THE DANISH WAR.
Stagnant Politics--Excitement over the Danish War--Attitude of the
Queen--Withdrawal of the Danes from Holstein--Lord Wodehouse’s
Mission--The _Quarterly Review_ advocates War--Mr. Disraeli
Repudiates a War Policy--Lord Palmerston’s Secret Plans--The Case
against Germany--The Queen’s Warnings--Mr. Cobden’s Arguments--Lord
Russell’s “Demands”--Palmerston drafts a Warlike Queen’s
Speech--The Queen Refuses to Sanction it--Lord Derby Summoned to
Osborne--He is Pledged to a Peace Policy--Austria and Prussia in
Conflict with the Diet--The Occupation of Sleswig--War at
Last--Retreat of the Danes to Düppel--Palmerston’s Protests
Answered by German Victories--The Invasion of Jutland--Storming of
the Düppel Redoubts--Excitement in London--Garibaldi’s Visit to
London--Garibaldi and the Dowager Duchess of Sutherland--Anecdotes
of Garibaldi’s Visit--Clarendon’s Visit to Napoleon III.--Expulsion
of Garibaldi by Palmerston--Napoleon III. Agrees to Accept the
Proposal for a Conference--Triumph of the Queen’s Peace
Policy--Palmerston’s Last Struggle--His Ministry Saved by Surrender
to Mr. Cobden--The Treaty of Vienna--End of the War.
The year 1864 gives one a vivid illustration of the stagnant condition
of politics in England under Lord Palmerston. The mind of the country
was absorbed in one question, and one only, namely, whether England
should make war in Prussia and Austria to maintain the integrity of
Denmark and uphold the Treaty of London. Ten years before, England had
rushed headlong into war for a cause that was more shameful, and for
“British interests” that were much more visionary than those which were
now at stake. But great progress had been made during these ten years.
The disasters and disgrace which had fallen on the nation during the
Crimean struggle had not been endured for nothing. Englishmen had no
longer boundless confidence in the aristocratic war party, whose clumsy
diplomacy and military incapacity had involved the country in the
inglorious contest with Russia. Moreover, while the Court was neutral in
that struggle, latterly leaning, if to any side, to the side of the war
party, in 1864 the Queen was obstinately determined to keep out of war,
and Palmerston found in her a much more formidable antagonist than
either Mr. Cobden or Mr. Bright. Mr. Morley, in his “Life of Cobden,”
asserts that it was his (Cobden’s) influence, and the pressure brought
to bear on the Ministry by Lancashire, that thwarted Palmerston at the
end of the struggle. Count Vitzthum, on the other hand, credits the
Queen with the honour of defeating the Premier. The truth is that
neither the Queen nor Mr. Cobden, acting alone, could have saved their
country from a fate as melancholy as that which smote Austria to the
dust at Sadowa.[179] But, acting together, though quite independently
of each other, they represented a combination of social and political
forces, which would have crushed not only Palmerston, but his Cabinet,
had he continued to resist them with blind oppugnancy.
At the beginning of the year the Danes, acting on English advice, had
withdrawn from Holstein, where Prussia and Austria had put in Federal
execution on behalf of the Diet. Danish and German troops therefore
faced each other on the Eider, which divided Sleswig from Holstein, and
Europe waited with almost breathless excitement for the first shot that
would kindle the far-darting flames of war. Councils of moderation had
been pressed by Lord Russell on the Danish Government, but in vain. They
were urged by Lord Wodehouse, who had been sent on a special mission to
Copenhagen, to withdraw the Constitution of November which had provoked
the intervention of Germany. His mission was a failure. Politicians at
home and abroad were alarmed by an extraordinary essay known to be from
the pen of Lord Robert Cecil, which appeared in the _Quarterly Review_,
advocating war against Germany on behalf of Denmark, and it was supposed
to represent the policy of the Tory Party. It, however, did not
represent the views of Mr. Disraeli, who, in a confidential conversation
with Count Vitzthum, disowned it, and as for Lord Derby, he had no
well-defined views on the subject. Had it been otherwise, Lord
Palmerston could have easily frightened his Cabinet into war. “Any
doubt,” writes Count Vitzthum, “as to the validity of the Treaty of 1852
offended so deeply the _amour propre_ of the Prime Minister that he was
capable of going any lengths. The plan which he devised, to save his
work, was to attack with one portion of the British ironclad fleet the
North Sea and Baltic coasts of Germany, and with another portion,
Trieste and Venice, to support with English gold Mazzini and Garibaldi
in Italy, and Kossuth in Hungary, and thus kindle a general
conflagration.”[180] This might have been Palmerston’s plan at the
beginning of the year. A few week’s reflection, however, toned it down,
for in a private letter to Lord Russell, dated the 13th of February, it
seems that, though his _animus_ against Germany had not abated, he was
of opinion that “it would be best for us to wait a while before taking
any strong step; though,” he adds, “it is very useful to remind the
Austrians and the Prussians privately of the danger they were running at
home.”[181] A few days after that, in a private letter to the Duke of
Somerset, Palmerston’s plan is found to be still further modified, but
this time in a mischievous direction. It now took the form of sending
the Fleet to Danish waters, with orders to prevent the Germans from
attacking Zealand and Copenhagen.[182] Every word spoken and every line
written on the Sleswig-Holstein Question by Palmerston and Russell at
this juncture, deluded the Danes into the belief that the British
Government were prepared to defend by force of arms the integrity of
Denmark as a British interest. But for this delusion Denmark would not
have obstinately resisted even the most moderate demands which were made
for concessions to the Germans in Sleswig-Holstein.
[Illustration: KRONBORG CASTLE, ELSINORE.]
The case against Austria, Prussia, and the Diet was capable of easy
statement in a popular form. Hence it is not surprising that the large
class of Englishmen who act on what may be called the public schoolboy
theory of high politics took the side of the Danes. Denmark was a small
Power, whereas Austria and Prussia were two large Powers, who were
“bullying” Denmark. Austria, Prussia, and most of the minor States of
Germany did not come into court with clean hands. They had individually
sanctioned the Treaty of London, to which they now objected, because the
German Diet, of which they were members, had not ratified it. They
refused to be bound by it because Denmark had violated antecedent
engagements, made independently of it, and on another subject than the
Danish Succession, with which the Treaty dealt. Austria and Prussia
could hardly be disinterested in coming forward as the champions of
Constitutionalism, and “the doctrine of nationalities” in Sleswig and
Holstein. The Treaty of London of 1852 was the work of England, and to
uphold it by arms was a debt of honour which Englishmen ought to pay.
