Excerpt from Monarchs and Men

IN the month of January 1842, Frederick William IV made a journey to England. He had, nineteen months before, written with his own hand, not only to Queen Victoria, but to the Prince Consort of Her Most Gracious Majesty, to say that he had ascended the throne of the Hohenzollerns; he had by this gracious act, and many subsequent indications of courtly respect, won the heart of the young ruler, and had, under the influence of Bunsen and Heinrich von Biilow, shown himself throughout his brief rule an admirer of the British character. Were not the chief continental Powers, Russia and France, vying with each other for England's favour Prussia, and the German Alliance in which Frederick William and his ministers saw a Power of the first rank, had. To stand well with this much-wooed island-nation. That did not indeed seem difficult, according to Biilow's memoir on the internal condi tion of Great Britain. Robert Peel, the new Premier, was, on account of his piety, a man after the heart of the Prussian King, and he had no political hostility to Germany. Even Palmerston had never been an enemy of Germany, according to Biilow; and Lord Aberdeen, his successor, was particularly welcome to the Berlin court, since he was a supporter of Metternich.

This feeling of the Hohenzollerns promised to be of considerable advantage to Britain. Stockmar of Coburg, who had been reared in the school of his countryman, Leopold, and was a power on the Thames at that time, knew on which side to approach the effusive monarch at his advice Frederick William was invited to be godfather at the baptism of Prince Albert Edward. Metternich, it is true, warned him of the danger of a Protestant agitation, and the Tsar Nicholas was opposed to the journey, since it might lead to a meeting with the King of Belgium or one of the French princes. Frederick William, however, would not be dissuaded. He felt that he was greatly honoured by the godfather ship, and was so convinced of the irresistibility of his charm that he sought difficulties rather than avoided them. He met no member of the Orleans family, but saw Leopold of Belgium at Ostend as he crossed, and afterwards visited him at Laeken, in order to obtain influence over him, although, he was at that time regarded as a usurper and stealer of the crown by monarchs who boasted their legiti macy. No living mortal could resist his eloquence. By the time he had talked to the Coburger for two hours the relations of Belgium and the Netherlands were in perfect order, and the question of the Belgio Luxemburg frontier was settled on the lines of the tariff-union.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.