e Alessandria, and to reduce the war
indemnity from 230,000,000 francs to 75,000,000, which Piedmont
undertook to pay, onerous though the charge was in her deplorable
financial condition. But the amnesty question was the last to be
settled, and in this Piedmont stood alone. France and her. The
Piedmontese special envoy at Milan, Count Pralormo, wrote to Prince
Schwarzenberg on the 2nd of July that his Government could not give up
this point. It was a conscientious duty so universally and strongly
felt, that they were readier to submit to the consequences, whatever
they might be, than to dishonour themselves by renouncing it. In other
words, they were ready to face a new war, abandoned to their fate by
all Europe, to undergo a new invasion, which meant the utter
destruction of their country, rather than leave their Lombard and
Venetian fellow-countrymen to the revenge of Austria. Count Pralormo
added that he was speaking not only in the name of the ministry, but
of the King and the whole nation. The risk was no imaginary one; there
were many in Austria who desired an excuse for crushing the life out
of the small state which was the eternal thorn in the side of that
great Empire. Few remember now the sufferings of Piedmont for Italy,
or the perils, only too real, which she braved again and again, not
from selfish motives--for the Piedmontese of the old, narrow school,
who said that their orderly little country had nothing to gain from
being merged in a state of 25,000,000 were by no means in error--but
from genuine Italian fellow-feeling for their less happy compatriots
beyond their confines.

At last, when the armistice concluded on the morrow of Novara had been
prolonged for five months, the treaty of peace was signed. Prince
Schwarzenberg offered to further reduce the indemnity, 75,000,000 to
71,000,000, but D'Azeglio having agreed to the former figure,
preferred to abide by his agreement. He thought, probably, that he
would thus gain some concession as to the amnesty, and, in fact,
Austria finally consented to pardon all but a small number of the
persons compromised in the late events. D'Azeglio still stood out, but
finding that there was no shadow of a chance of obtaining more than
this, he reluctantly accepted it. The great mass, the hundred thousand
and more fugitives who had left their homes in Lombardy and Venetia,
were, at any rate, promised a safe return. The city of Venice, as yet
undominated, though on the b