"When I arrived at the St. Pancrazio gate, the Villa Pamphili, the Villa Corsini, and the Villa Valentini alone remained in our hands. Now the Villa Corsini being taken was an enormous loss to us; for as long as we were masters of that, the French could not draw their parallels. At any price, then, that must be retaken: it was for Rome a question of life or death. The firing between the cannoneers of the ramparts, the men of the Vascello, and the French of the Villa Corsini and the Villa Valentini, increased. But it was not a fusillade or a cannonade that was necessary; it was an assault, a terrible but victorious assault, which might restore the Villa Corsini to us. For a moment the Villa Corsini was ours. That moment was short, but it was sublime! The French brought up all their reserve, and fell upon us altogether before I could even repair the disorder inseparable from victory. The fight was renewed more desperately, more bloodily, more fatally than ever. I saw repass before me, repulsed by those irresistible powers of war, fire and steel, those whom I had seen pass on but a minute before, now bearing away their dead. "There could no longer be any idea of saving Rome. From the moment an army of 40,000 men, having thirty-six pieces of siege cannon, can perform their works of approach, the taking of a city is nothing but a question of time; it must one day or other fall. The only hope it has left is to fall gloriously. As long as one of our pieces of cannon remained on its carriage, it replied to the French fire; but on the evening of the 29th the last was dismounted." Garibaldi was summoned before the Assembly, and this is his history of what happened:- "Mazzini had already announced to the Assembly the position we now stood in: there remained, he said, but three parts to take--to treat with the French; to defend the city from barricade to barricade; or to leave the city, assembly, triumvirate, and army, carrying away with them the palladium of Roman liberty. "When I appeared at the door of the chamber all the deputies rose and applauded. I looked about me and upon myself to see what it was that awakened their enthusiasm. I was covered with blood; my clothes were pierced with balls and bayonet thrusts. They cried, 'To the tribune! to the tribune!' and I mounted it. I was interrogated on all sides.