The big-boy-and-the-small-boy argument was founded on a strange
misconception of the facts. In Holstein and Sleswig the
[Illustration: CHRISTIAN IX., KING OF DENMARK.]
Danes played the part of the big boy who was bullying the little one.
When they were asked to hold their harsh hand by stronger Powers they
pleaded their weakness as an excuse for their tyranny. The bad motives
of the champions of the Sleswig-Holsteiners, however, did not affect the
rights or wrongs of their clients. Moreover, Englishmen quite mistook
the German argument, which was this: The German Powers who sanctioned
the Treaty of London did not allege that it was null and void because
Denmark had not kept the engagements of 1851. They said that Frederick
VII. had died before he had lawfully established in his kingdom the
order of succession which the Treaty sanctioned, and which, had Denmark
stood by her engagements, they would have had no difficulty in
supporting. This being the case, they were, they said, entitled to
repudiate a Treaty which was illegal in the eyes of international law,
till ratified by the German Diet, by the Sleswig-Holsteiners, and by the
heirs to the Duchies who had been set aside by it.
So far as the Queen was concerned, Palmerston’s arguments had no effect
on her mind. She had warned him that the change in the Danish
succession, effected by the Treaty of London, was illegal, and would one
day be disputed. It might have been legalised by a _fait accompli_--that
is to say, if the Germans in the Duchies had been induced to accept the
change by a conciliatory policy. On the contrary, the policy of the
Danes had been so offensively anti-German, that the Sleswig-Holsteiners
were more opposed to the Treaty than ever. Moreover, Germans all over
the Fatherland were with them, and it was therefore idle to ask German
Sovereigns to risk revolution by forcing on Germans in the Duchies an
oppressive foreign government. To propose English intervention was
equally objectionable to the Queen. She was firmly convinced that the
English people wanted peace and not war, and that the integrity of a
petty Northern State was not, in their opinion, essential to their
Imperial existence. Her Majesty laid her finger at the outset on the
point of folly in Palmerston’s policy, which was the maintenance of the
Treaty of 1852. Would Englishmen consent to levy war on the German race
to uphold an instrument which the carelessness of English diplomatists,
in refusing to obtain legal ratifications, had rendered invalid? And
then what would men of business say when asked to bear the burden of
such a war, to uphold a Treaty that thrust dynasty on a people who did
not want it? Curiously enough, the same line of argument was
subsequently taken by Mr. Cobden, though he did not know the secret
history of the Treaty of London. “In 1852,” said he, “by the mischievous
activity of our Foreign Office, seven diplomatists were brought round a
green table in London to settle the destinies of a million of people in
the two provinces of Sleswig and Holstein without the slightest
reference to the wants and wishes, and the tendencies or interests, of
that people. The preamble of the Treaty which was then and there agreed
to, stated that what those seven diplomatists were going to do was to
maintain the integrity of the Danish monarchy, and to sustain the
balance of power in Europe. Kings, emperors, princes, were represented
at that meeting, but the people had not the slightest voice or right in
the matter. They settled the Treaty, the object of which was to draw
closer the bonds between those two provinces and Denmark. The tendency
of the great majority of the people of these provinces--about a million
of them altogether--was altogether in the direction of Germany. From
that time to this year the Treaty was followed by constant agitation and
discord; two wars have sprung out of it, and it has ended in the Treaty
being torn to pieces by two of the Governments who were prominent
parties to the Treaty.”[183] Still, the Queen was so desirous of peace
that she did not refuse her sanction to proposals of compromise which
were from time to time made by Lord Russell, but which proved abortive.
In one of these, addressed to the German Diet on the 31st of December,
1863, Lord Russell said that England “_demands_, in the interests of
peace,” (1), a Conference of the signatory powers in London to compose
the dispute, and (2), the establishment of the _status quo_ till this
Conference finished its labours--one of those “demands” which, according
to Sir Alexander Malet, Herr von Bismarck treated with “disdain.”[184]
Anxious Cabinet meetings were held in January, and reports of
Ministerial dissensions flew round. Projects for giving the Danes
material support seem to have been broached, but, according to Lord
Malmesbury, writing on the 29th of January, the Ministry found “great
difficulties in the opposition of the Queen.”[185] In these
circumstances Lord Palmerston, knowing that the Tory Party were ready to
support him in defending Denmark, began to look to Lord Derby for aid.
To his colleagues he said, “If _we_ do not begin the war, the Tories
will turn us out in order to do it themselves.”[186] But here he was
again foiled. The Queen had an interview with Lord Derby at Osborne,
which ended in the leader of the Opposition becoming convinced that the
integrity of the Danish Kingdom was a mere phrase involving no British
interest which justified a war--an opinion which Mr. Disraeli enforced
in private when he scornfully described the “integrity of Denmark” not
as “a phrase,” but as “humbug.” He told Count Vitzthum, that he believed
if Denmark ever again possessed a fleet she “would fight in the next war
not for England, but for Russia and France.”[187] As for making war with
France for an ally--another Palmerstonian idea--Lord Derby was asked
whether that did not mean sacrificing Antwerp to save Copenhagen? There
thus remained for Palmerston but one more chance of committing the
country before Parliament met, and that was by inserting a bellicose
paragraph into the Royal Speech. Again he was thwarted by the Queen’s
opposition. Her Majesty refused to sanction a threatening speech, and
her objections were sustained by a majority of the Cabinet, much to
Palmerston’s chagrin. “It was not,” says Count Vitzthum, “till the day
before Parliament opened, that her Majesty approved the colourless
speech which was read on her behalf. Every one,” he adds, “was waiting
with the keenest anxiety for the debate on the Address, and the House of
Lords was crowded when Lord Derby (February 4) rose to make his three
hours’ speech. I stood on the steps of the throne, close by the front
railings. It so chanced that Lord Palmerston, who had been fetched by
the Duke of Argyll, was standing next to me, and thus I was able to
watch the impression produced on the Prime Minister by the eloquence of
his opponent. The House listened with breathless silence to Lord Derby’s
solemn admonitions on behalf of peace, in which he enlarged with
statesmanlike tact and rare skill on the proposition that a war with
Germany would be the gravest calamity to England. A perfect storm of
applause was the orator’s reward, and Lord Palmerston left the House in
evident uneasiness.”[188] And no wonder. He knew that his colleagues
would now be all the more disposed for peace, for it was only too
obvious that the result of Lord Derby’s interview with the Queen at
Osborne had been a pledge that he would not permit his party to aid the
Prime Minister in goading the country into war. “That particular
danger,” writes Count Vitzthum, “was over. Twice more, however, in the
course of that Session did Lord Palmerston attempt to drag the Cabinet
along with him and carry his project of a war. Each time he was
outvoted. Thrice did the Queen gain a victory over the would-be Dictator
in the bosom of his own Cabinet.”[189] The criticism of the Tory chiefs
was, however, directed to raise general distrust in Palmerston’s foreign
policy as a whole. Lord Derby described it as one of “meddle and
muddle.” “_Nihil intactum reliquit_,” observed Lord Derby, laughingly,
“_nihil tetigit quod non conturbavit._” In the meantime the whole
question was passing out of the sphere of diplomacy.
