she was delighted with her reception. Next day she went by train to Birmingham, when, wonderful to relate, the sun shone through a smokeless though sultry atmosphere. As for the arrangements for her reception, she writes, “all was admirably done—handsomer even than Manchester. The cheering was tremendous.” Loyal addresses were presented at the Town Hall, where, seated on an extemporised throne, her Majesty knighted the Mayor. The Royal Party next proceeded to Aston Hall and Park, “now to be converted,” writes the Queen, “into a People’s Museum and Park, and to obtain which the working people had worked very hard, and subscribed very largely.” Here six of the working men associated with the managers of the proceedings were presented to the Queen, who conversed with them affably, and then proclaimed the Park open. “Quite a pattern lady!” “What a darling!”—such were among the exclamations, writes the Queen, with which she was greeted by the crowd. After visiting many places of interest in the district, the Queen returned to Buckingham Palace on the 16th, greatly impressed with the welcome she had received from the most democratic and republican community in England. This visit had a marked political influence. It gave a great though unseen impetus to the movement for Reform, and many thoughtful Conservatives now began to suspect that there was less danger in giving votes to the loyal artizans of Birmingham, than to the lower middle class whom the Whigs desired to enfranchise.

In May the Emperor of the French had sent the Queen an invitation to come and inspect the fortifications at Cherbourg. At this time the friction between France and England had been somewhat increased by a divergence of view between the two countries as to the settlement of the Danubian Principalities. England, by opposing their union, had irritated France. France, by refusing to admit that the engagements entered into by Napoleon III. at Osborne in 1857 bound her to support the English view, had annoyed England.[30] It was, however, thought that the Queen’s personal popularity in France, and her influence with the Emperor, might bring about friendlier relations between the Governments, and the Ministry pressed her to accept the Imperial invitation. Writing on the 5th of August, the day after the Queen’s arrival at Cherbourg, Lord Malmesbury, who was one of her party, says, “It blew hard in the night, but subsided towards morning. The Queen not ill. The approach to Cherbourg very fine. Arrived there at 7 p.m. At 8 the Emperor and Empress came on board the Royal yacht without any suite. Nobody was admitted. Marshal Pélissier, who went in without any invitation, was immediately turned out by the Emperor.” What passed at this interview, however, was an embarrassing inquiry about the feeling against France in England. “We smiled,” writes the Queen of herself and her husband, “and said the feeling was much better, but that this very place caused alarm, and that those unhappy addresses of the Colonels had done incalculable mischief.” The grand effect of the saluting cannon seems to have impressed the Queen, and, says Lord Malmesbury, “when the Emperor left the Queen’s yacht, the electric light was thrown on the Emperor’s barge, following it the whole way into the harbour; the light shining only on the barge, whilst all around remained in darkness.” The Emperor, adds Lord Malmesbury, “was very friendly in his manner; but both he and the Empress could not digest some of the articles in the Times which had been offensive, especially against her, and I tried to make them understand what freedom the Press had in England, and how independent it was of all private and most public men.” As for the Queen, she says in her Diary that, after this grave visit she “went below,” and “read and nearly finished that most interesting book ‘Jane Eyre.’” On the morrow thunderous salutes smote her ears as she was dressing, and when she went on deck the harbour was literally swarming with craft brave with gala array. “Next morning,” writes Lord Malmesbury of this day’s proceedings, “the Queen, Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, Sir John Pakington, and myself breakfasted at the Préfecture. After which the Royal Personages drove over the town.... Returned to the Royal yacht, and accompanied the Queen to dinner on board the Bretagne. Among the officers at dinner was General Macmahon.” Here the Queen was rendered very nervous because Prince Albert had to make a complimentary speech in reply to the toast of her health, for at that moment every eye in Europe was on Cherbourg, and every ear straining for echoes of Royal and Imperial conversations on which might hang the dread issues of war. “I shook so,” writes the Queen, “that I could not drink my cup of coffee.”[31] All went off well, however, and the kindliest words on both sides were spoken. The display of 25,000 francs’ worth of fireworks ended a brilliant but fatiguing day. August 6th was devoted to leave-taking, amidst a complimentary cannonade, and the Queen got home in time to greet Prince Alfred on his birthday at Osborne. “The evening,” she writes, “was very warm and calm. Dear Affie was on the pier, and we found all the other children, including Baby (Princess Beatrice), standing at the door.” A visit of inspection to Prince Alfred’s birthday presents, a little birthday fête and dance on the terrace, adds the Queen, formed “a delightful finale to our expedition.”[32] But the visit was a mistake, though, as the Ministry insisted on it, the blame was theirs alone. It produced an abundant crop of alarms and attacks in the press on the menacing preparations for war which had been seen at Cherbourg. It caused the Queen to have a controversy with Lord Derby, who would pay no heed to her appeal to provide a counterpoise to the threatening stronghold which she had inspected.

