Fearing the anarchist
threat, Victoria
became an impressively
early advocate
for international
cooperation in
counterterrorism
THE DOWNFALL OF
THE QUEEN’S 007
How Vicky’s battle of wits
with Bismarck ended in
failure for the British agentPrincess Victoria (known to her family
as Vicky), wife of the Prussian crown
prince Fritz, was one of her mother’s
most prized assets in intelligence
gathering. And Prussia’s ambitious
minister-president Otto von Bismarck
was under no illusions about her. He
saw Vicky as nothing less than an
English agent, and interpreted her
intimacy with Queen Victoria as
potentially treasonous.
He had a point. Vicky wrote to her
mother: “I send you all the papers so
that you may see what Fritz has done,
UCKFCPFYTKV VGPq#UJKUKPʚWGPEG
grew, Bismarck sought to freeze her
out. Under constant surveillance from
his spies, Vicky, Fritz and the queen
increasingly communicated by cypher.
6JQUGGʘQTVUDGECOGHWVKNGCU
Vicky and Fritz were cut out of the
inner circle and their letters contained
ever less-sensitive information. By the
end of the 1880s, Vicky warned Queen
Victoria that Bismarck’s “creatures”
JCFKPNVTCVGFJGTGPVQWTCIG9JGP
she returned from one trip abroad, she
discovered that someone had broken
into her rooms and searched her desks
CPFNKPIECDKPGV
As tensions grew, the British am-
bassador warned Vicky not to write
anything incriminating on paper. The
best spy in Britain’s royal intelligence
network had been neutralised, and
Victoria’s ability to outmanoeuvre her
government dramatically declined.Although Britain abstained from many of the
votes, its delegate did agree to increase
intelligence sharing across borders. Victoria
knighted him for his services.
When Victoria died in 1901, she had spent
more than 63 years on the throne. She had
enjoyed a remarkable career in her own secret
service, of sorts. She had demanded intelli-
gence, wined and dined spies, and conducted
her own DIY intelligence analysis – albeit not
very objectively. Far from being isolated from
politics, Victoria persistently berated minis-
ters, pressing them to be tougher on surveil-
lance. She insisted on access to intelligence
received by her ministers, while developing
her own private networks that she used to
outmanoeuvre her governments. As her reign
progressed, she increasingly saw security
policy as her own fiefdom. She used intelli-
gence to pursue her own interests, creating
tensions between the crown and ministers in
the process. Knowledge, after all, is power.with beleaguered sovereigns, Victoria wanted
to evict all refugees from Britain. The prime
minister, Gladstone, was horrified by this very
un-British suggestion. However, the anarchist
threat only grew and, within the following
two decades, terrorists killed French presi-
dent Sadi Carnot (in 1894) and Empress
Elisabeth of Austria-Hungary (1898). Victoria
remonstrated that Britain’s willingness to
allow “these monstrous anarchists and
assassins to live here and hatch their horrible
plots in our country” was doing the govern-
ment “incalculable harm abroad”.
In response, she became an impressively
early advocate for international cooperation
in counterterrorism. Influenced by the queen’s
lobbying, in 1898 the British prime minister,
the Marquess of Salisbury, sent a delegation to
a conference in Rome to discuss just that.Learn more about the queen’s life in the
BBC Radio 4 series Encounters with
Victoria, presented by Lucy Worsley:
bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004sd5Rory Cormac is professor of international
relations at the University of Nottingham.
Richard J Aldrich is professor of international
security at the University of Warwick. Their new
book, The Secret Royals: Spying and the Crown,
from Victoria to Diana, published by Atlantic
Books, is available nowLISTENPrussia’s ambitious
leader Otto von Bismarck
in 1866. He viewed Queen
Victoria’s daughter as a British spyEmpire under threat
A painting of a battle between
Russian and Ottoman troops during
the war of 1877–78. Victoria used
intelligence to push the British
government to interveneBR
ID
GE
M
AN
/G
ET
TY
IM
AG
ES
/A
LA
M
Y