Lower House which he had held so long, Lord Granville retired from the field. The Queen then sent for Lord Palmerston, who formed a Ministry consisting of Lord John Russell, Lord Campbell, Sir G. C. Lewis, Sir George Grey, Sir Charles Wood, the Duke of Newcastle, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Elgin, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Sidney Herbert, Mr. Cardwell, the Duke of Somerset, and Mr. Milner Gibson. A place--the Presidency of the Board of Trade--was offered to Mr. Cobden, which he declined. The first five represented the Whigs; the next six represented the Peelites; Messrs. Gibson and Cobden were selected to conciliate the Radicals; and there could be no doubt that, tested by individual capacity, the combination was one of the strongest ever formed. The Queen deeply regretted the exclusion of Lord Clarendon from the Cabinet, and Mr. Greville says that Lord John Russell’s selfish determination to take the Foreign Office kept Clarendon out. This is hardly just. Lord Clarendon’s pro-Austrian sympathies, and his opposition to Palmerston’s foreign policy, rendered him ineligible for office at the time. The change was attended by one unpleasant incident. The substance of the Queen’s conversations with Lord Granville found their way into the press, and her Majesty’s indignation at this betrayal of her confidence was not concealed. It was clear that some of those with whom Lord Granville had been in negotiation had not kept faith with him, and in the House of Lords (17th of June) he expressed his regret, without, however, divulging the name of the culprit who had betrayed him. The war in the North of Italy had in the meantime been raging furiously. An uninterrupted series of defeats led Austria to the crowning disaster of Solferino (June 24th), and forced her to take refuge in the Quadrilateral. The losses of the French army had been heavy, and a weary struggle before the famous Four Fortresses was not inviting. The victory of Magenta had forced Prussia to mobilise her forces, and Solferino decided her to adopt a policy of “armed mediation”--the object of which was to concert with England and Russia terms of peace reconciling Austrian rights with Italian liberties, and forcing these terms on the combatants. In the end of May the Queen, depressed by the reverses of Austria, had been anxious that England should take her side, but had fortunately been dissuaded from pressing her views on the Government by Lord Malmesbury, who told her plainly that “the country would not go to war even in support of Italian independence, and there would not be ten men in the House of Commons who would do so on behalf of Austria.”[47] For the German States intervention was, however, hardly avoidable, and so the French Emperor prudently began to negotiate for peace.