After the Imperial declarations to Baron Hubner, Victor Emmanuel, on the 10th of January, in his Address to his Parliament, had said, “While we respect treaties, we are not insensible to the cry of suffering (_Grido di dolore_) which comes to us from so many parts of Italy.” Austrian troops forthwith began to swarm into the passes of the Tyrol, and to form on the line of the Ticino. Russia encouraged France to the utmost, and from conversations with Lord Palmerston and Lord Clarendon during their visit in autumn to Compiègne, the French Emperor felt convinced that the powerful party in England, led by Palmerston, would give him that moral support which the Queen and her Ministers denied him.[37] The Courts of St. James’s and Berlin were cold friends to the cause of Italian freedom. To them any war which upset the Settlement of 1815 was like the letting out of waters. The victory of either party could bode no good for Prussia, under whose leadership the Queen was even then hopeful that Germany would yet form a united Empire. The triumph of the Hapsburgs would strengthen their position in Germany, and as Herr von Bismarck said, this must mean that “our Kings will again become Electors and vassals of Austria.”[38] The victory of France, on the other hand, would tempt Napoleon III. to seize Belgium and the Rhine Provinces. In Germany public opinion was, on the whole, pro-Austrian. In England, popular feeling, stimulated by the Liberal Party, was decidedly Anti-Austrian. The view of the Tory Ministry was that of Lord Malmesbury, who thought that it was as wicked to dispute the right of Austria to her Italian provinces, as to question that of England to Ireland. Frenchmen, again, were as little inclined to go to war for “an idea” in Lombardy as in the Crimea. It would be tedious to follow the tangled skein of intrigue that finally ended in war. At the outset the advantage lay with Austria, because if she had struck quickly and sharply she might have crushed Sardinia, ere France could have come to her rescue. Protracted negotiation deprived Austria of this advantage, so Napoleon III. welcomed the proposal of England to find a diplomatic solution of the Italian Question--all the more readily that his failure to obtain pledges of absolute neutrality from England and Prussia, caused him to waver from his purpose. It was in the hope that he might be induced, when in this state of mind, to insert a pacific clause in his address to the Chambers, that the Queen, on the 4th of February, wrote to him suggesting this course,[39] in a letter thanking him for his congratulations on the birth of the Princess Royal’s son. Napoleon’s reply was friendly but evasive. He professed great friendship for England, and respect for treaties, but virtually reserved to himself the right to interpret them in his own interests. So matters stood at the beginning of the Session of 1859.