Papal states from being made in the month of August.
In deciding, however, that it was expedient to finish one enterprise
before beginning another, he did not give up Rome: he merely chose
what he thought a safer road to go there. And he now declared without
the least concealment that he intended to proclaim Victor Emmanuel
King of Italy from the Quirinal.

Would events have justified him again? There was a French garrison in
Rome; this, to Cavour, seemed a conclusive answer.

Cavour was engaged on a series of measures, unscrupulous manoeuvres as
some have called them, masterpieces of statesmanship as they have been
described by others, by which he got back the reins of the Italian
team into his own hands. The plan of an annexionist revolution in
Naples before Garibaldi arrived had failed. So much discontent was
felt at the apparent indifference, or, at least, 'masterly inactivity'
of the Sardinian government in presence of the great struggle in the
south that Cavour began to be afraid of a revolution breaking out in
quite a different quarter, in Victor Emmanuel's own kingdom. It was at
this critical juncture that he resolved to invade the Papal states,
and take possession of the Province of Umbria and the Marches of
Ancona.

The decision was one of extreme boldness. For three months Cavour had
been stormed at by all the Foreign Ministers in Turin, excepting Sir
James Hudson, but, as he wrote to the Marquis E. D'Azeglio: 'I shall
not draw back save before fleets and armies.'

Austria, France, Spain, Russia and Prussia now broke off diplomatic
relations with Sardinia. What would be their next act? The danger of
Austria intervening was smaller than it then appeared; Austria was too
much embarrassed in her own house, and especially in Hungary, for her
to covet adventures in Italy. But the French Government did, in the
plainest terms, threaten to intervene, and this notwithstanding that
the Emperor himself appeared to be convinced by Cavour's argument,
that the proposed scheme was the only means of checking the march of
revolution, which from Rome might spread to Paris. By announcing one
line of policy in public and another in private, Napoleon left the
door open to adopt either one or the other, according to the
development of events. In the sequel, the Papal party had a right to
say that he lured them to their destruction, as their plan of
operations, and in particular the defence of Ancona, was undertaken in
the dis