Viscount Palmerston to Queen Victoria.
THE COMMANDERSHIP-IN-CHIEF
Downing Street, 12th July 1856.
Viscount Palmerston presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and begs to state that he has consulted with his colleagues as to the advice to be tendered to your Majesty in regard to the appointment of a successor to Lord Hardinge as General Commanding-in-Chief; and upon a full consideration of the subject, the Cabinet are of opinion that your Majesty's choice could not fall upon any General Officer better suited to that important position than His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge, and Lord Panmure will have the honour of taking your Majesty's pleasure upon the matter officially.
It seems quite clear that there is no General Officer senior to His Royal Highness the Duke of Cambridge to whom it would in all respects be desirable to intrust the duties of the command of the Army, and there is no General Officer below him in seniority who has claim sufficiently strong to justify his being preferred to His Royal Highness....
Queen Victoria to the Earl of Clarendon.
Buckingham Palace, 13th July 1856.
The Queen wishes to ask, before she sanctions this draft, whether the Cabinet have fully considered the consequences of this declaration to the Persians, which may be war;35 and if so, whether they are prepared to go to war with Persia, and have provided the means of carrying it on? The draft itself the Queen approves.
Footnote 35: The Shah, availing himself of the departure of the British Minister from Teheran, laid siege to Herat, in direct violation of a treaty of 1853.