The treaty of Villafranca which followed Solferino proved a bitter deception: Venetia was not secured, Venice remained enthralled.

Nevertheless the Milanese was conquered from the foe, and then Tuscany and the duchies of Parma and Modena voted for annexation.

So, at all events, the nucleus of the Italian star was formed; the country had begun to build itself up afresh around victorious Piedmont.
Then, in the following year, Orlando plunged into epopoeia once more.
Garibaldi had returned from his two sojourns in America, with the halo of a legend round him--paladin-like feats in the pampas of Uruguay, an extraordinary passage from Canton to Lima--and he had returned to take part in the war of 1859, forestalling the French army, overthrowing an Austrian marshal, and entering Como, Bergamo, and Brescia.

And now, all at once, folks heard that he had landed at Marsala with only a thousand men--the Thousand of Marsala, the ever illustrious handful of braves! Orlando fought in the first rank, and Palermo after three days' resistance was carried.

Becoming the dictator's favourite lieutenant, he helped him to organise a government, then crossed the straits with him, and was beside him on the triumphal entry into Naples, whose king had fled.