n what looked like a desperate
enterprise. Garibaldi had talked with Cavour, and between them, they
had schemed to overthrow the kingdom of the Two Sicilies and join this
land to the northern country. Of course, Cavour pretended not to know
anything about Garibaldi, for the king of Naples and Sicily was
supposed to be a friend of the king of Sardinia. Nevertheless, he
secretly gave Garibaldi all the help that he dared, and urged men to
enroll with him.

[Illustration: The First Meeting of Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel]

With his thousand "red-shirts," as they were called, Garibaldi landed
on the island of Sicily, at Marsala. The inhabitants rose to welcome
him, and everywhere they drove out the officers who had been appointed
by their king to rule them. In a short time, all Sicily had risen in
rebellion against the king. (You will remember that this family of
kings had been driven out by Napoleon and restored by the Congress of
Vienna in 1815. They were Bourbons, the same family that furnished the
kings of Spain and the last kings of France. They stood for "the
divine right of kings," and had no sympathy with the common people.)
Crossing over to the mainland, Garibaldi, with his little army now
swollen to ten times its former size, swept everything before him as
he marched toward Naples. Everywhere, the people rose against their
former masters, and welcomed the liberator. The king fled in haste
from Naples, never to return. A vote was taken all over the southern
half of Italy and Sicily, to decide whether the people wanted to join
their brothers of the north to make a new kingdom of Italy. It was so
voted almost unanimously. Victor Emmanuel, king of Sardinia, thus
became the first king of United Italy. He made Florence his capital at
first, as the country around Rome still belonged to the pope. The pope
had few soldiers, but was protected by a guard of French troops.
However, ten years later, in 1870, when war broke out between France
and Prussia, the French troops left Rome, and the troops of Italy
marched quietly in and took possession of the city. Rome, for so many
years the capital, not only of Italy but of the whole Mediterranean
world, became once more the chief city of the peninsula. The pope was
granted a liberal pension by the Italian government in order to make
up to him for the loss of the money from his former lands. The dream
of Italians for the last 600 years had finally come to pass. Italy was
again one