In the sixteenth century there was a temporary alliance between your Henry VIII. and our Francis the First, against the Emperor of Germany, Charles V. In fact Henry VIII., at first, had allied himself with the German Emperor against the French king, but when the latter, attacked from all cardinal points (Spain and most of Italy were then in the hands of the Emperor), had been beaten at Pavia and taken prisoner to Madrid, your King perceived his mistake, i.e. England’s ultimate danger. He consequently offered his alliance to Francis for the restoration of this balance of power, which, for want of something better, was the guarantee of the independence of all states. In Mignet’s study[4] of these times I find this extract from your King’s instructions to his ambassadors in France, in March 1526, as to the conditions forced upon the French king, in his Spanish prison, by the Emperor of Germany:
‘They [the English ambassadors] shall infer what damage the crown of France may and is likely to stand in by the said conditions—this be the way to bring him [Charles] to the monarchy of Christendom.’
You know that, after all, the world-wide ambition of the then Emperor of Germany was defeated, to the point that he resigned in despair and ended his life in a monastery.
Again, towards the end of the same century Queen Elizabeth was on quite friendly terms with our Henry the Fourth. They had the same enemy: Philip the Second of Spain, son of Charles the Fifth and heir to the greater part of his dominions. This friendship ripened into alliance, and there was a very strong English contingent in the French army which retook Amiens, from the Spaniards, in 1597. Both sovereigns united also in helping the Low Countries in their struggle for independence against Spain.
In the seventeenth century your Cromwell and our Mazarin renewed the same alliance against Spain, and in 1657 a Franco-British army under the ablest of the French soldiers of that time, Marshal Turenne, beat the Spaniards near Dunkirk and took Dunkirk itself, which was handed over to you as the price previously agreed upon of the alliance.
After the Restoration your Stuarts were on so friendly terms with the French Government that they were accused, sometimes with some show of justice, of forgetting the national interests. There is no doubt that they tried, and to a certain extent successfully, to evade the just demands and control of your Parliament by becoming pensioners of the King of France. Their selling Dunkirk to France in 1662, five years after its capture from Spain, made them particularly unpopular. Of course, when they were finally expelled by your revolutions of 1688, they found, with hundreds of followers, a hospitable reception at the French court, causing thereby on the other hand a revival of hostility between our government and your new one. May I observe, by the way, that the head of this new government of yours was the Prince of Orange—French Orange, near Avignon—and that this little, practically self-governing principality was suffered to remain his until his death, in 1702, when Louis XIV. annexed it to France?
In the eighteenth century itself, marked by so keen a rivalry, there were temporary periods of understanding, specially during the two or three decades following the peace of Utrecht, with a view of preserving the peace of Europe. The names of Sir Robert Walpole and Cardinal Fleury are attached to this period.
In the nineteenth century, from the fall of Napoleon, the improvement of our relations—down to the present day—has been nearly continuous and marked by a series of remarkable facts. It was first the union of our navies, with that of Russia, for the destruction of the Turkish fleet at Navarino, in 1827, thereby securing the independence of Greece—an independence which was completed in the ensuing years by French and Russian armies—(we wish the present Greek Government, the Royal government, remembered this better!). It was then the union of our policies for the liberation of Belgium from Dutch vassalage, a liberation which Prussia wanted to oppose but durst not, seeing that France and England had made up their minds about it. Then came the union of our armies for the mistaken object of protecting Turkey against Russia (how strange it sounds now!), or of opening China to the European trade. Chief of all, how could we forget that—some way or other—France and Britain have been godmothers to Italian unity!
Well, all this is rather a long record and it may appear surprising to many as an aggregate, though nearly each component part of it is well known! The reason for this impression of surprise is this: in spite of this political co-operation, and side by side with it, much of the acrimonious spirit long survived, unwilling to die. The twentieth century, thank God! and the present alliance have given it the ‘coup de grâce’!