France was increasing her army and her navy. The Report of a Royal Commission on National Defences had early in the year recommended the construction of fortifications to protect our arsenals and places of arms. The Cabinet resolved to spend £9,000,000 in carrying out these works, the money to be raised by a loan to be repaid in twenty years.

The vast fiscal changes involved by the Treaty were based on the supposition that France would be at peace with us. Yet the Fortification Scheme clearly rested on the assumption that France would soon involve us in war. In defence of this contradictory policy Mr. Gladstone writes, “like the builders of the Second Temple, grasping their tool with one hand and the sword with the other, we with one hand established commercial relations with France of unexampled amity and closeness, while with the other we built ships, constructed fortifications, and founded volunteers with a silent but well-understood and exclusive view to an apprehended invasion from France.”[75] He goes on to say that the augmentation of our forces in 1860 had the advantage “of strengthening the position of England in the councils of Europe with respect to the reconstitution of Italy.” But, at the time, he was by no means favourably disposed to this military expenditure. Lord Palmerston told the Queen that Mr. Gladstone was threatening to resign if it were sanctioned; adding that, however much that was to be regretted, “it would be better to lose Mr. Gladstone than to run the risk of losing Portsmouth or Plymouth.” He was not satisfied in fact that the danger was so great as Palmerston and the Party of Panic imagined. He did not like the mode of raising the money which was proposed. “The struggle in the forum of his conscience,” writes Mr. Morley, “was long and severe;”[76] but finally he decided he could do more for the taxpayers’ interest by remaining in the Cabinet and influencing it than by resigning office; and trivial concessions were made to him which allayed his scruples. The Prince Consort, writing on the 31st of July to Baron Stockmar, says, “Gladstone continues in the Ministry, but on the condition that he shall be free next year to attack and denounce the fortifications, to the construction of which he this year gives his assent and the money. Palmerston laughingly yielded this condition to him.” Accordingly, on the 23rd of July, a resolution was carried in the House of Commons authorising £2,000,000 to be raised on annuities terminable in thirty years—this sum being enough to cover the expenditure possible within the year. Lord Palmerston, in speaking to the resolution, attacked France with great spirit, though it is unlikely that if France had really evil designs at the time on England, she would have given the Government even a year’s grace in which to begin their costly coast-fortification. One reason why Mr. Gladstone was hostile to a Fortification Scheme was that it upset all his financial arrangements. It created a feeling against sacrificing revenue, of which so much had already been surrendered to carry out the French Treaty.

It was soon evident that the proposal to abolish the Paper Duty was unpopular in Parliament, and when it passed the third reading by a majority of nine only, Lord Palmerston warned the Queen, who was on the side of the minority on this occasion, that the House of Lords would probably reject it. The Cabinet was not united on the subject, for Lord Malmesbury states that he was deputed to tell Lady Palmerston that the Opposition meant to reject it, “for which she thanked us.” Nay, he was deputed to go further, and promise her their support in the event of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Milner Gibson and Lord John Russell resigning either over the failure of the Paper Duty scheme, or over the withdrawal of the Reform Bill. When both events became inevitable, the Cabinet was severely shaken, and all through the early days of June it was expected that it would be broken up. When the Lords rejected the Paper Duty Bill, Mr. Gladstone threatened to resign unless the Government and the House of Commons censured them for meddling with a Bill relating to taxation. The Peers, however, though they have not the right to initiate Bills dealing with taxation, have always claimed the right of rejecting them, and the Commons’ Privilege Committee in their Report of the 29th of June admitted this right. However, to pacify Mr. Gladstone and the Radicals, Lord Palmerston introduced a series of Resolutions on the 6th of July in a speech which Lord Derby said was “the best tight-rope dancing he ever saw.”[77] These Resolutions affirmed once more the exclusive right of the House of Commons to impose and remit taxes, and to frame Bills of Supply, but did not challenge the claim of the Peers to reject them—and they were carried by a vote of 177 to 138.