A visit—long promised and long looked for—to the Prince and Princess Frederick William of Prussia followed. Her Majesty’s suite arrived at Potsdam on the 14th of August, and on the same evening the Queen and Prince Albert arrived at Babelsberg, where they were received with a warmth of welcome by their Prussian relatives that made the Queen, as she herself says, feel as if she were at home. The meeting between her and her daughter brought a moment of supreme delight to both. Each day spent in the happy circle of the Prince and Princess of Prussia seems to have knit the heart of the Queen closer to the family of which her eldest daughter was so obviously a cherished member. Every day some fresh mark of attention was paid to the Queen and her husband by their hosts, who seemed to exhaust their ingenuity in devising expedients for making her visit pleasant to her. Though this visit was purely a private one, the people gave her as cordial a reception as the Court, until at last her Majesty began to feel sad at the approaching termination of such a charming holiday. But on the 28th of August the last day came, and, writes the Prince Consort, “the parting was very painful.” The Queen and the Princess Royal wept in each other’s arms, though her Majesty says, with a pathetic reference to the conflicting duties of sovereignty and womanhood, “all would be comparatively easy were it not for the one thought that I cannot be with her at that very critical moment when every mother goes to her child.”[33] Dover was reached on the 31st, from whence the Queen went on to Portsmouth, and thence to Osborne, where they found Prince Alfred, who had passed his examination—especially the mathematical part of it—with great distinction, eager to tell them he had been appointed to the Euryalus. He was waiting for his mother, writes the Queen, “in his middie’s jacket, cap, and dirk, half-blushing, and looking very happy. He is a little pulled down from these three days’ hard examination, which only terminated to-day.... We felt very proud, for it is a particularly hard examination.”[34]

Only one anxiety had intruded itself during the Prussian tour—the issue of the Queen’s Proclamation to the Indian people on assuming the government of India. She objected strongly to the draft of it which was submitted to her, and begged Lord Derby to write one out for her in “his own excellent language,” keeping in view “that it is a female Sovereign who speaks to more than a hundred millions of Eastern people on assuming the direct government over them after a bloody civil war, giving them pledges which her future reign is to redeem.” Such a Proclamation should, says her Majesty, emphasise the ideas of generosity, benevolence, religious toleration, liberty, and equality before the law. What offended her deeply in the draft was a menace reminding the Indian people that she had “the power of undermining” native religions and customs. Her Majesty, writes Lord Malmesbury by her directions, “would prefer that the subject should be introduced by a declaration in the sense that the deep attachment which her Majesty feels to her own religion, and the comfort and happiness which she derives from its consolations, will preclude her from any attempt to interfere with native religions.” The name of the official personage who drew up this blundering and exasperating Proclamation, which the Queen had the good sense and good taste to cancel, need not be mentioned. It is but just to Lord Derby to say that when the Queen’s objections were telegraphed to him he examined the document, and so completely agreed with her Majesty that he re-wrote the Proclamation in a manner that anticipated her detailed instructions. A few additions were made to it by the Queen, and when it was issued it was hailed with delight by the Natives as the Magna Charta of India.

