Out with Garibaldi: A story of the liberation of Italy

by G. A. Henty

  CHAPTER XVI.

  NAPLES.

  The resemblance between Colonel Peard and Garibaldi was so great that,being similarly dressed, the Englishman, pushing on so far in advance,was everywhere taken for the general, and he utilised this likeness tothe utmost. The news of his rapid approach hastened the retreat of theNeapolitans. He sent fictitious telegrams to their generals as fromprivate friends, magnifying Garibaldi's forces, and representing that hewas taking a line that would cut them off from Naples, and so sent themhurrying away at full speed and adding to the alarm and confusion of thegovernment.

  "I suppose we had better push on with Garibaldi, grandfather?" Franksaid one day, as they finished an unusually long march.

  "Certainly, Frank," Signor Forli said, somewhat surprised; "we shall bein Naples in another three or four days. I am sure Garibaldi will notwait for his troops; he was saying to me yesterday that he was mostanxious to enter the city, as he had notice from a friend that Cavour'sparty were hard at work trying to organise a general rising of the citybefore he arrives, and the issue of a manifesto declaring VictorEmmanuel king of Italy and inviting him to come at once. This Garibaldiis determined not to allow. He has from the first always declared thathe came in the name of the king, and that when his work was done hewould hand over Southern Italy to him. You know his loyalty and absolutedisinterestedness; and the idea that he would endeavour to obtain anyadvantage for himself is absurd.

  "If he had chosen, instead of accepting the dictatorship of Sicily hecould have been elected king; and assuredly it is the same thing here.He is the people's hero and saviour; the very name of the King ofSardinia is scarcely known in Sicily, and excites no interest whatever.It is the same thing in Calabria: the enthusiasm is all for Garibaldi,and had he consented to accept the crown he would have been electedunanimously. His wish and hope is to present to Victor Emmanuel SouthernItaly cleared of all enemies, complete and undivided; and yet, ratherthan so receive it, Cavour, Farina, and the rest of them are intriguingat Naples, as they intrigued in Sicily, in order that the king shouldappear to take this wide accession of territory as the expression of thewill of the people, and not from the hand of Garibaldi.

  "It is pitiful to see such mean jealousy. In time, no doubt, even hadthere not been a Garibaldi, this would have come about, but it mighthave been fifteen or twenty years hence; and had it been done by meansof a royal army, France and Austria would probably both have interferedand demanded compensation, and so left Italy still incomplete. It is thespeed with which the change has been effected, and I may say theadmiration with which Europe has viewed it, and the assurance of thegovernment at Turin that it has had no hand in this business, but hastaken all means in its power to prevent it, that has paralysedopposition. I trust that all these intrigues will fail, and thatGaribaldi may have the sole honour that he craves--namely, that ofpresenting the kingdom of the two Sicilies to Victor Emmanuel. ShouldCavour's intrigues succeed, and Garibaldi be slighted, it will be theblackest piece of ingratitude history has ever recorded. However, why doyou ask 'shall we go on to Naples?' I thought that you were burning toget there."

  "I am; but you see we are passing, without time for making anyinvestigations, many places where my father, if alive, may be in prison.At Potenza, for example, I know that a large number of politicalprisoners are confined, and doubtless it is the same at many othertowns. I cannot bear to think of the possibility that he may be in oneof these, and that we have passed him by."

  "I can quite understand your feelings, Frank; but you know we are agreedthat it is at Naples we shall most probably find him, if he is stillalive. Bad as the prisons may be in other places, they are more looselymanaged; there would be fewer conveniences for keeping one prisonerapart from the others, while there are ample opportunities in those ofNaples for many to be kept in secret confinement. Certainly I was sokept myself at Reggio; but that was a royal fortress, and though used asa prison for political offenders, there were no malefactors there. Inthe jails in the provincial towns this could not be so, and I know thatprisoners are all mixed up together, save those who can afford to pay,who can live in comparative comfort, while the rest are herded togetheranyhow, and can scarcely exist upon the rations allowed to them. Themore I think of it, the more I am convinced that it is at Naples that wemust look for your father. Now that we have arrived at Salerno, andthat, as we hear, the Neapolitan troops are falling back from thecapital, and taking up their position round Capua and Gaeta, there canbe little doubt that Garibaldi will, in a day or two, go forward. Thereis, indeed, nothing to prevent you and me from going by train thereto-morrow, if you lay aside that red shirt and scarf, and dress inclothes that will attract no attention. But I do not see that anythingwould be gained by it; you will still have to wait until Garibaldi issupreme there, and his orders are respected, and you may be sure that,as soon as he is in power, his first step will be to throw open theprisons and release all who are charged with political offences, toorder these hideous dungeons to be permanently closed, and to thoroughlyreorganise the system. You have told me that he did this at Palermo, andhe will certainly do the same at Naples."

