Shortly after the conclusion of his Crimean enterprise the Emperor went adventuring again--on the adventure at which I have already hinted--and this time, it must be admitted, with a far more evident mark set upon the world's story as its outcome. For in 1859, in conjunction with the Sardinian army, we find him helping the Italians, inspired by their new sense of nationality, to express their hatred for the domination of Austria. Again following the footsteps of his great uncle, he defeated the Austrians in two successive battles in the North of Italy, and drove them out of Lombardy. Meanwhile, under the popular leader Garibaldi, the southern part of the peninsula had been won for the Italian people in 1860. An Italian Parliament, so called for the first time, was summoned, and the King of Sardinia elected King of Italy, though not yet with a kingship over the whole of what we now call Italy. {204} There were, still outstanding, Venice and the Papal States. As the price of her help, France received the Sardinian provinces of Savoy and Nice. [Illustration: GARIBALDI.] In 1866, however, this new Italy took the side of Prussia against Austria in their fight over Schleswig-Holstein. Both on land and sea the Italians were defeated, but no doubt they kept employed some of the Austrian force which, but for Italy's help, might have been used against Prussia, and as the recompense that help Italy was given Venice and the Venetian territory at the end of the Seven Weeks' War. {205} Garibaldi with his followers defeated the Papal troops, and entered Rome in the following year, but the French, again appearing as the Pope's friend, stepped in, recaptured Rome for the Pope, and forced Garibaldi and his army to surrender. It was largely due to Garibaldi's gallant efforts, nevertheless, that the Papal States were shortly afterwards finally incorporated into the kingdom of Italy, and in the following year, that is, in 1871, Rome became the capital of the kingdom and the seat of Government. The temporal power of the Pope was at an end; the national unity of Italy was virtually complete. France, at that moment, had little enough attention to spare for affairs other than her own. Trouble had arisen between Napoleon III. and the King of Prussia, leader of that Northern Confederation of German States which Bismarck had firmly welded together, over the succession to the Spanish throne. Save for that Franco-German trouble, Spain, since her great days, has made little mark on the Greatest Story. As we have already seen before, so now again, she played her own part, cut off from the main stage behind the barrier formed by the Pyrenees. It was a troubled drama. One king and then another was tried and found wanting. An experiment with a republican form of government had even less success. A solution was found in going back to a representative of the old royal family in 1875; and his successor is on the throne of Spain to-day.