FORTY-THREE TO FORTY-EIGHT.
The Queen’s first visit to a foreign country took place in September,
1843, when she and the Prince visited Louis Philippe and his family at
Château d’Eu, near Tréport. It was not only the Queen’s first visit to
France, but the first time since the Field of the Cloth of Gold that
an English reigning sovereign had been in France; and even then the
meeting of the two sovereigns had taken place on English territory
near Calais. The Queen was enchanted with everything she saw. She had
to the full all the keen and vivid interest which is almost invariably
awakened by seeing for the first time all those innumerable little
differences in every-day things which make a first foreign visit such a
revelation. If she was delighted with France, she was no less so with
her hosts, the King of the French and his family. She had been for six
years Queen of England, and it was, perhaps, a refreshment to her to
associate with those who were not her subjects, but her equals. She
wrote in her journal, “I feel so gay and happy with these dear people.”
Louis Philippe, on his part, was extremely anxious to make her visit
agreeable to her. He highly appreciated the honor she was conferring on
him. The representatives of the ancient monarchies of Europe did not
view him with any cordiality. He was not king by divine right, but by
the choice of the French people; the rightful King of France, in the
view of the Emperors of Russia and Austria, was the exiled Comte de
Chambord, Henry V. as they called him. Hence Louis Philippe cordially
welcomed the social prestige which he gained by receiving a visit from
the Queen of England. The King expressed his obligations on this score
to Prince Albert over and over again.
The Earl of Aberdeen, the Foreign Secretary of the day, accompanied
the Queen and Prince to France. The English Foreign Office at this
time regarded with apprehension a scheme which they believed Louis
Philippe and his Minister, Guizot, had in view of strengthening
French interests in Spain by marrying one of the King’s sons to the
young Queen Isabella. Louis Philippe, on the occasion of the Queen’s
visit, assured her most positively, and Guizot said the same thing to
Aberdeen, that he had no wish or intention of the kind, that even if
his son were asked in marriage for the Queen of Spain, he would not
consent. The Queen of Spain and her sister the Infanta were then young
girls of thirteen and twelve respectively. The French King’s assurances
to our Queen went so far as a positive promise that even if one of his
sons should eventually marry the Infanta, he should not consent to the
union until after the Queen of Spain was married and had children. It
is necessary to go at length into the wretched story. Louis Philippe
and Guizot covered themselves with infamy. Through their influence
a hateful marriage was forced on Queen Isabella, her consent to it
being, it is said, wrung from her under the influence of intoxication;
from this marriage it was hoped and believed that no children would be
born. At the same time that this so-called marriage was announced, it
was also made public that the Infanta would be married to the Duc de
Montpensier, son of Louis Philippe. The two marriages took place on the
same day, October 10th, 1846. Well might Stockmar write of this odious
transaction, as “a political intrigue which exceeds in immorality and
vulgarity everything brought out in modern times on the theatre of
politics; a part which would have shut out any one who had attempted to
play it in the circle of private life from all respectable society.”
Our Queen was deeply incensed; her whole soul revolted from the
wickedness of the scheme, and she had the added bitterness of feeling
that Louis Philippe had been guilty of personal deception towards
herself. It was he who introduced the subject when she visited him
at Eu, and gave her assurances upon it, unsought by her, and lightly
broken by him. His way of announcing the project to her did not mend
matters. He was ashamed to broach the subject in a formal manner,
and he got his wife to tell the Queen as a detail of family news
in a private and friendly letter, speaking of it as if it were of
no political importance, but simply an event that would add to the
domestic happiness (“_le seul vrai dans ce monde_,” the poor Queen
Marie Amélie was made to say) of the French Royal Family. Our Queen’s
reply was exceeding dignified, severe, short, and self-restrained. It
left no doubt as to her sentiments; and nothing is more indicative of
Louis Philippe’s bad conscience in the matter than the fact, which
he himself admits, that he sat up till four in the morning on three
following nights composing a reply in which he endeavored in vain to
justify himself.[22]
It is of course quite open to doubt whether the English Foreign Office
had been justified in regarding with apprehension the possible
accession of a grandson of Louis Philippe to the troublous royalty of
Spain. Cobden and the school he represented in England did not think it
mattered a straw to England, from the political point of view, whom the
Queen of Spain married. But the transaction could not be looked at as
merely political. It was condemned throughout the length and breadth of
England as grossly immoral, and the disgust it occasioned was all the
greater on account of the pretensions to high motives and to religious
principles assumed by the French King and his Minister.
