When the revolution in the Sardinian province of Piedmont was suppressed (1821), King Victor Emmanuel I. refused to grant further liberty to his subjects, or to make promises which he could not fulfil.  In this state of mind the honest old king abdicated in favor of his brother Charles Felix, who ruled despotically as Austria dictated, but did not belong to that class of despicable monarchs who promise everything and grant nothing.

In 1831, on the death of Charles Felix, the throne of Piedmont—­or, rather, Sardinia, as it was called when in 1720 the large island of that name was combined with the principality of Piedmont and other territories to form a kingdom—­was ascended by Charles Albert, of the younger branch of the House of Savoy.  Charles Albert was an honest sovereign, but perpetually vacillating between the liberal and clerical parties.  He hated Austria, but was averse to revolutionary measures.  He ruled wisely, however, effecting many useful reforms, and adding to the prosperity of the country, which was the best governed of all the Italian States.  It was to him that Mazzini appealed to put himself at the head of the national movement for liberty.

Joseph Mazzini, one of the earliest of the prominent men who aided in the deliverance of Italy, was a native of Genoa, belonging to a good but not illustrious family.  He was a boy of twelve years of age when the revolution of 1821 broke out in Piedmont, which was so summarily crushed by Austria.  At that early age he had indefinite ideas, but thought that Italians should boldly struggle for the liberty of their country.  In 1826, while a student at the university, he published an article on Dante, whose lofty sentiments and independent spirit made a deep impression on his soul.  His love for his native land became like a “fire in his bones;” it was a passion which nothing could repress.  He was an enthusiast of immense physical and moral courage, pure-minded, lofty in his aspirations, imbued with the spirit of sacrifice.  As his mind developed, he became an intense republican.  He had no faith in monarchies, even if liberal.  Heart and soul he devoted himself to the spread of republican ideas.  He early joined the Carbonari, who numbered nearly a million in Italy, and edited a literary paper in Genoa, in which he dared to rebuke the historian Botta for his aristocratic tendencies.  He became so bold in the advocacy of extreme liberal opinions that his journal was suppressed by government.  When the French insurrection broke out in 1830, he and other young men betook themselves to the casting of bullets.  He was arrested, and confined in the fortress of Savona, on the western Riviera.  It was while in prison that he conceived the plan of establishing a society, which he called “Young Italy,” for the propagation of republican ideas.  When liberated he proceeded to Geneva, where he made the acquaintance of Sismondi, the Swiss historian, who treated him with great kindness and urbanity, and