On the 14th of January, Austria and Prussia asked the Diet to sanction
the occupation of Sleswig, pending the withdrawal of the obnoxious
Constitution incorporating Sleswig in Danish territory, and all
fulfilment by Denmark of her engagements to respect the civic privileges
of all Germans in the Duchies. The Diet considered that the Danes might
comply with the German demand, and thus recover the Duchies. Hence the
Austro-Prussian proposal was defeated, the ostensible reason given by
the Diet being that it had no jurisdiction beyond Holstein. Prussia and
Austria then intimated that they would themselves occupy Sleswig. The
Prussian Chamber, adopting the view of the Diet, refused to grant the
Government supplies, because, as Herr Schultze-Delitzsch said, this
policy could only lead to the restoration of the Duchies to Denmark. Von
Bismarck’s retort was “_Flectere si nequeo superos, Acheronta
movebo._[190] If you refuse supplies, the Government will take them in
spite of you.” Austria, eager to recover the military _prestige_ she had
lost in Italy, and alarmed at the progress which democracy was making
every day in the Duchies, perhaps also somewhat afraid lest Prussia
might win all the glory of a strong and resolute pan-German policy,
joined Prussia, thereby striking a mortal blow at the authority of the
moribund Germanic Confederation among the German-speaking race. On the
1st of February the Austro-Prussian Army of occupation crossed the
Eider, which was the answer the allies gave to Lord Russell’s “demand”
for a Conference and the establishment of the _status quo_. Within a
week the Danes were driven northwards behind their fortifications in
Düppel--their last line of defence in Sleswig. Lord
[Illustration: THE PRUSSIANS STORMING THE REDOUBTS OF DÜPPEL.]
Palmerston, who had imagined that they could gain time for him by
holding the Dannewerk, now found that he had made a sad mistake. The
English Government accordingly implored France and Russia to join
England in giving moral and material support to Denmark. But Von
Bismarck, though still opposed by the Prussian Chamber, laughed at
Palmerston’s efforts to roll back the tide of German conquest. “He had,”
as his biographer says, “already taken care to be sure of his men, in
expectation of such a contingency. Russia, as we have seen, had been
laid under a counter-obligation to Prussia by the services of the latter
in the matter of the Polish insurrection.”[191] As for France, she had
been propitiated by a favourable Commercial Treaty, and Napoleon III.
was reminded that it was not Prussia, who had accepted, but England, who
had refused to accept, his project for an European Congress of
Sovereigns in 1863, who had dealt a cruel blow at his _prestige_.
Palmerston now awoke to the painful fact that there was another obstacle
in the way of carrying out a war policy. He and Lord Russell had left
England without a single ally in Europe. In vain did the two Ministers
struggle with their fate. Their protests and their proposals were
answered by German victories. At last, when Jutland was
invaded--territory so sacred that Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell had
resolved to resent its invasion by naval intervention--the Danes offered
to negotiate for peace on the basis of the _status quo_, as established
by the Treaties of 1851-52. Von Bismarck’s answer was that the offer
came too late, for Prussia no longer considered herself bound by
Treaties which war had cancelled. Still, Prussia would not object to a
Conference, but it must be a Conference without a basis or an
armistice--England having insisted on both. The proposal of an armistice
soon had no practical interest. On the 18th of April, after a
destructive cannonade, the Prussians stormed the redoubts of Düppel, and
captured them after half-an-hour’s fighting. The excitement now became
intense in London. Was it possible that the hitherto invincible
diplomacy of Palmerston was destined to fail whenever it was met by an
antagonist who, as Sir A. Malet says, treated “cajolery and menace” with
equal disdain?
