Charles Albert’s abdication immediately after his defeat by the Austrians left no alternative to his son and successor, Victor Emmanuel II., but that of signing a disastrous peace with Austria.  In a short time the stout-hearted young King called to his councils Count Cavour, the second son of a noble Piedmontese family, but of firmly Liberal principles, who resolved to make the little kingdom the centre of enlightenment and hope for despairing Italy.  He strengthened the constitution (the only one out of many granted in 1848 that survived the time of reaction); he reformed the tariff in the direction of Free Trade; and during the course of the Crimean War he persuaded his sovereign to make an active alliance with France and England, so as to bind them by all the claims of honour to help Sardinia in the future against Austria.  The occasion was most opportune; for Austria was then suspected and disliked both by Russia and the Western Powers owing to her policy of armed neutrality.  Nevertheless the reward of Cavour’s diplomacy came slowly and incompletely.  By skilfully vague promises (never reduced to writing) Cavour induced Napoleon III. to take up arms against Austria; but, after the great victory of Solferino (June 24, 1859), the French Emperor enraged the Italians by breaking off the struggle before the allies recovered the great province of Venetia, which he had pledged himself to do.  Worse still, he required the cession of Savoy and Nice to France, if the Central Duchies and the northern part of the Papal States joined the Kingdom of Sardinia, as they now did.  Thus, the net result of Napoleon’s intervention in Italy was his acquisition of Savoy and Nice (at the price of Italian hatred), and the gain of Lombardy and the central districts for the national cause (1859-60).

The agony of mind caused by this comparative failure undermined Cavour’s health; but in the last months of his life he helped to impel and guide the revolutionary elements in Italy to an enterprise that ended in a startling and momentous triumph.  This was nothing less than the overthrow of Bourbon rule in Sicily and Southern Italy by Garibaldi.  Thanks to Cavour’s connivance, this dashing republican organised an expedition of about 1000 volunteers near Genoa, set sail for Sicily, and by a few blows shivered the chains of tyranny in that island.  It is noteworthy that British war-ships lent him covert but most important help at Palermo and again in his crossing to the mainland; this timely aid and the presence of a band of Britons in his ranks laid the foundation of that friendship which has ever since united the two nations.  In Calabria the hero met with the feeblest resistance from the Bourbon troops and the wildest of welcomes from the populace.  At Salerno he took tickets for Naples and entered the enemy’s capital by railway train (September 7).  Then he purposed, after routing the Bourbon force north of the city, to go on and attack the French at Rome and proclaim a united Italy.