He crossed the ocean, landed at Nice, proceeded to Genoa and Milan, and when Charles Albert, defeated at Custozza, withdrew from the Lombard city and accepted an armistice, which saved Piedmont from invasion, August, 1848, Garibaldi passed over to Mazzini, and at the head of a volunteer force, of which Mazzini was the standard-bearer, issued a manifesto in which he proclaimed the Sardinian king a traitor, and declared that "the royal war was at an end, and that of the people was now to begin." That proclamation was, however, only an idle bravado. Mazzini, even if he had the spirit, lacked the physical strength of a fighting man. The Garibaldians, on hearing the news of the fall of Milan, lost heart, and many crossed over the frontier to Switzerland. With thinned and dispirited bands, Garibaldi, aided by his friend Medici, ventured on a few desultory fights near Luino, on Lake Maggiore, but soon fell back and withdrew to Lugano in the Canton Ticino, his health, it is said, breaking down, and his immediate followers being reduced to some three hundred. A few months later Pius IX., fallen from his popularity and pressed hard by his disaffected subjects, who murdered his minister and almost stormed him in his palace at the Quirinal, ran away to Gaeta, and a Roman Republic was proclaimed, of which Mazzini, in a triumvirate with two others, mere men of straw, became the head. Attacked by the French in flagrant violation of all rights of nations, Rome undertook to defend itself, and whatever Italy could boast of generous hearts, regardless of party differences, rallied round Garibaldi, who drove back the French from Porta Pancrazia, April 29 and 30, 1849, defeated the Neapolitans in that campaign of Velletri, which was like the farce contrasting with the tragic drama soon to be acted at Rome, and withstood a three months' siege, in which many of the noblest champions of the Italian cause lavished their lives in a hopeless, yet, as it proved, not a fruitless struggle.