The feeling of mistrust against France had given a strong impetus to the Volunteer movement in the country, and in 1860 this found vent in the great review of the citizen army in Hyde Park, and the formation of the National Rifle Association at Wimbledon. The review was held on the 23rd of June, and 20,000 men from all parts of the country attended. The Queen appeared on the ground at four o’clock in the afternoon with the King of the Belgians, the Princess Alice, and Prince Arthur, the Prince Consort riding beside her carriage. In two hours it was over—belying the Duke of Wellington’s historic doubt whether we had a general who could get so many men into Hyde Park and out again without “clubbing” and confusion. Lord Malmesbury says, “I went to Mr. Disraeli’s house in Grosvenor Gate to see the sight, which was very fine. The enthusiasm of the men and spectators exceeded all description. There were 20,000 Volunteers, all young men between eighteen and thirty.

They went through their evolutions with the greatest steadiness and precision, and at the final advance in line, when they halted within a short distance of the Queen, and the bands had ceased playing ‘God Save the Queen,’ they raised a cheer that might be heard for miles. This was taken up by the spectators, and the scene was so exciting that the Queen was quite overcome, and I saw many people the same.”[78] On the 7th of July her Majesty opened the first meeting of the National Rifle Association on Wimbledon Common, under the first sunny summer sky of a peculiarly bleak season. Mr. Whitworth[79] had adjusted one of his rifles so neatly that when her Majesty pulled the trigger and fired the first shot at 400 yards she scored a bull’s-eye.[80] Her own prize, conferring the Champion Marksmanship of England on the winner, was carried off by Mr. Edward Boss, of the 7th North York Rifles, with a score of twenty-four points—the greatest possible score being sixty. The public interest in the meeting, which was, in a sense, a great volunteer picnic, was indicated by the fact that the admission money (1s. a head) taken in six days from visitors amounted to £2,000.

Later in the season (7th of August) a grand review of the Scottish Volunteers was held in the Queen’s Park, Edinburgh, where the smooth plain on which Holyrood stands picturesquely surrounded by hills and crags, forms a natural amphitheatre admirably adapted for the popular enjoyment of a military pageant. All Scotland, so to speak, swarmed into Edinburgh, to be present at the scene, and contingents even from the Orkneys and Shetlands and the “storm-tossed Hebrides” were represented in the ranks of the great citizen army of the northern kingdom. It was said at the time that Scotland—always a military nation—must have a mania for volunteering, because she sent more troops to the review than passed the Queen at Hyde Park. The Queen herself remarked this fact, and her suite, who had seen the display in Hyde Park, were struck with the superior physique and drill of the men, though somewhat surprised that the Highland costume was worn by so few even of the Highland Regiments. The Queen was accompanied by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, then living at Cramond, near Edinburgh, the Prince Consort, the Princess Alice, and Prince Arthur. The Prince Consort rode on the right of her carriage, and the Duke of Buccleuch, as Captain of the Royal Body-Guard of Scottish Archers—a corps consisting entirely of nobles and gentlemen, who have the exclusive right of watching over the Royal person north of the Tweed—rode on the left hand. The programme was the same as at Hyde Park, but the surroundings and the enthusiasm of the troops and the myriads of spectators who covered the hillsides, made the spectacle more impressive. “It was magnificent,” wrote the Queen to King Leopold; “finer decidedly than in London.”