On the 6th of September the Queen and Prince Albert proceeded to Leeds to open the splendid Town Hall which the people of that borough had built, and where they were welcomed by the most picturesque Mayor in England, who in his robes and bearing, wrote the Queen, was “the personification of a Venetian Doge.” Needless to say then that, after the Hall was opened, Mr. Mayor Fairbairn was knighted. The Royal Family next sped northwards to Balmoral, where Prince Albert brought down his first stag on the 14th, and where the whole household gazed nightly at Donati’s comet, which blazed with peculiar brilliancy in the clear and “nimble air” of the Highlands. Among the superstitious mountaineers it was held to be a portent of war and pestilence. At Balmoral the Queen became involved in a discussion with her Ministers as to the future of the Indian Army. Who was to command it—the Queen through the British Commander-in-Chief, or the Queen through the Secretary of State in Council, as successors to the old East India Company and Board of Control? Her Majesty stoutly contended that the union between the British and Indian Armies should be completed by their being placed under the same supreme authority—namely, the Commander-in-Chief in India. The Indian Council grasping at patronage, however, held that though the Commanders-in-Chief in the Presidencies should not be subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief in India, except in respect of the Queen’s troops under their order, over the Native troops in their presidencies their authority must be supreme. Lord Clyde took the Queen’s view of the matter, and so did General Peel, War Secretary, and also the Prince Consort, and in 1860, when the controversy ended, it was her view that prevailed. Towards the end of the Balmoral holiday the Queen and her husband were greatly delighted to find that their much-loved friend, the Prince of Prussia, had finally been chosen Prince Regent in succession to his brother, the king, who had become too infirm in mind and body to hold the reins of Government. The Prince Regent (afterwards German Emperor) and Prince Albert were not only warm friends, but were in close confidential correspondence on public affairs, and the Queen and her husband alike looked to him as the only possible deliverer of Prussia from Absolutist Administrations dominated by Russian ascendency. Their counsels had a powerful influence on the Prussian Regent’s policy at the outset of his career, when he dismissed the Manteuffel Ministry, and initiated an era of moderate constitutional progress in his country. Indirectly, they conferred a marked benefit on this country at the same time. The foreign policy of Prussia, which had up till now seemed to be antipathetic to England, changed. Without abating any of their zeal for their respective interests, the Foreign Offices of the two countries found it much easier than it had been to work together in matters of general interest. This cordiality between the Courts of Berlin and St. James’s was promoted by the kindness which the Prince Regent bestowed on the Prince of Wales when, in November, he proceeded to Berlin to visit his sister. He returned, not only bearing with him a confidential letter from the Prince Regent to his father, but with it the Order of the Black Eagle, which had been, greatly to his delight, bestowed upon him. He had just completed his eighteenth year, and had been promoted to a colonelcy in the army. Colonel Bruce was now his governor—his tutor, Mr. Gibbs, having retired. The Prince had, in fact, become emancipated from pupilage, and Mr. Greville referring to this event says in his “Memoirs,” “I hear the Queen has written a letter to the Prince of Wales announcing to him his emancipation from parental authority and control, and that it is one of the most admirable letters ever penned. She tells him that he may have thought the rule they adopted for his education a severe one, but that his welfare was their only object; and well knowing to what seductions of flattery he would eventually be exposed, they wished to prepare and strengthen his mind against them, that he was now to consider himself his own master, and that they should never intrude any advice upon him, although always ready to give it him whenever he thought fit to seek it. It was a very long letter all in that line, and it seems to have made a profound impression on the Prince, and to have touched his feelings to the quick. He brought it to Gerald Wellesley in floods of tears, and the effect it produced is a proof of the wisdom which dictated its composition.”[35]

A fresh cause of disagreement had, however, now arisen with France. The seizure of a French slaver, called the Charles-et-Georges, by the Portuguese authorities at Mozambique, tempted the French Government to demand its surrender, and an indemnity whilst her status was sub judice. Coercion was threatened by the appearance of a French squadron in the Tagus, and an offer on the part of Portugal to submit to arbitration was refused. Englishmen in these circumstances gave vent to much indignation against a revival of the old brutal methods of Bonapartism in dealing with a small Power, and this indignation was shared by the Queen, though it was prudently veiled, her personal relations with the Portuguese Court being of an unusually cordial character. Lord Malmesbury was also well known not only to be a partisan of the French alliance, but a personal friend of the French Emperor. This led many to suspect that the British Government had played into the hands of France; and Lord Malmesbury’s policy was, in truth, so spiritless in defence of Portugal, that the Portuguese, fearing to waste time in appealing for the good offices of England, yielded to the overbearing menaces of France. At the same time, it is quite clear, from a sentence in one of the Prince Consort’s letters to Baron Stockmar, that the Court, on the whole, approved of the Foreign Secretary’s policy, which, at all events, kept the country clear of war. The loyal reception of the Queen’s Proclamation in India on the 17th of October, and the end of the rebellion in Oudh, gladdened the closing months of 1858. Over these, however, the first symptoms of the Prince Consort’s failing health projected the slowly-advancing shadow, that was so soon to shroud the remainder of the Queen’s career in widowed sorrow.

CHAPTER II.

THE ITALIAN REVOLUTION.

