possession of Turin and Verrua. At this, for the first time, the duke turned at bay, refused to give up the independence of his country, and threw himself into the camp of the coalition. More than seven years of battle and negociation followed. The spirit of the people of Savoy, and their ruler, remained unbroken through a series of disastrous campaigns, till at length the tide of fortune turned in their favour. Louis, finding the progress of his army in Italy completely arrested, was fain to bribe the duke, by the cession of Pignerol and Casale, to return to his old alliance; and consequently, when the war of the Spanish succession burst over Europe, in 1700, Victor Amadeus took arms on the part of France. Louis would have been wise had he, at the outset of the war, shaped the duke's interests to his own, at the same time shutting the Peninsula to Austria, by the cession of Lombardy for Savoy; an arrangement proposed by Victor, and which, though only effected in our own time, has always been a prime object of Piedmontese ambition. But Louis met the request with a haughty refusal, and from that hour the duke, while fighting with brilliant valour under the banner of the Bourbons, drew in secret nearer to the allied powers.

Towards the close of 1703, the French king discovered that a treaty between Victor and the Emperor was actually signed, by which the former engaged to head the imperial army in Lombardy, with a force of 15,000 men, and was to receive a strong barrier on his Italian frontier as the price of his services. Unhappily for Victor, his treason had been betrayed before he was prepared to meet its consequences. In the new year of 1704, he found himself shut into his Duchy as with a ring of iron from the troops of the coalition, by Vendôme and Tessé. Vercelli and Susa were already in their hands; the fall of Bard by treachery had opened the valley of Aosta to the enemy; the gripe of the French king was on the heart of Savoy. Then, after six months of unsurpassed heroism and suffering, the garrison of

Verrua capitulated, Nice fell at the same time, and Louis seemed on the point of fulfilling the oath which he had sworn in his wrath, to annihilate the Fox' of Savoy, and blot out his domain as an independent State from the map of Europe. But at this crisis the sympathies of the allied powers were roused by their interests; they recognised the barrier which the duke's bravery had opposed to the ambition of France in the Peninsula, and foresaw that, this barrier overthrown, Louis must gain immense advantages. All considerations urged them to come with speed to the rescue; England sent subsidies and promise of further help; Austria shook off her apathy, and despatched an army under Prince Eugene, with whom, in spite of great difficulties, Victor formed a junction against the French forces, which had well-nigh reduced Turin; and the battle fought before that city, September 7th, 1706, resulted in a decisive and final overthrow of the besieging army, and the subsequent weakness of the French king in Italy during the remainder of the war of succession. that long struggle wore itself out through mere exhaustion of the belligerents, many readers know. During the negociations which preceded the Peace of Utrecht, Victor made a last effort to realize his cherished design upon Lombardy; but Austria refused to relinquish so fair a possession, and the duke had to content himself with rounding off his States by an addition of all the territory promised in 1703, with the regal title and Sicily-which island he exchanged, in 1720, for the securer realm of Sardinia. The struggle of Piedmont into a kingdom forms a striking episode in the history of the past century. The policy of Victor Amadeus, whom we have seen always ready to change his camp, but never swerving from his endwhose kingdom rose from the downfall of Gallic power in the Peninsula, with the rise of Austrian preponderance--offers a strong contrast, yet not without points of close resemblance, to that of his famous descendant, born to widen the circlet on his brow into the crown of

How

paltry person, disfigured by a remarkably short neck, and an approach to a hump on the left shoulder-defects which his splendid attire only served to make more conspicuous-his father turned again to the window, with a gesture of impatient dislike, which he affected to conceal in contemplation of the landscape before him. From that window the eye looked on the palace gardens, and away over a wide sweep of country, till it rested where Lombardy showed on the horizon, sunny and vague as a dream of ambition. The quick Frenchman, by the monarch's side, following the direction of his gaze, fancied that he held the clue to his thought. "Those are the great plains of Lombardy," he said, with significant emphasis. The old war-horse started to the echo of the trumpet; his eye flashed for a moment; but the gleam faded, and, after a pause, the king said gravely, "I know your meaning, but you mistake my desires."

