Edward VII by Richard Davenport-Hines

Author:Richard Davenport-Hines [Davenport-Hines, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241014813
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-01-09T00:00:00+00:00

4

‘… and Every Inch the First Gentleman in Europe’

A new trans-European railway system, steamships and his own questing nature made Edward VII the best-travelled member of the royal family until they began flying in aircraft. In 1862 he became the first English prince to visit the Holy Land since Henry IV in 1392. Within a few years this royal itinerant knew most European capitals, including Athens, Constantinople and St Petersburg. Outside his continent, he visited Canada, the United States, Egypt and India. His journeys were a rejection of his monotonous boyhood detention.

In the prince’s youth, Prussia was the junior of five Great Powers: Austria, Britain, France, Russia and Prussia constituted the Concert of Europe established after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. In the royal household the allegiances forged at the Battle of Waterloo held until 1888. Bertie had entirely German ancestry, spoke German as a first language, was never the foe of Germans, and recognized confederated Germany as central to continental stability. Yet by his mid twenties he was set on formulating resistance to Hohenzollern Prussia. His efforts in this direction were hindered by the fact that although Queen Victoria devolved ceremonial and social duties to him, she was determined to remain politically paramount. His requests to see government papers, especially diplomatic dispatches, were refused because she fancied that he might be indiscreet. Instead, winnowed specimens of confidential Foreign Office material was supplied to him by her sanction.

The death in 1863 of King Frederick VII of Denmark provoked a succession crisis. The Danish throne devolved through the female line upon Frederick’s cousin, Christian IX, Princess Alexandra’s father; but under Salic law, the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Saxe-Lauenburg could only pass by male descent. The duchies therefore became separated from Denmark, just as the kingdom of Hanover had been divided from the United Kingdom when Victoria ascended her throne in 1837, and as the grand duchy of Luxemburg would be separated from the kingdom of the Netherlands in 1890. Christian IX tried to incorporate the duchies into his kingdom on his succession; but the German Confederation, which had replaced the Holy Roman Empire in 1815 and was dominated by Austria, upheld the claim to the duchies of Frederick, Prince of Augustenburg, who was the senior heir under Salic law. After Danes and Germans went to war, Queen Victoria’s son-in-law Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia led his forces to victory in the Battle of Dybbøl (18 April 1864). The three duchies were then annexed by Austria and Prussia: this usurpation by Augustenburg was consolidated by the marriage of his daughter to the future Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany.

Next, on 15 June 1866, Lord Augustus Loftus, the ambassador in Berlin, was sitting in Bismarck’s garden enjoying the evening breeze when the clocks chimed midnight. The Iron Chancellor astounded Loftus by checking his watch and then saying in French, with malicious unexpectedness, ‘At this moment our troops have entered Hanover, Saxony and Hesse-Cassel.’ Prussia was moving to dislodge Austria from leadership of the German Confederation, and to best the German states that were allied to Austria.

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