Page:Historical Essays and Studies.djvu/210

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198
ESSAYS ON MODERN HISTORY


a rising in the Neapolitan dominions, on condition of receiving indirect assistance. The Government of Turin was not ready to incur the chances of a new war ; time was needed to consolidate the State and to reorganise the army. But it suited the policy of France that the delivery of the South should not be the work of Sardinia, and that she should not enjoy the fruit of it. Cavour could not resist the pressure of the Republicans supported by the connivance of France, and he determined so to conduct himself as to turn the enterprise to his own advantage. This he accomplished in a way which was a triumph of unscrupulous statesmanship. Garibaldi went forth as the instrument of a party that desired a Republican Italy and of a power that desired a Federal Italy, and he did the work of monarchy and unity. When Palermo had fallen, the Piedmontese party insisted on annexation. Garibaldi refused to surrender the dictatorship, which he required in order to complete the conquest of the mainland. "Garibaldi," said La Farina, "wished the annexation to follow only after the deliverance of all Italy, including Rome and Venice." He thought that by retaining the power in his own hands he would be able ultimately to compel the Turin Government to follow him against the Pope and the Quadrilateral ; and his Mazzinist allies supported him, in order that the deliverance might be achieved by the revolution alone, and that the revolution might then be master of Italy. La Farina, Cavour's agent with Garibaldi, and the head of the national party organised by Manin, which aimed at unity without democracy, was forced to give way.

"I openly and quietly informed the General," he says, "of the reasons of my discontent. He treated me kindly at first ; but he reproached me with my friendship for Cavour, my approbation of the treaty of cession, and my opposition to his design on Central Italy."

Garibaldi sent him to Genoa, and declared that he would retire rather than annex Sicily to Sardinia before his work was done. "I came to fight for the