Marie-Louise neither hated her subjects, nor was hated by them, but
her engagements with Austria prevented her from granting the demanded
concessions, and she abandoned her state, to return to it, indeed,
under Austrian protection, but without the odious corollary of
vindictive measures which was generally meant by a restoration.

Much more important is the history of the Modenese revolution.
Apologists have been found for the Bourbons of Naples, but, if anyone
ever said a good word for Francesco d'Este, it has escaped the notice
of the present writer. Under a despotism without laws (for the edicts
of the Prince daily overrode the Este statute book which was supposed
to be in force), Modena was far more in the power of the priests, or
rather of the Jesuits, than any portion of the states of the Church.
Squint-eyed, crooked in mind and bloodthirsty, Francis was as ideal a
bogey-tyrant as can be discovered outside fiction. In 1822, he hung
the priest Giuseppe Andreoli on the charge of Carbonarism; and his
theory of justice is amusingly illustrated by the story of his sending
in a bill to Sir Anthony Panizzi--who had escaped to England--for the
expenses of hanging him in effigy.

Francis felt deeply annoyed by the narrow limits of his dominions, and
his annoyance did not decrease with the decreasing chances of his
ousting the Prince of Carignano from the Sardinian throne. He was
intensely ambitious, and one of his subjects, a man, in other
respects, of high intelligence, thought that his ambition could be
turned to account for Italy. It was the mistake over again that
Machiavelli had made with Cesare Borgia.

Ciro Menotti, who conceived the plan of uniting Italy under the Duke
of Modena, was a Modenese landed proprietor who had exerted himself to