bserves the fertile soil, deploring, only, that it is not
better cultivated; he admires the smiling valleys and the magnificent
woods whose kings of the forest show no mark of the centuries that
passed over their fresh verdure. At first Borjes was pleased with the
peasants who came to him, but as they were few, he was obliged to join
Crocco's large band, and he now began to see, with horror, what kind
of associates he had fallen amongst. He had no authority; the brigands
laughed at his rebukes; never in his life, he writes, had he come
across such thieves. Before the enemy they ran away like a flock of
sheep, but when it was safe to do so, they murdered both men and
women. In desperation, Borjes resolved to try and get to Rome, that he
might lay the whole truth before the King, but after suffering many
hardships, he was taken with a few others close to the Papal frontier
and was immediately shot. He died bravely, chanting a Spanish litany.

Borjes' journal notes the opposition of all classes, except the very
poorest and most ignorant. Was it to be believed, therefore, that this
mountain warfare, however long drawn out, could alter one iota the
course of events? If Francis II. supposed the insurrection to be the
work of a virtuous peasantry, why did he allow them to rush to their
destruction?

The task of restoring order was assigned to General Cialdini. He
found the whole country, from the Abruzzi to Calabria, terrorised by
the league of native assassins and foreign noblemen. The Modenese
general was a severe officer who had learnt war in Spain, not a gentle
school. If he exceeded the bounds of dire necessity he merits blame;
but no one then hoped in the efficacy of half measures.

One element in the epidemic of brigandage, and looking forward, the
most serious of all, was an unconscious but profoundly real socialism.
If half-a-dozen socialistic emissaries had assumed the office of
guides and instructors, it is even odds that the red flag of communism
would have displaced the white one of Bourbon. This feature became
more accentuated as the struggle wore on, and after experience had
been made of the new political state. The economic condition of a
great part of the southern population was deplorable, but liberty, so
many thought, would exercise an instantaneous effect, filling the
mouths of the hungry, clothing the naked, providing firing in winter,
sending rain or sunshine as it was wanted. But liberty does none of