  Four days later the king issued a farewell notice to the people, andleft Naples for Gaeta; and three hours afterwards Romano, his minister,who had drawn up his farewell, addressed the following telegram toGaribaldi:--

  "To the Invincible Dictator of the two Sicilies.--Naples expects youwith anxiety to confide to you her future destiny.--Entirely yours,LIBORIO ROMANO."

  A subsequent letter informed him that at a meeting of the ministers ithad been decided that the Prince of Alessandria, Syndic of Naples,should go to Salerno, with the commander of the national guard, to makethe arrangements for his entry into the capital. Garibaldi, however, didnot wait. Were he to arrive at the head of his troops, the Neapolitangarrisons of the castle and other strong places in the city might opposehim by force; and, as ever, wishing to avoid bloodshed, he determined torely solely upon the populace of Naples. He at once ordered a smallspecial train to be prepared.

  "I am only taking with me," he said to Frank, "a few of my staff. Youwill be one of the number: you have a right to it, not only as therepresentative of your mother, to whose aid we are largely indebted forour being now here, but for your own personal services. Signor Forlishall also go: he stood by me on the walls of Rome twelve years ago, hehas suffered much for his principles, he is your mother's father,therefore he too shall come."

  There were but four carriages on the little train that left at nineo'clock in the morning on the 7th of September for Naples. Cosenz, andthirteen members of the staff, represented the national army; theremaining seats being occupied by various personal friends and two orthree newspaper correspondents.

  "'Tis an affair not without risk," Signor Forli said to Frank, as theywalked towards the station. "That the people will receive Garibaldi withenthusiasm is certain, but the attitude of the troops is very doubtful.Certainly the flower of the Neapolitan army will have been left ingarrison at Naples; and if but a score of these remain faithful to theBourbons, Garibaldi's life may be sacrificed. However, I cannot believethat Providence will permit one who has done so great and mighty a workto perish, just at the moment of the completion of his enterprise."

  The station-master at Salerno, as soon as the train had started, flashedthe news to the various stations on the road; and the consequence was,that at every village the people assembled, and when half the journeywas done the crowds were so vast, that they overflowed on to the line,and the train was brought to a standstill. National guards climbed on tothe roofs of the carriages, and decorated them with flags andevergreens. At Torre del Greco, Resina, and Portici, progress becamealmost impossible, and the train had to proceed at a snail's pace toNaples. Here the authorities had prevented all access to the station,but outside the scene was an extraordinary one: horses and carriages,men and women of the highest and of the lowest classes; national guardsand gendarmes, members of Bertani's and the Cavourian committees, wereall crowded in
confusion together. The houses were decorated with flagsand tapestry, and thronged with eager spectators from basement to roof;and as Missori and three others rode out from the station on horseback,followed by Garibaldi in an open carriage with Cosenz, and by a dozenother carriages containing his staff and those who had arrived with him,the roar of welcome was overpowering.

  It was with the greatest difficulty that the horsemen cleared the way;for all along the road the crowd was as great as at the station. Theattitude of the troops, however, at the various points where they weremassed, was sullen and threatening. At Castel Nuovo the guns werepointed on the road; the troops stood ready to fire. One shot, and thecourse of history might have been changed. Garibaldi ordered hiscoachman to drive slower, and sat in his carriage calmly, with his eyesfixed upon the troops. One officer gave the order to fire; but he wasnot obeyed. The calmness and daring of the lion-like face filled thesoldiers with such admiration that, for the moment, their hostilityevaporated; and while some of them saluted as if to a royal personage,others took off their hats and burst into a cheer. Garibaldiacknowledged it by lifting his hat, and by a cheery wave of his hand,and drove on as calmly as before.

  In the carriages behind, all had held their breath at the criticalmoment.

  "What an escape! What an escape!" Signor Forli murmured to Frank, whowas sitting next to him. "Had but one musket been fired, we should allhave been dead men in a minute or two; and, what is of more consequence,the freeing of Italy must have been postponed for twenty years."

