In 1866 his son Alexander married Princess Dagmar, daughter of Christian IX., King of Denmark, and in 1874 he gave his daughter Marie in marriage to Queen Victoria's second son Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh.

It was in the following year (1875) that Lord Beaconsfield took advantage of a financial crisis in Turkey, and a financial stringency in Egypt, to purchase of the Khedive his half-interest in the Suez Canal for the sum of $20,000,000, which gave to England the ownership of nearly nine-tenths of that important link in the waterway leading direct to her empire in India.
During all the years since 1856, there was one subject which had been constantly upper-most in the mind of England; and that one subject was the one above all others which her Prime Minister tried to make people forget.

It was perfectly well known when one after another of the Balkan states revolted against the Turk--first Herzegovina, then Montenegro, then Bosnia--that they were suffering the cruelest oppression, and that not one of the Sultan's promises made to the Powers in 1856 had been kept.

But in 1876 no one could any longer feign ignorance.

An insignificant outbreak in Bulgaria took place.