The Queen was now getting alarmed as to the carrying out of the Treaty of Peace. She saw Russia making strenuous efforts to separate France and England. Instead of restoring Kars to the Turks, the Russians demolished the fortifications, and prolonged their military occupation of the country in defiance of the Treaty of Paris. They tried to filch Serpent Island at the mouth of the Danube, under the pretext that it was inside the new line of their frontier. They sought to push their new frontier as far south as Lake Jalpuk, because the Powers, misled by a faulty map, had permitted them to retain the Moldavian town of Bolgrad.[288] In each case the Emperor of the French was inclined to support the Russian claim. The British fleet was therefore ordered to occupy the Black Sea till the deadlock was ended, and when Chreptovitch, the new Russian ambassador, threatened to leave England because this step had been taken, Lord Palmerston coolly told him “the sooner he did so the better,” if he did not mean to give England satisfaction.[289]
The King of Prussia now began to press the Queen to interfere in a quarrel between him and the Swiss Republic. Neuenburg or Neufchâtel, by dynastic inheritance, had come into the possession of Frederick I. in 1707. In 1806 it was ceded to Napoleon, who gave it to Berthier, the most diplomatic of his generals. After the Great Peace it was granted an oligarchic constitution,
VIEW IN BERNE.
and received as a Canton into the Swiss Confederation, but its vassalage to the House of Hohenzollern was formally acknowledged. In 1848 the Republican citizens of Neuenburg broke the bond that tied them to the Prussian crown, and though the Protocol of London of the 24th May, 1852, recognised the Prussian claim to the Province, the Province ignored the Protocol of London. In the autumn of 1856 the Prussian party in Neuenburg attacked the Republicans, but the Swiss Federal troops ruthlessly suppressed the rising, and not only killed twelve royalists, but had the audacity to throw a hundred others into prison, simply because they were loyal to their feudal lord. The King of Prussia objected to their being put on trial, and demanded their surrender, but it was a far cry from Berlin to Berne, and the stubborn Switzers paid no heed to his demands. Napoleon III. menaced them in vain. Austria, always pleased to see Prussia humbled in Germany, threw obstacles in the way of Prussian troops marching through the territory of the Confederation to coerce Switzerland, and Napoleon did not dare to outrage French opinion by letting them march through Alsace-Lorraine. In England, Palmerston smiled grimly over the embarrassment of Russia’s most faithful ally. He said to the Hanoverian Minister in London when Prussia was threatening coercion, “the Prussians will incur much expense, and in January Switzerland will condemn the captives and then amnesty them; donc la farce sera finie, et la Prusse y sera pour les frais.”[290]
Nor was this the only anxiety at Court. King “Bomba’s” misgovernment in southern Italy, and his brutal treatment of persons arbitrarily arrested on suspicion of disloyalty, were provoking revolution. An outbreak in the south must lead to a rising in the north, which in turn must involve France and Sardinia in war with Austria. England and France, finding their remonstrances disregarded by the Neapolitan Government, withdrew their legations from Naples in October, and ordered the fleet to make a demonstration in the bay. This step was sanctioned by the Queen not without some misgiving, because to suspend diplomatic relations with a State because its internal government is not to our liking, was to establish a dangerous diplomatic precedent. It evoked from Russia a cutting remonstrance, which, however, Lord Palmerston had to accept as best he could.
On the 19th of October the Court returned to Windsor, and on the 17th of November, Stockmar, in response to a pressing appeal to come and advise the Queen in the midst of her growing difficulties, paid her what was destined to be his last visit. He found her heavily stricken with grief because of the death of her half-brother, Prince Leiningen, on the 13th. “We three,” (the Prince, the Princess Hohenlohe, and the Queen), she writes to King Leopold, “were very fond of each other, and never felt or fancied that we were not real Geschwister (children of the same parents). We knew but one parent—our mother.”[291] The last day of the year brought with it one consolation. The Conference in Paris had settled our dispute with Russia, and a map was signed by the plenipotentiaries which met the requirements of the Czar, without giving Russia strategical advantages which she had tried to obtain.[292]
CHAPTER XXXV.
TWO LITTLE WARS AND A “PENAL DISSOLUTION.”
The Queen’s New Year Greeting to Napoleon III.—A Gladstone-Disraeli Coalition—A “Scene” in the Carlton Club—Mr. Disraeli’s Attack on Lord Palmerston’s Foreign Policy—The Queen Consents to Reduce the Income Tax—A Fallacious Budget, with Imaginary Remissions—The Persian War—General Outram’s Victories—Unpopularity of the War—Making War without Consulting Parliament—The Rupture with China—A “Prancing Proconsul”—The Bombardment of Canton—Defeat of Lord Palmerston, and his Appeal to the Country—A Penal Dissolution—Abortive Coalition between the Peelites and Tories—Mr. Gladstone and the Intriguers—Split in the Peelite Party—Palmerston’s Victory at the Polls—The Rout of the Manchester School—The Lesson of the Election—Opening of the New Parliament—The Work of the Session—Mr. Gladstone’s Obstruction of the Divorce Bill—The Settlement of the Neufchâtel Difficulty—The Question of the Principalities—Visit of the French Emperor to the Queen.