“At this juncture,” writes Count Vitzthum, “Lord Palmerston thought fit
to offer a spectacle to the London mob, which was calculated to inflame
still more their revolutionary passions. Mindful of the _panem et
circenses_ of the Roman Emperors, the veteran Premier sought to please
the people by showing them Garibaldi. The latter, who had been released
from his imprisonment after the affair at Aspromonte, was to be
employed, if Palmerston succeeded in carrying through his scheme,
against Venetia, and, if necessary, against Rome. Ovations were showered
on the guerilla leader from the moment of his landing.[192] In London he
was met at the railway station by the Duke of Sutherland, and conducted
in pomp through the leading thoroughfares to Stafford House. Countless
multitudes thronged the streets, and hailed this triumphal procession
with acclamations. There had scarcely been such crowds at the entrance
of the French Emperor and Empress in 1855, or at that of the Princess of
Wales.[193] Garibaldi was lodged like a prince at the Duke of
Sutherland’s mansion. Thither came the most distinguished ladies of the
Whig aristocracy to court the favour of a look or a smile from the fêted
champion of freedom. The Ministers and the leaders of the Opposition met
together at the banquet given in his honour at Stafford House.[194]
London society filled the splendid apartments in the evening, and
thronged round the lion of the day.... Among those most profuse in their
attentions was the Duchess of Sutherland, late Mistress of the Robes,
who gave a luncheon party at Chiswick to the adventurer, and received
him like a king at the door of her mansion dressed in full attire. Lord
Clarendon, not to miss this festivity, postponed his journey to Paris,
where he was to make the last fruitless attempt to induce Napoleon to
take action.[195] There was something indescribably comic in this
exaggerated display of British hero-worship. The only man who was
unaffected by it was Garibaldi himself. The old sailor was not the least
imposed on by it all--not the least impressed. He made his appearance in
the gilded saloons without coat or waistcoat, and paraded in his red
flannel shirt. In the streets he wore his black felt hat, with a red
feather. Festivities and attentions bored him intensely. He made no
secret of his aversion to old women, even though they wore the ermine of
duchesses. After the banquet at Stafford House he said that he was not
accustomed to sit so late and so long at his meals. He called for his
pipe of tobacco. The Dowager Duchess [of Sutherland] overcame her
dislike to tobacco smoke, took Garibaldi into her boudoir, lit his pipe
with her own hands, and never left him till he had finished it.”[196]
This strange episode did not impose on the Queen either, who had reason
to believe that nobody concerned was deceived, except the good-natured
British populace, whose honest hero-worship was being exploited by
Palmerston for diplomatic purposes. The reception of Garibaldi was meant
as a warning to Austria that if invincible in Denmark she was vulnerable
in Venice; to France, that if through pique she thwarted Palmerston’s
diplomacy in Northern Europe, there would soon be trouble brewing for
her at Rome; and to Russia, that if she deserted England she would find
that the spirit of revolution could yet be roused in Poland. How far the
Tory leaders were parties to the imposture is not clear. Lord Malmesbury
tries to persuade us that they took part in it merely from motives of
childish curiosity. A fashionable lion was reported to be in Stafford
House, and so he and his colleagues went there to hear him roar.
One of the most curious projects broached by Lord Palmerston’s
satellites was that of raising a subscription among “the gentry of
England” to furnish Garibaldi with funds for attacking Austria in
Venice, and France in Rome. This scheme, says Lord Shaftesbury, who
euphuistically describes it as one for “furthering his [Garibaldi’s]
Italian purposes,” was quashed by
[Illustration: GARIBALDI’S RECEPTION IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE, LONDON.]
the patriot himself, happily in time to save his credit as well as the
credit of “the gentry of England.” After “many sittings of committees,”
writes Lord Shaftesbury, who was one of the most active of Lord
Palmerston’s agents in this business,[197] “myriads of letters and
private requests, we had in two months obtained payments and promises
for a sum considerably under three thousand pounds.” Whether Lord
Shaftesbury was, like Garibaldi, a tool in Palmerston’s hands it is
impossible to say. But it is a singular fact that we find him writing to
the Duc de Persigny on the 8th of April assuring him “that there is not
in it [Garibaldi’s visit] a notion of politics.” On the other hand, he
himself discloses, in a posthumous Memorandum unearthed by the industry
of his biographer, the whole story of his abortive attempt to raise
subsidies for Garibaldi’s revolutionary designs. Nay, when the Tory
chiefs went to Stafford House to dine with the hero, Lady Shaftesbury,
who was Lady Palmerston’s daughter, appears on the scene laughing at
them for having fallen into a trap.[198]
[Illustration: KIEL.]
But after the lion had roared loud enough to wake the echoes of the
Tuileries, Lord Clarendon was sent to Paris on a private diplomatic
mission. His object was to induce the Emperor Napoleon to support Lord
Palmerston’s proposal for a Conference of the Powers on the
Sleswig-Holstein Question, a scheme which France as yet did not
sanction. It must be allowed that if the German Powers scoffed at the
attempt to frighten them by a Cockney demonstration in favour of
Garibaldi, Lord Palmerston and his envoy seem to have made it serve
their turn in Paris. Napoleon III. agreed at last to support the
Palmerston-Russell scheme of a Conference, provided Palmerston would
send Garibaldi out of England as quickly as possible. This was an
embarrassing condition to fulfil, as the guerilla chief was becoming far
too popular to be treated in such an unceremonious fashion. He had
entered into an engagement to proceed to Manchester, and from thence on
a provincial tour of agitation, which greatly disquieted Napoleon III.,
and which must therefore be stopped. The end of the farce may be told in
Lord Malmesbury’s words. In his Diary on the 20th of April he
writes:--“Garibaldi leaves England on Friday.... Certainly there must be
some intrigue, as Mr. Ferguson, the surgeon, writes a letter to the Duke
of Sutherland--which is published--saying it would be dangerous for
Garibaldi’s health if he exposed himself to the fatigue of an expedition
to Manchester, &c. &c. On the other hand, Dr. Basile, Garibaldi’s own
doctor, says he is perfectly well, and able to undergo all the fatigue
of a journey to the manufacturing towns.”[199] This communication from
Dr. Basile was published, because Garibaldi was naturally angry at
having been overreached by Palmerston and the Whig aristocracy, who
sacrificed him whenever he was of no more use to them as a piece on the
political chessboard. What made matters worse was that Garibaldi felt
certain that, if he had been allowed but one week for agitation in the
provinces, he would have stirred up so much popular feeling that he
could have defied Lord Palmerston to order him home.
As usual in cases where Lord Palmerston was forced to do something that
displeased the populace, it was promptly insinuated far and wide that he
was again the victim of the Court. Garibaldi, it was hinted, had been
expelled in deference to the Queen’s pro-Austrian sympathies. It is but
right to vindicate her Majesty from the absurd suggestions that were
then current, and for that reason it has been deemed expedient to tell
the true story of Garibaldi’s visit to London in 1864. Let it be
admitted, however, that at least one member of the Whig aristocracy
refused to turn against the hero when the _mot d’ordre_ went forth from
Cambridge House that he must be dropped. This was the Dowager Duchess of
Sutherland, who carried the discarded lion away to Cliefden, and tended
him faithfully till he left Plymouth on the 25th of April. It was her
enthusiasm that inspired one of the diners-out of the day with an
anecdote which rendered the wonderful party at Stafford House on the
13th of April almost as memorable as Garibaldi’s presence there. “She”
(the Dowager Duchess), said one of the company, “is noble, richly
jointured, romantic, and a widow--why, then, does she not marry her
hero?” “Ah,” was the reply, “but you forget he has a wife living.”
