hope, the impression was one of embarrassment and mortification.  Italy was distinctly precluded by her engagement with Prussia from accepting Napoleon’s invitation to conclude a separate peace.  Meanwhile, Austria gained by the move, as it set her at liberty to recall the larger part of her troops from Venetia for the defence of Vienna.  Her honour did not require her to contest the ground in a province which she had already given away.  When Cialdini, at the head of the reorganised Italian army of which he now held the chief command, advanced across the Po to Padua, he found the path practically open.

It was still possible for Italy to accomplish two things which would have in a great measure retrieved her prestige.  The first was to occupy the Trentino; the second was to destroy the Austrian fleet.  With the means at her disposal she ought to have been able to do both.

In the earlier phases of Italian liberation, no one disputed that if Lombardy and Venetia were lost to the Empire the Tridentine province, wedged in as it is between them, would follow suit.  When, in 1848, Lord Palmerston offered his services as mediator between Austria and revolted Italy, it was on a minimum basis of a frontier north of Trento.  The arguments for the retention of Trieste—­that Austria had made it what it was; that Germany needed it as a seaport, etc.—­were inapplicable here; and even after the defeat of Custoza, an occupation of the Trentino, had it happened in conjunction with a naval victory, would have opened a fair prospect to possession.  But there was no time to lose, and much time was lost by ordering Garibaldi to descend to the southern extremity of the lake of Garda to ‘cover Brescia’ from an imaginary attack.  When the fear of an Austrian invasion subsided, and Garibaldi returned to the mountains, he endeavoured to re-take the position of Monte Suello which he had previously held, but the attempt failed.  The volunteers were forced to retire with great loss, and the chief himself was wounded.  On the 16th of July the volunteers renewed their advance up the mountain ravines, and, after taking Fort Ampola, reached the village of Bezzecca, where they were attacked by the Austrians early on the 21st.  Each side claimed that sanguinary day as a victory; the Garibaldians remained masters of the ground, but the Austrians, in retiring, took with them a large number of prisoners.  The losses of the volunteers on this and other occasions when they were engaged were disproportionately heavy.  They were spendthrift of their lives, but in war, and especially in mountain warfare, caution is as needful as courage, and in caution they were so deficient that they were always being surprised.  General Kuhn’s numerically inferior force of tried marksmen, supported by good artillery and favoured by ground which may be described as one great natural fortification, had succeeded up till now in holding the Trentino, but his position was becoming critical, because while Garibaldi sought to approach Trento from the west, Medici with 10,000 men detached from the main army at Padua, was ascending the Venetian valleys that lead to the same destination from the east.  Kuhn was therefore on the point of being taken between two fires when the armistice saved him.