Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/469

 had entertained him at Windsor. The crown prince of Prussia was his close friend, and Her sym. his cause was also espoused by pathy with the queen's daughter Alice and Germany. t er husband, Prince Louis of Hesse, as well as by her brother-in-law, Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg. But while regarding with benevolence the pretensions of Duke Frederick of Augustenburg, and pitying the misfortunes of his family, she could not repress the thought that the policy of Prussia, although antagonistic to his interests, was calculated to increase the strength and prestige of that kingdom, the promotion of which was for her 'a sacred duty.'

There were other grounds which impelled her to restrain her impulse to identity herself completely with any one party to the strife. Radical divergences of opinion were alive in her own domestic circle. The princess of Wales, the daughter of the king of Denmark, naturally felt acutely her father's position, and when, in December 1863, she and her husband were fellow-guests at Windsor with the crown prince and princess of Prussia, the queen treated Schleswig-Holstein as a forbidden subject at her table. To her ministers and to the mass of her subjects, moreover, the cause of Denmark made a strong appeal. The threats of Prussia and Austria to attack a small power like Denmark seemed to them another instance of brutal oppression of the weak by the strong. Duke Frederick's position was deemed futile. The popularity of the princess of Wales, the king of Denmark's daughter, tended to strengthen the prevailing popular sentiment in favour of the Danes.

In view of interests so widely divided the queen hoped against hope that peace might be preserved. At any rate she was resolved that England should not directly engage in the strife, which she wished to see restricted to the narrowest possible limits of time and space. It was therefore with deep indignation that she learned that active interference in behalf of Denmark was contemplated by her cabinet. Napoleon III was sounded as to whether he would lend his aid, but he had grown estranged from Palmerston, and answered coldly. The ministers' ardour in behalf of Denmark was not diminished by this rebuff. But the queen's repugnance to their Danish sentiment was strengthened. She made no endeavour to conceal her German sympathies, although they became, to her regret, the subject of reproachful comment in the press. Theodor von Bernhardi, the Prussian envoy, had an interview with her at Osborne on 8 Jan. 1864. She frankly deplored the strength of the Danish party in England, which had won, she said, the leading journalistic organs. She thought that Germany might exert more influence in the same direction. She was dissatisfied, she added, with the position of the crown prince, and lamented the depressed condition of the liberal party in Prussia (, Aus dem Leben, 1895, pt. v. 276-81). At the same time she turned a deaf ear to the urgent appeals of Duke Frederick's friends for material assistance. Within a few hours of her interview with Bernhardi she wrote to her brother-in-law at Coburg that she had come to see with her government that Duke Frederick's claim was unworkable. 'All my endeavours and those of my government,' she said, 'are only directed towards the preservation of peace.' When her ministers introduced what she regarded as bellicose expressions into the queen's speech at the opening of parliament (4 Feb. 1864), she insisted on their removal.

A more critical stage was reached in the same month, when hostilities actually broke out between Austria and Prussia on the one hand and Denmark on the other. Although the Danes fought bravely, they were soon defeated, and the English government, with the assent of the queen, urged on the belligerents not merely an armistice, but a conference in London, so that an accommodation might be reached and the war abridged. The conference met on 20 April. The queen saw many of the envoys and talked to them with freedom. She recommended mutual concessions. But it was soon seen that the conference would prove abortive. To the queen's annoyance, before it dissolved, her government championed with new vehemence the cause of the Danes, and warlike operations in their behalf were again threated. Palmerston told the Austrian ambassador, Count Apponyi, that if the Austrian fleet went to the Baltic it would meet the British fleet there. The queen, through Lord Granville, expressed dissatisfaction with the threat, and appealed to the cabinet to aid her against the prime minister. She invited the private support of the leader of the opposition, Lord Derby, in the service of peace, and hinted that, if parliament did not adopt a pacific and neutral policy, she would have report to a dissolution. Meanwhile her German relatives complained to her of the encouragement that her ministers and subjects were giving the Danes. But in her foreign correspondence, as the situation developed, she displayed scrupulous tact. She depreciated the rumours that she and her ministers were