Many interesting family events rendered the year 1860 memorable to the Queen. Of these, one of the most important was the tour of the Prince of Wales in Canada—a visit which had been promised during the Crimean War, in answer to a deputation which had invited the Queen to go to the Colony,[81] and, without avail, begged her to appoint one of her sons Governor-General.[82] In spring it was decided that the Prince should proceed to the Far West under the care of the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and when the news reached America, Mr. Buchanan, President of the United States, invited the Prince to visit the Republic, promising him such a warm welcome as would be most pleasing to the Queen. The invitation was accepted, but it was intimated that on his tour the Prince would drop all Royal state and travel under one of his Scottish titles—Baron Renfrew. On the 2nd of August his Royal Highness received a hearty greeting from the people of St. John’s, Newfoundland, the rough fishermen and their wives being especially enthusiastic in their loyalty. On the 7th, at Halifax, he was pelted with flowers by cheering crowds till, the Duke of Newcastle said, their carriage was rapidly filled up with bouquets; in fact, all through Canada the welcome given to the Queen’s son for the Queen’s sake was cordial in the extreme. One of the most picturesque incidents of the tour was the visit to Niagara by night, the Falls being illuminated by Bengal lights. These were first of all placed between the Falls and the rock over which they tumble, and turned as if by magic the vast sheet of water into a mass of incandescent silver, the boiling river itself gleaming with phosphorescent tints, and the spray rising high in the air as a thick luminous cloud. Then when the white lights were changed to crimson, the Falls and rapids were transformed into a seething lurid river of blood, and the spectators were awed into silence by the terrific grandeur of the scene. When the Prince crossed to the United States the people there strove to outdo the Canadian welcome. It was laughingly said that he would be lucky if he got out of the country without being asked to “run for President” next year, and the accounts which the Queen received of the splendid reception at Chicago deeply moved her. At Cincinnati and St. Louis the crowds were still greater and more enthusiastic, though quieter and more staid in demeanour than those in Canada. On the 3rd of October the Prince visited President Buchanan at Washington, and in company with him stood uncovered before the tomb of Washington—who had wrested the independence of the continent from his great-grandfather. In New York no monarch of ancient or modern times could have received a warmer ovation from his own people, and the reception at Boston, if less effusive, was not less cordial. The Duke of Newcastle, in reporting on the results of the tour, attributed its success first, to the growing feeling of goodwill that was springing up between Americans and Englishmen—a feeling, alas! to be soon rudely disturbed by the ungenerous support which the aristocratic classes gave to the secession of the Southern Slave States, and secondly, added the Duke, to the “very remarkable love for your Majesty personally, which pervaded all classes in this country, and which has acted like a spell upon them when they found your Majesty’s son actually among them.” The Prince of Wales, in fact, embodied for the American people the romance of their ancestral past—and their hearts warmed to him from the moment he set foot on their territory. The President also wrote to the Queen, telling her how the Prince had passed through the ordeal of the

visit—always dignified, always frank, always affable, so that he “conciliated, wherever he has been, the kindness and respect of a sensitive and discriminating people.”[83] The Queen in her reply said that her son could not sufficiently extol the great cordiality with which he had been received, and she went on to say, “Whilst as a mother I am most grateful for the kindness shown him, I feel impelled to express, at the same time, how deeply I have been touched by the many demonstrations of affection towards myself personally which his presence has called forth.”[84] The Duke of Newcastle had taken grave responsibilities on him in connection with the visit, and, as Dr. Acland told Mr. Charles Sumner, it was therefore for him a personal triumph. The Queen was evidently of the same opinion, because, on his return, she testified her appreciation of the tact with which the Duke had managed the tour by conferring on him the Order of the Garter. A similar visit paid by Prince Alfred to Cape Town evoked similar expressions of goodwill from the colonists. Writing to Stockmar the Prince Consort speaks of the curious coincidence which, in almost the same week, caused one brother to open the great bridge across the St. Lawrence, and the other to lay the foundation stone of the breakwater in Cape Town harbour at the other end of the world. “What a cheering picture,” he writes, “is here of the progress and expansion of the British race, and of the useful co-operation of the Royal Family in the civilisation which England has developed and advanced.”[85]

Early in May the Royal Family were visited by Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt, between whom and the Princess Alice “a natural liking” had grown up, which was destined to ripen into a warmer feeling. “The Queen and myself,” observes the Prince Consort in a letter to Baron Stockmar, “look on as passive spectators, which is undoubtedly our best course as matters at present stand.” It was, however, an open secret that they favoured the alliance. In the following November, Prince Louis came to Windsor as a formal suitor for the hand of the Princess. In her “Leaves from a Journal” the Queen herself tells the story of the wooing on the 30th of November. “After dinner,” she says, “while talking to the gentlemen, I perceived Alice and Louis talking before the fireplace more earnestly than usual, and when I passed to go to the other room, both came up to me, and Alice in much agitation said he had proposed to her, and he begged for my blessing. I could only squeeze his hand and say ‘Certainly,’ and that we would see him in our room later.... Alice came to our room—agitated but quiet.... Albert sent for Louis to his room—went first to him, and then called Alice and me in.... Louis has a warm, noble heart. After talking a little we parted, a most touching, and, to me, sacred moment.”

