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Title: The Liberation of Italy

Author: Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco

Release Date: November 17, 2004  [eBook #14078]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1


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THE LIBERATION OF ITALY 1815-1870

by the

COUNTESS EVELYN MARTINENGO CESARESCO

Author of 'Italian Characters In The Epoch Of Unification' (_Patriotti
Italiani_), etc.

With Portraits

London

Seeley And Co, Limited
Essex Street, Strand

1895







[FRONTISPIECE: GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI]







PREFACE


The old figure of speech 'in the fulness of time' embodies a truth too
often forgotten. History knows nothing of spontaneous generation; the
chain of cause and effect is unbroken, and however modest be the
scale on which an historical work is cast, the reader has a right to
ask that it should give him some idea, not only of what happened, but
of why it happened. A catalogue of dates and names is as meaningless
as the photograph of a crowd. In the following retrospect, I have
attempted to trace the principal factors that worked towards Italian
unity. The Liberation of Italy is a cycle waiting to be turned into an
epic.

In other words, it presents the appearance of a series of detached
episodes, but the parts have an intimate connection with the whole,
which, as time wears on, will constantly emerge into plainer light.
Every year brings with it the issue of documents, letters, memoirs,
that help to unravel the tangled threads in which this subject has
been enveloped, and which have made it less generally understood than
the two other great struggles of the century, the American fight for
the Union, and the unification of Germany.

I cannot too strongly state my indebtedness to the voluminous
literature which has grown up in Italy round the _Risorgimento_ since
its completion; yet it must not be supposed that the witness of
contemporaries published from hour to hour, in every European tongue,
while the events were going on, has become or will ever become
valueless. I have had access to a collection of these older writings,
formed with much care between the years 1850-1870, and some
authorities that were wanting, I found in the library of Sir James
Hudson, given by him to Count Giuseppe Martinengo Cesaresco after he
left the British legation at Turin.

There are, of course, many books in which the affairs of Italy figure
only incidentally, which ought to be consulted by anyone who wishes to
study the inner working of the Italian movement. Of such are Lord
Castlereagh's _Despatches and Correspondence_, and the autobiographies
of Prince Metternich and Count Beust.

Perhaps I have been helped in describing the events clearly, by the
fact that I am familiar with almost all the places where they
occurred, from the heights of Calatafimi to the unhappy rock of Lissa.
Wherever the language of the _Si_ sounds, we tread upon the history of
the Revolution that achieved what a great English orator once called,
'the noblest work ever undertaken by man.'

The supreme interest of the re-casting of Italy arises from the new
spectacle of a nation made one not by conquest but by consent. Above
and beyond the other causes that contributed to the conclusion must
always be reckoned the gathering of an emotional wave, only comparable
to the phenomena displayed by the mediæval religious revivals.
Sentiment, it is said, is what makes the real historical miracles. A
writer on Italian Liberation would be indeed misleading who failed to
take account of the passionate longing which stirred and swayed even
the most outwardly cold of those who took part in it, and nerved an
entire people to heroic effort.

Salò, Lago di Garda.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I

RESURGAM

Italy from the Battle of Lodi to the Congress of Vienna


CHAPTER II

THE WORK OF THE CARBONARI

Revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples and in Piedmont--The Conspiracy
against Charles Albert


CHAPTER III

PRISON AND SCAFFOLD

Political Trials in Venetia and Lombardy--Risings in the South and
Centre--Ciro Menotti


CHAPTER IV

YOUNG ITALY

Accession of Charles Albert--Mazzini's Unitarian Propaganda--The
Brothers Bandiera


CHAPTER V

THE POPE LIBERATOR

Events leading to the Election of Pius IX.--The Petty Princes--Charles
Albert, Leopold and Ferdinand


CHAPTER VI

THE YEAR OF REVOLUTION

Insurrection in Sicily--The Austrians expelled from Milan and
Venice--Charles Albert takes the Field--Withdrawal of the Pope and
King of Naples--Piedmont defeated--The Retreat


CHAPTER VII

THE DOWNFALL OF THRONES

Garibaldi arrives--Venice under Manin--The Dissolution of the Temporal
Power--Republics at Rome and Florence


CHAPTER VIII

AT BAY

Novara--Abdication of Charles Albert--Brescia crushed--French
Intervention--The Fall of Rome--The Fall of Venice


CHAPTER IX

'J'ATTENDS MON ASTRE'

The House of Savoy--A King who Keeps his Word--Sufferings of the
Lombards--Charles Albert's death


CHAPTER X

THE REVIVAL OF PIEDMONT

Restoration of the Pope and Grand-Duke of Tuscany--Misrule at Naples--
The Struggle with the Church in Piedmont--The Crimean War


CHAPTER XI

PREMONITIONS OF THE STORM

Pisacane's Landing--Orsini's Attempt--The Compact of
Plombières--Cavour's Triumph


CHAPTER XII

THE WAR FOR LOMBARDY

Austria declares War--Montebello--Garibaldi's Campaign--Palestro--
Magenta--The Allies enter Milan--Ricasoli saves Italian Unity--
Accession of Francis II.--Solferino--The Armistice of Villafranca


CHAPTER XIII

WHAT UNITY COST

Napoleon III. and Cavour--The Cession of Savoy and Nice--Annexations
in Central Italy


CHAPTER XIV

THE MARCH OF THE THOUSAND

Origin of the Expedition--Garibaldi at Marsala--Calatafimi--The Taking
of Palermo--Milazzo--The Bourbons evacuate Sicily


CHAPTER XV

THE MEETING OF THE WATERS

Garibaldi's March on Naples--The Piedmontese in Umbria and the
Marches--The Volturno. Victor Emmanuel enters Naples


CHAPTER XVI

BEGINNINGS OF THE ITALIAN KINGDOM

The Fall of Gaeta--Political Brigandage--The Proclamation of the
Italian Kingdom--Cavour's Death


CHAPTER XVII

'ROME OR DEATH!'

Cavour's Successors--Aspromonte--The September Convention--Garibaldi's
Visit to England


CHAPTER XVIII

THE WAR FOR VENICE

The Prussian Alliance--Custoza--Lissa--The Volunteers--Acquisition of
Venetia


CHAPTER XIX

THE LAST CRUSADE

The French leave Rome--Garibaldi's Arrest and Escape--The Second French
Intervention--Monte Rotondo--Mentana


CHAPTER XX

ROME THE CAPITAL

M. Rouher's 'Never!'--Papal Infallibility--Sédan--The Breach in Porta
Pia--The King of Italy in Rome




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


     GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI (Frontispiece)

     GIUSEPPE MAZZINI

     KING VICTOR EMMANUEL

     COUNT CAVOUR






CHAPTER I

RESURGAM

Italy from the Battle of Lodi to the Congress of Vienna.


The unity of Italy, which the statesmen of Europe and all save a small
number of the Italians themselves still regarded as an utopia when it
was on the verge of accomplishment, was, nevertheless, desired and
foreseen by the two greatest intellects produced by the Italian race.
Dante conceived an Italy united under the Empire, which returning from
a shameful because self-imposed exile would assume its natural seat in
Rome. To him it was a point of secondary interest that the Imperial
Lord happened to be bred beyond the Alps, that he was of Teutonic, not
of Latin blood. If the Emperor brought the talisman of his authority
to the banks of the Tiber, Italy would overcome the factions which
rent her, and would not only rule herself, but lead mankind. Vast as
the vision was, Dante cannot be called presumptuous for having
entertained it. The Rome of the Cæsars, the Rome of the Popes, had
each transformed the world: Italy was transforming it for a third time
at that moment by the spiritual awakening which, beginning with the
Renaissance, led by inevitable steps to the Reformation. The great
Florentine poet had the right to dream that his country was invested
with a providential mission, that his people was a chosen people,
which, by its own fault and by the fault of others, had lost its way,
but would find it again. Such was Dante's so-called Ghibelline
programme--less Ghibelline than intensely and magnificently Italian.
His was a mind too mighty to be caged within the limits of partisan
ambitions. The same may be said of Machiavelli. He also imagined, or
rather discerned in the future, a regenerate Italy under a single
head, and this, not the advancement of any particular man, was the
grand event he endeavoured to hasten. With the impatience of a heart
consumed by the single passion of patriotism, he conjured his
fellow-countrymen to seize the first chance that presented itself,
promising or unpromising, of reaching the goal. The concluding passage
in the _Principe_ was meant as an exhortation; it reads as a prophecy.
'We ought not therefore,' writes Machiavelli, 'to let this occasion
pass whereby, after so long waiting, Italy may behold the coming of a
saviour. Nor can I express with what love he would be received in all
those provinces which have suffered from the foreign inundations; with
what thirst of vengeance, with what obstinate faith, with what
worship, with what tears! What doors would be closed against him? What
people would deny him obedience? What jealousy would oppose him? What
Italian would not do him honour? The barbarous dominion of the
stranger stinks in the nostrils of all.'

Another man of genius, an Italian whom a fortuitous circumstance made
the citizen and the master of a country not his own, grasped both the
vital necessity of unity from an Italian point of view, and the
certainty of its ultimate achievement. Napoleon's notes on the
subject, written at St Helena, sum up the whole question without
rhetoric but with unanswerable logic:--'Italy is surrounded by the
Alps and the sea. Her natural limits are defined with as much
exactitude as if she were an island. Italy is only united to the
Continent by 150 leagues of frontier, and these 150 leagues are
fortified by the highest barrier that can be opposed to man. Italy,
isolated between her natural limits, is destined to form a great and
powerful nation. Italy is one nation; unity of customs, language and
literature must, within a period more or less distant, unite her
inhabitants under one sole government. And Rome will, without the
slightest doubt, be chosen by the Italians as their capital.'

Unlike Dante and Machiavelli, who could only sow the seed, not gather
the fruit, the man who wrote these lines might have made them a
reality. Had Napoleon wished to unite Italy--had he had the greatness
of mind to proclaim Rome the capital of a free and independent
state instead of turning it into the chief town of a French
department--there was a time when he could plainly have done it.
Whether redemption too easily won would have proved a gain or a loss
in the long run to the populations welded together, not after their
own long and laborious efforts, but by the sudden exercise of the will
of a conqueror, is, of course, a different matter. The experiment was
not tried. Napoleon, whom the simple splendour of such a scheme ought
to have fascinated, did a very poor thing instead of a very great one:
he divided Italy among his relations, keeping the lion's share for
himself.

Napoleon's policy in Italy was permanently compromised by the
abominable sale of Venice, with her two thousand years of freedom, to
the empire which, as no one knew better than he did, was the pivot of
European despotism. After that transaction he could never again come
before the Italians with clean hands; they might for a season make him
their idol, carried away by the intoxication of his fame; they could
never trust him in their inmost conscience. The ruinous consequences
of the Treaty of Campo Formio only; ceased in 1866. The Venetians have
been severely blamed, most of all by Italian historians, for making
Campo Formio possible by opening the door to the French six months
before. Napoleon could not have bartered away Venice if it had not
belonged to him. The reason that it belonged to him was that, on the
12th of May 1797, the Grand Council committed political suicide by
dissolving the old aristocratic form of government, in compliance with
a mere rumour, conveyed to them through the ignoble medium of a petty
shopkeeper, that such was the wish of General Buonaparte. In
extenuation of their fatal supineness, it may be urged that they felt
the inherent weakness of an oligarchy out of date; and in the second
place, that the victor of Lodi, the deliverer of Lombardy, then in the
first flush of his scarcely tarnished glory, was a dazzling figure,
calculated indeed to turn men's heads. But, after all, the only really
valid excuse for them would have been that Venice lacked the means of
defence, and this was not the case. She had 14,000 regular troops,
8000 marines, a good stock of guns--how well she might have resisted
the French, had they, which was probable, attacked her, was to be
proved in 1849. Her people, moreover, that _basso popolo_ which
nowhere in the world is more free from crime, more patient in
suffering, more intelligent and public-spirited than in Venice, was
anxious and ready to resist; when the nobles offered themselves a
sacrifice on the Gallic altar by welcoming the proposed democratic
institutions, the populace, neither hoodwinked nor scared into
hysterics, rose to the old cry of San Marco, and attempted a righteous
reaction, which was only smothered when the treacherous introduction
of French troops by night on board Venetian vessels settled the doom
of Venice's independence.

'Under all circumstances,' Napoleon wrote to the Venetian Municipality,
'I shall do what lies in my power to prove to you my desire to see your
liberty consolidated, and miserable Italy assume, at last, a glorious
place, free and independent of strangers.' On the 10th of the following
October he made over Venice to Austria, sending as a parting word the
cynical message to the Venetians 'that they were little fitted for
liberty: if they were capable of appreciating it, and had the virtue
necessary for acquiring it well and good; existing circumstances gave
them an excellent opportunity of proving it.' At the time, the act of
betrayal was generally regarded as part of a well-considered plot laid
by the French Directory, but it seems certain that it was not made known
to that body before it was carried out, and that with Napoleon himself
it was a sort of after-thought, sprung from the desire to patch up an
immediate peace with Austria on account of the appointment of Hoche to
the chief command of the army in Germany. The god to which he immolated
Venice was the selfish fear lest another general should reap his German
laurels.

Venice remained for eight years under the Austrians, who thereby
obtained what, in flagrant perversion of the principles on which the
Congress of Vienna professed to act, was accepted in 1815 as their
title-deeds to its possession. Meanwhile, after the battle of
Austerlitz, the city of the sea was tossed back to Napoleon, who
incorporated it in the newly-created kingdom of Italy, which no more
corresponded to its name than did the Gothic kingdom of which he
arrogated to himself the heirship, when, placing the Iron Crown of
Theodolinda upon his brow, he uttered the celebrated phrase: 'Dieu me
l'a donnée, gare à qui la touche.'

This is not the place to write a history of French supremacy in Italy,
but several points connected with it must be glanced at, because,
without bearing them in mind, it is impossible to understand the
events which followed. The viceroyalty of Eugène Beauharnais in North
Italy, and the government of Joseph Buonaparte, and afterwards of
Joachim Murat, in the South, brought much that was an improvement on
what had gone before: there were better laws, a better administration,
a quickening of intelligence. 'The French have done much for the
regeneration of Italy,' wrote an English observer in 1810; 'they have
destroyed the prejudices of the inhabitants of the small states of
Upper Italy by uniting them; they have done away with the Pope; they
have made them soldiers.' But there was the reverse side of the medal:
the absence everywhere of the national spirit which alone could have
consolidated the new _régime_ on a firm basis; the danger which the
language ran of losing its purity by the introduction of Gallicisms;
the shameless robbery of pictures, statues, and national heirlooms of
every kind for the replenishment of French museums; the bad impression
left in the country districts by the abuses committed by the French
soldiery on their first descent, and kept alive by the blood-tax
levied in the persons of thousands of Italian conscripts sent to die,
nobody knew where or why; the fields untilled, and Rachel weeping for
her children: all these elements combined in rendering it difficult
for the governments established under French auspices to survive the
downfall of the man to whose sword they owed their existence. Their
dissolution was precipitated, however, by the discordant action of
Murat and Eugène Beauharnais. Had these two pulled together, whatever
the issue was it would have differed in much from what actually
happened. Murat was jealous of Eugène, and did not love his
brother-in-law, who had annoyed and thwarted him through his whole
reign; he was uneasy about his Neapolitan throne, and, in all
likelihood, was already dreaming of acquiring the crown of an
independent Italy. Throwing off his allegiance to Napoleon, he
imagined the vain thing that he might gain his object by taking sides
with the Austrians. It must be remembered that there was a time when
the Allied Powers had distinctly contemplated Italian independence as
a dyke to France, and there were people foolish enough to think that
Austria, now she felt herself as strong as she had then felt weak,
would consent to such a plan. Liberators, self-called, were absolutely
swarming in Italy; Lord William Bentinck was promising entire
emancipation from Leghorn; the Austrian and English allies in Romagna
ransacked the dictionary for expressions in praise of liberty; an
English officer was made the mouthpiece for the lying assurance of the
Austrian Emperor Francis, that he had no intention of re-asserting any
claims to the possession of Lombardy or Venetia.

In 1814, Napoleon empowered Prince Eugène to adopt whatever attitude
he thought best fitted to make head against Austria; for himself, he
resigned the Iron Crown, and his Italian soldiers were freed from
their oaths. It was not, therefore, Eugene's loyal scruples which
prevented him from throwing down a grand stake when he led his 60,000
men to the attack. It was want of genius, or of what would have done
instead, a flash of genuine enthusiasm for the Italian idea. In place
of appealing to all Italians to unite in winning a country, he
appealed to one sentiment only, fidelity to Napoleon, which no longer
woke any echo in the hearts of a population that had grown more and
more to associate the name of the Emperor with exactions which never
came to an end, and with wars which had not now even the merit of
being successful. It is estimated that although the Italian troops
amply proved the truth of Alfieri's maxim, that 'the plant man is more
vigorous in Italy than elsewhere,' by bearing the hardships and
resisting the cold in Russia better than the soldiers of any other
nationality, nevertheless 26,000 Italians were lost in the retreat
from Moscow. That happened a year ago. Exhausted patience got the
better of judgment; in April 1814, the Milanese committed the
irremediable error of revolting against their Viceroy, who commanded
the only army which could still save Italy: the pent-up passions of a
long period broke loose, the peasants from the country, who had always
hated the French, flooded the streets of Milan, and allying themselves
unimpeded with the dregs of the townsfolk, they murdered with great
brutality General Prina, the Minister of Finance, whose remarkable
abilities had been devoted towards raising funds for the Imperial
Exchequer. Personally incorruptible, Prina was looked upon as the
general representative of French voracity; he met his death with the
utmost calmness, only praying that he might be the last victim. No one
else was, in fact, killed, and next day quiet was resumed, but the
affair had another victim--Italy. You cannot change horses when you
are crossing a stream. Prince Eugène was in Mantua with a fine army,
practically intact, though it had suffered some slight reverses; the
fortress was believed to be impregnable; by merely waiting, Eugene
might, if nothing else, have exacted favourable terms. But the news of
Prina's murder, and the blow dealt at his own authority in Milan,
caused him to give over the fortress and the army to the Austrians
without more ado; an act which looked like revenge, but it was most
likely prompted by moral cowardice. The capitulation signed with
Field-Marshal Bellegarde on the 23rd of April, so exasperated the army
that the officers in command of the garrison decided to arrest Eugene,
but it was found that he was already on his way to Germany, taking
with him his treasure, in accordance with a secret agreement entered
into with the Austrian Field-Marshal. Such was the end to the Italian
career of Eugène Beauharnais.

For the _Beau Sabreur_ another ending was in store. Back on Napoleon's
side in 1815, his Austrian allies having given him plenty of reason
for suspecting their sincerity, he issued from Rimini, on the 30th of
March, the proclamation of an independent Italy from the Alps to
Sicily. There was no popular reply to his call. Italy, prostrate and
impoverished, was unequal to a great resolve. The Napoleonic legend
was not only dead, but buried; Napoleon had literally no friends left
in Italy except those of his old soldiers who had managed to get back
to their homes, many of them deprived of an arm or a leg, but so
toughened that they lived to great ages. These cherished to their last
hour the worship of their Captain, which it was his highest gift to be
able to inspire. 'I have that feeling for him still, that if he were
to rise from the dead I should go to him, if I could, wherever he
was,' said the old conscript Emmanuele Gaminara of Genoa, who died at
nearly a hundred in a Norfolk village in 1892: the last, perhaps, of
the Italian veterans, and the type of them all.

But a few scattered invalids do not make a nation, and the Italian
nation in 1815 had not the least wish to support any one who came in
the name of Napoleon. So Murat failed without even raising a strong
current of sympathy. Beaten by the Austrians at Tolentino on the 3rd
of May, he retreated with his shattered army. In the last desperate
moment, he issued the constitution which he ought to have granted
years before. Nothing could be of any avail now; his admirable Queen,
the best of all the House of Buonaparte, surrendered Naples to the
English admiral; and Murat, harried by a crushing Austrian force,
renounced his kingdom on the 30th of May. After Waterloo, when a price
was set on his head in France, he meditated one more forlorn hope;
but, deserted by the treachery of his few followers, and driven out of
his course by the violence of the waves, he was thrown on the coast of
Calabria with only twenty-six men, and was shot by order of Ferdinand
of Naples, who especially directed that he should be only allowed
half-an-hour for his religious duties after sentence had been
delivered by the mock court-martial. His dauntless courage did not
desert him: he died like a soldier. It was a better end for an Italian
prince than escaping with money-bags to Germany. Great as were Murat's
faults, an Italian should remember that it was he who first took up
arms to the cry which was later to redeem Italy: independence from
Alps to sea; and if he stand on the ill-omened shore of Pizzo, he
need not refuse to uncover his head in silence.

When Mantua surrendered, the Milanese sent a deputation to Paris with
a view of securing for Lombardy the position of an independent kingdom
under an Austrian prince. They hoped to obtain the first by
acquiescing in the second. They were aroused from their unheroic
illusions with startling rapidity. Lord Castlereagh, to whom they went
first (for they fancied that the English were interested in liberty),
referred them 'to their master, the Austrian Emperor.' The Emperor
Francis replied to their memorial that Lombardy was his by right of
conquest; they would hear soon enough at Milan what orders he had to
give them. Even after that, the distracted Lombards hoped that the
English at Genoa would befriend them. All uncertainty ceased on the
23rd of May 1814, when Field-Marshal Bellegarde formally took
possession of Lombardy on behalf of his Sovereign, dissolved the
Electoral Colleges, and proclaimed himself Regent. There was no
question of reviving the conditions under which Austria ruled Lombardy
while there was still a German Empire: conditions which, though
despotic in theory, were comparatively easy-going in practice, and did
not exclude the native element from the administration. Henceforth the
despotism was pure and simple; for Italians to even think of politics
was an act of high treason.

It is not generally known that a British army ultimately sent to Spain
was intended for Italy,[1] but its destination was changed because the
Italians showed so little disposition to rise against Napoleon. The
English Government was continually advised by its agents in Italy to
make Sicily, which was wholly in its power, the _point d'appùi_ for a
really great intervention in the destinies of the peninsula. 'The
grand end of all the operations in the Mediterranean,' wrote one of
Lord Castlereagh's correspondents, 'is the emancipation of Italy, and
its union in one great state.' Lord William Bentinck urged that if
Sicily were reunited to Naples under the Bourbons, liberty,
established there by his own incredible efforts, would be crushed, and
the King would wreck vengeance on the Constitution and its supporters.
Universal terror, he said, was felt at 'the unforgiving temper of
their Majesties.' He strongly supported a course proposed for her own
reasons by Queen Caroline: the purchase of Sicily by the English
Government which could make it 'not only the model but the instrument
of Italian independence.'

