royal wedding celebration

“Believe me,” Queen Victoria wrote to her eldest daughter, “Children are a terrible anxiety & the sorrow they cause is far greater than the pleasure they give. I therefore cannot understand your delight at the constant increase of them.”
But the constant increase continued apace. Seven months after leaving Paris, Vicky gave birth to her seventh child, Sophie - an ‘ugly’ name in Queen Victoria’s frank opinion. Five days later, 19th July 1870, France declared war on Prussia and, for a second time in four years, Vicky had barely recovered from her confinement when she was faced the prospect her husband’s imminent departure for battle.
War against France was something for which Bismarck had long been hoping and preparing: not only would it provide the Prussians with the opportunity of seizing the French territories of Alsace and Lorraine, but also it would draw together the German states leading ultimately to the unification of the country. All that was needed was an excuse, and in the summer of 1870, the perfect justification arose as a result of the Prussian nomination of a candidate for the vacant Spanish throne.
Four years previously, a revolution in Spain had brought an end to the reign of the unhappily-married and allegedly promiscuous Queen Isabella. The unpopular queen abdicated in favour of her son, Alfonso, but the Spanish, dissatisfied with their dynasty, were considering alternative candidates from other ruling Houses. Several European princes had been suggested, but when the Prussians nominated Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, the French were appalled. Wary already of Bismarck’s designs along the Franco-German border, Napoleon III could not countenance prospect of a Hohenzollern ruling Spain, and sent a minister to the Prussian king at the spa town of Ems, insisting that Prince Leopold’s name be withdrawn. On Bismarck’s advice the king accepted the demands but when the French went further, insisting on both an apology for having suggested Leopold in the first place and a guarantee that no other Hohenzollern candidate would ever be put forward, they played straight into Bismarck’s hands. The Chancellor edited the so-called ‘Ems Dispatch’ and arranged for it to be published and circulated throughout Europe in the full knowledge that the insult would spur the French into making a declaration of war.
The scheme worked to perfection; the whole of Germany reacted with self-righteous outrage to the French aggression and for the first time a sense of unity pervaded the country. Among the uniformed guests who gathered in Potsdam for Sophie’s christening on Monday 25th July 1870, were the rulers of several South German states who had joined the Prussian alliance. The disputes of 1866 were forgotten as Prussians and Hessians united against their common enemy. Even the Crown Princess was caught up in the atmosphere of patriotism and, in spite of her aversion to bloodshed, she had no doubt that the German cause was just. The morning after Sophie’s christening, before Vicky was even awake, Fritz slipped quietly from their rooms and left at the head of his army.
In Darmstadt, too, there were echoes of 1866, as Alice, six months pregnant for a fifth time, watched Louis depart with the troops, knowing that he, as commander of a small division would be far more exposed to enemy bullets than her brother-in-law, the Crown Prince of Prussia. At least she found comfort in the knowledge that this time she and Vicky were united in the war effort and could work together in making preparations for the wounded.
No sooner had Fritz departed than Vicky set to work in Berlin and Homburg, applying Florence Nightingale’s nursing theories to provide light and airy wards for the casualties. In Hesse Alice established four base hospitals, to which she paid daily visits, often taking her elder daughters with her.
“My mother was very busy with Red Cross work,” Victoria recalled, “and regularly visited the wounded, both German and French, and I often accompanied her.”
So devoted was Alice to her duties that she barely had time to sleep or rest, and yet, rather than winning admiration, her concern for the prisoners-of-war earned her only ‘a heap of criticism.’ In a cruel foreshadowing of events that would later overtake her daughters to a more disastrous degree, Alice’s kindness to the French increased the suspicion that both she and Vicky secretly favoured the enemy. It was widely observed in Berlin that, though London newspapers were supportive of Prussia, the British government had made little attempt to dissuade the French from taking up arms. It was even suggested that the British were secretly backing the enemy - a suspicion which seemed to be confirmed when it was discovered that French ships were supplied with British coal and French shells were manufactured in Birmingham. As a result, as Vicky told her mother, the English were even ‘more hated than the French’ and the brunt of German anger was aimed at the English princesses. While Vicky was virtually pleading with Queen Victoria to send British soldiers to support the Germans, Bismarck seized his opportunity to further denigrate the Crown Princess by accusing both Vicky and Alice of passing military secrets to their mother who was, in turn, passing the information to the French.
Undeterred by the criticism, her anxiety for Louis’s safety and the acute lack of supplies, Alice continued her work in such appalling conditions that by the eighth month of her pregnancy, her health began to fail.
‘I had a violent inflammation of eyes and throat with two days strong fever and strong neuralgia,’ she told the Queen in mid-September. Still more worrying was the prospect of her imminent confinement in a town full of disease-ridden hospitals and ‘without even a married lady in the house’ to assist her. Under such pressure it was unsurprising that the baby was born prematurely on October 7th - a ‘fat, pink’ little boy with pretty features, whom she named Frittie. While the baby thrived, Alice’s health continued to cause concern yet she continued her duties until December when, taking the children to Berlin, she enjoyed a brief rest with the Crown Princess.