“That,” said another guest--alleged to have been Lord Palmerston--“is of
no consequence; I have Gladstone here, and can easily get him to explain
her away.” Yet, though the duchess and the mob alike forgot to mourn for
their hero after his expulsion had ceased to be a nine days’ wonder, it
is pleasing to know that their fidelity to his cause was unwavering, and
that their admiration of the man himself was absolutely untarnished by
sordid and selfish calculations.
The project of the Conference on the Sleswig-Holstein Question, now
that France accepted it, was fairly started, and it gave Palmerston a
chance of extricating his Ministry without much ignominy from the
complication in which they had become enmeshed. The Queen favoured it,
as she favoured any arrangement that seemed likely to make for peace;
but, as the Conference was to meet without a basis and without an
armistice--indeed, as the capture of Düppel had made Prussia and Austria
masters of the situation, an armistice was of little consequence--her
Majesty’s view of the issue was not so sanguine as that of her Prime
Minister. “Austria and Prussia,” says Count Vitzthum, “were not sorry to
take advantage of it (the Conference) in order to escape from a false
position, in which they had placed themselves as belligerent Powers and
cosignatories of the London Treaty. Both of them declared their
readiness to attend the Conference, on condition that the German Bund
received, as such, an invitation also. It was the first time since its
existence that the Diet had been invited to attend and vote at a
European Conference. The choice of its representation fell on the Saxon
Minister of State, the most active advocate of the Federal standpoint.
He accepted the choice, but was unable, from the haste with which the
matter was arranged, to reach London on the 20th of April, the day fixed
by the impatient Lord Russell for the opening of the Conference.”[200]
As might be expected, this led to a hitch in the proceedings. Austria
and Prussia alleged that they could not take part in the Conference
until Count Beust appeared on the scene, so that the first meeting of
the diplomatists was ominously abortive. It was not till the 25th of
April that the Conference met for work, and the story of its
transactions is somewhat painful for Englishmen to recall. It soon
became apparent that the real object of the German representatives was
to thwart the policy of the English Government, and tear up the Treaty
of London under the very eyes of their English colleagues. Lord
Palmerston and Lord Russell speedily discovered why the Diet had been
invited for the first time to take part in a European Conference.
Austria and Prussia, being cosignatories of the Treaty of London, found
it a little embarrassing to take the initiative in “denouncing” that
futile instrument; but they put forward Count Beust, as the
representative of the Diet, to repudiate it, and he, on behalf of
corporate Germany, declared that no solution of the problem could be
accepted which did not provide for the complete separation of the
Duchies from Denmark. In vain did Palmerston and Russell resist a demand
that was utterly irreconcilable with the policy of maintaining the
integrity of Denmark which was formulated in the Treaty of London.
Russia and France abandoned them, and it became evident that continued
victory would render the Germans, not more moderate, but more exacting
in their demands. “Lord Clarendon,” writes Count Vitzthum, in his bright
but brief account of the secret history of the Conference, “who, though
nominally second, was in reality the first British plenipotentiary,
induced Lord Russell, with a view of checking the bloodshed, to propose
the separation of Holstein, Lauenburg, and South Sleswig. The
neutrals--Russia and France--agreed to this, but the Danish
representatives declared that their instructions were exhausted, and
thus the matter remained to be settled by the sword.”[201]
Count Vitzthum’s narrative does not seem quite fair to Denmark. The
Danes, it must be noted, have always alleged that they agreed to a
frontier proposed by Lord Clarendon, and accordingly they assumed that
after such a surrender of their position England would defend them and
stand by her own proposition. Lord Russell, however, in his statement of
the 27th June, denied that England had, through Lord Clarendon,
committed herself to maintain this frontier. The fact is that Austria
and Prussia, at a meeting of the Conference on the 17th of May, brought
the proceedings to a deadlock by declaring that they would no longer
recognise the King of Denmark as Sovereign of the Duchies. The neutral
Plenipotentiaries then met privately at Lord Russell’s house and
concocted a compromise by which Denmark should cede Holstein and Sleswig
as far as the Schlei, and that the European Powers should then guarantee
the rest of the Danish Dominions. Denmark accepted this proposal, but
the German Powers, whilst eagerly accepting the principle of separating
the Duchies from Denmark, objected to the frontier. According to a
statement made by Bishop Monrad in the Danish Rigsraad, it is clear the
compromise was not distinctively an English project, though it
originated in Clarendon’s suggestions. But, according to Bishop Monrad,
“Earl Russell promised that neither would he make a proposal himself nor
support the proposal of any other Plenipotentiary which would be less
favourable for Denmark, unless Denmark herself should consent to such
new proposals.” Yet after the boundary of the Schlei had been suggested,
Earl Russell, at a meeting of the Conference, proposed that the question
of the frontier should be submitted to arbitration--the King of the
Belgians being mentioned as arbiter--although Denmark did _not_ consent
to such a proposal. This proposition, partially accepted by Austria and
Prussia, was rejected by Count Beust on behalf of the Diet. France then
proposed that, while Germany should take German and Denmark should keep
Danish Sleswig, the intervening part, with a mixed population, should by
a _plébiscite_ determine its own destiny. This was also rejected by
Denmark, and so the Conference, which met at the request of England
without a basis, separated without a result.
The obstinacy of the Danes, who seem to have built their hopes of
English succour on Lord Palmerston’s marvellous power over a servile
House of Commons, secured the triumph of Austria and Prussia--who up to
this point were encumbered by their signatures to the Treaty of London.