Before Count de Blondel had found a reply, the court proceeded to the chapel, where the great treasure of the reliquary was a fragment of the Holy Windingsheet. Stopping before this relic to give force to his words, the king whispered to his companion, "You all suppose me ambitious; but the world shall soon have a proof that all I desire is quiet and repose." De Blondel bowed low, the bow of mingled deference and humility, with which it behoves a courtier to receive the confidence of a sovereign, saying meanwhile to himself, "So the Fox of Savoy is trying to blind us; he is busy with some great project; he will strike a blow yet for Milan."

And the Frenchman thought over the probabilities in a quiet way, while he was upon his knees, rising from them fully determined to be on the qui vive, to note what way the royal designs might tend, and to despatch the very first information he could gain to his own master.

This Count de Blondel was an especial favourite with Victor Amadeus-his confident and counsellor, as far as a man who never told a secret, unless it was one he wished to make public, nor took

have either. With him Victor entered freely into details of his policy, which sound curiously enough in the present day-the means, for instance, by which he contrived to keep up ill-will among his ministers; saying that it was indispensable to a ruler that the servants of the State should not be on good terms among themselves, or they would join in deceiving their master. "If you would avoid being ruined," he added, "get up a quarrel between your cook and your steward." More worthy of a king were some words spoken to the same man on a subsequent occasion. "I began to reign in my raw youth," said the monarch; "I found the resources of my country drained; troubles, and dangers on every side, were my inheritance. Nevertheless, I have done something in my day; I leave an army well-disciplined and faithful, a flourishing treasury, a good name, and a kingdom to my successor." And how far these words were from an idle boast, a glance at the life of the first King of Sardinia, through a reign of fifty years, will show.

Until the close of the previous century, Savoy had been little more than a high-road for the French into Italy. Louis XIV. kept an iron hand over the Duchy, and his Cabinet imposed treaties. on its sovereign, which rendered him much more the vassal than the ally of France. These were the relations of Savoy with her powerful neighbour, when, in 1684, Victor Amadeus took the reins of Government at the age of eighteen. eighteen. The young prince possessed those opposite qualities which mark the man born for success rather than heroism; -an eager ambition restrained by the coldest calculation, an impetuosity which was never suffered to overleap his prudence. Resolving from the first hour of his reign to throw off the tyranny of France, he yet appeared to accept the part of vassal assigned him by her king, and kept his hand upon his sword, determined never to unsheath it till he could strike a decisive blow. This attitude he preserved until 1689, when Louis, menaced by the league of Augs

the king returning to Rivoli after the ceremony.

Immediately on his arrival at Rivoli, Victor briefly announced his marriage to his son, who, embarrassed by the unexpected news, betrayed more surprise than pleasure, and could hardly collect himself to stammer out feeble wishes for his father's happiness. This, the king replied, was secured by the step he had just taken; and he went on to say that his wife was not to take the title of queen, but in future to be known as Marchesa di Spigno, and that, in accordance with his wish, she would for the present continue her duties as lady-inwaiting. Another announcement, still more startling, awaited the prince on the thirty-first of the same month, when Victor first acquainted him with his purpose to abdicate in his favour-a project which, although hitherto kept profoundly secret from the heir to the throne, had been for some time past a fixed idea with the king. In the December of the previous year, he had commanded from the librarian Palazzi a memoir upon those sovereigns who had resigned their crowns; and, on receiving the paper, which fully set forth the political, religious, and family reasons urging them to that step, Victor went through each case in detail with Palazzi, displaying his wonted. acuteness in criticisms upon the views and character of the several princes, but without letting a word fall which might betray his own intentions. Towards his confessor, the Abbé Boggio, the monarch showed less reserve, discussing the question fully with him from time to time; and the priest seems to have tried every argument to move him from his purpose, but Victor's reply was always the same. He felt weary, and longed for repose! Charles, then over thirty, was much better able to bear the burden of Government; his own great desire was to devote the rest of his days to God, and bury in solitude all his worldly anxieties! Upon this the Abbé warned his royal penitent that he would infallibly repent if he took the step, and clinched his argument with that old truth which ex

