Save for these anxious diplomatic perplexities, the Balmoral holiday was a highly enjoyable one, notable for long mountain excursions, of which the Queen’s ascent of Ben Macdhui was one of the most striking. The Prince Consort’s address to the British Association at Aberdeen was well received, and it was followed by a Highland gathering of philosophers at Balmoral, whose fête was, however, marred by tempestuous weather. On the journey south the Queen opened, on the 14th of October, the great waterworks at Loch Katrine for the supply of Glasgow—works on a scale of magnificence not unworthy of the Roman Empire. After a pleasant, but brief sojourn in Wales, the Queen and her husband reached Windsor on the 17th, pleased to find that the Prince and Princess Frederick William proposed soon to visit them. They came on the 9th of November—when the birthday of the Prince of Wales was celebrated—and stayed till the 3rd of December. The last month of the year was spent at Osborne, till Christmastide came round, when the Royal Family removed to Windsor, where, writes the Prince Consort in his Diary, “we danced in the New Year.”
CHAPTER III.
THE COURT AND THE CABINET.
The Queen’s Distrust of French Policy—Her Conferences with Lord Clarendon—The French Pamphlet on “The Pope and the Congress”—Palmerston’s Proposal of an Alliance Offensive and Defensive with France—Intriguing between Palmerston and Persigny—Recall of Cavour—Affairs in China—Mr. Cobden’s Commercial Treaty with France—Cession of Nice and Savoy to France—The Anglo-French Alliance at an End—Lord John Russell’s Reform Bill—Threatened Rupture with France—Russia Attempts to Re-open the Eastern Question—Garibaldi’s Invasion of the Two Sicilies—Collapse of the Neapolitan Monarchy—The Piedmontese Invade the Papal States—Annexation of the Sicilies to Sardinia—Meeting between Napoleon III. and the German Sovereigns at Baden—A New Holy Alliance—The Mahometan Atrocities in Syria—The Macdonald Scandal—Palmerston’s Fortification Scheme—The Lords Reject the Bill Abolishing the Paper Duty—The Volunteer Movement—Reviews in Hyde Park and Edinburgh—The Queen at Wimbledon—The Prince of Wales’s Tour in Canada and the United States—Betrothal of the Princess Alice—The Queen and her Grandchild—Serious Accident to the Prince Consort—Illness of the Queen.
Although the new year (1860) opened brightly for commercial England, the political outlook was far from cheerful. The Cabinet and the Queen were by no means in harmony on Foreign affairs, and Ministers were themselves far from being agreed as to a Reform policy. Lord Palmerston, Lord John Russell, Mr. Gladstone, and Mr. Milner Gibson were violently anti-Austrian. They were so eager to win credit for establishing a free kingdom in Northern Italy, that they were easy dupes in the hands of the French Emperor, whose design it was to achieve this end, so that whilst the credit should be his, the risk should be theirs. The Queen, on the other hand, was profoundly distrustful of French policy. She persisted in seeing in it nothing save a scheme for getting England to “pull the chestnuts out of the fire” for France. Her view was that the Italian people were now masters of the situation. Their old rulers could not be restored save by force, which Napoleon did not dare to use, and which Austria, weakened in her finances, and menaced by a Hungarian rising, was also afraid to apply. The solution of the Italian question in the opinion of the Queen might be safely left to the natural course of events, and the duty of England was done when she frankly expressed her sympathy with the Italian struggle for constitutional freedom. Napoleon, however, after promising to make Italy “free from the Alps to the Adriatic,” could hardly leave her to free herself as she was doing. His engagements to Austria on the other hand rendered it difficult for him to interfere actively. But it would have suited his convenience admirably if he were able to interfere with an ally, and on the basis of a proposal which originated with England, for then he might be able to offer a plausible excuse for not abiding by the pact of Villafranca. The game of diplomacy during this period was played, by France insinuating projects of interference to Lord Palmerston, so that they might seem to have originated with him, and by Lord Palmerston putting them into Lord John Russell’s mind, so that Lord John, who was at
THE QUEEN OPENING GLASGOW WATERWORKS AT LOCH KATRINE.
the Foreign Office, might seem to the Queen to be the originator of them. There is reason to believe that the Queen quite understood her Prime Minister’s tactics. Mr. Greville gives a graphic sketch of her relations to her Ministers during this period of controversy, in his record of a conversation which he had with Lord Clarendon about a confidential visit he paid to Osborne in the previous summer. “The Queen,” writes Mr. Greville, “was delighted to have him (Clarendon) with her again, and to have a good long confidential talk with him, for it seems she finds less satisfaction in her intercourse with either Palmerston or Lord John. The relations of these two are now most intimate and complete. Palmerston, taking advantage of Russell’s ignorance of Foreign Affairs, used to suggest a project to him. Russell would bring this before the Cabinet as his own, and Palmerston would support it as if the case was quite new to him.” At Osborne Clarendon “was unfortunately attacked by gout, and confined to his room. He was sitting there with Lady Clarendon, when Lady Gainsborough came in and told him that she was desired by the Queen to beg he would, if possible, move into the next room [the lady-in-waiting’s room] and establish himself there; that the Queen would come in, when all the ladies present were to go away and leave
