Disraeli further endeared himself to the Queen by supporting the idea of a memorial statue of Albert. This, he told the Queen, should ‘represent the character of the Prince himself in the harmony of its proportions, in the beauty of its ornament, and in its enduring nature. . . . a testimony of a sublime life and a transcendent career’. Many would have thought this eulogy a little too melodramatic; Victoria was flattered. In reply, she sent a copy of Albert’s speeches bound in white leather and wrote a letter expressing her ‘deep gratification’ at the tribute he paid to her adored, beloved and great husband. Victoria also congratulated Disraeli on his novel Coningsby. In her journal she confessed that she thought it a ‘very remarkable, strange book. There are some beautiful sentiments in it, and some very striking opinions, – a sort of democratic conservatism, but the same large, patriotic views, he holds now. The story is strange, and the language too stilted and unnatural.’58 Victoria’s fondness of Disraeli was unbounded. In 1876, she made him Earl of Beaconsfield and allowed him to wear the ‘Windsor uniform’, the name of a special dark-blue uniform worn by men of the royal family and a few very senior courtiers at Windsor castle.59 Only a few non-royals such as Melbourne and Wellington were ever given permission to wear it.
Disraeli’s wife had died in 1872 and both he and the Queen regularly talked about how they missed their respective spouses. More importantly, Disraeli encouraged Victoria to become less self-pitying and to recover some of her natural vitality. Soon the Queen discovered a renewed sense of purpose: she began to take more of an interest in public affairs. She enjoyed reading Disraeli’s letters – unlike those Gladstone’s which had been so long that she requested a summary of them. Victoria regarded Disraeli as a servant of the Crown rather than of the people, a belief that Disraeli encouraged. Some thought it an unnaturally close working relationship especially when the two spent hours together in discussion and wrote directly to each other rather than go through their private secretaries. And as with Melbourne, Victoria’s relationship with Disraeli made her dislike anyone who questioned or opposed policies put forward by her friend. Albert’s insistence on the sovereign taking a neutral position had long faded. As a result, the Queen left herself open to the same fluctuations in popularity as that suffered by politicians more generally. Undoubtedly the Queen became increasingly Conservative during Disraeli’s time of office. Certainly she shared Disraeli’s visions of imperial grandeur underpinned by a spirited foreign policy and even more than he was, she was captivated by tales of the romance and fascination of India. Disraeli, a consummate politician, was thus able to harness ‘the monarchy for the uses of popular, revivified Conservatism’.60
The Queen’s social conscience was never particularly strong and she rarely took any interest in the lives of the British people,61 showing as little interest in the social reform agenda of the Disraeli ministry as she had been to the previous Whig reforms. In 1875 Disraeli’s government passed the Artisans Dwelling Act, a Public Health Act, a Sale of Food and Drugs Act, a Factory Act, the Climbing Boys Act, a Merchant Shipping Act and a Trade Union Act. Queen Victoria instructed her private secretary to write to Disraeli expressing her satisfaction of the regulation of Labour Laws and of the Artisans Dwelling Act but did not comment specifically on the other reforms.
In contrast, Queen Victoria took her role as head of the Church of England very seriously. Nevertheless, the monarch preferred Presbyterian simplicity to high Anglican splendour and was the first sovereign to take communion in the Scottish Kirk. Before her accession to the throne, Victoria attended short and plain religious services but on becoming Queen she was forced to switch to the more grandiose rituals of royal Anglican Communion. Victoria disliked lavish worship and particularly viewed the ostentatiousness of cathedral services with distaste. Not surprisingly, the Queen wanted the Anglican Church to remain uncontaminated by what she saw as Romanish influences. The Oxford Movement, a group of High Church members based at the University of Oxford, had successfully urged the Church to reinstate some of the older pre-Reformation forms of Christian worship, namely the use of incense, Eucharistic vestments, candles and the idolisation of the Virgin Mary. In the Queen’s opinion, the Church of England had misguidedly returned to these older traditions, leading to schisms in the Christian Anglican faith. She was concerned that ‘the progress of these alarming Romanising tendencies has become so serious of late, the young clergy seem so tainted with these totally anti-protestant doctrines, and are so self-willed and defiant, that the Queen thinks it absolutely necessary to point out the importance of avoiding any important appointments and preferments in the Church which have ANY leaning that way’.62 Her point of view was certainly a valid one as leading churchmen and other clergy had converted to Roman Catholicism while others had turned to Anglo-Catholicism.
