A series of hills, dominated by Solferino and San Martino, formed the positions the Franco-Sardinian army had to assail.  The French contested Solferino with the Austrians, and, after a hotly disputed battle of more than twelve hours, succeeded in occupying it.  The Sardinians, led by Victor Emmanuel, made a violent assault on San Martino; four times in succession did they take it, only to lose it again, but the fifth time they made themselves masters of it for good and all.  By six o’clock in the evening the strength of the Austrian army was everywhere broken.  Just then a frightful hurricane, heralded by clouds of dust and accompanied by torrents of rain, burst over the two armies and thus favored the flight of the Austrian battalions.  Napoleon III now fixed his headquarters at Cavriana, in the same house that Francis Joseph had tenanted during the action.  On that vast battlefield the combatants had numbered three hundred thousand men—­one hundred sixty thousand Austrians and one hundred forty thousand French and Sardinians—­of all these, after that sanguinary struggle, twenty-five thousand were left dead or wounded.

After a few days’ rest the Franco-Sardinian army crossed the Mincio and besieged Peschiera.  Now there seemed a chance of the Italians fulfilling the hope they had so long cherished, of expelling the foreigners.  They confidently awaited news of fresh feats of arms in the Quadrilateral and of the success of the fleet sent by France and Sardinia into Adriatic waters, but instead came the most unexpected tidings imaginable.

On July 8th Napoleon III had met Francis Joseph, and three days later the preliminaries of peace were signed at Villafranca.  By this treaty Austria was to cede Lombardy to Napoleon, who was to relegate it to Sardinia; the Italian States were to be amalgamated into a confederation, under the Presidency of the Pope, but Venice, though forming part of this same confederation, was to remain under Austrian rule.  Great indeed was the mortification of all Italy on hearing such terms of peace announced.  Cavour, who had devoted all his marvellous talents to realizing the ideal of national redemption and had believed his ends so nearly attained, hastened to his Prince, and, in a melancholy interview, advised him not to accept such conditions.  But Victor Emmanuel, although it caused his very heart to bleed, signed the treaty, adding these words:  “I approve as far as I myself am concerned,” whereupon Cavour sent in his resignation.

What was the motive that had induced Napoleon to break his lately made promise of freeing Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic?  There were many reasons which influenced him:  the sight of that immense battlefield, strewn with the bodies of the slain, the determined resistance of the Austrian soldiers, the difficulties which would have to be faced in the Quadrilateral, the hostile attitude of Prussia, were all motives which combined to sway the French Emperor’s