One marked feature of the London season in 1874 was the sudden withdrawal of the Duchess of Edinburgh from Court ceremonials. An attempt was made to account for this by explaining that as her Royal and Imperial Highness was expecting to become a mother she deemed her retirement from Society necessary.[78] According to statements current at the time, however, her absence was due not exactly to a dispute, but to a difficulty about her precedence, which must have considerably embarrassed the Queen. As the daughter of a powerful Emperor, the Duchess of Edinburgh not unnaturally thought that she had a right to take precedence of the Princess of Wales, who was but the daughter of a petty king. An Imperial Highness should, in her opinion, take precedence of a Royal Highness. On the other hand, it was intolerable to the English people that even by implication should the inferiority of the English Monarchy to that of any Imperial House in Europe be recognised--in fact, the kings of England had never admitted that any of the Continental Emperors had a title to precedence over them. The country, therefore, heard with interest a report that the Russian Czar was about to come to England, not merely to visit his daughter, but if possible to settle with the Queen the question of precedence that had disturbed her family. Her Majesty was understood to be willing to assent to any arrangement which did not confer on the wife of her second son, the right to take precedence over the wife of the Heir Apparent, and so matters stood when the Czar arrived at Dover on the 13th of May. He was received with the utmost cordiality by the Queen in person at Windsor. The first effect of his visit was to replace the Duchess of Edinburgh in the _Court Circular_ among the ladies of the Royal Family next to the Princess of Wales, and to cause her to be described as “Her Royal _and Imperial Highness_ the Duchess of Edinburgh (Grand Duchess of Russia).”[79] The Czar was well received by the people, among whom he was popular as the Liberator of the Serfs, and after a dreary week of sightseeing and State banquets, he left England on the 22nd of May. On the 30th of March the Queen proceeded to Windsor Great Park to review the troops who had been engaged in the Ashanti War. The force, 2,000 in number, went through their evolutions in gallant style, and her Majesty with her own hands awarded the Victoria Cross to Lord Gifford for personal bravery in the campaign. On the 13th of April the Queen also inspected the sailors and marines of the Royal Navy who had fought in the Ashanti War. The review took place at Gosport, and many of the officers were, by the Queen’s desire, personally presented to her. The controversy then raging over Vivisection seemed to have interested her Majesty greatly, for at the Jubilee meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals there was read a letter written by Sir Thomas Biddulph by the Queen’s instructions, which ran as follows:--