he great French army which, for three months, had besieged his
capital, vowed to erect a temple if it should please the Lord of Hosts
to grant him and his people deliverance from the hands of the enemy.
Five days later the French were in flight. All the Alps, from Mon Viso
to the Simplon, all Piedmont, and beyond Piedmont, Italy to the
Apennines, can be scanned from the church which fulfilled the royal
vow.

To the Superga the body of Charles Albert was brought from the place
of exile. Before the coffin, his sword was carried; after it, they led
the war-horse he had ridden in all the battles. After the war-horse
followed a great multitude. He had said truly that it was an opportune
time for him to die. The pathos of his end rekindled the affections of
the people for the dynasty.

As in the Mosque of dead Sultans in Stamboul, so in the Mausoleum of
the Superga, each sovereign occupied the post of honour only till the
next one came to join him. But the post of honour remains, and will
remain, to Charles Albert. His son lies elsewhere.

CHAPTER X

THE REVIVAL OF PIEDMONT

1850-1856

Restoration of the Pope and Grand Duke of Tuscany--Misrule at
Naples--The Struggle with the Church in Piedmont--The Crimean War.

The decade from 1849 to 1859 may seem, at first sight, to resemble an
interregnum, but it was an evolution. There is no pause in the life of
nations any more than in the life of individuals: they go forward or
they go backward. In these ten years Piedmont went forward; the other
Italian governments did not stand still, they went backward. The
diseases from which they suffered gained daily upon the whole
body-politic, and even those clever foreign doctors who had been the
most convinced that this or that remedy would set them on their feet,
were in the end persuaded that there was only one place for them--the
Hospital for Incurables. After the fall of Rome, Pius IX. issued a
sort of canticle from Gaeta, in which he thanked the Lord at whose
bidding the stormy ocean had been arrested, but he did not even so
much as say thank you to the French, without whom, nevertheless, the
stormy ocean would have proceeded on its way. To all suggestions from
Paris that now that victory had been won by force the time was come
for the Sovereign to give some guarantee that it would not be abused,
the Pope turned a completely deaf ear. 'The Pope,' said M. Drouyn
de Lhuys, 'prefers to return to Rome upon the dead bodi