rendered the war-cry more inopportune than ever. Charles
Albert, King of Sardinia, had been driven from the Mincio to the Oglio,
thence to the Adda, thence to Milan. He was now recrossing the Piedmontese
frontier, vanquished, despairing and heart-broken. Piedmont, nevertheless,
in the silence of her humiliation, set about preparing for a final effort.

The various ministers whom Pius IX. had called to his counsels were all
alike unsuccessful. Circumstances of greater difficulty than ever had now
arisen, and not without a sad foreboding of the greater evils that were
yet in store, the Holy Father had recourse to the well-known statesmanship
of Count Rossi, who had formerly been French Ambassador to the Holy See.

M. Mignet, the able biographer of this eminent statesman, gives a distinct
and interesting account of the difficulties with which, as Chief of the
Pope's Council of State, he was called to contend:

"M. Rossi at first hesitated. He knew what formidable problems
there were to solve. To conduct, according to constitutional
principles, a government that had been heretofore absolute; to
administer by the hands of laymen the affairs of a country that
had been hitherto subject to Ecclesiastics; to unite in an Italian
league a state that had been almost always opposed to a political
union of the Peninsula; in a word, to establish all at the same
time, a Constitutional Government, a Civil Administration, a
National Federation, were not the only difficulties that he would
have to overcome. The minister of a Prince, whose confidence
others would dispute with him, a stranger in a country, where he
would exercise public authority, he would be liable to be left
without support notwithstanding his devotedness, and without
approbation notwithstanding his services; to be attacked as a
revolutionist by the blind advocates of abuses, and disavowed as
an enemy of liberty by the impassioned partisans of chimeras. He
continued to decline for a considerable time. The conditions which
he at first proposed to the Sovereign Pontiff not having been
accepted, M. Rossi thought that he had escaped the lot that was in
store for him. But the Pope, after having essayed in vain a new
ministry, pressed him more urgently, in the month of September,
1848, to come to his aid, offering him at the same time his full
confidence and unlimited authority. M. R