THE BELOVED GERMANY

“There will be no kingdom for our son unless you fight Germany.”--_Eugénie to Louis Napoleon._ 1870.

“What swine! They are full of vexation and envy because we have fought great battles here--and won them. They cannot bear to think that shabby little Prussia should prosper so. The Prussians are a people which should merely exist in order to carry on war for them in their pay. That is the view taken by all the upper classes in England. They have never been well disposed towards us, and have always done their utmost to injure us.... The Crown Princess herself is an incarnation of this way of thinking. She is full of her own great condescension in marrying into our country. I remember her once telling me that two or three merchant families in Liverpool had more silver plate than the entire Prussian nobility. ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘that is possible, your Royal Highness, but we value ourselves for other things besides silver plate.’”--_Prince Bismarck on England._ 1870.

Queen Victoria’s fiftieth birthday was spent at Balmoral, where the Scotch peasants and servants were given every opportunity of rejoicing; the Queen herself principally observing the day by bestowing the Garter upon Prince Leopold and the Order of the Thistle on Prince Arthur.

On her return from the north the Khedive of Egypt was in London, and it was a sign that Victoria was regaining, however slowly, a normal state of mind, that she invited him to stay at Windsor, held a review for him in Windsor Great Park, and stayed a night at Buckingham Palace that she might be present at a breakfast or garden party given in his honour. At this function the wind was bitterly cold, causing the gorgeous refreshment tents and the drawing-room tent to be crowded, while every one was admiring or criticizing the way in which the Prince of Wales and about thirty of his friends had at last solved the knotty question of how to dress for such an occasion. Blue coats with brass buttons were the choice, a fashion which, if odd in itself, was better than the earlier impecunious-waiter mode of evening coats and morning trousers. Later in the week there was a great review at Aldershot, and then the Prince of Wales sped the departing guest from Charing Cross, and the Egyptian visitor was this time really gratified by the royal attention shown him.

The one public event in which the Queen took part in 1869 was the opening of Blackfriars Bridge and the Holborn Viaduct, and this she did with all the outward observance of full state, the first time the state coach had been out since her widowhood. The people, anxious to let her know what they could do, showed tremendous enthusiasm in their welcome, and though there was an undercurrent of darkness and anxiety, it was kept hidden from royal eyes.

The workless population of London--and there were many thousands--decided to descend in a mass upon the route and exhibit themselves in all their wretched poverty before their sovereign; but their intention became known, and the influence of the trade unions was invoked to prevent this. The Fenians, too, had their scheme of upsetting the harmony of the day, a placard being sent out bearing the following awful inscription--

“To all Fenians.

Vive la Republique!

The Queen will visit the City in state on Saturday, and on that day she will be shot. She seldom gives a chance. The opportunity won’t be lost.

God save Ireland!”

Shirley Brooks, in relating the fact, added, “I hope the beast who wrote it will be bitten by a mad dog.”

Each year of the Queen’s reign seems to have brought its own big event or anxiety. The anxiety was accentuated by the fact that her opinions had become definitely crystallized into conservatism, and her Governments were so far generally Liberal. The great event of 1870 was the Franco-German War, but there were minor troubles to endure. There was Gladstone’s Irish Land Bill, which aimed at giving to all Ireland the “tenant rights” which had never been filched from Ulster, and the retention of which has been the secret of the success of North Ireland. This Bill she liked no better than the Irish Church Bill.

Her energetic Government raised another question which was personally offensive to her, and that concerned the sleepy ways of her cousin, George of Cambridge, the commander-in-chief, and she found herself obliged to play a losing hand over the right

claimed by the Crown to command the army irrespective of parliamentary interference. The Duke had been appointed in 1855 to the chieftainship of the army by Albert-Victoria, not for his qualities as a soldier, but that they might concentrate the command of the army in themselves. George of Cambridge was kindly enough, but he was, like many of the Georges, far from clever, and he was but the veil which hid the real headship of the Queen. Albert had felt strongly that the monarch should have full control of the army, and would have taken the post himself in 1850 had he not already known his hands to be full and that such an appointment would have added greatly to his unpopularity. It was the Germanic system grafted upon our Constitution, and was extremely dangerous in that it seemingly gave military power over to one person who had neither the knowledge, aptitude nor time necessary to wield it, and who was wedded to ancient theories of use and prerogative. From the day of the Duke of Wellington our army had dwindled until it was declared during the Danish war that we could only have put twenty thousand men into the field.

