330 
for this dangerous errand. He set 
out in the middle of August, and tra- 
versed all Italy as a courier dispatched 
to Turin. At Ferrara he learned, that 
the Austrians already amounted to fifty 
thousand men in Lombardy, whilst 
some more troops were stationed on the 
Alps, So that a chance of revolution- 
izing all Italy by surprise seemed 
already to be over. Coming back to 
Florence, lve was informed that two 
Tuscan regiments at Leghorn, having 
shown symptoms of a revolutionary 
spirit, had been separated and sent to 
distant places. Butat Modena he was 
in the greatest danger of detection. 
Being stopped there, they were going 
to unseal his dispatches, when he 
boldly asking the Austrian commissary 
whether the emperor was at war with 
the King of Naples, and, loudly pro- 
testing against the violence offered to 
his character, recovered his papers, and 
was allowed to proceed. The national 
formality of the Germans, no less than 
his own presence of mind, extricated 
Pisa from that dangerous predicament. 
Throughout Lombardy he found the 
public mind better disposed to an 
Italian revolution than that of any 
other country of Italy, as the people 
had adouble yoke toshake off; but they 
were totally disarmed. Besides the 
patriotic associations (a double edged 
tool, indeed, for working out of liberty, 
but sufliciently justified by necessity,) 
were little spread among them. They 
were equally weak in Romagna and 
‘Tuscany; where, moreover, a strong 
aversion prevailed towards the Nea- 
politan name, occasioned in some re- 
spect by the undisciplined excesses of 
the troops of Murat on a former oeca- 
sion, and the bad suecess of his last 
enterprise upon Htaly. These petty 
raneours among the Htalians, which 
afford to their very oppressors a good 
ground for laughing at them, area main 
cause of their miseries. At Turin, 
Pisa was told that the Piedmontese 
army, though it intensely abhorred the 
Austrians out of a military jealousy, 
was little disposed to promote a reyo- 
lution in the state. This error, whether 
arising from the bad information of 
Pisa, or from a misconceived idea of 
the Piedmontese patriots themselves, 
proved fatal to Ttaly ; for, had the re- 
volution broken out in Piedmont only 
a féw weeks sooner, orhad the Neapo- 
litan leaders but becn aware of the im- 
minency of that event, when an Aus- 
trian army advanced towards their 
The Neapolitan Patriots, 
. 
[Nov. 1, 
frontiers, affairs could have taken quite 
a different turn. Be that as it, may, 
from all such particulars reported at 
home by Pisa, they seem to have con- 
cluded, that, by pouring the few Nea- 
politan troops into. Upper Ltaly, even 
at the first stage of the revolution, 
Naples would oniy have incurred the 
blame of an unproyoked aggression, 
and hastened her own ruin. 
When the executive government 
attempted to put down the constitution 
at one blow, on the 7th of December, 
Pisa did not desert his country. 
Though hardly recovered from a dan- 
gerous illness, he hastened on that 
night to his regiment; and, haranguing 
his comrades, exhorted them to remain 
firm in the cause of the nation, by whom 
they were paid, and be ready to sup- 
port the parliament were it found ne- 
cessary. |Then, galloping throughout 
the capital, he endeavoured to prevent 
any tumults from arising among the 
patriots. He so far succeeded in this, 
that many thousands of them kept in 
arms within their places of rendezvous 
a night and day together, almost 
completely-out of public observation. 
‘Yo maintain public order was then 
considered at Naples as a principal 
means of disproving all the imputa- 
tions of anarchy poured down upon 
the revolution by the pamphleteers of 
the holy alliance; as if such imputa- 
tions were sincerely made, and success- 
fully to give them the lie were tanta- 
mount to ihe preservation of the newly 
acquired liberties! Let the event 
speak for itself. At break of day, Pisa 
went into the lobby of the parliament, 
where some deputies began already to 
mect; and, to encourage them tore- 
ject the message of the government, he 
said to them—‘‘ You never saw me 
here before, for this is not a place 
where a soldier ought often to show 
himself. But now the public danger 
draws me here. What do you fear? 
The army feels with you. Do youde- 
liberate freely, then, and remember, 
that liberty cannot be compromised 
without being annihilated.” 
War being declared against Naples, 
Pisa was attached io the staff of the 
second corps commanded by General 
Pepe in the Abruzzi. He was posted 
at Arquata with two battalions of 
militia, which were to throw them- 
selves as a flyine column into Sérra- 
valle, to harass the enemy on his flank, 
and to raise the country. But that 
collectitious militia, being for the most 
part 
