Louis Philippe, at this time, was somewhat disturbed by a letter from M. Bresson to M. Guizot, dated July 12, in which the ambassador gave a lengthy account of his recent proceedings at Madrid. The Queen-Mother, he reported, urged various objections to the Duke of Cadiz. “Isabella,” she declared, “had an insurmountable aversion to him and she herself had grave doubts about his virility. This last statement,” wrote M. Bresson, “took us upon very delicate ground. She adverted to his voice, his hips, and his general bodily conformation, and I replied by insisting that his rigid morality was to be ascribed solely to his consuming passion for the Queen, her daughter. Furthermore, I pointed out, that his desire to marry was inconsistent with the idea that he was incapable of fulfilling the conditions of matrimony.” Christina’s opinion upon that point was probably little influenced by arguments such as these. But, when M. Bresson took upon himself to assure her that, “in any Bourbon combination” the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier with the Infanta could be announced simultaneously with that of the Queen, she received the information with “every appearance of sincere pleasure.” Rianzarez also expressed to him his satisfaction with this arrangement, which would remove the great political objection to the Queen’s marriage with Cadiz or, even, with Trapani. Bresson, however, was of opinion that her union with the former could be effected more easily and expeditiously than with the latter, and he, accordingly, suggested that his regiment should be brought to Madrid, in order that, “by constantly seeing him, Isabella might grow accustomed to his voice and hips.”[844]
The Queens, Louis Philippe declared at once, must be given to understand clearly that Bresson had no right to promise that the two marriages would be concluded simultaneously. He was not to be moved from this decision by Guizot’s insinuation that possibly the ambassador had not gone quite so far as His Majesty imagined. On the contrary, he replied, he had very little doubt that he had committed himself even more deeply than he admitted. It was while he was in this mood that Jarnac’s copy of Palmerston’s despatch of July 19 reached Paris. A perusal of its contents caused the King a considerable amount of annoyance,[845] yet it would not appear to have weakened his determination to insist upon the disavowal of M. Bresson.[846] But the question, as to how far the despatch of July 19 was responsible for the final decision of Louis Philippe, will be discussed later on.
Although in his official instructions he had expressed no preference for any particular candidate, Palmerston soon informed Bulwer, privately, that Don Enrique was the British candidate.[847] The selection of that prince called forth no objections from M. de Jarnac. On the contrary, as late as August 16, he gave Palmerston definitely to understand that, provided he would adhere to that arrangement, France would join with him in pressing it upon the Court of Madrid.[848] Bulwer, however, was filled with dismay on learning that he was expected to support the suit of Don Enrique. He had little fault to find with him personally. He considered him manly, enterprising and ambitious, and described him as resembling in many respects Prince Louis Napoleon.[849] There was one objection to him, however, and that was an insuperable one—nothing short of a successful revolution would induce Christina to accept him. “Let me caution your Lordship again and again,” he wrote on August 4, “against appearing to listen to the counsels of the Progressistas and Don Enrique, if you wish to retain the confidence of the palace.”[850]
No sooner was Palmerston installed at the Foreign Office, than Bulwer, reverting to his former scheme, began to plead earnestly in favour of the Coburg marriage. France, he maintained, in order to carry out successfully her plans of aggrandisement in Algeria, Morocco, Tunis and Egypt must exercise a paramount influence at Madrid. It followed, therefore, that all her ambitious designs would be checkmated by the Queen’s marriage outside the Bourbon line. “The policy of maintaining good relations with France,” he was not disposed to dispute it, “was a great and wise policy. But what would happen,” he asked, “were Louis Philippe to die? In that event would not the power of a great military nation fall into the hands of three or four enterprising young men, burning for glory in their several careers? The policy of good relations with France depended,”he much feared, “upon the life of a man of seventy-four and upon the well or the ill-directed aim of an assassin.”[851] The Coburg marriage, Christina assured him, could still be arranged. Let the management of the affair be entrusted to him and he would undertake to bring it to a successful conclusion. France would oppose it vigorously, and it must, therefore, be prepared in secrecy. Indeed, he acknowledged that his plan must needs “wear the aspect of an intrigue, in order to avoid the effects of an intrigue.”[852]
