THE most important part of Lord Dalling's book is the
chapters. in which he tells the sad and infamous story of the Spanish Mar- riages. As he was our Minister at the Court of Madrid during the time of the chief negotiations, and as he was the chief opponent of the French Court, he could speak with more authority than any other English statesman. Guizot gave his version of the story with much fullness of detail and with consummate skill in his Mimoires pour servir a 1 'Histoire de mon Temps. Lord Palling now gives his, and it forms a State-paper of much value. Lord. Palmerston did not take part in the negotiations until nearly the end, when he succeeded. Lord Aberdeen at the Foreign Office.By that time Guizot had cast his net over the Spanish Court,
and all but caught the Queen in its toils. Palmerston might still have defeated the intrigue, if he had been as sagacious as he was. bold ; but he knew so little about the real feelings of the Spanish Court that he blundered at the outset, and his error ruined, everything. * The attempt of France to increase her influence over Spain by providing a husband for Queen Isabella began when that unfortunate Sovereign was only twelve years old. Louis Phi- lippe was eager both to increase the power of France, and to' make good matches for his sons ; and Guizot, who was then his. Minister of Foreign Affairs, was fanatically anxious to keep the Peninsula in leading-strings. He argued that the union of Spain, Germany, and the Low Countries under the sceptre of Charles V. and of Philip II. had placed France in peril ; and that she had not been lifted out of danger until Richelieu, Mazarin, and Louis XIV. had isolated Spain from the enemies of France- The same argument was used by Napoleon III. as a pretext for declaring war against Prussia when the Prince of Hohenzollern was allowed to become a candidate for the Spanish Crown. Thus Guizot only acted in accordance with the traditional spirit of French diplomacy when he tried to give away the Queen of Spain's hand. He found it the more easy to interfere because, although the nation resented any interference with its domestic affairs, the moderate party in the Cortes and the Queen-mother were eager that the young sovereign should marry the Duc d'Aumale. Such a project was naturally alarming to the English diploma- tists of the old school, and indeed to the whole Continent. Louis Philippe's shrewdness told him that it would not do, and so. Guizot energetically declared that the King would allow none of his sons to become candidates for the Queen's hand. But he also• made known that France would not permit her to marry any prince who did not belong to some branch of the House of Bour- bon. She was free, he said, to marry a Prince of Naples or of Lucca, a son of Don Carlos or a son of Don Francisco ; but she might not go outside that sacred circle. Lord Aberdeen opposed that arrogant pretension with much amiability and astonishing feebleness, when it was made by M. Pageot, the French Chargé
• The Life of Henry John Temple, Viscount Palmerston. By the late Right Hon. Sir Henry Lytton Bulwer (Lord Dalling). Vol. III. London : Richard Bentley and Son. 1814.
d'Affaires at our Court. He was shocked by such an attempt to limit the choice of the young Queen in a matter of essential im- portance to herself. The French diplomatist replied that in any -case, the choice would be made not by herself, but by her Ministers ; and that, as they would be guided by purely political motives, so, in self-defence, must France. Lord Aberdeen went back to his first statement, that the marriage was a purely dome.stic affair, with which England had no right to meddle. In that case, it was urged, Eng- land could not object if the Queen should marry her cousin, the Duc Z'Aumale. " Ah !" replied Lord Aberdeen, " I do not say that ; such an alliance would disturb the equilibrium of Europe ; that would be different." Lord Aberdeen was clearly no match for the diplomatist who was pouring out the arguments with which he had been primed by Guizot. By opposing the marriage of the -Queen with the Due d'Aumale on purely political grounds, he -was acting in accordance with precisely the same principles as France herself. Palmerston committed the same mistake when he took the negotiations in hand ; for in one breath he said that England would neither exclude nor support any of the candidates for the hand of the Queen, and in the next, he distinctly declared that he would oppose the claims of any prince belonging to a power- =ful reigning family. Thus England showed that she was hostile to the Royal house of France, and Guizot had an excuse for saying that he must act in self-defence.