Not easily will the world forget the New Year’s Day of 1859. “I regret,” said the French Emperor to Baron Hubner, the Austrian Ambassador, at the reception at the Tuileries, “that the relations between our two countries are not more satisfactory; but I beg you to assure the Emperor (of Austria) that they in no respect alter my feelings of friendship to himself.” Taken in connection with the rumoured results of Continental intrigues, but one interpretation could be put on these words. The restlessness of France was to be appeased by a war for the deliverance of Italy from the Hapsburgs, and the bombs of Orsini had forced the Emperor to be faithful to his forgotten engagements to his old comrades among the Carbonari. The Emperor’s own story was that he felt convinced there could be no peace in Europe unless the Territorial Settlement of 1815 was revised. He professed to have aimed at effecting that object by the regeneration of Poland. The Crimean War having, however, proved this scheme to be futile, his policy was thenceforth directed to the deliverance of Italy from Austrian servitude. In either case the waters of diplomacy would be troubled, and it would be easy to fish out of them something that might partially compensate France for what she lost in 1815. But the truth was that, at his secret interview with Count Cavour, at Plombières, in the autumn of 1858, the Emperor had entered into an engagement to defend Piedmont, if attacked by Austria, and to establish under the Sardinian Crown a Kingdom of Northern Italy, the price for this aid being the cession of Savoy and Nice to France. At this meeting the marriage of Prince Napoleon to the Princess Clothilde, daughter of the King of Italy, was discussed, but not definitely arranged. The announcement of the coming marriage was, however, made to the Queen by the French Emperor on the 31st of December, 1858. On the 23rd of January, 1859, the formal request for the Princess Clothilde’s hand was made. On the 30th the wedding was celebrated, and on the 3rd of February the Prince and Princess Napoleon returned to Paris. On the evening before the marriage, Napoleon III. was said to have signed a pacte de famille, promising aid offensive and defensive to Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel pledging himself to cede to France Savoy and Nice, in return for territorial acquisitions in Lombardy.[36] Thus the French Emperor was bound to Sardinia as with “hoops of steel,” when the European crisis in 1859 became acute, and Lord Malmesbury imagined that he could compose it by diplomacy.

After the Imperial declarations to Baron Hubner, Victor Emmanuel, on the 10th of January, in his Address to his Parliament, had said, “While we respect treaties, we are not insensible to the cry of suffering (Grido di dolore) which comes to us from so many parts of Italy.” Austrian troops forthwith began to swarm into the passes of the Tyrol, and to form on the line of the Ticino. Russia encouraged France to the utmost, and from conversations with Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarendon during their visit in autumn to Compiègne, the French Emperor felt convinced that the powerful party in England, led by Palmerston, would give him that moral support which the Queen and her Ministers denied him.[37] The Courts of St. James’s and Berlin were cold friends to the cause of Italian freedom. To them any war which upset the Settlement of 1815 was like the letting out of waters. The victory of either party could bode no good for Prussia, under whose leadership the Queen was even then hopeful that Germany would yet form a united Empire. The triumph of the Hapsburgs would strengthen their position in Germany, and as Herr von Bismarck said, this must mean that “our Kings will again become Electors and vassals of Austria.”[38] The victory of France, on the other hand, would tempt Napoleon III. to seize Belgium and the Rhine Provinces.

In Germany public opinion was, on the whole, pro-Austrian. In England, popular feeling, stimulated by the Liberal Party, was decidedly Anti-Austrian. The view of the Tory Ministry was that of Lord Malmesbury, who thought that it was as wicked to dispute the right of Austria to her Italian provinces, as to question that of England to Ireland. Frenchmen, again, were as little inclined to go to war for “an idea” in Lombardy as in the Crimea.

It would be tedious to follow the tangled skein of intrigue that finally ended in war. At the outset the advantage lay with Austria, because if she had struck quickly and sharply she might have crushed Sardinia, ere France could have come to her rescue. Protracted negotiation deprived Austria of this advantage, so Napoleon III. welcomed the proposal of England to find a diplomatic solution of the Italian Question—all the more readily that his failure to obtain pledges of absolute neutrality from England and Prussia, caused him to waver from his purpose. It was in the hope that he might be induced, when in this state of mind, to insert a pacific clause in his address to the Chambers, that the Queen, on the 4th of February, wrote to him suggesting this course,[39] in a letter thanking him for his congratulations on the birth of the Princess Royal’s son. Napoleon’s reply was friendly but evasive. He professed great friendship for England, and respect for treaties, but virtually reserved to himself the right to interpret them in his own interests. So matters stood at the beginning of the Session of 1859.

