Editing John Russell, 1st Earl Russell (section)

===Disagreements with Palmerston ===
Russell frequently clashed with his headstrong Foreign Secretary, [[Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston|Lord Palmerston]], whose belligerence and support for continental revolution he found embarrassing. In 1847 Palmerston provoked a confrontation with the French government by undermining the plans of the Spanish court to marry the young [[Isabel II of Spain|Spanish Queen]] and [[Infanta Luisa Fernanda, Duchess of Montpensier|her sister]] into the French royal family.{{sfn|Walpole|1889b|pp=1-10}}
He subsequently clashed with Russell over plans to increase the size of the army and the navy to defend against the perceived threat of French invasion, which subsided after the overthrow of the [[Louis Philippe I|French king]] in 1848.{{sfn|Walpole|1889b|pp=13-25}} [[Louis Philippe I|Louis Philippe's]] flight from [[Paris]] signalled a new spark of revolutionary fervour throughout Europe and next went to [[Austrian Empire|Austria]], where a student revolt forced [[List of heads of government under Austrian emperors|Austrian Chancellor]] [[Klemens von Metternich|Count Metternich]] out of the country and take up refuge in England with [[Ferdinand I of Austria|Emperor Ferdinand]] considering asylum in [[Tyrol]]. The spirit of revolution soon spread to [[Milan]], [[Naples]]; [[Berlin]] and [[Switzerland]].{{Sfn|Reid|1895|p=179}}

In 1850, further tension arose between the two over Palmerston's [[gunboat diplomacy]] in the [[Don Pacifico affair]], in which Palmerston sought compensation from the [[Government of Greece|Greek government]] for the ransacking and the burning of the house of [[David Pacifico]], a Gibraltarian holder of a British passport.{{sfn|Chambers|2004|p=313}} Russell considered the matter "hardly worth the interposition of the British lion," and when Palmerston ignored some of his instructions, the Prime Minister wrote to Palmerston telling him he had informed the Queen that he "thought the interests of the country required that a change should take place at the Foreign Department."{{sfn|Walpole|1889b|pp=56-60}} However, less than a month later [[Edward Geoffrey Smith Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby|Lord Stanley]] successfully led the House of Lords into passing a motion of censure of the Government over its handling of the affair and Russell realised that he needed to align with Palmerston in order to prevent a similar motion being passed by the House of Commons, which would have obliged the Government to resign.{{sfn|Walpole|1889b|pp=61-62}} The Government prevailed, but Palmerston came out of the affair with his popularity at new heights since he was seen as the champion of defending British subjects anywhere in the world.{{sfn|Chambers|2004|pp=323–4}}