“It is a great comfort to be with dear Vicky,” she wrote to Queen Victoria. “We spend the evenings alone together, talking or writing out letters.”
Tactfully, she omitted to mention that part of the ‘great comfort’ of being with Vicky was that her sister was helping her by sharing the breast-feeding of little Frittie.
In the course of the conflict the German states were united and when at last the victorious armies returned home in March 1871, Fritz’s father was elevated from King of Prussia to German Kaiser and Emperor. Though deeply affected by the horror of war, Fritz had proved a noble, gallant and able leader and his triumphal entry into Berlin was greeted with great applause. To the delight of the crowds he and Vicky appeared in the palace window where the Crown Prince held his little daughter, Sophie, in his arms.
In Hesse there were similar scenes of celebration. Louis’ gallantry had earned him the Order ‘Pour la Mérite’ and the streets were decorated with triumphant lights and banners:
“Our house will also be illuminated,” Alice explained to her mother, “and I take the two eldest girls [Victoria and Ella] out with me to see it all. It is a thing for them never to forget, this great and glorious though too horrid war.”
In that moment of triumph neither Victoria nor Ella could have known that one day they would suffer the effects of a far more terrible conflict.

The ensuing peace brought a return to a calmer existence for the Crown Princess of the newly unified Germany. In April 1872, she gave birth to her eighth and last child, named Margaret Beatrice Feodora after one of her godmothers, the Queen of Italy. For once Queen Victoria thoroughly approved of ‘all the pretty names,’ but throughout her life the princess was familiarly known as ‘Mossy’ on account of her downy hair. Her christening in Berlin was a far less militaristic affair than Sophie’s had been and the guest list of artists, writers and academics, demonstrated that the Crown Princess was no longer prepared to endure the ‘Prussian influence’ that had so infected her elder children.
It was clear to Vicky that much of her elder children’s arrogance was due to the flattery they received at Court. More than ever she saw the need to take them away from Berlin at every opportunity and was delighted when she found an old country estate, the Bornstaedt, to which she and Fritz could escape with the children for a few months every summer. There, the family enjoyed a simple life, renovating the house and working on the land, and even their elder children, free of Bismarck’s influence, became more amenable. But the return to Potsdam inevitably brought with it the old tensions and it was increasingly obvious that, while the Crown Princess undoubtedly loved all her children, a clear and natural division had already emerged within the family. The three eldest - Willy, Charlotte and Henry - continued to frustrate their mother. Even their appearance disappointed her: though Willy was ‘quite good looking’ there was no improvement in his arm; Charlotte’s thin hair, frail physique and poor health were a constant worry; and Henry, who had not ‘grown prettier,’ she repeatedly described as ‘ugly.’
For the younger children, however, Vicky had nothing but praise. Waldemar, she said, was so much cleverer than his brothers and so handsome and ‘manly’; Moretta clung to her with affection; Sophie was pretty; and Mossy was:
“…such a love, such a little sunbeam, so good and so gifted, she will be a charming little person one day, but sometimes I fear not a very happy one, for she is so sensitive and her little heart so tender and warm and loving, so clinging that she is sure to suffer in life.”
The bonds between Vicky and her younger daughters would never be broken.

In Darmstadt, too, the ‘constant increase’ continued. In June 1872, two months after Mossy’s birth, Alice’s fourth daughter was born and named Alix because, as Alice explained to Queen Victoria the German pronunciation ‘murdered Alice.’ The baby was:
“…like Ella, only smaller features, and still darker eyes with very black lashes, and reddish brown hair. She is a sweet, merry little person, always laughing and a dimple in one cheek, just like Ernie.”
Doted upon by her elder sisters, little Alix soon earned the nickname ‘Sunny’ for her ready smile and cheerful disposition but, within a year of her birth, a family tragedy struck the Hessian household marking the first in a series of misfortunes that would cloud her entire life.
In January 1873, three-year-old Frittie had a slight cut on his ear which continued to bleed profusely for several days. It soon became apparent to Alice that her little boy was suffering from the hereditary haemophilia which had already had afflicted her own younger brother Leopold.•
“I was much upset when I saw that he had this tendency to bleed,” wrote Alice, “and the anxiety for the future, even if he gets well over this, will remain for years to come…To see one’s own child suffer is for a mother a great trial. With what pleasure would one change places with the little one and bear the pain.”
It was a sentiment that Frittie’s sister, Alix, would soon come to understand too well.
