House of Commons. The queen had already acknowledged the desirability of a prompt settlement of the long-debated extension of the franchise. She had even told Lord Russell that vacillation or indifference respecting it on the government's part, now that the question was in the air, weakened the power of the crown. But the continental complication reduced a home political ques- tion to small dimensions in the queen's eye. She declined to recognise a reform bill as a matter of the first importance, and she wrote with some heat to Lord Russell that, whatever happened to his franchise proposals in the commons, she would permit no resignation of the ministers until the foreign crisis was passed. Her ministers begged her to remain at Windsor in May instead of paying her usual spring visit to Balmoral. She declined, with the remark that they were bound at all hazards to avert a ministerial crisis. In June the worst happened, alike at home and abroad. War was declared between Prussia and Austria, and Lord Russell's government was defeated while its reform bill was in committee in the House of Commons. On Disputes 19 June Lord Russell forwarded with Lord his resignation to Balmoral and deprecated dissolution. The queen wrote protesting that she was taken completely by surprise. 'In the present state of Europe,' she said, 'and the apathy which Lord Russell himself admits to exist in the country on the subject of reform, the queen cannot think it consistent with the duty which the ministers owe to herself and the country that they should abandon their posts in consequence of their defeat on a matter of detail (not of principle) in a question which can never be settled unless all sides are prepared to make concessions ; and she must therefore ask them to reconsider their decision' (Walpole, Lord John Russell, ii. 415). Lord Russell retorted that his continuance in office was impracticable, and with his retirement he in effect ended his long public life. The queen in her anger regarded his withdrawal as amounting to desertion, and, failing to hasten her departure from Balmoral, suffered the government for some days to lie in abeyance. At length the conservative leader, Lord Derby, accepted her request to form a new ministry, with Disraeli as chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the House of Commons (6 July 1866).
Meanwhile the Austro-Prussian war was waging in Germany, and many of the queen's relatives were in the field, the crown prince alone fighting for Prussia, the rest supporting Austria. She was in constant communication with her kindred on the two sides, and her anxiety was intense. She took charge of the children of Princess Alice of Hesse-Darmstadt, and sent her at Darmstadt much linen for the wounded. The result was not long in doubt. At the outset, the rapid Prussia invasion of Hanover by Prussian seizes troops drove the queen's cousin Prussia seizes Hanover. the king from his throne, and blotted out the kingdom, converting it into a Prussian province. The queen felt bitterly the humiliation of the dissolution of a kingdom which had long been identified with England. She made urgent inquiries after the safety of the expelled royal family of Hanover. The king, who was blind, made his residence at Paris, and in the welfare of him and of his family, especially of his daughter Frederica, whom she called 'the poor lily of Hanover,' her affectionate interest never waned. Elsewhere Prussia's triumph in the war was as quickly assured, and the queen suffered more disappointments. Italy had joined Prussia against Austria. Austria was summarily deprived of Venetia, her last hold on the Italian peninsula, and the union of Italy under Victor Emanuel a project with which the queen had no sympathy was virtually accomplished. The Austrians were decisively defeated at the battle at Sadowa near Koniggratz on 3 July 1866, and the conflict was at an end seven weeks after it had begun. Thus Prussia was finally placed at the head of the whole of North Germany ; its accession to an imperial crown of Germany was in sight, and Austria was compelled to retire from the German confederation. It was with mixed feelings that the queen saw her early hopes of a strong Prussia realised. The price of the victory was abolition of the kingdom of Hanover, loss of territory for her son-in-law of Hesse-Darmstadt, and reduction of power and dignity for the other small German states with which she was lineally associated.
The queen's withdrawal to the quiet of Balmoral in October gave welcome relief after such severe political strains. She repeated a short sojourn, which she had made the year before, with the lately widowed Duchess of Athol, a lady of the bed-chamber, at Dunkeld, and she opened the Aberdeen waterworks at Invercannie (16 Oct. 1866), when for the first time in her widow-hood she herself read the answer to the address of the lord provost. Another public The queen at Wolverhampton. ceremonial in which she took part after her return south revealed the vast store of loyalty which, despite detraction and criticism, the queen still had at her command. On 30 Nov.