The Queen required her Anglican clergy to be firmly Protestant and her church to return to the low-church rituals she preferred. She urged Disraeli to check the most ‘dangerous and objectionable’ Romanish forms of worship that had been appropriated by some Anglican clergy. Early in 1874, the Queen persuaded Archbishop Tait, the archbishop of Canterbury, to introduce a Public Worship Regulation Act in order to curtail the growing Roman Catholic influences on the Church of England. Disraeli shepherded what he called ‘the Queen’s Bill’ through parliament and cemented the undying gratitude of Victoria who believed that her personal wishes had been carried out.63 In fact, the Bill undermined the Queen’s impartiality: constitutional monarchs were supposed to be above politics and many believed it dangerous for the Queen to advance such a politically controversial measure. Moreover, it alienated high churchmen in the Anglican Church and at the same time heightened anti-Roman Catholic prejudice.
Foreign policy
As ever, the Queen was more interested in foreign policy than domestic affairs. And once again, her family relationships made her partisan. Victoria had disapproved of Gladstone’s approach which, she believed, had Britain playing a submissive role in international affairs. Gladstone had wanted to get rid of land ruled by England; Disraeli, however, sought to enhance English power. During Disraeli’s ministry, the words jingoism and jingoists began to be used, terms which had first been used in a popular music hall song:
We don’t want to fight but by jingo if we do
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men
We’ve got the money too64
In 1875 Victoria was overjoyed when Disraeli secretly bought shares in the Suez Canal which were being sold by the impoverished ruler of Egypt. The Suez Canal, which was built by the French, was a strategic waterway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and with it the route to India. In 1869, 44 per cent of the Suez Canal, jointly owned by Egypt and France, was put up for sale by the Egyptians. Without consulting his Cabinet, Disraeli borrowed £4 million from the Rothschild bank and bought the shares on behalf of the British government. ‘It is just settled, you have it, Madam,’ he wrote to Victoria. The Queen believed that the purchase ‘gives us complete security for India and altogether places us in a very safe position! An immense thing. It is entirely Mr Disraeli’s doing. Only 3 or 4 days ago I heard of the offer and at once supported and encouraged him, when at that moment it seemed doubtful, and then today all has been satisfactorily settled.’65 In the Queen’s view it was a ‘source of great satisfaction and pride to every British heart!’
It got better. Queen Victoria had long been fascinated by India and was ecstatic when, on 1 May 1876, the Royal Titles Bill was passed and Disraeli presented Queen Victoria with the title Empress of India. However, the Royal Titles Bill did not have a smooth passage through parliament. A number of Liberal MPs objected because they felt that it was a title associated with continental despots rather than constitutional monarchs. Gladstone thought it theatrical bombast and folly. Even some in the House of Lords objected. The Queen heard ‘that the Duke of Somerset’s language had been most ungentlemanlike and unusual in the Hse of Lords, disrespectful to me and very offensive to
Mr Disraeli, insinuating that it was all a trick to get my children a higher position at the German Courts! Really too bad and too ridiculous, as it is an absolute falsehood.’66 However, the Duke of Somerset had a point. The Queen was definitely annoyed by continental royals regarding the children of tsars, emperors and kaisers as more important than her own children. More significantly, she had long been aggrieved that every other major European monarchy – Austria, Germany, France and Russia – had an emperor. In 1871, when the German Empire was inaugurated, the new German Emperor thought himself superior to Victoria who was merely a queen. Certainly, the Queen delighted in adding the title of ‘Ind Imp’ on new coins and signing herself Victoria RI (Regina and Imperatrix) on her correspondence.
