Cavour took care that he should do no such thing.  The Piedmontese statesman knew when to march onwards and when to halt.  As his compatriot, Manzoni, said of him, “Cavour has all the prudence and all the imprudence of the true statesman.”  He had dared and won in 1855-59, and again in secretly encouraging Garibaldi’s venture.  Now it was time to stop in order to consolidate the gains to the national cause.

The leader of the red-shirts, having done what no king could do, was thenceforth to be controlled by the monarchy of the north.  Victor Emmanuel came in as the deus ex machina; his troops pressed southwards, occupying the eastern part of the Papal States in their march, and joined hands with the Garibaldians to the north of Naples, thus preventing the collision with France which the irregulars would have brought about.  Even as it was, Cavour had hard work to persuade Napoleon that this was the only way of curbing Garibaldi and preventing the erection of a South Italian Republic; but finally the French Emperor looked on uneasily while the Pope’s eastern territories were violated, and while the cause of Italian Unity was assured at the expense of the Pontiff whom France was officially supporting in Rome.  A plebiscite, or mass vote, of the people of Sicily, South Italy, and the eastern and central parts of the Papal States, was resorted to by Cavour in order to throw a cloak of legality over these irregular proceedings.  The device pleased Napoleon, and it resulted in an overwhelming vote in favour of annexation to Victor Emmanuel’s kingdom.  Thus, in March 1861, the soldier-king was able amidst universal acclaim to take the title of King of Italy.  Florence was declared to be the capital of the realm (1864), which embraced all parts of Italy except the Province of Venetia, pertaining to Austria, and the “Patrimonium Petri”—­that is, Rome and its vicinity,—­still held by the Pope and garrisoned by the French.  The former of these was to be regained for la patria in 1866, the latter in 1870, in consequence of the mighty triumphs then achieved by the principle of nationality in Prussia and Germany.  To these triumphs we must now briefly advert.

No one who looked at the state of European politics in 1861, could have imagined that in less than ten years Prussia would have waged three wars and humbled the might of Austria and France.  At that time she showed no signs of exceptional vigour:  she had as yet produced no leaders so inspiring as Mazzini and Garibaldi, no statesman so able as Cavour.  Her new king, William, far from arousing the feelings of growing enthusiasm that centred in Victor Emmanuel, was more and more distrusted and disliked by Liberals for the policy of militarism on which he had just embarked.  In fact, the Hohenzollern dynasty was passing into a “Conflict Time” with its Parliament which threatened to impair the influence of Prussia abroad and to retard her recovery from the period of humiliations through which she had recently passed.