Lord Clarendon’s
[Illustration: COUNT BEUST.]
proposal marked the abandonment of that instrument by the only Power
desirous of abiding by it. The Conference, by its abortive attempts at
solving the Danish problem, therefore, extricated Austria and Prussia
from their false position, for when it broke up the ill-starred Treaty
of London was there and then consigned to what Carlyle calls “the limbo
of dead dogs.” And the curious thing is that Palmerston and Russell seem
to have almost courted a defeat, which shattered the diplomatic
_prestige_ of England for more than a decade. “The Treaty of London,”
writes Count Vitzthum, “might, perhaps, have been saved, had the British
Minister acknowledged from the first that the value of a Treaty,
intended to settle a _quæstio de futuro_, an eventuality of the future,
depended on the circumstances under which that eventuality occurred. A
very different importance attaches to treaties which, like those of
1815, deal with _faits accomplis_ and establish the final results of a
war lasting over many years. Palmerston and Russell committed in their
zeal a political blunder when they declared that to cancel the Treaty of
London was tantamount to unsettling everything else. Had not Napoleon
been then so seriously occupied in Mexico he would have taken the
British Ministers at their word.[202] But be that as it may, the Treaty
was now dead. The Conference had not only united Germany, but also
served as a safety-valve against an explosion in Parliament. The saying
that no change of Ministry is to be thought of after the Ascot Races was
verified anew. The Ascot meeting was now over. Nevertheless, before the
Session came to an end, the Ministers were doomed to suffer a
humiliation without a parallel.”[203] What made this humiliation all the
more mortifying to Palmerston, was that the punishment was to come from
the hateful hand of Cobden.
At the end of June, says Mr. Cobden, “the Prime Minister announced that
he was going to produce the Protocols,[204] and to state the decision of
the Government upon the question. He gave a week’s notice of this
intention, and then I witnessed what has convinced me that we have
effected a revolution in our Foreign policy. The whippers-in--you know
what I mean--those on each side of the House who undertake to take stock
of the number and the opinion of their followers--the whippers-in during
the week were taking soundings of the inclination of members of the
House of Commons. And then came up from the country such a manifestation
of opinion against war, that day after day during that eventful week
member after member from the largest constituencies went to those who
acted for the Government in Parliament, and told them distinctly that
they would not allow war on any such matters as Sleswig and Holstein.
Then came surging up from all the great seats and centres of
manufacturing and commercial activity one unanimous veto upon war for
this matter of Sleswig and Holstein.”[205]
The old device which had served Palmerston so often in his contests with
the Court--that of pitting the infatuation of a bellicose people against
the calm sagacity of a pacific sovereign--could not be employed, and the
Minister was forced to admit that the game on which he had staked his
reputation had gone against him. Hence, writes Mr. Morley, “when Lord
Palmerston came down to the House on that memorable afternoon of the
27th of June, it was to make the profoundly satisfactory but profoundly
humiliating announcement that there was to be no war.” He admitted that
the Government “felt great sympathy for Denmark,” although “she had in
the beginning been in the wrong.” But under a new sovereign she had
shown some desire to act properly, and so, said the Prime Minister, “we
felt that from the beginning to the end of these events she [Denmark]
had been ill-used, and that might had overridden right.” With jaunty
audacity he added that Ministers also knew that the sympathies of the
British nation were in favour of Denmark--for he made no allusion to the
confidential reports of the Ministerial “whips”--and he frankly said “we
should therefore have been glad to have found it possible to recommend
to our Sovereign to take part with Denmark in the approaching struggle.”
But then Denmark had rejected a compromise in the Conference--a
compromise which, however, he did not state, had been almost thrust on
her by Lord Russell, in violation of his own pledges to her--though he
did admit that in rejecting this proposal, her fault was “equally shared
by her antagonists.” Yet other considerations must be looked to--an
admission which illustrated the revolution that had been effected in
English diplomacy since the Crimean War. It did not appear, observed
Lord Palmerston blandly, that the matter in dispute “was one of very
great importance,” (an amazing statement from the author of the Treaty
of London) for “it did not affect the independence of Denmark, and it
went very little beyond what she herself had agreed to.” Now, Lord
Russell had pledged himself not to support any arrangement that went
“beyond what she [Denmark] had agreed to” when she accepted the
compromise arrived at in his house by the plenipotentiaries of the
neutral Powers, and Lord Palmerston’s additional explanation that it
turned “simply on the question to whom a portion of territory should
belong,” provoked a contemptuous titter in the House. But the real truth
had to be confessed at last. Ministers, said Lord Palmerston--who had
led the War Party in Lord Aberdeen’s Cabinet--in advising their
sovereign to levy war, “could not possibly lose sight of the magnitude
of the object--the magnitude of the resistance which would have to be
overcome, and the comparative means which England and its supposed
antagonist would have to bring to bear upon the contest.” They had
discovered that neither France nor Russia would help England in
supporting Denmark. “The whole brunt, therefore,” said Lord Palmerston,
“of the effort to dislodge the German troops, and those who might come
to their assistance, from Sleswig and Holstein, would fall upon this
country alone.” Hence, he continued, “we have not thought it consistent
with our duty to give our Sovereign advice to undertake such an
enterprise.”
The whole scheme of Palmerstonian diplomacy seemed revealed, as if by a
lightning-flash, in all its impotent meddlesomeness. In a matter of no
very great importance concerning a foreign country, England was to talk
daggers, but use none, if her antagonist chanced to be too strong to be
cowed by menaces. The House of Commons instinctively felt that this was
not a policy worthy of a great nation. It received the Prime Minister’s
statement in a manner that convinced him that his spell over it was
broken. He made one final effort to regain his influence by appealing to
its foibles. He accordingly uttered dark and terrible threats of
vengeance if Austria and Prussia attacked “the existence of Denmark as
an independent Power in Europe,” and did other things which everybody
knew they had no temptation to do. “If,” said he, “we should see at
Copenhagen the horrors of a town taken by assault--the destruction of
property, the sacrifice of the lives, not only of its defenders but of
peaceful inhabitants, the confiscation which would arise, the capture of
the Sovereign as a prisoner of war, or events of that kind--I do not
mean to say that if any of these events were likely to happen, the
position of this country might not possibly be a fit subject for
reconsideration.” Then he paused to see if his old trick of rhetoric
would do its work. It failed him, however, and, instead of the cheers
for which he waited, his declamation was greeted with shouts of
contemptuous derision. The cheers did not come till Mr. Disraeli
condemned the utterance as “a continuation of those senseless and
spiritless menaces by which her Majesty’s Government had lowered the
influence of England in the Councils of Europe.” And they came again and
again from every quarter of the House when the Tory leader declared “he
should prefer that the foreign policy of this country should be
conducted by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, for the result would have been
the same as in the hands of her Majesty’s Government, while they would
not have lured on Denmark by fallacious hopes, and exasperated the
German Powers by exaggerated expressions of menace and condemnation of
their conduct.” As for Lord Russell, he seemed to feel his humiliation
so keenly that it was with difficulty he made his statement audible in
the House of Lords. “I heard enough,” writes Lord Malmesbury in his
terse summary of it, “to know that the Government were for peace at any
price, and meant to desert the Danes.”
