cause of the monarchy-would be fatally discredited. Cavour was conscious that he was playing for high stakes, but he was confident of victory. You have the future of the country in your haversacks'-so he wrote to La Marmora. The soldiers were aware of their high responsibility. Out of this mud,' said one of them in the trenches before Sebastopol, Italy will be made.' It was. Cavour's calculations were precisely fulfilled. In the Battle of the Tchernaja the gallant Sardinians covered themselves with glory. The stain of Novara was wiped out. In the Congress of Paris Cavour claimed a place. The diplomatic position of Sardinia was established. At the end of 1855 Cavour and his sovereign paid a visit to the allied Courts of Paris and London. 'This journey,' wrote Cavour, has confirmed the constitutional system; it is the equivalent of ten years of life.'* Even more important was the result of the Congress of Paris. Here are Cavour's own characteristic estimates:

'The Italian question has become for the future a European question. The cause of Italy has not been defended by demagogues, revolutionists and party men, but has been discussed before the Congress by the plenipotentiaries of the Great Powers.'† And again: 'Two facts will remain, which are not without some importance. First, the stigma branded on the conduct of the King of Naples by France and England in the face of united Europe; and, second, the condemnation aimed by England at the clerical government in terms as precise and energetic as the most zealous Italian patriot could have desired.' +

Mr Thayer is surely right in the verdict he pronounces upon the Crimean episode: 'posterity will look back to it as one of the most brilliant strokes of statecraft in the nineteenth century.'§ It was undeniably the turningpoint in the fortunes of Cavour, of Sardinia, and of Italy. Hitherto Sardinia had been regarded as one of many Italian States; not the largest, nor the wealthiest, nor the best established. Cavour himself had hardly been distinguished from the crowd of Italian 'patriots' or revolutionaries who were anathema to the respectable European Courts and Chancelleries. After 1856 things

* Thayer, i, 368.

Thayer, i, 386.

† Acton, op. cit., p. 189.

§ Op. cit. i, 333.

were different. Sardinia was a 'Power'; Cavour was recognised as among the ablest of European diplomatists. At Paris he had withstood Austria to the face, and had denounced in open congress the hideous misgovernment which prevailed in Naples and in the Romagna. He had enlisted the sympathy of England and had all but secured the alliance of France.

The seed sown at Paris in 1856 fructified at Plombières in 1858. The astute diplomatist threw his net over the whilom conspirator who now sat upon the Imperial throne of France. The motives which inspired the Italian policy of Napoleon III have been frequently canvassed and still remain obscure. They would not have been Napoleon's had they not been complex and contradictory. He was not wholly the 'vulpine knave,' pictured and denounced by Garibaldi. He was not wholly anything. But he was genuinely attracted to Italy; and one of his first acts as President was to send a French army to Rome to succour the Pope and foil the efforts of the Republican conspirators with whom he had formerly consorted. It pleased the French clericals, but it was the first of several contradictory miscalculations which eventually brought him to Sedan.* In Paris Cavour dangled the bait before his eyes with consummate adroitness. Had not the Italian campaign of 1796 revealed to Europe the military genius of the first Napoleon? What better field for the display of the genius of his nephew? Napoleon I had posed as the liberator' of Italy, and had actually gone far to promote its unity. Might not Napoleon III win still more enduring fame by accomplishing the purpose professed by his predecessor? Could the Third Empire be sustained without the glamour of successful war? What foeman better worthy of his steel than Austria?

Whatever may have been the precise bait offered by Cavour, it was swallowed by Napoleon. The understanding arrived at in Paris was confirmed, despite or possibly because of the inauspicious Orsini episode, at Plombières. Austria was to be expelled from the Penin sula; and northern and central Italy were to be united

* Cf. Thayer, i, 176, and MM. Bourgeois and Clermont, Rome e Napoléon III.

under the House of Savoy. In return, Savoy was to be ceded to France, and perhaps Nice as well; and Victor Emmanuel was to give his daughter in marriage to the Emperor's cousin, Prince Jerome. Both sacrifices were painful, but Cavour was convinced that the deadweight of the Austrian incubus could not be lifted without foreign help. England, though prodigal of sympathy, was adamant against intervention. France was the only hope; and Napoleon's terms, therefore, had to be accepted.

In January 1859 Europe was startled by the news that Napoleon, at his New Year's Day reception, had addressed the Austrian Ambassador as follows: 'Je regrette que les relations entre nous soient si mauvaises.' It was a bolt from the blue. Still more startling were the words of Victor Emmanuel when, on January 10, he opened Parliament at Turin:

'Our country, small in territory, has acquired credit in the councils of Europe because she is great in the idea she represents, in the sympathy she inspires. The situation is not free from peril, for, while we respect treaties, we cannot be insensible to the cry of anguish which comes to us from many parts of Italy.'

