Etching drawn and engraved by Percival Skelton.
Queen Victoria (1837-1901) was invited to France by King Louis-Philippe (1830-1848) and is seen her arriving in her carriage at the castle of Eu, owned by the Orléans family. This visit was to seal an improvement in Franco-English diplomatic relations after years of crisis marked by several colonial events: the Turko-Egyptian crisis (when the Pasha of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, rebelled against the Sultan of Turkey), the Portendick affair on the question of trade in gum arabic off the coast of Senegal, the dispute on rights of trading ships to call in at ports on the coast of Africa, the affair of the Sandwich islands, etc. Both this visit by Queen Victoria to Eu and that of Louis-Philippe to Windsor the following October in 1844 were the clearest expression of the first Entente cordiale.