This way of talking was not confined to private despatches, and it was
no wonder if the Italians were disappointed when they found that
England declined to plead their cause with the Allies in Paris, and
afterwards at Vienna. When charged directly with breach of faith
before the House of Commons, Lord Castlereagh said that Austria, being
'in truth the great hinge on which the fate of mankind must ultimately
depend,' had to be paid (this was exactly the sense, though not the
form, of his defence) by letting her do what she liked with Italy.
There is a certain brutal straightforwardness in the line of argument.
Lord Castlereagh did not say that independence was not a good thing.
He had tried to obtain it for Poland and had failed; he had not tried
to obtain it for Italy, because he was afraid of offending Austria. At
least he had the courage to tell the truth, and did not prate about
the felicity of being subjects of the Austrian Emperor, as many
English partisans of Austria prated in days to come.

The political map of Italy in the summer of 1814 showed the Pope (Pius
VII.) reinstated in Rome, Victor Emmanuel I. at Turin, Ferdinand III.
of Hapsburg-Lorraine in Tuscany, the Genoese Republic for the moment
restored by the English, Parma and Piacenza assigned to the Empress
Marie-Louise, and Modena to the Austrian Archduke Francis, who was
heir through the female line to the last of the Estes. Murat was still
at Naples, Ferdinand IV. in Sicily, Austria acknowledged supreme in
Lombardy and Venetia, and the island of Elba ironically handed over to
Napoleon. These were the chief features, so far as Italy was
concerned, of the Treaty of Paris, signed on the 30th of May 1814.
Next year the Congress of Vienna modified the arrangement by providing
that the Spanish Infanta Maria Louisa, on whom had been bestowed the
ex-republic of Lucca, should have the reversion of Parma and Piacenza,
while Lucca was to go in the end to Tuscany. Murat having been
destroyed, the Neapolitan Bourbons recovered all their old
possessions. San Marino and Monaco were graciously recognised as
independent, which brought the number of Italian states up to ten. The
Sardinian monarchy received back the part of Savoy which by the Treaty
of Paris had been reserved to France. It was also offered a splendid
and unexpected gift--Genoa.

Lord William Bentinck entered Genoa by a convention concluded with the
authorities on the 18th of April 1814. A naval demonstration following
an ably-conducted operation, by which Bentinck's hybrid force of
Greeks and Calabrese, with a handful of English, became master of the
two principal forts, hastened this conclusion, but the Genoese had no
reluctance to open their gates to the English commander, who inspired
them with the fullest confidence. He came invested with the halo of a
constitution-maker-under-difficulties; it was known that he had
stopped at nothing in carrying out his mission in Sicily; not even at
getting rid of the Queen, who found in Bentinck the Nemesis for having
led a greater Englishman to stain his fame in the roads of Naples.
Driven rather than persuaded to leave Sicily, Marie Antoinette's
sister encountered so frightful a sea voyage that she died soon after
joining her relations at Vienna. Lord William had acquired the art of
writing the finest appeals to the love of freedom; a collection of his
manifestoes would serve as handy-book to anyone instructed to stir up
an oppressed nationality. He immediately gave the Genoese some
specimens of his skill as a writer, and by granting them at once a
provisional constitution, he dispelled all doubts about the future
recognition of their republic. What was not, therefore, their dismay,
when they were suddenly informed of the decision of the Holy Alliance
to make a present of them to the people whom, of all others, they
probably disliked the most. Italians had not ceased yet from reserving
their best aversion for their nearest neighbours.

Bentinck did not mean to deceive; perhaps he thought that by going
beyond the letter of his instructions he should draw his government
after him. That he did, in effect, deceive, cannot be denied; even
Lord Castlereagh, while necessarily refusing to admit that definite
promises had been made, yet allowed that, 'Of course he would have
been glad if the proclamation issued to the Genoese had been more
precisely worded.' The motive of the determination to sacrifice the
republic was, he said, 'a sincere conviction of the necessity of a
barrier between France and Italy, which ought to be made effectual on
the side of Piedmont. The object was to commit the defence of the Alps
and of the great road leading round them by the Gulf of Genoa, between
France and Italy, to the same power to which it had formerly been
entrusted. On that principle, the question relating to Genoa had been
entertained and decided upon by the allied sovereigns. It was not
resolved upon because any particular state had unworthy or sordid
views, or from any interest or feeling in favour of the King of
Sardinia, but solely to make him, as far as was necessary, the
instrument of the general policy of Europe.'

A better defence might have been made. Piedmont was destined to serve
as a bulwark, not so much against France, which for the time was not
to be feared, as against Austria, absolute except for the subalpine
kingdom in all Italy. But this belongs to the shaping of rough-hewn
ends, which is in higher hands than those of English ministers. The
ends then looked very rough-hewn.

Piedmont was a hotbed of reaction and bigotry. True, she had a history
differing vastly from that of the other Italian states, but the facts
of the hour presented her in a most unattractive light. The Genoese
felt the keenest heart-burnings in submitting to a decision in which
they had no voice, and which came to them as a mandate of political
extinction from the same powers that confirmed the sentence of death
on Genoa's ancient and glorious rival. The seeds were laid of
disaffection, always smouldering among the Genoese, till Piedmont's
king became King of Italy. It might almost be said that the
reconciliation was not consummated till the day when the heir and
namesake of Humbert of the White Hands received the squadrons of
Europe in the harbour of Genoa, and the proud republican city showed
what a welcome she had prepared for her sovereign of the Savoy race.

After the Congress of Vienna finished its labours, there were, as has
been remarked, ten states in Italy, but out of Sardinia (whose
subjugation Prince Metternich esteemed a mere matter of time) there
was one master. The authority of the Emperor Francis was practically
as undisputed from Venice to the Bay of Naples as it was in the Grand
Duchy of Austria. The Austrians garrisoned Piacenza, Ferrara and
Commacchio; Austrian princes reigned in Tuscany, Parma, Modena and
Lucca; the King of Naples, who paid Austria twenty-six million francs
for getting back his throne, thankfully agreed to support a German
army to protect him against his subjects. In the secret treaty
concluded between himself and the Emperor of Austria, it was
stipulated that the King of the Two Sicilies should not introduce into
his government any principles irreconcilable with those adopted by His
Imperial Majesty in the government of his Italian provinces. As for
the Roman States, Austria reckoned on her influence in always
securing the election of a Pope who would give her no trouble. Seeing
herself without rivals and all-powerful, she deemed her position
unassailable. She forgot that, by giving Italy an unity of misery, she
was preparing the way for another unity. Common hatred engendered
common love; common sufferings led on to a common effort. If some
prejudices passed away under the Napoleonic rule, many more still
remained, and possibly, to eradicate so old an evil, no cure less
drastic than universal servitude would have sufficed. Italians felt
for the first time what before only the greatest among them had
felt--that they were brothers in one household, children of one mother
whom they were bound to redeem. Jealousies and millennial feuds died
out; the intense municipal spirit which, imperfect as it was, had yet
in it precious political germs, widened into patriotism. Italy was
re-born.

Black, however, was the present outlook. Total commercial stagnation
and famine increased the sentiment of unmitigated hopelessness which
spread through the land. The poet Monti, who, alas! sang for bread the
festival songs of the Austrians as he had sung those of Napoleon, said
in private to an Englishman who asked him why he did not give his
voice to the liberties of his country which he desired, though he did
not expect to see them: 'It would be _vox clamantis in deserto_;
besides, how can the grievances of Italy be made known? No one dares
to write--scarcely to think--politics; if truth is to be told, it must
be told by the English; England is the only tribunal yet open to the
complaints of Europe.' A greater poet and nobler man, Ugo Foscolo, had
but lately uttered a wail still more despondent: 'Italy will soon be
nothing but a lifeless carcass, and her generous sons should only
weep in silence without the impotent complaints and mutual
recriminations of slaves.' That as patriotic a heart as ever beat
should have been afflicted to this point by the canker of despair
tells of the quagmire--not only political but spiritual--into which
Italy was sunk. The first thing needful was to restore the people to
consciousness, to animation of some sort, it did not matter what, so
it were a sign of life. Foscolo himself, who impressed on what he
wrote his own proud and scornful temperament, almost savage in its
independence, fired his countrymen to better things than the
despairing inertia which he preached. Few works have had more effect
than his _Letters of Jacobo Ortis_. As often happens with books which
strongly move contemporaries, the reader may wonder now what was the
secret of its power, but if the form and sentiment of the Italian
_Werther_ strike us as antiquated, the intense, though melancholy
patriotism that pervades it explains the excitement it caused when
patriotism was a statutory offence. Such mutilated copies as were
allowed to pass by the censor were eagerly sought; the young read it,
women read it--who so rarely read--the mothers of the fighters of
to-morrow. Foscolo's life gave force to his words: when all were
flattering Napoleon, he had reminded him that no man can be rightly
praised till he is dead, and that his one sure way of winning the
praise of posterity was to establish the independence of Italy. The
warning was contained in a 'discourse' which Foscolo afterwards
printed with the motto from Sophocles: 'My soul groans for my country,
for myself and for thee.' Sooner than live under the Austrians, he
went into voluntary exile, and finally took refuge in England, where
he was the _fêted_ lion of a season, and then forgotten, and left
almost without the necessaries of life. No one was much to blame;
Foscolo was born to misunderstand and to be misunderstood; he hid
himself to hide his poverty, which, had it been known, might have been
alleviated. His individual tragedy seemed a part of the universal
tragedy.

With Foscolo, his literary predecessor Alfieri must be mentioned as
having helped in rekindling the embers, of patriotic feeling, because,
though dead, he spoke; and his plays, one of which was prophetically
dedicated _al libero Popolo Italiano_, had never been so much read.
The _Misogallo_, published for the first time after the fall of
Napoleon, though aimed at the French, served equally well as an
onslaught on every foreign dominion or even moral or intellectual
influence. 'Shall _we_ learn liberty of the Gauls, _we_ who taught
every lofty thing to others?' was a healthy remonstrance to a race
that had lost faith in itself; and the Austrians were wise in
discountenancing the sale of a work that contained the line which gave
a watchword to the future:--

      _Schiavi or siam si; ma schiavi almen frementi_.

Like Foscolo's, Alfieri's life was a lesson in independence: angry at
the scant measure of freedom in Piedmont, he could never be induced to
go near his sovereign till Charles Emmanuel was staying at Florence as
a proscript. Then the poet went to pay his respects to him, and was
received with the good-humoured banter: 'Well, Signor Conte, here am
I, a king, in the condition you would like to see them all.'

Against the classical, not to say pagan, leanings of these two poets,
a reaction set in with Alessandro Manzoni, the founder of Italian
Romanticism, to which he gave an aspect differing from that which the
same movement wore in France, because he was an ardent Catholic at a
time when Christianity had almost the charm of novelty. His religious
outpourings combine the fervour of the Middle Ages with modern
expansion, and he freed the Italian language from pedantic
restrictions without impairing its dignity. It was once the fashion to
inveigh against Manzoni for, as it was said, inculcating resignation;
but he did nothing of the kind. As a young man he had sung of the
Italians as 'Figli tutti d'un solo Riscatto,' and though he was not of
those who fight either with the sword or the pen, yet that 'Riscatto'
was the dream of his youth and manhood, and the joy of his old age.
His gentleness was never contaminated by servility, and the love for
his country, profound if placid, which appears in every line of his
writings, appealed to a class that could not be reached by fiery
turbulence of thought.

In an age when newspapers have taken the place of books, it may seem
strange to ascribe any serious effect to the works of poets and
romancists; but in the Italy of that date there were no newspapers to
speak of; the ordinary channels of opinion were blocked up. Books were
still not only read, but discussed and thought over, and every slight
allusion to the times was instantly applied. In the prevailing
listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of
importance. A spark of genius does much to raise a nation. It is in
itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people
does not produce men of genius. Whatever awakes one part of the
intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more than
you can degrade, the heart of man piecemeal. In this sense not
literature only but also music helped, who can say how effectually, to
bring Italy back to life. The land was refreshed by a flood of purely
national song, full of the laughter and the tears of Italian
character, of the sunshine and the storms of Italian nature. Music,
the only art uncageable as the human soul, descended as a gift from
heaven upon the people whose articulate utterance was stifled. And

   ... No speech may evince
  Feeling like music.






CHAPTER II

THE WORK OF THE CARBONARI

1815-1821

Revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples and in Piedmont--The Conspiracy
against Charles Albert.


Considering what the state of the country was after 1815, and how
apparently inexhaustible were the resources of the Empire of which the
petty princes of the peninsula were but puppets, it is remarkable that
political agitation, with a view to reversing the decisions of Vienna,
should have begun so soon, and on so large a scale. Not that the
nation, as a whole, was yet prepared to move; every revolution, till
1848, was partial in the sense that the mass of the people stood
aloof, because unconvinced of the possibility of loosening their
chains. But, during that long succession of years, the number of
Italians ready to embark on enterprises of the most desperate
character, accounting as nothing the smallness of the chance of
success, seems enormous when the risks they ran and the difficulties
they faced are fully recognised. Among the means which were effective
in first rousing Italy from her lethargy, and in fostering the will to
acquire her independence at all costs, the secret society of the
Carbonari undoubtedly occupies the front rank. The Carbonari acted in
two ways; by what they did and by what they caused to be done by
others who were outside their society, and perhaps unfavourable to it,
but who were none the less sensible of the pressure it exercised. The
origin of Carbonarism has been sought in vain; as a specimen of the
childish fables that once passed for its history may be noticed the
legend that Francis I. of France once stumbled on a charcoal burner's
hut when hunting 'on the frontiers of his kingdom next to Scotland,'
and was initiated into the rites similar to those in use among the
sectaries of the nineteenth century. Those rites referred to vengeance
which was to be taken on the wolf that slew the lamb; the wolf
standing for tyrants and oppressors, and the lamb for Jesus Christ,
the sinless victim, by whom all the oppressed were represented. The
Carbonari themselves generally believed that they were heirs to an
organisation started in Germany before the eleventh century, under the
name of the Faith of the Kohlen-Brenners, of which Theobald de Brie,
who was afterwards canonised, was a member. Theobald was adopted as
patron saint of the modern society, and his fancied portrait figured
in all the lodges. That any weight should have been attached to these
pretensions to antiquity may appear strange to us, as it certainly did
not matter whether an association bent on the liberation of Italy had
or had not existed in German forests eight hundred years before; age
and mystery, however, have a great popular attraction, the first as an
object of reverence, the second as food for curiosity with the
profane, and a bond of union among the initiated. The religious
symbolism of the Carbonari, their oaths and ceremonies, and the axes,
blocks and other furniture of the initiatory chamber, were well
calculated to impress the poorer and more ignorant and excitable of
the brethren. The Vatican affected to believe that Carbonarism was an
offshoot of Freemasonry, but, in spite of sundry points of
resemblance, such as the engagements of mutual help assumed by
members, there seems to have been no real connection between the two.
Political Freemasonry remained somewhat of an exotic in Italy, and was
inclined to regard France as its centre. As far as can be ascertained,
it gave a general support to Napoleon, while Carbonarism rejected
every foreign yoke. The practical aims of the Carbonari may be summed
up in two words: freedom and independence. From the first they had the
penetration to grasp the fact that independence, even if obtained,
could not be preserved without freedom; but though their predilections
were theoretically republican, they did not make a particular form of
government a matter of principle. Nor were they agreed in a definite
advocacy of the unity of Italy.

A Genoese of the name of Malghella, who was Murat's Minister of
Police, was the first person to give a powerful impetus to
Carbonarism, of which he has even been called the inventor, but the
inference goes too far. Malghella ended miserably; after the fall of
Murat he was arrested by the Austrians, who consigned him as a new
subject to the Sardinian Government, which immediately put him in
prison. His name is hardly known, but no Italian of his time worked
more assiduously, or in some respects more intelligently, for the
emancipation of Italy. Whatever was truly Italian in Murat's policy
must be mainly attributed to him. As early as 1813 he urged the King
to declare himself frankly for independence, and to grant a
constitution to his Neapolitan subjects. But Malghella did not find
the destined saviour of Italy in Murat; his one lasting work was to
establish Carbonarism on so strong a basis that, when the Bourbons
returned, there were thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of
Carbonari in all parts of the realm. The discovery was not a pleasant
one to the restored rulers, and the Prince of Canosa, the new Minister
of Police, thought to counteract the evil done by his predecessor by
setting up an abominable secret society called the Calderai del
Contrapeso (Braziers of the Counterpoise), principally recruited from
the refuse of the people, lazzaroni, bandits and let-out convicts, who
were provided by Government with 20,000 muskets, and were sworn to
exterminate all enemies of the Church of Rome, whether Jansenists,
Freemasons or Carbonari. This association committed some horrible
excesses, but otherwise it had no results. The Carbonari closed in
their ranks, and learnt to observe more strictly their rules of
secrecy. From the kingdom of Naples, Carbonarism spread to the Roman
states, and found a congenial soil in Romagna, which became the focus
whence it spread over the rest of Italy. It was natural that it should
take the colour, more or less, of the places where it grew. In
Romagna, where political assassination is in the blood of the people,
a dagger was substituted for the symbolical woodman's axe in the
initiatory rites. It was probably only in Romagna that the
conventional threat against informers was often carried out. The
Romagnols invested Carbonarism with the wild intensity of their own
temperament, resolute even to crime, but capable of supreme impersonal
enthusiasm. The ferment of expectancy that prevailed in Romagna is
reflected in the Letters and Journals of Lord Byron, whom young Count
Pietro Gamba made a Carbonaro, and who looked forward to seeing the
Italians send the barbarians of all nations back to their own dens, as
to the most interesting spectacle and moment in existence. His lower
apartments, he writes, were full of the bayonets, fusils and
cartridges of his Carbonari cronies; 'I suppose that they consider me
as a dépôt, to be sacrificed in case of accidents. It is no great
matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is
sacrificed. It is a grand object--the very poetry of politics. Only
think--free Italy!!! Why, there has been nothing like it since the
days of Augustus.'

The movement on which such great hopes were set was to begin in the
kingdom of Naples in the spring of 1820. The concession of the
hard-won Spanish Constitution in the month of March encouraged the
Neapolitans to believe that they might get a like boon from their own
King if they directed all the forces at their command to this single
end. To avoid being compromised, they sought rather to dissociate
themselves from the patriots of other parts of Italy than to
co-operate with them in an united effort. The Carbonari of the
Neapolitan kingdom, who were the entire authors of the revolution,
which, after many unfortunate delays, broke out on the 1st of July,
had good cause for thinking that they were in a position to dictate
terms; the mistake they made was to suppose that a charter conceded by
a Bourbon of Naples could ever be worth the paper on which it was
written. Not only among the people, but in the army the Carbonari had
thousands of followers on whom they could rely, and several whole
regiments were only waiting their orders to rise in open revolt. The
scheme was to take possession of the persons of the King and the royal
family, and retain them as hostages till the Constitution was granted.
Such extreme measures were not necessary. The standard of rebellion
was raised at Monteforte by two officers named Morelli and Silvati,
who had brought over a troop of cavalry from Nola, and by the priest
Menechini. In all Neapolitan insurrections there was sure to be a
priest; the Neapolitan Church, much though there is to be laid to its
account, must be admitted to have frequently shown sympathy with the
popular side. Menechini enjoyed an immense, if brief, popularity which
he used to allay the anger of the mob and to procure the safety of
obnoxious persons. The King sent two generals and a body of troops
against the Chartists, but when the Carbonari symbols were recognised
on the insurgent flags, the troops showed such clear signs of wishing
to go over to the enemy that they were quietly taken back to Naples.
The cry of 'God, the King, and the Constitution,' was taken up through
the land; General Pepe, who had long been a Carbonaro in secret, was
enthusiastically hailed as commander of the Chartist forces, which
practically comprised the whole army. The King was powerless; besides
which, when pushed up into any corner people who do not mind breaking
their word have a facility for hard swearing. On the 13th of July,
Ferdinand standing at the altar of the royal chapel, with his hand on
the Bible, swore to defend and maintain the Constitution which he had
just granted. If he failed to do so, he called upon his subjects to
disobey him, and God to call him to account. These words he read from
a written form; as if they were not enough, he added, with his eyes on
the cross, and his face turned towards heaven: 'Omnipotent God, who
with Thine infinite power canst read the soul of man and the future,
do Thou, if I speak falsely, or intend to break my oath, at this
moment direct the thunder of Thy vengeance on my head.'

The Neapolitans had got their liberties, but they soon found
themselves face to face with perplexities which would have taxed the
powers of men both wiser and more experienced in free government than
they were. In the first place, although a revolution may be made by a
sect, a government cannot be carried on by one. The Carbonari who had
won the day were blind to this self-evident truth; and, to make
matters worse, there was a split in their party, some of them being
disposed to throw off the Bourbon yoke altogether; a natural desire,
but as it was only felt by a minority, it added to the general
confusion. Then came, as it was sure to come, the cry for separation
from Sicily. The Sicilians wanted back the violated constitution
obtained for them by the English in 1812, and would have nothing to do
with that offered them from Naples. In every one of the struggles
between Sicily and Naples, it is impossible to refuse sympathy to the
islanders, who, in the pride of their splendid independent history,
deemed themselves the victims of an inferior race; but it is equally
impossible to ignore that, politically, they were in the wrong. In
union, and in union alone, lay the only chance of resisting the
international plot to keep the South Italian populations in perpetual
bondage. The Sicilian revolt was put down at first mildly, and
finally, as mildness had no effect, with the usual violence by the
Neapolitan Constitutional Government, which could not avoid losing
credit and popularity in the operation. Meanwhile, the three persons
who traded under the name of Europe met at Troppau, and came readily
to the conclusion that 'the sovereigns of the Holy Alliance exercised
an incontestable right in taking common measures of security against
states which the overthrow of authority by revolt placed in a hostile
attitude towards every legitimate government.' The assumption was too
broadly stated, even for Lord Castlereagh's acceptance; but he was
contented to make a gentle protest, which he further nullified by
allowing that, in the present case, intervention was very likely
justified. France expressed no disapproval. Only the Netherlands,
Switzerland, Sweden and Spain gave the Constitutional _régime_ tacit
support by recognising it. The Emperor of Russia was very anxious to
take part in the business, and would have sent off an army instantly
had not his royal brother of Prussia hesitated to consent to the
inconvenience of a Cossack march through his territory. The work was
left, therefore, to the Emperor of Austria. Before entering upon it,
it occurred to these three to invite the King of Naples to meet them
at Laybach. They knew his character.

Ferdinand assured his Parliament that he was going to Laybach solely
to induce the Holy Alliance to think better of its opposition, and to
agree, at least, to all the principal features of the new state of
things. Most foolishly the Parliament, which, according to the
Constitution, might have vetoed his leaving the country, let him go.
Before starting he wrote an open letter to his dear son, the Duke of
Calabria, who was appointed Regent, in which he said: 'I shall defend
the events of the past July before the Congress. I firmly desire the
Spanish Constitution for my kingdom; and although I rely on the
justice of the assembled sovereigns, and on their old friendship,
still it is well to tell you that, in whatever circumstance it may
please God to place me, my course will be what I have manifested on
this sheet, strong and unchangeable either by force or by the flattery
of others.'

