NAPLES.
The resemblance between Colonel Peard and Garibaldi was so great that,
being similarly dressed, the Englishman, pushing on so far in advance,
was everywhere taken for the general, and he utilised this likeness to
the utmost. The news of his rapid approach hastened the retreat of the
Neapolitans. He sent fictitious telegrams to their generals as from
private friends, magnifying Garibaldi's forces, and representing that he
was taking a line that would cut them off from Naples, and so sent them
hurrying away at full speed and adding to the alarm and confusion of the
government.
"I suppose we had better push on with Garibaldi, grandfather?" Frank
said one day, as they finished an unusually long march.
"Certainly, Frank," Signor Forli said, somewhat surprised; "we shall be
in Naples in another three or four days. I am sure Garibaldi will not
wait for his troops; he was saying to me yesterday that he was most
anxious to enter the city, as he had notice from a friend that Cavour's
party were hard at work trying to organise a general rising of the city
before he arrives, and the issue of a manifesto declaring Victor
Emmanuel king of Italy and inviting him to come at once. This Garibaldi
is determined not to allow. He has from the first always declared that
he came in the name of the king, and that when his work was done he
would hand over Southern Italy to him. You know his loyalty and absolute
disinterestedness; and the idea that he would endeavour to obtain any
advantage for himself is absurd.
"If he had chosen, instead of accepting the dictatorship of Sicily he
could have been elected king; and assuredly it is the same thing here.
He is the people's hero and saviour; the very name of the King of
Sardinia is scarcely known in Sicily, and excites no interest whatever.
It is the same thing in Calabria: the enthusiasm is all for Garibaldi,
and had he consented to accept the crown he would have been elected
unanimously. His wish and hope is to present to Victor Emmanuel Southern
Italy cleared of all enemies, complete and undivided; and yet, rather
than so receive it, Cavour, Farina, and the rest of them are intriguing
at Naples, as they intrigued in Sicily, in order that the king should
appear to take this wide accession of territory as the expression of the
will of the people, and not from the hand of Garibaldi.
"It is pitiful to see such mean jealousy. In time, no doubt, even had
there not been a Garibaldi, this would have come about, but it might
have been fifteen or twenty years hence; and had it been done by means
of a royal army, France and Austria would probably both have interfered
and demanded compensation, and so left Italy still incomplete. It is the
speed with which the change has been effected, and I may say the
admiration with which Europe has viewed it, and the assurance of the
government at Turin that it has had no hand in this business, but has
taken all means in its power to prevent it, that has paralysed
opposition. I trust that all these intrigues will fail, and that
Garibaldi may have the sole honour that he craves--namely, that of
presenting the kingdom of the two Sicilies to Victor Emmanuel. Should
Cavour's intrigues succeed, and Garibaldi be slighted, it will be the
blackest piece of ingratitude history has ever recorded. However, why do
you ask 'shall we go on to Naples?' I thought that you were burning to
get there."
"I am; but you see we are passing, without time for making any
investigations, many places where my father, if alive, may be in prison.
At Potenza, for example, I know that a large number of political
prisoners are confined, and doubtless it is the same at many other
towns. I cannot bear to think of the possibility that he may be in one
of these, and that we have passed him by."
"I can quite understand your feelings, Frank; but you know we are agreed
that it is at Naples we shall most probably find him, if he is still
alive. Bad as the prisons may be in other places, they are more loosely
managed; there would be fewer conveniences for keeping one prisoner
apart from the others, while there are ample opportunities in those of
Naples for many to be kept in secret confinement. Certainly I was so
kept myself at Reggio; but that was a royal fortress, and though used as
a prison for political offenders, there were no malefactors there. In
the jails in the provincial towns this could not be so, and I know that
prisoners are all mixed up together, save those who can afford to pay,
who can live in comparative comfort, while the rest are herded together
anyhow, and can scarcely exist upon the rations allowed to them. The
more I think of it, the more I am convinced that it is at Naples that we
must look for your father. Now that we have arrived at Salerno, and
that, as we hear, the Neapolitan troops are falling back from the
capital, and taking up their position round Capua and Gaeta, there can
be little doubt that Garibaldi will, in a day or two, go forward. There
is, indeed, nothing to prevent you and me from going by train there
to-morrow, if you lay aside that red shirt and scarf, and dress in
clothes that will attract no attention. But I do not see that anything
would be gained by it; you will still have to wait until Garibaldi is
supreme there, and his orders are respected, and you may be sure that,
as soon as he is in power, his first step will be to throw open the
prisons and release all who are charged with political offences, to
order these hideous dungeons to be permanently closed, and to thoroughly
reorganise the system. You have told me that he did this at Palermo, and
he will certainly do the same at Naples."
