Queen Victoria was much attached to her first premier, Lord Melbourne. But soon changes took place in the ministry. The Conservatives, led by Sir Robert Peel, came into power. Sir Robert Peel, remembering the pernicious influence of women-intriguers in the time of Queen Anne, insisted that the ladies of Victoria’s household should be changed with the change of the ministry. But Victoria was a very different woman and sovereign from the weak-minded Anne. With indignation, she wrote:—
“They wanted to deprive me of my ladies, and I suppose they would deprive me next of my dressers and my housemaids; but I will show them that I am queen of England.” And show them she did, and the Conservatives were obliged to yield and retire, and Lord Melbourne was recalled to office.
But in 1841, the Whigs were again succeeded by the Conservatives; and Sir Robert Peel became prime minister. He was succeeded in 1846 by Lord John Russell, who was placed in power by the combined efforts of the Protectionists and Whigs.
The Revolution in France, which resulted in the overthrow of Louis Philippe and the ascension to the French throne of Prince Louis Napoleon, as Napoleon III., occasioned outbursts of the people in various parts of Europe. There were wild threats of an insurrection in London, but the scare passed over, and the preservation of order was secured without bloodshed.
The renowned Duke of Wellington was the chief military authority in England, and the leader in the House of Lords up to the time of his death, in 1852, in his eighty-fourth year. The queen greatly mourned his loss. She had given him the distinguished honor of standing godfather to one of her own children, Prince Arthur, and when she heard the news of his death she wrote:—
“What a loss! One cannot think of this country without the duke, our immortal hero. In him centred almost every earthly honor a subject could possess. Above party, looked up to by all, revered by the whole nation, the friend of the sovereign.”
In this same year the Conservatives again came into power, with the Earl of Derby as premier. We cannot give the various changes in the English ministry during Victoria’s reign. Suffice it to say, the Derby ministry retired in 1858, and were succeeded by the Palmerston ministry. Again, Lord Palmerston was obliged by circumstances to resign, and Lord Derby again came into office. But he was soon deposed, and Lord Palmerston returned to office as prime minister. On the death of Viscount Palmerston in 1865, Lord John Russell again became premier, but was soon defeated by the Conservatives, who came into power with the Earl of Derby, and Mr. Benjamin Disraeli. Lord Derby afterwards resigned, and Disraeli became prime minister, and subsequently received the title of Lord Beaconsfield. In 1880 Lord Beaconsfield’s party was defeated, and a Liberal ministry came in with Mr. Gladstone. Later changes it is not necessary to note here.
The English wars during the last fifty years have been wars in Afghanistan, the quelling of various revolts in India, England’s alliance with France in the Crimean War, the Abyssinian War in 1867, and the recent war with Egypt, which resulted in the loss of several Englishmen of note, especially the renowned and brave Chinese Gordon, whose imprisonment and inhuman murder by the savage followers of Mahdi, at Khartoum, called forth loud denunciations against the military measures of the English government.
The Franco-German War in 1870, resulting in the downfall of Napoleon III., although not entered into by England, was watched with intense anxiety by Queen Victoria. Two of her daughters, the Princesses Victoria and Alice, were obliged to see their husbands depart for the seat of war, and the beloved Princess Alice devoted herself with untiring energy to the care of the sick and wounded soldiers. For the second time Queen Victoria welcomed the fallen French monarchs to her realm. She had received the family of Louis Philippe with kindness; and the Empress Eugénie, together with the dethroned emperor and the young Prince Imperial, were equally the recipients of her pity and sympathy. Strange vicissitudes of fortune! During the Crimean War, the emperor and empress of the French had visited Queen Victoria, their royal ally.
“How strange,” says the queen’s journal, “that I, the granddaughter of George III., should dance with Emperor Napoleon, nephew of England’s greatest enemy, now my most intimate and nearest ally, only six years ago, living in this country an exile, poor and unthought of!”