From Rome I went to Spezzia, where a friend had promised to take me on board his yacht; and here I found a formidable ironclad squadron, consisting of the Italia, the Andrea Doria, the Francisco Morosimi, the Re Umberto, the Rugiero di Lauria, the Affondatore (turret-ram), and several other vessels of the second class, preparing to put to sea. What could be the objective of this fleet? On this point all the naval authorities were as silent as the grave; but a few more days were to solve the mystery.

Our own destination was Monte Carlo, where we anchored our yacht in the pretty little bay of Monaco, and, going ashore, found the army of the Prince—consisting of about sixty-five carabineers—in no small state of excitement, owing to the prospect of its being forced perhaps by circumstances to abandon its attitude of armed neutrality, and sucked into the whirlpool of hostilities, whereof the Riviera might so soon become the sanguinary scene. But such a prospect had not the least apparent terror for the visitors to the beautiful Inferno at Monte Carlo—men and women of all nations—Jews and Gentiles, Elamites and Assyrians—who, in spite of the military bustle going on around them—French battalions of Chasseurs and Alpine troops arriving and departing by road and rail—continued to frequent the tables of the Casino with an all-engrossing passion for their occupation worthy of the abstruse philosopher of Syracuse. ‘Noli turbare circulos meos,’ also exclaimed these lost-to-all-else worshippers of the roulette wheels.

It is not, perhaps, generally known in England, but the fact is that during the last few years the French have been busy constructing a formidable line of forts all along the Riviera from Marseilles to Mentone; and every commanding peak and mountain-top overlooking the sea and the seaside road is capped with one of these terrifically strong stone-works. Careless pleasure-seekers on the Riviera are not likely to take special notice of these mountain-crowns, with heavy long-range guns for their jewels; but there they are, all the same. They form, indeed, France’s silent answer to the Triple Alliance, and were placed there since the conclusion of that pact to bar the advance of Italy, should that Power, in fulfilment of her treaty engagements with Germany, be called upon to assail the flank of France, and select as her line of attack the sea-board rather than the mountain route.

An important reason why the Italian army should prefer the Riviera road into France with all its perils was that, apart from the natural difficulties of the Alpine routes, which had rather increased than diminished since the time of Hannibal and CÆsar, they were unwilling—such was their loyalty to public law—to expose themselves to the charge of infringing the neutrality either of Switzerland or of Savoy. For it must be remembered that, even after it had changed hands with Nice in 1860, Savoy, this section, so to speak, of the Franco-Italian Alsace-Lorraine, continued subject to the Treaty of Vienna (1815) as neutral territory, part of which, Chablais and Faucigny, might even be occupied with Federal troops ‘in the event of Switzerland’s neighbours being in a state of open or imminent warfare.’ Indeed, a portion of the Federal Army had already made bold to brave the displeasure and even the reprisals of France by occupying as it was, theoretically speaking, entitled to do, the upper part of Savoy; and this had introduced into the military situation an element of complexity which the Italians would have been foolish to ignore. Consequently, they resolved to force the passage of the Riviera road—the more so as their fleet could cover their march to some extent, and even land troops at particular points, as long at least, at the other portions of the French navy, at present engaged in the Baltic and elsewhere, should not be free to make for the Mediterranean.

The Italians had also resolved to send another smaller army, consisting of their 1st and 3d Corps (whose places in the army of the Riviera were to be taken by the 6th and 8th), across the Alps by the Mont Cenis route, so as thus to attempt to turn the flank of the French Army, consisting mainly of the 7th, 14th, 15th, and 16th Corps, which were now pretty well all the French could spare from the further draft they had had to make on their military resources with a view to repair their reverses on the Rhine.