His foreign policy was a return to that of Catherine the Great--the restoration of the Byzantine Empire. Making admirable use of the Hellenic enthusiasm of Canning, he destroyed the Turkish fleet at Navarino. Thus popular at home and abroad, regarded by the Liberals of Europe as the restorer of Greek freedom, and by the Legitimists as a stronger successor to Alexander, he was able to crush the Poles. Enthusiastic Berlin students carried the effigies of Polish leaders in triumph; but not a sword was drawn. England, France, Austria looked on silent at the work of Diebitch and Paskievitch, "my two mastiffs," as the Czar styled them, and the true "_finis Poloniae_" had come. A Russian Army marching against Kossuth, and the Czar's demand for the extradition of the heroic Magyar, unmasked the despot. Yet his European triumph was complete, and the war in the Crimea seemed his crowning chance--the humiliating of the two Powers which in his eyes represented Liberty and the Revolution. Every force that personal rancour, and the devotion of years to one sole end, every measure that reason and State policy could dictate, lent their aid to stimulate the efforts of the monarch in this enterprise. The disaster was sudden, overwhelming, irremediable. Yet in one thing his life was a success, and that a great one--he had Russianised Russia. The Crimean War marks a turning-point in the History of Europe only less significant than the Revolution of 1848. The isolating force of religion was annulled, and the slowly increasing influence of the East upon the West affected even the routine of diplomacy. The hopes of the Carlists and the Jesuits in Spain were frustrated, and Austria, deprived of the reward of her neutrality, could look no more to the Muscovite for aid in crushing Italian freedom, as she had crushed Hungary. From his deep chagrin at the treason of the Powers, Cavour seemed to gather new strength and a political wisdom which sets his name with those of the greatest constructive statesmen of all time. The defeat at Novara was avenged, the policy of Villafranca, and the designs of that singular saviour of society, Louis Napoleon, were checked. Venetia was recovered, and when in 1870 the lines around Metz and Sedan withdrew the French bayonets which hedged in Pio Nono, Victor Emmanuel entered Rome as King of Italy. Thirty years have passed since the 20th September, and the burdens of taxation and military sacrifices which Italy has borne, with the prisoner in the Vatican like a conspirator on her own hearth, can be compared only with the burdens which Prussia endured for the sake of glory and her kings before and after Rossbach. But instead of a Rossbach, Italy has had an Adowa; instead of justice, a corrupt official class and an army of judges who make justice a mockery, anarchism in her towns, a superstitious peasantry, an aristocracy dead to the future and to the memory of the past.