Whatever purpose Napoleon had in view, he was induced, at last, by the British Government to desist from prolonging a struggle which could only end in one way.  The French fleet was withdrawn in January 1861, and Gaeta capitulated on February 13.  King Francis began the sad life of exile, which closed a few years ago at Arco.  The true Bourbon takes misfortune easily; the pleasures of a mock court are dear to him, his spirits never fail, nor does his appetite.  But Francis II., the son of a Savoyard mother, never consoled himself for the loss of country and crown.

Cavour hoped that with the fall of Gaeta the state of the old Regno would rapidly improve, but another citadel remained to the reaction—­Rome, whence the campaign against unity continued to be directed.  A veritable terreur blanche, called by one side brigandage, by the other a holy war, possessed the hills from Vesuvius to the Sila forest.  But though there were several foreign noblemen who took part in it, not one Neapolitan of respectability or standing joined the insurgents.  The general elections showed in the south, as over the whole country, a large majority pledged to support Cavour.  The first act of the new Chamber was to vote the assumption of the title of King of Italy by Victor Emmanuel.  The king might have assumed the title a year before with more correctness than the Longobard kings of Italy or the First Consul, but he did well to wait till none could gainsay his right to it.  Some faddists proposed to substitute “King of the Italians.”  Cavour replied that the title of King of Italy was the consecration of a great fact:  the transformation of the country, whose very existence as a nation was denied, into the kingdom of Italy.  It condensed into one word the history of the work achieved.  On the proclamation of the new kingdom Cavour resigned office; Victor Emmanuel, who was never really at his ease with Cavour, thought of accepting in earnest what was done as a matter of form, but Ricasoli dissuaded him from the idea.  The Cavour ministry therefore returned to office, with a few modifications.

The new Chamber represented all Italy, except Rome and Venice.  From Villafranca to his death, Venice was never out of Cavour’s mind.  He kept in touch with the revolutionary forces in Hungary, and Kossuth believed to the last that, if Cavour had lived, he would have compassed the liberation of both Hungary and Venetia within the year 1862.  He would have supported Lord John Russell’s plan, which was that Italy should buy the Herzegovina and give it to Austria in exchange for Venetia, but, on the whole, he thought that the most likely solution was war, in which Prussia and Italy were ranged on the same side.  He, almost alone, rated at its true value the latent military force of Prussia.  He had a knack of calling Prussia “Germany,” as he used to call Piedmont “Italy.”  He turned off the furious remonstrances which came like the burden of a song from Berlin, with the polite