Louis Philippe's first posi tion.

of his family. He declined the proposal, but only on the understanding that the throne which he refused for a child of his own should not be offered to a rival, or pass away from the Bourbon family. He expected the other reigning families of Europe to imitate his own forbearance, and he insisted that the choice of the Queen of Spain should be made from her own house, or from one of the descendants of Philip V.1

Animated by these views, he sent Pageot, who had returned with Salvandy from Spain, on a special mission to London, to Vienna, and to Berlin, to suggest such an agreement respecting the queen's marriage. Pageot made little progress. Aberdeen told him that Britain "did not recognise in France or in all Europe any right whatever to dispose of the hand of the Queen of Spain," and that, though there were political grounds for objecting to her marriage with a French prince, she ought to be free to choose a husband from any other quarter. The question, Aberdeen thought, was not European but Spanish, and the only effect of Pageot's proposal would be to "excite feelings of indignation and resistance in the heart of every Spaniard who values the dignity and independence of his country." 2

Pageot's mission failed, but its failure had not much significance. The queen had not yet entered her teens, and all the intrigues of all the Governments of Europe could not make her ripe for marriage. Louis Philippe was forced to wait, and for nearly two years the question of a Spanish. marriage ceased to trouble diplomacy. Grave events, however, in the interval occurred in Spain. The Government of Espartero fell, and Espartero took refuge in England. Narvaez succeeded to power, and the queen mother, Christina, returned to Madrid. Isabella power. was declared of age; the law which had previously required the concurrence of the Spanish Cortes in her marriage.

Narvaez

accedes to

1 Revue Rétrospective, p. 51; Guizot, vol. viii. pp. 107, 110.

* Correspondence relating to Spanish Marriages, Parl. Papers, 1847, No. 59, PP. 1-2.

was altered, and a new law was passed which merely required her to communicate her marriage to the Cortes. It stipulated, however, that neither the sovereign nor the sovereign's heir should contract marriage with any person excluded by the law from the succession to the Crown.1

Only a few weeks after these events Queen Victoria paid the visit to Louis Philippe which enabled Guizot and Aberdeen to talk over the policy of the two nations. The two ministers agreed that France and England should endeavour in future to act together on the Spanish question. Aberdeen officially declared that, though the British Government continued to regard the marriage of the Queen of Spain as a Spanish question, it was "disposed to concur in the proposition Agreement of the Cabinet of the Tuileries, and to recommend that the selection of the queen's consort should Aberdeen. be made from the descendants of Philip V."2 Both countries decided to stamp their new policy by sending new representatives to Madrid; and Guizot selected M. Bresson; Aberdeen, Henry Bulwer, for the purpose.3

between

Guizet and

queen's

There were only eight persons who came under the category from which Guizot and Aberdeen thus decided that the queen's husband should be selected:-(1) The three sons The candiof Don Carlos, the queen's cousins; (2) the two dates for the sons of Don Francis, Don Carlos' younger brother; hand. (3) the two brothers of the King of Naples, the queen's uncles; and (4) a prince of Lucca. The French in 1843 were inclined to favour the Duke of Cadiz, the elder son of Don Francis; the English, or Aberdeen, preferred Count Aquila, the elder of the two Neapolitan candidates.*

Neither arrangement, however, suited the queen mother,

1 Parl. Papers, 1847, No. 59, p. 4. It does not say much for the fairness of English writers, that this provision is suppressed by, I believe, every writer on the subject. 2 Ibid., 1847, p. 3. 3 Guizot, vol. viii. pp. 155, 159.

• Revue Rétrospective, p. 298. The despatch from St. Aulaire to Guizot is dated July 18, 1845. but it is evident that the date ought to be 1843. It is melancholy to see a British Foreign Minister recommending the marriage of a child (herself the daughter of an uncle and niece) to an uncle; but perhaps his Grecian studies affected Aberdeen's judgment. A marriage which had produced a Nausicaa may have seemed good enough for a Queen of Spain.

The SaxeCoburg candidate.

who naturally thought that she had a right to be consulted on her daughters' marriages. She had originally desired to see them married to two of Louis Philippe's sons. Failing them, she desired to unite them to princes of high position. Ever since the marriage of Leopold with Charlotte of England, the Saxe-Coburgs had been rising in importance. Leopold himself was King of Belgium; his nephew, Albert, was husband to the Queen of England; another nephew had recently married the Queen of Portugal. The King of Portugal had a brother, another Leopold, whom Christina thought would be a better husband for her daughter than either Cadiz or Aquila. She still, indeed, preferred a French alliance, but, failing a son of Louis Philippe's, she favoured the suit of Leopold of Saxe-Coburg."1

In the autumn of 1845 the Queen of England paid a second visit to Louis Philippe. The two sovereigns were again attended by Guizot and Aberdeen, and Guizot seized the opportunity of speaking to Aberdeen about the Spanish marriages. The question was gradually attaining a more immediate importance. Isabella was in her sixteenth year; her young sister was growing up to womanhood. Spain had two princesses, not one princess, to provide for; and the French Government had already intimated that, though it declined the throne of Spain for a French prince, it had no objection to see a French prince married to the queen's sister.2 Both Louis Philippe and Guizot, however, undertook that the Duc de Montpensier, the prince selected for the sister's hand, should not marry the Infanta till the queen