By far the wisest course would have been to declare that the Queen should be left absolutely free to marry whom she liked, and to have protested in the face of Europe against the arrogant claim that she must marry a Bourbon. Had Lord Aberdeen done so, and had he encouraged' Spain to defy the menaces of France, the worst infamy of the Spanish Marriages would never have been perpetrated, and the Court might have been spared the domestic scandals that ended in revolution. For when the marriage of the Due d'Aumale had put him beyond •the reach of Spain, the 'Queen-mother would gladly have braved France, if England had -given her encouragement. Our Minister, Sir Henry Bulwer, would have used all his influence to defeat the intrigues of the French Court, if he had but been free to act; but he was fettered by his superior, Lord Aberdeen, who was the slave of Guizot's imperious intellect. He was told to keep strictly neutral, and he -could do so only at the price of allowing the poor young Queen to fall into the toils of her enemies.
The motives of the French Court were suspected at the time to be very sinister, and subsequent events deepened the idea of its guilt. Louis Philippe, it was thought, wished to gain supreme influence over the Peninsula at any price. He dared not awaken the alarm of Europe by marrying the Queen to one of his own sons, but he hoped, it was thought, to gain his•ends by indirect means. If her husband were to be a feeble nobody, and if his sown youngest son, the Due de Montpensier, were to marry her sister, France could thus, perhaps, control the political destinies of the Peninsula. Such a plan was cunning rather than far- seeing, but it was skilfully pursued, both by the opposing of some candidates and the suggesting of others. The Prince de Metternich was anxious that the rival families of Spain should be united by the marriage of the Queen with the son of Don Carlos, and that exiled pretender was so favourable to the arrangement as to formally hand over his shadowy rights to his heir. But Guizot objected to such a match, because Don Carlos did not. abandon the pretension to be the legitimate King of Spain, and because his son would act as such. Then he would be aided by the clerical and the reactionary party, while the Queen might gather round her the Liberals, and there would be war in the palace itself. At any rate, such a marriage would not have suited the -designs of France, and the idea of it was set aside. Then Guizot made the astonishing proposition that the Queen should marry the Comte de Trapani, a brother of the King of Naples and of the Queen-mother herself. Thus he was Isabella's uncle. He was a young man, a pupil of the Jesuits, very bigoted, very weak in mind and equally weak in body. It would have been difficult to find a more despicable, and therefore a more suitable can- didate. On the other hand, the Duc de Montpensier should marry the Infanta ; but the King promised that the marriage should not take place until children should be born to the Queen herself. The Queen-mother gave a reluctant consent, merely, perhaps, to gain time; the Comte himself was taken from the Jesuit house inwhich he was passing through the theological mill ; and arrangements were made in Spain for the wedding. But the nation were hostile to such a match ; there were rumours of resistance in the Cortes ; and the Queen-mother had set her heart on getting the Due de Montpensier for her daughter. So the Comte de Trapani had to be sent back to the Jesuits. On the other hand, Louis Philippe had
given Queen Victoria so solemn a pledge when she visited the Chateau d'Eu that the Due de Montpensier would not marry the Queen, and Guizot had so explicitly given the same pledge to Lord Aberdeen on the same occasion, that the wish of the Queen- mother could not be fulfilled. But then the French Court played its best card by saying that the most suitable husband would be either of the two sons of Don Francisco de Paulo, the brother of the late King. Both were, therefore, cousins of the Queen.
One of them, Don Francisco, Duke of Cadiz, was so notoriously a feeble bigot, that Lord Palmerston called him an "absolute and absolutist fool" He was likewise so poor a physical speci- men of humanity, that as Lord Palmerston also said, it was a scandal to recommend him at all. His brother, Don Enrique, had more energy; but he was wild and reckless, and he had made himself the enemy of the Queen-mother by leaguing himself with her enemies. Such were the two precious young men between whom Guizot invited Isabella to choose. So hostile was the mother to Don Enrique, that while her party were in power, the Queen could not choose him, and thus Guizot had virtually de- creed that she should give her hand to a man whom she openly despised. On the other hand, he secretly agreed that if the Queen should marry the Due de Cadiz, the Due de Montpensier should become the husband of her sister.
