Victor Emmanuel, on succeeding to the throne in consequence of his father’s abdication, enjoyed the reputation of an experienced and intrepid soldier, yet was not in other respects a general favourite with his people. Nor was unpopularity at home the only difficulty in his way. When, after the fatal day of Novara, he received the crown from Charles Albert, who resigned it not until he had vainly sought honourable death in battle, he swore to avenge the wrongs of Italy, and to uphold the free institutions of his own realm. For this he had to reckon both with Austria and Naples, who, with unparalleled effrontery, called upon him to govern his kingdom in such a manner as should be in conformity with the mode of government in the other States of the Peninsula. To such a demand the King did not deign to listen, and his opponents were forced to be content with denouncing Sardinia as a hot-bed of sedition and revolutionary agitation. In the beginning of 1859 Victor Emmanuel, who, in his speech to Parliament, had remarked on the threatening appearance of the political horizon, commenced preparations for war against Austria. The circumstances which precipitated the war are too fresh in the recollection of our readers to be dwelt on here to any length. Cavour, on the part of Sardinia, was under promise to England to make no hostile demonstration against Austria. France had declared that she would aid Sardinia only in the case of the latter being attacked. The preliminaries to an European Congress were actually under discussion, when the Emperor of Austria suddenly broke off all negotiations, and demanded of Sardinia an immediate disarmament, a summons which was treated by Cavour with contempt. At this juncture, Austria, with that peculiar aptitude for blundering which has so characterised her action, sent, in the night of April 28-29, 1859, her armies across the Ticino, thus affording an occasion of action whereof the two allies were not slow to avail themselves. The French troops hastened to cross the Alps. Battle followed battle with uniform success to the allied arms, when, like a thunderbolt, news of the Peace of Villafranca fell on Europe. Unexplained at the time, the reasons for it soon came within the range of tolerably accurate conjecture. In the first place the eagerness with which people of the other States in Italy prepared to unite themselves with Sardinia (which Cavour had foreseen, but which had failed to strike Louis Napoleon,) was hardly to the taste of the French Emperor. Whatever were his objects in the war, the unity of Italy was certainly not one of them. He had employed his army, and thereby diverted his people; he had gained a satisfactory amount of glory, though perhaps not so much as his ambition led him to hope for. In his victories, (though it were hard to apply to them the epithet _Pyrrhic_,) he had undoubtedly sustained greater loss than his adversary; and he possibly thought it as well to refrain from following the Austrians