Events soon confirmed the views of the Queen and Prince, so often
inculcated by Stockmar, that sorrow will always be found dogging sin.
The Spanish marriages took place in October, 1846: in fifteen months
from that time Louis Philippe and the dynasty he hoped to found had
been swept away; the little Spanish daughter-in-law whose son he had
hoped might wear the crown of Spain was, with other members of his
family, fugitive in England, indebted for shelter and even clothing to
our Queen, who forgot all her resentment, and gave them a most kind
welcome. Nothing came about as Louis Philippe had planned. The Queen
of Spain had children; her grandson is now the baby King of Spain, and
Louis Philippe’s great-grandson, exiled from France, is addressing
futile[23] proclamations from English soil, to assure the French people
that when they want him, which they show no sign of doing, he is ready
to ascend the throne of his ancestors. It has been remarked that a
strange fatality attended on many of the chief actors in the Spanish
marriages. The French Minister at Madrid, M. Bresson, committed suicide
in 1847. Louis Philippe and his dynasty were overthrown in 1848.
Queen Isabella was deposed in 1868. Her son, Alfonso XII., married his
cousin Princess Mercedes Montpensier. She died, not without suspicions
of poisoning, within a year of her marriage; and he died, while still
quite a young man, before the birth of his only son by his second
marriage. Before the accession of Alfonso XII., the question of a
successor to Queen Isabella was the proximate cause of the French and
German War of 1870-71.
Cobden, travelling in France very shortly before the outbreak of 1848,
saw nothing which led him to expect any political disturbance; he
believed the future to promise nothing but tranquillity and commercial
development, and that Free Trade spelt “peace on earth.”
Stockmar was a Free Trader too, but he had learnt that that which
is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit
is spirit. He did not look for spiritual results from purely
material causes; and perhaps his vantage-ground on what he called
the watch-tower of London, or even his position at the “hole in the
stove” in Coburg, enabled him to gauge more correctly than Cobden
the political forces of the time. He had foreseen the outbreak of
revolution, as the result to be expected from despotism and bad
government on the Continent, added to the misery and destitution
of the great masses of the people. The storm of 1848 did not find
him unprepared; and in England and Belgium, where the principles of
constitutionalism, as understood and taught by him, had taken firm
hold, were almost the only countries in Europe where revolution did not
get the upper hand.
But although this was so, 1848 was a sufficiently serious time in
England. In Ireland the misery of the people had amounted to actual
famine, and notwithstanding everything that lavish expenditure and
devoted services, both by public servants and private individuals,
could do, hundreds of thousands perished from starvation or its
attendant pestilence. In the Union of Skibbereen nearly the whole
population, 11,000 persons, perished. The shopkeepers of the little
Kerry town of Kenmare told the writer of these pages in 1870 that
during the worst months of the famine of 1847 they seldom took down
their shutters in the morning without finding one or two corpses in the
street, poor things who had been living in the mountains and had just
had strength to crawl down into Kenmare to die. And what was famine in
Ireland was the bitter pinch of scarcity in England and Scotland. In
February, 1847, wheat was 102 shillings a quarter; added to this there
was a general sense of alarm and absence of security, bringing with it
want of capital, want of employment, want of wages. There was hardly
a house, rich or poor, that was not suffering loss; but while to the
rich the loss meant giving up luxuries which only custom had made seem
necessaries, to the poor it meant actual want and privation;[24] when
men are low and miserable, and feel they have nothing to lose, is the
time when revolutionary propaganda works like wildfire among them.
