When
France interfered the scale turned. She asserted her determination
to maintain the Convention of 1864 by force of arms, and Italy was
obliged to allow Garibaldi to be defeated, since she was unable to
face the perils of a war with her powerful neighbour. If a small
body of French troops had not entered Rome on the 30th of the
month, the events of 1870 would have occurred three years earlier,
though probably with different results.
It being the object of the general commanding the Pope's forces to
concentrate a body of men with whom to meet Garibaldi, who was now
advancing boldly, the small detachments, of which many had already
been sent to the front, were kept back in Rome in the hope of
getting together something like an army. Gouache's departure was
accordingly delayed from day to day, and it was not until the
early morning of the 3d of November that he actually quitted Rome
with the whole available corps of Zouaves. Ten days elapsed,
therefore, after the events last described, during which time he
was hourly in expectation of orders to march. The service had
become so arduous within the city that he could scarcely call a
moment his own. It was no time to think of social duties, and he
spent the leisure he had in trying to see Faustina Montevarchi as
often as possible.
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