alpine and other Italian States: let there be among them no contention, save in valour and in sacrifice. Cursed be he, who, in this final struggle, would sever brother from brother! "From the Alps to the sea, there is no real independence, no freedom, as long as this consecrated land is trampled by the Austrian. "Your country asks of you arms and men. Rise and answer to the call. To arms! and life to Italy!" It is an holy sentiment, and an holy cry, that of national independence; and it ever will have power to stir every free Italian soul, and influence to assuage if not to extinguish the accursed dissensions, the most degrading among all the degrading ills of our heritage of servitude. This power and influence it possessed, even in those days, at Rome; evincing the consciousness of an imprescriptible right, sprung from God, even as His perfect justice is. For independence is freedom, and freedom is justice, and justice is God: and in every people there resides eternally a divine right to drive the stranger from their soil. I have said it long ago, and I would shiver my very pen had I not spirit to reassert it now, that the insolence and threats of strangers, and the miseries of Italy, have increased and are increasing. The time may be a question, nay it ought to be one; and the enterprise of independence should not be hazarded in default of opportunity and of forces duly organised; but still, Italians ought to keep both spirit and understanding incessantly intent upon it: some day it must be theirs; and may Heaven prosper even their temerity! Rome was not so joyous in March 1849 as she had been one year before, when a Benediction that sprang from the sentiment of nationality impelled all Italy towards their sacred Alps; yet even now the restoring energy was felt, countenances contracted with displeasure opened into calm, hands a while before hostile were in friendly clasp, gloomy misgivings were expelled by a common hope, smouldering anger between brothers was concentrated on the foreign oppressor, and thus was hallowed: Constitutionalist and Republican embraced, and made ready to march as comrades to the Lombard plains. Valerio exerted himself to reanimate every generous idea, and rivet the new-born concord; at banquets and social assemblies, in the face of the rulers of Rome and of hot Republicans, he paid honour to his Sovereign, to the Princes and the whole dynasty of Savoy, to his own Piedmont; and invoked for them a destiny worthy of their prowess and of their magnanimous perseverance. Oh! let the Italian reader pause, let him pause with me, upon this momentary recollection of the renewal of that shout for the Holy War; let him rein in his thoughts hurrying on to the catastrophe. Before he bewails it, let him shed tears with me over that stress, that exultation, that daring hope, with which we all throbbed yet once in March of 1849. We all once more felt ourselves better men; love of our country purged our souls from every meaner emotion, from all our resentful spleen; we every one felt worthy of the godlike land of our nativity, and we made an oath of affection to one another, of war against the stranger. We remember, we still re member those gleams of joy, of hope, of consecrated resentment: still will that recollection control our spirits in our new dissensions; it will ennoble us afresh, will inspire us with the hope of new union, new agreement, will invigorate us for the new occasions that cannot fail to come. But those gleams were my story now brings sombre images before me. Before I paint them, once more I cry, God bless the independence of Italy! CHAP. V. OF THE AUSTRIAN. DIS STATE OF THE PIEDMONTESE ARMY. RADETZKI. BICOCCA. ENGAGEMENTS. BATTLE CALLED OF RETREAT UPON THE CITY; CONFUSION AND BROILS THERE.-KILLED AND WOUNDED ON THE TWO SIDES.-CHARLES ALBERT, HIS LANGUAGE AND ABDICATION. -AN ARMISTICE BETWEEN RADETZKI AND THE NEW KING. ITS CONDITIONS. CONTINUED RESISTANCE OF CASALE. DEPARTURE OF CHARLES ALBERT. AFTER the truce of Milan, the army of Piedmont remained inactive, relaxed in discipline, and loath to resume the conflict. The Government enlarged it so greatly that by January it reached 135,000 men, but for the most part they were neither practised in arms nor kindled with a martial spirit; for the country was not disposed to an early renewal of the war. The skeletons, which are the foundation of the army, originally rather bare, were now more so. The petty officers, as well as the officers, were ignorant of, and unknown by, the men; the veteran commanders were not esteemed, the new ones had not been heard of; the infantry, swelled in number, had declined in quality; the artillery was capital, but scanty; there was a lack of light horse, the staff was indifferent, the commissariat and hospitals ill-organised. Of the 135,000 men borne on the roll, 100,000 only could be brought into action; and deducting the sick and the untrained we could reckon only 85,000, in seven divisions (besides two separate brigades), and 156 guns. The two gallant sons of the King were Generals of Division; with Perrone, a veteran soldier of freedom, distinguished in the French army, and in the recent Italian war; Bes, whose valorous deeds had won him rank and honours; Alfonso La Marmora, the most daring and most vigorous of the younger commanders; Giovanni Durando, who had led the Roman troops into Venezia; and lastly Ramorino, who in 1831 had fought in Poland, had earned a sorry name in Mazzini's expedition into Savoy, and had since lived in exile with an ill reputation, until the convulsions of 1848 raised him from his abject state, and the political clubs got him to the head of the Lombard Division, numbering 8000 or 9000 men. King Charles Albert had modestly given up the command in chief; but as Piedmont had no general deemed worthy of it, and as the French Republic did not choose to present Italy even with a captain, the choice fell upon the Pole Chrzanowski. He was modest in disposition, stunted in person, unacquainted with our tongue and manners, instructed in the art of war, but neither watchful nor energetic, nor resolute, in the degree requisite for a commander-in-chief. The Austrian army was composed of 100,000 men |