Parliament had been called together on the 5th of February. Ministers were undoubtedly discredited by a popular suspicion that they were using the influence of England to buttress up Austrian tyranny in Italy. The impartial impotence of Lord Malmesbury’s policy, as subsequently revealed in his despatches, however, showed that these suspicions were unfounded. The question of Reform had been stirred during the autumnal recess by Mr. Bright. But his violent attacks on the propertied classes had roused the fiercest antagonism, and probably did more to retard than advance the cause he had at heart. Yet the Government could not afford to dispense with the support of the Party of Parliamentary Reform, and so Mr. Disraeli’s determination to deal with the question was intimated in the Queen’s Speech. Lord Granville, Lord Palmerston, and Lord John Russell, though speaking less hopefully than Mr. Disraeli of the efforts of the Government to preserve peace, alike deprecated a war for the expulsion of Austria from North Italy, where her position was secured to her by the Treaty of 1815. But they argued that she had no right to go beyond that Treaty, and that the presence of Austrian and French armies in Central Italy, on which they imposed a government that was hateful to the people, was most dangerous to the peace of the world. The Emperor’s speech to the French Chambers, as the Prince Consort said, was “meant to look peaceful”—but that was all. “Not a word,” wrote Lord Malmesbury “is said about Treaties, but a good deal about the interests and honour of France.”[40] Indeed, Victor Emmanuel and Cavour fancied they detected in it signs of wavering. The former threatened to abdicate, and the latter to resign, after disclosing to the world the secret compact of Plombières and the pacte de famille, signed on the eve of the Princess Clothilde’s marriage. This threat, together with Cavour’s Mephistophelean allusions to the vengeance of the Carbonari, invariably brought the Emperor back to his original resolve, and defeated the efforts of British diplomacy to avert war. Meanwhile, the Prince Regent William had been pressed by the French Emperor to hold aloof from Austria. Rival parties in Prussia were trying to drag him in contrary directions, and at last he appealed confidentially to his friends, the Queen and the Prince Consort, for advice, saying, “I anxiously await your answer, for it will be decisive for us.”[41] It is important to study this correspondence, because at the time the Queen and Prince Consort were denounced in many quarters, where French influence was at work, for intriguing through the Courts of Berlin and Brussels to get up a great German League against the liberties of Italy. England, replied the Prince Consort, would not now go with France, no matter how far Austria put herself in the wrong. Prussia would be well advised, thought the Prince, to take the same line. In the meantime, let German public opinion, of which Napoleon stood much in awe, on the question, be elicited by encouraging the freest discussion in Germany, and when the crisis came, let that opinion guide Prussia. Prussia and the German States, the Prince Consort thought, should adopt an attitude of armed neutrality—ready to strike a blow for the protection of the Rhine provinces before a victorious France could quite clear her hands of a defeated Austria. Prussia and Germany, argues the Prince in another letter, owe no duty to Austria in respect of Italy. But Austria owes them a duty as a German State bound to assist in the defence of Germany from French aggression. Ere Prussia sided with Austria, an Austrian army must be ready to advance on the Rhine, and Germany must be permitted to exercise a distinct influence on Austrian policy in Italy. The Prince Regent of Prussia treated the Prince Consort’s views as “decisive,” and, as will be subsequently seen, by acting on them he not only increased the influence of Prussia in Germany, but virtually brought the war between France and Austria to a sudden close. In the meantime, Parliament, with great generosity and patriotic spirit, refused to embarrass Ministers by debating the Italian Question, and at the request of the French Emperor, Lord Cowley was sent to Vienna to mediate between France and Austria.

On the 28th of February Mr. Disraeli expounded his Reform Bill, the adoption of which compelled Mr. Walpole and Mr. Henley to retire from the Cabinet. The great blunder of the Whig Reform Bill of 1832 was that it excluded the working classes—without whose support the Bill could never have been forced on the Crown—from political power. The object of a practical Reform Bill was therefore simple. It was to lower the franchise, so as to give votes to the working classes, and then readjust the distribution of power in the constituencies in terms of this reduced franchise. Mr. Disraeli, however, produced a fantastic scheme, in which every concession given with the right hand was taken back with the left. The county franchise was reduced to £10, but then as a set-off the freeholders in towns were no longer to vote for the counties. The franchise in towns was not reduced, but a series of what Mr. Bright called “fancy franchises’ was created, with a view to render the representation of “interests” predominant.[42] Certain constituencies were to have additional members, and some small boroughs with two members were to lose one. Nobody was satisfied with the measure, so Lord John Russell on the 10th of March gave notice that he would move an amendment to the motion for the Second Reading, condemning the disturbance of the freehold franchise, and demanding a greater extension of the suffrage than Mr. Disraeli contemplated. All sections of the Opposition were able to vote for the resolution. Lord John Russell, who imagined he enjoyed a monopoly of the question of Reform, and that nobody should deal with it but himself, wanted to carry the Resolution and reject the Bill. Lord Palmerston was willing to vote for the Resolution and go on with the Bill. “I do not,” he said, “want them [the Ministry] to resign. I say to them, as I think Voltaire said of a Minister who had incurred his displeasure, ‘I won’t punish him; I won’t send him to prison; I condemn him to keep his place.’” Mr. Gladstone refused

to support the Resolution, because he said he wanted the question of Reform settled, and it would be quite possible to re-model the Bill in Committee, and Mr. Roebuck took the same view. Mr. Bright, however, thinking that any settlement arrived at in 1859 would be too favourable to the territorial interest, supported the Resolution in order to quash the Bill. Sir James Graham, who had drafted the Resolution, made by far the most statesmanlike speech 111 the debate. He argued that it was of no use to lower the borough franchise unless it were reduced so that no further reduction could be demanded, and suggested that the municipal rating franchise would be the best to adopt. On the 1st of April the Government by this coalition of factions was defeated by a vote of 330 to 291, and, undeterred by Lord Palmerston’s threat to stop supplies, Mr. Disraeli on the 4th of the month intimated that the Ministry would appeal to the country.

