Now that the testing-time was come, France threw to the winds the principle announced in her name with such solemn emphasis.  ’Precious French blood should never be shed except on behalf of French interests,’ said Casimir Perier, the new President of the Council.  A month after the flight of the Duke of Modena, the inevitable Austrians marched into his state to win it back for him.  The hastily-organised little army of the new government was commanded by General Zucchi, an old general of Napoleon, who, when Lombardy passed to Austria, had entered the Austrian service.  He now offered his sword to the Dictator of Modena, who accepted it, but there was little to be done save to retire with honour before the 6000 Austrians.  Zucchi capitulated at Ancona to Cardinal Benvenuti, the Papal delegate.  Those of the volunteers who desired it were furnished with regular passports, and authorised to take ship for any foreign port.  The most compromised availed themselves of this arrangement, but the vessel which was to bear Zucchi and 103 others to Marseilles, was captured by the Austrian Admiral Bandiera, by whom its passengers were kidnapped and thrown into Venetian prisons, where they were kept till the end of May 1832.  This act of piracy was chiefly performed with a view to getting possession of General Zucchi, who was tried as a deserter, and condemned to twenty years’ imprisonment.  Among the prisoners was the young wife of Captain Silvestro Castiglioni of Modena.  ’Go, do your duty as a citizen,’ she had said, when her husband left her to join the insurrection.  ’Do not betray it for me, as perhaps it would make me love you less.’  She shared his imprisonment, but just at the moment of the release, she died from the hardships endured.

By the end of the month of March, the Austrians had restored Romagna to the Pope, and Modena to Francis IV.  In Romagna the amnesty published by Cardinal Benvenuti was revoked, but there were no executions; this was not the case in Modena.  The Duke brought back Ciro Menotti attached to his triumphal car, and when he felt that all danger was past, and that the presence of the Austrians was a guarantee against a popular expression of anger, he had him hung.

’When my children are grown up, let them know how well I loved my country,’ Menotti wrote to his wife on the morning of his execution.  The letter was intercepted, and only delivered to his family in 1848.  The revolutionists found it in the archives of Modena.  On the scaffold he recalled how he was once the means of saving the Duke’s life, and added that he pardoned his murderer, and prayed that his blood might not fall upon his head.

During the insurrection in Romagna, an event occurred which was not without importance to Europe, though it passed almost unnoticed at the time.  The eldest son of Queen Hortense died in her arms at Forli, of a neglected attack of measles; some said of poison, but the report was unfounded.  He and his brother Louis, who had been closely mixed up with Italian conspiracies for more than a year, went to Romagna to offer their services as volunteers in the national army.  By the death of the elder of the two, Louis Napoleon became heir to what seemed then the shadowy sovereignty of the Buonapartes.