petition" was found to
contain not six million signatures as was alleged, but only 1,975,469, and
many of these proved to be fictitious, whole sheets being found to be in
the same handwriting, and containing such names as Victoria Rex, Prince
Albert, Punch, and so forth.

[Sidenote: Collapse of Chartism]

[Sidenote: End of Feargus O'Connor]

In the words of a contemporary, "Chartism had received its death-blow.
O'Brien, Vincent, and others endeavored to revive it, but in vain. Its
members fell off in disappointment and allied themselves with reformers of
greater moderation, and Feargus O'Connor, who for ten years had madly
spent his force and energy in carrying forward the movement, gave it up in
despair. Everything he had touched had proved a failure. From being an
object of terror, Chartism had become an object of ridicule. O'Connor took
the matter so much to heart that he soon became an inmate of a lunatic
asylum, and never recovered his reason."

[Sidenote: Progress of Italian Revolution]

[Sidenote: Austrians driven northward]

[Sidenote: Radetzky seeks refuge]

All Italy now, from the southern shores of Sicily to the Alps, was in a
blaze of insurrection. Venice, Piedmont and Lombardy were in arms. Charles
Albert, the King of Sardinia, put himself at the head of the movement in
northern Italy. From all parts of Italy volunteers crowded to his banners.
In defiance of the Pope's orders a compact body of these volunteers marched
from Rome. Radetzky, the Austrian commander, a veteran of all the Austrian
wars since the outbreak of the French Revolution, had long prepared for
this struggle by formidable fortifications at Verona. When Milan revolted
and the Austrian Vice-Governor, O'Donnell, was captured, Radetzky evacuated
the city at the approach of Charles Albert's army from Piedmont. His
outlying garrison was cut off by the Italians. Preferring the loss of Milan
to a possible annihilation of the army, Radetzky fell back upon Verona. On
the banks of the Adige, about twenty-five miles east of the Mincio, he
rapidly concentrated all available forces, while the Italians threw up
intrenchments on the Mincio. There, with the armies of Piedmont and
Lombardy in front of him and the revolutionary forces of Venice behind him,
Radetzky stubbornly held his ground. Nothing remained to Austria on
Italian ground but Verona and the neighboring fortresses on the Adige and
Mincio.

[Sidenote: Kossuth's appeal]

[Sidenote: M