Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/454

 M. Achille Fould, the Paris banker and Napoleon Ill's minister of finance. On the 17th the whole court attended the first Handel festival at the Crystal Palace, when ' Judas Maccabeus ' was performed ; the royal company drove to and fro in nine four-in-hands. On the 18th a levee was followed by a state ball, in which the queen danced with unabated energy. Hardly a day passed without an elaborate ceremonial. On 26 June a military review took place in Hyde Park amid extraordinary signs of popular enthusiasm, and the first batch of Victoria crosses was distributed. From 29 June to 2 July the queen stayed with the Earl of Ellesmere at Worsley Hall to inspect the art treasures exhibition at Manchester. Next month she laid the foundation at Wandsworth Common of the Royal Victoria Patriotic Asylum for daughters of soldiers, sailors, and marines, and before the end of the month time was found for a visit to Aldershot. Royal personages from the continent thronged the queen's palaces. The king of the Belgians brought his daughter, the Princess Charlotte, and her fiancé the Archduke Maximilian of Austria, who was later to lay down his life in Mexico under heartrending circumstances. The prince of Hohenzollern, the queen of the Netherlands, and the Duke and Duchess of Montpensier all interested their royal hostess. She was gratified, too, on both personal and political grounds, by a short visit to Osborne of the Grand Duke Constantino of Russia, brother of the reigning tsar Alexander II. He had been invited to the Tuileries by Napoleon, who was ominously seeking every opportunity of manifesting goodwill to Russia, and the queen did not wish to be behind him in showing courtesies to her recent foes.

The constant intercourse of the queen and the prince at this moment with the royal families of Europe led her to define her husband's rank more accurately than had been done before. On 25 June prince 1857, by royal letters patent, she consort. conferred on him the title of prince consort. 'It was always a source of weakness,' the prince wrote, 'for the crown that the queen always appeared before the people with her foreign husband.' But it was doubtful whether this bestowal of a new name effectively removed the embarrassment. The 'Times' wrote sneeringly that the new title guaranteed increased homage to its bearer on the banks of the Spree and the Danube, but made no difference in his position anywhere else. Abroad it achieved the desired result. When on 29 July the prince attended at Brussels the marriage of the ill-fated Archduke Maximilian with the Princess Charlotte of Belgium, he was ac- corded precedence before the Austrian arch- dukes and immediately after the king of the Belgians.

The English government still deemed it prudent to cultivate the French alliance, but the emperor's policy was growing enigmatic, and in the diplomatic skirmishes among the powers which attended the final adjustment, in accordance with the provisions of the treaty of Paris, of the affairs of the Balkan peninsula, he and the English government took opposite sides. The anxiety of the emperor to maintain good personal relations with the queen was the talisman which restored harmony. A few informal word with the queen, the emperor assured her ministers, would dissolve all difficulties. Accordingly he and the empress were invited to pay a private visit to Osborne, and they stayed there from 6 to 10 Aug. The French ministers, Walewski and Persigny, accompanied their master, and the queen was attended by Palmerston and Clarendon. The blandest cordiality characterised the discussion, but from the point of view of practical diplomacy advantage lay with the emperor. He had supported the contention of Russia and Sardinia that it was desirable to unite under one ruler the two semi-independent principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. The English government supported Austria's desire to keep the two apart. Napoleon now agreed to the continued separation of the principalities ; but in 1859, when they, by their own efforts, joined together and founded the dominion which was afterwards named Roumania, he insisted on maintaining the union. When the Osborne visit was ended affectionate compliments passed between the emperor and the queen in autograph letters, and the agreement was regarded as final. The queen wrote with ingenuous confidence of the isolation that characterised the position of a sovereign, but added that fortunately her ally, no less than herself, enjoyed the compensation of a happy marriage. The ostentatious activity with which the emperor was strengthening his armaments at Cherbourg hardly seemed promising for the continuance of such personal harmony, but the emperor paradoxically converted the war-like preparations which were going forward almost within hail of the English shore, into new links of the chain of amity which was binding the two royal families together. At his suggestion, within a fortnight of his