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 always believed him to be secretly fomenting serious disquiet. He now professed to detect a menace to France in the semi-independence of the frontier state the duchy of Luxemburg seeing that the new conditions which Prussian predominance created in north Germany gave that power the right to fortify the duchy on its French border. He therefore negotiated with the suzerain of the duchy, the king of Holland, for its annexation to his own dominions, or he was willing to see it annexed to Belgium if some small strip of Belgian territory were assigned to him. Prussia raised protests and Belgium declined his suggestion. The queen urgently appealed to her government to keep the peace, and her appeal had its effect. A conference met in London (11-14 May 1867) with the result that the independence of the duchy of Luxemburg was guaranteed by the powers, though its fortresses were to be dismantled. Napoleon was disappointed by his failure to secure any material advantage from the settlement, and he was inclined to credit the queen with thwarting his ambition.

His relations with her endured a further strain next month when his fatal abandonment in Mexico of her friend and connection, the Archduke Maxixmillian, became known. In 1804 Napoleon had managed to persuade the arch-duke, the Austrian emperor's brother, who had married the queen's first cousin, Princess Charlotte of Belgium, and had frequently been the queen's guest, to accept the imperial throne which a French army was setting up in republican Mexico. Few of the inhabitants of the country acknowledged the title of the new emperor, and in 18ti6, after the close of the American civil war, the government at Washington warned Napoleon that, unless his troops were summarily withdrawn from the North American continent, force would be used to expel them. The emperor pusillanimously offered no resistance to the demand, and the French army was withdrawn, but the archduke declined to leave with it. His wife, Princess Charlotte of Belgium, as soon as she realised her husband's peril, came to Europe to beg protection for him, and to the queen's lasting sorrow her anxieties permanently affected her intellect. Meanwhile the inhabitants of Mexico restored the republic, and the archduke was shot by order of a court-martial on 20 June 1867. The catastrophe appalled the queen, whose personal attachment to its victims was great. She wrote a frank letter of condolence to the archduke's brother, the emperor of Austria, and for the time spoke of Napoleon a politically past redemption. But she still cherished private affection for the empress of the French, and privately entertained her as her guest at Osborne in July. Nor when misfortune overtook the emperor himself in 1870, did she permit her repugnance to his political action to repress her sense of compassion.

While the Mexican tragedy was nearing its last scene the second great exhibition was taking place at Paris, and Napoleon III, despite the universal suspicion that he excited succeeded in entertaining many royal personages among them the tsar Alexander II the king of Prussia, Abdul Aziz, sultan of Turkey, Ismail Pasha, khedive of Egypt, and the prince of Wales. The queen's ministers recommended that she should renew the old hospitalities of her court and invite the royal visitors in Paris to be her guests. The queen of Prussia had spent several days with her in June, but she demurred to acting as hostess in state on a large scale. She however agreed, with a view to confirming her influence in Eastern Europe, to entertain Abdul Aziz, the sultan of Turkey, and to receive Ismail Pasha, the khedive of Egypt, who had announced his intention of coming, and was in the country from 6 to 18 July. No sultan of Turkey had yet set foot on English soil, and the visit, which seemed to set the seal on the old political alliance between the two governments, evoked intense popular excitement, sultan was magnificently received on his arrival on 12 July, and was lodged in Buckingham Palace. Though the queen took as small a part as possible in the festivities, she did not withdraw herself altogether from them. Princess Alice helped her in extending hospitalities to her guest, who lunched with her at Windsor and highly commended her attentions. A great naval review by the queen at Spitbead was arranged in his honour, and he accompanied his hostess on board her yacht, the Victoria and Albert. The weather was bad, and amid a howling storm the queen invested the sultan with the order of the gaiter on the yacht's deck. When the sultan left on 23 July he exchanged with her highly complimentary telegrams.

At Balmoral, in the autumn, she showed more than her usual energy. On her way thither she made an excursion in the Scottish border country, staying for two days with the Duke and "Duchess of Roxburgh at Floors Castle, near Kelso (21 to 23 Aug.) On the 22nd she visited Melrose Abbey,