explained at length in the succeeding chapter.]

[Footnote 531: G. Garavani, La costituzione della
repubblica romana nel 1798 e nel 1849 (Fermo,
1910).]

*396. The Reaction.*--The reaction, however, was swift and seemingly all
but complete. At the earliest possible moment the king of Naples
withdrew from the war, revoked the constitution which he had granted,
and put the forces of liberalism to rout. With the assistance of
France, Austria, and Naples, the Pope extinguished the Roman republic
and re-established in all of its vigor the temporal power. By Austrian
arms one after another of the insurrectionary states in the north and
center was crushed, and Austrian influence in that quarter rose to its
former degree of ascendancy. Constitutionalism gave place to
absolutism, and the liberals, disheartened and disunited, were
everywhere driven to cover. Only in Piedmont, whose sovereign, after
the bitter defeat at Novara, had abdicated in favor of his son, Victor
Emmanuel II. (March 23, 1849), was there left any semblance of
political independence or civil liberty.[532]

[Footnote 532: Elaborate accounts of the revolution
of 1848 in Italy are contained in King, History of
Italian Unity, I., Chaps. 9-19, and Thayer, Dawn of
Italian Independence, II., Bks. 4-5. A good brief
account is Cambridge Modern History, XI., Chap. 4
(bibliography, pp. 908-913). A suggestive sketch is
Fisher, Republican Tradition in Europe, Chap. 9.]

III. THE ACHIEVEMENT OF UNIFICATION (p. 362)

*397. The Leadership of Piedmont.*--To all inducements to abrogate the
constitution which his father had granted Victor Emmanuel continued
deaf, and the logic of the situation began to point unmistakably to
Piedmont as the hope of the patriotic cause. After 1848 the building
of the Italian nation becomes, indeed, essentially the story of
Piedmontese organization, leadership, conquest, and expansion. Victor
Emmanuel, honest and liberal-minded, was not a statesman of the first
rank, but he had the wisdom to discern and to rely upon the
statesmanship of one of the most remarkable of ministers in the
history of modern Europe, Count Cavour. When, in 1850, Cavour entered
the Piedmontese ministry he was known already as an ardent ad