Queen Victoria to Viscount Palmerston

THE PEACE NEGOTIATIONS

Buckingham Palace, 6th March 1856.

With reference to Lord Clarendon's letter, the Queen must say that she, though very reluctantly, shares his opinion, that we have no choice now but to accept the peace, even if it is not all we could desire, and if another campaign might have got us better terms. She feels certain that the bad accounts of the French Army in the Crimea, which appears to suffer now all the misery which ours suffered last year at the worst time of the siege, will more than ever indispose the Emperor from risking a renewal of hostilities. It is affirmed that the French have beyond 20,000 men in hospital!

If we are to have this peace, however, the Queen must again agree with Lord Clarendon that we ought not ourselves to depreciate it, as our Press has done the deeds of our Army.

With regard to the principalities, it is the Queen's opinion that nothing will oppose a barrier to Russia and her intrigues but the arrangement which will satisfy the people themselves, viz. an hereditary monarchy. The example of Egypt might perfectly well be followed in Wallachia and Moldavia.

The subject of Poland would, in the Queen's opinion, be much better left unintroduced into the present negotiations; we have no claim arising out of this war to ask Russia to make concessions on that head, which, moreover, would be treated by her as an internal question not admitting of foreign interference.

The clause in the Treaty of Vienna about the Bonapartes is a dead letter, as this very Treaty, now to be signed, will prove, and the Emperor would act very unwisely to call for an alteration in which all Powers who signed the original Treaty would claim to be consulted. We have every interest not to bring about a European Congress pour la Révision des Traités, which many people suspect the Emperor wishes to turn the present Conference into.

The Queen wishes only to add that, should Prussia be asked to join in the final Treaty on the ground of her having been a party to the July Treaty, we should take care that it does not appear that this was an act of courtesy of all the other Powers towards Prussia except England, who need not be made to take additional unpopularity in Germany upon herself.