as well as oaks, hears not the
voice of the Lord." Under the command of General Durando, a band of
Crociati, or crusaders, marched from Rome against the Austrians. Count
Balbo was placed in command of the Piedmontese army. To the remonstrances
of the British Ambassador at Turin, King Charles Albert replied that he
must either march against Austria or lose his crown. England, indeed, was
emphatic in its disapproval of the Italian national movement. In the pages
of the "Edinburgh Review," Sir Archibald Allison, the court historian,
wrote: "It is utterly repugnant to the first principles of English policy,
and to every page in English history, to lend encouragement to the
separation of nationalities from other empires." The new republican
government in France, on its part, had no desire to see a strong Italian
national State spring up on its southern frontier. Lamartine, the French
Foreign Minister, declined Charles Albert's request to sanction his
military occupation of Lombardy. A strong French army of observation was
concentrated on the Italian frontier in the Alps. Germany, which in later
years was destined to become the strongest ally of Italy, was still so
bound up with Austria that when Arnold Ruge in the Frankfort Parliament
dared to express a wish for the victory of Italian arms against Austria, a
great storm of indignation broke out in Germany. As a last resort, Charles
Albert, on April 6, proposed an offensive and defensive alliance to
Switzerland, but the little republic wisely declined to emerge from its
traditional neutrality. It was then that the Italians raised the defiant
cry: "Italia fara de se" (Italy will fight her own battles). When the hard
beset Austrian Government, in a confidential communication of Minister
Wessendberg to Count Casati, showed itself inclined to yield Lombardy upon
payment of Lombardy's share in the Austrian national debt, the proposition
was curtly declined.

[Sidenote: Set-back at Naples]

[Sidenote: Neapolitan forces recalled]

[Sidenote: Pio Nono's allocution]

It was a fatal move. The course of Italy, as Dante once sang, seemed like
that of "a ship without stars in a wild storm." Affairs took a wrong turn
in Naples. There a new popular Parliament had just been elected, which was
about to meet, when there were some final difficulties between the King and
his Liberal Ministers over the exact wording of the oath of allegiance. The
excitable Neapolitan populace forthwith became