Victor Emmanuel ii. (1849).  The Republics set up at Rome and Venice struggled valiantly for a time against great odds—­Mazzini, Garibaldi, and their volunteers being finally overborne at the Eternal City by the French troops whom Louis Napoleon sent to restore the Pope (June 1849); while, two months later, Venice surrendered to the Austrians whom she had long held at bay.  The Queen of the Adriatic under the inspiring dictatorship of Manin had given a remarkable example of orderly constitutional government in time of siege.

It seemed to be the lot of the nationalists and democrats to produce leaders who could thrill the imagination of men by lofty teachings and sublime heroism; who could, in a word, achieve everything but success.  A poetess, who looked forth from Casa Guidi windows upon the tragi-comedy of Florentine failure in those years, wrote that what was needed was a firmer union, a more practical and intelligent activity, on the part both of the people and of the future leader: 

                   A land’s brotherhood
     Is most puissant:  men, upon the whole,
       Are what they can be,—­nations, what they would.

Will therefore to be strong, thou Italy! 
Will to be noble!  Austrian Metternich
Can fix no yoke unless the neck agree.

* * * * *

Whatever hand shall grasp this oriflamme,
Whatever man (last peasant or first Pope
Seeking to free his country) shall appear,
Teach, lead, strike fire into the masses, fill
These empty bladders with fine air, insphere
These wills into a unity of will,
And make of Italy a nation—­dear
And blessed be that man!

When Elizabeth Barrett Browning penned those lines she cannot have surmised that two men were working their way up the rungs of the political ladder in Piedmont and Prussia, whose keen intellects and masterful wills were to weld their Fatherlands into indissoluble union within the space of one momentous decade.  These men were Cavour and Bismarck.

It would far exceed the limits of space of this brief Introduction to tell, except in the briefest outline, the story of the plodding preparation and far-seeing diplomacy by which these statesmen raised their respective countries from depths of humiliation to undreamt of heights of triumph.  The first thing was to restore the prestige of their States.  No people can be strong in action that has lost belief in its own powers and has allowed its neighbours openly to flout it.  The history of the world has shown again and again that politicians who allow their country to be regarded as une quantite negligeable bequeath to some abler successor a heritage of struggle and war—­struggle for the nation to recover its self-respect, and war to regain consideration and fair treatment from others.  However much frothy talkers in their clubs may decry the claims of national prestige, no great statesman has ever underrated their importance.  Certainly the first aim both of Cavour and Bismarck was to restore self-respect and confidence to their States after the humiliations and the dreary isolation of those dark years, 1848-51.  We will glance, first, at the resurrection (Risorgimento) of the little Kingdom of Sardinia, which was destined to unify Italy.