Even after the engagement had been actually announced, Prince Frederick William told Lady Bloomfield, the wife of the British Minister in Berlin, that, though he was very much disappointed that the Queen and Prince Albert wished the marriage to be postponed as the Princess Royal was so young, it was perhaps a good thing, for by that time party spirit in Prussia would run less high. The strength of that party spirit was ominously shown on the occasion of the marriage of the Prince’s sister, Princess Louise, when the great nobility of Prussia ostentatiously absented themselves from the festivities.
General von Gerlach, who as we have seen extracted from the King of Prussia that dry admission that the rumours of the English engagement were well-founded, drew also a more interesting comment on the news from a very different personage. Bismarck, who was already regarded as a man with a future, and at the time held an important diplomatic post at the Diet at Frankfort, wrote to the General on April 8, 1856, a commentary which was in some ways extraordinarily prophetic:
“You ask me in your letter what I think of the English marriage. I must separate the two words to give you my opinion. The ‘English’ in it does not please me, the ‘marriage’ may be quite good, for the Princess has the reputation of a lady of brain and heart. If the Princess can leave the Englishwoman at home and become a Prussian, then she may be a blessing to the country. If our future Queen on the Prussian throne remains the least bit English, then I see our Court surrounded by English influence, and yet us, and the many other future sons-in-law of her gracious Majesty, receiving no notice in England save when the Opposition in Parliament runs down our Royal family and country. On the other hand, with us, British influence will find a fruitful soil in the noted admiration of the German ‘Michael’ for lords and guineas, in the Anglomania of papers, sportsmen, country gentlemen, &c. Every Berliner feels exalted when a real English jockey from Hart or Lichtwald speaks to him and gives him an opportunity of breaking the Queen’s English on a wheel. What will it be like when the first lady in the land is an Englishwoman?”
Not less interesting in their way are the comments which Prince Albert’s brother, Duke Ernest, made on his niece’s betrothal:
“The Royal House of Prussia has long afforded in its genealogical history a singular spectacle of waverings between the West and East of Europe. While family alliances between Orthodox Russia and Catholic Austria were almost wholly excluded, the Protestant faith did not at all prevent the Hohenzollerns from having a strong leaning towards the family of the Tsars, and the connections which were thus made undoubtedly exerted their influence upon Germany. The Crimean War may be regarded as a political lesson on this concatenation of circumstances. Was it not most extraordinary that even before peace had been concluded with Russia, the Royal House of Prussia was, in its matrimonial aims, on the point of exhibiting a marked tendency towards the West of Europe? The union of a Prussian heir-apparent with a Princess of my House, with its numerous branches, was an event which at the time unquestionably seemed opposed to the Russian tradition.
“If we remember how at the end of the war everyone looked upon my brother as the active force against Russia, though at the beginning this was by no means clear, the marriage of a Prussian Prince who was destined to the succession with a daughter of the Queen of England necessarily possessed a decided political character. My brother, however, loved his eldest daughter too well to be influenced entirely by political considerations in respect of her marriage; and I often had an opportunity of observing that the chief wish of his heart for many years had been to see his favourite child occupy some exalted position. With paternal ambition, he was wont to picture to himself his promising daughter, whose abilities had been early developed, upon a lofty throne, but, more than all, I know that he was anxious to make her also truly happy. The Prince of Prussia, above all other scions of reigning Houses, afforded the greatest hopes for the future.”
There was another Court at which the news of the engagement was regarded with mixed feelings. The Emperor Napoleon at first received the Anglo-Prussian alliance almost with dismay. He feared that, by strengthening Prussian influence, it would have the effect of weakening, and possibly destroying, the French understanding with England. But he allowed himself to be reassured by Lord Clarendon, who declared that Queen Victoria’s affection for the House of Prussia was private and personal, and had nothing to do with politics. Prince Frederick William, returning by way of Paris as a successful suitor, had brought the Emperor a letter from the Queen, and to it Napoleon replied, rather coldly:
“We like the Prince very much, and I do not doubt that he will make the Princess happy, for he seems to me to possess every characteristic quality belonging to his age and rank. We endeavoured to make his stay here as pleasant as possible, but I found his thoughts were always either at Osborne or at Windsor.”
It was on this visit of the Prince’s that the Empress Eugénie made the following comments in a letter to an intimate friend, which, in view of those later events in which Moltke played so great a part, possess a pathetic significance:
“The Prince is a tall, handsome man, almost a head taller than the Emperor; he is slim and fair, with a light yellow moustache—in fact, a Teuton such as Tacitus described, chivalrously polite, and not without a resemblance to Hamlet. His companion, Herr von Moltke (or some such name), is a man of few words, but nothing less than a dreamer, always on the alert, and surprising one by the most telling remarks. The Germans are an imposing race. Louis says it is the race of the future. Bah! Nous n’en sommes pas encore là.”