This correspondent was fortunate to spend an afternoon discussing the recent conflict with the King of Italy, shortly before his kingdom’s demise and his untimely yet heroic death. Enjoying a typically warm late summer day in his palace at Caserta, we talked at length on how Italy’s military campaigns had fared over the past three years. Though things were looking bleak for the young kingdom, little were we to know that only a month later this palace would fall to Ottoman forces.