And in truth the Bourbon soldiers did not run. At Calatifimi the Garibaldians beat them only after a fierce encounter; at Palermo there was a desperate struggle; at Milazzo, a resistance which might, if prolonged, have destroyed the expedition. In every instance it seemed as if the Bourbons might have won had they but displayed a little more nerve, another half hour’s persistence; but it was always the Garibaldians who had the precious reserve of pluck and strength to draw upon, and they always won. Their capture of Palermo, a walled city of two hundred thousand inhabitants, defended by many regiments on land and by men-of-war in the harbor, ranks highest among their exploits. Less than a month after quitting Genoa, they had liberated more than half the island and had set up a provisional government. By the first of August only two or three fortresses had not surrendered to them. And now questions of diplomacy came in to disturb the swift current of conquest. Garibaldi determined to cross to the mainland, redeem Naples, march on to Rome, and from the Capitol hail Victor Emanuel King of Italy. Cavour saw great danger in this plan. At any moment, a defeat would jeopard the positions already gained; an attack on the Pope’s domain would bring Louis Napoleon and Austria to his rescue, and might entail a war in which the just-formed Kingdom of Italy would be broken up; furthermore, Cavour believed that assimilation ought to keep pace with annexation. He knew that it would require long training to raise the Italians of the south, corrupted by ages of hideous misrule, to the level of their northern kinsmen.