Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/195

 the 'National Association for Supplying Female Medical Aid to the Women of India.' The scheme touched the heart of the people, and its value was recognised by Queen Victoria, who bestowed on Lady Dufferin the royal order of Victoria and Albert as well as the imperial order of the Crown of India.

Lord Dufferin's policy included measures for strengthening British rule. He improved railway communications with Quetta and the Afghan border ; he increased the army by 10,600 British and 20,000 Indian soldiers, introduced the linked battalion and reserve system into the native army, and constituted a new force of Burma military police. By the annexa- tion of Upper Burma he completed the work of consolidation begun by Lord Dalhousie. King Thibaw having murdered most of his father's house, and refused to redress the wrongs inflicted on a British trading company, assumed a defiant attitude. Recourse to war became impera- tive. Mandalay was occupied on 28 Nov. 1885 by General Prendergast, and after his kingdom was annexed on 1 Jan. 1886 Sir Charles Bernard [q. v. Suppl. II] estab- lished a British administration. Other military operations during Dufferin's rule were in 1888 the expulsion of the Tibetans from a position which, taking advantage of the British policy of non-interference, they had seized at Lingtu within the protectorate of Sikkim, and expeditions against various clans of the Black Mountain on the North- west frontier.

Lord Dufferin retired from India in December 1888. For his Indian services he received advancement to a marquisate hi 1888, and on 29 May 1889 the city of London made him an honorary freeman. Early in 1889 he resumed his diplomatic career as ambassador at Rome. Italy, encouraged by her position as a member of the triple alliance, and stimulated by her past tradi- tions, was then seeking compensation for her exclusion from Tunis in a policy of adventure in East Africa, thus dissipating her economic energies and courting disaster. On 24 March 1891 Dufferin concluded with the Marchese di Rudini the protocol which defined the respective spheres of British and Italian influence in East Africa. Apart from the work of the embassy his leisure time was passed pleasantly in visiting the scenes of his father's closing years and places of family interest. Proof of his high reputation at home was given by his election as lord rector of St. Andrews University in April 1891, when he delivered an address to the students full of admirable and practical advice. On the death of Lord Lytton, British ambassador in Paris, in 1891, he was transferred in December to the British embassy in Paris, where he remained until 13 Oct. 1896. Lord Dufferin's earlier exploits in the Lebanon, Egypt, and Burma, in which he was deemed to have ignored French interests, led a party in France to assail the new British ambassador with criticism and quite unmerited suspicion. The French nation was passing at the time through a disturbing series of events the Panama canal scandals in 1892, the funeral of Marshal MacMahon in 1893, the assassination of President Carnot in June 1894, and the abdication of his successor, M. Casimir Perier, in the following year. The British ambassador defended himself with vigour against the imputation of hostile designs which were entirely foreign to his character, and though perhaps he never attained in Paris the full amount of popularity which he commanded elsewhere, he succeeded in gaining the confidence and regard of the French government. By the part which he took in the discussion of the Siamese question he contributed to the satisfactory settlement of a possible cause of conflict with France. Siam was a near neighbour of Burma and of the Malay states, and a line of British Indian frontier as far as the Mekong had been traced. On the east, however, the kingdom was exposed to peaceful penetration and even hostile attack from the possessions of France in Cochin China. The agreement signed by Lord Salisbury and the French ambassador on 15 Jan. 1896 secured the independence of the central part of Siam, fixed the 'Thalweg' of the Mekong as the limit of the possessions and spheres of influence of the two powers, and included a provision for delimitation in Nigeria. Other differences with France in the Congo and elsewhere were adjusted, and when Lord Dufferin, having completed his seventieth year, retired from official life he left Paris in 1896 with every public assurance that he had rendered excellent service towards the improvement of relations between the two countries.

Lord Dufferin had become warden of the Cinque Ports in 1891, but he resigned the office in 1895 in order that he might spend the rest of his days at Clandeboye in quiet attention to his own affairs. Civic and academic honours still flowed upon him in a constant stream. He was made hon. LL.D. of Cambridge in 1891, was given the freedom of Edinburgh in 1898, and