We all know what happened: how the defeat of the Italians at Custozza by the Archduke Albert was more than counterbalanced by the defeat of the Austrians at Sadowa; and how Austria had to accept her humiliation, submit to be turned out of the German Federation, and surrender Venetia to Italy, after a _plébiscite_ had been taken to ascertain those “wishes of the population” which Francis Joseph had so haughtily refused to recognise. The figures give eloquent evidence of the feelings of alien races towards Austrian rule. They were as follows: For annexation 640,000 Against 40 ——————— Majority for 639,960 ——————— The result, one may be sure, would have been pretty much the same if a _plébiscite_ had been taken in the Trentino, and South Tyrol. There also Austrian rule was unsympathetic; and that sore still remains open, with the result that, though Austria and Italy are now nominally allied, they are very far from being friends, and Italy still awaits her chance of responding to the lamentations which continue to reach her from the Purgatory of the Unredeemed. We shall see what we shall see in this connection when Austria is next embarrassed; but meanwhile we must return to Francis Joseph’s part in this great drama of 1866. His sphere of action was not the battlefield, but the council chamber; but there his prestige was felt, even in the hour of his discomfiture. Europe was still, to some extent, a family party in which the sentiment prevailed that Kings and Emperors must not be too hard on each other; and German Europe, at any rate, was still fascinated by the spectacle of the magnificent façade of the House of Habsburg, and reluctant to damage it in the spirit of Goths and Vandals. Even Bismarck’s “realistic politics” had to allow for that sentiment; and it was a sentiment of which Francis Joseph, on his part, instinctively perceived the value. His perception of it is the solid fact at the back of the strange story of his shameful behaviour towards General Benedek: a story in which he figures as the Jesuit convinced that the end justifies the means and that individuals must be sacrificed ruthlessly to the interests of the Order. “One cannot expect much of a man who has been educated by the Jesuits,” said the late Prince Consort, summing him up with curt scorn; and there will be no pleasant disappointment of expectations in the story which is to follow. * * * * *