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This was a small matter to Cavour: they were again on the high seas, he said cheerfully, but what was the good of thinking of peace and quiet till Italy was made? The Sardinian Government adopted the policy of assisting the expedition now as far as they could without being compromised with the Powers of Europe but no farther.
"Anyone," said Cavour, "can govern in a state of siege," but I do not think Englishmen realise the extent to which the ruling policy has been to accentuate the repressive to the exclusion of the beneficent side of government, and how ready they have been to make the government not one of opinion, as in their own country, but one of force. When Mr.
Amedeo Dorini, the hall porter of the Hotel Cavour in Milan, stood on the pavement before the hotel one autumn afternoon in the year 1894, waiting for the omnibus, which had gone to the station, and which was now due to return, bearing Amedeo hoped a load of generously inclined travelers. During the years of his not unpleasant servitude Amedeo had become a student of human nature.
Then the war of 1859 broke out, and like most Hungarian and Polish refugees, Count T hurried off to Italy, in order to place himself at the disposal of that great and patriotic Piedmontese statesman, Cavour.
But people forget; and it was of vital consequence that virtuous Austria should figure in the coming conflict not as the victim of aggression but as the aggressor. On all sides it was said that the Austrian Government would never commit an error of such magnitude; only Cavour thought the contrary. 'I shall force her to declare war against us, he told Mr Odo Russell in December 1858.
A Sardinian contingent had now, by a stroke of policy on the part of Count Cavour, the Sardinian Minister, joined the English and French in arms in the Crimea; but an unsuccessful attack, made with heavy loss by the combined forces of the English and French on Sebastopol, filled the country with disappointment and sorrow.
Cavour further satisfied the Chamber by saying that Rome and Venice must in the end be united to the mother country, though the questions involved in such union must, out of deference to Europe and France, be postponed for the present. A vote of two hundred ninety against six confirmed the policy of the Government and gave full expression to the wishes of the country.
Leri, which Cavour looked upon henceforth as his true home, lies in one of the ugliest parts of the plains of Piedmont, cold in winter, scorched by a burning sun in summer, and unhealthy from the exhalations of the rice-fields which contribute to its wealth.
In pursuance of such a policy, Cavour induced Piedmont to join the Allies in the Crimean War, and the Italian soldiers behaved with conspicuous bravery at the battle of Tchernaya.
Piedmontese statesmen had always looked askance at these forces; Cavour was becoming fully alive to the vast motive power they would place in the hands of the man who could command them, and whom they could not command. He was free from the caste prejudices which caused many even good patriots of that date to hold the masses in horror.
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