Brave words! News came in due time of the sequel. On the 9th of
February 1821, the Regent received a letter from the King, in which he
gave the one piece of advice that the people should submit to their
fate quietly. He was coming back with 50,000 Austrians, and a Russian
army was ready to start if wanted. Nevertheless, to prevent a sudden
outbreak before the foreign troops arrived, the Regent carried on a
game of duplicity to the last, and pretended to second, whilst he
really baulked, the preparations for resistance decreed by Parliament.
Baron Poerio, the father of two patriot martyrs of the future,
sustained the national dignity by urging Parliament to yield only to
force, and to defy the barbarous horde which was bearing down on the
country. The closing scene is soon told. On the 7th of March, in the
mountains near Rieti, General Guglielmo Pepe, with 8000 regular troops
and a handful of militia, encountered an overwhelmingly superior force
of Austrians. The Neapolitans stood out well for six hours, but on the
Austrian reserves coming up, they were completely routed, and obliged
to fly in all directions.

'Order reigned' in the kingdom of Naples. In Sicily, a gallant attempt
at insurrection was begun, but there was not the spirit to go on with
it, and General Rossaroll, its initiator, had to fly to Spain. The
afterpiece is what might have been expected; an insensate desire for
vengeance got hold of Ferdinand, and the last years of his life were
spent in hunting down his enemies, real or imaginary. Morelli and
Silvati were hung, the fugitives, Pepe and Rossaroll, were condemned
to death, but this was only the beginning. The Austrian commander
counselled mercy, but in this respect the King showed an independent
mind. A court-martial was instituted to examine the conduct of
ecclesiastics, public functionaries and soldiers, from the year 1793
downwards. No one was safe who had expressed a dislike of absolutism
within the last thirty years. A blameless gentleman who was a
Carbonaro, was conducted through Naples on the back of an ass, and
beaten with a whip, to which nails were attached. Eight hundred
persons are said to have perished at the hands of the state in one
year. Ferdinand himself expired on the 3rd of January 1825, after
misgoverning for sixty-five years.

The Neapolitan revolution had just collapsed, when another broke out
in Piedmont, which, though short in duration, was to have far-reaching
consequences.

At that time, the King of Sardinia was Victor Emmanuel I., who
succeeded his brother Charles Emmanuel in 1802, when the latter
abdicated and retired to Rome, where he joined the Society of Jesus.
Victor Emmanuel's only son was dead, and the throne would devolve on
his youngest brother, Charles Felix, Duke of Genoa, whom reasons of
state led to abandon the wish to become a monk, which he had formed as
a boy of eleven, on being taken to visit a convent near Turin. But
Charles Felix, though married, was without children, and the
legitimate heir-presumptive was Charles Albert, Prince of Carignano,
who represented the younger branch of the family, which divided from
the main line in the early part of the seventeenth century. Charles
Albert's father was the luckless Prince Charles of Carignano, who,
alone of his house, came to terms with Napoleon, who promised him a
pension, which was not paid. His mother, a Saxon Princess, paraded the
streets of Turin, dressed in the last republican fashion, with her
infant son in her arms. Afterwards, she gave him a miscellaneous
education, that included a large dose of Rousseau from a Swiss
professor. The boy was shifted from place to place, happier when his
mother forgot him, than when, in temporary recollection of his
existence, she called him to her. Once when he was travelling with the
Princess and her second husband, M. de Montléart, Charles Albert was
made to sit on the box of the carriage, in a temperature many degrees
below zero.

His uncles (as the King and Charles Felix called themselves, though
they were his cousins) heard with natural horror of the vagaries of
the Princess of Carignano, and they extended their antipathy from the
mother to the son, even when he was a child. In Victor Emmanuel, this
antipathy was moderated by the easy good-nature of his character; in
Charles Felix, it degenerated into an intense hatred.

It is a singular thing that Prince Metternich, from the very first,
had an instinctive feeling that the unfortunate boy, who seemed the
most hopeless and helpless of human creatures, would prove the evil
genius of the Austrian power. He therefore set to work to deprive him
of his eventual rights. He was confident of success, as fortune had
arranged matters in a manner that offered a ready-made plan for
carrying out the design. Victor Emmanuel had four daughters, precluded
from reigning by the Salic law, which was in force in Piedmont. His
wife, the Queen Maria Teresa, a woman of great beauty and insatiable
ambition, was sister to the Austrian Archduke Francis d'Este, Duke of
Modena. Francis had never married, having been robbed of his intended
bride, the Archduchess Marie-Louise, by her betrothal to Napoleon.
What simpler than to marry the eldest of the Sardinian princesses to
her uncle, abrogate the Salic law, and calmly await the desired
consummation of an Austrian prince, by right of his wife, occupying
the Sardinian throne?

The first step was soon taken; princesses came into the world to be
sacrificed. The plot ran on for some time, the Queen, who was in the
habit of calling Charles Albert 'that little vagrant,' giving it her
indefatigable support. Victor Emmanuel was weak, and stood in
considerable awe of his wife, who had obtained a great ascendancy over
him in the miserable days of their residence in the island of
Sardinia. His nephew, who was almost or wholly unknown to him, partook
of the nature of a disagreeable myth. Nevertheless he had a sense of
justice, as well as Savoy blood, in his veins--he resisted; but the
day came when his surrender seemed probable. Just at that moment,
however, the Duke of Modena prematurely revealed the project by asking
through his representative at the Congress of Vienna for the port of
Spezia, in order that he might conveniently connect his own state with
his prospective possession, the island of Sardinia. Prince Talleyrand
was alarmed by the vision of Austria supreme in the Mediterranean, and
through his opposition the conspiracy, for the time, was upset, and
the rights of Charles Albert were recognised.

Curiously enough, Prince Metternich had insisted on the young Prince,
then seventeen, visiting the headquarters of the Allies. Charles Felix
(who was unconnected with the Modena scheme) wrote a letter to the
King on this subject, in which he stated it as his belief that the
Austrian plan was to get Charles Albert accidentally killed, or to
plunge him in vice, or to make him contract a discreditable marriage.
This was why they had invited him to their camp. He adds the
characteristic remark that their nephew would be in no less danger at
the headquarters of the Duke of Wellington 'à cause de la religion.'
Have him home and have him married, is his advice. 'We are well
treated, because there is the expectation of soon devouring our
remains by extinguishing the House of Savoy. It is the habit of the
cabinet of Vienna; it was thus they made an end of the House of Este.'

These counsels were the more likely to impress Victor Emmanuel from
his knowledge that they were inspired by no shadow of personal
interest in 'the little vagrant,' but by the race-feeling alone. The
Queen contrived to prevent the immediate recall of the Prince of
Carignano, but she was obliged to give way, and he was definitely
established in Piedmont. In 1818 he was married at Florence to the
Archduchess Maria Teresa of Tuscany, who, on the 14th of March 1820,
gave birth to the child that was to become the first King of Italy.

Very soon after his return to his country, the hopes of the Liberal
party began to centre in the young Prince, whom some of their more
ardent spirits already saluted as the rising sun. Those who made his
acquaintance were fascinated by the charm of manner which he could
always exert when he chose, and were confirmed in their hopes by his
evident susceptibility to the magnetism of new ideas and fatalistic
ambitions. What they did not perceive was, that in his nature lay
that ingrained tendency to drift before the wind, which is the most
dangerous thing in politics. In the mid-sea of events he might
change his course without conscious insincerity, but with the
self-abandonment of a mind which, under pressure, loses the sense of
personal responsibility.

In Piedmont, Carbonarism had made great way among the upper classes
and among the younger officers; the flower of the country was enrolled
in its ranks, and the impatience to take some action towards procuring
free institutions for themselves, and doing something for their
Lombard brothers, had reached fever heat in the spring of 1821, when
the affairs of Naples were creating much excitement. The principal
conspirators, noble young men, full of unselfish ardour, were the
chosen friends and companions of the Prince of Carignano. It was
formerly the opinion that they made him the confidant of their plans
from the first, that he was one of them, in short--a Carbonaro bound
by all the oaths and obligations of the society. The judgment of his
conduct afterwards is, of course, much affected by this point; were
the assumption correct, the invectives launched against him, not by
any means only by republican writers, would hardly seem excessive. But
by the light of documents issued in recent times, it appears more just
as well as more charitable to suppose that Charles Albert's complicity
was of a much less precise character. A little encouragement from a
prince goes a long way.

According to his own account, he was taken by surprise when, on the
and or 3rd of March, his friends Carail, Collegno, Santa Rosa and
Lisio came to tell him in secret that they belonged to societies
which had been long working for the independence of Italy, and that
they reckoned on him, knowing well his affection for his country, to
aid them in obtaining from the King some few first concessions, which
would be the prelude of a glorious future. It is clear that he ought
either to have broken with them altogether from that moment or to have
cast his lot with them for good or evil. He tried a middle course. He
induced the conspirators to put off the revolution by which they
intended to enforce their demands, and he conveyed to the King
information of what had happened, asking at the same time that no
measures should be taken against incriminated persons.

In fact, no precautions of any kind seem to have been taken. Victor
Emmanuel, frightened at first, was soon reassured. The revolution, which
was to have begun on the 8th, actually broke out on the 10th of March at
Alessandria, where the counter orders issued at Charles. Albert's
request, after the interview just described, were not obeyed. The
garrison 'pronounced' in favour of the Spanish Constitution. It was now
impossible to draw back. From Alessandria the revolution spread to the
capital. The bulk of the army sympathised with the movement, and relied
on the support of the people. The greatest ladies mixed with the crowds
which gathered under the Carbonaro flag--black, blue and red. On the
other hand, there were a few devoted servants of the House of Savoy who
beheld these novelties with the sensations of a quiet person who sees
from his window the breaking loose of a menagerie. Invincibly ignorant
of all that was really inspiring in this first breath of freedom, they
saw nothing in it but an unwarrantable attack on the authority of their
amiable, if weak, old King, for whom they would gladly have shed every
drop of their blood--not from the rational esteem which the people of
Italy, like the people of England, now feel for their sovereign, but
from the pure passion of loyalty which made the cavalier stand blindly
by his prince, whether he was good or bad, in the right or in the wrong.
Men of their type watched the evolution of Piedmont into Italy from
first to last with the same presentiment of evil, the same moral
incapacity of appreciation. A handful of these loyal servitors hurried
to Victor Emmanuel to offer their assistance. They marshalled their
troop in battle-array in the courtyard of the palace. Their arms were
antiquated pistols and rapiers, and they themselves were veterans, some
of them of eighty years, mounted on steeds as ancient. The King thanked
them, but declined their services; nor would he give _carte blanche_ to
Captain Raimondi, who assured him that with his one company he could
suppress the insurrection if invested with full powers. Soon after this
refusal, a firing of guns announced that the citadel was in the hands
of the insurgents. The troops within and without fraternised; it was a
fine moment for those who knew history and who were bent in their hearts
on driving the foreigner out of Italy. Here at the citadel of Turin,
during the siege of 1706, occurred the memorable deed of Pietro Micca,
the peasant-soldier, who, when he heard the enemy thundering at the door
of the gallery, thought life and the welcome of wife and child and the
happy return to his village of less account than duty, and fired the
mine which sent him and three companies of French Grenadiers to their
final reckoning.

After vacillating for two or three days, Victor Emmanuel abdicated on
the 13th of March. The Queen desired to be appointed regent, but, to
her intense vexation, the appointment was given to Charles Albert. A
more unenviable honour never fell to the lot of man.

Deserted by the ministers of the crown, who resigned in a body, alone
in the midst of a triumphant revolution, appealed to in the name of
those sentiments of patriotism which he could never hear invoked
unmoved, the young Prince uttered the words which were as good as a
surrender: 'I, too, am an Italian!' That evening he allowed the
Spanish Constitution to be proclaimed subject to the arrival of the
orders of the new King.

The new King! No one remembered that there existed such a person. Nor
had anyone recollected that the Spanish Constitution abrogated the
Salic law, and that hence, instead of a new King, they had a new
Queen--the wife of the Duke of Modena! An eminent Turinese
jurisconsulist, who was probably the only possessor of a copy of the
charter in the town which was screaming itself hoarse for it, divulged
this awkward discovery.--Several hours were spent in anxious
discussion, when the brilliant suggestion was made that the article
should be cancelled. The article was cancelled.

But Charles Felix could not be disposed of so easily. The news of the
late events reached him at Modena of all places in the world, the
rallying-point of the Prince of Carignano's bitterest foes. He was not
long in sending his orders. He repudiated everything that had been
done, and commanded Charles Albert, 'if he had a drop of our royal
blood left in his veins,' to leave the capital instantly for Novara,
where he was to await his further instructions.

Charles Albert obeyed. He was accompanied on his journey--or, as it
may be called, his flight--by such of the troops as remained loyal.
At Novara he found a sentence of exile, in a fresh order, to quit
Piedmontese territory. Tuscany was indicated as the state where he was
to reside.

The Austrians crossed the frontier with the consent of the King.
Charles Felix's opinion of Austria has been already given; another
time he said: 'Austria is a sort of bird-lime which, if you get it on
your fingers, you can never rub off.' If anything was needed to
increase his loathing for the revolution, it was the necessity in
which it placed him, as he thought, of calling in this unloved ally.
But Charles Felix was not the man to hesitate. Not caring a straw for
the privilege of wearing a crown himself, his belief in the divine
right of kings, and the obligation to defend it, amounted to
monomania. The Austrian offer was therefore accepted. On her part
Austria declined the obliging proposal of the Czar of a loan of
100,000 men. She felt that she could do the work unaided, nor was she
mistaken.

On the 8th of April the Constitutionalist troops which marched towards
Novara, sanguine that the loyal regiments there quartered would end by
joining them, were met by an armed resistance, in which the
newly-arrived Austrians assisted. Their defeat was complete, and it
was the signal of the downfall of the revolution. The leaders retired
from Turin to Alessandria, and thence to Genoa, that had risen last
and was last to submit. Thus most of them escaped by sea, which was
fortunate, as Charles Felix had the will to establish a White Terror,
and was only prevented by the circumstance that nearly all the
proposed victims were outside his kingdom. Capital sentences were sent
after them by the folio: there was hardly a noble family which had not
one of its members condemned to death. When his brother, Victor
Emmanuel, recommended mercy, he told him that he was entirely ready
to give him back the crown, but that, while he reigned, he should
reign after his own ideas. He seems to have had thoughts of hanging
the Prince of Carignano, and for a long time he seriously meant to
devise the kingdom to his son, the infant Prince Victor. Thus a new
set of obstacles arose between Charles Albert and the throne.

Of the personal friends of that ill-starred Prince all escaped. One of
them, the noble-minded Count Santorre di Santa Rosa, died fighting for
liberty in Greece. In the miseries of exile and poverty he had never
lost faith in his country, but fearlessly maintained that 'the
emancipation of Italy was an event of the nineteenth century.' To
another, Giacinta di Collegno, it was reserved to receive the dying
breath of Charles Albert, when as an exiled and crownless king he
found rest, at last, at Oporto.

There were deeper reasons than any which appear on the surface for the
failure of the revolutionary movements of this period. North and
south, though the populations exhibited a childish delight at the
overthrow of the old, despotic form of government, their effervescence
ended as rapidly as it began. They did not really understand what was
going on. 'By-the-bye, what _is_ this same constitution they are
making such a noise about?' asked a lazzarone who had been shouting
'Viva la Costituzione' all the day. Within a few weeks of the
breakdown at Novara, Count Confalonieri wrote wisely to Gino Capponi
that revolutions are not made by high intelligences, but by the masses
which are moved by enthusiasm, and for a possibility of success, the
word Constitution, the least magical of words, should have been
replaced by the more comprehensible and stirring call: 'War to the
stranger.' But this, instead of sounding from every housetop, was
purposely stifled at Naples, and kept a mysterious secret in
Piedmont.






CHAPTER III

PRISON AND SCAFFOLD

1821-1831

Political Trials in Venetia and Lombardy--Risings in the South and
Centre--Ciro Menotti.


The Austrians fully expected a rising in Lombardy in the middle of
March, and that they were not without serious fears as to its
consequences is proved by the preparations which they quietly made to
abandon Milan, if necessary. The Court travelling-carriages were got
ready, and the younger princes were sent away. Carbonarism had been
introduced into Lombardy the year before by two Romagnols, Count
Laderchi and Pietro Maroncelli. It was their propaganda that put the
Austrian Government on the alert, and was the cause of the Imperial
decree which denounced the society as a subversive conspiracy, aiming
at the destruction of all constituted authority, and pointed to death
and confiscation of property as the penalty for joining it. There was
the additional clause, destined to bear terrible fruit, which declared
accomplices, punishable with life-imprisonment, all who knew of the
existence of lodges (_Vendite_, as they were called) or the names of
associates, without informing the police. In the autumn of 1820,
Maroncelli and many others, including Silvio Pellico, the young
Piedmontese poet, were arrested as Carbonari, while the arrest of the
so-called accomplices began with Count Giovanni Arrivabene of Mantua,
who had no connection with the society, but was charged with having
heard from Pellico that he was a member. Pellico and his companions
were still lying untried in the horrible Venetian prisons, called,
from their leaden roofs, the 'Piombi,' when the events of 1821 gave
rise to a wholesale batch of new arrests. As soon as they knew of a
movement in Piedmont, the Lombard patriots prepared to co-operate in
it; that they were actually able to do nothing, was because it broke
out prematurely, and also, to some extent, because their head, Count
Confalonieri, was incapacitated by severe illness. But though their
activity profited not at all to the cause, it was fatal to
themselves. The Austrian Government had, as has been stated, a
correct general notion of what was going on, but at the beginning it
almost entirely lacked proofs which could inculpate individuals. In
the matter of arrests, however, there was one sovereign rule which all
the despotic Governments in Italy could and did follow in every
emergency: it was to lay hands on the most intelligent, distinguished
and upright members of the community. This plan never failed; these
were the patriots, the conspirators of those days. The second thing
which the Austrians made a rule of doing, was to extort from the
prisoners some incautious word, some shadow of an assent or admission
which would place them on the track of other compromised persons, and
furnish them with such scraps of evidence as they deemed sufficient,
in order to proceed against those already in their power. In their
secret examination of prisoners, they had reduced the system of
provocative interrogation to a science. They made use of every
subterfuge, and, above all, of fabricated confessions fathered on
friends of the prisoner, to extract the exclamation, the nod of the
head, the confused answer, which served their purpose. The prisoners,
men of good faith, and inexperienced in the arts of deception, were
but children in their hands, and scarcely one of them was not doomed
to be the involuntary cause of some other person's ruin--generally
that of a dear and intimate friend.

The first to be arrested was Gaetano De-Castillia, who went with the
Marquis Giorgio Pallavicini on a mission to Piedmont while the
revolution there was at its height. They even had an interview with
the Prince of Carignano, 'a pale and tall young man, with a charming
expression' (so Pallavicini describes him), but had obtained from him
no assurance, except the characteristic parting word: 'Let us hope in
the future.' When De-Castillia was arrested, Pallavicini, then a youth
of twenty, and full of noble sentiments, rushed to the director of the
police with the avowal: 'It was I who induced De-Castillia to go to
Piedmont; if the journey was a crime, the fault is mine; punish me!'
No error could have proved more calamitous; till that moment the
Austrians were in ignorance of the Piedmontese mission; De-Castillia
was arrested on some far more trifling charge. Pallavicini's generous
folly was rewarded by fourteen years' imprisonment, and its first
consequence was the arrest of Count Confalonieri, at whose instance
the visit to Turin had been made. For months the Austrians had desired
to have a clue against him; the opportunity was come at last.

Federico Confalonieri, brilliant, handsome, persuasive, of great
wealth and ancient lineage, innately aristocratic, but in the best
sense, was morally at the head of Lombardy, by the selection of the
fittest, which at certain junctures makes one man pre-appointed leader
while he is still untried. When in England, the Duke of Sussex
prevailed upon him to become a Freemason, but he was not a Carbonaro
in the technical sense, though both friends and foes believed him to
be one. He knew, however, more about this and the other secret
societies then existing in Italy--even those of the reactionary
party--than did most of the initiated. In an amusing passage in his
memoirs he relates how, when once forcibly detained in a miserable
hostelry in the Calabrian Mountains, a den of brigands, of whom the
chief was the landlord, he guessed that this man was a Calderaio, and
it occurred to him to make the sign of that bloodthirsty sect. Things
changed in a second; the brigand innkeeper was at his feet, the
complete household was set in motion to serve him. In 1821, he
founded at Milan, not a secret society, but an association in which
all the best patriots were enrolled, and of which the sole engagement
was the formula, repeated on entering its ranks: 'I swear to God, and
on my honour, to exert myself to the utmost of my power, and even at
the sacrifice of my life, to redeem Italy from foreign dominion.'

Knowing to what extent he was a marked man, Confalonieri would have
only exercised common prudence in leaving the country, but he could
not reconcile himself to the idea of flight. Anonymous warnings rained
upon him: most likely they all came from the same quarter, from Count
Bubna, the Austrian Field-Marshal, with whom Confalonieri was
personally on friendly terms. On the 12th of December the Countess
Bubna made a last effort to save him; her carriage was ready, she
implored him to take it and escape across the frontier. He refused,
and next day he was arrested.

Austrian legal procedure was slow; the trial of the first Carbonari,
Silvio Pellico and his companions, did not take place till 1822. On
the 22nd of February the sentence of death was read to Silvio Pellico
in his Venetian prison, to be commuted to one of fifteen years'
imprisonment at Spielberg, a fortress converted into a convict prison
in a bleak position in Moravia. To that rock of sorrow, consecrated
for ever by the sufferings of some of the purest of men, Silvio
Pellico and Pietro Maroncelli, with nine or ten companions, condemned
at the same time, were the first Italians to take the road. Here they
remained for the eight years described by the author of _Francesca da
Rimini_, in _Le Mie Prigioni_, a book that served the Italian cause
throughout the world. Even now some Italians are indignant at the
spirit of saintly resignation which breathes upon Silvio Pellico's
pages, at the veil which is drawn over many shocking features in the
treatment of the prisoners; they do not know the tremendous force
which such reticence gave his narrative. _Le Mie Prigioni_ has the
reserve strength of a Greek tragedy.

Maroncelli contracted a disease of the leg through the hardships
endured; amputation became necessary, but could not be performed till
permission was received from Vienna--a detail showing the red-tapism
which governed all branches of the Austrian administration. This
patriot went, after his release, to America, where he died, poor,
blind and mad. Pellico, crushed in soul, devoted his latter years
entirely to religion. Only men of iron fibre could come out as they
went in. The Spielberg prisoners wore chains, and their food was so
bad and scanty that they suffered from continual hunger, with its
attendant diseases. Unlike the thieves and assassins confined in the
same fortress, the State prisoners were given no news of their
families. Such was Spielberg, 'a sepulchre without the peace of the
dead.'

