quiet under the rule of Christina, the Queen Mother,
and her daughter Isabella, the young Queen. In
1846, the question of Isabella’s marriage, which
had for long been the subject of diplomatic speculations,
suddenly became acute. Various candidates for
her hand were proposed—among others, two
cousins of her own, another Spanish prince, and Prince
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, a first cousin of Victoria’s
and Albert’s; for different reasons, however,
none of these young men seemed altogether satisfactory.
Isabella was not yet sixteen; and it might have been
supposed that her marriage could be put off for a few
years more; but this was considered to be out of the
question. “Vous ne savez pas,” said
a high authority, “ce que c’est que ces
princesses espagnoles; elles ont le diable au corps,
et on a toujours dit que si nous ne nous hations pas,
l’heritier viendrait avant le mari.”
It might also have been supposed that the young Queen’s
marriage was a matter to be settled by herself, her
mother, and the Spanish Government; but this again
was far from being the case. It had become, by
one of those periodical reversions to the ways of
the eighteenth century, which, it is rumoured, are
still not unknown in diplomacy, a question of dominating
importance in the foreign policies both of France and
England. For several years, Louis Philippe and
his Prime Minister Guizot had been privately maturing
a very subtle plan. It was the object of the
French King to repeat the glorious coup of Louis XIV,
and to abolish the Pyrenees by placing one of his
grandsons on the throne of Spain. In order to
bring this about, he did not venture to suggest that
his younger son, the Duc de Montpensier, should marry
Isabella; that would have been too obvious a move,
which would have raised immediate and insurmountable
opposition. He therefore proposed that Isabella
should marry her cousin, the Duke of Cadiz, while Montpensier
married Isabella’s younger sister, the Infanta
Fernanda; and pray, what possible objection could
there be to that? The wily old King whispered
into the chaste ears of Guizot the key to the secret;
he had good reason to believe that the Duke of Cadiz
was incapable of having children, and therefore the
offspring of Fernanda would inherit the Spanish crown.
Guizot rubbed his hands, and began at once to set the
necessary springs in motion; but, of course, the whole
scheme was very soon divulged and understood.
The English Government took an extremely serious view
of the matter; the balance of power was clearly at
stake, and the French intrigue must be frustrated
at all hazards. A diplomatic struggle of great
intensity followed; and it occasionally appeared that
a second War of the Spanish Succession was about to
break out. This was avoided, but the consequences
of this strange imbroglio were far-reaching and completely
different from what any of the parties concerned could
have guessed.