Of course the Opposition felt bound to challenge the policy of the
Ministry by a vote of censure, though they were far from being unanimous
as to their tactics. Writing on the 3rd of July, Lord Malmesbury
says:--“Lord Derby is so ill with the gout, that he cannot bring on the
question of the correspondence between Denmark and Germany next Friday,
and he has deputed me to do it in his place, and Lords Salisbury,[206]
Donoughmore, Colville, Hardwicke, Carnarvon, and Chelmsford came this
afternoon at one o’clock to consult with me respecting the motion to be
made in the House of Lords. Lord Derby is nervous in consequence of some
objections made by the Duke of Buccleuch and Lord Stanhope, who talk of
a collision between the two Houses, and he fears the Party will not be
unanimous. I am for going on with it, and so were the rest. We adjourned
at two o’clock, when a large meeting took place, I being in the chair.
The two above-named Peers, with Lords Winchester and Bath, made some
difficulties, but ended by giving way, and it was settled unanimously
that the same resolution
[Illustration: WINDSOR CASTLE, FROM THE BERKSHIRE SHORE.]
which Disraeli makes to-day in the Commons is to be moved on Friday in
the Lords. I went yesterday to Disraeli to settle about this, he merely
pointing to a chair. I did not sit down, but gave him the message Lord
Derby had sent, and went away.[207] After the meeting at Lord
Salisbury’s I went to Lord Derby’s to report what had occurred. He was
pleased to hear that the motion was not given up, but he was in such
dreadful pain that I did not stay.”[208] The vote of censure in the
House of Lords was rejected by a majority of 9, and little attention was
paid to the struggle there. But all eyes turned to the arena of strife
in the House of Commons, where the issue was doubtful, and where on the
4th of July Mr. Disraeli moved a Resolution “to express to her Majesty
our great regret that, while the course pursued by her Majesty’s
Government has failed to maintain their avowed policy of upholding the
independence and integrity of Denmark, it has lowered the just influence
of this country in the councils of Europe, and thereby diminished the
securities for peace.” His indictment of Palmerston’s Foreign Policy was
unanswerable. In alliance with France and Russia, England might have
controlled the Danish Question. But Lord Palmerston and Lord Russell,
after annoying Russia because she persecuted Poland, provoked France by
refusing to join her in protecting the Poles from persecution. When the
English Government discovered that France was immovably neutral on the
Danish Question, they should either have declared frankly that they
would, if need be, defend Denmark by force, or, like France, they should
have abstained from either menacing the German Powers, or holding out to
Denmark delusive hopes of succour. The latter, said Mr. Disraeli, would
have been his policy; on the other hand, the British Ministers wavered
between peace and war--indulging in unaccomplished threats and
unfulfilled promises. The undignified part that Lords Palmerston and
Russell made England play at the Conference--which, as Mr. Disraeli
observed, “lasted about as long as a Carnival and, like a Carnival, was
an affair of masks and mystifications,”--laid them open to a disastrous
attack. Palmerston’s first aim was to maintain the integrity of Denmark.
In the Conference the English plenipotentiary was the first to accept
and even suggest her dismemberment. His second aim was professedly to
maintain the independence of Denmark and lessen the risk of a great war
in Europe. In the Conference the English representative, however,
proposed to put Denmark under the joint guarantee of the Great Powers.
“They would,” as Mr. Disraeli pointed out, “have created another Turkey
in Europe, in the same geographical situation, the scene of the same
rival intrigues, and the same fertile source of constant misconceptions
and wars.” Mr. Gladstone virtually acknowledged the diplomatic defeat of
the Government. They had tried, he said in effect, to induce France and
Russia--the natural enemies of England--to join them in going to war
with Germany--her natural ally. But having failed they ceased to menace
the German Powers, who were too strong to be intimidated by Lord
Palmerston.
The resolution was only a party device to drive Ministers from office by
drawing a sensational picture of the degradation to which England had
been exposed by Ministerial diplomacy. Mr. Kinglake, however,
interfered, and proposed a resolution drafted by Cobden evidently for
the purpose of humiliating Palmerston, and yet offering a loophole of
escape from a vote of censure that must, if carried, have cut short his
career, and brought a Tory Ministry with violent anti-German sympathies
back to power. This resolution ironically expressed the satisfaction of
the House that the Queen had been advised not to aid Denmark by force of
arms. Mr. Kinglake then showed Lord Palmerston a list of the Liberals
who intended to vote for Mr. Disraeli’s motion, in the event of the
Government declining to accept what Count Vitzthum calls Mr. Cobden’s
“humiliating absolution,” so that the Prime Minister had but little
choice. “He was bound either to retire from office, or swallow the
bitter pill offered to him by the Manchester School and pledge himself
to maintain the strictest neutrality.”[209] He agreed to swallow the
pill, which Mr. Cobden refused to gild; for in his speech of the 6th of
July Cobden delivered a scathing attack on the futility of Lord
Palmerston’s whole scheme of foreign policy, which had subjected England
to humiliation in all parts of the world. The final demonstration of its
failure, he argued, was the complete justification of those principles
of non-intervention which he and Mr. Bright had preached for many long
and weary years. It was admitted that he laid down with a masterly hand
the foreign policy which future Governments, whether Whig or Tory, would
be compelled by the people to follow. “Our country,” said Cobden, amidst
cheers from every part of the House, “requires peace. Some people think
it is very degrading and very base that an Englishman should speak of
his country as requiring peace, and as being entitled to enjoy its
blessings; and if we allude to our enormous commercial and industrial
engagements as a reason why we should avoid these petty embroilments, we
are told that we are selfish and grovelling in our politics. But I say
we were very wrong to take such measures as were calculated to extend
our commerce, unless we were prepared to use prudential precautions to
keep our varied manufacturing and mercantile operations free from the
mischief of unnecessary war.” England had no armies to spare for
Continental interference. She had 79,000 troops locked up in India. In
China she had two little armies separated by thousands of miles; she had
