When Mantua surrendered, the Milanese sent a deputation to Paris with a view of securing for Lombardy the position of an independent kingdom under an Austrian prince.  They hoped to obtain the first by acquiescing in the second.  They were aroused from their unheroic illusions with startling rapidity.  Lord Castlereagh, to whom they went first (for they fancied that the English were interested in liberty), referred them ‘to their master, the Austrian Emperor.’  The Emperor Francis replied to their memorial that Lombardy was his by right of conquest; they would hear soon enough at Milan what orders he had to give them.  Even after that, the distracted Lombards hoped that the English at Genoa would befriend them.  All uncertainty ceased on the 23rd of May 1814, when Field-Marshal Bellegarde formally took possession of Lombardy on behalf of his Sovereign, dissolved the Electoral Colleges, and proclaimed himself Regent.  There was no question of reviving the conditions under which Austria ruled Lombardy while there was still a German Empire:  conditions which, though despotic in theory, were comparatively easy-going in practice, and did not exclude the native element from the administration.  Henceforth the despotism was pure and simple; for Italians to even think of politics was an act of high treason.

It is not generally known that a British army ultimately sent to Spain was intended for Italy,[1] but its destination was changed because the Italians showed so little disposition to rise against Napoleon.  The English Government was continually advised by its agents in Italy to make Sicily, which was wholly in its power, the point d’appui for a really great intervention in the destinies of the peninsula.  ’The grand end of all the operations in the Mediterranean,’ wrote one of Lord Castlereagh’s correspondents, ’is the emancipation of Italy, and its union in one great state.’  Lord William Bentinck urged that if Sicily were reunited to Naples under the Bourbons, liberty, established there by his own incredible efforts, would be crushed, and the King would wreck vengeance on the Constitution and its supporters.  Universal terror, he said, was felt at ’the unforgiving temper of their Majesties.’  He strongly supported a course proposed for her own reasons by Queen Caroline:  the purchase of Sicily by the English Government which could make it ’not only the model but the instrument of Italian independence.’

This way of talking was not confined to private despatches, and it was no wonder if the Italians were disappointed when they found that England declined to plead their cause with the Allies in Paris, and afterwards at Vienna.  When charged directly with breach of faith before the House of Commons, Lord Castlereagh said that Austria, being ’in truth the great hinge on which the fate of mankind must ultimately depend,’ had to be paid (this was exactly the sense, though not the form, of his defence) by letting her do what