The Eastern Question: 1875–1878
Between July 1875 and July 1878, the Queen and Disraeli were absorbed in the ‘Eastern Question’, trying to reconcile the opposing parties of the Ottoman and the Russian Empires. The once powerful Turkish Empire had grown steadily weaker and both the Queen and Disraeli noticed that the rest of Europe looked on in anticipation of new territorial acquisitions should the empire fall. Britain and Russia competed to dominate the Mediterranean: the Russians were keen to gain Turkish territory; the British were determined that the Russians should not.
In July 1875 the first threat to the Turkish Empire emerged when the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina rose in rebellion against the Turkish occupation of their country. A Bulgarian uprising followed shortly afterwards. Disraeli and the Queen, who both feared that a weakened Turkey would upset the balance of power in the region, supported Turkish claims to these territories. During the summer of 1876, the brutal atrocities committed by Turkish mercenaries against the Bulgarian nationalists dominated British politics. The Bashi Bazouks, as the mercenaries were called, massacred approximately 15,000 people, at one time burning down a church where a thousand women and children had taken refuge. At first Queen Victoria dismissed the atrocities as fictional scare-mongering but was eventually forced to recognise that ‘the Bashi Bazouks were horribly cruel, killing by torturing in a dreadful way, mutilating before killing. They were horrid looking people, wild peasants with narrow faces, and pointed beards, dressed in no uniform, but the national dress, with many knives stuck about in their belts.’67
In September, Gladstone, now leader of the Opposition, published Bulgarian Horror and the Question of the East, calling upon Britain to withdraw its support for Turkey and proposing independence for the afflicted occupied countries. In the pamphlet, Gladstone declared that ‘no refinement of torture had been spared’; that ‘women and children had been violated, roasted and impaled’; and urged Europe to ‘let the Turks now carry away their abuses in the only possible manner, by carrying off themselves’.68 The Queen thought that Gladstone had ‘most unadvisedly written a violent pamphlet on the “Bulgarian Atrocities”, adding fuel to the flame, really too bad’.69 She was ‘greatly annoyed at the violent language at the so called “Atrocity” meetings, held by Mr Gladstone. . . . It is so unpatriotic to make use of this troublesome question for party ends.’70 Soon the Queen was forced to accept the truth of the atrocities perpetrated by the Bashi Bazouks on the Bulgarians. Even so, she felt that ‘the violence and excitement of people here and against the Govt is most unreasoning’.71 Not for the first time, Victoria misread the mood of the country. There was a public outcry when news of the Bulgarian atrocities was published: Gladstone’s pamphlet sold 200,000 copies in the first month of its publication.
The British called on Turkey to introduce reforms and demobilise its Bashi Bazouks. When Victoria heard that ‘the Turks will hear of no concessions and nothing can be done, only privately!’,72 she met the Sultan unofficially and urged him to agree to the British suggestions for reform.73 The next day the Sultan sent a message ‘that he himself saw no fatal objection to our terms, but that he could not manage his ministers and was afraid of being dethroned’ unless the terms were modified.74 Queen Victoria may have enjoyed this brief exercise of her power but it came to nothing.
On 24 April 1877, in the hope of regaining territories lost in the Crimean War, Russia declared war on the Turkish Empire. Queen Victoria was furious and wrote to one of the critics of Turkey, the Duke of Argyll: ‘I wish therefore to state solemnly, that I know that this war. . . would have been prevented, had Russia not been encouraged in the strongest manner by the extraordinary, and, to me, incomprehensible, agitation carried on by some Members.’75 She was referring to Gladstone and others who criticised the Ottoman Empire. In May 1877 the Queen told Disraeli that she ‘had secret communication from a source I could not divulge, that the Russians were determined to have Constantinople. . . – therefore we ought to keep ourselves in readiness’.76 She insisted that the Russian Emperor ‘should be told distinctly though confidentially that we will not allow him to go to Constantinople’ 77 and instructed her ministers to make it clear that any occupation of Turkish territory would be viewed as a belligerent action.78 And with a Palmerstonian flourish, the Queen directed her ministers to write to Russia stating that if Russia seized Constantinople, then Britain would declare war. She also persuaded Disraeli’s government to strengthen the British Army and to send the British fleet to Constantinople. Here the Queen was merely iterating government policy anyway. Nonetheless, many disliked this truculent reaction, fearing that there would be another Crimean War, with similarly disastrous consequences.
