ng herself, but was there the
slightest prospect, eleven years later, of that chance being repeated?
Each student of history may answer for himself. What is plain is, that
France and Sardinia _together_ were to find it an exceedingly hard
task even to drive the Austrians out of Lombardy.

The unconquerable dislike of men of principle, like Mazzini, to
joining hands with the author of the _coup d'etat_ was perfectly
explicable. There were doubtless some sincere Bulgarian patriots who
disliked joining hands with the Autocrat of all the Russias. The gift
of freedom from a despot means a long list of evils. Mazzini grasped
the maleficent influence which Napoleon III. would be in a position to
exercise over the young state; he knew, moreover, when only two or
three other persons in Europe knew it, that the bargain of Plombieres
was on the principle of give-and-take. How Mazzini was for many years
better informed than any cabinet in Europe, remains a secret. 'I know
positively,' he wrote on the 4th of January 1859, 'that the idea of
the war is only to hand over a zone of Lombardy to Piedmont, and the
cession of Savoy and Nice to France: the peace, upon the offer of
which they count, would abandon the whole of Venetia to Austria.' A
month before this he had disclosed what was certainly true, namely,
that Napoleon wanted to place a Murat on the throne of Naples, and to
substitute Prince Napoleon for the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The point
that is doubtful in the above revelation is the statement that the
Emperor never meant to emancipate Venetia. The probabilities are
against this. He may, however, have questioned all along whether his
troops, with those of the King of Sardinia, would display a
superiority over the Austrian forces sufficiently incontestable for
him to risk taking them into the mouse-trap of the Quadrilateral. In
this one thing Napoleon was amply justified--in having no sort of
desire to take a beaten army back to Paris.

Mazzini, with the more extreme members of the Party of Action
(including Crispi), issued a protest against the Napoleonic war, with
the advice to have nothing to do with it or its authors. But Italy
thought otherwise, and Garibaldi, the man who of all others most
nearly represented the heart of Italy, rejoiced and was glad. He did
not believe a word about the proposed cession of Savoy and Nice; no
one did, except Mazzini and his few disciples. What he saw was, that a
great step towards independe