Palmerston, during the last five years of his life, had, with his moribund Parliament, enjoyed a siesta of inaction which but poorly prepared the Queen for the strenuous times that were coming under Gladstone and his new brooms who were intending to sweep as cleanly as possible. Thus when Cardwell, later Viscount Cardwell, became War Secretary in 1869, and Childers went to the Admiralty, they found both army and navy in an alarming state of inefficiency. France was superior to England in ironclads, while Russia and Italy combined equalled her. In 1866 Sir John Pakington had asked for supplies to build six turret ships, and the Chancellor Disraeli opposed the suggestion, refusing to allow £50,000 that even one might be begun. The statements made then awoke public attention to both army and navy, and various short-sighted actions of the Duke of Cambridge’s--such as condemning a young lieutenant for some misdemeanour to wear his uniform on all occasions for a year as a punishment, thus turning an honour into a disgrace--kept the matter alive. Many people were astonished and relieved when in answer to a question in the House in February 1869 Cardwell replied--

“The Duke of Cambridge is not Commander-in-Chief, but a Field Marshal commanding in chief,” a distinction which had not been understood by the majority. To this he added the still more surprising information that the Duke was under the command of himself, who intended that he should remain so.

England waited for developments, and was not altogether disappointed.

Sir E. M. Grant Duff tells that Gladstone one day met Cardwell and Childers walking in Bond Street, and the former said to him--

“We have come to a decision. We are going to alter the arrangements of the War Office and get rid of the Duke of Cambridge.”

“Good gracious!” replied Gladstone. “You have just come into office; you have enemies enough already and to spare! Do you really mean to add to them the undying hostility of the Court?”

This may have cooled the ardour of the two ministers, for the Duke of Cambridge held his post for a long time, and a _Punch_ cartoon gave the key to the situation, saying--

“Look here, Cardwell, you say _you_ can keep George up to his work! Mind you do, or, by Jingo, I shall advise her Majesty to sack you both.”

Mr. Cardwell had made the first step and had incidentally raised the first pang of surprised anger in the Queen’s breast at the idea of a new infringement of her prerogative. The Duke of Cambridge could no longer be regarded as commander of the national forces subject only to her Majesty. The War Minister did, however, go further, by bringing forward a scheme for the reconstruction of the army, one clause being the abolition of the purchase of commissions and the substitution of promotion for personal merit.

The purchase system had become one of extreme danger both to the army and the country, and as it was a class arrangement it was bitterly fought through both houses when Gladstone made it one of his essential reforms. It raised such keen feeling that for the first time obstruction in its modern form took the place of opposition. That the question of loss should not destroy the Bill, Gladstone proposed to buy the commissions back at the extraordinary values set upon them by the holders. It passed the Commons by a small majority, but the Lords were determined this time to fight to a finish.

Victoria once more found herself on the side of ancient things, and from the quiet of her far retreat watched events with anger and distrust. Then to her horror she suddenly found herself drawn into the centre of the dispute. Gladstone knew entirely the temper and the intention of the Lords, and foresaw months spent in discussing a reform which was essential to the safety of the nation, ending, perhaps, with a terrible upheaval which would do much more damage to the Upper than to the Lower House. He had all through been in unremitting correspondence with the Queen, and had done his best to soothe her contention that he was infringing her personal rights. At last he proved to her that Commission purchase was instituted by an Act of George III, which left it _to the discretion_ of the sovereign to continue the practice, and that George had used his discretion in so continuing it.

Thus in July, when the Lords were joyfully contemplating the destruction of the Bill by amendments, the Queen was being persuaded to sign a warrant reversing that of her grandfather. She hated the deed, but she knew that the country was with the Bill, and she was under the spell of Gladstone’s strong determination. It must have been one of the occasions when he had “to harden his heart to a flint.” The compensation he offered her was that by this act she was giving public evidence of the power of the Crown, one which pleased her and took the bitterness out of the transaction.

“She made no sort of difficulty in signing the warrant,” said Lord Halifax, the minister in attendance, “but she asked a formal expression of the Cabinet’s advice as she was using her power in opposition to the House of Lords.”

The deed caused a sudden cessation of the storm; then after the first surprise it burst again in full fury; anathemas rang through the land, and piteous stories were told of the brutal Prime Minister who had literally forced her Majesty to sign this warrant against her will, who overturned the Constitution, robbed the officers and wished to destroy the army. The incident did not cause Victoria to like her Prime Minister any better; but had not Gladstone done this in spite of her opposition, we should never have had a Sir John French, the son of an unmoneyed naval captain, as head of the army’s aristocracy of merit.

There was another man whom the Queen did not like, and that was Louis Napoleon. She always distrusted him, most people did, and Bismarck was busy just now getting articles inserted into the London Press which aimed at producing anger in England against France, for he felt himself now in deadly need of keeping France isolated. Napoleon III had been a great figure, dominating Europe; he had dreamed great dreams, which sometimes came to reality, but towards this last year he had lost health and confidence. He wanted to sit quietly writing a book on Cæsar, and his enthusiastic wife dragged him into noisy discussions on Poland, Mexico and the future of their son. He was already a broken man before 1870, and he had no desire for war.

