with severe losses, carrying
back six captured guns, which the people dragged in triumph to the
Doge's palace. A cabin-boy named Zorzi was borne on the shoulders of
the soldiers enveloped in the Italian flag; his story was this: the
national colours, floating from the mast of the pinnace on which he
served, were detached by a ball and dropped into the water; the child
sprang in after them, and with a shout of _Viva l'Italia,_ fixed them
again at the masthead under a sharp fire. Zorzi was, of course, the
small hero of the hour, especially among the women. General Pepe
commanded the sortie, with Ulloa, Fontana and Cosenz as his
lieutenants; Ugo Bassi, the patriot monk of Bologna, marched at the
head of a battalion with the crucifix, the only arms he ever carried,
in his hand. The success cost Italy dear, as Alessandro Poerio, poet
and patriot, the brother of Baron Carlo Poerio of Naples, lost his
life by a wound received at Mestre. But the confidence of Venice in
her little army was increased a hundredfold.

The most important event of the autumn of 1848 was the gradual but
continuous break-up of the Papal authority in Rome. The meeting of the
new Parliament only served to accentuate the want of harmony between
the Pope and his ministers; assassinations were frequent; what law
there was was administered by the political clubs. In Count Terenzio
Mamiani, Pius IX. found a Prime Minister who, for eloquence and
patriotism, could hardly be rivalled, but hampered as he was by the
opposition he encountered from the Sovereign, and by the absence of
any real or solid moderate constitutional party in the Chamber of
Deputies, Mamiani could carry out very few of the improvements he
desired to effect, and in August he retired from an impracticable
task, to be replaced by men of less note and talent than himself.

Wishing to create fresh complications for the Pope, the Austrians
invaded the Legations, regardless of his protests, and after the fall
of Milan, General Welden advanced on Bologna, where, however, his
forces were so furiously attacked by the inhabitants and the few
carabineers who were all the troops in the town, that they were
dislodged from the strong position they had taken up on the
Montagnola, the hill which forms the public park, and obliged to fly
beyond the city walls. Radetsky disapproved of Welden's movements on
Bologna, and ordered him not to return to the assault.

Had the Austrians returned and massacred half