The campaign of 1848 was finished.  From the frontier, Charles Albert issued a proclamation to his people, calling upon the Piedmontese to render the common misfortunes less difficult to bear by giving his army a brotherly reception.  ‘In its ranks,’ he concluded, ’are my sons and I, ready, as we all are, for new sacrifices, new hardships, or for death itself for our beloved fatherland.’

The political and diplomatic transactions connected with the war in Lombardy were the subject after it closed of much discussion, and of some violent recriminations.  Even from the short account given in these pages, it ought to be apparent that the supreme cause of disaster was simply bad generalship.  Contemporaries, however, judged otherwise; if they were monarchists, they attributed the failure to the want of whole-hearted co-operation of the Provisional Governments of Lombardy with the liberating King; if they were republicans, they attributed it to the King’s want of trust in the popular element, and anxiety lest, instead of receiving an increase of territory, he should find himself confronted with a new republic at his door.  Both parties were so far correct that the strain of double purposes, or, at least, of incompatible aspirations which ran through the conduct of affairs, militated against a fortunate ending.  The Piedmontese Government, even had it wished, would have found it difficult to adhere strictly to the programme of leaving all political matters for discussion after the war.  What actually happened was that the union, under the not altogether attractive form of Fusion with Piedmont (instead of in the shape of the formation of an Italian kingdom), was effected at the end of June and beginning of July over the whole of Lombardy and Venetia, including Venice, where, perhaps alone, the feeling against it was not that of a party, but of the bulk of the population.  Manin shared that feeling, but his true patriotism induced him to push on the Fusion in order to avoid the risk of civil war.  He retired into private life the day it was accomplished, only to become again by acclamation Head of the State when the reverses of Sardinia obliged the King’s Government to renounce the whole of his scarcely—­acquired possessions, not excepting Modena, which had been the first, by a spontaneous plebiscite, to elect him Sovereign.

The diplomatic history of the war is chiefly the history of the efforts of the English Cabinet to pull up a runaway horse.  Lord Minto had been sent to urge the Italian princes to grant those concessions which Austria always said (and she was perfectly right) would lead to a general attack upon her power, but when the attack began, the British Government strained every nerve to limit its extension and diminish its force.  That Lord Palmerston in his own mind disliked Austria, and would have been glad to see North Italy free, does not alter the fact that he played the Austrian game, and played it with success.  He strongly