In fact, no precautions of any kind seem to have been taken.  Victor Emmanuel, frightened at first, was soon reassured.  The revolution, which was to have begun on the 8th, actually broke out on the 10th of March at Alessandria, where the counter orders issued at Charles.  Albert’s request, after the interview just described, were not obeyed.  The garrison ‘pronounced’ in favour of the Spanish Constitution.  It was now impossible to draw back.  From Alessandria the revolution spread to the capital.  The bulk of the army sympathised with the movement, and relied on the support of the people.  The greatest ladies mixed with the crowds which gathered under the Carbonaro flag—­black, blue and red.  On the other hand, there were a few devoted servants of the House of Savoy who beheld these novelties with the sensations of a quiet person who sees from his window the breaking loose of a menagerie.  Invincibly ignorant of all that was really inspiring in this first breath of freedom, they saw nothing in it but an unwarrantable attack on the authority of their amiable, if weak, old King, for whom they would gladly have shed every drop of their blood—­not from the rational esteem which the people of Italy, like the people of England, now feel for their sovereign, but from the pure passion of loyalty which made the cavalier stand blindly by his prince, whether he was good or bad, in the right or in the wrong.  Men of their type watched the evolution of Piedmont into Italy from first to last with the same presentiment of evil, the same moral incapacity of appreciation.  A handful of these loyal servitors hurried to Victor Emmanuel to offer their assistance.  They marshalled their troop in battle-array in the courtyard of the palace.  Their arms were antiquated pistols and rapiers, and they themselves were veterans, some of them of eighty years, mounted on steeds as ancient.  The King thanked them, but declined their services; nor would he give carte blanche to Captain Raimondi, who assured him that with his one company he could suppress the insurrection if invested with full powers.  Soon after this refusal, a firing of guns announced that the citadel was in the hands of the insurgents.  The troops within and without fraternised; it was a fine moment for those who knew history and who were bent in their hearts on driving the foreigner out of Italy.  Here at the citadel of Turin, during the siege of 1706, occurred the memorable deed of Pietro Micca, the peasant-soldier, who, when he heard the enemy thundering at the door of the gallery, thought life and the welcome of wife and child and the happy return to his village of less account than duty, and fired the mine which sent him and three companies of French Grenadiers to their final reckoning.

After vacillating for two or three days, Victor Emmanuel abdicated on the 13th of March.  The Queen desired to be appointed regent, but, to her intense vexation, the appointment was given to Charles Albert.  A more unenviable honour never fell to the lot of man.