of the year 1849 the Liberals were everywhere crushed, their leaders executed, imprisoned, or driven into exile, and the dream of Italy's unity and freedom dispelled by the hard present fact of renewed tyranny and foreign domination.
Much, however, had been gained. The patriotic party had had revealed to itself its strength, and at the same time the necessity of united action,—of the adoption of a single policy. Henceforth the Republicans and Federalists were more inclined to give up as impracticable their plans of national organization, and with the Constitutionalists to look upon the kingdom of Sardinia as the only possible basis and nucleus of a free and united Italy.
Victor Emmanuel II., Count Cavour, and Garibaldi.—Sardinia was a state which had gradually grown into power in the northwest corner of the peninsula. The throne was at this time held by Victor Emmanuel II. (1849–1878). To him it was that the hopea of the Italian patriots now turned. Nor were these hopes to be disappointed. Victor Emmanuel was the destined liberator of Italy, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that his was the name in which the achievement was to be effected by the wise policy of his great minister Count Cavour, and the reckless daring of the hero Garibaldi.
Count Cavour was a man of large hopes and large plans. His single aim and purpose was the independence and unification of Italy. He was the genius of Italian liberty. Garibaldi, " the hero of the red shirt," was the knight-errant of Italian independence. Though yet barely past middle life, he had led a career singularly crowded with varied experiences and romantic adventures. Because of his violent republicanism, he had already been twice exiled from Italy.
The Austro-Sardinian War (1859–1860).—The hour for striking another blow for the freedom of Italy had now arrived. In 1859 Count Cavour, in the pursuance of his national policy for Italy, having first made a secret arrangement with the French emperor, gave Austria to understand that unless she granted Lombardy and Venetia free government and ceased to interfere in the affairs of