  "It was horribly close," Frank said. "I would rather go through tenhand-to-hand fights, than another time like the last three minutes; ithas made me feel quite queer, and I own that what you say about puttingback Italian freedom for twenty years never entered my mind. The onethought I had was, that we were all going to be smashed up withouthaving the chance of striking a single blow. I went through some prettysharp fighting at Palermo, but I was always doing something then, anddid not think of the danger. I don't mind saying that I was in a bluefunk just now."

  Garibaldi drove straight, as was the custom of kings on first enteringNaples, to the palace of the archbishop. Here the Te Deum was sung; andhe then went on to the palace of Angri, where he and his staff took uptheir quarters. Vast crowds assembled outside the palace, and thegeneral had to appear again and again on the balcony in reply to theroars of acclamation from the enthusiastic population. General Cosenz,who was himself a Neapolitan, was appointed to organise a government.This he did to the general satisfaction--moderate men only being chosen.Garibaldi requested Admiral Persano in the name of Victor Emmanuel totake command of the Neapolitan navy, decreeing that it should form partof the Sardinian squadron; and appointed to the pro-dictatorship theMarquis of Pallavicini, a staunch friend of the king. He had offeredSignor Forli an apartment in the palace, and as soon as the firstexcitement had ceased the latter said to Frank, who had at Salernoreceived the portmanteau he had left at Genoa:--

  "Let us go out and see the state of the city. But before we do so, youhad best put on your ordinary clothes: we should simply be mobbed if youwere to go out as one of Garibaldi's officers."

  "Yes; we have had quite enough of that as we came along," Frank said."It will really be a comfort to go about for once in peace and quiet."

  They started in a few minutes, leaving the palace by one of the sideentrances, and soon mingled in the crowd. The people seemed half madwith delight. As soon as the news of Garibaldi's arrival spread throughthe town every house was decorated, and the whole population poured outinto the streets. Among the better classes the joy that the governmentof the Bourbons had come to an end, and that the constitutionalgovernment, which had done so much for Northern Italy, would succeed thedespotism which had pressed so heavily on all with anything to lose, wasdeep and sincere. Among the lower classes the enthusiasm manifested wasbut the excitement of some few minutes, and had Francesco returned amonth later, at the head of his victorious troops, they would haveshouted as lustily.

  It was a fete, a special fete, and it mattered but little to the fickleand excitable population what was its cause. But here, as on alloccasions when Italian people give way to bursts of enthusiasm,foreigners were struck with the perfect good-temper, the orderlybehaviour, and the entire absence of drunkenness, among the population.In Paris the first step of people excited by a change of governmentwould have been to fall upon those whom they considered to be the agentsof their oppressors. The gendarmes, who had so long been feared, wouldnot have dared show themselves in the streets; the emblems of royaltywould have been torn down in the public buildings; the members of thelast government would have been forced to fly for their lives. There wasa little of this in Naples, but, as in Venice, six years later, thisfeeling of animosity for the past speedily passed away.

  But how faint was the feeling of real patriotism in the minds of theNeapolitans is shown by the fact that only one inhabitant of the cityjoined Garibaldi's army; that not a single house was open for thereception of his officers or soldiers; that after the battle of Volturnohundreds of wounded men were left lying all day on the pavements withoutaid or nourishment, without a single mattress being found for them tolie upon, by the inhabitants. Never, except by the King of Italy and thecivil and military authorities of Piedmont to Garibaldi and hisfollowers, who had won a kingdom for them, was such national ingratitudedisplayed as by the people of Naples.

  "It is pleasant to see," Signor Forli said, as he and Frank wanderedabout; "but it would be far more pleasant if one did not know that itmeans absolutely nothing. You have told me that it was the same thing atMessina: that, in spite of Garibaldi's appeal to the ladies of theplace, they did nothing whatever to aid the wounded in thehospitals--never contributed so much as a piece of lint or material forbandages; and, frivolous as the people there are, these in Naples areworse. If all Italy were like the Neapolitans, the country would not beworth shedding a drop of blood for. However, one must make someallowances for them. For centuries they have been slaves rather thanfree people; they have had no voice as to their own disposal, they couldnot express even an opinion on public affairs, without riskingimprisonment or death; there has been nothing left for them but to amusethemselves; they have been treated like children at school, and theyhave become children. We can only hope that in time, under a freegovernment, they will grow worthy of freedom, worthy of forming a partof an Italy to which the Lombards, the Piedmontese, and the Calabriansbelong."

