. The second day we met eight _carabinieri_, who
opened fire on us and imagined that we were very numerous. Three days
later we discovered that we were surrounded by soldiers. There remained
only one thing to do. We buried the guns and decided to disperse. I hid
myself in a load of hay, and thus succeeded in escaping from the
dangerous region."[24] An attempt at insurrection also took place in
Romagna, but it appears to have been limited to cutting the telegraph
wires between Bologna and Imola.

Back of all the Italian riots lay a serious economic condition. The
peasants were in very deep distress, and it was not difficult for the
Bakouninists to stir them to revolt. The _Bulletin_ of the Jura
Federation of August 16 informs us: "During the last two years there
have been about sixty riots produced by hunger; but the rioters, in
their ignorance, only bore a grudge against the immediate monopolists,
and did not know how to discern the fundamental causes of their
misery."[25] This is all too plainly shown in the events of 1874. Beyond
giving the Bakouninists a chance to play at revolution, there is little
significance in the Italian uprisings of that year.

The failure of the various insurrections in France, Spain, and Italy
was, naturally enough, discouraging to Bakounin and his followers. The
Commune of Paris was the one uprising that had made any serious
impression upon the people, and it was the one wherein the Bakouninists
had played no important part. The others had failed miserably, with no
other result than that of increasing the power of reaction, while
discouraging and disorganizing the workers. Even Bakounin had now
reached the point where he was thoroughly disillusioned, and he wrote to
his friends that he was exhausted, disheartened, and without hope. He
desired, he said, to withdraw from the movement which made him the
object of the persecutions of the police and the calumnies of the
jealous. The whole world was in the evening of a black reaction, he
thought, and he wrote to the truest and most devoted of all that loyal
circle of Swiss workmen, James Guillaume, that the time for
revolutionary struggles was past and that Europe had entered into a
period of profound reaction, of which the present generation would
probably not see the end. "He urged me," relates Guillaume, "to imitate
himself and 'to make my peace with the bourgeoisie.'"[26] "It is
useless," are Bakounin's words, "to wish obstinately to obtain