The significance of the words was instantly apprehended; and Massari, an eye-witness of the scene in the Chamber, declares the effect of them to have been electric. Diplomacy did its best to avert war, but on April 23 Austria demanded that Sardinia should disarm. Cavour instantly accepted the challenge; and three weeks later Victor Emmanuel welcomed at Genoa the 'magnanimous ally' who had come to 'liberate Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic.' Exactly nine weeks later he started home again. In Turin the traitor of Villafranca 'met an arctic chill.' Thank God he's gone,' was Victor Emmanuel's exclamation, after bidding his ally farewell.

As to the campaign itself, Mr Thayer subjects the accounts given in the French despatches to searching criticism, which it is impossible here to follow in detail. Magenta, San Martino and Solferino have been generally accepted as resounding victories for the allies. With a more equal distribution of luck the issue, according to Mr Thayer, might easily have been different. As it was, the victor stopped short after Solferino and sought Vol. 216.-No. 431.

2 D

an armistice from the vanquished; on July 8 the two Emperors, after personal negotiations, came to terms. Italy was to be free not to the Adriatic but only to the Mincio; Austria was to retain Venetia and the Quadrilateral; Lombardy was to be annexed to Piedmont; Leopold of Tuscany and Francis of Modena were to be restored, but without recourse to force'; Italy was to be united in a confederation under the honorary presidency of the Pope.

The truce of Villafranca has been endlessly discussed; and, though Mr Thayer canvasses every point with conscientious thoroughness, it cannot be said that he throws much fresh light upon one of the dark places of history. That Napoleon had good grounds for ending the war is no longer disputed. French financiers were already grumbling at the enormous cost of the war; the politicians saw no recompense in sight; the Austrians, though driven back behind the Mincio, were not really beaten. Much to his own disgust, Napoleon found himself abetting the Revolution in Italy; to the dismay of the Empress and the clericals, his success in the north was endangering the position of the Pope; the English Government was regarding with increasing suspicion the Italian adventure of the French Emperor; Prussia was actually mobilising with a view to an offer of mediation." The last-named development was not less alarming to the Austrian Emperor than to Napoleon. It was, indeed, the determining factor in his acceptance of the proffered terms. The gist of the thing is,' wrote Moltke to his brother, that Austria would rather give up Lombardy than see Prussia at the head of Germany.'*

Mr Thayer, despite his obvious dislike of Napoleon, has a sound appreciation of his Italian policy:

'Nothing' (he writes) can be clearer now than that Napoleon was justified by the interests of France and of his dynasty in stopping the war. "To serve Italian independence," he told the dignitaries of France on his return to St Cloud, "I made war against the wish of Europe; as soon as the fate of my country seemed to be imperilled I made peace." . . . We need not charge Napoleon with premeditated deceit, much less with deliberate treachery. . . . He had indeed broken down the

*Thayer ii, 101.

dam behind which for forty years the rising flood of national desire had been pent up. The rush of waters startled him ; he foresaw that they might sweep out of his control.' *

Victor Emmanuel strove to do justice to his ally, and never in his whole career showed himself more truly great than in the terrible days after the signature of the truce of Villafranca. If Napoleon's end was justified, the means he adopted were detestable. He treated his Italian allies shamefully. Nevertheless, hurt and indignant as he was, Victor Emmanuel possessed that clarity of vision and steadiness of judgment which enabled him to perceive that much had been accomplished. The political unity of Italy,' he said, 'since Novara a possibility, has become, since Villafranca, a necessity.'

It was otherwise with Cavour. For the first and only time in his life he completely lost his head. It is not difficult to understand and to forgive him. The French alliance and the war of 1859 were his work. He hoped to secure from it the expulsion of the Austrians, the expansion of Piedmont, a union in Central Italy.' What it actually achieved was far less-and more. This truth Victor Emmanuel perceived; Cavour, in his anger, did not. He wanted his master to repudiate the armistice, to decline the gift of Lombardy, to continue the war alone, to fall, if it must be, with reputation unsullied.' The King's good sense prevailed over the Minister's temporary madness. I am as furious as he over this peace, but I don't lose my compass; I don't lose my reason.' Within six months Cavour acknowledged his error and his debt to the Emperor of the French.

'How many germs contained in the treaty of Villafranca have developed in marvellous fashion! The political campaign which followed the peace of Villafranca has been as glorious for the Emperor, and more advantageous for Italy than the military campaign which preceded it. . . . .. He has thereby earned the right to be classed among the greatest benefactors of mankind.' (Cavour to Prince Napoleon, Jan. 25, 1860.)

We recall with regret Cavour's temporary lapse of judgment, but there is another point on which it is even more essential to insist. While Victor Emmanuel

Ib. ii, 115-117.