Four days later the king issued a farewell notice to the people, and
left Naples for Gaeta; and three hours afterwards Romano, his minister,
who had drawn up his farewell, addressed the following telegram to
Garibaldi:--
"To the Invincible Dictator of the two Sicilies.--Naples expects you
with anxiety to confide to you her future destiny.--Entirely yours,
LIBORIO ROMANO."
A subsequent letter informed him that at a meeting of the ministers it
had been decided that the Prince of Alessandria, Syndic of Naples,
should go to Salerno, with the commander of the national guard, to make
the arrangements for his entry into the capital. Garibaldi, however, did
not wait. Were he to arrive at the head of his troops, the Neapolitan
garrisons of the castle and other strong places in the city might oppose
him by force; and, as ever, wishing to avoid bloodshed, he determined to
rely solely upon the populace of Naples. He at once ordered a small
special train to be prepared.
"I am only taking with me," he said to Frank, "a few of my staff. You
will be one of the number: you have a right to it, not only as the
representative of your mother, to whose aid we are largely indebted for
our being now here, but for your own personal services. Signor Forli
shall also go: he stood by me on the walls of Rome twelve years ago, he
has suffered much for his principles, he is your mother's father,
therefore he too shall come."
There were but four carriages on the little train that left at nine
o'clock in the morning on the 7th of September for Naples. Cosenz, and
thirteen members of the staff, represented the national army; the
remaining seats being occupied by various personal friends and two or
three newspaper correspondents.
"'Tis an affair not without risk," Signor Forli said to Frank, as they
walked towards the station. "That the people will receive Garibaldi with
enthusiasm is certain, but the attitude of the troops is very doubtful.
Certainly the flower of the Neapolitan army will have been left in
garrison at Naples; and if but a score of these remain faithful to the
Bourbons, Garibaldi's life may be sacrificed. However, I cannot believe
that Providence will permit one who has done so great and mighty a work
to perish, just at the moment of the completion of his enterprise."
The station-master at Salerno, as soon as the train had started, flashed
the news to the various stations on the road; and the consequence was,
that at every village the people assembled, and when half the journey
was done the crowds were so vast, that they overflowed on to the line,
and the train was brought to a standstill. National guards climbed on to
the roofs of the carriages, and decorated them with flags and
evergreens. At Torre del Greco, Resina, and Portici, progress became
almost impossible, and the train had to proceed at a snail's pace to
Naples. Here the authorities had prevented all access to the station,
but outside the scene was an extraordinary one: horses and carriages,
men and women of the highest and of the lowest classes; national guards
and gendarmes, members of Bertani's and the Cavourian committees, were
all crowded in confusion together. The houses were decorated with flags
and tapestry, and thronged with eager spectators from basement to roof;
and as Missori and three others rode out from the station on horseback,
followed by Garibaldi in an open carriage with Cosenz, and by a dozen
other carriages containing his staff and those who had arrived with him,
the roar of welcome was overpowering.
It was with the greatest difficulty that the horsemen cleared the way;
for all along the road the crowd was as great as at the station. The
attitude of the troops, however, at the various points where they were
massed, was sullen and threatening. At Castel Nuovo the guns were
pointed on the road; the troops stood ready to fire. One shot, and the
course of history might have been changed. Garibaldi ordered his
coachman to drive slower, and sat in his carriage calmly, with his eyes
fixed upon the troops. One officer gave the order to fire; but he was
not obeyed. The calmness and daring of the lion-like face filled the
soldiers with such admiration that, for the moment, their hostility
evaporated; and while some of them saluted as if to a royal personage,
others took off their hats and burst into a cheer. Garibaldi
acknowledged it by lifting his hat, and by a cheery wave of his hand,
and drove on as calmly as before.
In the carriages behind, all had held their breath at the critical
moment.
"What an escape! What an escape!" Signor Forli murmured to Frank, who
was sitting next to him. "Had but one musket been fired, we should all
have been dead men in a minute or two; and, what is of more consequence,
the freeing of Italy must have been postponed for twenty years."