The autumnal sojourn at Balmoral was shortened by the Queen’s decision to visit Germany, where she had now a little grand-daughter added to the Royal circle. On the 22nd of September the Queen, Prince Consort, and Princess Alice left Buckingham Palace for Gravesend, Lord John Russell being Minister in attendance. The flat scenery of the Scheldt, which was speedily reached, struck her Majesty as being in ugly contrast to the romantic grandeur of the Aberdeenshire mountains. At Verviers the tour was saddened by the news of the death of the Dowager Duchess of Coburg, the Prince Consort’s stepmother. At Aix-la-Chapelle the Prince’s valued friend, the Prince Regent of Prussia, and his brother, Prince Frederick Charles, met them; and at Frankfort they were joined by the Princess of Prussia and Prince Frederick William. As they neared Coburg the Queen says she felt quite agitated when her husband began to identify each scene and spot with his life in his old home, now darkly shadowed by mourning. The Princess Frederick William was here, however, and brought “the darling little grandchild” for the Queen’s inspection—“such a darling little love,” writes her Majesty—“a fine, fat child, with a beautiful white, soft skin, very fine shoulders and limbs, and a very dear face, like Vicky and Fritz, and also Louise of Baden. He has Fritz’s eyes and Vicky’s mouth, and very fair, curly hair.” A meeting with Stockmar, then old and feeble, but fresh in heart and spirits, also enhanced the enjoyment of the visit. After a fortnight’s residence, the Queen writes, “Our English people are enchanted with everything, with the beauty of the country, and of the palaces, the quiet simplicity of the people, &c.” On the 1st of October the Prince Consort narrowly escaped being killed. The horses of his carriage ran away with him, and to save his life he had to jump out when he saw that a collision with a barrier across the road was inevitable. He was bruised badly, though not seriously injured. The Queen however, was much alarmed. “Oh! God,” she writes, “what did I not feel! I could only, and do only, allow the feelings of gratitude, not those of horror, at what might have happened, to fill my mind;” and in testimony of her

gratitude she established a foundation, called the “Victoria-Stift,” in Coburg. The “Victoria-Stift” consisted of the investment of 12,000 florins (£1,000) in the names of the Burgomaster and chief clergyman of Coburg. Every year, on the 1st of October—the anniversary of the Prince’s escape—the interest from this sum is divided among certain young men and women to help them in their occupations and assist them to earn a livelihood. Old family friends and all picturesque places in the neighbourhood were visited; and the Queen’s grandchild, the little Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, seems to have been a source of never-failing delight to her Majesty. But on the 9th of October the enjoyment of these quiet days came to an end, and the Queen and her husband left a spot endeared to them by many sweet remembrances. This fortnight, writes the Queen, “with its joys and sorrows, and the fearful episode of my dearest Albert’s accident, will be for ever deeply engraven on my heart.” On the return journey they were joined by the Prince Regent of Prussia, who travelled with them to Mayence. Rain spoiled the beauties of the Rhine; but when Coblentz was reached the Princess of Prussia was waiting to solace the Royal Party, who arrived, wet, chilled, and uncomfortable. The Queen, in fact, had caught a cold, and illness and depression of spirits due to the parting from her daughter and her beloved grandchild, Prince Wilhelm, robbed the rest of her holiday of all enjoyment. When she reached Brussels she could hardly walk, and had to keep to her room and comfort herself with the “Mill on the Floss” for a day, whilst Dr. Bayly was treating her for a feverish sore throat. After a dismally rainy voyage the Royal travellers reached Windsor on the 17th of October. “Already a week since we left Coburg,” writes the Queen, “and the dear happy days there belong to the treasured recollections of the past!”[86]

