Italy, and yet of a kind that France and Austria would accept.  The terms Lord John offered were:  (1) that Austria and France should both agree to abstain from intervention, except at the invitation of the five Great Powers; (2) that another vote should be taken in those States which had desired to amalgamate with Piedmont before the King should be free to enter their territories.  The other provisions dealt with the preservation of the status quo in Venetia and the withdrawal of the French troops from Rome and Northern Italy.

It will be seen that the first clause was merely a reiteration, a reinforcement with Europe to back it, of the clause which Napoleon, blind to its results, had attempted to induce the Emperor of Austria to put upon paper at Villafranca.  Having failed then, he had contented himself with announcing that he would not interfere himself, nor allow Austria to interfere, by force of arms in Italy, a promise to which English diplomacy had from that moment firmly held him.  We have seen, too, that before Lord John had consented to take part in the Zurich Congress, he had exacted from Napoleon an assurance that he would consider, as an alternative to the Federation proposed at Villafranca, the formation of an Italian Federation in which Venice (or in other words Austria) should have no part whatever.  Such a Federation would not have been very different from the amalgamation with Piedmont which the other States had just proposed of their own accord; and consequently the Emperor of the French could not well protest against Lord John’s proposals without repudiating all his earlier negotiations.  Thus England and Italy now held France on their side, an unwilling ally in diplomacy, and Austria, on whom Lord John had endeavoured all along to force the principle of non-intervention, at last gave way.  She refused, however, to commit herself for the future, or to admit that she had not the right to interfere at any time in Italy’s affairs; but she let it be known that, for the present, reluctance to renew war with France and Piedmont would determine her actions.  Of course the people of the States confirmed their vote in favour of annexation, and on April 2, 1860, the first Parliament representing Piedmont and Central Italy met at Turin.

This was the first stage in the making of Italy.  When it was completed there remained only three independent Powers (excluding Austrian Venice) dividing the peninsula among them—­in the north the new kingdom of Piedmont; in the centre the diminished Papal States; in the south the kingdom of Naples.  Lord John, as the spokesman of England, by playing off Napoleon, who was no friend to Italian unity, against Francis Joseph, who was the prime enemy of Italian freedom, had secured for Italy an opportunity to work out her own salvation.  He and Cavour together had forced Napoleon to prevent Austria from checking what Napoleon himself would have liked to prevent.