FREDERICK CHARLES, DUKE OF AUGUSTENBURG.
second is the Slavonic idea, which was to maintain, at all costs, the integrity of Denmark, and as far as possible encourage the policy that promoted a closer union between her and the Duchies. In this conflict of diplomatic forces the policy of England was vacillating and inconsistent, and for an excellent reason. Palmerston committed the fatal blunder of identifying British interests with the veiled designs of Russia, and he became a violent partisan of Denmark, whose policy was solely directed to what was called the “Danification” of the Duchies. On the other hand, the Queen had what Palmerston lacked—patience to master the complicated facts of the Danish question, and she became convinced that law and justice were on the side of the German Party in Sleswig-Holstein. The Prince Consort, again, was perhaps the only eminent man of his time who detected the hand of Russia in the game of intrigue at Copenhagen, from which sprang the policy of absorbing the Duchies against their will. He had the sense to see that British interests could hardly depend on maintaining the integrity of a small State like Denmark against the will of its people, and against the public law of Europe, and with no other practical result than that of preventing Germany from establishing herself as a rival power to Russia in the Baltic. Prince Albert’s death merely strengthened the Queen in her loyalty to his ideas—which in this instance were in harmony with her own conclusions. Hence, in 1863 and 1864, when the Danish Question became acute, the Queen and Lord Palmerston were in irreconcilable conflict, which explains why English policy seemed to the world at the time, a tissue of unintelligible inconsistencies. Happily for the English people, this conflict ended in the humiliating defeat of Palmerston—who, however, fought for his hand to the bitter end, with a courage and an obstinacy worthy of a better cause. No Tudor Sovereign ever strove more unweariedly and with more complete success than did the Queen at this time, to thwart the policy of her Minister, in the interests of peace, progress, and civilisation.
The first sign of trouble in the Duchies was given in 1846, when Christian VIII., as the Queen and Prince Consort knew, acting at the instigation of Russia, issued letters-patent extending the Danish law of female succession to all his dominions. These letters were a flagrant outrage on the public law of Europe, which excluded female sovereignty from his German provinces. Still Germany could only interfere on behalf of Holstein, which, as one of the States of the Germanic Confederation, was—as we have seen—under Salic Law. On the other hand, the German Party in the Duchies agitated against the letters-patent as an infringement of their autonomy; they demanded the union of the two Duchies, and their full and final absorption by the German Bund or Diet. The Diet, however, merely promised to defend their rights in Holstein, and vindicate the claims of all legal agnates in the succession to the Sovereignty of the Duchies. The death of Christian VIII. on the 20th of January, 1848, gave the German Party an opportunity for revolt. A Provisional Government was formed for the Duchies, and Prussia helped the Germans in Sleswig-Holstein to expel their Danish masters. The dispute dragged on till the 2nd of July, 1850, when a Treaty between Denmark and Prussia was signed at Berlin, vesting the Danish succession in Prince Christian of Sleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, and on his issue in the male line by his marriage with Louise, Princess of Hesse, heiress of the Crown of Denmark, who ceded to him all her rights. But the rights of the German Federation as regards Holstein and Lauenburg were not prejudiced by this Treaty. As for the heir to the Sovereignty of the Duchies under Salic Law—the Duke of Augustenburg—he sold his claims for 3,500,000 dollars. But obviously such a Treaty had no validity till it was sanctioned by the German Diet, inasmuch as it changed the legal succession in Holstein. An acknowledgment of the principle of maintaining at all hazards the integrity of Denmark, to be of use, must therefore have European sanction. To pave the way for a Treaty embodying this sanction Russian diplomacy at once set to work, and, unfortunately, Palmerston’s indiscretion at this juncture put him at the mercy of Baron Brunnow, the Russian Minister in London. It will be remembered that Palmerston’s policy of coercing Greece to recover Don Pacifico’s bad debts, had caused France to withdraw her Minister from London. But Russia took up the quarrel quite as fiercely as France, and Baron Brunnow not only absented himself from the official dinner at the Foreign Office on the Queen’s birthday, but finding that, through Lady Palmerston’s agency, means were taken to persuade the Queen that he meant to insult her personally, Brunnow called on Prince Albert privately and told him why he could not be present. It need hardly be said that this explanation did not soften her Majesty’s feeling towards Palmerston. Then came the censure which the House of Lords passed on him on the 17th of June. It was morally certain that if Russia followed France in withdrawing her Minister, the House of Commons would have confirmed the censure of the Lords, whereupon—condemned alike by the Crown and by both Houses of Parliament, by the Tories, the Radicals, and the Peace Party—Palmerston’s career must have ended. And every moment Brunnow’s demand for his passports was expected. At this crisis Palmerston, says Count Vitzthum, “turned to the Russian Minister with the inquiry whether there were no means of reconciling the Cabinet of St. Petersburg. After some consideration, Brunnow proposed a bargain: ‘Give us Denmark,’ he said, ‘and then we will give you Greece and forget the past.’ Of course it was not a question of ceding the Danish Kingdom, but of converting it into a Russian dependency, and giving the Emperor Nicholas a prospect of obtaining the harbour of Kiel.”[163] But how was this to be done? The first step was to get the integrity of Denmark affirmed as a European interest. Playing on Palmerston’s ignorance, Brunnow invented Russian claims to the Duchies based on those rights to the Gottorp portion, which the Emperor Paul had surrendered. These claims, Brunnow said, would be revived by the Czar Nicholas when the Danish line of kings became extinct with the death of Frederick VII. At such a suggestion Palmerston entered quite eagerly into the project of settling the succession to the Danish Crown on the basis (1), of recognising the integrity of Denmark as a European interest; (2), of passing over all male heirs to the sovereignty of the whole Danish Kingdom, in favour of Prince Christian of Glücksburg, the husband of the female heir. The points in the game which Russian diplomacy scored were three. The bargain kept Kiel out of German hands, which were alone strong enough to hold it against Russia. By getting the integrity of Denmark recognised, Russia rendered it easy for her to demand the whole kingdom whenever the time came to revive the Czar’s so-called claims to the Duchies as heir to the House of Gottorp. By getting the sovereignty of Denmark vested in Christian of Glücksburg, Russia contrived to seat on the Danish throne a Prince whose line of succession was not unlikely to fail.
THE EXCHANGE, COPENHAGEN.
When the bargain was struck France and Sweden recognised it. The Czar, as usual, “answered” for Prussia and Austria, and it was embodied in the Protocol of the 4th of July, 1850. The Queen, however, objected most strenuously to the whole arrangement. She warned her Ministers that it arbitrarily set aside the legal rights of nineteen agnates nearer in succession to the childless Frederick VII. than Christian of Sleswig-Holstein-Glücksburg. The Prince Consort declared in one of his letters to Stockmar that it violated law, equity, and honour, and predicted that trouble would spring from it. “But,” writes Count Vitzthum, “though he alone saw through the Russian game, he shrank from bringing the direct pressure of his influence to bear on the English Ministry in a matter which might expose him to the charge of sympathising too strongly with his Fatherland.” Yet he seems to have taken very strong means privately to neutralise the policy of Palmerston and Brunnow. He advised the Prince of Noër, one of the nineteen agnates who were set aside, to protest formally against the settlement of the Danish succession, so that the idea of challenging it was at all events kept alive in