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Through that bloody series of offensives the Italians slowly but steadily gained ground, and drew ever nearer to Trento and Trieste. Only those who went out to the Italian Front before Caporetto, and saw with their own eyes what the Italian Army had accomplished on the Carso and among the Julian Alps, can fully realise the greatness of the Italian effort.
Pagolo Guinigi finding himself thus closely pressed, by the advice of Antonio del Rosso, then representative of the Siennese at Lucca, sent Salvestro Trento and Leonardo Bonvisi to Milan, to request assistance from the duke; but finding him indisposed to comply, they secretly engaged, on the part of the people, to deliver their governor up to him and give him possession of the place; at the same time intimating, that if he did not immediately follow this advice, he would not long have the opportunity, since it was the intention of Pagolo to surrender the city to the Florentines, who were very anxious to obtain it.
An English statesman who called on Pius IX. was somewhat surprised by the Pope saying that Italian unity was very well, but it was a pity it did not include Trento and Trieste. The case of Dalmatia is different; there the mass of the population is unquestionably of a non-Italian race, though that race is one which, whenever left to itself, seems created to amalgamate with the Italian.
We had a Count Velo, a Count Sesso, a Count Trento all very amiable companions. They invited us to accompany them to the casino, where Madame C shone by her charms and her coquettish manners. After we had spent two hours in that place, P C invited all his new friends to supper, and it was a scene of gaiety and profusion.
There is a frightful danger that the leaders, the generals and the politicians at Rome, will say 'fight on! but the rank and file will go on breaking. 'We are fighting for Trento and Trieste! they used to say, and now they say 'we are organising the defence of the Piave line! The Regular soldiers never want the war to end. And soon they will be distributing medals for the retreat. Medals!"
All this last stretch of country is famous in Italian history as the scene of Garibaldi's campaign of 1866, which, had it not been interrupted by the course of events elsewhere, would probably have hastened the liberation of Trento by more than half a century, and greatly modified the problems of Italian policy in recent years.
Two or three weeks later, I heard that Count Trento had given those two miserable beings some money to enable them to leave the city; as far as I was concerned, I would not have anything to do with them. A month afterwards P C was again arrested for debt, the man who had been security for him having become a bankrupt.
The volunteers, so many of whose comrades lay dead along the mountain gorges who believed, too, that they were in sight of the reward of their sacrifices were thrown into a ferment, almost into a revolt by the order to retreat. They had expected in a day or two to shake hands with Medici, who, after some hard fighting, was within a march of Trento.
When, in 1848, Lord Palmerston offered his services as mediator between Austria and revolted Italy, it was on a minimum basis of a frontier north of Trento.
We had a Count Velo, a Count Sesso, a Count Trento all very amiable companions. They invited us to accompany them to the casino, where Madame C shone by her charms and her coquettish manners. After we had spent two hours in that place, P C invited all his new friends to supper, and it was a scene of gaiety and profusion.
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