He was resolved to put an end to the block at all costs, except the reconsignment of populations already free to Austria or Austrians.  “Let the people of Central Italy declare themselves what they want, and we will stand by their decisions come what may.”  This was the rule which he proposed to follow, and which he would have followed even if war had been the consequence.  Personally he would have accepted a provisional union of the Central States, such as Farini advocated; but Ricasoli discerned in any temporary division a danger to Italian unity, and induced or rather forced Cavour to renounce the idea.  He called Ricasoli an “obstinate mule,” but he had the rare gift of seeing that the strong man who opposed him in details was to be preferred to a weak man who was only a puppet.

The substitution of Walewski by Thouvenel at the French Foreign Office, and the Emperor’s letter to the Pope advising him to give up the revolted Legations of his own accord, raised many hopes, but those who took these to be the signs of a decided change of policy were mistaken.  Napoleon would not yield about Tuscany, and it grew plainer every day that the reason why he held out was in order to sell his consent.  M. Thouvenel has distinctly stated that at this period the English ministry were informed of the Emperor’s intention to claim Savoy and Nice if Piedmont annexed any more territory.  Even before he resumed office, Cavour was convinced that the only way to a settlement was to strike a direct bargain with Napoleon.  He viewed the contemplated sacrifice not with less but with more repulsion than he had viewed it at Plombieres.  The constant harassing of the last six months, which provoked him to say that never would he be again an accessory to bringing a French army into Italy, left an ineffaceable impression on his mind.  The cession of the two provinces seemed to him now much less like obliging a friend than satisfying a highwayman.  But he was convinced that it was an act of necessity.

As the “might-have-beens” of history can never be determined, it will never be possible to decide with certainty whether Cavour’s conviction was right or wrong.  Half a year of temporising had prejudiced the position of affairs; it was more difficult to defy Napoleon now than when he broke off the war without fulfilling his promises.  A clear-sighted diplomatist, Count Vitzthum, has given it as his opinion that if Cavour had divulged the Secret Treaty of January 1859, by which Savoy and Nice were promised in return for the French alliance, Napoleon would have been so deeply embarrassed that he would have relinquished his claims at once.  But such a course would have mortally offended France as well as the Emperor.  Cavour did not share the illusion of the Italian democracy that the “great heart” of the French nation was with them.  He once said that, if France became a republic, Italy would gain nothing by it—­quite the contrary.  With so many questions still open, and, above all, the difficult problem of Rome, he feared to turn the smothered animosity of the French people into violent and declared antagonism.