  It was already late in the afternoon, and until some of the troopsarrived it would be impossible to take any steps with relation to publicbuildings. The castle of St. Elmo, and the prison of Santa Maria, withmany other places, were still in the hands of the Neapolitan soldiers,whose attitude continued to be hostile, and until these retired nothingcould be done; and it was by no means certain that the guns at St. Elmo,which completely commanded the town, might not at any moment open fire.

  "I can well understand your impatience to get rid of these troops fromthe city," Garibaldi said the next morning. "I do not forget, Percival,the main object that you had in view, and I too long for the time when Imay clasp the hand of my old comrade of South America and Rome. Ipromise you that the moment the prisons are evacuated you shall go withthe party who will search them, and search them strictly. You know whatthese jailors are: they are the creatures of the worst men ofFrancesco's government. By years of cruelty and oppression they haveearned for themselves the hatred of every one within the walls of theprisons and of their friends and relatives. Our victory means theirdismissal--that is, as soon as the prisons are cleaned from the lowestdungeons to the roofs. That they shall superintend: it is they who areresponsible for it, and they themselves shall be engaged in the work ofpurification. It may well be that they will try to hide the lowest andworst dungeons from our search, partly from fear that the natural andrighteous indignation excited by the discoveries may end in their beingpromptly punished with death for their accumulated crimes, partly inhopes that the royal troops may yet overcome us and rest
ore Francesco tohis throne; in which case they would receive approval for stillretaining some of the worst victims of the tyranny of his government."

  "You may be sure that I shall search them thoroughly, general."

  On going out, they found the streets were still thronged by an almostfrenzied populace. These invaded the hotels and cafes, and pressed allthey could lay hands on to join in the demonstrations. A few murderswere perpetrated; the state of things prevailing affording an excellentopportunity for satisfying private revenge, as it needed only a cry thatthe victim was a spy of the government to justify it in the eyes of thebystanders.

  In the quarter nearest to St. Elmo the enthusiasm had a good deal cooleddown, as the fear that the guns of the castle might at any moment openfire for the time dissipated any desire for marching about andacclaiming Garibaldi. At four o'clock, however, it was known that twoofficers of the castle had gone down to the palace, and at six thewelcome news spread that the garrison had capitulated, and would marchout on the following morning.

  Frank had little sleep that night. All along his hopes had been highthat he should find his father here; but now that the question would beso soon decided, his fears were in the ascendant. He remembered that theevidence in favour of his father's death was extremely strong, the onlyhopeful fact being that his body had not been discovered. So slight dideven his mother and Signora Forli deem the chance of his being alive,that for two years neither had breathed a word to the other as to theexistence of a possibility that he might be still living. Undoubtedlythe release of his grandfather had increased his own hope, but he feltnow that there was but small ground for the feeling. Had his father beenhidden away in a fortress, he might also have survived; but theprobabilities seemed altogether against this. It was not until middaythat St. Elmo was evacuated, and several companies of the national guardmarched in. A colonel of the staff had, with Frank, been charged withthe duty of searching the dungeons. They had brought with them fiftylazzaroni, who had been engaged for this repulsive work. A dozen of theGaribaldian troops were to accompany them; the prison officials were allordered to go with the party, and they, as well as the lazzaroni, weretold to bring pails and brooms.

  The castle of St. Elmo covers an area of no less than four acres; it wascut out of the solid rock, and is surrounded by a sunken ditch, sixty orseventy feet deep, and fifty wide. This great mass of stone ishoneycombed in every direction with a network of corridors andsubterranean apartments, and there is ample space to hold severalthousand prisoners. The upper tiers of chambers were fairly clean; thesewere, in fact, the barracks of the troops. The guns looked out fromembrasures. Several batteries of field artillery, with waggons and allfittings, still remained there, and the chambers were littered withrubbish of all kinds, discarded by the troops before leaving. It was nothere that prisoners were to be found. The national guard had alreadyopened the doors of the cells and chambers in the stage below, and hadliberated those confined there; the work of searching those still lowerbegan at once. The extent was so vast and the windings were so intricatethat the work seemed interminable. In order to make sure that eachpassage had been searched, a pail of whitewash was sent for, and asplash made at each turning. Each story was darker, and the air morestifling, than that above it, for they were now far below the level ofthe castle itself.

