Mentana lies in a depression commanded by the neighbouring mounds, not a good configuration for defence.  This village in the Roman Campagna sprang into history on a November day one thousand and sixty-seven years before, as the meeting-place of Charlemagne and Leo III.  Here they shook hands over their bargain:  that the Pope should crown the great Charles Emperor, and that the Emperor should assure to the Pope his temporal power.  And now the ragged band of Italian youths was come to say that of bargains between Popes and Emperors there had been enough.

They numbered less than 5000.  General De Failly reckoned the Papal troops engaged at 3000 and the French at 2000, but Italian authorities compute the former at a higher figure.  The most experienced of the Garibaldian officers thought that the attackers were twice as numerous as they were.  At the first onslaught great confusion prevailed among the volunteers.  Mentana seemed lost, but the sound of the guns they had captured at Monte Rotondo restored their moral, and making a gallant rush forward they retook the principal positions with the bayonet.  As they saw the Pontificals swerve back they uttered cries of joy.  It was two o’clock.  The enemy’s fire slackened; something was going on which the volunteers could not make out.  All at once there was a sharp unfamiliar detonation, resembling the whirring sound of a machine.  The French had come into action.

A hailstorm of bullets mowed down the Garibaldian ranks.  Their two guns were useless, for the ammunition, seventy rounds in all, was exhausted.  They fought till four o’clock—­till nearly their last cartridge was gone; then they slowly retreated.  Very few of them guessed what that peculiar sound meant, or imagined that they had been engaged with the French, but next morning Europe knew from General De Failly’s report that ‘the Chassepots had done wonders.’

Garibaldi left the field, haggard and aged, unable to reconcile himself to a defeat which he thought that more discipline, more steadiness in his rank and file, would have turned into a victory.  He had always demanded the impossible of his men; till now they had given it to him.  In time he judged more justly.  Those miserably-armed lads who lately had been glad to eat the herbs of the field, if haply they found any, stood out for four hours against the pick of two regular armies, one of which was supposed to be the finest in the world.  They had done well.

Mentana remained that night in the hands of 1500 Garibaldians, who still occupied the castle and most of the houses when the general retreat was ordered.  In the morning the Garibaldian officer who held the castle capitulated, on condition that the volunteers ’shut up in Mentana’ should be reconducted across the frontier; terms which the French and Papal generals interpreted to embrace only the defenders of the castle.  Eight hundred of the others were taken in triumph to Rome.  It would have been wiser to let them go.