Palmerston, however, was not to be diverted from his intention by these arguments. The Court, the government, and the Coburgs themselves were alike agreed that Louis Philippe’s hostility to it had rendered the Spanish proposal unacceptable. On August 22, therefore, he addressed a lengthy despatch to Bulwer, in which he laid it down as the deliberate opinion of the British government that Don Enrique was the most suitable candidate.[853] But, before this communication could reach Madrid, the affair to which it referred had been definitely settled. The French government had not failed to turn its knowledge of Palmerston’s dispatch of July 19 to account. M. Bresson, in pursuance of M. Guizot’s[854] instructions, had been busily engaged in representing it as a declaration of hostility against the Moderado government in Madrid. Nuñoz, the brother of the Duke of Rianzarez, informed Mr. Bulwer that all hope of arranging the Coburg marriage had been abandoned, that Palmerston “would listen to no other alliance but that of Don Enrique, who is looked upon by the Court as an open adversary and a disguised rebel,” and that a Progressista insurrection was being prepared in London.[855] Only a week after he had transmitted this news, the British minister, on August 29, reported that the Queen, the night before at 12 o’clock, had made up her mind in favour of Don Francisco de Asis, Duke of Cadiz. Furthermore, he had to inform Lord Palmerston that the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier would take place at the same time. “I learn,” he wrote in conclusion, “that directly the Queen had signified her intention of marrying her cousin, Count Bresson formally asked the hand of the Infanta for the Duke of Montpensier, stating that he had powers to enter upon and conclude that affair.”[856]
M. Guizot, on September 1, communicated this news to Lord Normanby, the new British ambassador in Paris.[857] Palmerston, who was yachting with Her Majesty on the south coast of England, received the information of the conclusion of the double marriage in a letter from the Comte de Jarnac. Louis Philippe eluded the disagreeable task of apprising Queen Victoria that he had broken his compact, by allowing his own Queen, Marie Amélie, to convey the intelligence to her. The reply which she received was short and cold. “You will remember,” wrote Queen Victoria, “what passed between the King and myself at Eu. . . . You will, doubtless, have heard that, in order to be agreeable to your King, we declined to arrange the marriage of our cousin, Prince Leopold, with the Queen of Spain. . . . You will, therefore, easily understand that the sudden announcement of this double marriage could only cause us surprise and the keenest regret. . .”[858]
M. Guizot explained his conduct by referring to the Memorandum of February 27, 1846, of the existence of which Palmerston was now for the first time informed. In that document France had reserved to herself the right of departing from the agreement at Eu, should at any time a Coburg marriage appear “imminent or probable.” Palmerston’s inclusion of Prince Leopold among the available candidates in his despatch of July 19, combined with Christina’s overture at Lisbon, in the previous month of May, had created a situation, M. Guizot insisted, which released France from all her engagements. But, although he firmly maintained this contention and instructed M. de Jarnac to hold the same language in London, his conduct was not that of a man confident in the justice of his cause. Besides attempting to induce Lord Aberdeen to declare that, under the circumstances, a departure from the compact at Eu was permissible, he drew up a bitter attack upon Lord Palmerston and sent it to Jarnac with instructions to forward it to Lord John Russell. But in both cases he met with disappointment. Aberdeen told him frankly that he could not adopt his view of the case, and that he had no fault to find with the language or the conduct of his successor in office.[859] John Russell showed his letter to Palmerston, and informed M. de Jarnac that his colleague had his hearty approval and support.[860] Louis Philippe, meanwhile, had compiled a lengthy statement of his case and had sent it to his daughter, the Queen of the Belgians, in order that it might be placed before Queen Victoria. But neither his laboured attempts to extenuate his own conduct nor his insinuations about Lord Palmerston produced the desired effect. After a careful consideration of his letter, replied the Queen on September 27, she had failed to discover any reasons which could justify him in breaking his promise. She had arrived at this conclusion, she begged him to believe, “by the help of her own eyes,” not, as he had suggested, by the aid of those of Lord Palmerston.[861]
