For a few days such of the townsfolk as had not completely lost their heads, underwent acute anxiety as they gazed at the frowning pile of Sant’ Elmo; but finally the officers in command of the garrison decided to capitulate, contrary, in this instance, to the wishes of the soldiery.  The royal troops marched out of the city towards Capua on the 11th of September.

Garibaldi’s first act had been to hand over the Neapolitan fleet in the bay to Admiral Persano, a solemn reassertion of his loyalty to Victor Emmanuel, whom, in his every utterance, he held up to the people as the best of kings and the father of his country.  He instructed his Neapolitan officer, Cosenz, to form a ministry, and wrote to the Marquis Pallavicini, the prisoner of Spielberg, inviting him to become Pro-Dictator.  Had a man of authority like Pallavicini, who also entirely possessed the Dictator’s confidence, at once assumed that office, much of the friction which followed might have been spared.  But he did not enter into his functions till October, and in the meanwhile the ‘dualism’ of Sicily broke out in an exaggerated form, each side sincerely believing the other to be on the verge of ruining the country to which they were both sincerely attached.  The appointment of Dr Bertani as Secretary of the Dictatorship gave rise to controversies which even now, when the grave has closed over the actors, are hardly at rest.  It is time that they should be.  Apart from the war about persons, some of them not very wise persons, and apart from the fears entertained at Turin, that the freeing of the Two Sicilies would drift into a republican movement:  fears which were invincible, though, as far as they regarded Garibaldi, they were neither just nor generous, the question resolved itself, as was the case in Sicily, into whether the unification of Italy was to go on or whether it was to halt?  Garibaldi refused to give up Sicily to the King’s government because he intended making it the base for the liberation of Naples.  Events had justified him.  He now refused to hand over Naples because he intended making it the base for the liberation of Rome.  It has been seen that he and he alone prevented an attempt at a landing in the Papal states from being made in the month of August.  In deciding, however, that it was expedient to finish one enterprise before beginning another, he did not give up Rome:  he merely chose what he thought a safer road to go there.  And he now declared without the least concealment that he intended to proclaim Victor Emmanuel King of Italy from the Quirinal.

Would events have justified him again?  There was a French garrison in Rome; this, to Cavour, seemed a conclusive answer.