"It was horribly close," Frank said. "I would rather go through ten
hand-to-hand fights, than another time like the last three minutes; it
has made me feel quite queer, and I own that what you say about putting
back Italian freedom for twenty years never entered my mind. The one
thought I had was, that we were all going to be smashed up without
having the chance of striking a single blow. I went through some pretty
sharp fighting at Palermo, but I was always doing something then, and
did not think of the danger. I don't mind saying that I was in a blue
funk just now."
Garibaldi drove straight, as was the custom of kings on first entering
Naples, to the palace of the archbishop. Here the Te Deum was sung; and
he then went on to the palace of Angri, where he and his staff took up
their quarters. Vast crowds assembled outside the palace, and the
general had to appear again and again on the balcony in reply to the
roars of acclamation from the enthusiastic population. General Cosenz,
who was himself a Neapolitan, was appointed to organise a government.
This he did to the general satisfaction--moderate men only being chosen.
Garibaldi requested Admiral Persano in the name of Victor Emmanuel to
take command of the Neapolitan navy, decreeing that it should form part
of the Sardinian squadron; and appointed to the pro-dictatorship the
Marquis of Pallavicini, a staunch friend of the king. He had offered
Signor Forli an apartment in the palace, and as soon as the first
excitement had ceased the latter said to Frank, who had at Salerno
received the portmanteau he had left at Genoa:--
"Let us go out and see the state of the city. But before we do so, you
had best put on your ordinary clothes: we should simply be mobbed if you
were to go out as one of Garibaldi's officers."
"Yes; we have had quite enough of that as we came along," Frank said.
"It will really be a comfort to go about for once in peace and quiet."
They started in a few minutes, leaving the palace by one of the side
entrances, and soon mingled in the crowd. The people seemed half mad
with delight. As soon as the news of Garibaldi's arrival spread through
the town every house was decorated, and the whole population poured out
into the streets. Among the better classes the joy that the government
of the Bourbons had come to an end, and that the constitutional
government, which had done so much for Northern Italy, would succeed the
despotism which had pressed so heavily on all with anything to lose, was
deep and sincere. Among the lower classes the enthusiasm manifested was
but the excitement of some few minutes, and had Francesco returned a
month later, at the head of his victorious troops, they would have
shouted as lustily.
It was a fête, a special fête, and it mattered but little to the fickle
and excitable population what was its cause. But here, as on all
occasions when Italian people give way to bursts of enthusiasm,
foreigners were struck with the perfect good-temper, the orderly
behaviour, and the entire absence of drunkenness, among the population.
In Paris the first step of people excited by a change of government
would have been to fall upon those whom they considered to be the agents
of their oppressors. The gendarmes, who had so long been feared, would
not have dared show themselves in the streets; the emblems of royalty
would have been torn down in the public buildings; the members of the
last government would have been forced to fly for their lives. There was
a little of this in Naples, but, as in Venice, six years later, this
feeling of animosity for the past speedily passed away.
But how faint was the feeling of real patriotism in the minds of the
Neapolitans is shown by the fact that only one inhabitant of the city
joined Garibaldi's army; that not a single house was open for the
reception of his officers or soldiers; that after the battle of Volturno
hundreds of wounded men were left lying all day on the pavements without
aid or nourishment, without a single mattress being found for them to
lie upon, by the inhabitants. Never, except by the King of Italy and the
civil and military authorities of Piedmont to Garibaldi and his
followers, who had won a kingdom for them, was such national ingratitude
displayed as by the people of Naples.
"It is pleasant to see," Signor Forli said, as he and Frank wandered
about; "but it would be far more pleasant if one did not know that it
means absolutely nothing. You have told me that it was the same thing at
Messina: that, in spite of Garibaldi's appeal to the ladies of the
place, they did nothing whatever to aid the wounded in the
hospitals--never contributed so much as a piece of lint or material for
bandages; and, frivolous as the people there are, these in Naples are
worse. If all Italy were like the Neapolitans, the country would not be
worth shedding a drop of blood for. However, one must make some
allowances for them. For centuries they have been slaves rather than
free people; they have had no voice as to their own disposal, they could
not express even an opinion on public affairs, without risking
imprisonment or death; there has been nothing left for them but to amuse
themselves; they have been treated like children at school, and they
have become children. We can only hope that in time, under a free
government, they will grow worthy of freedom, worthy of forming a part
of an Italy to which the Lombards, the Piedmontese, and the Calabrians
belong."