Politically, though the year had been eventful, it was not without its compensations. The dying embers of the Indian Mutiny had been extinguished. The war with China had ended with the capture of Pekin, the destruction of the Summer Palace, and the ratification of the Convention of Tchung-Kow and the Treaty of Tien-tsin[87] (24th of October). “At home with ourselves and with our colonies,” Prince Albert says in a letter to Stockmar (28th December), “we have every reason to be satisfied.” One event, indeed, brought grief to the Queen and her family. This was the death of the venerable Earl of Aberdeen, on the 14th of December. Lord Aberdeen was not only the trusted Minister, but the valued personal friend of the Queen and her husband. His experience of public affairs extended from the close of the war with Napoleon to the beginning of the war with Russia, and no English Minister in modern times enjoyed in a higher degree the respect and confidence of foreign Governments and Sovereigns. His stainless integrity and scrupulous honesty won the confidence of the Prince Consort. The high moral courage which led him to speak the truth in public, however unpalatable and unpopular it might be, so endeared him to the Queen that she expressed her admiration for it on the only occasion when she rebuked him for an impolitic indulgence in this virtue. Though a Peelite, he differed from his leader in having greater foresight, and a firmer grip of principle. Aberdeen did not, like Peel, work aimlessly from sheer expediency. He had a theory, a guiding idea, which, rightly or wrongly, always pushed him far in advance of his Party. This theory was that the less people were meddled with by governments, the happier and more prosperous would they become. He carried his principle of non-intervention from foreign to home policy, and acted on the conviction that more good was to be done by repealing old laws, than by enacting new ones. For the salvation of the people, he trusted to independence rather than patronage—to liberty rather than protection. He was blamed for buttressing the petty despotisms of the Continent, but he was blamed unjustly. He shrank from shedding English blood, and wasting English treasure in helping revolutionary movements, and he did so for two reasons. Nations worthy of freedom, he thought, must free themselves; the patronage of revolutionary movements must sooner or later involve England in war with all the Great Powers of Europe. His failure to avert the Crimean War need not here be dwelt on. It was the great blot on his career. Yet it is but due to his memory to say, as even Mr. Disraeli admitted, that if Lord Aberdeen had been head of a Cabinet the members of which all shared his views, and were all loyal in supporting his policy, the Crimean War would probably never have broken out. If Aberdeen had been master in his Cabinet, if he had been served at Constantinople by a loyal Ambassador, and at St. Petersburg by an Envoy who could have opposed with his own tact, patience, and cool common sense the monomaniacal ideas and arguments of the Czar, the conflict between Russia and England could have been averted.[88]

CHAPTER IV.

THE DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.

From her own tranquil island the Queen, at the beginning of 1861, looked abroad upon a world that was strangely disturbed. It was a world in which men cried peace when there was no peace. In Europe, French agents were intriguing with the revolutionary parties in Poland, Hungary, and the Danubian Principalities. Italian conspirators were busy as usual in Venetia. The misgovernment of Turkey was again goading her Christian subjects to despair, and rousing the wrath of Panslavic fanaticism in Russia. Across the Atlantic the New Year brought with it the severance of South Carolina from the United States, and the pulse of the British aristocracy and their social parasites rose high as their golden youth congratulated each other on the “bursting of the bubble Republic.”[89] It is true that the harvest had been bad, and that the winter had been the coldest that had been experienced for half a century. But Free Trade made food cheap and wages high, so that there was no popular discontent to trouble the Government. The prospect of a cotton famine in Lancashire, as the result of a civil war in America, was not thought to be within the range of practical contingencies. As for political parties, they were, as Mr. Ashley says, “in a singular jumble at the period which we have now reached.”[90] The Tories were alarmed by Mr. Gladstone’s Budgets. These were supposed to be dangerously democratic, not only because his attack on the Paper Duty seemed designed to strengthen the power and position of a cheap press, but because in his financial speeches he seemed to justify the repeal of taxes solely by his desire to benefit the poor, and his imposition of new burdens by his desire to punish the rich for being wealthy. Absurd as this suspicion was, it is necessary to take it seriously, because it had much to do with creating the unexpected dictatorship of Lord Palmerston.

It was well known that Palmerston’s hostility to reform had well-nigh driven the Radicals into factious opposition. They had no more to expect from him, and at any moment they were ready to act against him. They even offered to combine with the Tories, turn out the Government, and keep Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli in power for two years, during which period they thought the Reform problem would ripen for solution. This offer was not accepted. In fact, through Lord Malmesbury and Lady Palmerston, a secret alliance was organised, in terms of which the Tories agreed to maintain Lord Palmerston in office “if only he would resist ‘Democratic’ Budgets, and keep his hands from any violent action against Austria.”[91] This compact was ratified by the people, who, despite the triumph of the Anglo-French alliance in China, were growing every day more distrustful of Napoleon’s warlike preparations, which it was part of Palmerston’s policy to counteract. Mr. Ashley asserts that Lord Palmerston was “too loyal to enter into any such secret understanding.” As a matter of fact, the alliance was, on behalf of Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli, first tendered by Lord Malmesbury at Lady Palmerston’s party, on the 12th of May, 1860, when, says Lord Malmesbury, “Lady Palmerston expressed herself as being very grateful for the offer.” [92]

