Metternich, reported Lamb, received the news of the French proceedings at Ancona very calmly. He expressed himself as confident that Gallois' actions would be disavowed by his government. "The Emperor," he declared, "would be justified in falling upon the French at Ancona, but he was too great a sovereign to receive an insult from the captain of a frigate or the colonel of a regiment." It was to England that Austria looked for support at this crisis. She ruled the seas and it rested with her to decide whether, or not, France should hold the command of the Mediterranean. About a week after this conversation had taken place Metternich informed Lamb that he was perfectly satisfied with the explanations which Marshal Maison had been instructed to give, and that no demand would be made to the French government for the evacuation of Ancona, so long as the Austrians continued to occupy the Legations.[203]
This condition of affairs was allowed to prevail for some years. Both Powers retained their troops in the Papal States, and the embarrassing necessity under which the French government was placed of making the occupation of Ancona depend upon the presence of an Austrian garrison at Bologna constituted Metternich's revenge for M. Périer's intervention in Italy.
The attention of the _corps diplomatique_ had not been concentrated exclusively upon the complications to which the French proceedings at Ancona might give rise. Early in the month of February it was known that Count Orloff had been despatched by the Tsar on a special mission to the Hague. It was in deference to the wishes of Nicholas that the Courts of Vienna and of Berlin had decided to withhold their ratification of the treaty of separation of November 15, 1831, and the keenest curiosity prevailed as to the instructions with which the Tsar's emissary had been furnished. In respect to the condition of affairs in the Low Countries Russia was in a somewhat peculiar situation as regards England. During the Napoleonic war Russia had borrowed at Amsterdam a sum of 25,000,000 florins. At the peace the King of the Netherlands and the King of Great Britain agreed respectively to bear one-half of the charge of this debt. But it was provided that, should at any time the King of the Netherlands be deprived of his sovereignty over the Belgian provinces, this charge should cease. The contingency referred to in the treaty had come about, under circumstances never contemplated by the statesmen by whom it had been drawn up. They had hoped to give Russia a direct interest in preserving the union, but it was now the British government which desired to see it abolished and the Tsar who wished it to be maintained. Without doubt, according to the letter of the treaty, England was no longer bound to pay a share of the Russian-Dutch loan. Judged by the spirit of it, however, she could not honestly escape from the charge which she had undertaken to bear. This last construction of the agreement was adopted by Palmerston, who admitted the British liability in a new convention, by the terms of which the Tsar guaranteed that, should the stipulations made for the independence and neutrality of Belgium be endangered by the course of events, he would contract no other engagements without a previous agreement with his Britannic Majesty. Palmerston had thus earned the gratitude of the Tsar and had, in addition, made it difficult for him to intervene actively on behalf of the King of Holland.[204] Ministers were debarred, however from referring to this inner history of the affair in Parliament, where their policy in the matter of the Russian loan was severely attacked both by the Tory Opposition and by the Radicals, who deprecated the notion of voting pecuniary assistance to the autocratic government of Russia.