Giuseppe Garibaldi's volunteers had advanced in the direction of Trento in the invasion of Trentino, winning the battle of Bezzecca. Later, the Habsburgs were forced to seek an armistice with Italy due to the collapse of their northern armies following the decisive Battle of Sadowa and the rapid Prussian advance into Bohemia and towards Vienna. On 12 August, an armistice was signed by Austria and Italy at Cormons bringing an end to the fighting. Provisions of the Treaty During the negotiations of the treaty, Austria agreed to surrender the land of the former Venetian Republic (present-day Veneto and Friuli) and Mantua. Italian diplomats also attempted to obtain Trentino as far as Salorno, but this was unsuccessful as the Austrians adhered to the text of the armistice of Cormons, which established the former Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia as the border between them, thus excluding also the Italian speaking areas of Gorizia and Trieste. Emperor Franz Joseph had already agreed to cede Venetia and Mantua to France, in exchange for non-intervention in the Austro-Prussian War, but France, who was acting as intermediary between Prussia and Austria, ceded them to Italy on 19 October, as agreed in a secret treaty in exchange for the earlier Italian acquiescence to the French annexation of Savoy and Nice. In the peace treaty it was written that the annexation would have become effective only after a plebiscite to let the population express their will about being annexed or not to the Kingdom of Italy; this was held on 21 and 22 October, and the result was overwhelmingly in support of joining Italy. The treaty also forced Italy to pay a cash indemnity for each Austrian fort present in Venetia, as well as requiring them to assume the state debt Venetia had accumulated while under Austrian control. The treaty required Austria to formally acknowledge the existence of the Kingdom of Italy. Austria was also made to give Italy the Iron Crown of Lombardy, the crown used by the medieval Kings of Lombardy. Consequences of the Treaty For Austria the Treaty of Vienna and the concurrent Treaty of Prague with Prussia were national humiliations, one Austrian general remarked ‘that we [Austria] have sunk to the level of Turkey’. As a result of the twin defeat to both Prussia and Italy the Austrian government incurred a massive state debt, throwing the government into turmoil. With the Empire on the brink of