d _Risorgimento_" was less
surprised at the current of English official thought than were his
radical critics, but would any English minister, he asked, enter on a
European war to prevent the liberation of Italy, which was an object
sacred in the eyes of the mass of the English people? He believed it
to be impossible, but were it so, so be it! England would have against
her a mighty coalition, not of princes, as in former days, but of
peoples, in the old world and in the new. Victory in such a matricidal
strife would be as fatal to the first-born of liberty as defeat.

Thus Cavour was prepared to fight Austria, Russia, and England. The
division of parties at that time was in its essence the division of
those who were willing to accept a republican solution and those
who were not. It does not follow that all the liberals wished for a
republic, but they would all have taken office under it. Of this there
is little doubt. Cavour never would have become a republican any more
than an absolutist minister. But he saw what the other conservatives
failed to see, that the dynasty of Savoy could only live if it led.

On March 22, Charles Albert was still assuring the Austrian Ambassador
that his intentions were pacific. Next day Cavour's article appeared,
and in the evening the king decided for instant war. Only two of
the ministers assented at once; the others gave in after a long
discussion. War was declared on the 25th. Time lost cannot be
recalled; the happy moment had been let go by; Piedmont went not to
Lombardy engaged in a dangerous struggle, but to Lombardy victorious.
Cavillers said that the king had come to eat the fruits others had
gathered. Confidence in the ultimate result reached the point of
madness, but with revolution stalking through the streets of Vienna
the Austrian eagle seemed to have lost its talons. In May 1848, in
Austria itself, Lombardy was looked upon as completely lost, and with
it the Southern Tyrol as far as Meran, for no one at that period
thought of separating this Italian district from Italy; the most
sanguine Austrians only hoped to save Venetia. Radetsky alone expected
to save all, because he knew what he could do, and he had judged
Sardinian generalship correctly. Charles Albert's staff seemed to have
but one idea--to reverse the tactics which had led the first Napoleon
to victory on the same ground.

The brightest gleam of success which shone on the king of Sardinia's
arms was at Goito, in