When he resolved to cut short the war, Napoleon still had it in his power to go down to history as the supreme benefactor of Italy.  He chose instead to become her worst and by far her most dangerous enemy.  The preliminaries of peace opened with the words:  ’The Emperor of Austria and the Emperor of the French will favour the creation of an Italian Confederation under the honorary presidency of the Holy Father.’  Further, it was stated that the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Modena would return to their states.  Though Napoleon proposed at first to add, ‘without foreign armed intervention,’ he waived the point (Rome was in his mind) and no such guarantee was inserted.  Here, then, was the federative programme which all the personal influence and ingenuity of the French Emperor, all the arts of French diplomacy, were concentrated on maintaining, and which was only defeated by the true patriotism and strong good sense of the Italian populations, and of the men who led them through this, the most critical period in their history.

In England Lord Derby’s administration had fallen and the Liberals were again in power.  Napoleon was so strangely deluded as to expect to find support in that quarter for his anti-unionist conspiracy.  His earliest scheme was that the federative plan should be presented to Europe by Great Britain.  Lord John Russell answered:  ’We are asked to propose a partition (morcellement) of the peoples of Italy, as if we had the right to dispose of them.’  It was a happy circumstance for Italy that her unity had no better friends than in the English Government during those difficult years.  Cavour’s words soon after Villafranca, ‘It is England’s turn now,’ were not belied.

One thing should have made Napoleon uneasy; a man like Cavour, when his blood is roused, when his nature is fired by the strongest passions that move the human heart, is an awkward adversary.  If there was an instant in which the great statesman thought that all was lost, it was but an instant.  With the quick rebound of virile characters he recovered his balance and understood his part.  It was to fight and conquer.

‘Your Emperor has dishonoured me,’ he said to M. Pietri in the presence of Kossuth (the interview taking place at Turin on the 15th of July).  ‘Yes, sir, he has dishonoured me,’ and he set forth how, after promising to hunt the last Austrian out of Italy, after secretly exacting the price of his assistance to which Cavour had induced his good and honest King to consent, he now left them solemnly in the lurch; Lombardy might suffice!  And, for nothing to be wanting, the King was to be forced into a confederation with Austria and the Italian princes under the presidency of the Pope.  After painting the situation with all the irony and scorn of which he was master, he gave his note of warning:  ’If needs be, I will become a conspirator, I will become a revolutionist, but this treaty shall never be executed; a thousand times no—­never!’