As in the former negotiations, Austria took her stand on precisely the same ground as Italy.  And thus it was that France plunged into the campaign of 1870 single-handed.

After Woerth, and once more after Gravelotte, the endeavour to draw Italy into the struggle was renewed.  Napoleon was aware that Victor Emmanuel was wildly anxious to come to the rescue, and on this personal goodwill his last hope was built.  Prince Napoleon was despatched from the camp at Chalons to see what he could do.  At this eleventh hour (19th August) Napoleon was ready to yield about Rome.  At the camp, the influence which guided him in Paris was less felt, or it is probable that he would not have yielded even now.  Prince Napoleon carried a sheet of white paper with the Emperor’s signature at the foot.  He showed it to Lanza when he reached Florence, and told him to fill it up as he chose.  Whatever he asked for was already granted.  A month before, such terms would have won both Italy and Austria—­not now.

The Prince found his father-in-law eager to give the 50,000 men that were asked for, but the ministers protested that the Italian army was unprepared for war.  Still, to satisfy the King, who signified his irritation so clearly to Lanza that this good servant was on the point of resigning, they agreed to submit the case to Austria; if Austria would co-operate, they would re-consider their decision.  Austria replied:  ‘Too late.’

When, in 1873, Victor Emmanuel paid a visit to Berlin, he caused some sensation at a grand State banquet by saying to his host:  ’But for these gentlemen’ (and he waved his hand towards the ministers who accompanied him) ‘I should have gone to war with you.’  Courtiers did not know which way to look, but the aged Emperor was not displeased by the soldierly bluntness of the avowal.

Prince Napoleon remained in Florence, throwing away his eloquence, till the 2nd of September cut short the argument.  When he had left his cousin, the Emperor was resolved to fall back on Paris according to MacMahon’s plan, but the ministers and the Empress Regent forced him to his doom.  On the 2nd of September Sedan was lost; on the 4th the Empire fell.

‘And to think,’ exclaimed Victor Emmanuel when he heard the news, ‘that this good man was always wanting to give me advice!’

From the date of the declaration of war, and still more since the evacuation of Rome by the French troops (begun on the 29th of July, ended on the 19th of August), Italy had been too deeply agitated for any sane person to suppose that the prescriptive right of the nation to seize the opportunity which offered itself of completing its unity could be resisted by the artificial dyke of a compromise which made the Government the instrument of France.  Lanza was determined to maintain order; he had Mazzini arrested at Palermo, and suppressed disorders where they occurred, but the rising tide of the will of the people could not be suppressed, and had the ministry resisted it, something more than the ministry would have fallen.