The man who wanted war was Bismarck. He had raised Prussia upon the shoulders of a united Germany to the pinnacle of European supremacy. Denmark and Austria he had stamped under his feet. Now he wanted to fulfil a plan made twelve years earlier, when he had said that as soon as he could win the friendship of Russia he intended to conquer France. He had wooed Russia ever since; the human sacrifice of Poles had been to this end, and now he had succeeded by whispering the words “Black Sea Fleet.” So he turned his attention to France, the strongest empire in Europe, and he determined to act quickly before Russia could repent.

Napoleon was a little disturbed from his dreams, and felt feebly for an ally in Austria; then he turned to the Powers and demanded that the Luxemburg question, left open since the Danish war, should be settled, for the presence of Prussian guns on its forts pointing over his land at last struck him with an air of menace. By the intervention of England this matter was adjusted, and the little state was declared, with the assent of all, a permanently neutral country, its forts being dismantled.

This was a check to Prussia, but the wily Chancellor found in it a pretext for a quarrel, declaring that Napoleon himself had tried to secure Luxemburg for France. There had been some secret suggestions, which Bismarck himself was accused by some of having prompted. In 1869 Prussia sent picked troops to the north to engage in gigantic manœuvres, and the Queen of Holland wrote warning letters to Napoleon about Prussian intentions. But Kismet had entered into his soul, and he made no preparations. England might have influenced events, but all she did was to revile him. He could not understand it, nor could he tell why England’s queen, who had so gratefully accepted his train for her journey through France, should now turn so bitterly against him. Perhaps he never knew that in his great defeat she said harshly that it was “a righteous punishment upon him.” Certainly he did not know at the time that Queen Victoria sat in the little Craithie church listening to her dear Dr. Macleod, the clergyman who knew so well how to reach her heart, while he preached a sermon which, as it echoed her sentiments, she judged to be “splendid.”

“Without mentioning France, he made every one understand what was meant (when he pointed out how God would punish wickedness, vanity and sensuality). And the chapters he read ... were really quite wonderful for the way in which they seemed to describe France. It was all admirable and heart stirring.”[10] One of the chapters was Isaiah xxviii, crying woe upon drunkards: “They are swallowed up of wine, they are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness, for there is no place clean.”

Poor wicked France and poor Louis Napoleon! How he had been beloved fifteen years earlier! But since then he had won from Austria some of her filched possessions; and now he was opposed to the dear Germany, in which lay the interests of her children.

A German scheme to put a Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain, thus sandwiching France between two of that family, caused disagreement, but the matter was in process of being arranged, and Emperor William wrote a telegram from Ems, which would have smoothed negotiations. It passed through the hands of Bismarck, who made important deletions, and war was declared.[11]

Victoria’s two sons-in-law, “Fritz” and Louis of Hesse, were commanding portions of the German army, and the Queen followed their actions keenly, and was also constantly in correspondence with the Crown Princess and Princess Alice, sending them hospital material. The latter wrote to her mother--

“How I sympathize with you, for I know with what fervour you wish well to Germany. All the world knows well the services rendered to Germany by England, the dangers that England has warded off from her, and that all is owing to your wisdom, to your experience, to your sentiments, which are sincere and just. You will be happy, I am sure, to know how universally your work is recognized and appreciated. What would dear papa have thought of this war? The unity of Germany would have pleased him, but not the brutal means by which it has been founded.”

Prussia now was Prussia then. _The Standard_, which kept itself free from the taint of Prussian money, published accounts of vindictive and dishonourable acts. Whole villages had been put to the flames, civilians had been thrust back to die in their burning houses, public buildings and hospitals were shelled. Bismarck sneered at these revelations as manufactured in England, or as the ravings of ignorant villagers who wanted to be revenged for their losses. But these things caused the beginning of a reaction in England, and other things learned from her daughters softened the Queen’s heart to France.

When Bismarck arranged the bombardment of Paris, he found himself foiled, as neither the Emperor nor the Crown Prince would allow it. He laid the fault at the doors of Queen Augusta, the Crown Princess, and chiefly of Queen Victoria, who through her letters held the two men back. He hated all women who were clever, or who meddled in public affairs, and at this great crisis of his life he was pinned down by three women. He loathed them with all his heart, talked of them freely to those around him: “There are also female snobs and very distinguished ones. The feminine half of our Court are snobs, our two most exalted ladies are snobs.” For Victoria his hate was the hate of the man who--far as he had climbed--knew he could never get to the top. Shortly, he was jealous. He knew well enough how Victoria had played into Prussian hands; he knew that she did it blindly as far as European politics went; he knew that it resulted from her affection for Germany because of her own birth, her husband and her children. And he hated her the more for it. For whatever he did he knew that he could not make Prussia supreme over England. So he wrote contemptuously of the “Coburg-Belgium-English clique,” thus dumping together Victoria, Ernst and Leopold II.

