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accident that, before she succeeded to the throne, she had been brought into close and intimate contact with relations by marriage who were of French blood. No sovereign of this country since Queen Anne had possessed any near relationship to the French Royal House; the wife of George I had, indeed, French blood in her veins, but the tragedy of her life prevented the transmission to her children of any French influences, beyond what might be derived from heredity. When the Princess Victoria was thirteen, her mother's brother, Leopold, after wards King of the Belgians, the widower of the Princess Charlotte of Wales, married Louise, the eldest daughter of Louis Philippe, afterwards King of the French. This marriage was the first of a series of alliances between Queen Victoria's Coburg relations and the Orleans family In 1837, a cousin of the Queen married Louis Philippe' second daughter; in 1840, another cousin married hi second son, the Duc de Nemours; and in 1843, a thir cousin married his third daughter.

By far the most important of these marriages, from the point of view of the development of Queen Victoria outlook and sympathies, was that of the King of th Belgians. The Duchess of Kent, a Coburg by birth, wa devoted to her brother Leopold; and his relations wit his niece were like those of a father and daughter. Th reminiscences of her early childhood, written by th Queen in 1872, and printed in the Letters of Quee Victoria,' indicate her affection for 'dear Uncle Leopold whose generosity had come to the help of the im poverished mother and child after the death of the Duk of Kent. King Leopold, among other paternal office guided the girl's reading, and urged her to study 'th memoirs of the great and good Sully,' which he presente to her; but, he added, 'As they have not been writte exclusively for young ladies, it will be well to hav Lehzen to read it with you' ('Letters,' 1, 51). The reco of the books she read shows that she was interested France and the French; and when, in 1835, she met th Queen of the Belgians for the first time, she fell in lov with her French aunt. 'Aunt Louisa has the mo delightful sweet expression I ever saw. She is qui delightful and charming. She is so gay and merry to ('Girlhood of Queen Victoria,' I, 188).

It was both novel and desirable that a sovereign of Great Britain should be educated to love French people and French ways; and she soon extended her affection from his daughter to Louis Philippe himself, who wrote, on her accession, a graceful letter in which he reminded her that he had been the friend of her father when the Duke of Kent, nearly forty years earlier, had been Commander-in-Chief in British North America. King Leopold wrote to her about his father-in-law's 'great disposition to be on the best possible terms with England,' and she replied that 'by the happy circumstance of your double near relationship to me and to the King of the French, Belgium-which was in former times the cause of discord between England and France-becomes now a mutual tie to keep them together.'

King Leopold's insistence upon the difficult and delicate position of Louis Philippe in France led the future Queen to be ready to make allowances for the provocations which French policy occasionally gave to British statesmen. Throughout the dispute over the revolt of Mehemet Ali against Turkey (1839-41), when France adopted an attitude antagonistic to that of the other Great Powers (Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia), and, under the guidance of Thiers, threatened to intervene as a partisan of Mehemet Ali, the Queen impressed on her ministers the necessity of doing nothing to irritate France. Louis Philippe was personally most anxious to preserve peace, and went so far as to dismiss ༤ hiers; and the Queen, feeling that some return should made by this country, found herself in conflict with Lord Palmerston. The Foreign Minister urged that the French, after having failed to extort concessions upon the Turkish Question by menaces of foreign war,' were now trying to obtain them by saying that such concessions are necessary in order to prevent revolution in France.' The Queen, in reply, insisted that, while the 1 danger of revolution might be exaggerated, it did exist; and that there was nothing inconsistent with the honour and dignity of this country in 'attempts to soften the irritation still existing in France or to bring France back to her former position in the Oriental Question.' France, she said, had been in the wrong and had been humbled, 'but, therefore, it is easier than if we had failed to do

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something to bring matters right again' ('Letters,' 1, pp. 291-315). Her intervention certainly aided the happy adjustment of our relations with France.

In 1843, Queen Victoria paid a visit to the King and Queen of the French, who some years earlier had suggested an informal visit to her at Brighton. Recent experience has made us familiar with State visits, and it is easy to underestimate the importance of the step then taken. No Sovereign of this country, after succeeding to the throne, had left the British Isles since George II had paid his last visit to Hanover in 1755; and no foreign monarch, while in the possession of his throne, had, for some centuries, been entertained in this country, except when the Allied Sovereigns visited London after the fall of Napoleon. The last State visit to France was the meeting of Henry VIII and Francis I on the Field of Cloth of Gold. The visit was, therefore, no customary or conventional formality, but a real compliment; and it took place before the Queen had paid a similar compliment to any German State, even to the Duchy of Coburg, the ruler of which was both her uncle and her father-in-law. The French people gave her a cordial reception, and she returned with a personal regard for Louis Philippe and the dear French family' ('Letters,' 1, 618).

