w of it, he was unwilling that its authors
should choose the time and mode of action which they chose. He was,
moreover, misinformed as to the extent of the preparations, since no
Milanese of any standing gave his support to the plan.

On the plea that the Lombard emigration was concerned in the abortive
movement, which was by no means consistent with facts, the Austrian
Government sequestered the landed property of the exiles and voluntary
emigrants, reducing them and their families (which in most instances
remained behind) to complete beggary. Nine hundred and seventy-eight
estates were placed under sequestration. The Court of Sardinia held
the measure to be a violation of the amnesty, which was one of the
conditions of the peace of 1850. The Sardinian Minister was recalled
from Vienna, and the relations between the two governments were once
more on a footing of open rupture.

Not less important was the moral effect of the sequestrations in
France and England, but particularly in England. They acted as the
last straw, coming as they did on the top of the flogging system which
had already enraged the English public mind to the highest degree. The
Prince Consort wrote in March to his brother: 'To give you a
conception of the maxims of justice and policy which Austria has been
lately developing, I enclose an extract of a report from Turin which
treats of the decrees of confiscation in Italy. People here will be
very indignant.' He goes on to say (somewhat too broadly) that the
English upper classes were till then thoroughly Austrian, but that she
had succeeded in turning the whole of England against her, and there
was now no one left to defend her.

Austria, through Count Buol, complained that she was 'dying of
legality,' but England took the Sardinian view that the sequestrations
directly violated the treaty between the two Powers. In the Austrian
Note of the 9th of March, it was distinctly declared that Piedmont
would be crushed if she did not perform the part of police-agent to
Austria. Cavour's uncowed attitude at this crisis was what first fixed
upon him the eyes of European diplomacy.

In the course of the summer, the Duke of Genoa, Victor Emmanuel's
brother, paid a visit to the English Court, where the Duke of
Saxe-Coburg was also staying, by whom he was described as 'one of the
cleverest and most amiable men of our time.' Sunny Italy, adds Duke
Ernest, seemed to have sent him to England so that by his mere
p