the dignity of an independent nation.  Meanwhile something had occurred which reinforced the arguments of those who were against sending troops at all.  After hedging for a year, Austria signed a treaty couched in vague terms, but which appeared to debar her, at any rate, from taking sides with Russia—­Italy’s most flattering prospect.  Napoleon III. expected much more from it than this; he thought that Austria was too much compromised to avoid throwing in her cause with the allies.  It must be said of Napoleon that among the men responsible for the Crimean War he alone aimed at an object which, from a political, let alone moral view, could justify it.  He did not think that it would be enough to obtain a few restrictions, not worth the paper on which they were written, and the prospect of a new lease of life to Turkish despotism.  He certainly had one paltry object of his own; he wished to gratify his subjects by military glory.  He began to suspect the hollowness of the testimony of the plebiscite; the French people did not like him, and never would like him.  A war would please the populace and the army; it would also make him look much more like a real Napoleon.  But when he had decided to go to war, he hoped to do something worth doing.  He thought (to use his own words) “that no peace would be satisfactory which did not resuscitate Poland.”  There, and nowhere else, were the wings of the Russian eagle to be clipped.  Moreover, the entire French nation, which cared so little for Italy, would have applauded the deliverance of Poland.  On the Polish question the ultramontane would have embraced the socialist.  France was never so united as in the sympathy which she then felt for Poland, except in that which she now feels for Russia.  But Napoleon did not think that he could resuscitate Poland without Austrian assistance.  At the close of 1854 he made sure of getting it.

Cavour clung to his project.  Probably his penetrating mind guessed that Austria could not fight Russia, which had saved her from destruction in 1849.  There now arose a demand for some guarantee which should give Piedmont, if she took part in the war, at least the certainty of a moral advantage.  The king remarked to the French Ambassador that all this wrangling about conditions was folly “If we ally ourselves promptly and frankly, we shall gain a great deal more” Doubtless Cavour thought the same, but to satisfy the country it was necessary to demand, if nothing else, a promise from the Western Powers that they would put pressure on Austria to raise the sequestrations on the property of the Lombard exiles.  But the Powers, which were courting Austria, refused to make any such promise, on which the Foreign Minister, General Dadormida, resigned, notwithstanding that the Lombard emigrants generously begged the Government not to think of them.  Cavour offered the Foreign Office and the Presidency of the Council to D’Azeglio; under whom he would have consented to serve, but D’Azeglio declined to enter the Ministry, whilst engaging not to oppose its policy Cavour then took the Foreign Office himself, and at eight o’clock on the evening of the same day, January 10, 1855, the protocol of the offensive and defensive alliance of Sardinia with France and England was, at last, signed.