Mazzini did not share the enthusiastic hopes everywhere raised in the ranks of the Liberal party throughout Europe by the first acts of Pius IX., in 1846, but at the same time he availed himself, towards the end of 1847, of the opportunity to publish a letter addressed to the new pope, indicating the nature of the religious and national mission which the Liberals expected him to undertake. The leaders of the revolutionary outbreaks in Milan and Messina in the beginning of 1848 had long been in secret correspondence with Mazzini; and their action, along with the revolution in Paris, brought him early in the same year to Italy, where he took a great and active interest in the events which dragged Charles Albert into an unprofitable war with Austria; he actually for a short time bore arms under Garibaldi immediately before the reoccupation of Milan, but ultimately, after vain attempts to maintain the insurrection in the mountain districts, found it necessary to retire to Lugano. In the beginning of the following year he was nominated a member of the short-lived provisional government of Tuscany formed after the flight of the grand-duke, and almost simultaneously, when Rome had, in consequence of the withdrawal of Pius IX., been proclaimed a republic, he was declared a member of the constituent assembly there. A month afterwards, the battle of Novara having again decided against Charles Albert in the brief struggle with Austria, into which he had once more been drawn, Mazzini was appointed a member of the Roman triumvirate, with supreme executive power (March 23, 1849). The opportunity he now had for showing the administrative and political ability which he was believed to possess was more apparent than real, for the approach of the professedly friendly French troops soon led to hostilities, and resulted in a siege which terminated, towards the end of June, with the assembly's resolution to discontinue the defence, and Mazzini's indignant resignation. That he succeeded, however, for so long a time, and in circumstances so adverse, in maintaining a high degree of order within the turbulent city is a fact that speaks for itself. His diplomacy, backed as it was by no adequate physical force, naturally showed at the time to very great disadvantage, but his official correspondence and proclamations can still be read with admiration and intellectual pleasure, as well as his eloquent vindication of the revolution in his published "Letter to MM. de Tocqueville and de Falloux." The surrender of the city on the 30th of June was followed by Mazzini's not too precipitate flight by way of Marseilles into Switzerland, whence he once more found his way to London. Here in 1850 he became president of the National Italian Committee, and at the same time entered into close relations with Ledru-Rollin and Kossuth. He had a firm belief in the value of revolutionary attempts, however hopeless they might seem; he