the siege, I will allude but briefly to those of
the 30th April, when Oudinot, having announced
to the Romans his intention of entering the city
that day, found himself at about four in the
afternoon, apparently to his own wonderment,
in full retreat towards Civita Vecchia, closely
pursued by Garibaldi, in whose hands, moreover,
were left about two hundred of the attacking
force, prisoners or wounded. One may pardon
the somewhat bombastic terms in which the
Roman authorities announced that the French
troops had kept their word and entered Home
on the promised day—only as prisoners. The
joke was, after all, a transcript from one of
Napoleon as to the evacuation of Prussia, and it
was the only revenge they took. The prisoners
were restored at the earliest opportunity; and
the wounded, after receiving every attention
which their condition demanded, followed their
comrades. Greatly puzzled by the way were
many of these soldiers to know why they,
republicans, had been fighting against the republican
government of Rome, and often did they
apppeal on the subject —for the French soldier
is not a mere fighting machine— to visitors in
the hospital, whose answers they probably
thought unsatisfactory enough. But not to
mortals is it granted to penetrate the cloudy
sanctuary of Olympus, to explore the secret
thoughts of Zeus; and from the Parisian Jove
had gone forth the fiat that the Romans were
oppressed by a tyrant soldiery. Strangely
ignorant of this fact the Romans themselves
appeared to be; doubly strange it was that
when, by reason of Garibaldi's departure from
Rome to sweep with steel besom the maccaroni
king and his followers from Velletri, they were
for several days free from the yoke of this
tyrant army, the Romans were still obstinately
blind to the charms of French protection.

This obstinacy was duly punished; for when
M. de Lesseps, in his simple-mindedness, finally
agreed to a convention of really straightforward
and undiplomatic tenor, Oudinot at once threw
off the mask, disavowed the authority of his
civilian colleague, declared his intention of
attacking the city on Monday morning, and, by
way of being even better than his word, began
the attack on Saturday night. Gallantly was
the city defended. Rome and Venice stand as
emphatic refutations of the oft-repeated falsehood
that Italians will not fight. In the course
of the first day, the Casino dei Quattro Venti
was taken and retaken six times; and the Villa
of the Vascello, outside the walls, though
unroofed and reduced to a shell by the French
artillery, remained to the very last day the
impregnable fortress of Colonel Medici's brave
battalion of Piedmontese sharpshooters. The
first breach effected in the walls was, indeed,
yielded to the French without a musket being
discharged; the regiment Dell' Unione, which
had previously distinguished itself for bravery,
on that night running away ignominiously. But
not even then was Rome taken. For ten days
did Garibaldi's energy prolong the defence,
although the enemy was actually within the
walls, and two additional breaches had to be
effected before the French would hazard an
attack on the position of S. Pietro Montorio.
This spot, on which Garibaldi had concentrated
his last strength, is well known to visitors as
commanding the loveliest and most extensive
view of the city, and may be described to non-
travellers as the point whence was taken the
panorama of Rome published in the Illustrated
London News. That same panorama had its
share of the dangers of war, having been left by
its painter in the Villa Savorelli, and found,
after the surrender, lying uninjured on a heap of
rubbish among the ruined columns and gilded
ceilings of the Villa.

The end, however, could not be doubtful. On
one side was a small though determined body of
men: on the other, the whole military power of
France, since nothing could be more certain
than that the opportunity of washing out in
blood the shame of the defeat would overpower
in the minds of Frenchmen all other considerations.
Accordingly, on the 29th of June, the
last act of the drama was performed. It was
precluded and accompanied for three hours by a fire
of howitzer-shells, which, as they were directed
upon the entirely non-combatant quarter of the
Piazza di Spagna, did not very consistently
accord with the published programme of freeing
peaceful inhabitants from a tyrant soldiery. It
may be fairly doubted whether our countryman
WYATT, whose lamp was knocked out of his
hand by the fragment of a shell which burst in
his studio; or whether the Saxon painter,
TOERMER, who, while endeavouring to
extinguish the fire in his house, had the bucket
carried off in a precisely similar manner, fully
appreciated the benefits of Gallic intervention.
During this time the second and third breaches
were the scene of a fearful struggle. Many a
gallant Frenchman lost his life before the
invaders made good their footing on the summit
of the breaches. The traveller wno drives round
the walls may still discern, near the monument
erected in 1848 to commemorate the sham theft
and mock recovery of the skull of St. Andrew,
several crosses placed by their victorious
comrades in honour of the brave men who fell that
night. The ever-increasing numbers of the
French, however, bore down all resistance, and
at length, on the very day when — if Romish
tradition may be believed, which is usually a
large If —the Prince of the Apostles had,
eighteen hundred years before, suffered martyrdom
on this very spot, the tottering throne of
his successor was set up anew on ground
cumbered with the corpses of Roman citizens.

Early the next morning a proclamation
announced to the inhabitants that all further
resistance was useless, and would thenceforth
cease; a fact soon confirmed by the total silence
of the artillery on both sides. Strange as it may
appear, it is nevertheless true, that the cessation
of firing, though it brought personal safety, did
not bring what was altogether a sense of relief.
There was a dull, dreary vacuity in the day, cor-
corresponding possibly to the "vastus dies" of