Victorians in Arms: The French Invasion Scare of 1859-60
Robert E. Zegger describes the alarming dip in Anglo-French relations, half way through the reign of Napoleon III.
Queen Elizabeth’s state visit to France in 1972 marked an end and a beginning in Anglo-French relations, an end to a decade of estrangement over entry into the Common Market and the beginning of a new era as equal partners in the European future.
The occasion recalls a similar visit by Queen Victoria during the Crimean War when a British sailor named William Pegg wrote:
‘It is a grand and glorious sight to see how the march of civilization has formed a bond of unity between two nations that have for so many years been at war; or continually suspected and hated each other - England and France - those rivals full of bitterness, have shaken hands across the Channel.’
Anglo-French relations have, indeed, taken many twists and turns, although at no time did these occur so abruptly as during the Second Empire of Louis Napoleon, from 1851 to 1870.
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