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Updated: June 24, 2025
The most severe phase in the financial difficulties was past when, at the beginning of 1858, Cavour consigned the exchequer to Lanza, assuming himself the Ministry of the Interior, which was vacant through the resignation of Rattazzi. The breach between the two men, who were never in entire intellectual harmony, had been growing inevitable for some months.
The air was full of rumours, and in particular much was said about a Garibaldian expedition to Greece, for which, it was stated and re-stated, Rattazzi had promised £40,000. That Garibaldi meant to cast his lot in any struggle not bearing directly on Italian affairs, as long as the questions of Rome and Venice still hung in the balance, is not to be believed.
Rattazzi was notoriously opposed to any cession of territory, and had he known how to play his game it is at least open to argument that the House of Savoy might have been spared losing its birthright as the Houses of Orange and Lorraine had lost theirs. But his weak policy landed Italian affairs in a chaos which made Napoleon once more master of the situation.
As the austere figure of Léontine Fay passes away, hidden in a cloud of sunny dust raised by the wheels of a hundred carriages, another form comes upon the stage, radiant amongst the most brilliant, the observed of all observers Madame Rattazzi, née Princess Bonaparte Wyse. What a wonderful toilette is hers!
It was then that Rattazzi made the announcement that although he did not mean to vote for this particular Bill, he intended to support the Ministry through the session which had just begun, if, as he believed, this Bill was an isolated measure, and did not indicate a change of policy.
The leader of the Left had debts, and was not in a hurry to pay them. When Rattazzi, through Cavour's instrumentality, was elected President of the Chamber, D'Azeglio felt again aggrieved. Cavour, who began by treating his chief's antipathy to his new ally as a prejudice to be made fun of, and in the end dispelled, came to understand that it was insuperable.
The 'principle' of French intervention was adopted by the council of ministers on the 17th of October. Then, and not till then, Rattazzi decided to send the Italian troops over the frontier. On finding that neither the King nor several of his colleagues in the ministry would support him, he resigned office on the 19th of the month. It was on the day after that Garibaldi appeared in Florence.
Rattazzi, on the other hand, was believed to answer very closely to this description; and patriots who were willing to bear all the blame in case of failure and yield all the praise in case of success, began once more to speculate on the profit to the national cause which might be extracted from the peculiarities of his character.
In this matter Cavour thought that Rattazzi ought to have stood by him, instead of which he took the part of the deeply offended king, who went so far as to say that only his position and his duty to the country prevented him from challenging his prime minister then and there. Time seems long to those who wait.
And yet the higher expediency demanded that the sacrifice of Piedmont and of her King for Italy should be consummated. Rattazzi announced the coming campaign to the Chambers on the 14th of March; the news was well received; there was a general feeling that, whatever happened, the present situation could not be prolonged.
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