Italy. 17 August 1848
Italy.
No. 77/78, 17 August 1848

— The journals of Turin, Genoa, etc., are loudly complaining that the cause of Italy’s freedom and independence has been betrayed precisely by him and by those who, until the very last moment, repeatedly swore an oath to conquer or die for Italy. What earlier only a small number of men proclaimed—that Charles Albert is a traitor—is now being loudly and daily repeated by the masses and by all journals that have not been completely sold to the perfidious Sardinian king. Later, this insight will bear fruit; for the moment, it comes, to be sure, too late. Since the engagements near Goito and Mozzambano, it had become daily clearer to many that the Sardinian was either meditating treason or was utterly incapable of carrying out the task he had undertaken. He fell into complete inactivity, and what did happen was contrary to all rules of common sense, politics, and the art of war. A host of questions have long been pressing, the answers to which have now in part been supplied by events, and will in part soon come to light. Who, for example, continually paralysed the arrangements for arming the entire population? Who divided and tore apart the Italian army over so many points, and omitted to form a reserve line, so that every defeat was bound to lead to inescapable ruin? Why did Charles Albert not advance on Vicenza? Why did the army in Valleggio lack bread? Whence the desertion of the Modenese? How did it come about that the Lombard volunteers found not a single cannon on the banks of the Mincio? How came it that the cartridges distributed to several Piedmontese corps during the battle were utterly unusable because the bullets were too big? And finally: how could this Charles Albert, who had long been resolved to retreat, still allow a mass of houses in the suburbs of Milan, worth 30 million lire, to be destroyed? To these questions there is no other answer, unless one is willing to suppose the most wretched and incredible incompetence, than that Charles Albert acted as treacherously and perfidiously in 1848 as he did in 1821, when he vilely betrayed his fellow conspirators and helped to deliver them over to the rope, the galleys, and exile.

— The journal *La Suisse* communicates the following passages from a letter by a senior officer who served in Charles Albert’s army and experienced the latest events in Milan: “Betrayed, betrayed! by this perjured king … We were fighting before the gates against the enemy; the king was with us. He had the Vercellina Gate fortified; he had his army of 45,000 men under the walls of Milan. The whole population was under arms; in every street formidable barricades; 30,000 National Guards ready to defend the city. The alarm-bell resounded from all sides; the population of Piedmont and Genoa rose en masse to rush to Milan’s aid. The attack begins; the cannons thunder; we return the fire; joy throughout the city in the confidence of victory … After a day of fighting and house-burning, the king announces to us that he has capitulated to Radetzky, that he is withdrawing to Piedmont without firing another shot! The city is surrounded by the Austrians. The people scream: Treason! They want to strike us, who wear uniforms, dead in the streets as the accomplices of Charles Albert. The people have seized several generals; I was fortunate enough to get away.”

— Paris papers report that the French envoy to the Papal Court, M. d’Harcourt, immediately after the arrival of the news of the Austrian entry into the Legations, set out for the headquarters of the Austrian general in order to act there as a mediator.

By the same channel the news has arrived that Radetzky has seized the 75,000 muskets which France palmed off on Italy for cash and fine words—as the sole assistance to the Italian cause.

The Bourbon in Naples is now doubly revived and is resolved to declare war on Charles Albert, because of the latter’s acceptance of the crown of Sicily for his son.

— Several Italian companies have arrived in the canton of Ticino with bag and baggage and three howitzers. They demand to march through Switzerland to France. The number of bourgeois