teaching since the world began. "Your Majesty," he said, "will never find the calm you seek, for men carry with them the tempest of the soul, and change of place changes not the disposition. The only way to obtain peace of mind is to bear patiently till death our own cross in the place among men which God has appointed us." And, finding that his reasonings made but slight impression on the king, Boggio, in subsequent conversations, entreated him at least to make a trial of private life, before condemning himself to it without recal, by a temporary withdrawal from affairs. This counsel Victor rejected with characteristic vehemence, saying, "No! I cannot bring myself to do things by halves; all or none, indoors or out-of-doors, is my motto." Up to the beginning of August the king went on amusing himself by discussing his project of abdication with confidential advisers, delighting in the tears and dissuasions with which it was always received; and, as had ever been his wont, while seeking the counsel of others, fully determined to follow the bent of his own mind.

On the 31st of August, prior to the interview with Charles in which he disclosed his purpose, Victor caused the act of abdication, which had been drawn up a few days before under his careful supervision, to be read to him by the Marquis di Borgo, of whom he inquired if it were perfectly regular; and, on the marquis observing that a clause freeing the people from their oath of allegiance must be inserted, the king took the act, looked it over, and returned it with the remark, "Let the deed stand as it is; there is a clause implying their release.” An incident, trivial in itself, but significant, if we bear in mind the subtle character of this prince. On the third of September, an extraordinary assembly, consisting of all the officers of state, the nobility, and foreign ambassadors, was convened by the king at Rivoli. To very few the purpose of this gathering had been revealed; and those few, by their master's order, kept it secret. The utmost excitement prevailed; conjecture

Italy, through the humiliation of Austria, and the aggrandizement of Imperial France.

CHAPTER II.

Up to the point we have reached, the life of the first King of Sardinia forms a page in European history; but the details of its tragical close have, till within the last few years, been buried in the secret archives of the house of Savoy. After the Peace of Utrecht, Victor Amadeus bent his energies to the execution of those plans for the welfare of his kingdom which he had long meditated, but found himself unable to carry into effect during more troublesome times. Towards 1730 his work seemed accomplished. No more fortresses remained to be built on his French frontier; his treasury was overflowing; both people and army were broken into strict subjection; even the perpetual squabbles with Rome, in which of late years this somewhat undutiful son of the church had found his chief interest and excitement, had for the present come to an end. And now the demons of prosperity began to vex the monarch; the satiety of power, that sad monotony of existence which awaits those who live to accomplish all their aims, aggravated the burden of growing ill-health, and goaded a restless spirit whose natural element was change, as its natural employment was the secret elaboration of some project whose unravelment should take the world by surprise.

At the

date of the conversation with Blondel, which our readers will recal, in the autumn of 1729, the king's mind was busy with a double design-a design, as he had truly said, not inspired by ambition, for he meditated an abdication in favour of his son Charles Emmanuel, and a second marriage with a lady about the court.

The beautiful Theresa Canale di Cumiana, a daughter of one of the noblest houses of Savoy, had been thirty years before maid-of-honour to the Duchess Dowager. There were rumours that in

