arising from the extreme
irritability of English public opinion against Germany on the Danish
question, were very great, and there can be little doubt that the
personal influence of the Queen with the German Sovereign was an
appreciable influence, and it was her desire that a paragraph in the
Queen's Speech opening Parliament in February 1864 was erased. Words
which contained at least a veiled or attributed threat to Germany were
omitted, and instead of them an inoffensive paragraph was inserted
expressing the Queen's ardent desire for peace and recording the
earnest efforts she had made to maintain it.[51] At the same time
when, by the Convention of Gastein in August 1865, the Duchies were
severed from the Danish throne and placed in the virtual possession of
Prussia and Austria, the protest of Lord Russell against so flagrant a
violation of public right, and especially of the right of the people
to be consulted on their own destiny, was drawn up with her full
assent and indeed in a great measure at her suggestion.[52]

On other occasions her remonstrances were disregarded, and courses
were pursued to which she strongly objected. The surrender after
Majuba was in her opinion a pusillanimous abandonment of the English
flag, and it was with extreme reluctance that she acquiesced in it.
Still more vehement were her feelings about the long abandonment of
General Gordon in the Soudan. She had been indefatigable in urging on
the Ministry of Gladstone the duty of speedy measures for his rescue,
and when, owing to the long delay of the Ministry, the most heroic of
modern Englishmen perished at Khartoum, her indignation knew no
bounds. In a letter to his sisters, burning with mingled pity and
indignation, she pronounced his 'cruel though heroic fate' to be 'a
stain left upon England,' which she keenly felt. This was one of the
few occasions in which she allowed her sentiments in hostility to the
policy of her Ministers to appear publicly before the world. In
general, she had a profound distrust of the policy and judgment of Mr.
Gladstone, and she fully shared the dread with which the great body of
English statesmen looked upon the Home Rule policy. It was no new
sentiment on her part, for she had lived through the Repeal agitation
of O'Connell, and as far back as 1843 Sir Robert Peel had somewhat
unconstitutionally declared in Parliament that he was authorised by
the Queen to state that she, like her predecessor, was resolved