the violation of the royal word pledged to Queen Victoria CHAP. amidst the festivities of the Château d'Eu and Windsor XLVI. Castle. These invectives were eagerly imported into France 1846. by the Liberal journals of that country, which, after having exhausted the whole vocabulary of abuse founded on alleged oppression, despotism, and abandonment of principle by the Citizen King, were charmed to find the still more serious charges of personal breach of faith and duplicity brought against him by the power which had hitherto given him its strongest support. 49. on the fu France and Immense was the effect of this estrangement between France and England upon the internal and external Its effects situation of both countries. No event since the fall of ture of Charles X. is to be compared with it in importance. By England. depriving Louis Philippe of the moral support of England it essentially weakened his throne, both in the estimation of foreign powers and of his own subjects. It lowered his character with many who had hitherto from necessity given him their support, and encouraged his enemies both at home and abroad by diffusing the belief that, in any crisis, either external or internal, he could look for no support from this country. The Spanish Alliance, in the existing state of Europe, gave him nothing in comparison. Weakened by the loss of her colonies, distracted by the passions, and still bleeding at every pore from the wounds of civil war, Spain could render no assistance to France. Guizot's master-stroke was as great a mistake in policy as it was a deviation from faith. Its consequences were even more disastrous in the external relations and influence of the two countries than on their internal stability. By separating the two Western Powers, whose union could alone check the encroachments of Russia in Eastern Europe, it left the field, both in Poland and on the Danube, open to Muscovite ambition. From this disastrous severance is to be dated a series of causes and effects which went on in necessary sequence till Europe was shaken to its centre by the French Revolution, and, CHAP. necessity having taught wisdom, the alliance of France XLVI. and England, thus unhappily severed, was cemented anew 1846. at Inkermann and Sebastopol. 50. blame in riages. Seeing the Spanish marriages have been attended with Who was to these highly important and calamitous results, it becomes these mar- of the greatest importance to determine which party was to blame in the contracting of them, and upon whom does the charge of breach of faith really rest. The charge, and the serious one, of breach of faith, undoubtedly attaches to the French monarch, or rather his minister M. Guizot, the chief man in the whole Spanish intrigue. It is now fully ascertained by the best of all evidencethat of Louis Philippe and M. Guizot themselves-that the agreement between the former and Queen Victoria, contracted amidst the festivities of the Château d'Eu and Windsor, was, that the Queen of Spain was to bestow her hand on a descendant of Philip V., and that the Duke de Montpensier was to marry the Infanta, but not till the Queen had given birth to "children." She did marry a descendant of Philip V., and England never urged any other marriage; on the contrary, she refused her consent to the Coburg alliance when it had been formally demanded by the Queen-Regent of Spain. Then how is the hurrying on of the Montpensier marriage, and its conclusion on the same day, and at the same altar as that of the Queen, to be justified? Confessedly this can be done on no other ground than the letter of Lord Palmerston, of 19th July, to Sir H. Bulwer, communicated to the French ambassador in London, which placed Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg among the suitors of the Queen, and gave him the first place on the list. It is on this ground, accordingly, and this alone, that the breach of engagement is justified by the diplomatists and historians of France. It may be conceded that it was an unfortunate and ill-advised step on the part of Lord Palmerston to name him at all among the royal suitors, the more especially as it was likely to give umbrage to France, and the consent of England to the suit of the German prince had CHAP. been recently and formally refused. XLVI. 1846. 51. merston's slip; Gui breach of But that this diplomatic slip afforded no vindication whatever of the breach of engagement is evident from Lord Palthe following considerations:-1. The Prince was men- was an imtioned as a suitor by Lord Palmerston, in his letter of prudent the 19th, only narrativé, and in summing up at the zot's a outset of the letter the existing state of affairs; and this faith. was strictly true, as the hand of the Queen had recently been offered to him by the Queen-Regent of Spain: 2, It was not said that England would support his pretensions; on the contrary, the Government had formally refused their consent to it, and evinced its good faith by intimating the proposal, and their declinature of it, to the Cabinet of the Tuileries; and this was known to Louis Philippe, and duly appreciated by him. 3, The refusal of England to support the Coburg alliance was intimated by Lord Palmerston to the French ambassador when the letter mentioning it was read on 20th July; the same was repeated by Lord Cowley to Louis Philippe in person, on 25th July; it was promised on September 1, by Guizot to Lord Normanby, that the two marriages should not take place at the same time; and on the 23d September it was officially notified to M. Guizot that England supported the suit of Don Enrique, not Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, with which the French minister professed himself perfectly satisfied. 