Cavour believed that the ultimate school of any army is war. Above
all, he believed that this was the hour for a great resolve or a _gran
rifiuto_. If the House of Savoy stood still with folded arms it might
retire into the ranks of small ruling families, which leave the
rearrangement of maps to their betters. It was secretly reported to
Cavour that Napoleon III. was beginning to drop enigmatical remarks
about Italian affairs, and it was these reports that finally decided
him to strain every nerve to make his audacious design a reality.

Russia had broken off diplomatic relations with Sardinia in 1848,
and when Victor Emmanuel communicated the death of his father to the
Powers, the only one which returned no response was the empire of the
Czar. It would be absurd to adduce this lack of courtesy as an excuse
for war; still it gave a slightly better complexion to an attack which
the Russian Government was justified in calling "extraordinarily
gratuitous." Cavour had one person of great importance on his side,
the king. In January 1854 he broached the subject with the tentative
inquiry, "Does it not seem to your Majesty that we might find some way
of taking part in the war of the Western Powers with Russia?" To which
Victor Emmanuel answered simply, "If I cannot go myself I will send
my brother." But it is not too much to say that the whole country was
against him. The old Savoyard party opposed the war tooth and nail,
and from the "Little Piedmont" point of view it was perfectly right.
The radicals, headed by Brofferio, denounced it as "economically
reckless, militarily a folly, politically a crime." Most of the
Lombard emigration thought ill of it, and the heads of the army were
lukewarm or contrary; this was not the war they wanted. The Tuscan
romancist Guerrazzi wrote, with unpardonable levity, that republicans
ought to rejoice because this was the final disillusion given to
Italians by monarchy, limited or not. One republican, however, Manin,
saw in the Italian tricolor displayed with the French and English
flags in Paris the first ray of hope that had gladdened his eyes since
he left Venice, and Poerio; when he heard of the alliance in his
dungeon, "felt his chain grow lighter." It seemed as if those who had
suffered most for Italy had a clearness of vision denied to the rest.

What, if persisted in, would have been the most serious obstacle was
the opposition of Rattazzi, but he was won over to assent, if not to
a