Partisans of the Government had attempted to make capital out of the disturbed state of the Continent, and had spoken as if it were wicked to oppose a bad Reform Bill at a time when Lord Malmesbury was mediating between armed nations. As a matter of fact, Lord Malmesbury was only permitted to amuse himself with futile mediation, which was to be protracted till France was ready to attack Austria, and Austria was lured into an attack on Piedmont, that would give France an excuse for fulfilling the secret compact with Cavour at Plombières. When Lord Cowley returned from Vienna he brought the assent of Austria (1), to withdraw her troops from the Roman States; (2), to support a reforming policy in Italy; and (3), to promise not to assail Sardinia. His mission would have been successful had not Napoleon in the meantime manufactured failure for it. He gave a hint to Russia which caused her to propose a Congress for the settlement of all questions at issue between France and Austria, and Lord Cowley’s plans were put out of the field. A Congress, by protracting negotiations, exposed Austria to the exhausting drain of her armaments, whilst France was perfecting her arrangements for falling upon her. Time, too, might bring about a change of Ministry in England, where the substitution of a warm ally like Lord Palmerston for a Tory Cabinet whose sympathies were, if anything, in favour of Austria, would be an advantage to France.

It was in these circumstances that the Queen reluctantly consented to a dissolution, when Mr. Disraeli and Lord Derby convinced her that they could not, after Lord Palmerston’s insolent speech, honourably go on with their Reform Bill. In fact, they pointed out that, even if they resigned, the Whigs would have to dissolve Parliament themselves in a few months to carry, against the opposition of the House of Lords, their own alternative measure of Reform, to which they were pledged. “The Congress truly does not dance,” observes the Prince Consort, in one of his shrewd letters to Stockmar. The fact is, that whenever Cavour heard of it, he warned the Emperor that if he played false, he (Cavour) would return to Turin, place his resignation in Victor Emmanuel’s hands, proceed to the United States, and not only charge the Emperor with luring the Sardinian Government into a ruinous warlike policy by promises of assistance, but that he would publish documentary proofs of his charges to the whole world. As Prince Albert said, Napoleon had “sold himself to the devil,” and “Cavour can do with his honour what he pleases.”[43] Hence, France would no longer support a proposal that Sardinia should disarm, and when Austria proposed simultaneous disarmament all round, the Emperor’s reply was, that the forces of France were not yet on a war footing. At last, Napoleon assented to this project, on condition that Sardinia and the other Italian States were heard in the Congress, which left the issue in the hands of Austria. The tension of the situation was now extreme, and telegrams came pouring in every hour to the Queen, whose nerves were sorely strained by the excitement of the crisis. Just before the dissolution, explanations of a somewhat unsatisfactory nature were given in both Houses of Parliament on the 18th of April, and next day (the 19th), Austria took the fatal and aggressive step which, as the Queen predicted, would turn public opinion against her. Instead of accepting the Congress, as France and Sardinia had accepted it, she called on Sardinia to disarm within three days, otherwise an Austrian army would march on Turin. Had Austria attacked at once she might have crushed her enemy before France could come to her aid. She hesitated and was lost. The effect of Count Buol’s ultimatum on England was electric. The Ministry, despite its pro-Austrian sympathies, hastened to protest against the invasion of Sardinia, and the Queen, in a letter to King Leopold, reflected the opinion of the people, when she said “though it was originally the wicked folly of Russia and France that brought about this fearful crisis, it is the madness and blindness of Austria that has brought on the war now.”[44] But this “madness and blindness” would not have deterred Austria from allowing the small Italian States to have a consultative representation at the Congress, had she been sure that a friendly Ministry would be in power in England. She, however, was afraid to weaken her position on the eve of Lord Palmerston’s possible return to office.[45] On the 29th Austrian troops crossed the Ticino. “All Italy is up,” writes Lord Malmesbury in his Diary: a feeble effort on his part to patch up negotiations for a Congress was rejected by France, though accepted by Austria, and the game of war began in earnest. In England, Ministers were blamed for having encouraged by their sympathy the obstinacy of Austria, which led her to break the peace. As a matter of fact, Lord Malmesbury’s efforts had been directed to pacify the combatants, to localise the war, and to prevent the German States, whose people were clamouring to be led to the conquest of Alsace, from joining in the fray.[46]

