Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/480

{{RunningHeader|Victoria|466|Victoria}{{rule}} in-law of Hesse-Darmstadt in 1865, and whose ' Life of Thomas Edward, the Banff Naturalist,' she examined in 1876 with such effect as to direct the bestowal on Edward of a civil list pension of 501. She was interested, too, in the works of George Macdonald, on whom she induced Lord Beaconsfield to confer a pension in 1877.

In 1870 European politics once more formed the most serious topic of the queen's thought, and the death in July of her old friend, Lord Clarendon, the foreign secretary, increased her anxieties. Despite her personal attachment to Lord Granville, who succeeded to Clarendon's post, she had far smaller faith in his political judgment. Although she watched events with attention, the queen was hopeful until the last that the struggle between France and Germany, which had long threatened, might be averted. In private letters to the rulers of both countries she constantly counselled peace ; but her efforts were vain, and in July 1870 Napoleon declared war. She regarded his action as wholly unjustified, and her indignation grew when Bismarck revealed designs that, Napoleon was alleged to have formed to destroy the independence of Belgium, a country in whose fortunes she was deeply concerned by reason of the domestic ties that linked her with its ruler. In the opening stages of the conflict that followed her ruling instincts identified her fully with the cause of Germany. Both her sons-in-law, the crown prince and Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt, were in the field, and through official bulletins and the general information that her daughters collected for her, she studied their movements with painful eagerness. She sent hospital stores to her daughter at Darmstadt, and encouraged her in her exertions in behalf of the wounded. When crushing disaster befell the French arms she regarded their defeat as a righteous judgment. She warmly approved a sermon preached before her by her friend, Dr. Norman Macleod, at Balmoral on 2 Oct. 1870, in which he implicitly described France as 'reaping the reward of her wickedness and vanity and sensuality' (More Leaves, p. 151). But many of her subjects sympathised with France, and her own tenderness of heart evoked pity for her French neighbours in the completeness of their overthrow. With a view to relieve their sufferings, she entreated her daughter the crown princess, her son-in-law the crown prince, and her friend and his mother the queen of Prussia to avert the calamity of the bombardment of Paris.

Bismarck bitterly complained that 'the petticoat sentimentality which the queen communicated to the Prussian royal family hampered the fulfilment of German designs. The crown prince's unconcealed devotion to her compromised him in the eyes of Bismarck, who deprecated her son-in-law's faith in her genuine attachment to German interests (see the prince's 'Diary,' edited by Professor Geffeken, in Deutsche Rundschau, 1888). Nor did the queen refrain from pressing her ministers to offer her mediation with the object not merely of bringing the war to an early close, but of modifying the vindictive terms which Germany sought to impose on France. But her endeavours were of small avail. English influence was declining in the councils of Europe. Russia had made the preoccupation of France and Germany the occasion for breaking the clause in the treaty of Paris which excluded Russian warships from the Black Sea. And this defiant act was acquiesced in by Gladstone's government. Yet the queen's efforts for France were well appreciated there. Some years later (3 Dec. 1874) she accepted, with sympathetic grace, at Windsor an address of thanks, to which she replied in French, from representatives of the French nation, for the charitable services rendered by English men and women during the war ; the elaborate volumes of photographs illustrating the campaigns, which accompanied the address, she placed in the British Museum.

Hatred of Napoleon's policy did not estrange her compassion from him in the ruin that overtook him and his family. The Empress Eugenie fled to England in September 1870, and took up her residence at Chislehurst. The queen at once sent her a kindly welcome, and on 30 Nov. paid her a long visit, which the exile returned at, Windsor on 5 Dec. Thenceforth their friendship was unchecked. When Napoleon, on his release from a German prison, joined his wife in March 1871, the queen lost no time in visiting him at Chislehurst, and until his death on 9 Jan. 1873 openly showed her fellow-feeling with him in his melancholy fate.

The course that domestic affairs were taking during 1870 was hardly more agreeable to her than the course of foreign affairs. In April the attempt by a Fenian to assassinate Prince Alfred while on a visit at Port Jackson, New South Wales, greatly disturbed her, but happily the prince recovered; and she had no reason to doubt the genuineness of public sympathy which was given her in full measure. At home