After some days the wound began to heal and Alice naively hoped that in time he would grow out of the condition. In the spring, for the good of her own health, she and travelled to Italy leaving her children in the care of their paternal grandmother who had been given strict instructions about their meals, bedtimes, and hours of study. The much-needed holiday was refreshing and invigorating for Alice, but she missed her children terribly and was delighted by the reunion at the beginning of May. A few weeks later the family enjoyed a long walk and picnic in the countryside beyond Darmstadt before Louis had to depart to review the troops in another part of the Grand Duchy. The next morning, when Louis had gone, Alice sat in bed working through her letters while Frittie and Ernie played beside her. Their game became increasingly boisterous and Ernie, ran out of the room to wave from an opposite room. On seeing him, Frittie climbed onto a chair to wave back but as he leaned forwards, the chair slipped and her fell through the open window. Alice flew from the room and found him lying dazed but miraculously uninjured on the stone below. Her relief was short-lived. That evening, he suffered a brain haemorrhage and died before morning.
The death of her little brother was Alix’s first introduction to the hereditary ‘bleeding disease’ that would so blight her own life and bring such disaster to Russia. Her mother never came to terms with the loss - ‘To my grave,’ she wrote to Queen Victoria, ‘I shall carry this sorrow with me’ - and yet through his death Alice, sighing desperately ‘God’s will be done,’ seemed to have recovered her childhood faith which she had begun to doubt for so long. At the same time, with a heightened sense of her own mortality, her determination to dedicate herself to her other children increased:
“I feel more than ever that one should put nothing off; and children grow up so quickly and leave one, and I would long that mine should take nothing but the recollection of love and happiness from their home with them into the world’s fight, knowing that they have always a safe harbour and open arms to comfort and encourage them when they are in trouble.”
Though the Queen commissioned a statue of the little boy, which remains at Frogmore House on the Windsor estate, and invited the family for their annual holiday in England, her response to Alice’s grief was cold and unsympathetic in the extreme. The loss of a child, she suggested, was nothing to the loss of a husband. Her heartless reaction was, no doubt, a reprisal for Alice’s criticism of her own excessive mourning for ‘beloved Albert’ and reflected the mounting irritation that the Queen felt towards her daughter in Darmstadt.
By the following year, when Alice gave birth to her last child, May, (an ‘enchanting little thing’ with sparkling eyes) Queen Victoria’s patience with Alice was reaching its limit. She could not deny that Alice had selflessly nursed her father through his last illness and had given her unwavering support through the early months of her bereavement, but now her ‘excessive demands’ for more money and her constant ‘interference’ in matters that did not concern her were more than the Queen’s nerves could bear.
Though Queen Victoria was reluctant to admit it, the root cause of her annoyance was far more personal - Alice not only had the audacity to disapprove of her favourite highland servant the ubiquitous John Brown, but worse, she had dared to criticise the Queen herself.
Rumours of the Queen’s inordinate dependence of the rough-spoken ghillie were already circulating through the country. Republican papers even suggested that the Queen had secretly married her ghillie and some went so far as to imply that she had borne him a child. That the Queen was a little in love with him, there was no doubt. His devotion to her was absolute; nothing was too much trouble for him on her account and she repaid him with complete confidence, making allowance for his drunkenness and allowing him, as Alice complained, to talk to her:
“…on all things while we, her children are restricted to speak on only those matters which may not excite her or which she chooses to talk about.”
It was not simply the Queen’s infatuation with the ghillie that irked her family so much as the imperious and disrespectful manner with which he treated other members of her household. If he deemed her too tired to receive them, the ghillie thought nothing of denying her own children access to her rooms.
Alice was not the only member of the family to object to his constant presence; her brothers Bertie, Alfred and Leopold, could not stand the man; Vicky had gone so far as to suggest that all the Queen’s children should sign a petition demanding his removal from Court; but outspoken Alice was most vociferous in her objections. Her complaints struck a raw nerve but now she went further and dared to voice openly what everyone else once whispered: the Queen had become so self-absorbed that she was neglecting her duties as Sovereign.
Since the death of Prince Albert in 1861, the ‘Widow of Windsor’ had settled into a semi-reclusive existence, cut off from her people and refusing to appear in public ‘alone.’ In the early years of her widowhood, the country had sympathised with her grief, but as the mourning continued unabated for over a decade, pity was rapidly turning into frustration. In the face of an absentee monarch, the Republican movement was gaining ground but neither ministers nor princes could edge the Queen out of her self-indulgent isolation when Alice boldly declared it was time for the mourning to stop.
Alice had overstepped the mark and the princess, who exhausted herself in serving the poor, was accused of having airs and graces, of having ‘too high an opinion of herself,’ and of upsetting her mother’s staff by her arrogance.
“When [she] came the last two times,” the Queen complained to Vicky, “she grumbled about everything – and Louis also sometimes – the rooms, the hours, wanting to make me do this and that…If Alice wishes to come she should accommodate herself to my habits.”
That year, in a fit of pique, the Queen threatened to refuse the Hessians the annual invitation to England and only Vicky’s tactful intervention persuaded her to change her mind - a great relief to Alice’s daughters for whom the holidays in Windsor, Osborne or Balmoral were among the brightest highlights of childhood.