The Crimean war, to a participation in which he invited little Piedmont, predestined by him to enjoy the benefits of Italian resurrection, helped him to cut the knot of the Holy Alliance, to humble Russia and set her at enmity with Austria, to create by a plébiscite the first of his national unities—that of the Roumanian Principalities—and to introduce at the Congress of Paris that subalpine diplomacy which, endorsed by him, sowed the seeds of the contemplated Italian war.
Meanwhile, the daggers and bombs of the Pianori, Tibaldi, and Orsini came to remind him that, before being Emperor of the French, he had been an Italian Carbonaro, and that he was expected to keep his oaths. It is said that, after the explosion of Orsini's bombshell, a friend of the assassin, to whom Napoleon complained confidentially of this party persecution, replied: "You have forgotten that you are an Italian."
"What shall I do?" asked his majesty.
"Serve your country."
"Very good. But I am Emperor of the French, a nation hard to govern. Can I sacrifice the interests of my people to accommodate those of Italy?"
"No one will prevent you from studying the interests of France when you have promulgated the independence and secured the unity of your country. Italy first of all."[24]
But he had less need of spurring than was supposed.
After the secret negotiations of Plombières, he attacked Austria in the plains of Lombardy, and, having subdued her, he inaugurated the resurrection of Italy according to his idea, which, presiding over the work, showed itself unveiled, with all the magnificence of territorial compensation, universal suffrage, non-intervention, and accomplished facts, as we all know.
VI.
But the Napoleonic ship got lost irreparably among the three rocks above named. Between the Mincio and the Adige it met Germany in threatening guise; in Rome, the betrayed pontiff rose up; and in Paris revolution lifted her savage head. For eleven years Bonaparte struggled to save the ship from the straits into which his Italian enterprise had driven it; but the more earnest his efforts, the worse became the entanglement, until the tempest of 1870 split the vessel in the midst with awful shipwreck.