L.C. Farini was sent by Victor Emmanuel to administer the provinces of Modena and Parma, and Massimo d'Azeglio was charged with the same mission in Romagna. The Marches of Ancona had been recovered by the Papal troops, which were concentrated in the district called La Cattolica, near Rimini. A volunteer corps, under the Piedmontese General Mezzacapo, was entrusted with the task of preventing them from crossing into the Legations.

In the month of May, when the allies were reaping their first successes, an event occurred at Caserta which precipitated crisis in the South Italy. Ferdinand II. died at forty-eight years of age of a terrible complaint which had attacked him a few months earlier, when he went to meet his son's bride, the Princess Maria Sofia of Bavaria, sister of the Empress of Austria. The news from Upper Italy hastened his end; he is said to have exclaimed not long before he died: 'They have won the cause!'

The accession of a youth, of whom nothing bad was known, to a throne [Pg.238] that had been occupied by a sovereign so out of place in modern civilisation as Ferdinand, would appear at first sight a fortunate circumstance for the chances of the dynasty; but it was not so. In an eastern country it matters little whether the best of the inhabitants loathe and detest their ruler; but it matters much whether he knows how to cajole and frighten the masses, and especially the army, into obedience. Naples, more Oriental than western, possessed in Ferdinand a monarch consummately expert in this side of the art of government. Though without the higher military virtues, his army was his favourite plaything; he always wore uniform, never forgot a face he had once seen, and treated the officers with a rather vulgar familiarity, guessing at their weaknesses and making use of them on occasion. The rank and file regarded him as a sort of supernatural being. Francis II., who succeeded him, could scarcely appear in this light even to the most ignorant. Popular opinion considered him not quite sound in his mind. Probably his timorous, awkward ways and his seeming stupidity were simply the result of an education conducted by bigoted priests in a home that was no home: populated as it was by the offspring of a stepmother who hated him. His own mother, the charming Princess Cristina of Savoy, died while the city was rejoicing at his birth. The story is well known of how, shortly after the marriage, Ferdinand thought it diverting to draw a music-stool from under his wife, causing her to fall heavily. It gives a sample of the sufferings of her brief married life. An inheritance of sorrow descended from her to her child.

If Francis II. was not popular, neither was the new queen. Far more virile in character and in tastes than her husband, her high spirit was not what the Neapolitans admire in women, and those who were [Pg.239] devoted to the late King accused her of having shown impatience during his illness for the moment when the crown would fall to Francis. Malicious gossip of this kind, however false, serves its end. Thus, from one cause or another, the young King exercised a power sensibly weaker than that of his father, while, besides other enemies, he had an inveterate one in his stepmother, who began weaving a conspiracy to oust him from the throne and place on it the eldest of his half-brothers. This plot received, however, very little popular support.

The Sardinian Government sought to persuade Francis to join in the war against Austria; disinterested counsel, as in taking it lay his only hope, but it was opposed by England, Russia and France. In July two of the Swiss regiments at Naples mutinied. The Swiss Government, becoming alive to the discredit cast on the country by mercenary service, had decided that Swiss subjects serving abroad should lose their rights as citizens of the Confederation whilst so employed, and that they should no longer introduce the arms of their respective cantons into their regimental colours. This was the immediate cause of their insubordination. The mutineers, most of whom were unarmed, were ruthlessly shot down in the Campo di Marte to the terror of the population, and the two Swiss regiments which remained quiet were dissolved; by which the monarchy lost the troops that were chiefly to be depended on in emergencies. The Austrians and Bavarians imported in their stead did not form separate regiments, but were incorporated among the native troops, though the regiments that contained them were commonly called 'Bavarian.' They only partially filled the place of the Swiss.

Between the 4th and the 24th of June, no engagement of any magnitude was fought in Lombardy except the attack on Benedek at Melegnano, a battle in which the French lost most men, and gained no strategical advantage. It was supposed to have been fought because Napoleon I. had gained a victory in the same neighbourhood. The Austrians retreated to the Mincio, destroying the bridges over the Adda, Serio, Oglio and Mella as they went; these rivers the allies had to make repassable, which is the excuse given for the dilatory nature of their pursuit of the enemy. The Emperor Francis Joseph had now assumed the command, with Hess as his principle adviser, and Wimpffen and Schlick, famous as the 'One-eyed,' as heads of the two great corps into which the army was divided.

On the 22nd of June, the Austrians were ranged along the left bank of the Mincio from Peschiera to Mantua, and the French were massed near Montechiaro, on the Brescia road, which Napoleon had made his headquarters. In withdrawing all their men from the right bank of the river, the Austrians desired to create the impression that they had finally abandoned it. It was their plan, which did not lack boldness, to throw the whole army back upon the right bank, and to perform a concentric movement on Montechiaro, where they hoped to fall unawares on the French and destroy them. They were confident of success, for they knew what a good stand they had made at Magenta, and now that Gyulai was got rid of, and the young Emperor had taken the field, they did not doubt that fortune would turn her wheel. To these men of many nations, the presence of their Emperor was the one inspiration that could rouse them, for if they were fighting for anything, it was for him in the most personal sense; it was to secure his mastery of the [Pg.241] splendid land over which he looked from the castle of Valleggio, on the 23rd of June, whilst his brilliant staff stood round, waiting for the signal to mount and clatter down the steep road to the Mincio bridge. The army now advanced along all its line.

Even the soberest writers have not resisted making some reference to the magnificent scene of to-morrow's battle. On one side, the mountain bulwarks rising tier on tier, gorgeous with the trancendent beauty of colour and light of the Italian summer; on the other, the vine-clad hillocks which fall gently away from the blue lake of Garda till they are lost in the

.....harvest shining plain
Where the peasant heaps his grain
In the garner of his foe.