It was already late in the afternoon, and until some of the troops
arrived it would be impossible to take any steps with relation to public
buildings. The castle of St. Elmo, and the prison of Santa Maria, with
many other places, were still in the hands of the Neapolitan soldiers,
whose attitude continued to be hostile, and until these retired nothing
could be done; and it was by no means certain that the guns at St. Elmo,
which completely commanded the town, might not at any moment open fire.
"I can well understand your impatience to get rid of these troops from
the city," Garibaldi said the next morning. "I do not forget, Percival,
the main object that you had in view, and I too long for the time when I
may clasp the hand of my old comrade of South America and Rome. I
promise you that the moment the prisons are evacuated you shall go with
the party who will search them, and search them strictly. You know what
these jailors are: they are the creatures of the worst men of
Francesco's government. By years of cruelty and oppression they have
earned for themselves the hatred of every one within the walls of the
prisons and of their friends and relatives. Our victory means their
dismissal--that is, as soon as the prisons are cleaned from the lowest
dungeons to the roofs. That they shall superintend: it is they who are
responsible for it, and they themselves shall be engaged in the work of
purification. It may well be that they will try to hide the lowest and
worst dungeons from our search, partly from fear that the natural and
righteous indignation excited by the discoveries may end in their being
promptly punished with death for their accumulated crimes, partly in
hopes that the royal troops may yet overcome us and restore Francesco to
his throne; in which case they would receive approval for still
retaining some of the worst victims of the tyranny of his government."
"You may be sure that I shall search them thoroughly, general."
On going out, they found the streets were still thronged by an almost
frenzied populace. These invaded the hotels and cafés, and pressed all
they could lay hands on to join in the demonstrations. A few murders
were perpetrated; the state of things prevailing affording an excellent
opportunity for satisfying private revenge, as it needed only a cry that
the victim was a spy of the government to justify it in the eyes of the
bystanders.
In the quarter nearest to St. Elmo the enthusiasm had a good deal cooled
down, as the fear that the guns of the castle might at any moment open
fire for the time dissipated any desire for marching about and
acclaiming Garibaldi. At four o'clock, however, it was known that two
officers of the castle had gone down to the palace, and at six the
welcome news spread that the garrison had capitulated, and would march
out on the following morning.
Frank had little sleep that night. All along his hopes had been high
that he should find his father here; but now that the question would be
so soon decided, his fears were in the ascendant. He remembered that the
evidence in favour of his father's death was extremely strong, the only
hopeful fact being that his body had not been discovered. So slight did
even his mother and Signora Forli deem the chance of his being alive,
that for two years neither had breathed a word to the other as to the
existence of a possibility that he might be still living. Undoubtedly
the release of his grandfather had increased his own hope, but he felt
now that there was but small ground for the feeling. Had his father been
hidden away in a fortress, he might also have survived; but the
probabilities seemed altogether against this. It was not until midday
that St. Elmo was evacuated, and several companies of the national guard
marched in. A colonel of the staff had, with Frank, been charged with
the duty of searching the dungeons. They had brought with them fifty
lazzaroni, who had been engaged for this repulsive work. A dozen of the
Garibaldian troops were to accompany them; the prison officials were all
ordered to go with the party, and they, as well as the lazzaroni, were
told to bring pails and brooms.
The castle of St. Elmo covers an area of no less than four acres; it was
cut out of the solid rock, and is surrounded by a sunken ditch, sixty or
seventy feet deep, and fifty wide. This great mass of stone is
honeycombed in every direction with a network of corridors and
subterranean apartments, and there is ample space to hold several
thousand prisoners. The upper tiers of chambers were fairly clean; these
were, in fact, the barracks of the troops. The guns looked out from
embrasures. Several batteries of field artillery, with waggons and all
fittings, still remained there, and the chambers were littered with
rubbish of all kinds, discarded by the troops before leaving. It was not
here that prisoners were to be found. The national guard had already
opened the doors of the cells and chambers in the stage below, and had
liberated those confined there; the work of searching those still lower
began at once. The extent was so vast and the windings were so intricate
that the work seemed interminable. In order to make sure that each
passage had been searched, a pail of whitewash was sent for, and a
splash made at each turning. Each story was darker, and the air more
stifling, than that above it, for they were now far below the level of
the castle itself.
