ble for the catastrophe.

The campaign of 1848 was finished. From the frontier, Charles Albert
issued a proclamation to his people, calling upon the Piedmontese to
render the common misfortunes less difficult to bear by giving his
army a brotherly reception. 'In its ranks,' he concluded, 'are my sons
and I, ready, as we all are, for new sacrifices, new hardships, or for
death itself for our beloved fatherland.'

The political and diplomatic transactions connected with the war in
Lombardy were the subject after it closed of much discussion, and of
some violent recriminations. Even from the short account given in
these pages, it ought to be apparent that the supreme cause of
disaster was simply bad generalship. Contemporaries, however, judged
otherwise; if they were monarchists, they attributed the failure to
the want of whole-hearted co-operation of the Provisional Governments
of Lombardy with the liberating King; if they were republicans, they
attributed it to the King's want of trust in the popular element, and
anxiety lest, instead of receiving an increase of territory, he should
find himself confronted with a new republic at his door. Both parties
were so far correct that the strain of double purposes, or, at least,
of incompatible aspirations which ran through the conduct of affairs,
militated against a fortunate ending. The Piedmontese Government,
even had it wished, would have found it difficult to adhere strictly
to the programme of leaving all political matters for discussion after
the war. What actually happened was that the union, under the not
altogether attractive form of Fusion with Piedmont (instead of in the
shape of the formation of an Italian kingdom), was effected at the end
of June and beginning of July over the whole of Lombardy and Venetia,
including Venice, where, perhaps alone, the feeling against it was not
that of a party, but of the bulk of the population. Manin shared that
feeling, but his true patriotism induced him to push on the Fusion in
order to avoid the risk of civil war. He retired into private life the
day it was accomplished, only to become again by acclamation Head of
the State when the reverses of Sardinia obliged the King's Government
to renounce the whole of his scarcely--acquired possessions, not
excepting Modena, which had been the first, by a spontaneous
plebiscite, to elect him Sovereign.

The diplomatic history of the war is chiefly the history of the
efforts of the Engli