Count Vitzthum, however, puts the matter beyond doubt. Writing in 1861, he says:—“The secret agreement between the Conservatives and Palmerston, which had checked the barren Party contest of the previous year, was renewed before the Session began, and even received the secret sanction of the Court. After Lord Palmerston, in January, had submitted to the Queen and Prince Albert his programme for the current year, and had promised in particular his vigorous prosecution of the works for national defence, Disraeli was invited to Windsor. The Prince, to his no small satisfaction, received the assurance from the leader of the Opposition that the Tories, though three hundred strong, had no thoughts of undertaking the Government, so long as Palmerston continued to safeguard the Conservative interests of the State. Disraeli added that it rested only with the present Prime Minister to exercise a power such as none of his predecessors had wielded since Pitt.”[93] Finally, conclusive proof of the existence of the alliance is given by the highest living authority on such a matter—namely, Sir Theodore Martin—who discloses details of the whole transaction. Sixty members of the House of Commons had apparently pledged themselves to follow Mr. Cobden’s policy of “democratic finance,” which was to lessen expenditure by reducing armaments. Palmerston’s Government was therefore doomed unless an alliance could be struck up with the Tories. According to the Prince Consort, Mr. Disraeli said that “the Conservative party was ready not only to give general support to a steady and patriotic policy, but even to help the Minister out of scrapes if he got into any.” But, in return, they must, to use Sir Theodore Martin’s words, “state explicitly the principles of their policy, and not enter into a line of what he (Mr. Disraeli) termed democratic finance.”[94] When Mr. Ashley stated that Lord Palmerston was “too loyal to enter into any such secret understanding,” he must have neglected to read the letter dated 24th of January, 1861, which the Prince Consort sent to Lord Palmerston, embodying the terms of the understanding in question. It is also possible that he did not anticipate the publication of Lord Malmesbury’s diary, in which, under date the 14th of March, 1861, there is the following entry:—“The House of Commons threw out Mr. Locke-King’s Bill for reducing the county franchise to £10, by a majority of 28. We had agreed with the Government that, if they helped us to throw out this Bill, we would help them to pass Lord Palmerston’s Resolution, reversing their former vote on the payment of the Navy.”[95]

On the 4th of February the Queen came to town for the opening of Parliament, which took place on the 5th. The Royal Speech, says Count Vitzthum, “ratified the private agreement (between Palmerston and the Tories) by making no mention of reform. The skirmishes that took place during the