another detachment in Japan; she had 10,000 men “fighting somebody’s
battles” in New Zealand; she had from 10,000 to 15,000 troops in North
America, “committed as a point of honour to defend a frontier of 1,500
miles against a country which can keep 700,000 men on the field;” she
had also troops at the Cape, the West Indies, West Africa, Malta, and
Gibraltar. Surely the world never saw, said Cobden, such a dispersion of
force as this by a Power that attempted to interfere with Continental
affairs. Hence the time had come for the new departure in foreign
politics, for, with the failure of Lord Palmerston’s Danish policy, it
was clear our whole system of conducting our relations with foreign
countries had broken down. The Foreign Office had lost its credit
abroad. Foreign Governments now knew that its threats and its pledges
were vain and empty, because the real power now lay, not in the Foreign
Office, but in the House of Commons. It was not the Ministry he desired
to change, but the system; so that, though he was prepared to vote
against Mr. Disraeli’s censure, Mr. Cobden, as Lord Robert Cecil
observed, was about as true a friend to the Ministry, as the Ministry
had been to Denmark. The only difference was, that whilst the Government
gave Denmark fair words and no succour, Mr. Cobden had given Lord
Palmerston valuable succour, but no fair words. It was past midnight on
the 9th of July when Palmerston rose to defend his position, but he
added nothing to the debate. As Mr. Evelyn Ashley, his adoring
biographer, says, “he had, in truth, a difficult task. There had been a
conspicuous failure; of that much there could be no doubt. Allies,
colleagues, and circumstances had proved adverse; yet the excuses for
failure could not be laid on any of them. So, with the exception of a
dexterous allusion to the words of the resolution as ‘a gratuitous libel
upon the country by a great Party who hoped to rule it,’ he did not
detain the House for long on the points immediately at issue, but,
dropping the Danish matter altogether, went straight into a history of
the financial triumphs of his Government.”[210] After all, for these he
was indebted to Mr. Gladstone with whom he was rarely in agreement on
matters of general policy; and his obvious evasion of the matter in
dispute was resented by the House, which interrupted him with angry
cries of “Question!” His defence certainly had no bearing on the issue;
but, as Mr. Ashley observes, with unconscious cynicism, “it had all to
do with the Party question, for it decided the votes of doubting men,
who, caring little about Sleswig-Holstein, cared a great deal about
English finance. Anyhow, it commanded success, for the Government got a
majority of eighteen, and thus renewed their lease of power.” Lord
Palmerston had expected only a majority of three, but several Tories had
voted with the Liberals, and eleven abstained from voting at all.
“This,” writes Count Vitzthum, “is explained by the fear of a Roman
Catholic intrigue. The Vatican had been anxious to make use of the
opportunity for overthrowing the hated Premier. Some Monsignori
especially sent from Rome are said to have been busily engaged in the
lobby in inducing the Irish Members to vote with the Opposition. Be
that as it may, a majority of eighteen votes was a godsend so
unexpected, that the Premier begged some young ladies, who had no notion
of what had happened, to congratulate him. Lady Palmerston was delighted
at the hand-shakings lavished on the Prime Minister by the crowd that
thronged the lobby.”
[Illustration: FREDERICKSBORG CASTLE, ELSINORE.]
The result of the division was hailed with great delight by the country.
To have turned out Palmerston would have brought Lord Derby back to
office, whose followers, it was suspected, would have finally driven him
into war with Germany. To retain Palmerston in power, but by a vote that
humiliated him and destroyed his personal _prestige_, was felt to be in
every way safer for the country than the transference of its Government
to an Opposition which was at once weak and warlike. “However the dice
may fall,” writes Count Vitzthum, “the Prime Minister is disarmed, and
his secret schemes of anger and revenge are condemned. The victory of
the Peace Party is a victory of the Queen. Maligned, insulted, and
reproached for German sympathies, her Majesty has checked the
dictatorship of her Prime Minister, and beaten him three times in his
own Cabinet on the question of war and peace. The Queen has recognised
the true interests, the true wishes of her people, and not allowed
herself to be misled by the gossip of the drawing-rooms, or the
declamations of the daily Press.”[211] As for Lord Palmerston, his
biographer has published some letters which show how bitterly he
resented his defeat. In one of these, addressed to the King of the
Belgians, he rails at Austria and Prussia for taking advantage of the
weakness of Denmark, at Denmark for obstinately putting herself in the
wrong, and at France for not cooperating with England. “One
consequence,” he says, “is clear and certain, that if our good friend
and neighbour at Paris were to take it into his head to deprive Prussia
of her Rhenish provinces, not a finger in England would be stirred, nor
a voice raised, nor a man or a shilling voted, to resist such a
retribution upon the Prussian monarch.” As the Power which seized the
Rhine would have Belgium at its mercy, it would be difficult to imagine
an English Minister addressing to a Belgian Sovereign a more maladroit
expression of impotent discomfiture. Then, in autumn, Palmerston,
replying to a letter from Lord Russell, writes, “You say that with less
timidity around us we might probably have kept Austria quiet on the
Danish affair. Perhaps we might; but then we had no equal pull upon
Prussia, and she would have rallied all the German Powers round her, and
we should equally have failed in saving Denmark.[212] As to Cabinets, if
we had colleagues like those who sat in Pitt’s Cabinet, such as
Westmoreland and others, or such men as those who were with Peel, like
Goulburn and Hardinge, you and I might have our own way on most things;
but when, as is now the case, able men fill every department, such men
will have opinions, and hold to them; but, unfortunately, they are often
too busy with their own department to follow up foreign questions so as
to be fully masters of them, and their conclusions are generally on the
timid side of what ought to be the best.”[213] The further development
of the Danish Question need not be dwelt on here, as it affected the
policy neither of the Cabinet nor of the Court. The Germans resumed the
war as soon as the Conference broke up. Uninterrupted victory put them
in complete possession of the Duchies, to which Denmark finally
renounced all claim by the Treaty of Vienna, which was signed on the
18th of October.