of her Majesty the Queen does not intend to accept
any part in the responsibility nor to guarantee the certain
consequences of a misgovernment which has scarcely a parallel in
Europe.' Mr Elliot replied, early in March: 'I have used all
imaginable arguments to convince this Government of the necessity of
stopping short on the fatal path which it has entered. I finished by
saying that I was persuaded of the inevitable fall of his Majesty and
the dynasty if wiser counsels did not obtain a hearing, and requested
an audience with the King; since, when the catastrophe occurs, I do
not wish my conscience to reproach me with not having tried all means
of saving an inexperienced Sovereign from the ruin which threatens
him. The Ministers of France and Spain have spoken to the same
effect.' Even Russia advised Francis to make common cause with
Piedmont. In April, Victor Emmanuel wrote to his cousin, 'as a near
relative and an Italian Prince,' urging him to listen while there was
yet time to save something, if not everything. 'If you will not hear
me,' he said, 'the day may come when I shall be obliged to be the
instrument of your ruin!'

It has been said that the Sardinian Government, in tendering similar
advice, hoped for its refusal and contemplated the eventuality hinted
at with the reverse of apprehension. Of course this is true. Yet the
responsibility of declining to take the only course which might by any
possibility have saved him must rest with the King of Naples and not
with Victor Emmanuel and his Ministers. The attempt to make Francis
appear the innocent victim of a diabolical conspiracy will never
succeed, however ingenious are the writers who devote their abilities
to so unfruitful a task.

To trace the real beginning of the expedition we must go back to the
summer of 1859. When the war ended in the manner which he alone had
foreseen, Mazzini projected a revolutionary enterprise in the south
which should restore to the Italian movement its purely national
character and defeat in advance Napoleon's plans for gathering the
Bourbon succession for his cousin, Prince Murat. He sent agents to
Sicily, and notably Francesco Crispi, who, as a native of the island
and a man of resource and quick intelligence, was well qualified to
execute the work of propaganda and to elude the Bourbon police. Crispi
travelled in all parts of Sicily for several months, and in September
he was able to report to Mazzini that the insurrection