rted rough-riders, appealed to the popular imagination.

Mazzini and Garibaldi were both believers in the Republican form of
government. Cavour, however, was a monarchist, and the others who
recognised his superior ability in such matters of practical statecraft,
accepted his decision and sacrificed their own ambitions for the greater
good of their beloved Fatherland.

Cavour felt towards the House of Sardinia as Bismarck did towards the
Hohenzollern family. With infinite care and great shrewdness he set to
work to jockey the Sardinian King into a position from which His Majesty
would be able to assume the leadership of the entire Italian people. The
unsettled political conditions in the rest of Europe greatly helped
him in his plans and no country contributed more to the independence of
Italy than her old and trusted (and often distrusted) neighbour, France.

In that turbulent country, in November of the year 1852, the Republic
had come to a sudden but not unexpected end. Napoleon III the son of
Louis Bonaparte the former King of Holland, and the small nephew of a
great uncle, had re-established an Empire and had made himself Emperor
"by the Grace of God and the Will of the People."

This young man, who had been educated in Germany and who mixed his
French with harsh Teutonic gutturals (just as the first Napoleon had
always spoken the language of his adopted country with a strong Italian
accent) was trying very hard to use the Napoleonic tradition for his own
benefit. But he had many enemies and did not feel very certain of his
hold upon his ready-made throne. He had gained the friendship of Queen
Victoria but this had not been a difficult task, as the good Queen was
not particularly brilliant and was very susceptible to flattery. As
for the other European sovereigns, they treated the French Emperor with
insulting haughtiness and sat up nights devising new ways in which they
could show their upstart "Good Brother" how sincerely they despised him.

Napoleon was obliged to find a way in which he could break this
opposition, either through love or through fear. He well knew the
fascination which the word "glory" still held for his subjects. Since
he was forced to gamble for his throne he decided to play the game of
Empire for high stakes. He used an attack of Russia upon Turkey as an
excuse for bringing about the Crimean war in which England and France
combined against the Tsar on behalf of the Sultan. It was a very co