foes out of the country, or leave them in its soil.  As before, Italy was to be the grave of the French,—­only that their grave was to be dug at the very beginning of the war, instead of being made, as in other days, at its close.  But it was otherwise ordered.  The Austrians lost the advantage which certainly was theirs at the opening of the contest, and, that lost, disaster after disaster befell their arms, until the “crowning mercy” of Solferino freed Italy from their rule, if it did not entirely banish them from her land.  That Solferino was not so great a victory to the Allies as it was claimed to be at the time, that it resembled less Austerlitz than Wagram, may be admitted, and yet its importance remain unquestioned; for its decision gained for Italy the only thing that it was necessary she should have in order to work out her own salvation.  Henceforth, she was not to tremble at the mere touch of the hilt of the sword worn by the Viceroy at Milan, but was to have the chance, at least, of ordering her own destinies.  If not thoroughly free, she was no longer utterly enslaved.

The peace of Villafranca surprised every one, from the Czar on the Neva to the gold-gatherers on the Sacramento.  Strange as had been the doings—­the world called them tricks—­of Napoleon III., no man was prepared for that; and even now, though seventeen eventful months have rolled away since the first shock of it was experienced, the summer-day it was received seems more like one of those days we see in dreams than like a day of real life.  Doubt, laughter, astonishment, and disgust followed each other through the minds of millions of men.  If curses could kill, the man who had escaped the bombs of Orsini and the bullets of the Austrians would certainly have died in the month that followed the interview he had flogged his imperial brother into granting him.  In America,—­where we are always doing so much (on paper) for the cause of freedom, and for the deliverance of “oppressed nationalities” of the proper degrees and shades of whiteness, in the firm conviction that the free man is the better customer,—­in America the reaction of opinion was overwhelming; and there were but few persons in the United States who would not have shouted over news that Henri Cinq was in Paris, and that the French Empire had a third time made way for the Kingdom of France.  Time has not altogether removed the impression then created; for, if it has not justified the belief that the French Emperor had abandoned the Italian cause, it has convinced the world that he lost a noble opportunity to effect the destruction of Austria.  There may be—­most probably there are—­facts yet unknown to the public, knowledge of which would partially justify the conduct of the victor toward the vanquished, in 1859; but, if we judge from what we know, which is all that any monarch can demand of the formers of opinion, Napoleon III. was guilty of a monstrous political and military blunder when he forced a truce upon Francis Joseph.