As has been stated, when Francis II. ascended the Neapolitan throne, he was invited to join in the war with Austria, and he refused.  Since then, the same negative result had attended the reiterated counsels of reform which the Piedmontese Government sent to that of Naples—­the young King showing, by repeated acts, that not Sardinia but Rome was his monitress and chosen ally in Italy.  The Pope had lately induced the French General Lamoriciere to take the command of the Pontifical troops, and he and the King of Naples were organising their armies, with a view to co-operating at an early date against the common enemy at Turin.  In January 1860, Lord Russell wrote to Mr Elliot, the English Minister at Naples:  ’You will tell the King and his Ministers that the Government of her Majesty the Queen does not intend to accept any part in the responsibility nor to guarantee the certain consequences of a misgovernment which has scarcely a parallel in Europe.’  Mr Elliot replied, early in March:  ’I have used all imaginable arguments to convince this Government of the necessity of stopping short on the fatal path which it has entered.  I finished by saying that I was persuaded of the inevitable fall of his Majesty and the dynasty if wiser counsels did not obtain a hearing, and requested an audience with the King; since, when the catastrophe occurs, I do not wish my conscience to reproach me with not having tried all means of saving an inexperienced Sovereign from the ruin which threatens him.  The Ministers of France and Spain have spoken to the same effect.’  Even Russia advised Francis to make common cause with Piedmont.  In April, Victor Emmanuel wrote to his cousin, ’as a near relative and an Italian Prince,’ urging him to listen while there was yet time to save something, if not everything.  ’If you will not hear me,’ he said, ’the day may come when I shall be obliged to be the instrument of your ruin!’

It has been said that the Sardinian Government, in tendering similar advice, hoped for its refusal and contemplated the eventuality hinted at with the reverse of apprehension.  Of course this is true.  Yet the responsibility of declining to take the only course which might by any possibility have saved him must rest with the King of Naples and not with Victor Emmanuel and his Ministers.  The attempt to make Francis appear the innocent victim of a diabolical conspiracy will never succeed, however ingenious are the writers who devote their abilities to so unfruitful a task.

To trace the real beginning of the expedition we must go back to the summer of 1859.  When the war ended in the manner which he alone had foreseen, Mazzini projected a revolutionary enterprise in the south which should restore to the Italian movement its purely national character and defeat in advance Napoleon’s plans for gathering the Bourbon succession for his cousin, Prince Murat.  He sent agents to Sicily, and notably Francesco Crispi, who, as a native of the