Napoleon III now fixed
his headquarters at Cavriana, in the same house that Francis Joseph had
tenanted during the action. On that vast battlefield the combatants had
numbered three hundred thousand men--one hundred sixty thousand
Austrians and one hundred forty thousand French and Sardinians--of all
these, after that sanguinary struggle, twenty-five thousand were left
dead or wounded.
After a few days' rest the Franco-Sardinian army crossed the Mincio and
besieged Peschiera. Now there seemed a chance of the Italians fulfilling
the hope they had so long cherished, of expelling the foreigners. They
confidently awaited news of fresh feats of arms in the Quadrilateral and
of the success of the fleet sent by France and Sardinia into Adriatic
waters, but instead came the most unexpected tidings imaginable.
On July 8th Napoleon III had met Francis Joseph, and three days later
the preliminaries of peace were signed at Villafranca. By this treaty
Austria was to cede Lombardy to Napoleon, who was to relegate it to
Sardinia; the Italian States were to be amalgamated into a
confederation, under the Presidency of the Pope, but Venice, though
forming part of this same confederation, was to remain under Austrian
rule.
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