The French government altogether declined to associate itself with Great Britain in protesting against the Decree of Durango. Lord Granville, who upon the return of the Whigs to office had resumed his post in Paris, found Louis Philippe and his chief ministers, with the exception of the Duc de Broglie, strongly opposed to any step of that kind. France, they argued, was differently circumstanced to Great Britain, inasmuch as she was not a party to the Eliot Convention. Moreover, were she to use threatening language to Don Carlos and were he to disregard her menaces, she would be driven to send troops across the frontier, and both the French and English governments had agreed that direct intervention was highly inexpedient for the moment. In vain Lord Granville protested that to remonstrate against the barbarity of the decree was a duty which the government owed to the men, who had been transferred from the French to the Spanish service. Neither that argument, nor the consideration that any appearance of lack of harmony between the French and British Cabinets must necessarily encourage the Pretender, had the smallest effect upon Louis Philippe or upon the majority of his ministers.[355]
Lord Palmerston's indignation at Louis Philippe's conduct was increased by the news which he was receiving from Lisbon. Dom Pedro had died on September 24, 1834, and the Cortes had, thereupon, declared the Queen to be of age, although she was not yet sixteen years of age. Shortly afterwards she had married Augustus of Leuchtenberg, the young duke whose candidature for the Belgian throne had so alarmed Louis Philippe in 1830. Their married life, however, was of brief duration. On March 25, 1835, Maria became a widow and the Cortes at once urged her to lose no time in contracting a second alliance. The young queen was quite ready to comply and soon, afterwards, informed her ministers, Marshal Saldanha and the Duke of Palmella, that she purposed marrying either the Duc de Nemours or the Prince de Joinville, both sons of Louis Philippe. Her selection of the French princes, wrote Lord Howard de Walden,[356] was to be ascribed to the influence of her aunt, the Marquise de Loulé, who was afterwards discovered to have been in the pay of Louis Philippe.[357] The British minister, however, succeeded in obtaining from Saldanha a promise in writing that he would resign, sooner than allow the French marriage to take place.[358] In Paris, meanwhile, Louis Philippe emphatically denied to the British ambassador that he had ever entertained the idea of bringing forward one of his sons as a candidate for the hand of the Queen of Portugal.[359] It seems certain, nevertheless, that some intrigue with that purpose in view had been in progress, and that it was not persevered with on account of the opposition of the British government. In the opinion of Lord Howard de Walden, it was to be attributed to the machinations of the French party at the Court of Lisbon that Queen Maria, about this time, displayed the greatest reluctance to sanction the despatch of a Portuguese division to the assistance of the _Christinos_.[360] But before long it was announced that she was betrothed to Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, a nephew of the King of the Belgians. The marriage was celebrated on April 9, 1836, and from that moment the influence of the French party at the Court diminished.