What, he asked Prince Napoleon, who was charged with the negotiations, was the meaning of that odd expression—“the wishes of the population”? Prince Napoleon replied that it meant just what it seemed to mean—that there was not an Italian in Lombardy who was not eager to see the Austrians turned out of that province. Whereupon Francis Joseph smote the table and raised his voice: “For my own part” (he said) “I recognise no rights except those which are incorporated in treaties. According to the treaties, Lombardy belongs to me. My arms having been unfortunate, I am quite willing to cede the territory to the Emperor Napoleon; but I cannot recognise the wishes of the population, for that is only another phrase for the right of revolution. Use the phrase if you must in your treaty with the King of Sardinia, and in your proclamations to the Italian people—that is no business of mine; but you must clearly understand that I, the Emperor of Austria, emphatically refuse to put my signature to such a form of words.” It did not matter; so Napoleon did not insist. The Head of the Habsburgs was quite welcome to make the gestures of pride while munching the pie of humility—a way of keeping up their dignity in depressing circumstances in which the Habsburgs are the worthy rivals of the Bourbons, and Francis Joseph in particular is the worthy rival of Louis XVIII., who treated the allied sovereigns as his lackeys when they restored him to his throne. A more important matter was that, though Francis Joseph had been given his lesson, he had not learnt it, and that Napoleon, owing to dangers near home, had not been able to make the lesson as complete as he would have liked. Napoleon had promised that Italy should be free “from the Alps to the Adriatic”; but he heard that Prussia was mobilising on the Rhine, and left his work unfinished. Not only was Venetia left to Austria; but Habsburg Dukes of Tuscany and Modena were also restored to the States from which their subjects had expelled them, though the latter had actually shot his political prisoners, after first flogging them, before taking to flight. Whence, of course, two consequences followed. In the first place Francis Joseph was confirmed in his stubborn view that he did really possess the right of ruling over Italians who loathed him. In the second place, the Italians continued to loathe him; and it was as certain as anything could be that, when his struggle with Prussia for the German hegemony came to a head, he would have to face a second day of reckoning with Victor Emmanuel. CHAPTER XIII An interval of peace—Beginnings of trouble with Prussia—Habsburg pride precedes a Habsburg fall—Refusal to sell Venetia to Italy—Italy joins Prussia—The war of 1866—The disaster of Sadowa—Benedek’s failure—Shameful treatment of Benedek by the Empire—Vain attempts to conciliate him—His widow’s comments.