Session had therefore no practical importance, and only served to conceal from the public and the parties themselves the understanding already effected between the leaders.”[96] Very few points for debate were raised by the Queen’s Speech. Peace in Europe, it was suggested, could be preserved by the moderation of the Powers. Syria would soon be pacified, and thankfulness was expressed at the success of British arms in China. A sympathetic allusion to the Civil War in America, was prettily pointed by a reference to the kindly welcome which the Prince of Wales had received in the United States, and the loyalty of the Canadians was frankly recognised. Crime, bankruptcy, land transfer, and rating were the subjects suggested for legislation. The debate on the Address in both Houses was insincere. Lord Derby made fun of the Government for coquetting with revolution in Italy, and he ridiculed Lord John Russell’s inconsistent despatches to Sir James Hudson. “Mr. Disraeli,” writes Count Vitzthum, “handled the same theme in an academic fashion in the House of Commons,” but nobody dreamt of seriously assaulting the Ministerial position. “In Italy strange things are taking place. It is still the idol of the two ‘old Italian masters,’” wrote the Prince Consort to Stockmar on the eve of the opening of Parliament.[97] And yet, when Ministers heard that Cavour had allowed arms to be shipped from the arsenal at Genoa for the conspirators who were organising an insurrection in Turkey, they became a little uneasy. No harm, however, came of this, because the Turkish authorities at Constantinople being forewarned, seized the arms when they arrived. But the problem of problems was, what did Napoleon mean to do in Italy? He had opened the French Chambers with a speech which, describing the annexation of Savoy as an act done in maintenance of the natural rights of France, created a panic among the Palmerstonians and their Tory allies. If Savoy—why not Belgium? was the question which this doctrine of natural rights suggested to men’s minds. And yet at this time Napoleon’s power was vastly exaggerated. The priests, who had not forgiven him for enriching Italy at the expense of the Pope, condemned his policy from their pulpits. The vulgar luxury and swindling speculations in which the Imperial entourage indulged, disgusted the educated classes. It was at this time that those who had hailed the Emperor as the “saviour of Society” began to call him “Badinguet”—after the bricklayer whose disguise he had borrowed when escaping from Ham. At one time Palmerston and Russell imagined they had discovered the solution of the most pressing of the Italian problems. They thought—or rather the Emperor of the French persuaded them to think—that Austria might sell Venetia to Sardinia, and whilst retaining half the purchase price to relieve her strained finances, with the other half buy Bosnia and the Herzegovina from the Sultan, who was also in lack of money. The Queen thwarted this cunning scheme, when Lord John Russell broached it in the end of December, by pointing out that to suggest the sale of Venetia to Sardinia, was to record an official opinion that Venetia ought to be in some way freed from Austrian rule. In the event of Austria refusing to sell the province this would be used as a justification for wresting Venetia from her, or for compelling England to press her to give it up. Palmerston himself came round to this view, and so the Venetian question was for a time eliminated. But in Italy it soon became clear that France meant to give Victor Emmanuel freedom to act. Gaeta surrendered in February when the French fleet was withdrawn—the King and Queen of Naples being conveyed to Rome. They sought refuge there under the protection of French bayonets, in the cheerless shelter of the empty Farnese Palace. Five days after the fall of Gaeta Victor Emmanuel summoned the first Italian Parliament to Turin, where it met in a large wooden hall improvised for the occasion. In his speech from the throne he regretted the recall of the French Minister, but did not pretend to be downcast by the platonic rebuke of France. As to the protest of Prussia against his policy, Victor Emmanuel said an ambassador had been sent to King William “in token of respect for him personally, and of sympathy with the noble German nation,” which he hoped would become convinced that Italian unity could not prejudice the rights of other states. The meaning of this reference in the speech was pointed out by De la Marmora. He cynically told the Prussian Government at Berlin, that Italy consoled herself with the thought that she had set an example which Prussia, in spite of her protests, would find useful “in conquering the hegemony of Germany.” On the 17th of March the Turin Parliament proclaimed Victor Emmanuel King of Italy, and two days afterwards England recognised his position. France delayed her recognition till June, Napoleon’s chief difficulty being the disposal of Rome. Opportunity, said Italian statesmen, will open the way to Venice; and as for Rome, though it must be the capital of free Italy, we only desire to go there, not at the head of a revolutionary army, but hand in hand with France. Personally, Napoleon would have wished to evacuate Rome. Its occupation was a heavy burden on his finances—which had become seriously embarrassed. To uphold the temporal power of the Pope, which he had disavowed, against the will of the Italian people, which in other quarters he had enforced by the sword, put him in a false position. On the other hand, the priests in France had to be conciliated, and there was a strong party among Frenchmen who thought that France should be compensated, by the occupation of Rome, for the rise of a new naval Power in the Mediterranean.[98] Early in the summer Cavour, who like Themistocles lived to convert a small state into a great one, died—his policy being cherished as a sacred legacy by his successor, Riccasoli. Cavour, however, lived long enough to see the failure of an intrigue to procure the evacuation of Rome by the cession of Sardinia to France. Mr. Kinglake in July tried to convince the House of Commons that this cession was practically agreed on, and he pointed out that Nelson had declared Malta would be useless to England whenever the Bay of Cagliari passed into the hands of a great naval power. But Lord John Russell—in the last speech he ever made in the Lower House—assured the country that he could find no evidence pointing to the existence of such a scheme. At the same time he made it plain, though he did not say so in as many words, that England would regard the cession of Sardinia to France as a casus belli.[99]

Another project was on foot which gave the Queen great uneasiness. Napoleon—whose brain, said Lord Palmerston once, was as full of schemes as a warren was full of rabbits—was said to be in favour of creating a new Eastern State or kingdom, with Constantinople as its capital, and King Leopold, the Queen’s uncle, as its Sovereign. In that case France would naturally take Belgium by way of compensation; but the idea, if ever seriously entertained, was soon consigned to the limbo of vanished Imperial dreams. The condition of Austria was now rather serious. All her proposals for reforming the political system of Hungary, relegated that ancient kingdom to the position of an Austrian province. The Hungarian people, however, refused to accept this position, and demanded the restoration of their rights as an independent State under the Sovereign of Austria, reigning over them as crowned King of Hungary. Their demand might at any moment take the form of a revolutionary movement, which would probably re-open the Eastern question, and involve England in war. Luckily this calamity was averted by the preoccupation of Napoleon and Victor Emmanuel, who alone had either the power or the will to raise a revolution in Hungary.