1 Guizot, vol. viii. p. 219.

2 This was originally suggested by Guizot through Bulwer in the summer of 1845. Bulwer's Palmerston, vol. iii. p. 215. Stockmar's editors declare that the arrangement was thought of by Guizot as early as 1840, and they base their conclusion, which they call a "noteworthy fact," on a memorandum of Guizot's when. Palmerston was in Paris in 1840. Palmerston, of course, was not in Paris in 1840, but in 1846, and the only noteworthy fact" is, that they have turned a "6" into a "o," and have not had the knowledge to rectify their mistake. Stockmar, vol. ii. p. 132. Sir T. Martin, misled by this misprint, declares that the Montpensier marriage had been "long since matured, but had long since dropped out of the discussion." Prince Consort, vol. i. p. 348.

.

was married and had issue. In return for this concession, Aberdeen arranged that the Coburg candidate should be neither adopted nor supported; and that no prince, not of the House of Bourbon, should be recognised as a claimant for the hand of the queen.?

Aquila, whose claim had been supported by Aberdeen in 1843, had married in the interval a princess of Brazil. Guizot thought that his pretensions to the queen's hand The Trapani might be passed on to his brother, the Count de candidate. Trapani. The Neapolitan connection, however, was not popular in Spain. The queen mother disliked the stipulations for the postponement of the Montpensier alliance; and obstacles therefore still existed to the accomplishment of the arrangement which Aberdeen and Guizot were both virtually disposed to favour.

Bresson.

These obstacles were, unfortunately, increased by the intrigues of the two men whom Britain and France had sent as their representatives to Madrid. Bresson was the minister Bulwer and who, in 1830, had supported the election of the Duc de Nemours to the throne of Belgium.3 Bulwer was the diplomatist who, in 1840, had helped to inflame Palmerston against France. It was almost as certain that Bresson and Bulwer would quarrel, as that nitre and glycerine brought into conjunction would explode. Bresson reported that Bulwer "n'est pas élevé et ses salons sont mal peuplés." Bulwer

1 I have retained this translation, because it represents Guizot's meaning. He wrote to Aberdeen (15th January 1847): “En disant quant la reine aura des enfans je n'ai voulu indiquer aucun nombre spécial d'enfans; . . . j'ai simplement voulu dire quant la reine aura une descendance à la quelle devra passer la couronne. C'est là en effet en français le sens de cette expression générale, avoir des enfans, et, si je ne me trompe, c'est aussi ce qu'on entend en Anglais par to have children." Aberdeen Private Correspondence.

"

2 Cf. Louis Philippe's account in Revue Rétrospective, p. 19: Quant à la candidature du Prince Léopold de Saxe-Cobourg . . . je réponds qu'elle ne sera ni avouée ni appuyée par l'Angleterre, et qu'elle ne vous gênera pas." See also Guizot's account in Mémoires, vol. viii. p. 227; and Stockmar's, vol. ii. p. 142. The latter says that no prince, not of the House of Bourbon, should be recognised and supported as the English candidate. But I can find no authority for the words in italics, which, of course, put a different construction on Aberdeen's promise.

3 Ante, vol. iv. p. 236. Guizot, vol. viii. p. 206.

declared that Bresson belonged by birth to the middle class, and was consequently vulgarly preoccupied with his position. as ambassador.1 Bresson, without much regard for Guizot's wishes, was determined on increasing French influence at Madrid. Bulwer thought his employers wrong in assenting to Guizot's principle, and, with characteristic insubordination, set himself to defeat the accomplishment of the Bourbon marriage. Bulwer and Bresson were thus busily undoing the good which their employers had done. Bresson insisted that Bulwer was intriguing for the Coburg marriage, and induced Guizot to believe that his principle was in danger. Bulwer, on the contrary, asserted that the Trapani marriage was to be forced on without the knowledge of the Cortes.3

In the midst of these intrigues, news reached Paris of the crisis which necessitated Peel's retirement in the autumn of 1845. For a few days it seemed certain that Aberdeen's tenure of the Foreign Office was at an end, and that Palmerston would in future control the foreign policy of England. Guizot had hitherto relied on the scrupulous fidelity with which Aberdeen had redeemed his pledges. Neither he nor Louis Philippe had any confidence in Palmerston. Fearing that the accession of the Whigs to office would redouble the activity of Leopold's partisans, he sent fresh instructions to Madrid, and desired Bresson, if the Coburg marriage seemed likely to succeed, to demand preference for Montpensier. The same ambitious considerations which made Christina and the Spanish Government prefer Coburg to Trapani would, so Guizot was justified in assuming, induce them to place Montpensier before Coburg.

The crisis

of 1845.

Peel's Government, however, did not fall. But, by this time, it was evident on both sides of the English Channel that the Trapani union was too odious to the Spanish people to be tolerable. Guizot's great principle was evidently imperilled.

3 Parl. Papers, 1847, No. 59, p. 4.

1 Guizot, vol. viii. p. 161, and Bulwer's Palmerston, vol. iii. p. 213. 2 Guisot, vol. viii. p. 230. 4 Guizot, vol. viii. p. 240. This letter was not communicated to Aberdeen. Greville, Part ii. vol. iii. p. 53. The account in Greville of the whole of the negotiation is of great importance.