  Frank had taken the advice of Signor Forli, and had bought severalbundles of the strongest cigars; and he and the officer in command, theofficer of the national guard who attended them and the soldiers allsmoked incessantly. At the worst places the lazzaroni and turnkeys wereset to work with their buckets and brooms. It was not until late in theevening that they came to the conclusion that every cell and chamber hadbeen searched. About a hundred and fifty prisoners had been found andreleased, but among them Frank looked in vain for his father. The lowestdungeons of all had been found empty; and this, and the solemnassurances of all the prison officials, who had been threatened withinstant death should further search discover any prisoners, convincedhim that at any rate his father was not there.

  The next day the neighbouring prison of Santa Maria was searched. It hadformerly been a monastery, and the upper cells were lofty and capacious.The jailors declared, indeed, that these were the only cells, but acareful search showed a door in the rock. This was burst open, and aseries of subterranean passages was discovered. The jailors declaredthat these had never been used in their time, and, they believed, neverbefore. That they had been used, however, was evident, from the markswhere lamps had been hung on the walls, and by many other signs. Noprisoners were found here, all having been released directly it wasknown that the garrison of the castle had capitulated. The searchoccupied the whole day, so extensive were the underground galleries; anda passage was discovered that evidently at one time formed acommunication between St. Elmo and this prison. As he came out intodaylight, Frank staggered, and would have fallen had not one of thesoldiers caught him. He had been ill the night before; and the effectsof the close air, noxious smells, and the work, which had been even moretrying than on the previous day, and his bitter disappointment, had nowcompletely overcome him. After some water had been dashed in his faceand he had taken a draught of some wine which one of the prisonofficials fetched, he partially recovered. He was assisted by two of theGaribaldians down the road to the town, and then, obtaining a vehicle,was driven to the palace, and managed with assistance to get up to hisapartment. A minute or two later Signor Forli joined him, one of theattendants having summoned him as soon as Frank arrived.

  "Do not trouble to speak, my dear boy," he said. Frank was lying on thebed sobbing convulsively. "You have failed--that I can well understand;but you must not altogether lose heart. We had thought this the mostlikely place; but there are still other prisons, and we will not give uphope until every one of these has been ransacked. I am sorry now that Idid not accompany you, but I am afraid, after what I have gone throughmyself, that only a few minutes in one of those places would overpowerme; and I wonder how you, young and strong as you are, were able tospend two days in such an atmosphere."

  "I shall be better to-morrow," Frank said. "That last place was awful;but I think that it was as much the strong tobacco, as those horriblestinks, which upset me. It was a choice of two evils; but I would smokeeven worse tobacco if I could get it, if I had to go through it again."

  "I will get you a glass of brandy and water, Frank; that will do youmore good than anything."

  The next morning Frank was still too unwell to be able to get up; hisfailure had completely broken him down, and he felt indisposed to makethe slightest exertion. At twelve o'clock, however, Signor Forli camein.

  "I have a piece of news to give you," he said, "news which affords ussome shadow of hope that you have not failed altogether. Last night Iwas talking with the general and one or two of his staff. Garibaldi is,as you know, intensely interested in your search, and sympathises withyou most warmly. Suddenly he said, 'Is it not possible that he may havebeen removed before the king and his court retired?' Had Percival beenfound in the prisons, it would have rendered the bad faith and mendacityof the government more glaring than ever, and would have deprived it ofany little sympathy that was felt for it in England. Therefore, feelingsure that the prisons would be searched as soon as I entered, Percival,had he been here, may, with other special prisoners, have been sent toCapua, which is so strongly fortified a place that they may well believeit to be impregnable to anything but a long siege by troops possessing abattering train."

  "IT WAS NOT UNTIL NULLO ORDERED FOUR MEN TO LOAD ... THATHE WOULD ANSWER"]

  Frank sat up. "That is indeed a good idea," he exclaimed. "How stupid ofme not to have thought of questioning the prison people! Yes; it isquite likely that if any of the prisoners were removed, he would beone of them."