At the beginning of August 1877, the Russian advance was halted. The Queen, guided by Disraeli, once more intervened – and this time without the knowledge of Foreign Secretary Lord Derby. A top-secret private message was sent to the Tsar warning him that British neutrality would come to an end if the Russians continued with their campaign. The military attaché in Russia, Colonel Wellesley, was asked to deliver the message. Wellesley ‘felt great difficulty and delicacy about this secret mission, of which Ld Derby (the foreign secretary at the time) was to know nothing’.79 Colonel Wellesley not only dreaded being put in an embarrassing position if he was questioned by the Emperor but feared that one of the Emperor’s staff would inform Derby.80 Queen Victoria overrode his objections and gave Wellesley
his formal, official answer to deliver, after which he would say, as from himself, that he had several confidential conversations with me, as well as the Prime Minister, and then he was to state what had been agreed on, that this was perhaps his last chance of stopping the war and above all of preventing our being forced into taking part in it, by showing how determined we were.81
Even in this age of secret diplomacy, this was an extraordinary action for both the Queen and Disraeli to take, and most definitely unconstitutional: to negotiate secretly with a foreign government without the knowledge of the foreign secretary and the Cabinet was little short of sedition, an offence seen to undermine the authority of the state. If the foreign secretary, the Cabinet and parliament, let alone the British population, had found out about these secret communications, it would have shaken confidence both in the monarchy and in the prime minister.
During the crisis, Victoria wrote to Disraeli every day and telegraphed him every hour, exhorting him to strong action. The Queen grew more and more belligerent as the crisis developed. She told Disraeli ‘Oh, if the Queen were a man she would like to go and give those Russians. . . a beating.’82 Queen Victoria was displeased by Derby’s conduct of foreign policy, believing him to be the ‘most difficult and unsatisfactory Minister’ she had ever suffered.83 She put enormous pressure on her foreign secretary, made him aware of her views and ‘very strong feelings’ and insisted that British interests be ‘defended by force if necessary’.84 Indeed, the Queen told him that she expected ‘her Government’ to give her ‘an assurance that we shall not again hear of difficulties, and impossibilities, and neutrality. . . we must see our rights secured as well as those of our former faithful ally, Turkey, whom we have by our forced neutrality cruelly abandoned to a most unscrupulous, aggressive, and cruel, foe’.85 She later wrote t
o Disraeli insisting that ‘Lord Derby must go’. Disraeli did not contest the Queen’s wish since he suffered from a fractured relationship with his foreign secretary. Derby resigned. In effect, Disraeli was allowing Queen Victoria to get away with running parts of the Foreign Office: she was now at the height of her political powers and probably at her manipulative worst.
On 31 January 1878, after bitter conflict and acrimonious negotiation with the Turks, the Russians agreed to accept an armistice offered by the enemy. But almost immediately the Russians broke the truce and continued to advance on Constantinople. In March 1878 the Turks were forced to make a peace treaty with the Russians, the Treaty of San Stefano. In the treaty Bosnia and Herzegovina were given independence, a huge autonomous Bulgaria was created and Turkey was forced to concede territory to Serbia and Russia. Disraeli objected to the humiliating treaty imposed on the Turks and threatened war: the fleet, as Queen Victoria had recommended, was sent to Constantinople and arrangements were made to move troops to the Mediterranean. In July 1878 the Great Powers – Britain, Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and Turkey – signed the Treaty of Berlin. It was agreed to re-draw the map of the Balkans: Bulgaria was divided into three, Austria took Bosnia-Herzegovina and Britain gained Cyprus. It was considered a triumph of British diplomacy; Disraeli returned home claiming he brought ‘peace with honour’. The Queen was more than delighted, sending Disraeli a huge bouquet of flowers and offering him the Garter and a Dukedom. Disraeli declined the Dukedom but accepted the Garter.
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