n, Victor Emmanuel II.
(1849). The Republics set up at Rome and Venice struggled valiantly for
a time against great odds--Mazzini, Garibaldi, and their volunteers
being finally overborne at the Eternal City by the French troops whom
Louis Napoleon sent to restore the Pope (June 1849); while, two months
later, Venice surrendered to the Austrians whom she had long held at
bay. The Queen of the Adriatic under the inspiring dictatorship of Manin
had given a remarkable example of orderly constitutional government in
time of siege.

It seemed to be the lot of the nationalists and democrats to produce
leaders who could thrill the imagination of men by lofty teachings and
sublime heroism; who could, in a word, achieve everything but success. A
poetess, who looked forth from Casa Guidi windows upon the tragi-comedy
of Florentine failure in those years, wrote that what was needed was a
firmer union, a more practical and intelligent activity, on the part
both of the people and of the future leader:

A land's brotherhood
Is most puissant: men, upon the whole,
Are what they can be,--nations, what they would.

Will therefore to be strong, thou Italy!
Will to be noble! Austrian Metternich
Can fix no yoke unless the neck agree.

* * * * *

Whatever hand shall grasp this oriflamme,
Whatever man (last peasant or first Pope
Seeking to free his country) shall appear,
Teach, lead, strike fire into the masses, fill
These empty bladders with fine air, insphere
These wills into a unity of will,
And make of Italy a nation--dear
And blessed be that man!

When Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned those lines she cannot have
surmised that two men were working their way up the rungs of the
political ladder in Piedmont and Prussia, whose keen intellects and
masterful wills were to weld their Fatherlands into indissoluble union
within the space of one momentous decade. These men were Cavour
and Bismarck.

It would far exceed the limits of space of this brief Introduction to
tell, except in the briefest outline, the story of the plodding
preparation and far-seeing diplomacy by which these statesmen raised
their respective countries from depths of humiliation to undreamt of
heights of triumph. The first thing was to restore the prestige of their
States. No people can be strong in action that has lost belief in its
own