The protests of the Queen, however, were as ineffectual as the official remonstrances of Bulwer at Madrid and of Normanby in Paris. On October 10, 1846, the double marriage was duly solemnized at the palace, in the hall called “de Embajadores.” The British minister was not present at the ceremony, which was witnessed by a great crowd of persons. “One viva only was heard, and that not very loud, when the Infante Don Francisco descended from his carriage.”[862] Louis Philippe and M. Guizot had attained their object, but they had sacrificed “the cordial understanding.” In England, the authors of the Spanish marriages stood condemned by the Court, by the Cabinet, and by public opinion. There was no thought of an appeal to arms, but it was felt that in the future the relations of the two governments could no longer be carried on in the same spirit of close and friendly intimacy. Palmerston, founding his case upon the renunciation made at the Peace of Utrecht[863] by the Duc d’Orléans of that day, sought to induce the Powers to declare that any children, which might be born to the Duc de Montpensier and the Infanta, would be excluded from succeeding to the Spanish throne. Throughout Europe, however, there were ominous signs of a recrudescence of the revolutionary spirit, and Metternich, in consequence, had strong reasons for desiring to propitiate Louis Philippe and M. Guizot. He, therefore, refused to pronounce himself and simply adopted an attitude of neutrality, taking care to point out that the trouble could never have arisen, had the legitimist principle been upheld and had Don Carlos been enthroned. Russia and Prussia, which like Austria had never acknowledged the sovereignty of Isabella, followed the example of the Court of Vienna and declined to be drawn into the controversy.
Palmerston’s conduct was, unquestionably, ill-advised in thus attempting to apply to Spain, in the middle of the nineteenth century, the stipulations of diplomatic instruments framed when the conditions of Europe were very different. But, if his objections to the Infanta’s marriage, founded upon the Treaty of Utrecht, were unsuccessful, he was afforded the satisfaction of completely refuting the pleas set up by M. Guizot in justification of his actions. The argument which forms the main contention of his despatches, both of October 31, 1846 and of January 8, 1847, is unanswerable. The Memorandum of February 27, 1846, to which the French government attached so much importance was, he pointed out, unofficial and verbal. No record of it was to be found at the Foreign Office. M. de Jarnac had never mentioned it to him, “until after the event had happened for which it was now quoted as a justification.” But, “even admitting for the sake of argument that Her Majesty’s present government were to be held bound by it, how could it justify a departure from the engagement of Eu? The imminent danger, specified in that memorandum, was the likelihood that either the Queen or the Infanta should be about immediately to marry a foreign Prince, not being a descendant of Philip V. But if that likelihood had ever existed, it had at all events ceased to exist, when M. Bresson demanded the hand of the Infanta for the Duc de Montpensier. Not only had it then ceased to exist, but with respect to the Queen, whose marriage was then the immediate and only subject of discussion, it had been succeeded by an impossibility; because when Count Bresson demanded the hand of the Infanta the marriage of the Queen to the Infant Don Francisco had actually been resolved upon and settled.”[864]
Both in the French Chambers and in the British Parliament the Spanish marriages were the subject of debate, at the opening of the session of 1847. The publication of the English blue-book created a profound sensation in France.[865] After reading the correspondence, no one could any longer maintain that England had encouraged the candidature of Prince Leopold of Coburg, or that Louis Philippe had been justified in breaking the agreement of Eu. Nevertheless, in spite of the light which was thus thrown upon the proceedings which led up to the marriages, the true history of the case was only imperfectly revealed. Even to-day, the real motives which actuated some of the principal actors in the affair are still largely a matter of conjecture. Palmerston[866] himself believed, and his opinion has been adopted by the majority of English writers, that a secret understanding existed between Christina and Louis Philippe. The Queen-Mother’s overture to the Duke of Saxe-Coburg has been represented as a trap craftily laid for the British government. England, it was calculated, would never resist the temptation of actively supporting the candidature of Prince Leopold, and Louis Philippe would, in consequence, be furnished with a pretext for repudiating his promises.[867] But, plausible as this explanation of Christina’s conduct may sound, it cannot stand the test of a close examination.