e, Garibaldi said: 'Poor boy! Born at the foot of a throne and
perhaps not by his own fault, hurled from it. He too will have to feel
the bitterness of exile without preparation.' 'Is that all?' asked
Vecchj. 'Do you think it nothing?' was the answer. 'Why then,'
persisted Vecchj, half in jest, 'did you go to Marsala?' 'It was the
duty of us all to go,' Garibaldi said quickly, 'else how could there
have been one Italy?'

Francis II. would have been happy had he found counsellors to persuade
him to keep pure such titles to sympathy as he then possessed.
Decorum, if not humanity, should have urged him to retire, surrounded
by the solitary flash of glory cast on his fallen cause by the brave
defence of Gaeta. But the revolution, the new Islam, if it could not
be conquered must be made to suffer for its triumph. Hence the exiled
King was advised to call in murder, pillage and rapine as
accomplices. The political brigandage which followed the downfall of
the King of the Two Sicilies began after the battle of the Volturno
and extended over five years. Its effect on the general situation was
nil; it harassed and distracted the Italian Government and created the
odious necessity of using severe repressive measures, but it never
placed the crown in danger. One effect it did have, and that was to
raise all over Italy a feeling of reprobation for the late dynasty,
which not all the crimes and follies of the two Ferdinands and the
first Francis had succeeded in evoking. How many bright lives, full of
promise, were lost in that warfare which even the sacred name of duty
could not save from being ungrateful and inglorious! Italians who have
lost their children in their country's battles have never been heard
to complain; nowhere was the seemliness of death for native land
better understood than it has been in the Italy of this century, but
to lose son or brother in a brigand ambush by the hand of an escaped
galley-slave--this was hard. The thrust was sharpened by the knowledge
that the fomenter of the mischief was dwelling securely in the heart
of Italy, the guest of the Head of the Church. From Rome came money
and instructions; from Rome, whether with or without the cognizance of
the authorities, came recruits. The Roman frontier afforded a means of
escape for all who could reach it, however red their hands were with
blood. What further evidence was needed of the impossibility of an
indefinite duration of this state within a state?