The State trials of the Lombard patriots in 1823 resulted in seven
capital sentences on the Milanese, thirteen on the Brescians, and four
on the Mantuans. The fate of the other prisoners depended on that of
Count Confalonieri. If the sentence on him were not carried out, the
lives at least of the others might be regarded as safe, since he was
looked upon as the head. It is certain that the authorities, and the
Emperor himself, had the most firm intention of having him executed;
the more merciful decision was solely due to the Countess
Confalonieri's journey to Vienna. Accompanied by the prisoner's aged
father, this beautiful and heroic woman, a daughter of the noble
Milanese house of Casati, went to Vienna before the conclusion of the
trial, to be ready for any eventuality. When the sentence of death was
passed, it was announced by the Emperor to old Count Confalonieri,
whom he advised to return with the Countess Teresa as fast as possible
if they wished to see the condemned man alive. Undaunted by the news,
the brave wife sought an interview with the Empress, in whom she found
a warm advocate, but who was obliged to own, after several attempts to
obtain a reprieve, that she despaired of success. Teresa Confalonieri
hurried back to Milan through the bitter winter weather, in doubt
whether she should arrive before the execution had taken place. But
the unceasing efforts of the Empress won the day. The respite was
granted on the 13th of January; life-imprisonment was substituted for
death. The countess sent her husband the pillow which she had bathed
with her tears during her terrible journey; needless to say that it
was not given to him. She died broken-hearted with waiting before he
was set at liberty in the year 1836.

When Count Confalonieri reached Vienna on his way to Spielberg, he was
surprised to find himself installed in a luxurious apartment, with
three servants to wait upon him. Though too ill to touch solid food, a
sumptuous breakfast and dinner were daily set before him; and but for
the constant jingle of his chains, he would have thought himself in a
first-class hotel on a journey of pleasure. The object of these
attentions was clear when one evening Prince Metternich came to see
him, and stayed for three hours, endeavouring by every exquisite
flattery, by every promise and persuasion, to worm out of him the
secrets of which he alone was believed to be the depositary. The
Austrian Government had spent £60,000 on the Milan Commission, and,
practically, they were no wiser than when it began. Would Confalonieri
enlighten them? Whatever scruples he might have felt during the trial
could be now laid aside; there was no question of new arrests. It was
from pure, abstract love of knowledge that the Government, or, rather,
the Emperor, desired to get at the truth. If he preferred to open his
mind to the Emperor in person, His Majesty would grant him a secret
audience. Above all, what was the real truth about the Prince of
Carignano?

All the rest was a blind; it was the wish to have some damnatory
evidence against Charles Albert, such as would for ever exclude him
from the throne, that had induced the Emperor and his astute minister
to make this final attempt.

'Confalonieri need never go to Spielberg,' said the Prince; 'let him
think of his family, of his adored wife, of his own talents, of his
future career, which was on the brink of being blotted out as
completely as if he were dead!' Confalonieri was worthy of his race,
of his class, of himself; he stood firm, and next morning, almost with
a sense of relief, he started for the living grave.

'The struggle was decided,' Prince Metternich had said in the course
of the interview, 'and decided not only for our own, but for many
generations. Those who still hoped to the contrary were madmen.'

Some years of outward quiet doubtless confirmed him in the first
opinion, while the second was not likely to be shaken by the next
attempt that was made to take up arms for freedom. On the 28th of June
1828, several villages in the province of Salerno rose in obedience to
the harangues of two patriotic ecclesiastics, Canon de Luca and Carlo
da Celle, superior of a capuchin convent. This was meant to develop
into a general insurrection, but it was nowhere followed up, and the
sword of vengeance fell speedily on the wretched villagers. Surrounded
by the royal troops, they were forced into submission, many were shot
on the spot, others were dragged in chains to Salerno, not even a drop
of water being allowed them during the journey under the scorching
sun. The village of Bosco was rased to the ground. The priest, the
monk, and twenty-two insurgents were shot after the repression. The
heads of the victims were cut off and placed in iron cages where their
wives or mothers were likely to see them. A woman went to Naples to
beg for the pardon of her two grandsons, by name Diego and Emilio. The
King, with barbarous clemency, told her to choose one. In vain she
entreated that if both could not be saved the choice should be left to
chance, or decided by someone else. But no; unless she chose they
would both be shot. At last she chose Diego. Afterwards she went mad,
and was constantly heard wailing: 'I have killed my grandson Emilio.'
This anecdote gives a fair notion of Francis I., whose short reign
was, however, less signalised by acts of cruelty, though there were
enough of these, than by a venality never surpassed. The
grooms-in-waiting and ladies-of-the-bedchamber sold the public offices
in the daylight; and the King, who was aware of it, thought it a
subject for vulgar jokes with his intimates. Francis died in 1830 of
bad humour at the Paris revolution, and was succeeded by Ferdinand
II., to be known hereafter as Bomba--then a clownish youth, one of
whose first kingly cares was to create St Ignatius Loyola a
Field-Marshal.

The revolution which upset the throne of Charles X., and ushered in
the eighteen years' reign of the Citizen King, seemed likely to have
momentous consequences for Italy. The principle of non-intervention
proclaimed by French politicians would, if logically enforced, sound
the death-knell of the Austrian power in Italy. Dupin, the Minister of
War, enlarged on the theme in a speech which appeared to remove all
doubt as to the real intentions of the Government. 'One phrase,' he
remarked, 'has made a general impression; it expresses the true
position of a loyal and generous Government. Not only has the
President of the Council laid down the principle that France should
abstain from intervention; he has declared that she would not tolerate
intervention on the part of others. France might have shut herself up
in a cold egotism, and simply said that she would not intervene; this
would have been contemptible, but the proclamation of not suffering
the interventions of others is the noblest attitude a strong and
magnanimous people can assume; it amounts to saying: Not only will I
not attack or disturb other nations, but I, France, whose voice is
respected by Europe and by the whole world, will never permit others
to do so. This is the language held by the ministry and by the
ambassadors of Louis Philippe; and it is this which the army, the
National Guard, France entire, is ready to maintain.'

Truly language was invented to travesty the truth, and when French
politicians say they are going to the right it is an almost sure sign
that they are going to the left; nevertheless, is it possible to blame
the Italians who read in these assurances a positive promise affecting
their own case?

The same assurances were repeated again and again through the winter
of 1830-31; they were repeated authoritatively as late as March in the
latter year. Well may a French writer inquire: 'Was it insanity or
treachery?'

The good tidings were published by the Italian exiles, who, living
close to the great centres of European politics, were the first to
intoxicate themselves with the great delusion. From London, Gabriele
Rossetti sent the exultant summons:

  Cingi l'elmo, la mitra deponi,
    O vetusta Signora del mondo:
    Sorgi, sorgi dal sonno profondo,
    Io son l'alba del nuovo tuo dì.

  Saran rotte le vostre catene,
    O Fratelli che in ceppi languite;
    O Fratelli che il giogo soffrite
    Calcherete quel giogo col piè.

The child beside whose cradle the ode was written, was to grow to
manhood while Italy still remained 'the weeping, desolate mother.' The
cry of the poet was not, however, without an echo. In 1831, Romagna,
Parma and Modena rose in rebellion.

Things had been going, without much variation, from bad to worse in
the Roman states, ever since 1815. Pius VII. (Chiaramonti), who died
in 1823, was succeeded by Leo XII. (Genga), an old man who was in such
enfeebled health that his death was expected at the time of his
election, but, like a more famous pontiff, he made a sudden recovery,
which was attributed to the act of a prelate, who, in prayer, offered
his own life for the Pope's, and who died a few days after resolving
on the sacrifice. During this Pope's reign, the smallpox was rife in
Rome, in consequence of the suppression of public vaccination. The
next conclave, held in 1829, resulted in the election of Pius VIII.
(Castiglioni da Cingoli), who died on the 30th of November 1830, and
was followed by Gregory XVI. (Cappellari). In each conclave, Austria
had secured the choice of a 'Zealot,' as the party afterwards called
Ultramontane was then designated. The last traces of reforms
introduced by the French disappeared; criminal justice was again
administered in secret; the police were arbitrary and irresponsible.
All over the Roman states, but especially in Romagna, the secret
society of the Sanfedesti flourished exceedingly; whether, as is
probable, an offshoot of the Calderai or of indigenous growth, its
aims were the same. The affiliated swore to spill the last drop of the
blood of the Liberals, without regard to sex or rank, and to spare
neither children nor old men. Many Romagnols had left their country
after the abortive agitation of 1821, and amongst these were the
Gambas. Count Pietro died in Greece, where he had gone on the service
of freedom. Had he lived, this young man would have been sure to win a
fair name in the annals of Italian patriotism; he should not, as it
is, be quite forgotten, as it was chiefly due to him that Byron's life
took the redeeming direction which led to Missolonghi.

In February 1831, Romagna and the Marches of Ancona threw off the
Papal Government with an ease which must have surprised the most
sanguine. The white, red and green tricolor was hoisted at Bologna,
where, as far as is known, this combination of colours first became a
political badge. Thirty-six years before Luigi Zamboni and Gian
Battista De Rolandis of Bologna had distributed rosettes of white, red
and green ribbon; Zamboni was arrested, and strangled himself, afraid
of betraying his friends; De Rolandis was hung on the 23rd of April
1796. Such was the origin of the flag, but, until 1831, the Carbonaro
red, blue and black was the common standard of the revolution. From
that year forth, the destinies of Italy were accomplished under the
colours of better augury, so fit to recall her fiery volcanoes, her
wooded Apennines, her snow-crowned Alps; colours which in one sense
she receives from Dante, who clothes in them the vision of the
glorified Beatrice.

The rising at Parma requires but little comment. The Empress
Marie-Louise neither hated her subjects, nor was hated by them, but
her engagements with Austria prevented her from granting the demanded
concessions, and she abandoned her state, to return to it, indeed,
under Austrian protection, but without the odious corollary of
vindictive measures which was generally meant by a restoration.

Much more important is the history of the Modenese revolution.
Apologists have been found for the Bourbons of Naples, but, if anyone
ever said a good word for Francesco d'Este, it has escaped the notice
of the present writer. Under a despotism without laws (for the edicts
of the Prince daily overrode the Este statute book which was supposed
to be in force), Modena was far more in the power of the priests, or
rather of the Jesuits, than any portion of the states of the Church.
Squint-eyed, crooked in mind and bloodthirsty, Francis was as ideal a
bogey-tyrant as can be discovered outside fiction. In 1822, he hung
the priest Giuseppe Andreoli on the charge of Carbonarism; and his
theory of justice is amusingly illustrated by the story of his sending
in a bill to Sir Anthony Panizzi--who had escaped to England--for the
expenses of hanging him in effigy.

Francis felt deeply annoyed by the narrow limits of his dominions, and
his annoyance did not decrease with the decreasing chances of his
ousting the Prince of Carignano from the Sardinian throne. He was
intensely ambitious, and one of his subjects, a man, in other
respects, of high intelligence, thought that his ambition could be
turned to account for Italy. It was the mistake over again that
Machiavelli had made with Cesare Borgia.

Ciro Menotti, who conceived the plan of uniting Italy under the Duke
of Modena, was a Modenese landed proprietor who had exerted himself to
promote the industry of straw-plaiting, and the other branches of
commerce likely to be of advantage to an agricultural population. He
was known as a sound philanthropist, an excellent husband and father,
a model member of society. Francis professed to take an interest in
industrial matters; Menotti, therefore, easily gained access to his
person. In all the negotiations that followed, the Modenese patriot
was supported and encouraged by a certain Dr Misley, who was of
English extraction, with whom the Duke seems to have been on familiar
terms. It appears not doubtful that Menotti was led to believe that
his political views were regarded with favour, and that he also
received the royal promise that, whatever happened, his life would be
safe. This promise was given because he had the opportunity of saving
the Duke from some great peril--probably from assassination, though
the particulars were never divulged.

Misley went to Paris to concert with the Italian committee which had
its seat there; the movement in Modena was fixed for the first days of
February. But spies got information of the preparations, and on the
evening of the 3rd, before anything had been done, Menotti's house was
surrounded by troops, and after defending it, with the help of his
friends, for two hours, he was wounded and captured. Next day the Duke
despatched the following note to the Governor of Reggio-Emilia: 'A
terrible conspiracy against me has broken out. The conspirators are in
my hands. Send me the hangman.--Francis.'

Not all, however, of the conspirators were in his hands; the movement
matured, in spite of the seizure of Menotti, and Francis, 'the first
captain in the world,' as he made his troops call him, was so overcome
with fright that on the 5th of February he left Modena with his
family, under a strong military escort, dragging after him Giro
Menotti, who, when Mantua was reached, was consigned to an Austrian
fortress.

Meanwhile, the revolution triumphed. Modena chose one of her citizens
as dictator, Biagio Nardi, who issued a proclamation in which the
words 'Italy is one; the Italian nation is one sole nation,' testified
that the great lesson which Menotti had sought to teach had not fallen
on unfruitful ground. Wild as were the methods by which, for a moment,
he sought to gain his end, his insistance on unity nevertheless gives
Menotti the right to be considered the true precursor of Mazzini in
the Italian Revolution.

Now that the testing-time was come, France threw to the winds the
principle announced in her name with such solemn emphasis. 'Precious
French blood should never be shed except on behalf of French
interests,' said Casimir Périer, the new President of the Council. A
month after the flight of the Duke of Modena, the inevitable Austrians
marched into his state to win it back for him. The hastily-organised
little army of the new government was commanded by General Zucchi, an
old general of Napoleon, who, when Lombardy passed to Austria, had
entered the Austrian service. He now offered his sword to the Dictator
of Modena, who accepted it, but there was little to be done save to
retire with honour before the 6000 Austrians. Zucchi capitulated at
Ancona to Cardinal Benvenuti, the Papal delegate. Those of the
volunteers who desired it were furnished with regular passports, and
authorised to take ship for any foreign port. The most compromised
availed themselves of this arrangement, but the vessel which was to
bear Zucchi and 103 others to Marseilles, was captured by the Austrian
Admiral Bandiera, by whom its passengers were kidnapped and thrown
into Venetian prisons, where they were kept till the end of May 1832.
This act of piracy was chiefly performed with a view to getting
possession of General Zucchi, who was tried as a deserter, and
condemned to twenty years' imprisonment. Among the prisoners was the
young wife of Captain Silvestro Castiglioni of Modena. 'Go, do your
duty as a citizen,' she had said, when her husband left her to join
the insurrection. 'Do not betray it for me, as perhaps it would make
me love you less.' She shared his imprisonment, but just at the moment
of the release, she died from the hardships endured.

By the end of the month of March, the Austrians had restored Romagna
to the Pope, and Modena to Francis IV. In Romagna the amnesty
published by Cardinal Benvenuti was revoked, but there were no
executions; this was not the case in Modena. The Duke brought back
Ciro Menotti attached to his triumphal car, and when he felt that all
danger was past, and that the presence of the Austrians was a
guarantee against a popular expression of anger, he had him hung.

'When my children are grown up, let them know how well I loved my
country,' Menotti wrote to his wife on the morning of his execution.
The letter was intercepted, and only delivered to his family in 1848.
The revolutionists found it in the archives of Modena. On the
scaffold he recalled how he was once the means of saving the Duke's
life, and added that he pardoned his murderer, and prayed that his
blood might not fall upon his head.

During the insurrection in Romagna, an event occurred which was not
without importance to Europe, though it passed almost unnoticed at the
time. The eldest son of Queen Hortense died in her arms at Forlì, of a
neglected attack of measles; some said of poison, but the report was
unfounded. He and his brother Louis, who had been closely mixed up
with Italian conspiracies for more than a year, went to Romagna to
offer their services as volunteers in the national army. By the death
of the elder of the two, Louis Napoleon became heir to what seemed
then the shadowy sovereignty of the Buonapartes.

No sooner had the Austrians retired from the Legations in July 1831,
than the revolution broke out again. Many things had been promised,
nothing performed; disaffection was universal, anarchy became chronic,
and was increased by the indiscipline of the Papal troops that were
sent to put it down. The Austrians returned and the French occupied
Ancona, much to the Pope's displeasure, and not one whit to the
advantage of the Liberals. This dual foreign occupation of the Papal
states lasted till the winter of 1838.






CHAPTER IV

'YOUNG ITALY' 1831-1844

Accession of Charles Albert--Mazzini's Unitarian Propaganda--The
Brothers Bandiera.


On 27 April 1831, Charles Albert came to the throne he had so nearly
lost. His reconciliation with his uncle, Charles Felix, had been
effected after long and melancholy preliminaries. To wash off the
Liberal sins of his youth, or possibly with a vague hope of finding an
escape from his false position in a soldier's death, he joined the Duc
d'Angoulême's expedition against the Spanish Constitutionalists. His
extraordinary daring in the assault of the Trocadero caused him to be
the hero of the hour when he returned with the army to Paris; but the
King of Sardinia still refused to receive him with favour--a
sufficiently icy favour when it was granted--until he signed an
engagement, which remained secret, to preserve intact during his reign
the laws and principles of government which he found in force at his
accession. If there had been an Order of the Millstone, Charles Felix
would doubtless have conferred it upon his dutiful nephew; failing
that, he presented to him for signature this wonderful document, the
invention of which he owed to Prince Metternich. At the Congress of
Verona in 1822, Charles Albert's claims to the succession were
recognised, thanks chiefly to the Duke of Wellington, who represented
England in place of Lord Londonderry (Castlereagh), that statesman
having committed suicide just as he was starting for Verona. Prince
Metternich then proposed that the Prince of Carignano should be called
upon to enter into an agreement identical with the compact he was
brought to sign a couple of years later. In communicating the proposal
to Canning, the Duke of Wellington wrote that he had demonstrated to
Prince Metternich 'the fatality of such an arrangement,' but that he
did not think that he had made the slightest impression on him. So the
event proved; baffled for the moment, the Prince managed to put his
plan in execution through a surer channel.

With the accession of Charles Albert appears upon the political scene
a great actor in the Liberation of Italy, Giuseppe Mazzini. Young and
unknown, except for a vague reputation for restlessness and for talent
which caused the government of Charles Felix to imprison him for six
or seven months at Savona, Mazzini proposed to the new King the terms
on which he might keep his throne, as calmly as Metternich had
proposed to him the terms on which he might ascend it. The contrast is
striking; on the one side the statesman, who still commanded the armed
force of three-fourths of Europe, doing battle for the holy alliance
of autocrats, for the international law of repression, for all the
traditions of the old diplomacy; on the other, the young student with
little money and few friends, already an exile, having no allies but
his brain and his pen, who set himself, certain of success, to
dissolve that mighty array of power and pomp. All his life Charles
Albert was a Faust for the possession of whose soul two irreconcilable
forces contended; the struggle was never more dramatically represented
than at this moment in the person of these two champions.

Mazzini's letter to Charles Albert, which was read by the King, and
widely, though secretly, circulated in Piedmont, began by telling him
that his fellow-countrymen were ready to believe his line of conduct
in 1821 to have been forced on him by circumstances, and that there
was not a heart in Italy that did not quicken at his accession, nor an
eye in Europe that was not turned to watch his first steps in the
career that now unfolded before him. Then he went on to show, with the
logical strength in developing an argument which, joined to a novel
and eloquent style, caused his writings to attract notice from the
first, that the King could take no middle course. He would be one of
the first of men, or the last of Italian tyrants; let him choose. Had
he never looked upon Italy, radiant with the smile of nature, crowned
with twenty centuries of sublime memories, the mother of genius,
possessing infinite means, to which only union was lacking, girt round
with such defences that a strong will and a few courageous breasts
would suffice to defend her? Had it never struck him that she was
created for a glorious destiny? Did he not contemplate her people,
splendid still, in spite of the shadow of servitude, the vigour of
whose intellect, the energy of whose passions, even when turned to
evil, showed that the making of a nation was there? Did not the
thought come to him: 'Draw a world out of these dispersed elements
like a god from chaos; unite into one whole the scattered members, and
pronounce the words, "It is mine, and it is happy"?'

Mazzini in 1831 was twenty-six years of age. His father was a Genoese
physician, his mother a native of Chiavari. She was a superior woman,
and devoted more than a mother's care to the excitable and delicate
child, who seemed to her (mothers have sometimes the gift of prophecy)
to be meant for an uncommon lot. One of the few personal reminiscences
that Mazzini left recorded, relates to the time and manner in which
the idea first came to him of the possibility of Italians doing
something for their country. He was walking with his mother in the
Strada Nuova at Genoa one Sunday in April 1821, when a tall,
black-bearded man with a fiery glance held towards them a white
handkerchief, saying: 'For the refugees of Italy.' Mazzini's mother,
gave him some money, and he passed on. In the streets were many
unfamiliar faces; the fugitives from Turin and Alessandria were
gathered at Genoa before they departed by sea into exile. The
impression which that scene made on the mind of the boy of sixteen was
never effaced.

Owing to his delicate health, Mazzini's early education was carried on
at home, where the social atmosphere was that of one of those little
centres in a provincial capital which are composed of a few people,
mostly kindred, of similar tastes, who lead useful and refined lives,
content with moderate ease. The real exclusiveness of such centres
exceeds any that exists in the most aristocratic sphere in the world.
The Mazzinis were, moreover, Genoese to the core; and this was another
reason for exclusiveness, and for holding aloof from the governing
class. Mazzini was born a few days after Napoleon entered Genoa as its
lord. He had not, therefore, breathed the air of the ancient Republic;
but there was the unadulterated republicanism of a thousand years in
his veins.

When he grew to manhood his appearance was striking. The black,
flowing hair, the pale, olive complexion, the finely-cut features and
lofty brow, the deep-set eyes, which could smile as only Italian eyes
can smile, but which could also flash astral infinitudes of scorn, the
fragile figure, even the long, delicate, tapering fingers, marked him
for a man apart--though whether a poet or an apostle, a seer or a
saint, it was not easy to decide. Yet this could be said at once: if
this man concentrated all his being on a single point, he would wield
the power, call it what we will, which in every age has worked
miracles and moved mountains.

Mazzini became a Carbonaro, though the want of clear, guiding
principles in Carbonarism made him misdoubt its efficacy, and its
hierarchical mysteries and initiatory ordeals repelled him by their
childishness. Then followed his arrest, and his detention in the
fortress of Savona, which was the turning-point in his mental life.
Before that date he learnt, after it he taught. From his high-perched
cell he saw the sea and the sky--with the Alps, the sublimest things
in Nature. The voices of the fishermen reached his ears, though he
could not see them. A tame goldfinch was his companion. Here, in a
solitude and peace which he remembered with regret in the stormy and
sorrowful years that were to come, he conceived his message and the
mission, in which he believed to the last day of his life.