Frank had taken the advice of Signor Forli, and had bought several
bundles of the strongest cigars; and he and the officer in command, the
officer of the national guard who attended them and the soldiers all
smoked incessantly. At the worst places the lazzaroni and turnkeys were
set to work with their buckets and brooms. It was not until late in the
evening that they came to the conclusion that every cell and chamber had
been searched. About a hundred and fifty prisoners had been found and
released, but among them Frank looked in vain for his father. The lowest
dungeons of all had been found empty; and this, and the solemn
assurances of all the prison officials, who had been threatened with
instant death should further search discover any prisoners, convinced
him that at any rate his father was not there.
The next day the neighbouring prison of Santa Maria was searched. It had
formerly been a monastery, and the upper cells were lofty and capacious.
The jailors declared, indeed, that these were the only cells, but a
careful search showed a door in the rock. This was burst open, and a
series of subterranean passages was discovered. The jailors declared
that these had never been used in their time, and, they believed, never
before. That they had been used, however, was evident, from the marks
where lamps had been hung on the walls, and by many other signs. No
prisoners were found here, all having been released directly it was
known that the garrison of the castle had capitulated. The search
occupied the whole day, so extensive were the underground galleries; and
a passage was discovered that evidently at one time formed a
communication between St. Elmo and this prison. As he came out into
daylight, Frank staggered, and would have fallen had not one of the
soldiers caught him. He had been ill the night before; and the effects
of the close air, noxious smells, and the work, which had been even more
trying than on the previous day, and his bitter disappointment, had now
completely overcome him. After some water had been dashed in his face
and he had taken a draught of some wine which one of the prison
officials fetched, he partially recovered. He was assisted by two of the
Garibaldians down the road to the town, and then, obtaining a vehicle,
was driven to the palace, and managed with assistance to get up to his
apartment. A minute or two later Signor Forli joined him, one of the
attendants having summoned him as soon as Frank arrived.
"Do not trouble to speak, my dear boy," he said. Frank was lying on the
bed sobbing convulsively. "You have failed--that I can well understand;
but you must not altogether lose heart. We had thought this the most
likely place; but there are still other prisons, and we will not give up
hope until every one of these has been ransacked. I am sorry now that I
did not accompany you, but I am afraid, after what I have gone through
myself, that only a few minutes in one of those places would overpower
me; and I wonder how you, young and strong as you are, were able to
spend two days in such an atmosphere."
"I shall be better to-morrow," Frank said. "That last place was awful;
but I think that it was as much the strong tobacco, as those horrible
stinks, which upset me. It was a choice of two evils; but I would smoke
even worse tobacco if I could get it, if I had to go through it again."
"I will get you a glass of brandy and water, Frank; that will do you
more good than anything."
The next morning Frank was still too unwell to be able to get up; his
failure had completely broken him down, and he felt indisposed to make
the slightest exertion. At twelve o'clock, however, Signor Forli came
in.
"I have a piece of news to give you," he said, "news which affords us
some shadow of hope that you have not failed altogether. Last night I
was talking with the general and one or two of his staff. Garibaldi is,
as you know, intensely interested in your search, and sympathises with
you most warmly. Suddenly he said, 'Is it not possible that he may have
been removed before the king and his court retired?' Had Percival been
found in the prisons, it would have rendered the bad faith and mendacity
of the government more glaring than ever, and would have deprived it of
any little sympathy that was felt for it in England. Therefore, feeling
sure that the prisons would be searched as soon as I entered, Percival,
had he been here, may, with other special prisoners, have been sent to
Capua, which is so strongly fortified a place that they may well believe
it to be impregnable to anything but a long siege by troops possessing a
battering train."
[Illustration: "IT WAS NOT UNTIL NULLO ORDERED FOUR MEN TO LOAD ... THAT
HE WOULD ANSWER"]
Frank sat up. "That is indeed a good idea," he exclaimed. "How stupid of
me not to have thought of questioning the prison people! Yes; it is
quite likely that if any of the prisoners were removed, he would be
one of them."
