magna, whose inhabitants now
suddenly announced their fusion with Sardinia. Indeed this impulse for
annexation now began to spread, and to the cry of "Victor Emmanuel" the
Marches and Umbria revolted against the Pontiff, but in these regions
the movement was sanguinarily suppressed by the Swiss troops.

Napoleon III was displeased to note how all Italian aspirations tended
to unity, and thus it was that he had signed the Treaty of Villafranca.
Peace was concluded at Zurich in the November following, and there the
idea of an Italian confederation was mooted afresh.

The fugitive princes ought to have returned to their States, but how was
it possible? They certainly could not hope to be recalled by their
subjects, for the latter had expelled them; occupying their kingdoms
with troops of their own was out of the question, because they had none;
foreign aid, moreover, was not to be looked for, since Napoleon III had
established the principle of non-intervention. Then the people of
Central Italy showed themselves capable of a bold political _coup:_
under the leadership of Bettino Ricasoli, dictator in Tuscany, and Luigi
Carlo Farini--who held a similar office in Emilia and Romagna--they
declared, by means of their assembled Deputies, their earnest desire to
be incorporated with Sardinia.

The new Ministry formed at Turin, after Cavour's resignation, had
pursued its way timidly, fearing to rouse the suspicion and displeasure
of the European Powers, but at this momentous and difficult juncture
Cavour again accepted the premiership (January 20, 1860). He immediately
gave a bolder impetus to King Victor Emmanuel's policy by sending a note
to all the Powers, in which he asserted it to be now impossible for
Sardinia to offer any resistance to the inevitable course of events.
Cavour imagined that since Napoleon III had obtained the imperial throne
by a plebiscite, he would not deny the validity of such a claim in
Italy, and forthwith submitted this idea to the Emperor, who was bound
to approve of it. But the French nation was discontented, imagining that
the blood it had shed for Italy had profited nothing, and was, moreover,
very averse to the formation of a powerful kingdom beyond the Alps.

Now it was that Cavour determined on a great sacrifice. In the
convention of Plombieres it had been agreed that, in the event of a
kingdom of eleven million inhabitants being established from the Alps to
the Adriatic, Sardinia would cede S