Thenceforth the French Government was much more desirous to repress insurrection at home than to sustain it abroad. Louis Napoleon Bonaparte was elected President that same year, partly on account of his name, and partly on account of his promise that he would defend the right of private property against Socialism. Austrian generals of the rough and reckless type which Carlyle loved forced Lombardy and Bohemia back into the Empire, and restored absolute monarchy at Vienna, while the King of Sardinia was obliged to abdicate after such a defeat in March, 1849, as almost extinguished liberty in Italy. Venice alone held out against them under that purest of patriots, Manin, and suffered terribly during a siege of twenty-one weeks. Hungary was subdued that summer with the aid of Russia. France did nothing except to revive the papal despotism at Rome. Mazzini's republic was crushed by that which had a Bonaparte for President. His power had been increased by the disfranchisement of several million French voters of the poorer class. His promise to restore universal suffrage joined with memory of the massacres of June, 1848, in preventing much resistance to his usurpation of absolute power on December 2, 1851. There was a monstrous vote, next November, for an empire, where the centralisation of administration was complete, and the legislature merely ornamental. Thus the liberation of Europe was prevented, partly by race prejudices, but mainly by attempts to benefit the poor by overtaxing the rich. France and Hungary were left with less political liberty than before; and Italy gained very little; but some of the constitutional freedom acquired in 1848 was retained in Prussia and other parts of Western Germany.
II. It was contrary to the general tendency of wars, that those of the latter half of the century aided the growth of free institutions in Italy. An honoured place among nations was given by the Crimean war to Sardinia. Then her patriotic statesman, Cavour, persuaded Napoleon III. to help him rescue Lombardy from Austria. Garibaldi took the opportunity to liberate Naples; and Victor Emanuel made himself King over all Italy except Rome and Venice. The latter city also was brought under a constitutional and friendly government by a third great war, which made the King of Prussia and his successors Emperors of Germany, while Austria was compelled to grant home rule to Hungary. The liberation and secularisation of Italy were completed in 1870 by the expulsion from Rome of the French garrison. The Emperor had lost his throne by waging war wantonly against a united Germany.