volutionists and abandoned by his ministers, granted the
constitution and sent to inform Charles Felix, who was now king, of the
occurrence. Charles Felix, who was then at Modena, repudiated the
regent's acts, accepted Austrian military assistance, with which the
rising was easily quelled, and exiled Charles Albert to Florence. The
young prince found himself the most unpopular man in Italy, for while
the Liberals looked on him as a traitor, to the king and the
Conservatives he was a dangerous revolutionist. At the Congress of
Verona (1822) the Austrian chancellor, Prince Metternich, tried to
induce Charles Felix to set aside Charles Albert's rights of succession.
But the king was piqued by Austria's interference, and as both the
grand-duke of Tuscany and the duke of Wellington supported him, Charles
Albert's claims were respected. France having decided to intervene in
the Spanish revolution on the side of autocracy, Charles Albert asked
permission to join the duc d'Angouleme's expedition. The king granted it
and the young prince set out for Spain, where he fought with such
gallantry at the storming of the Trocadero (1st of September 1823) that
the French soldiers proclaimed him the "first Grenadier of France." But
it was not until he had signed a secret undertaking binding himself, as
soon as he ascended the throne, to place himself under the tutelage of a
council composed of the higher clergy and the knights of the Annunziata,
and to maintain the existing forms of the monarchy (D. Berti, _Cesare
Alfieri_, xi. 77, Rome, 1871), that he was allowed to return to Turin
and forgiven.

On the death of Charles Felix (27th of April 1831) Charles Albert
succeeded; he inherited a kingdom without an army, with an empty
treasury, a chaotic administration and medieval laws. His first task was
to set his house in order; he reorganized the finances, created the
army, and started Piedmont on a path which if not liberalism was at
least progress. "He was," wrote his reactionary minister, Count della
Margherita, "hostile to Austria from the depths of his soul and full of
illusions as to the possibility of freeing Italy from dependence on
her.... As for the revolutionaries, he detested them but feared them,
and was convinced that sooner or later he would be their victim." In
1833 a conspiracy of the _Giovane Italia_ Society, organized by Mazzini,
was discovered, and a number of its members punished with ruthless
severity. On the election i