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This regard' was shortly afterwards tested by the publication in the following spring of a pamphlet by the Prince de Joinville entitled Notes sur les forces navales de France,' in which he 'talked of ravaging our coasts and burning our towns.' The Queen was much chagrined, but did not allow the incident to interfere with her general policy; and, when Louis Philippe made a return visit to Windsor in the autumn, he gratified her by his real distress for his son's imprudence. Perhaps not less gratifying were his remark, 'Le Prince Albert, c'est pour moi le Roi,' and his description of the Prince as Mon Frère.' The consideration shown by the King of the French for the delicate position of the Queen's husband was enhanced by the unyielding etiquette of the Prussian Court when the Queen and the Prince paid a visit to Frederick William IV in 1845. O their return from this expedition, they made a second visit to Louis Philippe.

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The cordiality of these relations cooled during the long controversy about the 'Spanish Marriages.' The Queen was most anxious that Great Britain and France 'should not appear at Madrid as countenancing conflicting parties' among the suitors of the young Spanish Queen and her sister; but Louis Philippe took advantage of the considerate hesitation shown by the British Government, and the Queen was naturally and justly indignant. 'Have confidence in him I fear I never can again,' she wrote to the King of the Belgians, and Peel, who is here [Windsor] on a visit, says a war may arise any moment once that the good understanding is disturbed' ('Letters,' ,126). In the beginning of 1848, when Louis Philippe lost a devoted sister, the Queen, after consulting Lord John Russell, resumed personal relations by a letter of condolence. A few weeks later, the King of the French was an exile in England.

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The Queen treated the exiled family with great kindness and hospitality, but she fully appreciated the necessity of avoiding any suggestion of political sympathy with Orleanists in France. You will naturally understand,' she told the King of the Belgians, 'that we cannot make cause commune with them, and cannot take a hostile position opposite to the new state of things in France' ('Letters,' II, 183). She was willing to give Louis Napoleon a fair chance, and in December 1848, hailed his coming election as a sign of better imes,' though she added, 'But that one should have to wish for him is really wonderful.' In February 1849, he praised his conduct as 'full of courage and energy." The coup d'état, in December 1851, was a shock to her, s to healthy opinion everywhere in this country; and Lord John Russell's dismissal of Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, on the ground of his expressed pproval of it before the Government had come to any onclusion on the subject, gave, for many reasons, great atisfaction to the Court. But it is abundantly clear rom the Queen's correspondence that she was not ostile to the new Government if it should satisfy the rench people. Writing on Dec. 9, she assumed that hose in France who wished for order would rally round he President; on the 30th, she suggested to the King

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of the Belgians that it was the unwise candidature of his brother-in-law, the Prince de Joinville, which 'led Louis Napoleon to take so desperate a course'; and on Jan. 20, 1852, she wrote to the King of the Belgians:

'We shall try and keep on the best of terms with the President, who is extremely sensitive and susceptible, but for whom, I must say, I have never had any personal hostility; on the contrary, I thought that during 1849 and 1850 we owed him all a good deal, as he certainly raised the French Government de la boue. But I grieve over the tyranny and oppression practised since the coup d'état, and it makes everything very uncertain, for though I believe it in every way his wish and his policy not to go to war, still il peut y être entraîné' ('Letters,' vol. II, cap. 21).

An opportunity of showing a friendly dispositon was not missed in the end of the year. Some of the European Courts were offended by the assumption of the title of Emperor; others took exception to the numeral III, which, indeed, in view of the fact that no Napoleon II ever reigned, was scarcely suited to a title conferred by popular election. The Tsar addressed the new Emperor as 'mon cher ami' instead of mon frère.' Queen Victoria had no hesitation about his full recognition, and, with regard to the numeral, she thought that, 'objectionable as this appellation no doubt is, it may hardly be worth offending France and her ruler by refusing to recognise it, when it is of such importance to prevent their considering themselves the aggrieved party' ('Letters,' II, 482). The Second Empire was officially proclaimed on Dec. 3; and, on the following day, the Queen wrote to my good Brother, the Emperor of the French,' a cordial letter expressing her invariable attachment and esteem and sincere friendship and regard.' The new French Emperor owed to Queen Victoria his introduction into royal circles; as it has been epigrammatically put, she made an honest man of him so far as this was possible.

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Relations with Napoleon III continued for some years to be very friendly. In September 1854, Prince Albert visited the Emperor in a camp between Boulogne and St Omer' (to us the phrase is suggestive both of 1803 and of 1914); six months later, the Emperor, accompanied

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