After the victory of Castelfidardo, the Sardinian attack was concentrated on Ancona.  Admiral Persano brought the squadron from Naples to co-operate with Fanti’s land forces, and the fortress capitulated on the 29th of September.  The campaign had lasted eighteen days.  The Piedmontese held Umbria and the Marches, and a road was thus opened for the army of Victor Emmanuel to march to Naples.  During the progress of these events Garibaldi was preparing for the final struggle on the Volturno.  He had not yet given up the hope of carrying his victorious arms to the Capitol, and from the Capitol to the Square of St Mark.  The whole republican party, and Mazzini himself, who had arrived in Naples, ardently adhered to this programme.  Their argument was not without force, risk or no risk, when would there be another opportunity as good as the present?  It was very well for Cavour to look forward, as he did to the day of his death, to a pacific solution of the Roman question; Mazzini saw—­in which he was far more clear-sighted than Cavour—­that such a solution would never take place.  His arrival at Naples caused alarm at Turin, both on account of his presumed influence over Garibaldi, the extent of which was much exaggerated, and from the terror his name spread among European diplomatists.  The Dictator was asked to proscribe the man whose latest act had been to give the last 30,000 francs he possessed in the world to the expenses of the Calabrian campaign.  He refused to do this.  ’How could I have insisted upon sending Mazzini into exile when he has done so much for Italian unity?’ he said afterwards to Victor Emmanuel, who agreed that he was right.  However, he allowed the Pro-Dictator Pallavicini to write a letter to Mazzini, inviting him to show his generosity by spontaneously leaving Naples in order to remove the unjust fears occasioned by his presence.  Mazzini replied, as he had a perfect right to do, that every citizen is entitled to remain in a free country as long as he does not break the laws.  And so the incident closed.

While the Party of Action urged Garibaldi not to give up Rome, other influences were brought to bear on him in the opposite sense, and especially that of the English Government, which instructed Admiral Mundy to arrange a ‘chance’ meeting between the Dictator and the English Minister at Naples, Mr. Elliot, on board the flagship Hannibal.  Mr. Elliot pointed out the likelihood of a European war arising from an attack on Venice, and the certainty of French intervention in case of a revolutionary dash on Rome.  Garibaldi replied that Rome was an Italian city, and that neither the Emperor nor anyone else had a right to keep him out of it.  ‘He was evidently,’ writes Admiral Mundy in reporting the interview, ’not to be swayed by any dictates of prudence.’