s for transport purposes in the
East. In December 1854 Cavour was formally invited to send a corps
which would enter the English service and receive its pay from the
British Exchequer. He would rather have sent it on these terms than
not at all, but the scheme met with such unqualified condemnation from
La Marmora and General Dadormida, the Foreign Minister, that it was
set aside as not becoming to the dignity of an independent nation.
Meanwhile something had occurred which reinforced the arguments of
those who were against sending troops at all. After hedging for a
year, Austria signed a treaty couched in vague terms, but which
appeared to debar her, at any rate, from taking sides with
Russia--Italy's most flattering prospect. Napoleon III. expected
much more from it than this; he thought that Austria was too much
compromised to avoid throwing in her cause with the allies. It must be
said of Napoleon that among the men responsible for the Crimean War
he alone aimed at an object which, from a political, let alone moral
view, could justify it. He did not think that it would be enough to
obtain a few restrictions, not worth the paper on which they were
written, and the prospect of a new lease of life to Turkish despotism.
He certainly had one paltry object of his own; he wished to gratify
his subjects by military glory. He began to suspect the hollowness of
the testimony of the plebiscite; the French people did not like him,
and never would like him. A war would please the populace and the
army; it would also make him look much more like a real Napoleon.
But when he had decided to go to war, he hoped to do something worth
doing. He thought (to use his own words) "that no peace would be
satisfactory which did not resuscitate Poland." There, and nowhere
else, were the wings of the Russian eagle to be clipped. Moreover,
the entire French nation, which cared so little for Italy, would
have applauded the deliverance of Poland. On the Polish question the
ultramontane would have embraced the socialist. France was never so
united as in the sympathy which she then felt for Poland, except in
that which she now feels for Russia. But Napoleon did not think that
he could resuscitate Poland without Austrian assistance. At the close
of 1854 he made sure of getting it.

Cavour clung to his project. Probably his penetrating mind guessed
that Austria could not fight Russia, which had saved her from
destruction in 1849. There now arose a d