There was an avowedly revolutionary political party in Ireland, always
ready to take advantage of any difficulty the Government might be in,
foreign or domestic, in order to harass and thwart them. “Refuse us
this” (repeal of the Union) O’Connell had said in 1840, when war with
France hung in the balance about the Eastern Question, “and then in
the day of your weakness dare to go to war with the most insignificant
of the powers of Europe.” In 1848, the mantle of O’Connell had fallen
on John Mitchel, who, in his paper called _The United Irishman_, gave
instructions for the successful carrying on of revolutionary street
warfare; he recommended the covering of the streets with broken glass
to lame the horses of the soldiery, and suggested that the citizens
should provide themselves with missiles to throw from the houses;
these, he said, could be used with great effect from the elevation of a
top story, especially if forethought had been used to provide “boiling
water or grease, or, better, cold vitriol if available. Molten lead
is good, but too valuable; it should always be cast in bullets and
allowed to cool.” This and a great deal of similar rubbish was poured
forth day by day, or week by week, in the rebel papers. It would be
harmless enough in an ordinary way; but amid the excitements of 1848,
and addressed to such an excitable people, it might have proved a
spark in a powder magazine. Mr. Mitchel proclaimed his intention of
committing high treason, but he was arrested before he had had an
opportunity of doing so. A deputation of Irish revolutionists was
sent to the Provisional Government in Paris to demand “what they were
sure to obtain, the assistance of 50,000 troops for Ireland.” The
French Government absolutely declined the proposal, and said they
were at peace with Great Britain, and wished to remain so. Mitchel
was sentenced to transportation, and the heads of the deputation to
Paris were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death. Their
sentences were, however, commuted to transportation, and then the fate
which so often throws a ludicrous aspect over Irish revolutionary
affairs overtook them; they denied the right of the Crown to reduce
the severity of their sentences, and demanded that they should either
be set at liberty, or hanged, drawn, and quartered,--a request which it
is needless to say was disregarded.
But Ireland was not the only source of anxiety; there was a threatening
of riot and pillage in Scotland, and one very serious rising took
place near Glasgow. It was suppressed through the personal and moral
courage of the Sheriff of Lanarkshire, Sir Archibald Alison; but if
it had been successful the whole of the manufacturing district of the
West of Scotland would probably have taken fire. In England danger
appeared to threaten from the Chartist movement. The Chartists gave
notice that they intended to assemble at Kennington Common 500,000
strong, on the 10th April, 1848, and to march thence to the House of
Commons, there to present their petition, which they said had received
nearly 6,000,000 signatures. It is rather significant that Englishmen,
even when they talk revolution, can, when it comes to action, think
of nothing less constitutional than the presenting of a petition to
Parliament. Sampson, the servant in _Romeo and Juliet_, is the typical
English revolutionist. “Is the law on our side if I say--ay?” However,
the Queen, the Ministry, and the whole country were alarmed. In London
thousands of special constables voluntarily enrolled themselves,
as a civil force, to help the military, if need were, to maintain
order. The Duke of Wellington as Commander-in-Chief, directed special
preparations for the defence of London; but with this usual good sense
he took care that not a single extra soldier or piece of artillery
was to be seen on the eventful day. The Admiralty, Horse Guards, and
Treasury were strongly garrisoned and filled with arms; there were 800
men with cannon in Buckingham Palace, and steamers and gunboats lay
in readiness on the river. Country gentlemen garrisoned their London
houses with their gamekeepers armed with double-barrelled guns. As
everybody knows now, it all ended in smoke. The 10th of April, 1848,
came and went; the Chartists met at Kennington, not 500,000, but
about 25,000 strong; their petition contained not six million, but
about two million signatures, a very large proportion of which were
fictitious. About 8,000 men from the mass meeting walked in procession
towards Westminster. On being met on the bridge by a police force, and
informed they would not be allowed to cross in mass, they bowed to the
inevitable, and sent their petition to Parliament in three four-wheeled
cabs! In this humble and unromantic manner ended the English revolution
of ‘48. The whole movement was overwhelmed with ridicule, from which it
never recovered, and the ordinary law-abiding people felt ashamed that
they had allowed themselves ever to believe in its seriousness.
Constitutional government was stronger than it knew itself to be. It
was easy to be wise after the event; but before, many brave hearts had
failed them for fear. The Queen was, of course, specially affected by
events on the Continent, as the monarchs whose rule was being either
overturned or threatened were in many instances her relations and
friends. She wrote on the 6th March to Stockmar, “I am quite well,
indeed particularly so, though God knows we have had since the 25th
enough for a whole life,--anxiety, sorrow, excitement.” On the very
day on which the Queen wrote, a mob had rushed to Buckingham Palace,
breaking lamps and shouting, “Vive la République!” However, their
leader, when arrested, began to cry! so that he could not be considered
a dangerous revolutionist.