He resolved to found a new association on broader and simpler lines than
the secret societies of the past, which should aim not only at the
material freeing of Italy from her present bondage, but at her moral and
religious regeneration. To aim at material progress of any kind, without
at the same time aiming at a higher moral progress, seemed to Mazzini
absurd; to attempt to pull down without attempting to build up seemed to
him criminal. Thus he accused the Socialists of substituting the
progress of humanity's kitchen for the progress of humanity. He believed
that Italy, united and redeemed, was destined to shed through the world
the light of a new moral unity, which should end the reign of
Scepticism, triumphant among discordant creeds. Mazzini's religious
belief was the motor of his whole being. The Catholicism in which he was
outwardly brought up never seems to have touched his inner nature; he
went through no spiritual wrench in leaving a faith that was never a
reality to him. The same is true of innumerable young Italians, who,
when they begin to read and study, drift out of their childhood's
religion without a struggle or a regret. But thought and study brought
Mazzini what it rarely brings to these young men--the necessity to find
something in which he could believe. He had not long to seek for a basis
to his creed, because he was one of the men from the prophets of old to
Spinoza, from Spinoza to Gordon, to whom the existence of God is a
matter of experience rather than an object of faith. Starting from this
point, he formed his religion out of what he regarded as its inevitable
deductions. If God existed, his creatures must be intended for
perfection; if this were the Divine scheme, man's one business was to
carry it out. He considered the idea of duty separated from the idea of
God to be illogical. Either the development of human things depended on
a providential law, or it was left to chance and passing circumstance,
and to the dexterity of the man who turned these to most account. God
was the sole source of duty; duty the sole law of life. Mazzini did not
denounce Catholicism or any other religion as false. He saw in it a
stepping-stone to purer comprehension, which would be reached when man's
intellect was sufficiently developed for him to be able to do without
symbols.

[Illustration: GIUSEPPE MAZZINI]

The conscience of humanity is the last tribunal. Ideas, as well as
institutions, change and expand, but certain fundamental principles
are fixed. The family would always exist; property would always exist.
The first, 'the heart's fatherland,' was the source of the only true
happiness, the only joys untainted by grief, which were given to man.
Those who wished to abolish the second were like the savage who cut
down the tree in order to gather the fruit. In the future, free
association would be the great agent of moral and material progress.
The authority which once rested in popes and emperors now devolved on
the people. Instead of 'God and the King,' Mazzini proposed the new
formula 'God and the People.' By the people he understood no caste or
class, whether high or low, but the universality of men composing the
nation. The nation is the sole sovereign; its will, expressed by
delegates, must be law to all its citizens.

By degrees certain words acquired more and more a mystical
significance in Mazzini's mind; the very name of Rome, for instance,
had for him a sort of talismanic fascination, not unlike that
possessed by Jerusalem for the mediæval Christian. When he spoke of
the people or the republic he frequently used those terms in an ideal
and visionary sense (as theologians use the Church) rather than in one
strictly corresponding with the case of any existing nation, or any
hitherto tried form of government. This does not alter the fact that
his theories, which have been briefly summarised, are not hard to
comprehend, as has been said by those who did not know in what they
consisted, nor, taken one by one, are they novel. What was new in the
nineteenth century was the appearance of a revolutionary leader, who
was before all things a religious and ethical teacher. And though
Mazzini never founded the Church of Precursors, of which he dreamt,
his influence was as surely due to his belief in his religious
mission, as was the influence of Savonarola. The Italians are not a
mystical people, but they have always followed mystical leaders. The
less men are prone to ideal enthusiasm the more attracted are they by
it; Don Quixote, as Heine remarked, always draws Sancho Panza after
him.

Mazzini had a natural capacity for organisation, and the Association
of Young Italy which he founded at Marseilles, the first nucleus being
a group of young, penniless refugees, soon obtained an astonishing
development. Up to the time of his 'Letter to Charles Albert,' his
exile had been so far voluntary that he might have remained in
Piedmont had he agreed to live in one of the smaller towns under the
watchful care of the police, but he declined the terms, and the first
effect of the 'Letter' was a stringent order to arrest him if he
recrossed the frontier. He was not surprised at that result. Mazzini's
attitude towards the Sardinian monarchy was perfectly well defined.
Republican himself, even to fanaticism, he placed the question of
unity, which for him meant national existence, above the question of
the republic. He did not believe that the House of Savoy would unite
Italy, but if unity could only be had under what he looked upon as the
inauspicious form of monarchy, he would not reject it. He was like the
real mother in the judgment of Solomon, who, because she loved her
child, was ready to give it up sooner than see it cut in two.

Apart from personal hereditary instincts and predilections, Mazzini
thought that he saw in the glorious memories of the Italian republics
a clear indication that the commonwealth was the form of government
which ought and would be adopted by the Italy of the future. But,
unlike most politicians, he laid down the principle that, after all,
when free, the nation must decide for itself. 'To what purpose,' he
asks, 'do we constantly speak of the sovereignty of the people, and of
our reverence for the national will, if we are to disregard it as soon
as it pronounces in contradiction to our wishes?'

He did not succeed in making the majority of his countrymen
republicans, but he contributed more than any other man towards
inspiring the whole country with the desire for unity. Herein lies his
great work. Without Mazzini, when would the Italians have got beyond
the fallacies of federal republics, leagues of princes, provincial
autonomy, insular home-rule, and all the other dreams of independence
reft of its only safeguard which possessed the minds of patriots of
every party in Italy and of nearly every well-wisher to Italian
freedom abroad?

In 1831, most educated Italians did not even wish for unity, and this
is still truer of the republicans than of the monarchists. Some, like
Manzoni, did wish for it, but, like him, said nothing about it, for
fear of being thought madmen. A flash of the true light illuminated
the mind of Giro Menotti, but that was extinguished on the scaffold.
Then it was that Mazzini came forward with the news that Italy could
_only_ be made free and independent by being united; unity was the
ruling tendency of the century, and, as far as Italy went, no Utopia,
but a certain conclusion. This was repeated over and over again,
wherever there were Italians, over the inhabited globe. By means of
sailors, 'Young Italy' spread like lightning. Giuseppe Garibaldi was
made a member by a sailor on the shores of the Black Sea.

With the masses, unity proved the wonder-working word which
Confalonieri had said was the one thing needful--a word yet fitter to
work wonders than 'War to the Stranger.' Among the cultivated classes,
it was much slower in gaining ground, and particularly among statesmen
and diplomatists. But in the end it was to convert them all.

'"Young Italy,"' writes Mazzini, 'closed the period of political
sects, and initiated that of educational associations.' 'Great
revolutions,' he says again, 'are the work of principles rather than
of bayonets.' It was by the diffusion of ideas that 'Young Italy'
became a commanding factor in the events of the next thirty years.
The insurrectional attempts planned under its guidance did not
succeed, nor was it likely that they should succeed. Devised by
exiles, at a distance, they lacked the first elements of success. The
earliest of these attempts aimed at an invasion of Savoy; it was hoped
that the Sardinian army and people would join the little band of
exiles in a movement for the liberation of Lombardy. The revolution of
1821 had evidently suggested this plan to Mazzini, but it was
foredoomed to misfortune. The Piedmontese authorities got wind of it,
and a hunt followed for the members of 'Young Italy'; most severe
measures were taken; there were eleven executions, and numberless
sentences to long terms of imprisonment. Jacobo Ruffini, the younger
brother of the author of _Dr Antonio_, and Mazzini's most beloved
friend, committed suicide in prison, fearing to reveal the names of
his associates. The apologists for Charles Albert say that if he had
not shown the will and ability to deal severely with the conspirators,
Austria would have insisted on a military occupation. Whatever were
his motives, this is the saddest page of his unhappy reign.

Checked in 1833, the descent on Savoy was actually attempted in 1834,
with Mazzini's consent, though not by his wish. An officer who had won
some celebrity in the Polish revolution, General Ramorino, a Savoyard
by origin, was given the command. Ramorino was a gambler, who could
not be trusted with money, but Mazzini's suspicion that on this
occasion he played the part of traitor is not proved. However that may
be, the expedition ended almost as soon as it began. Ramorino crossed
the frontier of Savoy at the head of the column, but when he heard
that a Polish reinforcement had been stopped on the Lake of Geneva, he
retreated into Switzerland, and advised the band to follow him.

After these events, Mazzini could no longer carry on his propaganda in
France. He took refuge in England, where a great part of his life was
to be passed, and of which he spoke, to the last, as his second
country. The first period of his residence in England was darkened by
the deep distress and discouragement into which the recent events had
plunged him; but his faith in the future prevailed, and he went on
with his work. His endeavours to help his fellow-exiles reduced him to
the last stage of poverty; the day came when he was obliged to pawn a
coat and an old pair of boots. These money difficulties did not
afflict him, and by degrees his writings in English periodicals
brought some addition to the small quarterly allowance which he
received from his mother. It seems strange, though it is easily
explained, that it was in London that he first got to know the Italian
working classes. He was surprised and gladdened by the abundance of
good elements which he found in them. No country, indeed, has more
reason to hope in her working men than the land whose sons have
tunnelled the Alps, cut the most arduous railway lines in America and
India, brought up English ships from the deep, laid the caissons (a
task of extreme danger) which support the great structure of the
Bridge of the Firth of Forth, and left their bones to whiten at
Panama. 'It is the universal testimony,' writes a high American
authority, 'that no more faithful men have come among us.' What was
the cause of the slaughter of the Aigues Mortes? That the Italians
worked too well.

Mazzini wrote for his humble friends the treatise on _The Duties of
Man_, in which he told them that he loved them too well to flatter
them. Another work that occupied him and consoled him was the rescue
and moral improvement of the children employed by organ-grinders, and
he was the first to call attention to the white slavery to which many
of them were subjected. He opened a school in Hatton Garden, in which
he taught, and which he mainly supported for the seven years from 1841
to 1848.

The enterprise of the Brothers Bandiera belongs to the history of
'Young Italy,' though Mazzini himself had tried to prevent it,
believing that it could only end in the sacrifice of all concerned.
Nor, at the last, did the actors in it expect anything else. They had
hoped for better things; for a general movement in the South of Italy,
or at least for an undertaking on a larger and less irrational basis.
But promises failed, money was not forthcoming, and it was a choice
between doing nothing or a piece of heroic folly. Contrary to
Mazzini's entreaties, they chose the second alternative.

Attilio and Emilio Bandiera were sons of the Austrian admiral who, in
1831, arrested Italian fugitives at sea. Placed by their father in the
Austrian navy, they renounced every prospect of a brilliant career to
enter the service of their down-trodden country. When they deserted,
strong efforts were made by the Archduke Rainieri, through their
mother, to win them back, but neither the offers of pardon nor the
poor woman's tears and reproaches turned them from their purpose.
Another deserter was with them, Lieutenant Domenico Moro, a youth of
great charm of person and disposition, who had been employed with a
mixed force of Englishmen and Austrians in the Lebanon, where he
formed a warm friendship with Lieutenant, now Admiral, Sir George
Wellesley, who still preserves an affectionate remembrance of him.
Nicola Ricciotti, a Roman subject who had devoted all his life to
Italy, and Anacarsi Nardi, son of the dictator of Modena, were also
of the band, which counted about twenty.

The Bandieras and their companions sailed from Corfu for the coast of
Calabria on the 11th of June 1844. 'If we fall,' they wrote to
Mazzini, 'tell our countrymen to imitate our example, for life was
given to us to be nobly and usefully employed, and the cause for which
we shall have fought and died is the purest and holiest that ever
warmed the heart of man.' It was their last letter. After they landed
in Calabria one of their number disappeared; there is every reason to
suppose that he went to betray them. They wandered for a few days in
the mountains, looking for the insurgent band which they had been
falsely told was waiting for them, and then fell into an ambush
prepared by the Neapolitan troops. Some died fighting; nine were shot
at Cosenza, including the Bandieras, Mori, Ricciotti and Nardi.
Boccheciampi the Corsican, whom they suspected of treason, was brought
up to be confronted with them during the trial; when asked if he knew
who he was, Nardi replied: 'I know no word in my divine Italian
language that can fitly describe that man.' Boccheciampi was condemned
to a nominal imprisonment; when he came out of prison he wrote to a
Greek girl of Corfu, to whom he was engaged, to join him at Naples,
that they might be married. The girl had been deeply in love with him,
and had already given him part of her dowry, but she answered: 'A
traitor cannot wed a Greek maiden; I bear with me the blessing of my
parents; upon you rests the curse of God.'

The martyrdom of the Bandieras made a great impression, especially in
England, where the circumstance came to light that their
correspondence with Mazzini had been tampered with in the English
Post Office, and that information as to their plans had reached the
Austrian and Neapolitan Governments through the British Foreign
Office. The affair was brought before the House of Commons by Thomas
Duncombe. The Home Secretary repeated a calumny which had appeared
many years before in a French newspaper, to the effect that the murder
of an Italian in Rodez by two of his fellow-countrymen was the result
of an order from the Association of Young Italy. Sir James Graham had
to apologise afterwards for 'the injury inflicted on Mr Mazzini' by
this statement, which he was obliged to admit was supported by no
evidence, and was contrary to the opinion of the Judge who tried the
case.

The _Times_ having observed in a leading article that the gravity of
the fact in question, the violation of private correspondence in the
Post Office, was not affected by the merits or demerits of Mr Mazzini,
of whom it professed to 'know nothing,' Thomas Carlyle wrote next day
a letter containing words which may be quoted as some of the best and
truest ever written about the great Italian: 'I have had the honour to
know Mr Mazzini for a series of years, and, whatever I may think of
his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great
freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of
genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but
as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who
in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and practise what
is meant by that.' [2]






CHAPTER V

THE POPE LIBERATOR

1844-1847

Events leading to the Election of Pius IX.--The Petty Princes--Charles
Albert, Leopold and Ferdinand.


The day is drawing near when the century which witnessed the
liberation of Italy will have passed away. Already a generation has
grown up which can but faintly realise the passionate hopes and fears
with which the steps that led through defeat to the ultimate victory
were watched, not only by Italians, but by thousands who had never set
foot in Italy. Never did a series of political events evoke a sympathy
so wide and so disinterested, and it may be foretold with confidence
that it never will again. Italy rising from the grave was the living
romance of myriads of young hearts that were lifted from the common
level of trivial interests and selfish ends, from the routine of work
or pleasure, both deadening without some diviner spark, by a sustained
enthusiasm that can hardly be imagined now. There were, indeed, some
who asked what was all this to them? What were the 'extraneous
Austrian Emperor,' or the 'old chimera of a Pope' (Carlyle's
designations) to the British taxpayer? Some there were in England who
were deeply attached still to the 'Great Hinge on which Europe
depended,' and even to the most clement Spanish Bourbons of Naples,
about whom strangely beautiful things are to be read in old numbers of
the _Quarterly Review_. But on the whole, English men and women--in
mind half Italian, whether they will it or not, from the day they
begin to read their own literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from
Shakespeare to Shelley, from Shelley to Rossetti and Swinburne--were
united at that time in warmth of feeling towards struggling Italy as
they have been united in no political sentiment relating to another
nation, and in few concerning their own country.

It would be vain to expect that the record of Italian vicissitudes
during the years when the fate of Italy hung in the balance can awake
or renew the spellbound interest caused by the events themselves. The
reader of recent history is like the novel reader who begins at the
last chapter--he is too familiar with how it all ended to be keenly
affected by the development of the plot. Yet it is plain that we are
in a better position to appreciate the process of development than was
the case when the issue remained uncertain. We can estimate more
accurately the difficulties which stood in the way, and judge more
impartially the means that were taken to remove them. One outcome of
this fuller knowledge is the conviction that patriotism was the
monopoly of no single Italian party. The leaders, and still more their
henchmen, were in the habit of saying very hard things about each
other. It was natural and unavoidable; but there is no excuse now for
failing to recognise that there were pure and devoted patriots on the
one side as well as on the other--men whose only desire was the
salvation of Italy, to effect which no sacrifice seemed too great. Nor
were their labours unfruitful, for there was work for all of them to
do; and the very diversity of opinion, though unfortunate under some
aspects, was not so under all. If no one had raised the question of
unity before all things, Italy might be still a geographical
expression. If no one had tried to wring concessions from the old
governments, their inherent and irremediable vices would never have
been proved; and though they might have been overturned, they would
have left behind a lasting possibility of ignorant reaction.

The Great Powers had presented to the Court of Rome in 1831 a
memorandum, in which various moderate reforms and improvements were
proposed as urgently necessary to put an end to the intolerable abuses
which were rife in the states of the Church, and, most of all, in
Romagna. The abolition of the tribunal of the Holy Office, the
institution of a Council of State, lay education, and the
secularisation of the administration were among the measures
recommended. In 1845 a certain Pietro Renzi collected a body of
spirited young men at San Marino, and made a dash on Rimini, where he
disarmed the small garrison. The other towns were not prepared, and
Renzi and his companions were obliged to retire into Tuscany; but the
revolution, partial as it had been, raised discussion in consequence
of the manifesto issued by its promoters, in which a demand was made
for the identical reforms vainly advocated by European diplomacy
fourteen years before. If these were granted, the insurgents engaged
to lay down their arms. The manifesto was written by Luigi Carlo
Farini, who was destined to play a large part in future affairs. It
proved to Europe that even the most conservative elements in the
nation were driven to revolution by the sheer hopelessness of the
dead-lock which the Italian rulers sought by every means to prolong.
Massimo d'Azeglio, who was then known only as a painter of talent and
a writer of historical novels, first made his mark as a politician by
the pamphlet entitled _Gli ultimi casi di Romagna_, in which his
arguments derived force from the fact that, when travelling in the
district, he had done all in his power to induce the Liberals to keep
within the bounds of legality. But he confessed that, when someone
says: 'I suffer too much,' it is an unsatisfactory answer to retort:
'You have not suffered enough.' Massimo d'Azeglio had lived for many
years an artist's life in Rome and the country round, where his
aristocratic birth and handsome face made him popular with all
classes. The transparent integrity of his nature overcame the
diffidence usually inspired by strangers among a somewhat suspicious
people, and he got to know more thoroughly than any other North
Italian the real aspirations of the Pope's subjects. He listened to
their complaints and their plans, and if they asked his advice, he
invariably replied: 'Let us speak clearly. What is it that you wish
and I with you? You wish to have done with priestly rule, and to send
the Teutons out of Italy? If you invite them to decamp, they will
probably say, "No, thank you!" Therefore you must use force; and where
is it to be had? If you have not got it, you must find somebody who
has. In Italy who has it, or, to speak more precisely, who has a
little of it? Piedmont, because it, at least, enjoys an independent
life, and possesses an army and a surplus in the treasury.' His
friends answered: 'What of Charles Albert, of 1821, of 1832?' Now,
there was no one who felt less trust in Charles Albert than Massimo
d'Azeglio; he admitted it with something like remorse in later years.
But he believed in his ambition, and he thought it madness to throw
away what he regarded as the sole chance of freeing Italy on account
of private doubts of the King of Sardinia's sincerity.

Charles Albert had reigned for fourteen years, and still the mystery
which surrounded his character formed as impenetrable a veil as ever.
The popular nickname of _Re Tentenna_ (King Waverer) seemed, in a
sense, accepted by him when he said to the Duke d'Aumale in 1843: 'I
am between the dagger of the Carbonari and the chocolate of the
Jesuits.' He chose, as bride for his eldest son, an Austrian princess,
who, however, had known no country but Italy. His internal policy was
not simply stationary, it was retrograde. If his consent was obtained
to some progressive measure, he withdrew it at the last moment, or
insisted on the introduction of modifications which nullified the
whole. His want of stability drove one of his ministers to jump out of
a window. In spite of the candid reference to the Jesuit's cup of
chocolate, he allowed the Society of Jesus to dictate its will in
Piedmont. Victor Amadeus, the first King of Sardinia, took public
education out of the hands of the Jesuits, after receiving the
following deathbed communication from one of the Order who was his own
confessor: 'Deeply sensible of your many favours, I can only show my
gratitude by a final piece of advice, but of such importance that
perhaps it may suffice to discharge my debt. Never have a Jesuit for
confessor. Do not ask me the grounds of this advice, I should not be
at liberty to tell them to you.' The lesson was forgotten now. Charles
Albert was not content to wear a hair-shirt himself; he would have
liked to see all his subjects furnished with the same garment. The
result was, that Piedmont was not a comfortable place for Liberals to
live in, nor a lively place for anyone. Yet there is hardly anything
more certain than that all this time the King was constantly dreaming
of turning the Austrians out of Italy. His government kept its
attention fixed on two points: the improvement of the army, and the
accumulation of a reserve fund to be available in case of war. Drill
and thrift, which made the German Empire out of Prussia, if they did
not lead straight to equally splendid results south of the Alps, were
still what rendered it possible for Piedmont to defy Austria when the
time came. In 1840, Charles Albert wrote to his Minister of War: 'It
is a fine thing to win twenty battles; as for me, I should be content
to win ten on behalf of a cause I know of, and to fall in the
tenth--then, indeed, I would die blessing the Lord.' A year or two
later, he unearthed and reassumed the ancient motto of the House of
Savoy: 'J'attends mon astre.' Nevertheless, to the outward world his
intentions remained enigmatical, and it was therefore with extreme
surprise that Massimo d'Azeglio (who, on his return from the Roman
states, asked permission to inform the King of the impressions made on
him by his travels) received the injunction to tell his Liberal
friends 'that when the occasion presented itself, his life, the life
of his sons, his treasure, and his army would all be spent for the
Italian cause.'

The fifteen years' pontificate of Gregory XVI. ended on the 1st June
of 1846. In spite of the care taken by those around him to keep the
aged pontiff in a fool's paradise with regard to the real state of his
dominions, a copy of _The Late Events in Romagna_ fell into his hands,
and considerably disturbed his peace of mind. He sent two prelates to
look into the condition of the congested provinces, and their tour,
though it resulted in nothing else, called forth new protests and
supplications from the inhabitants, of which the most noteworthy was
an address written by Count Aurelio Saffi, who was destined to pass
many honourable years of exile in England. This address attacked the
root of the evil in a passage which exposed the unbearable vexations
of a government based on espionage. The acknowledged power of an
irresponsible police was backed by the secret force of an army of
private spies and informers. The sentiment of legality was being
stamped out of the public conscience, and with it religion and
morality. 'Bishops have been heard to preach civil war--a crusade
against the Liberals; priests seem to mix themselves in wretched party
strife, egging on the mob to vent its worst passions. There is not a
Catholic country in which the really Christian priest is so rarely
found as in the States of the Church.'

