After easily gaining possession of the left (Venetian) bank of the Mincio, Charles Albert employed himself in losing time over chimerical operations with a view to taking the fortresses of Peschiera and Mantua, now strongly garrisoned, and impregnable while their provisions lasted.  This object governed the conduct of the campaign, and caused the waste of precious months during every day of which General Nugent, with his 30,000 men, was approaching one step nearer from the mountains of Friuli, and General Welden, with his 10,000, down the passes of Tyrol.  If, instead of playing at sieges, Charles Albert had cut off these reinforcements, Radetsky would have been rendered powerless, and the campaign would have had another termination.  Never was there a war in which the adoption of Napoleon’s system of crushing his opponents one by one, when he could not outnumber them if united, was more clearly indicated.

General Durando crossed the Po on the 21st of April with 17,000 men, partly Pontifical troops and partly volunteers, to which weak corps fell the task of opposing Nugent’s advance in Venetia.  The colours of the Pontifical troops were solemnly blessed before they left Rome, but as the order was only given to go to the frontier, and nothing was said, though everything was understood, about crossing it, the Pope was technically able to assert that the war was none of his making.  His ministry ventured to suggest to him that the situation was peculiar.  Now it was that Catholic Austria and Russia, herself schismatic, flourished in the face of the Pope the portentous scare of a new schism.  It is said that the Pope’s confessor, a firm Liberal, died just at this time, not without suspicion of poison.  Thoroughly alarmed in his spiritual capacity, the Pope issued his Encyclical Letter of the 29th of April—­when his ministers and the whole country still hoped from day to day that he would formally declare war—­in which he protested that his sacred office obliged him to embrace all nations in an equal paternal love.  If his subjects, he added, followed the example of the other Italians, he could not help it:  a half-hearted admission which could not mitigate the indignation which the document called forth.  With regard to Durando’s corps, the Pope did what was the best thing under the altered circumstances; he sent L.C.  Farini as envoy to the King of Sardinia, with the request that he would take the Roman troops under his supreme command, the Papal Government agreeing to continue the pay of such of them as belonged to the regular army.  Pius IX. made one last effort to help his fellow-countrymen which people hardly noticed, so futile did it appear, but which was probably made in profound seriousness.  He wrote a letter to the Emperor of Austria begging him to make all things right and pleasant by voluntarily withdrawing from his Italian dominions.  Popes had dictated to sovereigns before now; was there not Canossa?  Besides, if a miracle was sought, why should not a