The ineffable Ernst was like a creature on wires during those days, bombarding his Prussian relative with reams of advice, and flourishing his sword before the eyes of Europe. Like the Crown Prince, he sent to his wife regular accounts of what happened, and after the battle of Worth he wrote in this delightful style--

“I am able to begin with the joyful words, ‘another bloody battle,’ as the telegraph has informed you, brilliant and victorious.”

Emperor William sent the like news to his empress, in words which _Punch_ scarcely altered in the lines--

“My dear Augusta, We’ve had a buster. Laid ten thousand Frenchmen low! Thank God from whom all blessings flow!”

As far as Napoleon was concerned the war was quickly over; hardly a month from the beginning Sedan was fought and he surrendered. Then came the German advance upon Paris, and the three months’ struggle between Bismarck and the royal family. The Crown Princess was reported to have struck the table while talking of it and saying--

“For all that, Paris shall not be bombarded.”

She was wrong, Bismarck prevailed, and the siege began on December 27 amid heavy snow and severe cold.

Then the royal ladies concentrated their energies upon succouring the Parisians when the moment of capitulation arrived, a mistaken generosity, which but prolonged the suffering. They persuaded William to allow them to pass trains, packed with provisions, as near Paris as possible, ready to be taken into the city as soon as the siege was raised. Queen Victoria sent enormous quantities of food, but she would have been wiser to have tried to stop the war at the beginning, or at the end to have protested against the criminal fine exacted by Prussia from France. These food trains rested in the lines of the German soldiers, who themselves had not enough to eat; and when the gates of Paris were opened, there was no way of getting them there because of broken bridges and destroyed roads. The knowledge that it was coming had made the Parisians prolong their resistance until the last moment, so that then the mortality was frightful, five thousand a week dying of starvation, a great number being children under two years of age, and “coffins of these tiny French citizens were to be seen in all directions.”

It is a statesman’s business to be wise before and not after an event, and there was little statesmanship in English and royal action concerning this war.

Russia had not been idle. She had issued a circular to the European powers declaring that she would no longer recognize the prohibition which was inserted in the treaty of Paris, against her warships entering the Black Sea. This condition had been insisted upon by Palmerston after the Crimean War, and was regarded with disfavour by every country but England; Palmerston himself not believing that it could be enforced for more than ten years, but it had lasted fifteen. On receipt of the Russian circular Odo Russell was sent to the Prussian King to say that unless he could induce the Muscovite to withdraw the circular, England would go to war. Bismarck was utterly surprised at a belligerent tone from England, and seeing that it was meant he consented to use his influence, protesting that the whole affair was a remarkable, new and unexpected event to him. Yet in his reminiscences we find him boasting of his share in the transaction. “But for us they (the Russians) would not have obtained it from France and England.”

The circular was withdrawn, a conference was called, and Russia’s freedom in the Black Sea was assured by pacific means.

In spite of the Queen’s love for Germany, Bismarck was too strong for her, and when the war was over she was, next to the Crown Princess, the most unpopular person in that kingdom. Indeed, a most extraordinary wave of anger against England swept over the land, anger which had its root in jealousy of a people which could see neighbouring countries ravaged by war and yet sit quietly behind their cliffs and suffer no like damage.

One of the Queen’s strongest qualities was that of personal sympathy, and when Sedan sealed the fate of Napoleon and Eugénie, the latter fled to England, being received by Victoria, who had always loved her, with tears for her plight. Grant Duff said of Eugénie years earlier, “she is brave and would show well indeed if she had to dare anything in the streets of Paris.” That chance had arrived in September 1870, when, with Madam Le Breton, she fled through the palace and galleries of the Louvre, and sat silently for hours hidden in the dark corner of a conveyance in the Rue de Rivoli, surrounded by the rabble which blocked the streets, until at last she got away. Reaching a station outside Paris, she had again to wait for a train, and her only safety from detection was a newspaper which she held before her face and which saved her from discovery and possible death.

Once in England she went to Chislehurst, where Mary of Teck, one of her first callers, found her sadly changed and wrinkled, while the Duke of Cambridge thought her looking sixty and very low and subdued. It was of her that some one later said, “Her face makes me think of Rudyard Kipling’s story, _The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows_.”

Napoleon, a prisoner at Wilhelmshöhe in Cassel, was trying to get some moderation of the terms of peace by suggesting a common German-Franco war against England. This should not raise surprise, for he had nothing for which to thank England. It was many years before the world knew of this, and if Victoria heard of it at the time from Fritz, she did not let it prevent her offering an asylum to the dethroned emperor. He too came to Chislehurst, and once he again met the English queen, she succumbed anew to his charm of manner, and remained his firm friend until his death in January 1873; at which event she wept publicly and showed such grief that her people were astonished.