Other reasons than those of sentiment in reality decided Napoleon’s course.  Though these can only be guessed at, the guess, at the present date, amounts to certainty.  In the first place, the skin-deep rejoicings in Paris at the news of the victories did not hide the fact that French public opinion, never genuinely favourable to the war, was becoming more and more hostile to it.  Then there was the military question.  It is true that the Fifth Corps, estimated at 30,000 men, had, at last, emerged from its crepuscular doings in Tuscany, and was available for future operations.  Moreover, Kossuth paid a visit to the Imperial headquarters, and held out hopes of a revolution in Hungary which would oblige the Austrian Emperor to remove part of his troops from the scene of the war.  Nevertheless, Napoleon was by no means convinced that his army was sufficient to take the Quadrilateral.  He realised the bad organisation and numerous shortcomings of the forces under him so vividly that it seems incredible that, in the eleven following years, he should have done nothing to remedy them.  He attributed his success mainly to chance, though in a less degree to a certain lack of energy in the Austrians, joined with the exaggerated fear of responsibility felt by their leaders.  He never could thoroughly understand why the Austrians had not won Solferino.  Naturally, he did not express these opinions to his marshals, but there is ample proof that he held them; and if the fact stood alone, it ought not to be difficult to explain why he was not anxious for a continuance of the war.

But it does not stand alone.  Napoleon feared being defeated on the Rhine as well as in the Quadrilateral.  Prussia had six army corps ready, and she was about to move them.  That, after her long hesitations, she resolved to intervene was long doubted, but it cannot be so after the evidence which recent years have produced.

At the time things wore a different complexion.  Europe was never more amazed than when, on the 6th of July, Napoleon the victor sent General Fleury to Francis Joseph the vanquished with a request for an armistice.  One point only was plain; an armistice meant peace without Venetia, and never did profound sorrow so quickly succeed national joy than when this, to contemporaries astonishing intelligence, went forth.  But the blow fell on no Italian with such tremendous force as on Cavour.

There are natives of Italy who appear to be more cool, more calculating, more completely masters of themselves, than the men of any other nationality.  Cavour was one of these.  But there comes, sooner or later, the assertion of southern blood, the explosion of feeling the more violent because long contained, and the cool, quiet Italian of yesterday is not to be recognised except by those who know the race intimately well, and who know the volcano that underlies its ice and snow as well as its luxuriant vegetation.