[CHAPTER XVII]
THE LAST YEAR'S WORK
(1886-1887)
The sudden and unexpected declaration in September of the Union of Bulgaria and Eastern Roumelia which caused so much perturbation in Europe, and resulted in a war between Servia and Bulgaria, left the French quite indifferent; but the imminence of hostilities between England and Burmah provoked French ill-humour, which was all the more inexcusable because no protest had ever been made against French proceedings in Tonquin and Madagascar. The truth was that the Burmese resistance to the Indian Government was largely due to French encouragement. As far back as 1883 a Burmese Mission had arrived in Paris, and kept studiously aloof from the British Embassy; and although every opportunity had been taken to impress upon the French Government the peculiar relations between Burmah and British India, there was not the least doubt that the object of the Burmese had been to obtain from the French Government such a Treaty as would enable them to appeal to France in the event of their being involved in difficulties with England. How much encouragement they actually received is not known, but it was probably sufficient to effect their undoing.
The papers are abusing us about Burmah, and being quite innocent of any aggression themselves in that part of the world, are horrified at our holding our own there. Nevertheless, I hope the Indian Government will finish the thing out of hand, for an ugly state of feeling about it is growing up here.
The rapidity with which the operations against Burmah were conducted left nothing to be desired. The campaign was over within a few weeks; on January 1, 1886, the annexation of Burmah was proclaimed, and the affairs of that country ceased to be of any further interest to the French Government.
Lord Salisbury's tenure of the Foreign Office, which had been marked by so successful a policy that even Mr. Gladstone had expressed satisfaction, came to an end early in 1886, and he was succeeded by Lord Rosebery. 'The irony of events,' wrote the latter to Lord Lyons, 'has sent me to the Foreign Office, and one of the incidents of this which is most agreeable to me, is that it brings me into close relations with yourself.'
Although the Paris press had circulated a ridiculous fiction that Lord Rosebery (presumably because he was personally acquainted with Bismarck) was anti-French by inclination, the change of Government in England was received in France with perfect equanimity, as had been the case in the previous autumn.