on a last chance. On
the 12th of March 1849 he denounced the armistice and took the field
again with an army of 80,000 men, but gave the chief command to the
Polish general Chrzanowski. General Ramorino commanding the Lombard
division proved unable to prevent the Austrians from crossing the Ticino
(20th of April), and Chrzanowski was completely out-generalled and
defeated at La Bicocca near Novara on the 23rd. The Piedmontese fought
with great bravery, and the unhappy king sought death in vain. After the
battle he asked terms of Radetzky, who demanded the occupation by
Austria of a large part of Piedmont and the heir to the throne as a
hostage. Thereupon, feeling himself to be the obstacle to better
conditions, Charles Albert abdicated in favour of his son Victor
Emmanuel. That same night he departed alone and made his way to Oporto,
where he retired into a monastery and died on the 28th of July 1849.

Charles Albert was not a man of first-rate ability; he was of a
hopelessly vacillating character. Devout and mystical to an almost
morbid degree, hating revolution and distrusting Liberalism, he was a
confirmed pessimist, yet he had many noble qualities: he was brave to
the verge of foolhardiness, devoted to his country, and ready to risk
his crown to free Italy from the foreigner. To him the people of Italy
owe a great debt, for if he failed in his object he at least
materialized the idea of the Risorgimento in a practical shape, and the
charges which the Republicans and demagogues brought against him were
monstrously unjust.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Besides the general works on modern Italy, see the
Marquis Costa de Beauregard's interesting volumes _La Jeunesse du roi
Charles Albert_ (Paris, 1899) and _Novare et Oporto_ (1890), based on
the king's letters and the journal of Sylvain Costa, his faithful
equerry, though the author's views are those of an old-fashioned
Savoyard who dislikes the idea of Italian unity; Ernesto Masi's _Il
Segreto del Re Carlo Alberto_ (Bologna, 1891) is a very illuminating
essay; Domenico Perrero, _Gli Ultimi Reali di Savoia_ (Turin, 1889);
L. Cappelletti, _Storia di Carlo Alberto_ (Rome, 1891); Nicomede
Bianchi, _Storia della diplomazia europea in Italia_ (8 vols., Turin,
1865, &c.), a most important work of a general character, and the same
author's _Scritti e lettere di Carlo Alberto_ (Rome, 1879) and his
_Storia della monarchia piemontese_ (Turin, 1877); Count S. della