There was another candidate in the field, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. Being the cousin of Prince Albert, he was regarded as the representative of English influence. Guizot made himself believe that the Nestor of the Coburgs, the King of the Belgians, and the English Court were plotting to set the young prince on the throne of Spain. Lord Aberdeen assured him that he was mistaken, and also urged that, as the Prince was the brother of the Duchesse de Nemours, one of Louis Philippe's own sons, while he was only the cousin of Queen Victoria's husband, he might fairly be regarded as a French rather than an English can- didate. Lord Aberdeen himself was guiltless of any attempt to push the claims of the young Prince. On the other hand, Queen Christina did act on the assumption that he was favoured by the English Court, and Sir Henry Bulwer did encourage her. In the present volume, he tries to show that he held aloof from the con- test, even when he was urged by the Queen-mother to aid her in the attempt to rescue her daughter from the meshes of the French Court ; but we are happy to say that he fails to clear himself. So far as an honourable man could, he did obey the command of Lord Aberdeen to remain neutral, but an English gentleman could not stand perfectly still when he saw the French Minister, Count Bresson, drawing Guizot's net tighter and tighter round the poor young Queen. He shows that he did encourage her mother to make overtures to the Coburg Prince. He did quite right, and but for the weakness of Lord Aberdeen, he might have succeeded. Lord Aberdeen, however, was so much under the influence of Guizot as to tell him all that Bulwer had done, and to send Bulwer himself a severe censure for not having acted in concert with Bresson. Lord Balling curtly says that if he had betrayed Queen Christina's confidence to the diplomatist who was striving with all his might to entrap her, he would have played the part of a French spy instead of an English gentleman. So he sent his resignation to Lord Aberdeen ; but it was not accepted, and immediately afterwards the seals of the Foreign Office passed to Lord Palmerston, a man who was not to be cowed by Guizot's "magisterial manner." Lord Palmerston soon showed his teeth in a long despatch to Bulwer, setting forth the duties of the English Government with respect to Spain. It would remain neutral, he said, unless the successor of a powerful reigning house should become a candidate for the hand of the Queen. But there were three eligible suitors, he added, the Prince of Coburg and the two sons of Don Francisco de Paulo. Any of the three, he said, would be acceptable to England. Guizot held that the English Govertment had broken a pledge given by Lord Aberdeen in thus placing the Prince Leopold in the ranks of the candidates, and indeed giving him the first place. It was now clear, he said, that England sought to make the Coburg Prince King of Spain. Lord Aberdeen, he contended, had promised that England should give no countenance whatever to the claims of the Coburg Prince ; but Lord Dalling justly says that Guizot's assertion is desti- tute of any proof. Still the French Minister held that Lord Palmerston's words had freed him from the pledge that the Due de Montpensier should not marry the Infanta until the Queen should have children, and he instantly proceeded to urge that the marriage of the Queen to the Due de Cadiz and of the Due de Montpensier to her sister should be celebrated on the same day. The design might still have been defeated, if Lord Palmerston's private instructions to Bulwer had not destroyed the chances of the CoburgjPrince. There is good reason to believe that the Spanish Court would gladly have accepted him as a suitor, if he had really been backed by the influence of England ; but Palmerston privately wrote to Bulwer that the better plan would.be-to give Don Enrique to the Queen and Prince Leopold to the Infanta. Such instructions displayed an astonishing ignorance of the Spanish Court. It could not afford to give mortal offence to France for the sake of marrying the Infanta to a Coburg. It could run such a risk only to get a Coburg for the Queen. And the marriage of Don Enrique with the Queen was simply out of the question. He and the chiefs of his political party were in exile ; their rivals were in power. Were he to become King, the Queen-mother herself would, in all probability, be again obliged to quit Spain, leaving all the sweets of the power that she loved much, and per- haps much of the wealth that she loved more. Her friends must also