Brilliant but cautious, Salisbury had done double duty as Foreign Secretary until late 1900, when he ceded the office to the more flexible 5th Marquess of Lansdowne. By then, most of the major European nations had forged alliances: the Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy and the Dual Alliance between France and Russia. Britain, on the other hand, stood friendless and was therefore dangerously exposed in the event of conflict.
