L40,000.  That Garibaldi meant to cast his lot in any struggle not bearing directly on Italian affairs, as long as the questions of Rome and Venice still hung in the balance, is not to be believed.  A little earlier than this date, President Lincoln invited him to take the supreme command of the Federal army in the war for the Union, and he declined the offer, attractive though it must have been to him, both as a soldier and an abhorrer of slavery, because he did not think that Italy could spare him.  But the ’Greek Expedition,’ though a misleading name, was not altogether a blind.  Before Cavour’s death, there had been frequent discussion of a project for revolutionising the east of Europe on a grand scale; Hungary and the southern provinces of the Austrian Empire were to co-operate with the Slavs and other populations under Turkey in a movement which, even if only partially successful, would go far to facilitate the liberation of Venice.  It cannot be doubted that Rattazzi’s brain was at work on something of this sort, but the mobilisation, so to speak, of the Garibaldians suggested proceedings nearer home.  Trescorre was very far from the sea, very near the Austrian frontier.

In spite of contradictions, a plan for invading the Trentino, or South Tyrol, almost certainly did exist.  Whether Garibaldi was alone answerable for it cannot be determined.  The Government became suddenly alive to the enormous peril such an attack would involve, and arrested several of the Garibaldian officers at Sarnico.  They were conveyed to Brescia, where a popular attempt was made to liberate them; the troops fired on the crowd, and some blood was shed.  Garibaldi wrote an indignant protest and retired, first to the villa of Signora Cairoli at Belgirate, and then to Caprera.  He did not, however, remain there long.

After this point, the thread of events becomes tangled beyond the hope of unravelment.  What were the causes which led Garibaldi into the desperate venture that ended at Aspromonte?  Recollecting his hesitation before assuming the leadership of the Sicilian expedition, it seemed the more unintelligible that he should now undertake an enterprise which, unless he could rely on the complicity of Government, had not a single possibility of success.  His own old comrades were opposed to it, and it was notorious that Mazzini, to whom the counsels of despair were generally either rightly or wrongly attributed, had nothing to do with inspiring this attempt.  In justice to Rattazzi, it must be allowed that, after the arrests at Sarnico, Garibaldi went into open opposition to the ministry, which he denounced as subservient to Napoleon.  Nevertheless, with the remembrance of past circumstances in his mind, he may have felt convinced that the Prime Minister did not mean or that he would not dare to oppose him by force.  One thing is certain; from beginning to end he never contemplated civil war.  His disobedience to the King of Italy had only one purpose—­to give him Rome.  He was no more a rebel to Victor Emmanuel than when he marched through Sicily in 1860.