But affairs in the North were much more disquieting. Early in March the dispute between Denmark and the Duchies of Sleswig-Holstein, which the Queen and her husband had watched with jealous eyes from its origin, became acute. The Danish Government was willing to submit the budget for the Duchies to their local legislatures, on condition that it was not altered. The German Diet or Bund declared that this was equivalent to an assertion that territory which was really subject to the authority of the Bund, was under the exclusive Sovereign authority of Denmark. The three non-German Great Powers declared that Denmark ought to yield to the Duchies their constitutional rights, and laid it down that if this were not done, the German Bund might justly force concessions from Denmark, by Federal execution in Sleswig-Holstein. Denmark ignored the award and threats of the Powers, and Prussia took up the cause of the Sleswigers. In England the Prussian Government was sneered at for menacing Denmark because she denied the Duchies the right to control their Budgets, whilst it raised money for its own military purposes without the consent of its own subjects.

Other than political anxieties made the spring of 1861 dismal to the Queen. On the 12th of March she had visited her mother, the Duchess of Kent, at Frogmore, and found her suffering great pain from the effects of a surgical operation which had been performed to relieve an abscess in her arm. On the 15th Her Majesty and her husband were inspecting the Horticultural Society’s gardens at South Kensington, when they were summoned by Sir James Clark to the bedside of the Duchess of Kent, who began to develop feverish symptoms. When they arrived they found her dying. “I knelt before her,” writes the Queen, “kissed her dear hand and placed it next my cheek; but though she opened her eyes, she did not, I think, know me.... I went out to sob,” adds Her Majesty, stricken to the heart at finding, for the first time in her life, her mother had not received her with a loving smile of recognition. All through the night the Queen watched by the bedside of the dying Princess, weeping as she thought of her childhood and its sacred memories, and of the dreadful blank her mother’s death must make in her life. At eight in the morning of the next day (the 16th) Prince Albert persuaded the Queen to leave her mother’s room for a little, and rest. But she could not rest. She insisted on returning to the sick-room, and when she went back she saw that her mother was passing away. The heart-beats grew fainter; the eyes slowly closed, and as the clock struck half-past nine, Prince Albert took the Queen out of the room, and she knew all was over. For forty-one years she had not been parted from her mother save for a few brief weeks at a time. Now they were parted for ever on this side of the grave. “I seemed,” she writes, “to have lived through a life, to have become old.” The death of the Duchess of Kent plunged the Royal household in grief. She died leaving not one dry eye behind her among those who had known and served and loved her. The Princess Frederick William of Prussia hurried to her mother’s side, arriving at Windsor on the 18th; and then from every quarter, letters and messages of condolence came pouring in. Addresses of sympathy were carried in both Houses of Parliament, and every effort was made by Ministers to lighten the anxieties of the Queen at a time when sorrow lay heavily on her heart. The funeral took place on the 25th, in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, where the body was laid till a mausoleum at Frogmore could be built. “I and my girls,” wrote the Queen to King Leopold on that day, “prayed at home together, and dwelt on her happiness and peace.” On the 2nd of April the Princess Frederick William returned to Berlin, and the Queen and her husband retired to Osborne. The Easter recess had produced a lull in politics, and it might have been expected that the Queen would have been permitted to mourn her bereavement in peace. It was not so. On the 12th of April she was deeply pained to find the Times renewing its old attacks on Prince Albert, and again accusing him of thwarting Lord Palmerston’s Italian policy in the interests of his German relatives. For this cruel imputation there was no warrant, save the fact that Austria persisted in holding Venetia, which had been guaranteed to her by the pact of Villafranca, in spite of Lord Palmerston’s recommendation that she should cede the province to Italy.