The General Election resulted in a gain of twenty-nine seats to the Tory Party, but this still left them in a minority whenever all sections of the Opposition chose to combine against them. The Liberal Party, tired of dissension, put pressure upon the two leaders by whose long rivalry it had been

caused, for the purpose of reconciling them, and accordingly Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell—after being urged by his brother, the Duke of Bedford—agreed that either would serve under the other. At a meeting in Willis’s Rooms, on the 5th of June, the union of all sections of the Party was consummated, and an Amendment to the Address, declaring their want of confidence in the Ministry, was drafted and agreed to. Parliament met on the 6th of June. Next night Lord Hartington in the House of Commons moved this Amendment, which, after a debate lasting over three nights, was carried on the 10th of June by a majority of thirteen in a house of 643. The Government resigned, and the Queen, who was not particularly anxious to entrust either Lord John Russell or Lord Palmerston with the Premiership, invited Lord Granville to form a Ministry. Lord Palmerston very generously consented to serve under Lord Granville, but Lord John Russell refused. He had agreed to serve under Palmerston if he were appointed to the Foreign Office, but under Lord Granville he must at least be Leader of the House of Commons. As Lord Palmerston would not accept a peerage, and as it was impossible to ask him to abandon the Leadership of the Liberal Party in the

Lower House which he had held so long, Lord Granville retired from the field. The Queen then sent for Lord Palmerston, who formed a Ministry consisting of Lord John Russell, Lord Campbell, Sir G. C. Lewis, Sir George Grey, Sir Charles Wood, the Duke of Newcastle, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Elgin, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cardwell, the Duke of Somerset, and Mr. Milner Gibson. A place—the Presidency of the Board of Trade—was offered to Mr. Cobden, which he declined. The first five represented the Whigs; the next six represented the Peelites; Messrs. Gibson and Cobden were selected to conciliate the Radicals; and there could be no doubt that, tested by individual capacity, the combination was one of the strongest ever formed. The Queen deeply regretted the exclusion of Lord Clarendon from the Cabinet, and Mr. Greville says that Lord John Russell’s selfish determination to take the Foreign Office kept Clarendon out. This is hardly just. Lord Clarendon’s pro-Austrian sympathies, and his opposition to Palmerston’s foreign policy, rendered him ineligible for office at the time. The change was attended by one unpleasant incident. The substance of the Queen’s conversations with Lord Granville found their way into the press, and her Majesty’s indignation at this betrayal of her confidence was not concealed. It was clear that some of those with whom Lord Granville had been in negotiation had not kept faith with him, and in the House of Lords (17th of June) he expressed his regret, without, however, divulging the name of the culprit who had betrayed him.

The war in the North of Italy had in the meantime been raging furiously. An uninterrupted series of defeats led Austria to the crowning disaster of Solferino (June 24th), and forced her to take refuge in the Quadrilateral. The losses of the French army had been heavy, and a weary struggle before the famous Four Fortresses was not inviting. The victory of Magenta had forced Prussia to mobilise her forces, and Solferino decided her to adopt a policy of “armed mediation”—the object of which was to concert with England and Russia terms of peace reconciling Austrian rights with Italian liberties, and forcing these terms on the combatants. In the end of May the Queen, depressed by the reverses of Austria, had been anxious that England should take her side, but had fortunately been dissuaded from pressing her views on the Government by Lord Malmesbury, who told her plainly that “the country would not go to war even in support of Italian independence, and there would not be ten men in the House of Commons who would do so on behalf of Austria.”[47] For the German States intervention was, however, hardly avoidable, and so the French Emperor prudently began to negotiate for peace.