  "I have no doubt you would have thought of it, Frank, if it had not beenthat you were completely upset by that strong tobacco. Mind, I don'tblame you for taking it: it is better to be poisoned with nicotine thanby the stenches of
a Neapolitan prison. The thought only struckGaribaldi after we had chatted over the matter for some time. I wentover there this morning with Colonel Nullo. Although the officials atfirst asserted that no prisoners had been taken away, they soonrecovered their memories when he said that he would interrogate everyone of the warders separately, and if he found that any prisoners hadbeen sent away he would have them taken out into the courtyard and shotfor lying to him. They then remembered that four prisoners had beentaken away, but all declared with adjurations to all the saints thatthey did not know who they were: they were delivered over to them undernumbers only. One had been there seven years, and two had been therefive years, and one two years. Again threatening to examine all theturnkeys, he learned that the last prisoner received had been confinedin one of the lower dungeons, where they yesterday asserted that no onehad for years been imprisoned; the other three were also kept in themost rigid seclusion, but in the upper cells.

  "I insisted on seeing the man who had attended on the prisoner kept inthe lower cell. He was a surly ruffian, and it was not until Nulloordered four men to load, and to put the fellow with his back to thewall, that he would answer my questions. He said then that the prisonerwas, he should say, between forty and fifty, but it was not easy tojudge of age after a man had been below there for a few months. He hadnever said more than a few words to him, and it had never struck himthat he was not an Italian. I questioned him more closely as to this,and he admitted that he had sometimes, when he went down, heard theprisoner singing. He had listened, but could not understand the words,and they might have been in a foreign language. He had no more interestin that prisoner than in any other. He supposed, by his being sent downbelow there, that it was hoped he would die off as soon as possible.They seldom lived many months in those dungeons, but this man seemedtougher than usual, though his strength had failed a good deal lately.He was able to walk up from his cell to the carriage when he was takenaway. Now we mustn't feel too sanguine, Frank, but although there is noproof that this prisoner is your father, the evidence, so far as itgoes, is rather in favour of such a supposition than against it."

  "It is indeed," Frank said eagerly. "The fact that they put him downinto the cells where, as the man says, it was almost certain he wouldsoon die, and that when it was found that he had not done so, he was atthe last moment taken away, shows that there was some very strong motivefor preventing the fact that he was a prisoner becoming public; and weknow that they had the very strongest reason in the case of my father.The age would be about right, and the fact that he was singing wouldshow, at any rate, that it was some one who was determined not to givein, but to keep up his spirits till the very last, and I am sure myfather would have done that. Well, I will get up now. I could not liehere quietly; it would be impossible, after what you have been tellingme."

  "I think you are right, Frank. I will have a basin of soup sent in foryou. When you have eaten that, and dressed, we will take a carriage andgo for a long drive by the road along the shore to Pompeii. Thesea-breeze will do you more good than anything, and the lovely view, anda stroll through Pompeii itself, will distract your thoughts. There isnothing to be done until Capua is taken, which may not be for a longtime yet. However, events are moving. We hear that Victor Emmanuel andhis government, alarmed at the success of Garibaldi, and feeling that ifthey are to have any voice in the matter they must not be content torest passive while he is carrying all before him, have resolved upontaking some part in the affair. Under the pretext that in order torestore peace and order it is necessary that they should interfere, theyare about to despatch an army to Ancona by sea; and, landing there, willadvance into Central Italy, and act, as they say, as circumstances maydemand. All of which means, that now Garibaldi has pulled the chestnutsout of the fire for them they will proceed to appropriate them."

  "It is too bad!" Frank exclaimed angrily.

  "No doubt it is mean and ungracious in the extreme, but Garibaldi willnot feel it as other men would; he is human, and therefore he would liketo present the Kingdom of Naples and the States of Rome, free from theforeigner, to Victor Emmanuel. But that feeling, natural as it is, isbut secondary to his loyalty to Italy. He desires to see her one underVictor Emmanuel, and so long as that end is achieved he carescomparatively little how it comes about. Moreover, he cannot but seethat, though he has accomplished marvels, that which remains to be donewould tax the power of his army to the utmost. The Neapolitans havestill some seventy thousand men, who are encouraged by their king beingamong them. They have in Capua a most formidable fortress, which coulddefy the efforts of irregular troops, wholly unskilled in sieges anddeficient in heavy guns, for many months. Moreover, it would no longerbe mountain warfare, but we should have to fight in plains where theenemy's cavalry would give them an enormous advantage. There is anotherthing: the intrigues of Cavour's agents here are already giving him veryserious trouble, and this will doubtless increase; therefore I can wellunderstand that he will be glad rather than otherwise that Sardinia atlast should do her part towards the freeing of Italy, from which shewill benefit so vastly."