "Not an eye will be dry. He was Britain's pride, her glory, her hero, the greatest man she had ever produced." A public funeral was given him by order of Parliament. His body lay in state in a great hall whose walls were heavily draped with black, relieved only by the banners that he had captured in battle. Guardsmen as motionless as statues stood at intervals along the passage, leaning upon their muskets, which rested, muzzles down, on the floor. On the coffin lay the Duke's sword and his cocked hat, and around the bier stood officers on guard, whose scarlet uniforms shone out of the darkness in the light of the tall wax candles that outlined the bier. Finally the body of the Duke was borne to St. Paul's on an iron gun-carriage, followed by the dead commander's horse with its empty saddle and by a long line of soldiers representing every regiment. Thousands of people lined the street through which the funeral cortège  marched. They stood with bared heads and in such perfect silence that not a sound was heard but the steady tramp of feet and the roll of the funeral drums. So it was that the great soldier was buried amid the grief of the nation.

Never was he needed more, for the sound of war was coming near. The Emperor Nicholas, whom the Queen had called so "easy to get along with," proved to be somewhat less easy than he had been when on a visit. He had declared that he should protect the Christians in Turkey from the outrages of the Turks; but France and England believed that what he was really aiming at was to get possession of Constantinople. If he succeeded in this, no ship could enter the Black Sea against his will, and it would not be impossible for him to gain control of the Asiatic lands then ruled by Great Britain. If this came to pass, Russia would be far more powerful than any other state in Europe. This was the belief of England and France, and they wished to oppose him.

The Queen was always against war, but when it was finally declared, early in 1854, she did everything in her power for the success of England. When the first regiments that were ready to go to the Crimea marched through the of Buckingham Palace, she and the Prince stood on the balcony as enthusiastic as the troops. Then she hastened to Osborne to say farewell to the warships that were starting for the Baltic. Prince Alfred had already made up his mind to be a sailor, and the Duke's little namesake was destined to follow the Duke's example and be a soldier, but they were as yet only small children, and the Queen exclaimed, "How I wish I had two sons in the army now and two in the navy!" Nothing that affected the war was too great or too small for her to notice, and she had a definite opinion on every subject.

"Your Majesty," said Lord Aberdeen, the Prime Minister, "it is proposed to have a day of humiliation and fasting for the success of our arms."

"I approve most heartily of a day of prayer," declared the Queen, "but not of calling it a day of humiliation. We are not humiliated. It is not our wickedness, but the selfish ambition and want of honesty of the Emperor which have brought on this war. We believe that our cause is just, and that we are contending for what is right."

"But it has long been the custom to call such days times of fasting and prayer," the Prime Minister suggested.

"We will thank God for the blessings we have enjoyed," said the Queen, "and ask His help and protection, but it is my particular wish that we call the day one of prayer and supplication."

The war was begun, and during the two years following, no one in the land suffered more intensely than the Queen. A powerful nation is always inclined to expect that its enemies may be crushed at a blow, but Russia was not so easily crushed.

The Queen was prepared for battles lost and battles won, but not for blunders and poor management; and to a woman as prompt and as careful of details as she, such faults were unpardonable. Before many months came the report of the Charge of the Light Brigade, which Tennyson has made famous in his poem. This useless charge by which six hundred men were sent to attack an army was caused by a mistake. "Someone had blundered." Thousands of copies of the poem were printed and sent to the soldiers who were besieging Sebastopol.

The Queen was in constant anxiety. Telegrams were false and misleading, and if one brought good news in the morning, she dared not rejoice lest it should be contradicted before night. It was then that the work of the "special correspondent" began, for a physician who was at the scene of the war sent letters to the London Times, and for the first time, the people at home knew the daily life of their soldiers.

The story told in the columns of the Times  was a narration of terrible suffering, which was all the worse because so much of it was unnecessary. It does not seem possible that such stupid blunders could have been made. Food was sent that was not fit to eat. A whole shipload of much-needed shoes braved the storms of the Atlantic and Mediterranean—and proved to be all for the left foot! Clothes, blankets, and medicines in generous quantities lay in the holds of English vessels off Balaklava Bay, while men were dying for the lack of them. Shiploads of cattle arrived at Balaklava, and instead of being driven to the front, where there was sore need of beef, they were killed at once, and then came a long delay in arranging for transportation. The trouble was that it was no one's business to transport the stores, and no one had the right to interfere. The hospitals were so inefficient that nine-tenths of the men who died, perished of disease and mismanagement, and not from the bullets of the Russians.

