husband, whom she wished
to get rid of; she then denounced him to the military tribunal, and
two hours later an English family, whose house was near the barracks,
heard the ring of the volley of musketry which despatched him. Austria
had also occupied the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; and when, in July,
Leopold II. returned to his state, which had restored him by general
consent and without any foreign intervention, he entered Florence
between two files of Austrian soldiery, in violation of the article of
the Statute to which he had sworn, which stipulated that no foreign
occupation should be invited or tolerated. The Grand Duke wrote to the
Emperor of Austria, from Gaeta, humbly begging the loan of his arms.
Francis Joseph replied with supreme contempt, that it would have been
a better thing if Leopold had never forgotten to whose family he
belonged, but he granted the prayer. Such was the way in which the
House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, that had done much in Tuscany to win
respect if not love, destroyed all its rights to the goodwill of the
Tuscan people, and removed what might have been a serious obstacle to
Italian unity.

Austria, unable alone to cope with Hungary, committed the immeasurable
blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain,
but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay. Venice, and
Venice only, continued to defy her power. Since Novara, the first
result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who
had taken over the government after the Fusion, Venice had been ruled
by Manin on the terms which he himself proposed: 'Are you ready,' he
asked the Venetian Assembly, 'to invest the Government with unlimited
powers in order to direct the defence and maintain order?' He warned
them that he should be obliged to impose upon them enormous
sacrifices, but they replied by voting the order of the day: 'Venice
resists the Austrians at all costs; to this end the President Manin is
invested with plenary powers.' All the deputies then raised their
right hand, and swore to defend the city to the last extremity. They
kept their word.

It is hard to say which was the most admirable: Manin's fidelity to
his trust, or the people's fidelity to him. To keep up the spirits, to
maintain the decorum of a besieged city even for a few weeks or a few
months, is a task not without difficulty; but when the months run into
a second year, when the real pinch of privations has been felt by
ever