It is the fashion among certain historians to charge Lola Montez with responsibility for the revolution in Bavaria. But this charge is not justified. The fact is, the kingdom was ripe for revolution; and the equilibrium of the government was so unstable that Ludwig would have lost his crown, whether she was in the country or not.
It is just as well to remember this.
V
After a few months among them, Lola, tiring of the Swiss cantons, thought she might as well discover if England, which she had not visited for six years, could offer any fresh attractions. Accordingly, resolved to make the experiment, on December 30, 1848, she arrived in London.
The Satirist, hearing the news, suggested that the managers of Drury Lane and Covent Garden should engage her as a "draw." But she did not stop in England very long, as she returned to the Continent almost at once.
In the following spring, she made a second journey to London, and sailed from Rotterdam. Unknown to her, the passenger list was to have included another fallen star. This was Metternich, who, with the riff-raff of Vienna thundering at the doors of his palace, was preparing to seek sanctuary in England. Thinking, however, that the times were not altogether propitious, he decided to postpone the expedition.
"If," he wrote, "the Chartist troubles had not prevented me embarking yesterday at Rotterdam, I should have reached London this morning in the company of the Countess of Landsfeld. She sailed by the steamer in which I was to have travelled. I thank heaven for having preserved me from such contact!"
All things considered, it is perhaps just as well that the two refugees did not cross the Channel together. Had they done so, it is probable that one of them would have found a watery grave.
Metternich had worsted Napoleon, but he found himself worsted by Lola Montez. On April 9, he wrote from The Hague:
"I have put off my departure for England, because I wished to know first what was happening in that country as a result of the Chartists' disturbance. I consider that, for me who must have absolute rest, it would have been ridiculous to have arrived in the middle of the agitation."