When such news as this reached England, the whole country was aroused, but it was helpless. There was no time to change the organization of the conflicting "departments," and the Minister of War finally decided to do exactly what the Romans used to do in times of great difficulty: he appointed a dictator, with full power to go to the Crimea and do precisely as she thought best in making arrangements for the sick and wounded soldiers. This dictator was a woman named Florence Nightingale. She had a large fortune and a beautiful home, but she cared more for helping the sick than for living in luxury. For more than ten years she had been studying nursing, not only in England, but in France and Germany. Late in 1854 she went to the Crimea, taking forty-two nurses with her. It was no small task that she had undertaken, for in a short time ten thousand sick men were in her charge. The sanitary arrangements of the camp and the hospital were all in her hands. She was a gentle, modest woman, by nature shy and retiring, but where the comfort of her soldiers was concerned, she would never yield a point to anyone. "She had a voice of velvet and a will of steel," they said of her; and as she walked down the long aisles of the hospitals—in one of them the rows of beds stretched along for nearly two and a half miles—the poor sufferers kissed her very shadow. It was of her that Longfellow wrote

Meanwhile, the Queen was doing all in her power for the soldiers and their families. A Patriotic Fund was begun, and it soon reached $5,000,000. The "Soldier's Daughter" and her older girls sewed and knit for the army, the Prince of Wales, who was now thirteen years of age, painted a picture to be sold for the small contribution, for it brought nearly three hundred dollars—and the two older Princesses talked, as they sat knitting, about Miss Nightingale, and wished they could go to the Crimea and work by her side. At the opening of Parliament, the Queen began her speech bravely, but when she spoke of the war, her self-control failed her, and she struggled through the sentences as best she could with her eyes full of tears.

News of victories came, but nothing could be decisive except the capture of Sebastopol. "If we could only take Sebastopol!" she was always saying to herself, and one of her children said to a general who was starting for the Crimea, "Do hurry and take Sebastopol, or it will kill mamma." In September, 1855, the royal family and the Duchess of Kent were at Balmoral, when late one evening on the third day after their arrival, two telegrams were brought in, one for the Queen, and one for the Cabinet Minister.

"Good news," exclaimed the Queen. "This tells the details of the destruction of the Russian ships."

"But I have still better news," said the Minister. "Mine reads, 'Sebastopol is in the hands of the allies.' "

"Come and light the bonfire," cried Prince Albert, and he started up Craig Gowan, the hill opposite the house, where material for a bonfire had been piled up nearly a year before in the hope that Sebastopol would fall before the Queen had to return to London.

The gentlemen of the court hastened after the Prince, in full evening dress as they were. The little Princes were awakened and hurriedly dressed, and they followed after their father. The servants followed, the keepers, the workmen, the whole population of the village. The fires blazed out and shone on all the peaks round about. The people in the valleys knew what it meant, and they too hurried to the top of the hill. There was cheering, dancing, shouting, playing of bagpipes, and firing of guns. "It was a veritable witches' dance," declared the Prince when he came down. He was soon followed by the rest of the people, and when they were under the Queen's window, they sang to the music of the bagpipes, they fired guns, and then they cheered the Queen, the Prince, the Emperor of France, and last they gave a deafening "Nis! nis! nis! hurrah, for the fall of Sebastopol!"

It would seem as if this was excitement enough for one month, but four days later, the young Prince Frederick William of Prussia came to Balmoral to make a visit; and before the visit had lasted two weeks, there was a pretty little scene on the mountain side when he gave Princess "Vicky" a piece of white heather, the emblem of good fortune, and contrived to make it clear to her that the best fortune which could happen to him would be the gift of her hand. A few days before this, the father and mother and their guest had agreed that nothing should be said to the Princess for six months, but the secret had found its way out.

The Princess Victoria had always been Baron Stockmar's special favorite, and she as well as her father wrote their good friend at once, and sent him the news that the kindly old matchmaker had been waiting for since the Princess was a little child, for such a marriage would make a strong alliance between England and Prussia, the two great Protestant powers of Europe. Prince Albert wrote, "The Prince is really in love, and the little lady does her best to please him. Come to us soon. We have so much to talk over." A little later, he wrote again of his hope that he should soon hear the children say, "Do you know, papa, that the Baron is in his room below?" He closed, "We positively must have some talk face to face."

