to compass this by ceding Venetia to Napoleon
two days after Sadowa. It was making a virtue of necessity, as she was
bound in any case to cede it at the conclusion of the war; but as the
secret of the treaty had been well kept, the step caused great
surprise, and in Italy, where the public mind had leapt from profound
discouragement to buoyant hope, the impression was one of
embarrassment and mortification. Italy was distinctly precluded by her
engagement with Prussia from accepting Napoleon's invitation to
conclude a separate peace. Meanwhile, Austria gained by the move, as
it set her at liberty to recall the larger part of her troops from
Venetia for the defence of Vienna. Her honour did not require her to
contest the ground in a province which she had already given away.
When Cialdini, at the head of the reorganised Italian army of which he
now held the chief command, advanced across the Po to Padua, he found
the path practically open.

It was still possible for Italy to accomplish two things which would
have in a great measure retrieved her _prestige_. The first was to
occupy the Trentino; the second was to destroy the Austrian fleet.
With the means at her disposal she ought to have been able to do both.

In the earlier phases of Italian liberation, no one disputed that if
Lombardy and Venetia were lost to the Empire the Tridentine province,
wedged in as it is between them, would follow suit. When, in 1848,
Lord Palmerston offered his services as mediator between Austria and
revolted Italy, it was on a minimum basis of a frontier north of
Trento. The arguments for the retention of Trieste--that Austria had
made it what it was; that Germany needed it as a seaport, etc.--were
inapplicable here; and even after the defeat of Custoza, an occupation
of the Trentino, had it happened in conjunction with a naval victory,
would have opened a fair prospect to possession. But there was no time
to lose, and much time was lost by ordering Garibaldi to descend to
the southern extremity of the lake of Garda to 'cover Brescia' from an
imaginary attack. When the fear of an Austrian invasion subsided, and
Garibaldi returned to the mountains, he endeavoured to re-take the
position of Monte Suello which he had previously held, but the attempt
failed. The volunteers were forced to retire with great loss, and the
chief himself was wounded. On the 16th of July the volunteers renewed
their advance up the mountain ravines, and, after takin