mpments were ready for
the Austrian spring manoeuvres: from this point an easy march carried
him under the walls of Verona. Here he met General d'Aspre, who had
just arrived with the garrison of Padua. D'Aspre, by skill and
resolution, had brought his men from Padua without losing one, having
refused the Paduans arms for a national guard, though ordered from
Milan to grant them. 'You come to tell me all is lost,' said the
Field-Marshal when they met 'No,' rejoined the younger general, 'I
come to tell you all is saved.'

This great chance missed, there was another which could have been
seized. Mantua, extraordinary to relate, was defended by only three
hundred artillerymen and a handful of hussars. It would have fallen
into the hands of its own citizens but for the presence of mind of its
commandant, the Polish General Gorzhowsky, who told them that to no
one on earth would he deliver the keys of the fortress except to his
Emperor, and that the moment he could no longer defend it he would
blow it into the air, with himself and half Mantua. He showed them the
flint and the steel with which he intended to do the deed. Enemy
though he was, that incident ought to be recorded in letters of gold
on the gates of Mantua, as a perpetual lesson of that most difficult
thing for a country founded in revolution to learn: the meaning of a
soldier's duty.

It is easy to see that, if Charles Albert had made an immediate dash
on Mantua, the fortress, or its ruins, would have been his, to the
enormous detriment of the Austrian position. But this chance too was
missed. On the 31st of March, the 9000 men sent with all speed by
Radetsky to the defenceless fortress arrived, and henceforth Mantua
was safe. Charles Albert only got within fifteen or sixteen miles of
it five days later, to find that all hope of its capture was gone.

The campaign began with political as well as with military mistakes.
At the same time that the King of Sardinia was declaring in the
Proclamation addressed to the Lombards that, full of admiration of the
glorious feats performed in their capital, he came to their aid as
brother to brother, friend to friend, his ambassadors were trying to
persuade the foreign Powers, and especially Austria, Prussia and
Russia, that the only object of the war was to avoid a revolution in
Piedmont, and to prevent the establishment of a republic in Lombardy.
No one was convinced or placated by these assurances; far better as
policy t