With regard to the transaction itself, there is no justifying a breach of the law, nor an attack by a large number of people upon one or two individuals who cannot resist such superior force; and though in the present case, according to Baron Koller's account, the chief injury sustained by General Haynau consisted in the tearing of his coat, the loss of a cane, and some severe bruises on his left arm, and though four or five policemen proved to be sufficient protection, yet a mob who begin by insult lead each other on to outrage; and there is no saying to what extremes they might have proceeded if they had not been checked.
Such occurrences, however, have taken place before; and to go no further back than the last summer, the attacks on Lord Talbot at the Stafford meeting, and on Mr Bankes, Mr Sturt, and others at the Dorchester meeting, when a man was killed, were still more violent outrages, and originated simply in differences of political opinion; whereas in this case the brewers' men were expressing their feeling at what they considered inhuman conduct on the part of General Haynau.
The people of this country are remarkable for their hospitable reception of foreigners, and for their forgetfulness of past animosities. Napoleon Bonaparte, the greatest enemy that England ever had, was treated while at Plymouth with respect, and with commiseration while at St Helena. Marshal Soult, who had fought in many battles against the English, was received with generous acclamation when he came here as Special Ambassador. The King of the French, Mons. Guizot, and Prince Metternich, though all of them great antagonists of English policy and English interests, were treated in this country with courtesy and kindness. But General Haynau was looked upon as a great moral criminal; and the feeling in regard to him was of the same nature as that which was manifested towards Tawell39 and the Mannings,40 with this only difference, that General Haynau's bad deeds were committed upon a far larger scale, and upon a far larger number of victims. But Viscount Palmerston can assure your Majesty that those feelings of just and honourable indignation have not been confined to England, for he had good reason to know that General Haynau's ferocious and unmanly treatment of the unfortunate inhabitants of Brescia and of other towns and places in Italy, his savage proclamations to the people of Pesth, and his barbarous acts in Hungary excited almost as much disgust in Austria as in England, and that the nickname of "General Hyæna" was given to him at Vienna long before it was applied to him in London.
[Footnote 36:] The Austrian Ambassador.
[Footnote 37:] General Haynau had earned in the Hungarian War an odious reputation as a flogger of women. When visiting the brewery of Barclay & Perkins, the draymen mobbed and assaulted him; he had to fly from them, and take refuge in a neighbouring house. Lord Palmerston had to send an official letter of apology to the Austrian Government, which, as originally despatched, without waiting for the Queen's approval, contained a paragraph offensive to Austria.
[Footnote 38:] See Lord Palmerston's letter to Sir G. Grey, Ashley's Life of Lord Palmerston, vol. i. chap. vi.
Footnote 39: Executed for the Salt Hill murder.
Footnote 40: Marie Manning (an ex-lady's maid, whose career is said to have suggested Hortense in Bleak House to Dickens) was executed with her husband, in 1849, for the murder of a guest. She wore black satin on the scaffold, a material which consequently became unpopular for some time.
Queen Victoria to Lord John Russell.
THE DRAFT DESPATCHED