On the 11th of October the Sardinian parliament sitting at Turin passed all but unanimously the motion authorising the King’s Government to accept the annexation of those Italian provinces which manifested, by universal suffrage, their desire to form part of the Constitutional Monarchy.  Cavour’s speech on this occasion was memorable:  ‘Rome,’ he said, ’would inevitably become the splendid capital of the Italian kingdom, but that great result would be reached by means of moral force; it was impossible that enlightened Catholics should not end by recognising that the Head of Catholicism would exercise his high office with truer freedom and independence guarded by the love and respect of 22,000,000 Italians than entrenched behind 25,000 bayonets.’  Of Venice, the martyr-city, he said ’that public opinion was rapidly turning against its retention by Austria, and that when the great majority of Germans refused to be any longer accomplices in its subjection, that subjection would be brought to a close either by force of arms or by pacific negotiations.’

The words were strangely prescient at a time when the Prince Regent of Prussia was making most melancholy wails over the fall of the Neapolitan King.  The Prussian Government issued a formal protest, which Cavour met by observing that Prussia, of all Powers, had the least reason to object, as Piedmont was simply setting her an example which she ought to follow and would follow, the mission of the two nations being identical.  He already thought of Prussia as an ally:  ‘Never more French alliances,’ he was once heard to say.

On the same day, the 11th of October, Victor Emmanuel crossed the Neapolitan frontier at the head of the army which Cialdini led to victory at Castelfidardo.  The King published a proclamation, in which he said that he closed the era of revolution in Italy.  Other bodies of Piedmontese troops had been despatched by sea to Naples and Manfredonia.  The passage of the Piedmontese troops over the Abruzzi mountains was opposed both by a division of the Bourbon army and by armed peasants, who burnt a man alive at a place called Isernia; but their advance was not long delayed.

The Neapolitans now began to retire from the right bank of the Volturno, and retreat towards the Garigliano, their last line of defence.  Garibaldi crossed the river with 5000 men, and moved in the direction by which the vanguard of the Piedmontese was expected to arrive.  At daybreak on the 26th of October, near Teano, the Piedmontese came in sight.  Garibaldi, who had dismounted, walked up to Victor Emmanuel and said:  ‘Hail, King of Italy!’

Once before the title was given to a prince of the House of Savoy—­to Charles Albert, in the bitterest irony by the Austrian officers who saw him flying from his friends and country by order of his implacable uncle.  A change had come since then.

Victor Emmanuel answered simply:  ‘Thanks,’ and remained talking for a quarter of an hour in the particularly kind and affectionate manner he used with Garibaldi, but at the end of the interview, when the leader of the volunteers asked that in the imminent battle on the Garigliano they might have the honour of occupying the front line, he received the reply:  ‘Your troops are tired, mine are fresh, it is my turn now.’