It was in the midst of all this excitement that Princess Louise was
born, on March 18th, 1848. With all the fear caused by the anticipation
of the Chartist movement on April 10th, it is not surprising that the
Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, strongly urged the removal of the
Court to Osborne. It is not impossible that the three-weeks-old baby
was even more persuasive than the Prime Minister. However this may
be, the Queen left London for Osborne on April 8th, not without some
criticism from Greville. Greville was nothing if not critical; he
had blamed Sir Robert Peel for resigning in 1844, and thus causing a
ministerial crisis when the Queen was near her confinement, and he now
blamed Lord John Russell for advising the Queen to go to Osborne with
her new-born infant, in anticipation of a Chartist riot in London on
April 10, 1848.
There was an immense feeling of relief all over the country when the
day passed off so quietly. The popular feeling in London was manifested
by the cheers which greeted the Duke of Wellington when he turned out
early the next morning to his post at the Horse Guards. The Prince
wrote to his private secretary on April 11th, “What a glorious day was
yesterday for England.... How mightily this will tell all over the
world!” The utter inability of the revolutionary germ to thrive in
the soil of constitutional liberty was the lesson of 1848. Repeated
illustrations of the same fact have been given in more recent times.
After the explosion in Greenwich Park in 1894, caused by the Frenchman
Bourdin, the police seized an anarchist club near Tottenham Court Road,
and caught a gang of eighty men representing the anarchist propaganda
in London. Every man but one was a foreigner, and the solitary
Englishman was a journalist who had come, not to revolutionize, but to
get copy for his paper!
With characteristic conscientiousness the Queen and her husband did
not rest content with the fact that the social peace of England
was not endangered. They felt there never would have been even the
anticipation of danger, unless there had been much in the condition of
the poorer classes which called for redress. They had not been many
days at Osborne before they sent for Lord Ashley (better known to
this generation as Lord Shaftesbury), and asked his advice as to what
could be done to render more happy the condition of the poor. This was
a subject which, as is well known, was to Lord Ashley, not merely an
occupation, but a passion. His whole life, from youth to old age, was
given to it; almost his last words, at the age of 85, when he knew
he was dying, were: “I cannot bear to leave the world, with all the
misery in it.” The Prince could not, therefore, have sent for a better
counsellor. They had a long conversation in the gardens at Osborne.
The Prince asked for advice, and how he could best assist towards the
common weal. “Now, sir,” replied Lord Ashley, “I have to ask your Royal
Highness whether I am to speak out freely, or to observe Court form.”
“For God’s sake,” said the Prince, “speak out freely.”
Lord Ashley then advised him to throw himself into movements to promote
the social well-being of the masses of the people, and to show in
public that he was doing so. On the Prince asking for more detail,
Lord Ashley urged him to come and see for himself how the poorest
people in London lived; to go into their houses, and he offered himself
to conduct the Prince over houses in St. Giles, near Seven Dials.
He also urged him to take the chair a month later at the meeting of
the Laborers’ Friend Society, and (with the little bit of worldly
wisdom that guileless people so often pride themselves on) to come in
semi-state, with several carriages, four horses, outriders and scarlet
liveries. The Prince felt he ought not to consent to all this without
asking Lord John Russell’s advice; but he gave a conditional consent.
Lord John, however, was hostile, and offered strong opposition to the
Prince acting on Lord Ashley’s advice. However, Lord Ashley stuck to
his guns. He admitted that in any strictly political matter the Prince
was bound to abide by the advice of the Prime Minister, but on a matter
like this he advised the Prince to tell Lord John that “Your Royal
Highness is as good a judge as he is.” Lord Ashley finally prevailed,
and the Prince took the chair at the Laborers’ Friend meeting on May
18th, 1848. The outriders and the scarlet liveries were not omitted,
and the Prince made a speech which Sir Theodore Martin says first
fairly showed the country what he was, and gave a very important
impulse to the manifold movements towards social improvement which have
been so marked a feature of the present reign. Thus out of the “nettle,
danger,” we were enabled “to pluck the flower, safety.”
[22] The poor excuse put forward by Louis Philippe was that the English
Foreign Secretary, then Lord Palmerston, was manœuvring to bring about
a marriage between a Coburg Prince and the Queen of Spain. There was
no foundation for this charge; but Louis Philippe seems to have had a
terror of Lord Palmerston which deprived him of all self-control, and
capacity for judging of evidence.
[23] See _Times_, January 18th, 1895.
[24] Greville anticipated that the troubles of the time would affect
him to the extent of the loss of half his income. He did not whine,
but said, though he should not like it, he hoped and believed he could
accommodate himself to the necessary change in his habits without
repining outwardly or inwardly.