CORRIDOR, OSBORNE HOUSE.
(After a Photograph by J. Valentine and Sons, Dundee.)
Kingdom of 1772, an object of which England, as a party to the Treaties of 1815, could hardly approve. The insurgents had no military organisation or competent leaders, and they were carrying on guerilla warfare with the tenacity of despair.[159] As for the peasants, they had no reason to love their old tyrants, the nobles. For them the Government of the Czar was a lesser evil than the régime of 1772, and so they held aloof.[160] Still, some steps had to be taken to satisfy public opinion and ward off attacks in Parliament. Ministers accordingly decided to remonstrate gently with Russia—the excuse being that the Treaties of 1815 gave England a moral right of interference between Russia and Poland. The policy of France, on the other hand, was interference, not on the basis of the Treaties of 1815, which, the Emperor declared in his Speech to the Chambers, were dead, but in the interests of humanity outraged at the excesses which Poles and Russians were alike committing. Austria, on the other hand, considered that she could only approach Russia as a neighbouring Power, like Prussia, possessing Polish subjects, whose institutions might with advantage be imitated in Russian Poland. The attitude of Prussia was that of declared friendliness to Russia.
Thus the Powers were grouped as before the Crimean War: England, France, and Austria in accord, but each with a different end to serve, and a different idea underlying their respective policies: Russia and Prussia, on the other hand, solidly in alliance. Ultimately, Lord Russell suggested on the 17th of June that Russia might submit the whole Polish Question to a Conference of the Eight Powers who had signed the Treaty of Vienna, on the basis of an understanding that there should be an amnesty, and an armistice, and that moderate constitutional reforms should be carried out in Poland. The weak point in the proposal was that Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell ignored the warning of their own secret agent to the effect that the Poles had no organised leadership. Russia was therefore able to ask ironically with whom did Lord Russell propose to negotiate an armistice? and how he did propose to guarantee obedience to it by migratory bands under guerilla chiefs? It was therefore the contention of Russia that surrender must precede any negotiations for peace, and that were it not for the hope of aid from France and England, the Poles would have long since ceased to resist. Russia, in a word, refused to accept the basis of negotiations. She offered, however, to discuss the affairs of Poland with Austria and Prussia—the other partitioning Powers—probably anticipating the refusal of Austria to separate herself from England and France. Finally, she declined to accept any foreign interference whatever in her domestic affairs. Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell meekly submitted to this rebuff, and concurred with France and Austria in remonstrating with Russia, on the grave responsibility she incurred in haughtily rejecting their good offices.
The speech of the Emperor Napoleon at the opening of the French Chambers has already been referred to. The sentences alluding to the Treaties of 1815, and to the summoning of a European Congress, not only to settle the Polish Question, but other questions affecting nationalities struggling to be free, soon received a practical comment, for in Paris the Funds fell with startling rapidity. A few days after the speech was delivered the Emperor addressed a circular to the Powers which fully justified the warnings that the Queen had given to her Ministers, from the day the Polish Question was raised. Napoleon, in fact, invited the Sovereigns of Europe to meet in Congress and settle the affairs of the Continent, and the tone of the circular, combined with the veiled threat of war in his speech, really transformed the invitation into a summons. Italy and Prussia accepted the proposal, the former because she saw in it an opportunity for wresting Venice from Austria. As for Lord Russell, he met the project with a refusal couched in terms that stung the French Emperor to the quick. Writing on the 29th of November, Lord Malmesbury, in his “Diary,” says, “Mr. Seymour Fitzgerald arrived from Paris, where he says the refusal of our Government to attend the Congress proposed by Napoleon, and especially the rude tone of Lord Russell’s despatch, has created great irritation. The correspondence between the English and French Governments respecting the Congress is published in to-day’s papers. Lord Russell’s despatch is published in the Gazette, and I am not surprised that the French are angry; for not only is it very rude, but it was sent without the least delay, and published in the Times before it was delivered to Drouyn de Lhuys.”[161] The despatches, however, merely reveal the customary combination of dogmatic argument with a supercilious affectation of infallibility, which gives a distinctive mark to all Lord Russell’s diplomatic correspondence. Napoleon, too, had laid himself open to a rebuff by not sounding England on his proposal, before he sprang it on the world. Count Vitzthum says that the despatch was approved at a meeting of the Cabinet on the 19th of November, after which it was submitted next day to the Queen at Windsor, who, according to Lord Russell’s statement to the Count, “had given her assent with pleasure to the refusal to take part in the Congress.”[162] Still Napoleon was not without his consolations. In Mexico Forey’s victories enabled the French to bring together a Mexican Assembly of their partisans, who recommended the establishment of a mimic Bonapartist Empire under the Archduke Maximilian. This unfortunate Prince consented to take the Crown, provided the Mexicans sanctioned his dynasty by a plébiscite.
