which it was the first care of
liberated Venice to welcome home. The Austrians broke up his doorstep
on which, according to a Venetian custom, his name was engraved.
Another martyr, Ugo Bassi, had kissed the stone, exclaiming:

'Next to God and Italy--before the Pope--Manin!' The people gathered
up the broken fragments and kept them as relics, even as in their
hearts they kept his memory, till the arrival of that day of
redemption which, in the darkest hour, he foretold.

CHAPTER IX

'J'ATTENDS MON ASTRE'

1849-1850

The House of Savoy--A King who keeps his Word--Sufferings of the
Lombards--Charles Albert's Death.

Circumstances more gloomy than those under which Victor Emmanuel II.
ascended the throne of his ancestors it would be hard to imagine.

An army twice beaten, a bankrupt exchequer, a triumphant invader
waiting to dictate terms; this was but the beginning of the inventory
of the royal inheritance. The internal condition of the kingdom, even
apart from the financial ruin which had succeeded to the handsome
surplus of two years before, was full of embarrassments of the gravest
kind. There was a party representing the darkest-dyed clericalism and
reaction whose machinations had not been absent in the disaster of
Novara. Who was it that disseminated among the troops engaged in the
battle broadsides printed with the words: 'Soldiers, for whom do you
think you are fighting? The King is betrayed; at Turin they have
proclaimed the republic'? There were other broadsides in which Austria
was called the supporter of thrones and altars. The dreadful
indiscipline witnessed towards the end of, and after the conflict was
due more to the demoralising doctrines that had been introduced into
the army than to the insubordination of panic. There was another party
strengthened by the recent misfortunes and recruited by exiles from
all parts of Italy, which was democratic to the verge of republicanism
in Piedmont and over that verge at Genoa, where a revolution broke out
before the new King's reign was a week old. Constitutional government
stood between the fires of these two parties, both fanned by Austrian
bellows, the first openly, the second in secret.

Victor Emmanuel was not popular. The indifference to danger which he
had shown conspicuously during the war would have awakened enthusiasm
in most countries, but in Piedmont it was so thoroughly taken for
granted that the Princes of the House of Savoy did no