ons, money, the implements of war, were withheld
from them. The Piedmontese officers despatched to watch their proceedings
laughed at them like exasperating senior scholars examining the
accomplishments of a lower form. It was manifest that Count Medole and
the Government of Milan worked everywhere to conquer the people for the
king before the king had done a stroke to conquer the Austrians for the
people; while, in order to reduce them to the condition of Piedmontese
soldiery, the flame of their patriotic enthusiasm was systematically
damped, and instead of apprentices in war, who possessed at any rate the
elementary stuff of soldiers, miserable dummies were drafted into the
royal service. The Tuscans and the Romans had good reason to complain on
behalf of their princes, as had the Venetians and the Lombards for the
cause of their Republic. Neither Tuscans, Romans, Venetians, nor Lombards
were offering up their lives simply to obtain a change of rulers; though
all Italy was ready to bow in allegiance to a king of proved kingly
quality. Early in the campaign the cry of treason was muttered, and on
all sides such became the temper of the Alpine volunteers, that Angelo
and Rinaldo Guidascarpi were forced to join their cousin under Corte, by
the dispersion of their band, amounting to something more than eighteen
hundred fighting lads, whom a Piedmontese superior officer summoned
peremptorily to shout for the king. They thundered as one voice for the
Italian Republic, and instantly broke up and disbanded. This was the
folly of the young: Carlo Ammiani confessed that it was no better; but he
knew that a breath of generous confidence from the self-appointed
champion of the national cause would have subdued his impatience at
royalty and given heart and cheer to his sickening comrades. He began to
frown angrily when he thought of Vittoria. "Where is she now?--where
now?" he asked himself in the season of his most violent wrath at the
king. Her conduct grew inseparable in his mind from the king's deeds. The
sufferings, the fierce irony, the very deaths of the men surrounding him
in aims, rose up in accusation against the woman he loved.

CHAPTER XXXI

EPISODES OF THE REVOLT AND THE WAR

THE TREACHERY OF PERICLES--THE WHITE UMBRELLA--THE DEATH OF RINALDO
GUIDASCARPI

The king crossed the Mincio. The Marshal, threatened on his left flank,
drew in his line from the farther Veronese heights upon a narrowed battle
front bef