Much more serious for the Queen was the rapid development of the Sleswig-Holstein Question, as to which her opinions were known in Society to be in undisguised conflict with those of her Ministers. The death of Frederick VII. and the succession of the father of the Princess of Wales to the Danish Crown rendered this question urgent.
CHAPTER VII.
LORD PALMERSTON’S LAST CONTEST WITH THE QUEEN.
The Sleswig-Holstein Question—The Danish Succession—Palmerston’s Partisanship—The “Danification” of the Duchies—The Letters-Patent of Christian VIII.—The Revolution of ’48—The Sleswig-Holstein Treaty of Berlin—Salic Law in the Duchies—Palmerston’s Intrigue with the Russian Ambassador—The Protocol of 1850—The Queen’s Objections to it—Prince Albert’s Advice to the Prince of Noër—The Treaty of London—Lord Malmesbury’s Fatal Blunder—His Mistake as to the Mandate of the Diet—Letters-Patent of Frederick VII.—His Death—Accession of Christian IX.—Revolt of the Duchies—Proclamation of the Duke of Augustenburg as Sovereign—Mr. Gladstone’s Popular Budget—Death of Sir George Cornewall Lewis—The Queen’s Letter to Lady Theresa Lewis—The Dispute with Brazil—The Prison Ministers Bill—A South Kensington Job—Hoodwinking the Commons—A “Scene” in the House of Commons—A Ministerial Defeat—Sir George Grey and the City Police—The Civil War in America—Escape of the Alabama—Illegal Seizure of the Alexandra—Blockade Running—Proclamation Abolishing Slavery—Progress of the War—Net Results of the Campaigns.
Lord Palmerston is said to have declared that only one man in Europe knew all the history and details of the Sleswig-Holstein Question, and that his opinion about it seemed to be contrary to common sense. Since 1846 the problem had engaged the subtlest of European diplomatists and Jurisconsults in chronic controversy. The Kings of Denmark were also Sovereign Dukes of Sleswig-Holstein, and when they were absolute monarchs, the Germans in the Duchies were on the same footing as the Danes. They were equally in bondage. On the death of Frederick VI., in 1839, his great-nephew, Christian VIII., succeeded him as King of Denmark, and all the subsequent trouble rose from the fact that his only son, the Prince Frederick, was not likely to have an heir. The question of the succession was further complicated because the Salic Law which existed in the German Empire obtained in the Duchies of Sleswig and in Holstein—the latter, indeed, being actually one of the States of the Germanic Confederation. The Landgravine Louise of Hesse would, on the death of Prince Frederick, be the nearest heir to the Danish throne. But as the Salic Law excluded a woman from the Sovereignty of the Duchies, her succession must destroy the integrity of Denmark. It was of the utmost importance to Russia to preserve this integrity, because, in the first place, the Romanoffs had themselves claims to part of the Duchies, which, on the extinction of the Royal House of Denmark, might be extended over the whole country; and, in the second place, if the Duchies broke away from Denmark they would naturally be absorbed by Germany, which would thus gain not only a valuable seaboard, but the formidable naval station of Kiel, from which she might dispute Russian supremacy in the Baltic. Two leading ideas, therefore, are from this point seen to dominate diplomacy in treating the question of the Duchies. The first is the Teutonic idea, which was, by every legitimate means, to prevent the Duchies from being absorbed by Denmark, and to draw closer and closer their connection with Germany. The