In the second week of July the freedom of the City of London was presented to Prince Frederick William of Prussia; the Prince Consort was sworn in master of the Trinity House, and the Queen and the Prince visited the camp at Aldershott. On the 27th the marriage of the Princess Charlotte of Belgium and the Archduke Maximilian was celebrated at Brussels. The Prince went abroad for a few days, to make one in the group of friends and relations, among whom was the old French Queen Amélie, the grandmother of the bride. Queen Victoria wrote to King Leopold, that she was present with them in spirit, and that she could not have given a greater proof of her love than she had shown in urging her husband to go. "You cannot think how much this costs me," she added, "or how completely forlorn I am and feel when he is away, or how I count the hours till he returns. All the numerous children are as nothing to me when he is away. It seems as if the whole life of the house and the home were gone." On the 6th of August, the Emperor of the French's yacht, with the Emperor and Empress on board, arrived on the English coast, and a private visit of a few days' length was paid to the Queen and the Prince at Osborne. On the 19th of August Her Majesty and the Prince, with six of their children, in the royal yacht, paid an equally private visit to Cherbourg, in the absence of the Emperor and Empress. During the short stay there was a long country drive to an old chateau, when darkness overtook the adventurous party, and all was agreeably fresh and foreign. By the beginning of September terrible tidings arrived from India. The massacre of the English women and children at Cawnpore, after the surrender of the fort, and the perilous position of the garrison at Lucknow, darkened the usually joyous stay at Balmoral, to which the Princess Royal was paying her last visit. Another source of distress to the Queen and the Prince, when the mutiny began to be put down, was the indiscriminate vengeance which a section of the rulers in India seemed inclined to take on the natives for the brutalities of the rebels. At length Lucknow was relieved, and England breathed freely again, though the country had to mourn the death of Havelock. Sir Colin Campbell completed the defeat of the enemy, and the first steps were taken to put an end to the complications of government in India, by bringing the great colony directly under the rule of the Queen, and causing the intermediate authority of the East India Company to cease. CHAPTER XXX. THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL.