e not
delivered either by their own resistance or by the efforts of the
English, but by the reverses which I sustained at different points, and,
above all, by the error I committed in transferring my whole forces to
the distance of three thousand miles from them. Had it not been for
this, the Spanish government would have been shortly consolidated, the
public mind would have been tranquilized, and hostile parties would have
been rallied together. Three or four years would have restored the
Spaniards to profound peace and brilliant prosperity. They would have
become a compact nation, and I should have well deserved their
gratitude, for I should have saved them from the tyranny by which they
are now oppressed, and the terrible agitations which await them.

"With regard to the fifteen millions of Italians, their concentration
was already far advanced; it only wanted maturity. The people were daily
becoming more firmly established in the unity of principles and
legislation, and also in the unity of thought and feeling--that certain
and infallible cement of human thought and concentration. The union of
Piedmont to France, and the junction of Parma, Tuscany and Rome, were,
in my mind, only temporary measures, intended merely to guarantee and
promote the national education of the Italians. The portions of Italy
that were united to France, though that union might have been regarded
as the result of invasion on our part, were, in spite of their Italian
patriotism, the very places that continued most attached to us.

"All the south of Europe, therefore, would soon have been rendered
compact in point of locality, views, opinions, sentiments and interests.
In this state of things, what would have been the weight of all the
nations of the North? What human efforts could have broken through so
strong a barrier? The concentration of the Germans must have been
effected more gradually, and therefore I had done no more than simplify
their monstrous complication. Not that they were unprepared for
concentralization; on the contrary, they were too well prepared for it,
and they might have blindly risen in reaction against us before they had
comprehended our designs. How happens it that no German prince has yet
formed a just notion of the spirit of his nation, and turned it to good
account? Certainly if Heaven had made me a prince of Germany, amid the
critical events of our times I should infallibly have governed the
thirty millions of Germ