"I have no doubt you would have thought of it, Frank, if it had not been
that you were completely upset by that strong tobacco. Mind, I don't
blame you for taking it: it is better to be poisoned with nicotine than
by the stenches of a Neapolitan prison. The thought only struck
Garibaldi after we had chatted over the matter for some time. I went
over there this morning with Colonel Nullo. Although the officials at
first asserted that no prisoners had been taken away, they soon
recovered their memories when he said that he would interrogate every
one of the warders separately, and if he found that any prisoners had
been sent away he would have them taken out into the courtyard and shot
for lying to him. They then remembered that four prisoners had been
taken away, but all declared with adjurations to all the saints that
they did not know who they were: they were delivered over to them under
numbers only. One had been there seven years, and two had been there
five years, and one two years. Again threatening to examine all the
turnkeys, he learned that the last prisoner received had been confined
in one of the lower dungeons, where they yesterday asserted that no one
had for years been imprisoned; the other three were also kept in the
most rigid seclusion, but in the upper cells.
"I insisted on seeing the man who had attended on the prisoner kept in
the lower cell. He was a surly ruffian, and it was not until Nullo
ordered four men to load, and to put the fellow with his back to the
wall, that he would answer my questions. He said then that the prisoner
was, he should say, between forty and fifty, but it was not easy to
judge of age after a man had been below there for a few months. He had
never said more than a few words to him, and it had never struck him
that he was not an Italian. I questioned him more closely as to this,
and he admitted that he had sometimes, when he went down, heard the
prisoner singing. He had listened, but could not understand the words,
and they might have been in a foreign language. He had no more interest
in that prisoner than in any other. He supposed, by his being sent down
below there, that it was hoped he would die off as soon as possible.
They seldom lived many months in those dungeons, but this man seemed
tougher than usual, though his strength had failed a good deal lately.
He was able to walk up from his cell to the carriage when he was taken
away. Now we mustn't feel too sanguine, Frank, but although there is no
proof that this prisoner is your father, the evidence, so far as it
goes, is rather in favour of such a supposition than against it."
"It is indeed," Frank said eagerly. "The fact that they put him down
into the cells where, as the man says, it was almost certain he would
soon die, and that when it was found that he had not done so, he was at
the last moment taken away, shows that there was some very strong motive
for preventing the fact that he was a prisoner becoming public; and we
know that they had the very strongest reason in the case of my father.
The age would be about right, and the fact that he was singing would
show, at any rate, that it was some one who was determined not to give
in, but to keep up his spirits till the very last, and I am sure my
father would have done that. Well, I will get up now. I could not lie
here quietly; it would be impossible, after what you have been telling
me."
"I think you are right, Frank. I will have a basin of soup sent in for
you. When you have eaten that, and dressed, we will take a carriage and
go for a long drive by the road along the shore to Pompeii. The
sea-breeze will do you more good than anything, and the lovely view, and
a stroll through Pompeii itself, will distract your thoughts. There is
nothing to be done until Capua is taken, which may not be for a long
time yet. However, events are moving. We hear that Victor Emmanuel and
his government, alarmed at the success of Garibaldi, and feeling that if
they are to have any voice in the matter they must not be content to
rest passive while he is carrying all before him, have resolved upon
taking some part in the affair. Under the pretext that in order to
restore peace and order it is necessary that they should interfere, they
are about to despatch an army to Ancona by sea; and, landing there, will
advance into Central Italy, and act, as they say, as circumstances may
demand. All of which means, that now Garibaldi has pulled the chestnuts
out of the fire for them they will proceed to appropriate them."
"It is too bad!" Frank exclaimed angrily.
"No doubt it is mean and ungracious in the extreme, but Garibaldi will
not feel it as other men would; he is human, and therefore he would like
to present the Kingdom of Naples and the States of Rome, free from the
foreigner, to Victor Emmanuel. But that feeling, natural as it is, is
but secondary to his loyalty to Italy. He desires to see her one under
Victor Emmanuel, and so long as that end is achieved he cares
comparatively little how it comes about. Moreover, he cannot but see
that, though he has accomplished marvels, that which remains to be done
would tax the power of his army to the utmost. The Neapolitans have
still some seventy thousand men, who are encouraged by their king being
among them. They have in Capua a most formidable fortress, which could
defy the efforts of irregular troops, wholly unskilled in sieges and
deficient in heavy guns, for many months. Moreover, it would no longer
be mountain warfare, but we should have to fight in plains where the
enemy's cavalry would give them an enormous advantage. There is another
thing: the intrigues of Cavour's agents here are already giving him very
serious trouble, and this will doubtless increase; therefore I can well
understand that he will be glad rather than otherwise that Sardinia at
last should do her part towards the freeing of Italy, from which she
will benefit so vastly."