The strained relations between Great Britain and France, resulting from
the French policy of aggression in the Spanish peninsula, which had more
than once brought the two powers to the verge of war, had been eased
before the fall of the government of Charles X. The peril of a French
hegemony over the vast colonial empire of Spain had been forestalled by
Canning's recognition of the independence of the South American
republics; the intrigues of France in favour of the partisans of Dom
Miguel in Portugal had been checkmated by a politic breach, on behalf of
the Portuguese Liberals, of the British principle of non-intervention,
and finally the chief cause of offence had been removed, in 1827, by the
withdrawal of the French army of occupation from Spain. In the Greek
question the two powers had acted cordially in concert; and this good
understanding even the French conquest of Algiers in 1830, which laid
the foundations of the French empire in Africa, had not availed to
shatter; for the eyes of the Tory ministry were still fixed on France as
the potential focus of revolutionary propaganda, and any over-sea
possessions she might acquire were, in Wellington's opinion, so many
hostages for her good behaviour given to British sea-power. The results
of the July revolution in Paris were accepted by Great Britain so soon
as it became clear that Louis Philippe stood for peace and not for
revolutionary aggression; the armed intervention of France in favour of
the Belgians in August 1831 was stopped by the firm language of
Palmerston; the French occupation of Ancona, as a countermove to
Austrian aggressions in Italy, was accepted as "an incident of the
balance of power"; and the intention of the king of the French to abide
by the treaties, which became clearer with the consolidation of his
power at home, paved the way for that _entente_ between the two Liberal
powers which lasted until 1840.
The constitutional v. the autocratic powers.
The Eastern question, Mehemet Ali.
Conventions of Muenchengraetz and Berlin, 1833.
The cleavage between the fundamental principles of the two groups of
autocratic and constitutional powers was not only apparent in their
general attitude towards constitutional and national movements, but
affected also the position taken up by them during the crisis of the
Eastern question evoked by the revolt of Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, a
crisis by which between 1839 and 1841 all other diplomatic issues were
overshadowed. (See MEHEMET ALI.) During the Greek revolt the efforts of
Austria had been directed to preventing a Russian attack upon Turkey;
these efforts had failed, and Metternich's worst fears seemed to be
realized when the Russo-Turkish campaigns of 1828-29 issued in the
treaty of Adrianople (September 14, 1829) and the apparently complete
vassalage of the sultan to the tsar. But when, in 1832, Sultan Mahmud
appealed in his despair to the emperor Nicholas to save him from ruin at
the hands of the Egyptian rebels, and, as the result, the treaty of
Unkiar Skelessi (July 8, 1833) seemed to place definitely in the hands
of Russia the keys of the Black Sea, it was left to France and Great
Britain to give voice to the protest of Europe. Austria, alarmed by the
revolutionary movements of 1830, accepted the fact of Russian
preponderance at Constantinople, rather than risk a breach with the
autocrat who was now the main pillar of the Holy Alliance. The emperor
Nicholas, for his part, was equally prepared to surrender some of his
ambitions in the East for the sake of the common cause, the more so
since to Russian statesmen the maintenance of Turkey in a condition of
weakness and dependence now seemed preferable to any attempt to break it
up. The result of these dispositions was the convention of Muenchengraetz
(September 18, 1833) between Russia, Austria and Prussia, by which the
three powers undertook to guarantee the integrity of the Ottoman empire.
In the following month a secret convention was signed at Berlin between
the same powers (October 15), reaffirming the right of the powers to
intervene in the internal affairs of a friendly state at the request of
its legitimate sovereign, a right with which no third power would be
allowed to interfere, such interference to be regarded by the three
powers as an act of hostility directed against all of them.
The Tsar Nicholas I. and Palmerston.
Affairs of Spain and Portugal. Quadruple Alliance of 1834.
This reconstitution of the "Holy Alliance" on a narrower basis was the
work of the emperor Nicholas, whose masterful personality had by this
time quite overshadowed the influence of Metternich in the councils of
the autocratic powers. There was no formal breach of the Grand Alliance;
the "treaties" remained in force; but the French revolution of 1830 had
produced a practical disruption which was every day accentuated by the
attitude of the British government under the influence of Palmerston.
