The enlightened obstinacy with which the Queen pressed her objections to this wild scheme caused it to be abandoned, and for the courage and tenacity with which she maintained her position at that crisis England can never be too grateful. She foresaw, what Palmerston ignored, the inevitable conflict between Prussia and France, which she hoped and believed would lead to the unification of Germany, and one almost shudders to think of the position Great Britain would have occupied in 1870, had this offensive and defensive alliance with France been consummated in 1860. Her Majesty had permitted herself to be dragged by Palmerston into a war with Russia “for an idea,” with France as an ally. She could not forget the harsh lesson which that blunder had impressed on her. She could not forget, as easily as did Palmerston, how that alliance left England with little control over her action in war, and still less control over the settlement of the peace which was forced on her by the sudden desertion of her ally. Thwarted at this point, Napoleon and Palmerston renewed the attack at another. Persigny came to Lord John Russell with a suggestion that Austria and France should both pledge themselves not to interfere in Italy unless under a European mandate in case of anarchy, and he proposed that this arrangement might be made “the basis of an agreement between France and England.” The Queen’s answer was crushing. “If,” she wrote, “France and Austria will both abstain from interfering in the affairs of Italy, it will be much the wisest course; but the Queen cannot see why this should require an agreement to be entered into between France and us, who ought not to interfere at all.”[58]