Demonstrators enraged by a parliamentary vote to let universities sharply increase tuition fees targeted the royals as they were driven to a show in London's West End theater district Thursday night.
"Someone yelled, 'It's Charles and Camilla!' and they threw bins in the road to stop the car," student Katherina Chaffey, 17, told The Mirror. A pack of about 20 protesters barged through the police escort -- which included several armed officers -- and battered the distinctive Rolls-Royce with fists, boots, bottles and paint bombs. A protester even managed to lean through a partially open window and prod Camilla in the ribs with a stick, claimed the London Evening Standard.
Footage broadcast on national television late Thursday and photographs splashed on the front of British newspapers this morning showed Camilla's terror as the surprise attack unfolded. Wearing a green evening gown, she gasped in shock as the vehicle was surrounded, and she reached out to hold Charles' hand.
One witness told The Daily Mail the tuxedo-clad prince remained calm throughout the ambush. "Charles got her on the floor and put his hands on her," said Adnan Nazir, a 23-year-old podiatrist who was following the protesters.
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A spokeswoman for Clarence House, Charles' office and official residence, said that the couple made it through the incident unscathed: "We can confirm that their Royal Highnesses' car was attacked by the protesters on the way to their engagement at the London Palladium. Both their Royal Highnesses were unharmed." The same couldn't be said of their Phantom VI, which left the encounter with a smashed side window, dented doors, and white paint smeared across the rear of the vehicle. Despite their terrifying interlude, Camilla and Charles still made it to the Christmas charity gala where they were the guests of honor. Camilla shrugged off the attack as she emerged from the theater. "First time for everything," she joked.
But experts said the attack was not a laughing matter. Security analyst and former police officer Charles Shoebridge told The Daily Telegraph that armed royal protection officers would have opened fire on the protesters if they thought the royals were in serious danger. "Some of the demonstrators yesterday were carrying petrol, specifically to use in arson attacks," he said. "If the can of paint had been a can of petrol, it would have been very different."
Dai Davies, former head of Scotland Yard's royal protection squad, wondered why his successors chose to send Charles and Camilla through the middle of a riot. "One of the principles of protection is to have alternative routes and I would have expected there to be at least three different routes," he told BBC radio. "I'm surprised, and clearly the [Metropolitan Police] commissioner is embarrassed and surprised also, why there isn't better co-ordination -- or appears to be -- between those in charge of protection and those marshaling and dealing with the riots."
Alex Bomberg, a former aide to the royal family, said police officers who failed to communicate the protesters' whereabouts to the royal protection squad should be fired. "You can't blame the royal protection squad for a bunch of anarchists' bad behavior," Bomberg told The Associated Press. "But you can blame someone for not doing their job correctly and not understanding the situation as it was unfolding. Someone's head should bloody roll."
Police chiefs insist that they plotted the royals' journey carefully, and that the "disgraceful" attack was launched by fast-moving "thugs" running wild through the heart of the capital. "That route was thoroughly recced, including minutes beforehand," Sir Paul Stephenson, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told a press conference. "I think what you have to remember is the unpredictability of those -- I was going to call them demonstrators -- but these thugs, in the way in which they were moving around London." Stephenson pledged that the criminals who carried out the attack would be brought to justice.
Prime Minister David Cameron also offered his support to police this morning. "We do need to learn the lessons of this. It was a very regrettable incident," he said. "But in the end let's remember that this was not the fault of the police. This was the fault of the people that tried to smash up that car ... and I want to see them arrested and punished in the correct way."
The anti-royal rampage came at the end of a day of violent clashes between police and tens of thousands of students gathered outside Parliament, which left six officers and 43 protesters hospitalized. As it became clear that the government's plan to triple tuition fees to $14,200 a year would be approved by politicians, large groups of demonstrators vented their anger by smashing windows at the nearby Treasury building, burning park benches in Parliament Square and destroying an iconic red telephone box.
Others attacked more precious British monuments, including a statue of World War II leader Winston Churchill -- which was urinated on and sprayed with graffiti -- and the Cenotaph, a memorial to Britain's war dead. A student photographed swinging from a Union Flag attached to the column was later identified as Charlie Gilmour, son of Pink Floyd Guitarist David Gilmour.
"I would like to express my deepest apologies for the terrible insult to the thousands of people who died bravely for our country that my actions represented," the 21-year-old, who is studying history at Cambridge University, said in a statement. "I feel nothing but shame ... I did not realize that it was the Cenotaph and if I had, I certainly would not have done what I did."