The Greville Memoirs, Part 2 (of 3), Volume 3 (of 3): A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852Greville, Charles
History
The Greville Memoirs, Part 2 (of 3), Volume 3 (of 3): A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852
Greville, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901
answer, commenting in strong terms on the conduct of France, and
expressing his entire concurrence with Palmerston in every particular.
This reply must have been gall and wormwood to Louis Philippe, and very
disagreeable to Guizot. Jarnac wrote an answer to Lord John, rather a
rigmarole, but defending the King. This answer seems to have had great
success at Paris, whatever it may have had here, for there were letters
from both the King and Guizot; the first thanking his champion in very
warm terms, and the latter praising his zeal and eloquence.
[Sidenote: THE RUPTURE.]
The estrangement was now complete, and resentment openly testified. The
two Courts were _brouillÈs_; the Ministers collectively, Palmerston
individually, and Normanby at Paris, all put themselves in a cold and
forbidding attitude. Our refusal to join with France in the Cracow
affair was received as a hostile expression, and it is evident that the
King and Guizot have been getting more and more uneasy at the
estrangement, in which we persist. It is, however, not easy to discover
how far the Monarch and the Minister are acting in real conjunction, and
whether the former is faithful or false to the latter. Guizot's conduct
and the tone of his letters do not entirely correspond; the latter
evince a strong desire to obtain a sufficient security about the Coburg
alliance, and certainly strenuous efforts were made by Jarnac to extract
some document which might have been so considered; while, if we judge by
his acts, it would seem that all the French wanted was a pretext for
concluding the marriage, and such a written assurance as he kept
demanding would have counteracted their clever scheme of deception and
fraud. It strikes me as very possible that the King and Guizot were not
acting together; that the intrigue was the King's, which Guizot did not
dare or could not defeat or obstruct, but that while he was obliged to
work out the King's design, he would have been really glad if we had
given such clear and formal assurances as would have rendered the
execution of the plan impossible. I did not conceal from Jarnac my
opinion that he had failed to make his case any better; he was not a
little mortified at the admiration I expressed of John Russell's letter,
in which I in vain attempted to get him to join.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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