4, Nevertheless, in the face of all this, the French Government urged on both marriages, which were celebrated on the same day, and at the same altar, three weeks after, at Madrid, on 10th October. In these circumstances, it is evident that Lord Palmerston's slip afforded M. Guizot no real excuse, but was merely laid hold of by him as a pretext to cover an advantage to France which he deemed of importance, but which could not be obtained without a real breach of the royal faith of his master. It soon appeared how serious were to be the conse XLVI. 1846. 52. this dis- France and March 3. CHAP. quences of this disunion of France and England upon the balance of power, and interests of the lesser states in Europe. When the allied forces occupied Cracow on Effects of March 3, 1846, after the Polish insurrection, it was merely stipulated that the militia of the republic should not be reorganised, and that the town should be occupied alternately by the troops of the three powers. This was formally agreed to in a memorandum signed, on the 4th April following, by the plenipotentiaries of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Considering the use which the inhabitants of Cracow had made of their nationality while they enjoyed it, and the manner in which they had converted their town into an advanced post, from which they might scatter the seeds of disaffection and rebellion through all the provinces of Old Poland, now incorporated with the partitioning powers, no one, on reasonable grounds, could make any objection to this arrangement, which was obviously of a provisional nature only, and left the separate existence of the republic of Cracow untouched. But no sooner did the Northern Powers receive intelligence of the alienation of France and England on the Spanish marriage than they altered their views, and resolved to make this temporary outbreak a pretext for the incorporation of Cracow, with its dependent territory, with Austria, upon certain indemnities being provided to Russia and Prussia. By a treaty concluded, accordingly, on 11th November 1846, the city of Cracow, with twentythree square miles (German) of territory, and a hundred and fifty-six thousand inhabitants, was incorporated with Austria, and united with its province of Gallicia. Russia received as an indemnity certain territories in the north of Gallicia adjacent to Lithuania, and Prussia the town 1846; Mart. of Hatzen Plotz, with its adjacent territory. Thus was gnault, iii. completed the final partition of Poland, and the partial D'Hausson- restoration of its nationality, effected by Lord Castle177, 186. reagh at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, finally demolished! A strange and unlooked-for result to follow the Nov. 11, 1846. 1 Treaty, Nov. 11, Sup.; Re 169, 171; ville, ii. XLVI. 1846. entire triumph of Liberal principles for fifteen years back, CHAP. both in Paris and London; but easily accounted for, when the clashing of the ambition which these principles have exerted is taken into consideration, and the manner in which the concord of France and England had been destroyed by the jealousies awakened by the measures adopted by both in regard to the Spanish succession. 53. differences and Eng Treaty of Utrecht. It was not merely by removing all apprehension of an armed intervention of England and France in the affairs Diplomatie of Poland, that the coldness between these two powers of France tended to set free the Northern potentates, and hasten land on the the extinction of the last remnants of its nationality. The The diplomatic position and objects of the two powers, after the marriages of the Queen and the Infanta had been celebrated, led still more directly to the same result. Sensible, when it was too late, of the enormous errors he had committed in altering the order of succession in Spain, and forcing a queen upon an unwilling people, Lord Palmerston made strenuous efforts, when its effects had become apparent by the marriage of the Duke de Montpensier to the Infanta, to get the Northern powers, and Russia in particular, to adhere to his interpretation of the Treaty of Utrecht in regard to intermarriages of the royal families of France and Spain. This interpretation did not consist, as the French historians assert, in the plea that all marriages between these royal houses were prohibited by that treaty. Lord Palmerston was too well versed in diplomatic lore and recent history not to know that there was not a word in the treaty prohibitory of such marriages, and that, accordingly, they had repeatedly since taken place between the two royal families without objection from any quarter whatever.* What Marriages between French princes and Spanish princesses, accordingly, have been very frequent since the Treaty of Utrecht. One took place on 21st January 1721, another on 25th August 1739; and on 23d January 1745 the Dauphin of France married the princess who, but for the entail on the male line contained in the Treaty of Utrecht, would have been heiress of the crown of Spain. But on none of these occasions was it ever supposed that any in |