If Gregory XVI. was not without reasons for disquietude in his last
hours, he could take comfort in the fact that he had succeeded in
keeping railways out of all parts of his dominions. Gas and suspension
bridges were also classed as works of the Evil One, and vigorously
tabooed. Among the Pope's subjects there was a young prelate who had
never been able to make out what there was subversive to theology in a
steam-engine, or why the safety of the Papal government should depend
on its opposing every form of material improvement, although in
discussing these subjects he generally ended by saying: 'After all I
am no politician, and I may be mistaken.' This prelate was Cardinal
Mastai-Ferretti, Bishop of Imola. Born in 1792 at Sinigaglia, of a
good though rather needy family, Count Giovanni Maria Mastai was
piously brought up by his mother, who dedicated him at an early age to
the Virgin, to whom she believed that she owed his recovery from an
illness which had been pronounced fatal. Roman Catholic writers
connect the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception
with this incident of childhood. After entering the priesthood, young
Mastai devoted most of his energies to active charity, and remained,
as he said, 'no politician,' being singularly ignorant of the world
and of public affairs, though full of amiable wishes that everyone
should be happy. Some years spent in missionary work in South America
failed to enlarge his practical knowledge, the limits of which he was
the first to recognise--a fact that tended to make him all his life
the instrument, not of his own will, but of the wills of men whom he
honestly thought cleverer and more experienced than himself. His chief
friends in his Romagnol diocese, friends on the intimate basis of
social equality and common provincial interests, were sound patriots,
though not revolutionists, and the future Pio Nono involuntarily
adopted their ideas and sympathies. He saw with his eyes certain
abuses so glaring that they admitted of no two opinions, and these
helped to convince him of the truth of his friends' arguments in
favour of a completely new order of things. One such abuse was the
encouragement given by government to the Society of the Centurioni,
the latest evolution of the Calderai; the Centurions, recruited among
roughs and peasants, were set upon the respectable middle classes,
over which they tyrannised by secret accusations or open violence: it
was well understood that anyone called a Liberal, or Freemason, or
Carbonaro could be beaten or killed without inquiries being made.

The Bishop of Imola was frequently in the house of the Count and
Countess Pasolini, who kept their friend well supplied with the new
books on Italian affairs; thus he read not only D'Azeglio's _Cast di
Romagna_, but also Cesare Balbo's _Le Speranze d'Italia,_ which
propounded a plan for an Italian federation, and Gioberti's _Primato
morale e civile degli Italiani_, in which this plan was elaborately
developed. Gioberti indicated the Supreme Pontiff as the natural head
of the Italian Union, and the King of Sardinia as Italy's natural
deliverer from foreign domination. The eternal fitness of things, and
the history of many centuries, proved the Pope to be the proper
paramount civil authority in Italy, 'which is the capital of Europe,
because Rome is the religious metropolis of the world.' An ex-member
of 'Young Italy,' a Piedmontese by birth, a priest by ordination,
Gioberti's profession of faith was derived from these three sources,
and it attracted thousands of Italians by its apparent reconciliation
of the interests of the papacy, and of the Sardinian monarchy, with
the most advanced views of the newest school. History, to which
Gioberti appealed, might have told him that a reversal of the law of
gravity was as likely to happen as the performance by the papacy of
the mission he proposed to it; but men believe what they wish to
believe, and his work found, as has been said, thousands of admirers,
among whom none was more sincere than Cardinal Mastai. The day on
which Count Pasolini gave him a copy of _Il Primato_ he created that
great, and under some aspects pathetic illusion, the reforming Pope.

The Conclave opened on the 14th of June 1846. During the Bishop of
Imola's journey to Rome a white pigeon had perched several times on
his carriage. The story became known; people said the same thing had
occurred to a coming Pope on former occasions, and the augury was
accepted with joy and satisfaction. He was, in fact, elected after the
Conclave had lasted only two days, while the Conclave which elected
his predecessor lasted sixty-four. The brevity of that to which Pius
IX. owed the tiara was looked upon by the populace as something
miraculous, but it was the result of the well-considered determination
of the Italian Cardinals not to allow time for Austrian intrigues to
obtain the election of a Pope who would be ruled from Vienna. When the
new Pope appeared on the balcony of the Quirinal to give his first
benediction, the people, carried away by his youthful yet majestic
bearing, and by the hopes which already centred in him, broke into
frantic cries of: 'We have a Pope! He loves us! He is our Father!' If
they had cried: 'We have a new heaven and a new earth,' they would but
have expressed the delirium which, starting from Rome, spread
throughout Italy.

On the night of the 6th of December 1846, the whole line of the
Apennines from Liguria to Calabria was illuminated. A hundred years
before, a stone thrown by the child Balilla had given the signal for
the expulsion of the Austrians from Genoa: this was the memory
flashed from height to height by countless beacons, but while
celebrating the past, they were the fiery heralds of a greater
revolution.

The upheaval of Europe did not become a fact, however, for another
year. Meantime, the Roman States attracted more attention than any
other part of the peninsula, from the curiosity awakened by the
progress of the experiment of which they were the scene. It is not
doubtful that at the first moment Pius IX. was under the impression
that the problem he had taken in hand was eminently simple. A little
goodwill on the part of everybody, an amnesty to heal old sores, and a
few administrative reforms, ought, he thought, to set everything
right. Such was not the opinion of intelligent onlookers who were
students of politics--especially if they were foreigners, and could
therefore keep their heads moderately cool in the prevailing
excitement. The wave of a wand may seem to effect marvels, but long
and silent causes prepare the way for each event. Now what had been
going on for years in the Roman States was not the process of gradual
growth, but the process of rapid disintegration. The Temporal Power of
the Popes had died without anyone noticing it, and there was nothing
left but a body in the course of dissolution. Every foreigner in Rome
during the reign of Gregory XVI. bore witness that his government
depended for its existence absolutely on the Swiss Guards. In 1845,
Count Rossi told Guizot that without the Swiss regiments the
government in the Legations and the Marches 'would be overthrown in
the twinkling of an eye.' The British agent in Rome, writing during
the Conclave, bore this out by the statement, which applied not to one
portion of the Roman states, but to all, that 'the government could
not stand without the protection of Austria and the immediate
presence of the Swiss.' On the accession of Pius IX., the props, such
as they were, which had prevented an earlier collapse of the Temporal
Power, were either removed or rendered useless. The Swiss might as
well have been disbanded at once as retained merely to be a bone of
contention between the new government and the people, since it was
understood that a vigorous use of their services would never be
resorted to; while Austrian protection was transferred from the Pope
to the disaffected party in the Church, which consisted in a large
proportion of the cardinals and of the inferior clergy who were afraid
that, with the reform of abuses, they would lose their influence over
the lower class of their flocks. The English diplomatic agents in
Italy also firmly believed that Austria coupled with her support of
the ultramontane malcontents the direct encouragement of the
disorderly elements of the population. To resist all these contrary
forces, Pius IX. had only a popularity which, though for the time
immense, was founded almost completely on imagination. 'It was,' said
Mr Petre, 'the name and known views of Pius, rather than his acts,
which aroused so much interest.' If for 'known views' be substituted
'supposed views,' the remark exactly describes the situation.

Popularity is very well, but a government cannot long subsist on the
single fact of the popularity of the sovereign. When the Roman mob
began to cry: 'Viva Pio Nono _solo_,' the fate of the experiment was
sealed. Real control slipped from the hands that nominally wielded it.
'The influence,' Mr Petre wrote to Sir George Hamilton, 'of one
individual of the lower class, Angelo Brunetti, hardly known but by
his nickname of Ciceruacchio, has for the last month kept the peace of
the city more than any power possessed by the authorities, from the
command which he exerts over the populace.' It was Ciceruacchio who
preserved order when in July 1847 the air was full of rumours of a
vast reactionary plot, which aimed at carrying off the Pope, and
putting things back as they were under Gregory. That such a plot was
ever conceived, or, at anyrate, that it received the sanction of the
high personages whose names were mentioned in connection with it, is
generally doubted now; but it was believed in by many of the
representatives of foreign Powers then in Italy. The public mind in
Rome was violently disturbed. Austria made the excitement the excuse
for occupying the town of Ferrara, where, by the accepted
interpretation of the Treaty of Vienna, she had only the right to
garrison the fortress. This aggression called forth a strong
remonstrance from the Pope's Secretary of State, Cardinal Ferretti;
and though a compromise was arrived at through the mediation of Lord
Palmerston, the feeling against Austria grew more and more exasperated
in the Roman states, and the Pope consented, not, it seemed, much
against the grain, to preparations being taken in hand with a view to
the possible eventuality of war.

At this date the Italian question was better apprehended at Vienna
than in any other part of Europe. A man of Prince Metternich's talents
does not devote a long life to statecraft without learning to
distinguish the real drift of political currents. While Lord
Palmerston still felt sure that reforms, and nothing but reforms, were
what Italy wanted, Prince Metternich saw that two real forces were at
work from the Alps to the Straits of Messina, and two only: desire for
union, hatred of Austria. Nor was it his fault if the English Cabinet
or the rest of the world remained unenlightened. Besides enlarging on
this truth in frequent diplomatic communications, he caused it to be
continually dwelt upon in the Vienna _Observer_, the organ of the
Austrian Government, which printed illustrative quotations from the
writings of Mazzini, of whom it said that 'he has the one merit of
despising hypocrisy, and proceeding firmly and directly to his true
end. Persons who are versed in history will know that this is exactly
the same end as that at which Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi
formerly aimed. The only difference is, that the revolutionary dream
has in the course of centuries gained in self-reliance and
confidence.' It may truly be affirmed after this that Metternich 'had
the one merit of despising hypocrisy.' Exactly the same end as Arnold
of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi--who better could have described the
scheme of Italian redemption?

In the course of the summer of 1847, the Prince said more than once to
the British Ambassador: 'The Emperor is determined not to lose his
Italian dominions.' It was no idle boast, the speaker felt confident,
that the troops in Lombardy and Venetia could keep those provinces
from taking an active part in the 'revolution' which he declared to be
already complete over all central Italy, though the word revolution
had never yet been mentioned. Nor was it only in the Austrian army
that he trusted; Metternich was persuaded that neither in Lombardy nor
in Venetia was there any fear of a really popular and, therefore,
formidable movement. He believed that Austria's only enemy was the
aristocracy. He even threw out hints that if the Austrian Government
condescended to do so, it could raise a social or peasants' war of the
country people against their masters. This is the policy which has
been elaborately followed by the Russians in Poland. The Austrians
pointed to their virtue in not resorting to it; but some tentative
experiments in such a direction had not given results of a kind to
encourage them to go on. The Italian peasant, though ignorant, had a
far quicker innate intelligence than his unfortunate Polish brother.
He did not dislike his masters, who treated him at least with easy
familiarity, and he detested foreigners--those foreigners, no matter
of what nation, who for two thousand years had brought the everlasting
curse of war upon his fields. The conscription, which carried off his
sons for eight years into distant lands, of which he could not
pronounce the name, was alone enough to alienate him from the Austrian
Government. In hoping to find a friend in the Italian peasant,
Metternich reckoned without his host. On the other hand, he was
strictly correct in his estimate of the patriotism of the aristocracy.
The fact always seemed to the Prince a violation of eternal laws.
According to him, the fore-ordained disaffected in every country were
drawn from the middle classes. What business had noblemen with ancient
names and fine estates to prefer Spielberg to their beautiful palaces
and fairy-like villas on the Lombard lakes? Was it on purpose to spite
the best of governments, and the one most favourable to the
aristocratic principle, which had always held out paternal hands to
them? Could anything be imagined more aggravating?

This feature in Italian liberation has been kept mostly in the
background. Democratic chroniclers were satisfied to ignore it, and to
the men themselves their enormous sacrifices seemed so natural that
they were very willing to let them pass out of mind. It is in the
works of those who, while sympathising with Italy, are not Italians,
that the best record of it is to be found; nowhere better than in a
recent book by a French writer, M. Paul Bourget, in which occurs the
following just and eloquent tribute: 'We must say in praise of the
aristocracy on this side of the Alps that the best soldiers of
independence were nobles. If Italy owes the final success to the
superior capabilities of Victor Emmanuel and Cavour, and to the
agitating power of the General of the Thousand, it is well not to
forget the struggles sustained for years by gentlemen whose example
did so much to raise partisans among the humble. These aristocrats,
passionate for liberty, have (like our own of the eighteenth century)
done more for the people than the people itself. The veritable history
of this _Risorgimento_ would be in great part that of the Italian
nobility in which the heroic blood of feudal chiefs revolted against
the oppressions and, above all, the perpetual humiliation, born of the
presence of the stranger.'

When Prince Metternich looked beyond the borders of those provinces
which he said that his Sovereign did not intend to lose, he saw sooner
than most people that a ball was set rolling which would not stop half
way down the hill. The one element in the situation which came as a
surprise to him, was that introduced by Pius IX. 'A liberal Pope is an
impossible being!' he exclaimed. Nevertheless this impossible being was
a reality which had to be dealt with. He hoped all along, however, that
Pius would fall a victim to the Frankenstein he had called into
existence, and his only real anxiety lay where it had always lain--on
the side of Piedmont. 'Charles Albert ought to let us know,' he wrote to
the Austrian Minister at Turin, 'whether his reign has been only a mask
under which was hidden the Prince of Carignano, who ascended the throne
through the order of succession re-established in his favour by the
Emperor Francis.' Considering all things, the endeavour to make it
appear that the King was indebted for his crown to Austria was somewhat
venturesome. Charles Albert, Metternich went on to say, had to choose
between two systems, the system now in force, or 'the crassest
revolution.' He wrote again: 'The King is sliding back upon the path
which he enters for the second time in his life, _and which he will
never really quit_.' Words of a bitter enemy, but juster than the
'Esecrato o Carignano,' hurled for a quarter of a century at Charles
Albert by those who only saw in him a traitor.

The constant invocation of the revolutionary spectre by the Austrian
statesman convinced the King that the wish was father to the thought,
and, afraid of introducing the thin end of the wedge, he showed
himself more than ever averse to reforming the antiquated machinery of
the Sardinian Government. Instead of being the first of Italian
princes to yield to popular demands, he was almost the last. He
believed that the question of nationality, of independence, could be
separated from the question of free institutions. Of all the
chimerical ideas then afloat, this was the most chimerical. Even the
example of the Pope, for whom Charles Albert felt a romantic devotion,
was not enough to induce him to open the road to reforms. The person
who seems first to have impressed him with their absolute necessity
was Lord Minto, whose visit to Turin, in October 1847, coincided with
the dismissal of Count della Margherita, the minister most closely
associated with the absolutist and Jesuitical _régime_. Lord Minto was
sent to Italy to encourage in the ways of political virtue those
Italian princes who were not entirely incorrigible. His mission
excited exaggerated hopes on the part of the Liberals, and exaggerated
wrath in the retrograde party--both failing to understand its
limitations. The hopes died a natural death, but long afterwards,
reactionary writers attributed all the 'troubles' in Italy to this
estimable British diplomatist. What is not doubtful is, that,
accustomed as they were to being lectured and bullied by foreign
courts, the Italians derived the greatest encouragement from the
openly expressed sympathy of well-known English visitors, whether they
came in an official capacity like Lord Minto, or unofficially like Mr
Cobden, who travelled as a missionary of Free Trade, and was received
with rapture--with which, it is to be feared, Free Trade had little to
do--by the leading Liberals in Italy: Massimo d'Azeglio at Genoa,
Mancini at Naples Cavour and Scialoja at Turin, Minghetti at Bologna,
Ridolfi at Florence, and Manin and Tommaseo at Venice.

Towards the end of 1847, there was a curious shuffling of the cards in
the small states of Lucca and Parma, resulting in much irritation,
which, in an atmosphere so charged with revolutionary electricity, was
not without importance. The dissolute Bourbon prince who reigned in
Lucca, Charles Ludovico, had but one desire, which was to increase his
civil list. He hit upon an English jockey named Ward, who came to
Italy in the service of a German count, and this person he made his
Chancellor of the Exchequer. By various luminous strokes, Ward
furthered his Sovereign's object without much increasing the taxation,
and when matters began to grow complicated, and here, too, a cry was
raised for a Constitution (which had been solemnly guaranteed to the
people of Lucca at the Congress of Vienna, but had never been heard of
since), he proposed the sale of the Duchy off-hand to Tuscany, with
which it would, in any case, be united, when, on the death of the
ex-Empress Marie-Louise, the Duchy of Parma devolved on the Duke of
Lucca. At the same time, by a prior agreement, a district of Tuscany
called the Lunigiana was consigned, one-half to the Duchess of Parma,
and the other to the Duke of Modena. The indignation of the
population, which was made, by force, subject to the Duke of Modena,
was intense, and the whole transaction of handing about Italians to
suit the pleasure of princes, or to obey the articles of forgotten
treaties, reminded the least sensitive of the everyday opprobrium of
their lot.

The bargain with Tuscany had been struck only eight days when
Marie-Louise died--unlamented, since the latter years of her reign
formed a sad contrast to the earlier. Marie-Louise had not a bad
disposition, but she always let her husband of the hour govern as he
chose; of the four or five of these husbands, the last two, and
particularly the hated Count de Bombelles, undid all the good done by
their more humane predecessors. The Parmese petitioned their new Duke
to send the man away, and to grant them some measure of freedom. The
answer he gave was the confirmation of Bombelles in all his honours,
and the conclusion of a treaty with Austria, securing the assistance
of her arms. A military force had been sent to Parma to escort the
body of the late Duchess to Vienna; but on the principle that the
living are of more consequence than the dead, it remained there to
protect the new Duke from his subjects. Marie-Louise and her lovers,
Charles Ludovico and his jockey-minister, are instructive
illustrations of the scandalous point things had reached in the small
states of Italy.

There was, indeed, one state in which, though the dynasty was
Austrian, the government was conducted without ferocity and without
scandal. This was Tuscany. The branch of the Hapsburg-Lorraine family
established in Tuscany produced a series of rulers who, if they
exhibited no magnificent qualities, were respectable as individuals,
and mild as rulers. Giusti dubbed Leopold II. 'the Tuscan Morpheus,
crowned with poppies and lettuce leaves,' and the clear intelligence
of Ricasoli was angered by the languid, let-be policy of the
Grand-Ducal government, but, compared with the other populations of
Italy, the Tuscans might well deem themselves fortunate. Only on one
occasion had the Grand Duke given up a fugitive from the more favoured
provinces, and the presence of distinguished exiles lent brilliancy to
his capital. Leopold II. hesitated between the desire to please his
subjects and the fear of his Viennese relations, who sent him through
Metternich the ominous reminder, 'that the Italian Governments had
only subsisted for the last ten years by the support they received
from Austria'--an assertion at which Charles Albert took umbrage, but
he was curtly told that he was not intended. In spite of his fears,
however, the Grand Duke instituted a National Guard on the 4th of
September, which was correctly judged the augury of further
concessions. In August, the Austrian Minister had distinctly
threatened to occupy Tuscany, or any other of the Italian duchies
where a National Guard was granted; its institution was therefore
interpreted as a decisive act of rebellion against the Imperial
dictatorship. The red, white and green tricolor, not yet permitted in
Piedmont, floated already from all the towers of the city on the Arno.

Where there were no signs of improvement was in the government of the
Two Sicilies. King Ferdinand undertook a journey through several parts
of the country, but as Lord Napier, the British Minister, expressed
it: 'Exactly where the grace of the royal countenance was principally
conferred, the rebels sprung up most thickly.' A revolution was
planned to break out in all the cities of the kingdom, but the project
only took effect at Messina and at Reggio, and in both places the
movement was stifled with prompt and barbarous severity. When the
leader of the Calabrian attempt, Domenico Romeo, a landed proprietor,
was caught on the heights of Aspromonte, his captors, after cutting
off his head, carried it to his young nephew, whom they ordered to
take it to Reggio with the cry of 'Long live the King.' The youth
refused, and was immediately killed. In the capital, Carlo Poerio and
many patriots were thrown into prison on suspicion. Settembrini had
just time to escape to Malta.

The year 1847 closed amid outward appearances of quiet.






CHAPTER VI

THE YEAR OF REVOLUTION

1848

Insurrection in Sicily--The Austrians expelled from Milan and
Venice--Charles Albert takes the Field--Withdrawal of the Pope and King
of Naples--Piedmont defeated--The Retreat.


On the 12th of January, the birthday of the King of the Two Sicilies,
another insurrection broke out in Sicily; this time it was serious
indeed. The City of the Vespers lit the torch which set Europe on
fire.

So began the year of revolution which was to see the kings of the
earth flying, with or without umbrellas, and the principle of monarchy
more shaken by the royal see-saw of submission and vengeance than ever
it was by the block of Whitehall or the guillotine of the Place Louis
XV.

In Italy, the errors and follies of that year were not confined to
princes and governments, but it will remain memorable as the time when
the Italian nation, not a dreamer here or there, or a handful of
heroic madmen, or an isolated city, but the nation as a whole, with an
unanimity new in history, asserted its right and its resolve to exist.

King Ferdinand sent 5000 soldiers to 'make a garden,' as he described
it, of Palermo, if the offers sent at the same time failed to pacify
the inhabitants. These offers were refused with the comment: 'Too
late,' and the Palermitans prepared to resist to the death under the
guidance of the veteran patriot Ruggiero Settimo, Prince of Fitalia.
'Separation,' they said, 'or our English Constitution of 1812.'
Increased irritation was awakened by the discovery in the head office
of the police at Palermo of a secret room full of skeletons, which
were supposed to belong to persons privately murdered. The Neapolitans
were compelled to withdraw with a loss of 3000 men, but before they
went, the general in command let out 4000 convicts, who had been kept
without food for forty-eight hours. The convicts, however, did not
fulfil the intentions of their liberator, and did but little mischief.
Not so the Neapolitan troops, who committed horrors on the peasantry
as they retreated, which provoked acts of retaliation almost as
barbarous. In a short time all Sicily was in its own hands except the
citadel of Messina.

It is not possible to follow the Sicilians in their long struggle for
their autonomy. They stood out for some fourteen months. An English
Blue-book is full of the interminable negotiations conducted by Lord
Napier and the Earl of Minto in the hope of bringing the strife to an
end. When the parliament summoned by the revolutionary government
declared the downfall of the House of Bourbon, all the stray princes
in Europe, including Louis Napoleon, were reviewed as candidates for
the throne. The choice fell on the Duke of Genoa; it was well received
in England, and the British men-of-war were immediately ordered to
salute the Sicilian flag. But the Duke's reign never became a reality.
After an heroic struggle, the islanders were subjugated in the spring
of 1849.

So stout a fight for independence must win admiration, if not
approval. The political reasons against the course taken by the
Sicilians have been suggested in a former chapter. In separating their
lot from that of Naples, in rejecting even freedom unless it was
accompanied by disruption, they hastened the ruin of the Neapolitans
and of themselves, and surely played into the hands of the crafty
tyrant who desired nothing better than to fish in the troubled waters
of his subjects' dissensions.

In the gathering storm of January 1848, the first idea that occurred
to Ferdinand II. was the good old plan of calling in Austrian
assistance. But the Austrians were told by Pius IX. that he would not
allow their troops to pass through his territory. Had they attempted
to pass in spite of his warning, events would have taken a different
turn, as the Pope would have been driven into a war with Austria then
and there; perhaps he would have been glad, as weak people commonly
are, of the compulsion to do what he dared not do without compulsion.
The Austrian Government was too wise to force a quarrel; it was easy
to lock up Austrian subjects for crying 'Viva Pio Nono,' but the
enormous importance of keeping the Head of the Church, if possible, in
a neutral attitude could not be overlooked. All thoughts of going to
Ferdinand's help were politely abandoned, and he, seeing himself in a
defenceless position, and pondering deeply on the upsetting of Louis
Philippe's throne, which was just then the latest news, decided on
that device, dear to all political conjurors, which is known as taking
the wind out of your enemy's sails. The Pope, the Grand Duke of
Tuscany and the King of Sardinia, had worried him for six months with
admonitions. 'Very well,' he now said; 'they urge me forward, I will
precipitate them.' Constitution, representative government, unbridled
liberty of the press, a civic guard, the expulsion of the Jesuits;
what mattered a trifle more or less when everything could be revoked
at the small expense of perjury? Ferdinand posed to perfection in the
character of Citizen King. He reassured those who ventured to show the
least signs of apprehension by saying: 'If I had not intended to carry
out the Statute, I should not have granted it.'

