Besides this Legion, troops of volunteers came from all over Italy. The character of these patriots may be learned from Mazzini's account of the young Genoese poet Goffredo Mameli, who was killed there. "For me, for us exiles of twenty years who have grown old in illusions, he was like a melody of youth, a presentiment of times that we shall not see, in which the instinct of goodness and sacrifice will dwell unconscious in the human soul, and will not be, as virtue is in us, the fruit of long and hard struggles. Of a disposition lovingly yielding, he was only happy when he could abandon himself to those he loved, as a child in his mother's caress; and yet Mameli was unshakably firm in what touched the faith he had embraced. He was handsome, but careless of his appearance, and sensitive as a woman to the charm of flowers and sweet scents. Such was he when I knew him first at Milan in 1848, and we loved each other at once. It was impossible to see him and not love him. Only twenty-two, he joined the extremes rarely found united, a childlike gentleness and the energy of a lion, to be revealed, and which was revealed, in supreme emergencies." The defence of Rome was vain. Mazzini escaped by means of an English passport, and Garibaldi led a handful of men eastward hoping to reach Venice. The French soldiers marched into the city, and reestablished the Temporal Power of the Pope. Venice alone remained. Daniele Manin, the valiant dictator, maintained a stout defence for four months, but cholera and hunger came to the enemy's aid. On August 24 the city capitulated, and on the 30th Marshal Radetzky heard the _Te Deum_ of Austrian gratitude played in St. Mark's. In all Italy, except Piedmont, the reaction had triumphed; Piedmont alone was left to become the centre of whatever hopes of independence and unity still existed. FOOTNOTES: [23] _The Liberation of Italy_, Evelyn M. Cesaresco, p. 144. CHAPTER XXXVIII THE UNITY OF ITALY (1849-1871) After the uprisings of 1848-49, the old tyrannical system prevailed for eight years and seemed heavier than ever. Liberalism meant suspicion, disfavour, danger. The liberals were not very numerous and did not agree among themselves. Some looked for hope to Piedmont, some to England, some to France. Some were for a republic, some for a confederation, some for unity; some wished insurrection, others lawful agitation.