Queen Victoria's Funeral - 1901

As the mournful tones of Chopin's funeral march sounded over the streets of London, on February the second, 1901, a day of much symbolism brought the Victorian era to a close. Edward the Seventh was the new King, but as he rode in the cortege at the funeral of his mother, Queen Victoria, the Empire "on which the sun never set" was drawing to its close. The world's greatest Navy, which had contributed so much to the building of the British Empire, paid its last respects to a monarch whose reign had spanned sixty three years. Victoria was just eighteen when she ascended the throne. In 1840 she married Prince Albert, and when he died some twenty years later, she was devastated, going into mourning for the rest of her life. Queen Victoria's funeral was the last great occasion on which almost all the crowned heads of Europe gathered together at the same time. Soon, wars and revolution would be taking their toll, and the idea of monarchy itself was to be challenged everywhere. Many of her nine children had married into other Royal families in Europe. Their contacts provided a fund of political knowledge which the Queen ruthlessly exploited. This sometimes brought her into conflict with her Government (ten Prime Ministers came and went during her reign, some several times). But her long life, and vast family connections gave the Queen an unprecedented insight into Government at home and abroad. And as her coffin was carried into Windsor Castle before the final burial service, the British public, too, forgave her for the years of withdrawal following her husband's death, for the social injustices that grew up through the nineteenth century and they joined in the universal acclaim for the "Grand Mother of the Empire".