Not many days later, the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the King of
Sardinia each promulgated a Charter. In the case of Charles Albert, it
had been formally promised on the 8th of February, after sleepless
nights, severe fasts, much searching of the heart--contrasting
strangely with the gay transformation scene at Naples; but promises
have a more serious meaning to some persons than to others. Nor did
Charles Albert take any pleasure in the shouts of a grateful people.
'Born in revolution,' he once wrote, 'I have traversed all its phases,
and I know well enough what popularity is worth--_viva_ to-day,
_morte_ to-morrow.'

In the Lombardo-Venetian provinces all seemed still quiet, but the
brooding discontent of the masses increased with the increasing
aggressiveness of the Austrian soldiers, while the refusal to grant
the studiously moderate demands of men like Nazari of Bergamo and
Manin and Tommasco of Venice, who were engaged in a campaign of legal
agitation, brought conviction to the most cautious that no measure of
political liberty was obtainable under Austrian rule.

At the Scala Theatre some of the audience had raised cries of 'Viva
Pio Nono' during a performance of _I Lombardi._[3] This was the excuse
for prohibiting every direct or indirect public reference to the
reigning Pontiff. Nevertheless, a few young men were caught singing
the Pope's hymn, upon which the military charged the crowd. On the 3rd
of January the soldiers fell on the people in the Piazza San Carlo,
killing six and wounding fifty-three. The parish priest of the Duomo
said that he had seen Russians, French and Austrians enter Milan as
invaders; but a scene like that of the 3rd of January he had never
witnessed; 'they simply murdered in the streets.'

The _Judicium Statuarium_, equivalent to martial law, was proclaimed
in February; but the Viennese revolution of the 8th of March, and
Prince Metternich's flight to England, were followed by promises to
abolish the censure, and to convoke the central congregations of the
Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. The utmost privilege of these assemblies
was consultative. In 1815 they were invested with the right to 'make
known grievances,' but they had only once managed to perform this
modest function. It was hardly worth while to talk about them on the
18th of March 1848.

On the morning of that day, Count O'Donnel, the Vice-Governor of
Milan, announced the Emperor's concessions. Before night he was the
hostage of the revolution, signing whatever decrees were demanded of
him till in a few hours even his signature was dispensed with. The
Milanese had begun their historic struggle.

Taking refuge in the Citadel, Radetsky wrote to the Podestà, Count
Gabrio Casati (brother of Teresa Confalonieri), that he acknowledged
no authority at Milan except his own and that of his soldiers. Those
who resisted would be guilty of high treason. If arguments did not
avail, he would make use of all the means placed in his hands by an
army of 100,000 men to bring the rebel city to obedience. Unhappily
for Radetsky, there were not any such 100,000 men in Italy, though
long before this he had told Metternich that he could not guarantee
the safety of Lombardy with less than 150,000. In spite of partial
reinforcements, the number did not amount to more than from 72,000 to
75,000, while at Milan it stood at between 15,000 and 20,000. But if
we take the lower estimate, 15,000 regular troops under such a
commander, who, most rare in similar emergencies, knew his own mind,
and had no thought except the recovery of the town for his Sovereign,
constituted a formidable force against a civilian population, which
began the fight with only a few hundred fowling-pieces. The odds on
the side of Austria were tremendous.

If the Milan revolt had been one of the customary revolutions,
arranged with the help of pen and paper, its first day would have been
certainly its last. But even more than the Sicilian Vespers, it was
the unpremeditated, irresistible act of a people sick of being slaves.
At the beginning Casati tried to restrain it; so, with equal or still
stronger endeavours, did the republican Carlo Cattaneo, whose
influence was great. 'You have no arms,' he said again and again. Not
a single man of weight took upon himself the awful responsibility of
urging the unarmed masses upon so desperate an enterprise; but when
the die was cast none held back. Initiated by the populace, the revolt
was led to its victorious close by the nerve and ability of the
influential men who directed its course.

Towards nightfall on the 18th, during which day there had been only
scuffles between the soldiers and the people, Radetsky took the
Broletto, where the Municipality sat, after a two hours' siege, and
sent forthwith a special messenger to the Emperor with the news that
the revolution was on a fair way to being completely crushed.
Meanwhile, he massed his troops at all the entrances to the city, so
that at dawn he might strangle the insurrection by a concentric
movement, as in a noose. The plan was good; but to-morrow does not
belong even to the most experienced of Field-Marshals.

In all quarters of the city barricades sprang up like mushrooms.
Everything went, freely given, to their construction; the benches of
the Scala, the beds of the young seminarists, the court carriages,
found hidden in a disused church, building materials of the
half-finished Palazzo d'Adda, grand pianofortes, valuable pieces of
artistic furniture, and the old kitchen table of the artisan. Before
the end of the fight the barricades numbered 1523. Young nobles,
dressed in the velvet suits then in vogue, cooks in their white
aprons, even women and children, rushed to the defence of the
improvised fortifications. Luciano Manara and other heroes, who
afterwards fell at Rome, were there to lead. In the first straits for
want of arms the museums of the Uboldi and Poldi-Pozzoli families were
emptied of their rare treasures by permission of the owners; the crowd
brandished priceless old swords and specimens of early firearms. More
serviceable weapons were obtained by degrees from the Austrian killed
and wounded, and from the public offices which fell into their hands.
Bolza, long the hated agent of the Austrian police, was discovered by
the people, but they did not harm him. Throughout the five days, the
Milanese showed a forbearance which was the more admirable, because
there can be no doubt that when the Austrians found they were getting
the worst of it, they vented their rage in deplorable outrages on
non-combatants. That Radetsky was personally to blame for these
excesses has never been alleged, and it was perhaps beyond the power
of the officers to keep discipline among soldiers who, towards the
end, were wild with panic.

'The very foundations of the city were torn up,' wrote the
Field-Marshal in his official report; 'not hundreds, but thousands of
barricades crossed the streets. Such circumspection and audacity were
displayed that it was evident military leaders were at the head of the
people. The character of the Milanese had become quite changed.
Fanaticism had seized every rank and age and both sexes.'

As always happens with street-fighting, the number of the slain has
never been really known; the loss of the citizens was small compared
with that of the Austrians, who, according to some authorities, lost
5000, between killed and wounded.

Radetsky ordered the evacuation of the town and citadel on the night
of Wednesday, the 22nd of March. The Milanese had won much more than
freedom--they had won the right to it. And what they had done they had
done alone. When the news that the capital was up in arms spread
through Lombardy, there was but one gallant impulse, to fly to its
aid. But the earliest to arrive, Giuseppe Martinengo Cesaresco, with
his troop of Brescian peasants, found when he reached Milan that they
were a few hours too late to share in the last shots fired upon the
retreating Austrians.

Nowhere, except in Milan, did the revolution meet with a Radetsky. The
Austrian authorities became convinced that their position was
untenable, and they desired to avoid a useless sacrifice of life.
This, rather than cowardly fears, was the motive which induced Count
Palffy and Count Zichy, the civil and military governors of Venice, to
yield the city without deluging it in blood. The latter had been
guilty of negligence in leaving the Venetian arsenal in charge of
troops so untrustworthy that Manin could take it on the 22nd of March
by a simple display of his own courage, and without striking a blow,
but after this first success on the side of the revolution, which
supplied the people with an unlimited stock of arms and ammunition,
the Austrians did well to give way even from their own point of view.
At seven o'clock on the evening of the 22nd of March, the famous
capitulation was signed. Manin's prediction of the previous day,
'To-morrow the city will be in my power, or I shall be dead,' had been
realised in the first alternative.

Daniel Manin, who was now forty-four years of age, was by profession a
lawyer, by race a Jew. His father became a Christian, and, according
to custom, took the surname of his godfather, who belonged to the
family of the last Doge of Venice. Manin and the Dalmatian scholar,
Niccolò Tommaseo, had been engaged in patiently adducing proof after
proof that Austria did not even abide by her own laws when the
expression of political opinion was concerned. At the beginning of the
revolution they were in prison, and Palffy's first act of surrender
was to set them free. Henceforth Manin was undisputed lord of the
city. It is strange how, all at once, a man who was only slightly
known to the world should have been chosen as spokesman and ruler. It
did not, however, happen by chance. The people in Italy are observant;
the Venetians had observed Manin, and they trusted him. The power of
inspiring trust was what gave this Jewish lawyer his ascendancy, not
the talents which usually appeal to the masses. He had not the
advantage of an imposing presence, for he was short, slight, with blue
eyes and bushy hair; in all things he was the opposite to a demagogue;
he never beguiled, or flattered, or told others what he did not
believe himself. But, on his side, he _knew_ the people, whom most
revolutionary leaders know not at all. 'That is my sole merit,' he
used to say. It was that which enabled him to cleanse Venice from the
stain of having bartered her freedom for the smile of a conqueror, and
give her back the name and inheritance of 'eldest child of liberty.'

It was a matter of course that emancipated Venice should assume a
republican form of government. Here the republic was a restoration. At
Milan the case was different; there were two parties, that of
Cattaneo, which was strongly republican, that of Casati, which was
strongly monarchical. There was a third party, which thought of
nothing except of never again seeing a soldier with a white coat. By
mutual agreement, the Provisional Government declared that the
decision as to the form of government should be left to calmer days.
For a time this compromise produced satisfactory results.

The revolution gained ground. Francis of Modena executed a rapid flight,
and the Duke of Parma presently followed him. By the end of March,
Lombardy and Venetia were free, saving the fortresses of the
Quadrilateral. The exception was of far greater moment than, in the
enchantment of the hour, anyone dreamt of confessing. Mantua, Legnano,
Peschiera and Verona were so many cities of refuge to the flying
Austrian troops, where they could rest in safety and nurse their
strength. Still, the results achieved were great, almost incredible;
with the expectation that Rome, Naples, Tuscany and Piedmont would send
their armies to consolidate the work already done, it was natural to
think that, whatever else might happen, Austrian dominion was a thing of
the past. Alessandro Bixio (brother of the General), who was a
naturalised Frenchman, wrote to the French Government on the 7th of
April from Turin: 'In the ministries, in meetings, in the streets, you
only see and hear people to whom the question of Italian independence
seems to be one of those historical questions about which the time is
past for talking. According to the general opinion, Austria is nothing
but a phantom, and the army of Radetsky a shadow.' Such were the hopes
that prevailed. They were vain, but they did not appear so then.

Pius IX. seemed to throw in his lot definitely with the revolution
when, on the 19th of March, he too granted a Constitution, having
previously formed a lay ministry, which included Marco Minghetti and
Count Pasolini, under the presidency of Cardinal Antonelli, who thus
makes his first appearance as Liberal Premier. That the Roman
Constitution was an unworkable attempt to reconcile lay and
ecclesiastical pretensions, that the proposed Chamber of Deputies,
which was not to make laws affecting education, religious
corporations, the registration of births and marriages; or to confer
civil rights on non-catholics, or to touch the privileges and
immunities of the clergy, might have suited Cloud-cuckoo-town, but
would not suit the solid earth, were facts easy to recognise, but no
one had time to pause and consider. It was sufficient to hear Pius
proclaim that in the wind which was uprooting oaks and cedars might be
clearly distinguished the Voice of the Lord. Such utterances, mingled
with blessings on Italy, brought balm to patriotic souls. The Liberals
had no fear that the Pope would veto the participation of his troops
in the national war, for they were blind to the complications with
which a fighting Pope would find himself embarrassed in the middle of
the nineteenth century. But the other party discerned these
complications from the first, and knew what use to make of them.

The powers of reaction had only to catch hold of a perfectly modern
sentiment, the doctrine that ecclesiastics should be men of peace, in
order to dissipate the myth of a Pope liberator. It was beside the
question that, from the moment he accepted such a doctrine, the Pope
condemned the institution of prince-bishoprics, of which he
represented the last survival. Nor was it material that, if he adopted
it, consistency should have made him carry it to its logical
consequence of non-resistance. By aid of this theory of a peaceful
Pontiff, with the threat, in reserve, of a schism, Austria felt
confident that she could avoid the enormous moral inconvenience of a
Pope in arms against her.

Either, however, the full force of the influence which caused Pius IX.
to draw back was not brought to bear till somewhat late in the day, or
the part acted by him during the months of March and April can be
hardly acquitted of dissimulation. War preparations were continued,
with the warm co-operation of the Cardinal President of the Council,
and when General Durando started for the frontier with 17,000 men, he
would have been a bold man who had said openly in Rome that they were
intended not to fight.

While the Pope was still supposed to favour the war, Ferdinand of
Naples did not dare to oppose the enthusiasm of his subjects, and the
demand that a Neapolitan contingent should be sent to Lombardy. The
first relay of troops actually started, but the generals had secret
orders to take the longest route, and to lose as much time as
possible.

Tuscany had a very small army, but such assistance as she could give
was both promised and given. The fate of the Tuscan corps of 6000 men
will be related hereafter. The Grand Duke Leopold identified himself
with the Italian cause with more sincerity than was to be found at
Rome or Naples; still, the material aid that he could offer counted as
next to nothing.

There remained Piedmont and Charles Albert. Now was the time for the
army which he had created (for Charles Felix left no army worthy of
the name) to assert upon the Lombard fields the reason of its
existence. War with Austria was declared on the 23rd of March. It was
midnight; a vast crowd waited in silence in Piazza Castello. At last
the windows of the palace were opened, a sudden flood of light from
within illuminating the scene. Charles Albert stepped upon the balcony
between his two sons. He was even paler than usual, but a smile such
as no one had seen before was on his lips. He waved the long
proscribed tricolor slowly over the heads of the people.

The King said in his proclamation that 'God had placed Italy in a
position to provide for herself ('in grado di fare da sè'). Hence the
often repeated phrase: 'L'Italia farà da sè.' He told the Lombard
delegates, who met him at Pavia that he would not enter their capital,
which had shown such signal valour, till after he had won a victory.
He declared to all that his only aim was to complete the splendid work
of liberation so happily begun; questions of government would be
reserved for the conclusion of the war. Joy was the order of the day,
but the fatal mistakes of the campaign had already commenced; there
had been inexcusable delay in declaring war; if it was pardonable to
wait for the Milanese initiative, it was as inexpedient as it seemed
ungenerous to wait till the issue of the struggle at Milan was
decided. Then, after the declaration of war, considering that the
Sardinian Government must have seen its imminence for weeks, and
indeed for months, there was more time lost than ought to have been
the case in getting the troops under weigh. Still, at the opening of
the campaign, two grand possibilities were left. The first was
obviously to cut Radetsky off in his painful retreat, largely
performed along country by-roads, as he had to avoid the principal
cities which were already free. Had Charles Albert caught him up while
he was far from the Quadrilateral, the decisive blow would have been
struck, and the only man who could save Austria in Italy would have
been taken prisoner. Radetsky chose the route of Lodi and the lower
Brescian plains to Montechiaro, where the encampments were ready for
the Austrian spring manoeuvres: from this point an easy march carried
him under the walls of Verona. Here he met General d'Aspre, who had
just arrived with the garrison of Padua. D'Aspre, by skill and
resolution, had brought his men from Padua without losing one, having
refused the Paduans arms for a national guard, though ordered from
Milan to grant them. 'You come to tell me all is lost,' said the
Field-Marshal when they met 'No,' rejoined the younger general, 'I
come to tell you all is saved.'

This great chance missed, there was another which could have been
seized. Mantua, extraordinary to relate, was defended by only three
hundred artillerymen and a handful of hussars. It would have fallen
into the hands of its own citizens but for the presence of mind of its
commandant, the Polish General Gorzhowsky, who told them that to no
one on earth would he deliver the keys of the fortress except to his
Emperor, and that the moment he could no longer defend it he would
blow it into the air, with himself and half Mantua. He showed them the
flint and the steel with which he intended to do the deed. Enemy
though he was, that incident ought to be recorded in letters of gold
on the gates of Mantua, as a perpetual lesson of that most difficult
thing for a country founded in revolution to learn: the meaning of a
soldier's duty.

It is easy to see that, if Charles Albert had made an immediate dash
on Mantua, the fortress, or its ruins, would have been his, to the
enormous detriment of the Austrian position. But this chance too was
missed. On the 31st of March, the 9000 men sent with all speed by
Radetsky to the defenceless fortress arrived, and henceforth Mantua
was safe. Charles Albert only got within fifteen or sixteen miles of
it five days later, to find that all hope of its capture was gone.

The campaign began with political as well as with military mistakes.
At the same time that the King of Sardinia was declaring in the
Proclamation addressed to the Lombards that, full of admiration of the
glorious feats performed in their capital, he came to their aid as
brother to brother, friend to friend, his ambassadors were trying to
persuade the foreign Powers, and especially Austria, Prussia and
Russia, that the only object of the war was to avoid a revolution in
Piedmont, and to prevent the establishment of a republic in Lombardy.
No one was convinced or placated by these assurances; far better as
policy than so ignominious an attempt at hedging would have been the
acknowledgment to all the world of the noble crime of patriotism. But,
as Massimo d'Azeglio once observed, Charles Albert had the incurable
defect of thinking himself cunning. It was, moreover, only too true
that, although in these diplomatic communications the King allowed the
case against him to be stated with glaring exaggeration, yet they
contained an element of fact. He _was_ afraid of revolution at home;
he _was_ afraid of a Lombard republic; these were not the only, nor
were they the strongest, motives which drove him into the war, but
they were motives which, associated with deeper causes, contributed
to the disasters of the future.

The Piedmontese force was composed of two _corps d'armée,_ the first
under General Bava and the second under General Sonnaz: each amounted
to 24,000 men. The reserves, under the Duke of Savoy, numbered 12,000.
Radetsky, at first (after strengthening the garrisons in the
fortresses), could not put into the field more than 40,000 men. As has
been stated, the King assumed the supreme command, which led to a
constant wavering between the original plan of General Bava, a capable
officer, and the criticisms and suggestions of the staff. The greatest
mistake of all, that of never bringing into the field at once more
than about half the army, was not without connection with the supposed
necessity, based on political reasons, of garrisoning places in the
rear which might have been safely left to the care of their national
guards.

Besides the royal army, there were in the field 17,000 Romans, 3000
Modenese and Parmese, and 6000 Tuscans. There were also several
companies of Lombard volunteers, Free Corps, as they were called,
which might have been increased to almost any extent had they not been
discouraged by the King, who was believed to look coldly on all these
extraneous allies, either from doubt of their efficiency, or from the
wish to keep the whole glory of the campaign for his Piedmontese army.

The first engagements were on the line of the Mincio. On the 8th of
April the Sardinians carried the bridge of Goito after a fight of four
hours. The burning of the village of Castelnuovo on the 12th, as a
punishment for its having received Manara's band of volunteers,
excited great exasperation; many of the unfortunate villagers perished
in the flames, and this and other incidents of the same kind did much
towards awakening a more vivid hatred of the Austrians among the
peasants.

After easily gaining possession of the left (Venetian) bank of the
Mincio, Charles Albert employed himself in losing time over chimerical
operations with a view to taking the fortresses of Peschiera and
Mantua, now strongly garrisoned, and impregnable while their
provisions lasted. This object governed the conduct of the campaign,
and caused the waste of precious months during every day of which
General Nugent, with his 30,000 men, was approaching one step nearer
from the mountains of Friuli, and General Welden, with his 10,000,
down the passes of Tyrol. If, instead of playing at sieges, Charles
Albert had cut off these reinforcements, Radetsky would have been
rendered powerless, and the campaign would have had another
termination. Never was there a war in which the adoption of Napoleon's
system of crushing his opponents one by one, when he could not
outnumber them if united, was more clearly indicated.

General Durando crossed the Po on the 21st of April with 17,000 men,
partly Pontifical troops and partly volunteers, to which weak corps
fell the task of opposing Nugent's advance in Venetia. The colours of
the Pontifical troops were solemnly blessed before they left Rome, but
as the order was only given to go to the frontier, and nothing was
said, though everything was understood, about crossing it, the Pope
was technically able to assert that the war was none of his making.
His ministry ventured to suggest to him that the situation was
peculiar. Now it was that Catholic Austria and Russia, herself
schismatic, flourished in the face of the Pope the portentous scare of
a new schism. It is said that the Pope's confessor, a firm Liberal,
died just at this time, not without suspicion of poison. Thoroughly
alarmed in his spiritual capacity, the Pope issued his Encyclical
Letter of the 29th of April--when his ministers and the whole country
still hoped from day to day that he would formally declare war--in
which he protested that his sacred office obliged him to embrace all
nations in an equal paternal love. If his subjects, he added, followed
the example of the other Italians, he could not help it: a
half-hearted admission which could not mitigate the indignation which
the document called forth. With regard to Durando's corps, the Pope
did what was the best thing under the altered circumstances; he sent
L.C. Farini as envoy to the King of Sardinia, with the request that he
would take the Roman troops under his supreme command, the Papal
Government agreeing to continue the pay of such of them as belonged to
the regular army. Pius IX. made one last effort to help his
fellow-countrymen which people hardly noticed, so futile did it
appear, but which was probably made in profound seriousness. He wrote
a letter to the Emperor of Austria begging him to make all things
right and pleasant by voluntarily withdrawing from his Italian
dominions. Popes had dictated to sovereigns before now; was there not
Canossa? Besides, if a miracle was sought, why should not a miracle
happen? Pope and Emperor shaking hands over a free Italy and a world
reconciled--how delightful the prospect! Who can doubt that when the
Pope wrote that letter all the beautiful dreams of Cardinal Mastai
carried him once more away (it was the last time) in an ecstasy of
blissful hopes? 'Let not your Majesty take offence,' ran the appeal,
'if we turn to your pity and religion, exhorting you with fatherly
affection to desist from a war which, powerless to re-conquer the
hearts of the Lombards and Venetians, can only lead to a dark series
of calamities. Nor let the generous Germanic nation take offence if
we invite it to abandon old hatreds, and convert into useful relations
of friendly neighbourhood a dominion which can be neither noble nor
happy if it depend only on the sword. Thus we trust in the nation
itself, honestly proud of its own nationality, to no longer make a
point of honour of sanguinary attempts against the Italian nation, but
rather to perceive that its true honour lies in recognising Italy as a
sister.'

The Emperor received the bearer of the letter with coldness, and
referred him to his ministers, who simply called his attention to the
fact that the Pope owed the Temporal Power to the same treaties as
those which gave Austria the possession of Lombardy and Venetia.

