rians, who they imagined had crossed the Mincio the
night before. The struggle was terrible; in fact, the line covered by
the fighting extended a distance of five leagues.

A series of hills, dominated by Solferino and San Martino, formed the
positions the Franco-Sardinian army had to assail. The French contested
Solferino with the Austrians, and, after a hotly disputed battle of more
than twelve hours, succeeded in occupying it. The Sardinians, led by
Victor Emmanuel, made a violent assault on San Martino; four times in
succession did they take it, only to lose it again, but the fifth time
they made themselves masters of it for good and all. By six o'clock in
the evening the strength of the Austrian army was everywhere broken.
Just then a frightful hurricane, heralded by clouds of dust and
accompanied by torrents of rain, burst over the two armies and thus
favored the flight of the Austrian battalions. Napoleon III now fixed
his headquarters at Cavriana, in the same house that Francis Joseph had
tenanted during the action. On that vast battlefield the combatants had
numbered three hundred thousand men--one hundred sixty thousand
Austrians and one hundred forty thousand French and Sardinians--of all
these, after that sanguinary struggle, twenty-five thousand were left
dead or wounded.

After a few days' rest the Franco-Sardinian army crossed the Mincio and
besieged Peschiera. Now there seemed a chance of the Italians fulfilling
the hope they had so long cherished, of expelling the foreigners. They
confidently awaited news of fresh feats of arms in the Quadrilateral and
of the success of the fleet sent by France and Sardinia into Adriatic
waters, but instead came the most unexpected tidings imaginable.

On July 8th Napoleon III had met Francis Joseph, and three days later
the preliminaries of peace were signed at Villafranca. By this treaty
Austria was to cede Lombardy to Napoleon, who was to relegate it to
Sardinia; the Italian States were to be amalgamated into a
confederation, under the Presidency of the Pope, but Venice, though
forming part of this same confederation, was to remain under Austrian
rule. Great indeed was the mortification of all Italy on hearing such
terms of peace announced. Cavour, who had devoted all his marvellous
talents to realizing the ideal of national redemption and had believed
his ends so nearly attained, hastened to his Prince, and, in a
melancholy interview, advised him not to accept suc