were never tired of admiring the good organisation and neatness of their camp, which was laid out in huts that kept off the burning sun better than tents, intersected with paths and gardens.  The little army was fortified by the feeling that after all it was serving no alien cause but its own.  “Never mind,” said a soldier, as they were struggling in the slough of the trenches, “of this mud Italy will be made.”  They all shared the hope which the king expressed in a letter to La Marmora, “Next year we shall have war where we had it before.”

Victor Emmanuel’s visit to the courts of Paris and London was not without political significance.  Cavour first intended that only D’Azeglio should accompany him; he always put the Marquis forward when he wished the country to appear highly respectable and anti-revolutionary; at the last moment he decided to go himself as well.  In Paris the king was dismayed at observing that Napoleon, in presence of Austria’s inaction, was bent on making peace.  Cavour had also counted on the continuance of the war, but he found encouragement in the fact that when he left, the Emperor told him to write confidentially to Walewski what, in his opinion, he could do for Piedmont and Italy.  In England the king was most cordially received, and, if he was rather embarrassed when a portion of the English religious world hailed him as a kind of new Luther, he could not help being struck by the real friendliness shown to him by all classes.  Cavour made a strongly favourable impression on Prince Albert, and the Queen expressed so much sympathy with his aims that he called her “the best friend of Piedmont in England.”  He carried away a curious souvenir of his visit to Windsor.  When Victor Emmanuel was made Knight of the Garter, the Queen wished that he should know the meaning of the oath he took; whereupon Lord Palmerston at once wrote down a translation of the words into Italian, and handed it to the king.  When Cavour heard of this, he asked the king to give him the paper to preserve in the Sardinian archives.

The preliminaries of the peace were signed in February 1856.  It was a great blow to Victor Emmanuel, who had felt confident that if the war lasted long enough for Russia to be placed in real danger, Austria would he obliged to go to her assistance.  The heavy bill for war expenditure, largely exceeding the estimate, damped people’s spirits, buoyed up for an instant by victory, and they asked once more, what was the good of it all?  Time was to answer the question; but before showing how an issue, which even Cavour viewed with disappointment, proved, nevertheless, fruitful of more good than the most sanguine advocate of the war had ventured to hope for, a short account must be given of the home politics of Piedmont in the year 1855.