in the town. The municipality sent out delegates with
the keys of the city to Victor Emmanuel. At ten a.m. on the 7th,
MacMahon's corps began to file down the streets. Words cannot describe
the welcome given to them. How MacMahon lifted to his saddle-bow a
child that was in danger of being crushed by the crowd will be
remembered from the pretty incident having passed into English poetry.
On the 8th, the King and the Emperor made their entry amidst a new
paroxysm of enthusiasm. Napoleon is reported to have exclaimed: 'How
this people must have suffered!' In his proclamation 'to the Italian
people,' which bears the same date as his entry into Milan, he renewed
the assurance of the disinterested motives which had brought him to
Italy: 'Your enemies, who are also mine, have endeavoured to diminish
the universal sympathy felt in Europe for your cause, by causing it to
be believed that I am making war for personal ambition, or to
increase French territory. If there are men who fail to comprehend
their epoch, I am not one of them. In the enlightened state of public
opinion now prevailing, true greatness lies in the moral influence
which we exercise rather than in sterile conquests.' The proclamation
ended with the words: 'To-morrow you will be the citizens of a great
country.' Not the least effusive demonstrations were reserved for
Cavour, who joined his Sovereign a few days after the battle of
Magenta.

* * * * *

Leaving the Milanese to put their faith in princes while yet there was
time, a glance must be taken at what had been going on in the rest of
Italy, which was becoming a great nation far more rapidly, and in a
much fuller sense than Napoleon III. expected or wished. When Austria
sent her ultimatum to Turin, the Sardinian minister at the Court of
Tuscany invited the Grand Duke's Government to take part in the war of
liberation. This they refused to do. On perceiving, however, that he
could not depend on his troops, the Grand Duke promised to co-operate
with Piedmont, but his advisers did not now think it possible to save
the grand ducal throne, unless Leopold II. abdicated in favour of his
son, who was not burdened with the fatal associations of the reaction
of ten years before. Leopold probably thought that even his abdication
would not keep out the deluge, and he took the more dignified course
of declining to yield to force. On the 27th of April, accompanied by
the Corps Diplomatiqu