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As a recluse she lost popularity with her subjects in the late 186os and 1870s, only recovering it as the matriarch of Empire during the last ten years of her reign. As mother of four sons a nd five daughters she established dynastic links throughout non-Catholic Europe, enabling her to exert a limited influence as a peacemaker in world affairs. She delighted in ‘the Empire’ (especially India), although she never set foot in any overseas possessions, apart from Ireland. Her liking for Scotland induced her to spend several months each year at Balmoral, the Deeside castle which Prince Albert designed for her in the early 1850s; and she died on 22 January 1901 at another of his residences, Osborne House, in the Isle of Wight. E.Longford: Victoria RI (1964); F.Hardie: The Political Influence of Queen Victoria (Oxford, 1938). Villa, Pancho (1877-1923), Mexican revolutionary: born in northern Mexico and was the son of a farm worker. He acquired the skilled horsemanship of a cowboy, mingled with the ruthlessness of a robber baron who (unexpectedly) was also a total abstainer from alcohol. In 1909 Villa sided with MADERO in the first stages of the Mexican Revolution, later raising a private army which by October 1913 numbered more than 10,000 men who he claimed to be defending the rights of the people of northern Mexico against wealthy dictators from the cities ‘who have always slept on pillows’. In April 1914 he won a bloody battle at Torreeon, with arms purchased from the Americans in return for selling ‘confiscated’ cattle. Though he briefly worked in partnership with ZAPATA, Villa lacked the southerner’s commitment to a peasant revolution. At heart Villa remained a bandit chief who dabbled in political anarchy. He lost support from his earlier US patrons by allowing his men to execute sixteen American mineworkers taken from an ambushed train in January 1916; Villa’s army then crossed the border into New Mexico and sacked the town of Columbus. This affront brought General PERSHING into Mexico with a punitive expedition which, at the end of March 1916, virtually destroyed Villa’s army. He took to the mountains as a fugitive for four years, was pardoned by the Mexican authorities in July 1920 and granted a life pension in return for a pledge to spend his remaining days as a peaceful rancher. He was assassinated three years later. A.Knight: The Mexican Revolution, Vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1986); H. F.Chine: The United States and Mexico (Cambridge, Mass., 1953). Vorster, Balthazar Johannes (1915-83), South African Prime Minister, 196678 and briefly President: born at Jamestown in the north of Cape Province and educated at Stellenbosch. He was interned as a member of an extreme right-wing Afrikaaner movement in 1942 and did not enter the South African Parliament as a member of the Nationalist Party until 1953, after the beginning of the apartheid policy under Dr MALAN. In 1961 he became Minister of Justice and was best known for his security measures against ‘subversion’. He succeeded the assassinated Dr VERWOERD as Prime Minister on 13 September 1966 and held office until 20 September 1978. His repressive policy and strict insistence on rigid apartheid aroused repeated protests out side South Africa but was approved by the white electorate within the republic. After resigning because of ill-health,

he took office as State President but was forced to step down a few months later when the so-called ‘Muldergate Scandal’ discredited, in retrospect, his premiership by suggesting he misused funds for propaganda purposes. T.R.H.Davenport: South Africa, a Modern History (rev. edn 1991); L.Thompson: A History of South Africa (New Haven, Conn., 1990). Vyshinsky, Andrei Yanuaryevich (1883-1954), Soviet Public Prosecutor and Foreign Minister: born in Odessa, studied law at Moscow University before the Revolution, and served in the Red Army from 1918 to 1921, becoming Professor of Criminal Law at Moscow in the late 19205. He was Public Prosecutor in all the state trials of the period 1936-8, but from 1940 onwards assisted MOLOTOV conduct foreign affairs. In 1943 he became Soviet representative on the Allied commission for the Mediterranean. He attended the Potsdam Conference (1945) and was chief Soviet delegate to the United Nations from 1945 to 1949. In March 1949 he became Soviet Foreign Minister, holding the post until March 1953, when he reverted to his earlier duties as a delegate to the United Nations. Over legal affairs he was notorious for his contention that confession of a crime adequately proved guilt; and as a diplomat he was no less notorious for his coldly negative response to any initiatives from other powers. A.Vyshinsky: The Law of the Soviet State (New York, 1948); R.Conquest: The Great Terror (rev. edn 1971); J.Mackintosh: The Strategy and Tactics of Soviet Foreign Policy (New York, 1962); A.Dallin: The Soviet Union at the United Nations (New York, 1962).