chess-Regent of Parma found it
impossible to remain in their states, now that Austrian protection was
withdrawn. The latter had done what she could to preserve the duchy
for her young son, but the tide was too strong. These revolutions were
accomplished quietly; but, some months after, on the incautious return
to Parma of a man deeply implicated in the abuses of Charles III.'s
government--Colonel Anviti--he was cruelly murdered; an act of
vengeance which happily remained alone.

After the battle of Magenta, when the Austrian troops were recalled
from the Marches and Romagna, those districts rose and demanded the
dictatorship of Piedmont. Napoleon foresaw that this would happen as
far back as the Plombieres interview, and at that date it did not
appear that he meant to oppose it. But now, in Paris, the Clerical
party were seized with panic, and the Empress-Regent, then, as always,
completely under their control, did all in her power to arouse the
Emperor's opposition. The Pope, on his part, knowing that he was
secure in Rome--thanks to the French garrison, which, though it hated
its office, as the French writer Ampere and others bore witness, was
sure to perform it faithfully--had the idea of sending his Swiss
troops to put down the growing revolution. With these, and a few Roman
troops of the line, Colonel Schmidt marched against Perugia, where, in
restoring the Papal authority, he used a ferocity which, though denied
by clerical writers, was attested by all contemporary accounts, and
was called 'atrocious' by Sir James Hudson in a despatch to Lord John
Russell. The significance of such facts, wrote the English minister at
Turin, could only be the coming fall of the Pope's Temporal Power.

L.C. Farini was sent by Victor Emmanuel to administer the provinces of
Modena and Parma, and Massimo d'Azeglio was charged with the same
mission in Romagna. The Marches of Ancona had been recovered by the
Papal troops, which were concentrated in the district called La
Cattolica, near Rimini. A volunteer corps, under the Piedmontese
General Mezzacapo, was entrusted with the task of preventing them from
crossing into the Legations.

In the month of May, when the allies were reaping their first
successes, an event occurred at Caserta which precipitated crisis in
the South Italy. Ferdinand II. died at forty-eight years of age of a
terrible complaint which had attacked him a few months earlier, when
he went to meet his son's bride, the