In 1857, the Emperor of Austria relieved Field-Marshal Radetsky, then in his ninety-third year, of the burden of office.  He was given the right of living in any of the royal palaces, even in the Emperor’s own residence at Vienna, but he preferred to spend the one remaining year of his life in Italy.  At the same time, the Archduke Maximilian was appointed Viceroy of Lombardy and Venetia.  A more naturally amiable and cultivated Prince never had the evil fate forced upon him of attempting impossible tasks.  Just married to the lovely Princess Charlotte of Belgium, he came to Italy radiant with happiness, and wishing to make everyone as happy as he was himself.  Not even the chilling welcome he received damped his enthusiasm, for he thought the aversion of the population depended on undoubted wrongs, which it was his full intention to redress.  He was to learn two things; firstly, that the day of reconciliation was past:  there were too many ghosts between the Lombards and Venetians, and the House of Hapsburg.  Secondly, that an unseen hand beyond the Brenner would diligently thwart each one of his benevolent designs.  The system was, and was to remain, unchanged.  It was not carried out quite as it was carried out in the first years after 1849.  The exiles were allowed to return and the sequestrations were revoked.  It should be said, because it shows the one white spot in Austrian despotism, its civil administration, that on resuming their rights of ownership the proprietors found that their estates had not been badly managed.  But the depressing and deadening influence of an anti-national rule continued unabated.  Lombardy and Venetia were governed not from Milan, but from Vienna.  Very small were the crumbs which the Viceroy obtained, though he went on a journey to Austria expressly to plead for concessions.  It is sad to think what an enlightened heir to the great Austrian empire was lost, when Napoleon III. and his own family sent Maximilian of Hapsburg to Queretaro.

While Cavour had come to the conclusion that the aid which he believed essential for the expulsion of the Austrians could only come from the French Emperor, this sovereign was regarded by a not inconsiderable party of Italians as the greatest, if not the sole, obstacle to their liberation.  All those, in particular, who came in contact with the French exiles, were impressed by them with the notion that France, the real France, was only waiting for the disappearance of the Man of December to throw herself into their arms.  Among the Italians who held these opinions, there were a few with whom it became a fixed idea that the greatest service they could render their country was the removal of Napoleon from the political scene.  They conceived and nourished the thought independently of one another; they belonged to no league, but for that reason they were the more dangerous; somewhere or other there was always someone planning to put an end to the Emperor’s life.  It is not worth while to pause to discuss