surrender office to rivals who were eager for revenge, and who might have driven them into exile. Lord Palmerston, then, simply invited them to ruin themselves. Sir Henry Bulwer saw the scheme to be so preposterously absurd, that he held back the despatch until he should warn Palmerston of the ruin which it would bring ; but Palmerston had closed his ears to all advice, and he sent the characteristic reply that the best title of an agent to the confidence of his chief was obedience to his commands. So Bulwer gave the message to the Ministers, and they saw that all was over. Bresson was sent for, and it was instantly agreed that the Queen should marry the effeminate Don Francisco, while the Infanta should marry the Due de Montpensier. The Due d'Aumale speedily came with his brother to Madrid ; the marriages were celebrated ; Guizot had won ; and the Queen was ruined. Thus ended the five years of diplomatic craft,
Palmerston was furious when he saw the effect of his blunder- ing. He called Louis Philippe a detected pickpocket. He plainly accused Guizot of fraud and falsehood, and worse. He tried to prevent so scandalous a marriage as that of the Queen with the Duke of Cadiz. But Guizot smiled at his wrath with the serenity of a gambler who has won an enormous stake.
Meanwhile, strange events were happening in Madrid, which then, as now, was a wild place. The Ministers had often behaved like furies. Prime Minister, Olozaga, is said by his enemies to have once compelled the young Queen by sheer force to sign a decree for the dissolution of the Chambers. Another Prime Minister, Narvaez, being asked on his death-bed to forgive his enemies, replied that he had none, for he had killed them all. He used to threaten that he would blow out his own brains unless his colleagues would agree with him. The populace were still wilder. Some working-men intended to shoot the Due de Montpensier and the Due d'Aumale when they should enter Madrid, and fancying that the deed would please the English Government, one of them came to Sir Henry Bulwer, to ask whether they might take shelter in the British Embassy after they should fire the shots. The Court was equally original. Isabella so despised her husband, that she treated him with ostentatious disdain, and proceeded to choose a favourite of her own with an openness that is sadly well-known to history. The effects of the marriage were so shocking, that proposals for a divorce were freely mooted. " But," says Lord Dalling, " the Spaniards are a decorous people. Some very respectable and respected men discussed very gravely the propriety of putting the King quietly out of the way by a cup of coffee, but the scandal of a divorce shocked them." Meanwhile the Ministry had to play the difficult part of Duenna to the Queen ; and they tried to keep her in a kind of confinement, but they were baffled by her and her favourite, who was then General Serrano, and who is now the, President of the Spanish Republic. There was a forcible change of Ministry at three o'clock one morning. General Serrano's friends were lifted into power.. General Serrano him- self became the greatest man in Spain ; and poor Don Francisco, the Queen's husband, quitted the royal palace to live in the Prado. He was virtually dethroned ; and it is needless to describe the mingled profligacy and religious devotion by means of which the Court rode swiftly to Revolution.
Such is the saddest and most shameful chapter of modern diplomacy. The guilt of it lies, first, on the Queen-mother and the Ministers, who knew well what they were doing in giving such a woman as Queen Isabella such a husband as Don Francisco. It lies next on Louis Philippe and Guizot. The one heartlessly trifled with the happiness of a woman and the peace of a nation, in obedience to his diseased eagerness to make his family great. The other stifled his conscience and his religious instincts, in his determination to increase the influence of France and lower that ' of England. Theyeebleneas of Lord Aberdeen made him the tool of France. The ignorance of Lord Palmerston completed the work of ruin. Lord Dalling's book shows, what we might have guessed from Guizot's MImoires, that if he had been unfettered at Madrid, or if Lord Palmerston had conducted the negotiations from the beginning, and thus been guided by a real knowledge of Spanish feeling, not only would the records of diplomacy have now been free from a shameful chapter, but Spain and Europe might have been spared some of the most lamentable convulsions of recent years.
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