The history of the events that followed is well known, and need not be repeated. The old king, in the moment of peril, proved that he was a true Bourbon, incapable of a wise decision or an energetic act. All at once he had a horror of bloodshed, sacrificed his ministry, called to his council Thiers, Odillon-Barrot, and other dynastiques, who, vainly imagining that their bare names would allay the storm which they still more vainly imagined that they had conjured up, ordered the troops back to their barracks, and gave up the king and his dynasty to the armed and infuriated mob. The king abdicated; the Regency, under the Duchess of Orleans, was scouted; the royal family scampered for their lives towards England, that _refugium peccatorum_; monarchy was abolished; the République was proclaimed; a provisional government was organized impromptu, and a convention of delegates, to be chosen by universal suffrage, was ordered to meet and give France a regular political organization. But a few days elapsed before the movement in Paris was followed by insurrections in Berlin, Vienna, and a large number of the smaller German states. The Italian peninsula was all in a blaze; democracy was in the ascendant in all Europe, except Russia, Spain, Belgium, and Holland. Hungary demanded independence of Austria; the Slavic populations of the Austrian Empire at Prague and Agram were preparing to join in a panslavic movement; Pius the Ninth was deprived of all freedom of action, and held virtually imprisoned; Naples and Sicily were in full revolt, and the king ready to concede every thing, and, Bourbon-like thwarting every effort of his loyal subjects to protect him; Charles Albert declared himself the sword of the Holy See; the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom rejected Austrian supremacy, and chose him for king. He marched at the head of his troops, swelled by contingents from all Italy, to drive the barbarians back over the mountains, and to clear the peninsula of every vestige of foreign dominion.