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 grossed the attention of Europe from 1863 to 1866 rarely coincided. But she pressed counsel on them with all her old pertinacity, and constantly had to acquiesce unwillingly in its rejection in detail. Nevertheless she fulfilled her main purpose of keeping her country free from such European complications as were likely to issue in war. And though she was unable to give effective political aid to her German relatives, she was often successful in checking the activity of her ministers' or her people's sympathies with their enemies.

The different mental attitudes in which the queen and her ministers stood to current foreign events is well illustrated by the divergent sentiments which the Polish insurrection excited in them in 1863. Palmerston and his colleague Lord John sympathised with the efforts of Poland to release itself from the grip of Russia, and their abhorrence of the persecution of a small race by a great reflected popular English feeling. France, affecting horror at Russia's cruelty, invited English co-operation in opposing her. Prussia, on the other hand, where Bismarck now ruled, declared that the Poles were meeting their deserts. The queen sternly warned her government against any manner of interference. Her view of the situation altogether ignored the grievances of the Poles, he privately identified herself with their oppressors. The Grand Duke Constantine, who was governor-general of Poland when the insurrection broke out, had been her guest. His life was menaced by the Polish rebels, wherefore his modes of tyranny, however repugnant, became in her sight inevitable weapons of self-defence. The question had driven France and Prussia into opposite camps. Maternal duty called her to the side of Prussia, her eldest daughter's adopted country and future dominion.

Early in the autumn of 1863 the queen visited Germany and examined the foreign situation for herself at close quarters. The main object of her tour was to revive her memories of the scenes of her late husband's youth. After staying a night at the summer palace of Laeken with her uncle Leopold, she proceeded to Rosenau, Prince Albert's birthplace, and thence passed on to Coburg. The recent death of her husband's constant counsellor, Stockmar, at Coburg, intensified the depression in which public and private anxieties involved her, but she took pleasure in the society of the crown prince and princess, who joined her at Rosenau. Their political prospects, however, filled her with fresh alarms. The sovereigns of Germany were meeting at Frankfort to consider a reform of the confederation of the German states. For reasons that were to appear later, Prussia declined to join the meeting, and Austria assumed the leading place in the conference. It looked probable that an empire of Germany would come into being under the headship of the emperor of Austria, that Prussia would be excluded from it, and would be ruined in its helpless isolation. The jealousy with which not only Austria, but the smaller German states, regarded Prussia seemed to the queen to render imminent its decay and fall. Domestic instincts spurred her to exert all her personal influence in Germany to set the future of Prussia and her daughter's fortunes on a securer basis. Her brother-in-law, Duke Ernest, was attending the German diet of sovereigns at Frankfort. From Rosenau she addressed to him constant appeals to protect Prussia from the disasters with which the Frankfort meeting threatened it. On 29 Aug., after drawing a dismal picture of Prussia's rapid decline, she wrote : 'All the more would I beg you, as much as lies in your power, to prevent a weakening of Prussia, which not only my own feeling resists—on account of the future of our children but which would surely also be contrary to the interest of Germany; and I know that our dear angel Albert always regarded a strong Prussia as a necessity, for which therefore it is a sacred duty for me to work.' Two days later, on 31 Aug., the king of Prussia, at her request, paid her a visit. Bismarck, who had a year before assumed control of the policy of Prussia and understood the situation better than the queen, was in his master's retinue, but he was not present at the interview. The king's kindly tone did not reassure the queen. She thought he failed to realise his country's and his family's danger. But his apparent pusillanimity did not daunt her energies. A personal explanation with the ruler, from whom Prussia had, in her view, everything to fear, became essential. Early in September Francis Joseph, the emperor of Austria, was returning to Vienna from the diet at Frankfort. She invited him to visit on the way at the castle of Coburg. On 3 Sept. he arrived there. It was her first meeting with him. She had been interested in him since emperor of his accession to the throne in Austria. the eventful year 1848. Ten years later, in August 1858, he had sent to her when at Babelsberg a letter re-