suppress the insurrection if invested with full powers. Soon after this
refusal, a firing of guns announced that the citadel was in the hands
of the insurgents. The troops within and without fraternised; it was a
fine moment for those who knew history and who were bent in their hearts
on driving the foreigner out of Italy. Here at the citadel of Turin,
during the siege of 1706, occurred the memorable deed of Pietro Micca,
the peasant-soldier, who, when he heard the enemy thundering at the door
of the gallery, thought life and the welcome of wife and child and the
happy return to his village of less account than duty, and fired the
mine which sent him and three companies of French Grenadiers to their
final reckoning.

After vacillating for two or three days, Victor Emmanuel abdicated on
the 13th of March. The Queen desired to be appointed regent, but, to
her intense vexation, the appointment was given to Charles Albert. A
more unenviable honour never fell to the lot of man.

Deserted by the ministers of the crown, who resigned in a body, alone
in the midst of a triumphant revolution, appealed to in the name of
those sentiments of patriotism which he could never hear invoked
unmoved, the young Prince uttered the words which were as good as a
surrender: 'I, too, am an Italian!' That evening he allowed the
Spanish Constitution to be proclaimed subject to the arrival of the
orders of the new King.

The new King! No one remembered that there existed such a person. Nor
had anyone recollected that the Spanish Constitution abrogated the
Salic law, and that hence, instead of a new King, they had a new
Queen--the wife of the Duke of Modena! An eminent Turinese
jurisconsulist, who was probably the only possessor of a copy of the