The King of the Belgians to Queen Victoria

Chapter XXIX

1860

Laeken, 6th January 1860.

My dearest Victoria,—I have to thank you for a most affectionate and gracious letter of the 3rd....

I will speak to my pianist about Wagner's Lohengrin; he plays with great taste and feeling, and I purchased a fine Parisian piano to enable him to go on satisfactorily.

Now I must speak a little of passing events. Louis Napoleon wished for a Congress because it would have placed a new authority between himself and the Italians, whom he fears evidently concerning their fondness of assassinating people. The pamphlet, "The Pope and the Congress," remains incomprehensible; it will do him much harm, and will deprive him of the confidence of the Catholics who have been in France his most devoted supporters. Now the Congress is then postponed, but what is to be done with Italy? One notion is, that there would be some arrangement by which Piedmont would receive more, Savoy would go to France, and England would receive Sardinia. I am sure that England would by no means wish to have Sardinia. It will give me great pleasure to hear what Lord Cowley has reported on these subjects. I understand that Louis Napoleon is now much occupied with Germany, and studies its resources. This is somewhat alarming, as he had followed, it seems, the same course about Italy. Gare la bombe, the Prussians may say. One cannot understand why Louis Napoleon is using so many odd subterfuges when plain acting would from the month of September have settled everything. I must say that I found Walewski at that time very sensible and conservative. His retiring will give the impression that things are now to be carried on in a less conservative way, and people will be much alarmed. I know Thouvenel, and liked him, but that was in the poor King's time. In England his nomination will not give much pleasure, I should imagine, as he was in the situation to oppose English notions in the Orient.... Your devoted Uncle,

Leopold R.

Footnote 1: This famous pamphlet, issued (like that of February 1859, ante, p. 313, note 7) under the nominal authorship of M. de la Guéronnière, expounded the Emperor's view that the Pope should be deprived of his temporal dominions, Rome excepted. Its publication brought about the resignation of Count Walewski (who was succeeded by M. de Thouvenel) and the abandonment of the proposed Congress.