The Princess was to be confirmed in the spring, and until that event was past, nothing was to be said in public of the engagement. The marriage was not to take place until at least a year after the confirmation, but Prince Albert felt that the time was far too short for the preparation that her future position would make desirable; and, busy man as he was, he set apart an hour every evening to talk with her on historical topics, and listen to the papers which she prepared on subjects that he had given her. In the spring came her confirmation, which was preceded by an examination in the catechism held in the presence of her father and mother, the Duchess of Kent, and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This betrothal of the eldest daughter brought to the Queen mingled feelings of pleasure and pain; pleasure, because the alliance with Prussia, so desirable an arrangement for both countries, was to be brought about by a marriage that promised the happiness of her daughter; pain, because that marriage was the first break in the family circle. Nevertheless, in joy or in sorrow, the public life of the sovereign must go on. Many of the soldiers who had been severely wounded were sent home. The Queen had often visited them in the hospitals, and one day she said to her Minister:

"Those brave men ought to have medals that they can hand down to their children, and I have ordered a number to be made."

As the day appointed for the distribution of the medals drew near, the Minister asked if she would have them sent to the men.

"No," replied the Queen with decision, "I want to put those medals into their hands myself. I feel as if those men were my own children."

It was a pitiable company of sufferers that she met. There were men with deep red scars, men with empty sleeves, men tottering up to her on crutches to touch the hand of their Queen. Many of them would not give up their medals to be marked with their names, lest they should not receive again the very ones that the Queen had given them. One man was wheeled up in a chair. He had lost one leg and the foot from the other, but he had refused to give up the command of his battery till the fight was over, and had given his orders as calmly as if he had not been touched.

"Such bravery as that," cried the Queen, with tears in her eyes, "calls for more than a medal, and you shall be one of my aides-de-camp."

"That pays me amply for everything," he replied. The Queen wrote the account of this incident to King Leopold. "One must revere and love such soldiers as those," she added.

She was never weary of visiting the hospitals and camps. As the regiments returned from the Crimea in the spring and summer of 1856, there were reviews without end. On one occasion she reviewed eighteen thousand troops. She was dressed in the uniform of a field marshal, with a dark blue skirt; and as she rode down the front and returned by the rear, the thousands of men presented arms, and the bands of twenty regiments gave her a joyful greeting. Then she rode to a little mound from which she watched her troops as they filed past her.

There was no limit to the enthusiasm and loyalty which were aroused by the presence of the Queen. One review was held in a pelting rain. The evolutions were spoiled, and the men had every reason to feel gloomy and disappointed, but the Queen saved the day, for she rose in her carriage and made them a warm-hearted little speech of welcome that was like a flash of sunshine. When she closed with, "I thank God that your dangers are over, while the glory of your deeds remains," there was a wild outburst of cheers. The men waved their hats, their sabers, anything and everything that would wave, and shouted till the hills echoed.

The sailors were no less loyal. During this same summer, there was a superb naval review off Spitshead which the Queen witnessed from the royal yacht. Two hundred and forty ships of war were assembled, but that was not all, for the Queen's suite alone consisted of thirty steamships, and there were many hundred private steamboats and sailing vessels. Every foot of the shore that would give a view of the warships was crowded with spectators, and they had a sight well worth the seeing. Ships and steamers were beautifully decorated with flags and crowded with guests. The men-of-war were drawn up in a double line, and the royal yacht steamed slowly along between them. Every vessel manned its yards and fired a royal salute as the Queen passed. The most enthusiastic cheering echoed and reechoed. Then came a mimic naval attack on Southsea Castle, and the brilliant day was at an end.

One thing more the Queen planned to do for her soldiers, and that was to give a badge of special honor to those who had been especially distinguished by some deed of rare bravery. This badge was the Victoria Cross, which was then bestowed for the first time. With it went a pension of fifty dollars a year. More than one hundred thousand people assembled in Hyde Park to see the sixty-two chosen heroes receive their Crosses. The Queen was now in the scarlet jacket of the army. Prince Albert rode on one side of her and Prince Frederick William on the other side. She remained on horseback during the whole ceremony, leaning forward as one brave fighter after another was led up to her, and pinning the Cross on his breast.

The woman whose battles had been, not with Russians, but with mismanagement and inefficiency, lingered in the Crimea until she had seen every soldier leave for home, then she herself returned as quietly as if she had been on a pleasure trip. She seemed to have entirely forgotten that thousands of men in England would have been lying in Crimean graves had it not been for her; but the men remembered, and England gave her such a welcome as even the Duke of Wellington had hardly received. She was an honored guest at Balmoral. Everyone was longing to do something for her, but what should it be?" "Make her a gift," said the people, "and let her do with it as she will." Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was raised by popular subscription and presented to her. She did with it as she would; she endowed schools for the training of nurses to carry on the work that she loved.