On the 6th of July Persigny submitted to Lord John Russell a proposal that England should ask for an armistice on terms which the Emperor was willing to grant, but which the Austrian Ambassador, Count Apponyi, rejected. England also declined to sanction them because, in Lord Palmerston’s opinion, they ignored the wishes of Italy.[48] The Emperor then signed an armistice with the Austrians for seven days on the 8th of July, and arranged for a meeting with the Austrian Emperor on the 11th. On the 10th Persigny insidiously renewed his negotiations for the “moral support” of England in the new turn of affairs. Lord Malmesbury, who had the story from Persigny, says he “went to Lord Palmerston and said that the time was come for mediation, and suggested conditions, namely, Venice and its territories to be taken from Austria, not annexed to Sardinia, but made into a separate and independent State. There were other conditions, but this was the principal one.[49] That Lord Palmerston agreed to this, and rode down to Richmond to tell Lord John Russell, who was equally delighted; and that the proposal was adopted by them and sent to the Queen, who was at Aldershot, which occasioned some delay. That her Majesty refused her consent, saying the time was not yet come to make these proposals, as the fortresses were not yet taken. That, however, in the meantime, Persigny had telegraphed the consent of the English Government to his master, who immediately asked for an interview with the Emperor of Austria, showed him Persigny’s despatch, saying, ‘Here are the conditions proposed by England, and agreed to also by Prussia. Now listen to mine, which, though those of an enemy, are much more favourable. So let us settle everything together without reference to the neutral Powers, whose conditions are not nearly so advantageous to you as those I am ready to grant.’ The Emperor of Austria, not suspecting any reservation, and not knowing that the Queen had refused her consent to these proposals, which, though agreed to by her Government, were suggested by Persigny, evidently to give his master the opportunity of outbidding us, and making Francis Joseph think that he was thrown over by England and Prussia, accepted the offer, and peace was instantly concluded.”[50] There cannot be any doubt that the Queen, though unaware that Persigny was merely intending to use Palmerston as a dupe, was right in refusing her consent to these sham proposals. The Emperor of Austria, it is known, would not have accepted them. But in that case “moral support” of them, recklessly promised by Palmerston, might have laid us open to the charge of having abandoned our strict and scrupulous neutrality. By the Peace of Villafranca, which was arranged at the meeting of the Emperors, Venice was left as an Austrian State, but was to enter an Italian Confederation, presided over by the Pope; Lombardy was ceded to France, who might cede it to Sardinia, and the Dukes of Tuscany and Modena were to be restored. The verdict of the Parisian flaneurs was that “France had made a superb war, and Austria a superb peace.” Victor Emmanuel ground his teeth with rage when he found he had to accept this arrangement, adding, after his signature, the significant words, “I ratify this convention in all that concerns myself.” Cavour placed his resignation in the King’s hands, and left the camp for Turin, after a stormy interview with the French Emperor. “Arrêtez-moi, et vous serez forcé de retourner en France par le Tyrol,” he said, when Napoleon threatened to put him under arrest for his insolent language. Palmerston, in a letter to Persigny, protested against the arrangement with impotent rage.[51] The Prince Consort, however, cynically observed that the Italian Question was not quite settled yet, and that a Confederation with the Pope at the head of it was only “a bad joke.” The Queen soothed Lord Palmerston, in his bitter disappointment, by pointing out to him that his ally had now legalised in Italy that very Austrian influence which it was the object of the Palmerstonian policy to expel, but, she added, as Lord Palmerston had not protested against the war, he could not protest against the peace, unless it were considered wise to “make it appear as if to persecute Austria were a personal object with the First Minister of the Crown.” To Lord John Russell she wrote in terms that must have been as gall and bitterness to Palmerston, who had, in defiance of her objections, consented to give “moral support” to Persigny’s sham proposals for peace. The Emperor Napoleon, she observed, by his prudence and victories, had created for himself a formidable position. “It is remarkable,” she adds, “that he has acted towards Austria now just as he did towards Russia, after the fall of Sebastopol. But if it was our lot then to be left alone to act the part of the extortioner, while he acted that of the generous victor, the Queen is doubly glad that we should not now have fallen into the trap to ask from Austria, as friends and neutrals, concessions which he was ready to waive.”[52]

Still, her Majesty did not regard the anxious events of the year with unmixed regret. It was a gratifying fact that the Indian Mutiny had been suppressed, and on the 14th of April the thanks of Parliament were voted to those who had saved our Indian Empire. The Queen, in conveying her personal thanks to Lord Canning, laid before him her project for founding the Order of the Star of India. A visit from her eldest daughter had brightened her birthday festivities—saddened though these were by the illness of the Duchess of Kent, who had been attacked by erysipelas. The Government had begun to strengthen the defences of the country, and the spontaneous uprising of the people, which originated the Volunteer Movement, placed at her disposal the nucleus of a superb defensive army, to the organisation of which the Prince Consort now began to direct his attention. Mr. Gladstone’s Budget, too, though it necessitated a ninepenny income-tax[53] to meet exceptional naval and military expenditure, was passed ungrudgingly by Parliament, though, of course, it increased the popular antipathy to the French Emperor which the Peace of Villafranca had excited.

In vain did Napoleon III. endeavour to induce England to propose a Congress or a Conference for the purpose of settling the Italian Question in a manner that would allay Italian discontent. Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell would have fallen into this trap also, but for the tenacity with which the Queen urged her objections to their policy. Walewski fortunately admitted to Lord Cowley that the French and Austrian Emperors had agreed not to submit the Peace they had made to a Congress. “Two emperors,” wrote the Queen to Lord John Russell (20th July), “who were at war with each other have suddenly concluded personally a peace, and we have before us merely the account of one of them through his Minister. This Minister’s account admits that his master pledged his word on certain points, but thinks it not binding if England will propose its being broken. This is a duty which honour forbids us to undertake.” The Cabinet then so far yielded to the Queen’s reasoning that they agreed to hold aloof from the whole business, till the arrangement between the two Emperors was embodied in the Treaty of Zurich. A debate in the House of Commons (8th August) showed that Parliament, on the whole, approved of this course. On the 13th came the prorogation of the Legislature, which enabled the Queen and her husband to make a short excursion to the Channel Islands.