no means sighed in vain, for her charms ; till his mother, interfering, put an end to the intrigue, and cooled the scandal by a well-timed marriage between the frail beauty and the Count St. Sebastian, on whose death, in 1723, the king, in consideration of the widow's narrowed circumstances, gave her an appointment about the person of his daughter-inlaw. This the princess, to whom Theresa's history was not unknown, secretly resented; and from that time the lady-in-waiting and her mistress hated each other as only women, and women of the south, can hate. Theresa St. Sebastian was now in the autumn of her charms-a period when, if we may believe the Italian historian, they are dangerous alike to a very young or an elderly admirer. She boasted a fine complexion, a noble figure, the stately presence and the royal hand of a great lady, the eye of velvet and fire of a Piedmontese beauty. Until the death of Queen Anna she had kept completely aloof from the king, but after that event she threw herself more in his way, and through her talent and subtlety, joined to her personal attractions, soon succeeded in making an impression on the royal widower, who felt the flame of his youth revive in her presence. But the veteran widow was by no means to be won on the same easy terms as the girl of sixteen; in proportion as the lover waxed eager, the lady's virtue grew more severe, till the king was fain to hint at the position occupied by Madame Maintenon in the court of Versailles. The countess caught at the proposal of a private marriage-not that she purposed to content herself with the rôle of Madame Maintenon; but that step once taken, she trusted all to her power over the king. In the June of 1730, Victor, without giving the names of the parties concerned, procured a dispensation from Rome, permitting a Knight of St. Maurice-of which Order he was grand-master-himself a widower, to marry a widow; and on the 12th of August, his marriage with Theresa St. Sebastian was solemnised in

the king returning to Rivoli after the ceremony.

year,

Immediately on his arrival at Rivoli, Victor briefly announced his marriage to his son, who, embarrassed by the unexpected news, betrayed more surprise than pleasure, and could hardly collect himself to stammer out feeble wishes for his father's happiness. This, the king replied, was secured by the step he had just taken; and he went on to say that his wife was not to take the title of queen, but in future to be known as Marchesa di Spigno, and that, in accordance with his wish, she would for the present continue her duties as lady-inwaiting. Another announcement, still more startling, awaited the prince on the thirty-first of the same month, when Victor first acquainted him with his purpose to abdicate in his favour-a project which, although hitherto kept profoundly secret from the heir to the throne, had been for some time past a fixed idea with the king. In the December of the previous he had commanded from the librarian Palazzi a memoir upon those sovereigns who had resigned their crowns; and, on receiving the paper, which fully set forth the political, religious, and family reasons urging them to that step, Victor went through each case in detail with Palazzi, displaying his wonted acuteness in criticisms upon the views and character of the several princes, but without letting a word fall which might betray his own intentions. Towards his confessor, the Abbé Boggio, the monarch showed less reserve, discussing the question fully with him from time to time; and the priest seems to have tried every argument to move him from his purpose, but Victor's reply was always the same. He felt weary, and longed for repose! Charles, then over thirty, was much better able to bear the burden of Government; his own great desire was to devote the rest of his days to God, and bury in solitude all his worldly anxieties! Upon this the Abbé warned his royal penitent that he would infallibly repent if he took the step, and clinched his argument with that old truth which ex

teaching since the world began. "Your Majesty," he said, "will never find the calm you seek, for men carry with them the tempest of the soul, and change of place changes not the disposition. The only way to obtain peace of mind is to bear patiently till death our own cross in the place among men which God has appointed us." And, finding that his reasonings made but slight impression on the king, Boggio, in subsequent conversations, entreated him at least to make a trial of private life, before condemning himself to it without recal, by a temporary withdrawal from affairs. This counsel Victor rejected with characteristic vehemence, saying, "No! I cannot bring myself to do things by halves; all or none, indoors or out-of-doors, is my motto." Up to the beginning of August the king went on amusing himself by discussing his project of abdication with confidential advisers, delighting in the tears and dissuasions with which it was always received; and, as had ever been his wont, while seeking the counsel of others, fully determined to follow the bent of his own mind.

On the 31st of August, prior to the interview with Charles in which he disclosed his purpose, Victor caused the act of abdication, which had been drawn up a few days before under his careful supervision, to be read to him by the Marquis di Borgo, of whom he inquired if it were perfectly regular; and, on the marquis observing that a clause freeing the people from their oath of allegiance must be inserted, the king took the act, looked it over, and returned it with the remark, "Let the deed stand as it is; there is a clause implying their release." An incident, trivial in itself, but significant, if we bear in mind the subtle character of this prince. On the third of September, an extraordinary assembly, consisting of all the officers of state, the nobility, and foreign ambassadors, was convened by the king at Rivoli. To very few the purpose of this gathering had been revealed; and those few, by their master's order, kept it secret. The utmost excitement prevailed; conjecture