For Palmerston had now become "the firebrand of Europe," openly
proclaiming his contempt for international law and equally openly posing
as the protector of "oppressed nationalities." "If these two powers
(France and England)," wrote the tsar to King Frederick William of
Prussia, "have the courage to profess loudly rebellion and the overturn
of all stability, we ought to have the right and the courage to support
Divine right." This deep cleavage of principles was immediately
exhibited in the attitude of the powers towards the troubles in the
Spanish peninsula. In September 1833 Ferdinand VII. of Spain died, and,
under the Pragmatic Sanction, his daughter Isabella succeeded under the
regency of Queen Christina; in July, Dom Miguel, the absolutist
pretender to the throne of Portugal, had made himself master of Lisbon.
In Spain Don Carlos, Ferdinand's brother, claimed the crown as the
legitimate heir, and began the long agony of the Carlist wars; in
Portugal the constitutionalists upheld in arms the rights of Queen Maria
da Gloria (see SPAIN and PORTUGAL). Carlists and Miguelists, making
common cause, had the moral support of the allies of Muenchengraetz; while
France and Great Britain took the side of the Liberals. A formal
alliance between the two western powers, proposed by Talleyrand, was
indeed refused by Palmerston, who had no wish to commit Great Britain to
an irrevocable breach with Austria and Russia, and was suspicious of the
ambitions of France in Spain; but ultimately a triple alliance between
Great Britain, Spain and Portugal---with the object of restoring order
in the peninsula--was converted, under pressure from the French
government, into the Quadruple Alliance of the 22nd of April 1834.
Nicholas I. and Great Britain.
Breach of Anglo-French "entente" 1840.
The _entente_ implied by this formal instrument was, however, more
apparent than real. When, in the spring of 1835, Queen Christina applied
to the Allies for help against a renewed Carlist rising, Palmerston's
suspicions were again aroused by the somewhat naive suggestion of
Thiers that France should once more intervene as in 1823, a suggestion
that was firmly rejected. Palmerston's counter-proposal of an English
expedition met with as little favour in Paris. The Anglo-French
_entente_ was proving but a "cardboard alliance," as Wellington called
it; and the emperor Nicholas, to whom the existence of Louis Philippe as
king of the French was at once a sacrilege and a menace, began with a
good hope to work for its destruction. The fears roused by the Reform
Act of 1832 had been belied by its results; the conservative temper of
the British electorate had restored to Great Britain the prestige of a
legitimate power; and the pledge of the tsar's renewed confidence and
goodwill was the visit of the cesarevich (afterwards the emperor
Alexander II.) to the English court in 1839. This was not without its
effect on the public sentiment; but the triumph of the tsar's diplomacy
was due to fresh complications in the Eastern question, due to the
renewed effort of Sultan Mahmud to crush the hated viceroy of Egypt.
These events will be found outlined in the article MEHEMET ALI. Here it
will suffice to say that the convention of London of the 15th of July
1840, signed by Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia without
calling France into counsel, marked the definite breach of the
Anglo-French _entente_, a breach which was but imperfectly healed by the
Straits' Convention signed by all the powers on the 13th of July 1841.
Great Britain and France.
The Straits' Convention was hailed by Count Nesselrode, the Russian
foreign secretary, as having re-established "the federative system of
the European states on its old basis." This was true, in so far as it
created yet another precedent for the concerted action of the European
powers, and once more consecrated the right of "Europe" to decide in
common on questions of first-rate international importance. But the
divergence of interests and principles within the concert were too great
to be healed by the settlement of a single issue, however important, and
this divergence increased as events moved towards the revolutionary
outbreaks of 1848. When, in 1846, the independent republic of Cracow was
suppressed by agreement of the three autocratic powers, on the ground
that it had become a dangerous centre of revolutionary agitation, it was
Great Britain and France that protested against an arbitrary infraction
of the treaties by the very governments which had laid the greatest
stress upon their sanctity. The _entente_ between the two Liberal powers
had been patched up after the closure of the Egyptian Question; it was
cemented by visits of Queen Victoria and the prince consort to the
Chateau d'Eu (1843 and 1845), and of King Louis Philippe to Windsor
(1844); and it survived, in spite of several causes of friction, notably
the crisis in Morocco (q.v.), until 1846, when the affair of the Spanish
Marriages brought it to a somewhat dramatic conclusion.