Christopher Hibbert - Edward VII - The Last Victorian King

Thereafter, although he disapproved of the Tsar’s autocratic outlook and was frequently suspicious of Russia’s ‘promises and protestations’, he strove as King towards détente with Russia, stressing in his correspondence with the Tsar his desire to come to a ‘satisfactory settlement… similar to the one … concluded with France’. Hearing, in Scotland in 1906, that Baron Isvolsky, the Russian Foreign Minister, was in Paris, the King returned to London at once in the hope that a meeting might be arranged. Responding to the King’s overture, Isvolsky came to London for discussions which, as Hardinge said, ‘were entirely due to King Edward’s initiative [and] helped materially to smooth the path of the negotiations then in progress for an agreement with Russia’. This, Hardinge added, ‘was just one of those many instances when King Edward’s “flair” for what was right was so good and beneficial to our foreign relations’.

The King’s diplomatic skills were again appreciated in 1908 when he met the Tsar at Tallinn, then known as Revel, a meeting arranged — after the signing of the convention with Russia — in the hope that better relations might be established between the King and the Tsar, who, uneasy about England’s ties with Japan, had not long before condemned the King as ‘the greatest mischief-maker and the most deceitful and dangerous intriguer in the world’. Hardinge was worried on this occasion by the King’s intention both to raise the delicate question of the persecution of Russian Jews, about which he had received a memorandum from Lord Rothschild, and to mention Sir Ernest Cassel’s interest in the flotation of a Russian loan. To raise the question of the Jews was considered not to be ‘constitutionally right or proper’, while to become involved at the same time in a business transaction on behalf of a Jewish financier was held ‘to be unwise to say the least’. His concern for the welfare of the Jews, however, and his desire to oblige an old friend overrode considerations of prudence. So both the pogroms and the loan were mentioned. But although the King clearly questioned Sir Arthur Nicolson, British Ambassador in St Petersburg, on all sorts of subjects which he thought might crop up in discussions with the Tsar, little else of political importance was discussed. And neither were the pogroms halted, nor did the loan materialize. Yet, as Nicolson acknowledged, the meeting was a notable success. The Russian Prime Minister, Stolypin, was greatly impressed by the King’s unexpected knowledge of Russian affairs which, thanks to Nicolson, he had been able to parade. ‘Ah,’ Stolypin commented, ‘on voit bien que c’est un homme d’état!’ At the same time, the Tsar ‘repeatedly expressed his great satisfaction at the visit of the King and Queen’. It had, he said, ‘sealed and confirmed the intention and spirit of the Anglo–Russian agreement’, so Hardinge reported to Edward Grey; and the Tsar was convinced ‘that the friendly sentiments which now prevailed between the two governments could only mature and grow stronger … A glance at the Russian press of all shades and opinions shows conclusively how extremely popular throughout Russia the King’s visit had become, and how it was welcomed as the visible sign of a new era in Anglo–Russian relations.’

The King was criticized for declining to take a Cabinet minister with him on the grounds that to have done so ‘would have made him feel like a prisoner handcuffed to a warder while conversing with his relatives through a grille’. And he was also censured for having made the Tsar an Admiral of the Fleet without consulting Reginald McKenna, the First Lord of the Admiralty. He accepted the criticism in good part. As Knollys explained to the Prime Minister, Asquith:

He had never thought of proposing that the Emperor of Russia should be appointed an Admiral of the Fleet until the idea suddenly struck him at Revel. [He explained] that he was totally unaware of the constitutional point or else he certainly would not have said anything to the Emperor without first consulting you and Mr McKenna and that he regretted he had, without knowing it, acted irregularly … He was always anxious to keep on the best of terms with his ministers … Nothing could have been ‘nicer’ or more friendly than he was.

The King’s errors, in fact, such as they were, were minor in comparison with the rapport established at Tallinn with the Tsar, who openly admitted to having got on much better with the King than he had done the year before with the Kaiser at Björkö. But reading reports of the King of England’s friendly conversations with the Tsar, the Germans, alarmed by the possible consequences of the meeting, spoke again of ‘encirclement’ and ‘English machinations’.

The King’s relations with Germany had never been easy. Persistent trouble in the past had been caused by his frequent displays of sympathy for the family of the last King of Hanover, whose son, the Duke of Cumberland, had married Queen Alexandra’s youngest sister, Thyra. Hanover had found itself on the losing side in the Austro–Prussian War of 1866, and had subsequently been incorporated in the German Empire. The King, as Prince of Wales, had constantly supported the Hanoverians in their attempts to regain their confiscated fortune and territories. Nor had he hesitated to raise the awkward question of their restitution whenever opportunity offered or, when the old King of Hanover died in exile in Paris, to walk at the head of a long procession of mourners at the funeral. This occasion, attended by numerous of the Prince’s Royalist and Bonapartist friends, had assumed the nature of an anti-Prussian demonstration.

There had also been trouble over the Prince of Wales’s known sympathy for France during the Franco–Prussian War. He had been reported as having actually expressed his hopes of a Prussian defeat at a dinner at the French Embassy soon after the War began; and although Francis Knollys had assured Count von Bernstorff, the Prussian Ambassador in London, that the close family connection which the Prince ‘enjoyed with Prussia’ made it impossible for him ‘to entertain the opinion which he was alleged to have expressed’, Bernstorff had not been convinced. Nor had Prince Bismarck, the Imperial Chancellor, who had gone so far as to complain in public that their country had an enemy in the heir to the British throne.

The Prince of Wales had given further offence to Bismarck a few years later when the Prince’s nineteen-year-old niece, Princess Victoria, daughter of the Crown Princess of Prussia, had fallen in love with Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who had been chosen to rule Bulgaria, after its liberation from the Turks, as a Russian nominee. He was a most charming young man, handsome and gifted; but there had not only been strong political objections to the marriage, there had also been the dynastic objection that Prince Alexander was the child of a morganatic marriage between Prince Alexander of Hesse and a Polish countess. Princess Victoria’s mother, however, had dismissed these obstacles as of little importance. And so had her brother, the Prince of Wales. He had considered that Prince Alexander was just the husband for his young niece; and, after long and pleasant conversations with him at Darmstadt, where they had both attended the wedding of Prince Alexander’s brother, Prince Louis of Battenberg, the Prince of Wales had taken Prince Alexander on to Berlin where the Crown Prince had been persuaded by his wife and brother-in-law that Prince Alexander was, indeed, a worthy suitor.

The Crown Prince’s father, the old Kaiser Wilhelm I, had certainly not been persuaded, though. Nor had the Crown Prince’s son, Prince Wilhelm, then aged twenty-five, and strongly opposed to his parents’ liberal outlook. Nor had Prince Bismarck, who had spoken to the Prince of Wales about the insignificance of romantic love in comparison with a country’s destiny. Disregarding both Bismarck’s rebuke and the Kaiser’s ban on any further discussions about the possibility of such an unsuitable match, the Prince of Wales and his sister had arranged for a secret meeting between the two young lovers, who had been encouraged to believe that, although the marriage could not take place while the Kaiser was still alive, the situation would be transformed once the old man was dead.