The day after the publication of the Encyclical, that is to say, the
30th of April, the Piedmontese obtained their first important success
in the battle of Pastrengo, near Peschiera. Fighting from daybreak to
sundown, they drove the enemy back into Verona, with a loss of 1200
killed and wounded. The Austrians were in rather inferior numbers; but
the victory was highly creditable to the hitherto untried army of
Piedmont, and showed that it contained excellent fighting material. It
was not followed up, and might nearly as well have never been fought.

The Neapolitan troops, of whom 41,000 were promised, 17,000 being on
the way already, were intended to reinforce Durando's corps in
Venetia. With the two or three battalions which Manin could spare from
the little army of Venice, the Italian forces opposed to Nugent's
advance would have been brought up to 60,000 men; in which case not
even Charles Albert's 'masterly inactivity' could have given Austria
the victory.

The Neapolitan Parliament convoked under the new Constitution was to
meet on the 15th of May. A dispute had been going on for several days
between the Sovereign and the deputies about the form of the
parliamentary oath, the deputies wishing that the Chambers should be
left free to amend or alter the Statute, while the King desired that
they should be bound by oath to maintain it as it was presented to
them. It was unwise to provoke a disagreement which was sure to
irritate the King. However, late on the 14th, he appeared to yield,
and consented that the wording of the oath should be referred to the
discussion of Parliament itself. It seems that, at the same time, he
ordered the troops of the garrison to take up certain positions in the
city. A colonel of the National Guard raised the cry of royal treason,
calling upon the people to rise, which a portion of them did, and
barricades were constructed in the Toledo and other of the principal
streets. A more insane and culpable thing than this attempt at
revolution was never put in practice. It was worse even than that 20th
of May at Milan, which threw Eugene into the arms of Austria. Its
consequences were those which everyone could have foreseen--a two
days' massacre in the streets of Naples, begun by the troops and
continued by the lazzaroni, who were allowed to pillage to their
hearts' content; the deputies dispersed with threats of violence,
Parliament dissolved before it had sat, the original Statute torn up,
and (by far the most important) the Neapolitan troops, now at Bologna,
recalled to Naples. This was the pretty work of the few hundred
reckless rioters on the 15th of May.

Had not Pius IX. by this time repudiated all part in the war, the King
of the Two Sicilies would have thought twice before he recalled his
contingent, though the counsels of neutrality which he received from
another quarter--from Lord Palmerston in the name of the English
Government--strengthened his hand not a little in carrying out a
defection which was the direct ruin of the Italian cause. When the
order to return reached Bologna, the veteran patriot, General Pepe,
who had been summoned from exile to take the chief command, resolved
to disobey, and invited the rest to follow him. Nearly the whole of
the troops were, however, faithful to their military oath. The
situation was horrible. The choice lay between the country in danger
and the King, who, false and perjured though he might be, was still
the head of the State, to whom each soldier had sworn obedience. One
gallant officer escaped from the dilemma by shooting himself. Pepe,
with a single battalion of the line, a company of engineers, and two
battalions of volunteers, went to Venice, where they fought like
heroes to the end.

On the 27th of May, Radetsky, taking the offensive with about 40,000
men, marched towards Mantua, near which was stationed the small Tuscan
corps, whose commander only received when too late General Bava's
order to retire from an untenable position. On the 29th the Austrians,
in overwhelming numbers, bore down upon the 6000 Tuscans at Montanara
and Curtatone, and defeated them after a resistance of six hours. The
Tuscan professor, Giuseppe Montanelli, fell severely wounded while
holding the dead body of his favourite pupil, but he recovered to show
less discretion in politics than he had shown valour in the field.

Peschiera, where the supplies were exhausted, capitulated on the 30th,
and the day after found 22,000 Piedmontese ready to give Radetsky
battle at Goito, whence, after a severe contest, they drove him back
to Mantua. The Austrians lost 3000 out of 25,000 men. The honours of
the day fell to the Savoy brigade, which was worthy of its own fame
and of the future King of Italy, who was slightly wounded while
leading it. Outwardly this seemed the most fortunate period of the war
for Charles Albert, but that had already happened which was to cause
the turning of the tide. Nugent, with his 30,000 men, had joined
Radetsky. His march across Venetia was harassed by the inhabitants,
who left him no peace, especially in the mountain districts, but the
poor little force of Romans and volunteers under Durando and Ferrari
was unable to seriously check his progress in the open country, though
he failed in the attempt to take the towns of Treviso and Vicenza in
his passage. The repulse of the Austrians, 18,000 strong, from Vicenza
on the 23rd of May, did great credit to Durando, who only had 10,000
men, most of them _Crociati_, as the volunteers were called, whose
ideas about fighting were original. It is hard to see how this General
could have done more than he did with the materials at his disposal,
or in what way he merited the abuse which was heaped upon him. The
case would have been very different if his hybrid force had been
supported by the Neapolitan army.

Nugent was ordered by Radetsky to let the intermediate places alone,
and to come on to him as fast as circumstances would admit. The
junction of their troops was, the Field-Marshal saw, of vital
necessity, but when this was achieved, and when Welden had also
brought his 15,000 fresh men from Tyrol, he turned his attention to
Vicenza, since, as long as that town remained in Durando's hands,
Venetia would still be free. He conceived the bold plan of making an
excursion to Vicenza with his complete army, while Charles Albert
enjoyed the pleasant illusion that the Austrians were in full retreat
owing to his success at Goito. The result of Radetsky's attack was not
doubtful, but the defence of the town on the 10th of June could not
have been more gallant; the 3500 Swiss, the Pontifical Carabineers,
and the few other troops belonging to the regular army of the Pope did
wonders. Cialdini, the future general, and Massimo d'Azeglio, the
future prime minister, fought in this action, and the latter was
severely wounded. After several hours' resistance there was nothing to
be done but to hoist the white flag; Radetsky's object was
accomplished, the Venetian _terra firma_ was practically once more in
the power of Austria. On the 14th he was back again at Verona without
the least harm having happened in his absence.

Only military genius of the first order could now have saved the
Piedmontese, and what prevailed was the usual infatuation. Charles
Albert's lines were extended across forty miles of country, from
Peschiera to Goito. On the 23rd of July the Austrians fell upon their
weakest point, and obliged Sonnaz' division to cross over to the right
bank of the Mincio. On the 24th, the King succeeded in dislodging the
Austrians from Custozza after four hours' struggle; but next day,
which was spent entirely in fighting, Radetsky retook Custozza, and
obliged the King to fall back on Villafranca. Now began the terrible
retreat on Milan, performed under the ceaseless fire of the pursuers,
who attacked and defeated the retreating army for the last time, close
to Milan, on the 4th of August. Radetsky had with him 45,000 men;
Charles Albert's forces were reduced to 25,000. He had lost 5000 since
he recrossed the Mincio. He begged for a truce, and, defeated and
undone, he entered the city which he had vowed should only receive him
victorious.

To suppose that anything could have been gained by subjecting Milan to
the horrors of a siege seems at this date the veriest madness;
whatever Charles Albert's sins were, the capitulation of Milan was not
among them. The members of a wild faction, however, demanded
resistance to the death, or the death of the King if he refused. It is
their severest censure to say that their pitiless fury is not excused
even by the tragic fate of a population which, having gained freedom
unaided less than six months before, saw itself given back to its
ancestral foe by the man in whom it had hoped as a saviour. They saw
crimes where there were only blunders, which had brought the King to a
pass only one degree less wretched than their own. Crushed,
humiliated, his army half destroyed, his personal ambition--to rate no
higher the motive of his actions--trodden in the dust; and now the
name of traitor was hissed in his ears by those for whom he had made
these sacrifices.

Stung to the heart, the King instructed General Bava to tell the
Milanese that if they were ready to bury themselves under the ruins of
the city, he and his sons were ready to do the same. But the
Municipality, convinced of the desperateness of the situation, had
already entered into negotiations with Radetsky, by which the
capitulation was ratified. On this becoming known, the Palazzo Greppi,
where Charles Albert lodged, was the object of a new display of rage;
an attempt was even made to set it on fire. During the night, the King
succeeded in leaving the palace on foot, guarded by a company of
Bersaglieri and accompanied by his son, the Duke of Genoa, who, on
hearing of his father's critical position, disobeyed the order to stay
with his regiment, and came into the city to share his danger.

The next day, the 6th of August, the Austrians reentered Milan. They
themselves said that the Milanese seemed distraught. The Municipality
was to blame for having concealed from the people the real state of
things, by publishing reports of imaginary victories. Had the
unthinking fury of the mob ended, as it so nearly ended, in an
irreparable crime, the authors of these falsehoods would have been,
more than anyone else, responsible for the catastrophe.

The campaign of 1848 was finished. From the frontier, Charles Albert
issued a proclamation to his people, calling upon the Piedmontese to
render the common misfortunes less difficult to bear by giving his
army a brotherly reception. 'In its ranks,' he concluded, 'are my sons
and I, ready, as we all are, for new sacrifices, new hardships, or for
death itself for our beloved fatherland.'

The political and diplomatic transactions connected with the war in
Lombardy were the subject after it closed of much discussion, and of
some violent recriminations. Even from the short account given in
these pages, it ought to be apparent that the supreme cause of
disaster was simply bad generalship. Contemporaries, however, judged
otherwise; if they were monarchists, they attributed the failure to
the want of whole-hearted co-operation of the Provisional Governments
of Lombardy with the liberating King; if they were republicans, they
attributed it to the King's want of trust in the popular element, and
anxiety lest, instead of receiving an increase of territory, he should
find himself confronted with a new republic at his door. Both parties
were so far correct that the strain of double purposes, or, at least,
of incompatible aspirations which ran through the conduct of affairs,
militated against a fortunate ending. The Piedmontese Government,
even had it wished, would have found it difficult to adhere strictly
to the programme of leaving all political matters for discussion after
the war. What actually happened was that the union, under the not
altogether attractive form of Fusion with Piedmont (instead of in the
shape of the formation of an Italian kingdom), was effected at the end
of June and beginning of July over the whole of Lombardy and Venetia,
including Venice, where, perhaps alone, the feeling against it was not
that of a party, but of the bulk of the population. Manin shared that
feeling, but his true patriotism induced him to push on the Fusion in
order to avoid the risk of civil war. He retired into private life the
day it was accomplished, only to become again by acclamation Head of
the State when the reverses of Sardinia obliged the King's Government
to renounce the whole of his scarcely--acquired possessions, not
excepting Modena, which had been the first, by a spontaneous
plebiscite, to elect him Sovereign.

The diplomatic history of the war is chiefly the history of the
efforts of the English Cabinet to pull up a runaway horse. Lord Minto
had been sent to urge the Italian princes to grant those concessions
which Austria always said (and she was perfectly right) would lead to
a general attack upon her power, but when the attack began, the
British Government strained every nerve to limit its extension and
diminish its force. That Lord Palmerston in his own mind disliked
Austria, and would have been glad to see North Italy free, does not
alter the fact that he played the Austrian game, and played it with
success. He strongly advised every Italian prince to abstain from the
conflict, and it is further as certain as anything can well be, that
his influence, exercised through Lord Normanby, alone averted French
intervention in August 1848, when the desperate state of things made
the Italians willing to accept foreign aid. What would have happened
if the French had intervened it is interesting to speculate, but
impossible to decide. Their help was not desired, except as a last
resource, by any party in Italy, nor by any man of note except Manin.
The republicans wished Italy to owe her liberation to herself; Charles
Albert wished her to owe it to him. The King also feared a republican
propaganda, and was uneasy, not without reason, about Savoy and Nice.
Lamartine would probably have been satisfied with the former, but it
is doubtful if Charles Albert, though capable of giving up his crown
for Italy, would have been capable of renouncing the cradle of his
race. When Lamartine was succeeded by Cavaignac, perhaps Nice would
have been demanded as well as Savoy. That both the King and Mazzini
were right in mistrusting the sentiments of the French Government, is
amply testified by a letter written by Jules Bastide to the French
representative at Turin, in which the Minister of Foreign Affairs
speaks of the danger to France of the formation of a strong monarchy
at the foot of the Alps, that would tend to assimilate the rest of
Italy, adding the significant words: 'We could admit the unity of
Italy on the principle and in the form of a federation of independent
states, each balancing the other, but never a unity which placed the
whole of Italy under the dominion of one of these states.'

Whether, in spite of all this, a political mistake was not made in not
accepting French aid when it was first offered (in the spring of 1848)
must remain an open question. When the French came eleven years later,
they were actuated by no purer motives, but who would say that Cavour,
instead of seeking, should have refused the French alliance?

One other point has still to be noticed: the proposal made by Austria
in the month of May to give up Lombardy unconditionally if she might
keep Venetia, which was promised a separate administration and a
national army. Nothing shows the state of mind then prevailing in a
more distinct light than the scorn with which this offer was
everywhere treated. Lord Palmerston declined to mediate on such a
basis 'because there was no chance of the proposal being entertained,'
which proved correct, as when it was submitted to the Provisional
Government of Milan, it was not even thought worth taking into
consideration. No one would contemplate the sacrifice of Venice by a
new Campo Formio.

Far, indeed, was Austria the victorious in August from Austria the
humiliated in May. On the 9th of August, Hess and Salasco signed the
armistice between the lately contending Powers. The next day the
Emperor Ferdinand returned to his capital, from which he had been
chased in the spring. He might well congratulate himself upon the
marvellous recovery of his empire; but the revolution in Hungary was
yet to be quelled, and another rising at Vienna in October tried his
nerves, which were never of the strongest. On the 2nd of December he
abdicated in favour of his young nephew, the Archduke Francis Joseph,
who had been brought face to face more than once on the Mincio with
the Duke of Savoy, whom he rivalled in personal courage.

On the 10th of December, another event occurred which placed a new
piece on the European chess-board: Louis Napoleon was elected to the
Presidency of the French Republic.






CHAPTER VII

THE DOWNFALL OF THRONES

1848-1849

Garibaldi Arrives--Venice under Manin--The Dissolution of the Temporal
Power--Republics at Rome and Florence.


While the remnant of the Piedmontese army recrossed the bridge over
the Ticino at Pavia, crushed, though not though want of valour,
outraged in the person of its King, surely the saddest vanquished host
that ever retraced in sorrow the path it had traced in the wildest
joy, a few thousand volunteers in Lombardy still refused to lay down
their arms or to recognise that, after the capitulation of Milan, all
was lost. Valueless as a fact, their defiance of Austria had value as
a prophecy, and its prophetic aspect comes more clearly into view when
it is seen that the leader of the little band was Garibaldi, while its
standard-bearer was Mazzini. These two had lately met for the first
time since 1833, when Garibaldi, or 'Borel,' as he was called in the
ranks of 'Young Italy,' went to Marseilles to make the acquaintance of
the head and brain of the society which he had joined, as has been
mentioned, on the banks of the Black Sea.

'When I was young and had only aspirations,' said Garibaldi in London
in April 1864, 'I sought out a man who could give me counsel and guide
my youthful years; I sought him as the thirsty man seeks water. This
man I found; he alone kept alive the sacred fire, he alone watched
while all the world slept; he has always remained my friend, full of
love for his country, full of devotion for the cause of freedom: this
man is Joseph Mazzini.'

The words spoken then--when the younger patriot was the chosen hero of
the greatest of free nations, while the elder, still misunderstood by
almost all, was shunned and calumniated, and even called 'the worst
enemy of Italy'--gave one fresh proof, had one been wanting, that,
though there have been more flawless characters than Garibaldi, never
in a human breast beat a more generous heart. Politically, there was
nearly as much divergence between Mazzini and Garibaldi as between
Mazzini and Cavour; the master thought the pupil lacked ideality, the
pupil thought the master lacked practicalness; but they were at one in
the love of their land and in the desire to serve her.

On parting with Mazzini in 1833, Garibaldi, then captain of a sailing
vessel, went to Genoa and enrolled himself as a common sailor in the
Royal Piedmontese Navy. The step, strange in appearance, was certainly
taken on Mazzini's advice, and the immediate purpose was doubtless to
make converts for 'Young Italy' among the marines. Had Garibaldi been
caught when the ruthless persecution of all connected with 'Young
Italy' set in, he would have been shot offhand, as were all those who
were found dabbling with politics in the army and navy. He escaped
just in time, and sailed for South America.

The _Gazzetta Piemontese_ of the 17th of June 1834 published the
sentence of death passed upon him, with the rider which declared him
exposed to public vengeance 'as an enemy of the State, and liable to
all the penalties of a brigand of the first category.' He saw the
paper; and it was the first time that he or anyone else had seen the
name of Giuseppe Garibaldi in print; a name of which Victor Emmanuel
would one day say that 'it filled the furthest ends of the earth.'

Profitable to Italy, over nearly every page of whose recent history
might be written 'out of evil cometh forth good,' was the banishment
which threw Garibaldi into his romantic career of the next twelve
years between the Amazon and the Plata. Soldier of fortune who did not
seek to enrich himself; soldier of freedom who never aimed at power,
he always meant to turn to account for his own country the experience
gained in the art of war in that distant land, where he rapidly became
the centre of a legend, almost the origin of a myth. Antique in
simplicity, singleness, superabundance of life, and in a sort of
naturalism which is not of to-day; unselfconscious, trustful in
others, forgiving, incapable of fear, abounding in compassion,
Garibaldi's true place is not in the aggregation of facts which we
call history, but in the apotheosis of character which we call the
_Iliad_, the _Mahabharata_, the _Edda_, the cycles of Arthur and of
Roland, and the _Romancero del Cid_.

In childhood he rescued a drowning washerwoman; in youth he nursed men
dying of cholera; as a veteran soldier he passed the night among the
rocks of Caprera hunting for a lamb that was lost. No amount of habit
could remove the repugnance he felt at uttering the word 'fire.' Yet
this gentle warrior, when his career was closed and he lay chained to
his bed of pain, endorsed his memoirs with the Spanish motto: 'La
guerra es la verdadera vida del hombre.' War was the veritable life of
Garibaldi; war, not conspiracy; war, not politics; war, not, alas!
model farming, for which the old chief fancied in his later years that
he had discovered in himself a vocation.

Riding the wild horses and chasing the wild cattle of the Pampas, his
eyes covering the immense spaces untrodden by man, this corsair of
five-and-twenty drank deep of the innocent pleasures of untamed
nature, when not occupied in fighting by land or sea, with equal
fortune; or rather, perhaps, with greater fortune and greater proof of
inborn genius as commander of the naval campaign of the Paran[=a] than
as defender of Monte Video. No adventures were wanting to him; he was
even imprisoned and tortured. In South America he found the one woman
worthy to bear his name, the lion-hearted Anita, whom he carried off,
she consenting, from her father and the man to whom her father had
betrothed her. Garibaldi in after years expressed such deep contrition
for the act which bore Anita away from the quiet life in store for
her, and plunged her into hardships which only ended when she died,
that, misinterpreting his remorse, many supposed the man from whom he
took her to have been already her husband. It was not so. Shortly
before the Church of San Francisco at Monte Video was burnt down (some
twenty years ago), the marriage register of Garibaldi and Anita was
found in its archives, and a legal copy was made. In it she is
described as 'Doña Ana Maria de Jesus, unmarried daughter of Don
Benito Rivevio de Silva, of Laguna, in Brazil.' The bridegroom, who
during all his American career had scarcely clothes to cover him,
parted with his only possession, an old silver watch, to pay the
priest's fees. Head of the Italian Legion, he only took the rations of
a common soldier, and as candles were not included in the rations, he
sat in the dark. Someone reported this to the Government, who sent him
a present of £20, half of which he gave to a poor widow.

When the first rumours that something was preparing in Italy reached
Monte Video, Garibaldi wrote a letter offering his services to the
Pope, still hailed as Champion of Freedom, and soon embarked himself
for the Old World, with eighty-five of his best soldiers, among whom
was his beloved friend, Francesco Anzani. Giacomo Medici had been
despatched a little in advance to confer with Mazzini. At starting,
the Legion knew nothing of the revolution in Milan and Venice, or of
Charles Albert having taken the field. Great was their wonder,
therefore, on reaching Gibraltar, to see hoisted on a Sardinian ship a
perfectly new flag, never beheld by them out of dreams--the Italian
tricolor.

So Garibaldi returned at forty-one years of age to the country where
the sentence of death passed upon him had never been revoked. Before
the law he was still 'a brigand of the first category.' Nor was he
quite sure that he would not be arrested, and, as a precaution, when
he cast anchor in the harbour of his native Nice, he ran up the Monte
Videan colours. It was needless. Throngs of people crowded the quays
to welcome home the Ligurian captain, who had done great things over
sea. Anita was there; she had preceded him to Europe with their three
children, Teresita, Menotti and Ricciotti. There, also, was his old
mother, who never ceased to be beautiful, the 'Signora Rosa,' as the
Nizzards called her. She was almost a woman of the people, but the
simple dignity of her life made all treat her as a superior being. To
her prayers, while she lived, Garibaldi believed that he owed his
safety in so many perils, and after her death the soldiers used to say
that on the eve of battles he walked apart communing with her spirit.

From Nice, Garibaldi went to Genoa, where he took a last leave of his
friend Anzani, who returned from exile not to fight, as he had hoped,
but to die. The day before he expired, Medici arrived at Genoa; he was
very angry with the Chief, in consequence of some disagreement as to
the place of landing. Anzani said to him entreatingly: 'Do not be
hard, Medici, on Garibaldi; he is a predestined man: a great part of
the future of Italy is in his hands.' The counsel from dying lips sank
deep into Medici's heart; he often disagreed with Garibaldi, but to
his last day he never quarrelled with him again. Long years after, if
friction arose between Garibaldi and his King, it was Medici's part to
throw oil on the waters.

Garibaldi sought an interview with Charles Albert, and offered him his
arms and the arms of his Legion, 'not unused to war.' Pope or prince,
little it mattered to him who the saviour of Italy should be. But
Charles Albert, though he was polite, merely referred his visitor to
his ministers, and the inestimable sword of the hero went begging for
a month or more, till the Provisional Government of Milan gave him the
command of the few thousand volunteers with whom we saw him at the
conclusion of the campaign. The war was over before he had a chance of
striking a blow. His indignant cry of defiance could not be long
sustained, for Garibaldi never drove men to certain and useless
slaughter; when the real position of things became known to him, he
led his band over the Swiss confines, and bid them wait for a better
and not distant day.

Under Manin's wise rule, which was directed solely to the preservation
of peace within the city, and resistance to the enemy at its gates,
Venice remained undaunted by the catastrophes in Lombardy, after all
the Venetian _terra firma_ had been restored to Austria. (Even the
heroic little mountain fort of Osopo in the Friuli was compelled to
capitulate on the 12th of October.) The blockade of the city on the
lagunes did not prevent Venice from acting not only on the defensive
but on the offensive; in the sortie of the 27th of October, 2500
Venetians drove the Austrians from Mestre with severe losses, carrying
back six captured guns, which the people dragged in triumph to the
Doge's palace. A cabin-boy named Zorzi was borne on the shoulders of
the soldiers enveloped in the Italian flag; his story was this: the
national colours, floating from the mast of the pinnace on which he
served, were detached by a ball and dropped into the water; the child
sprang in after them, and with a shout of _Viva l'Italia,_ fixed them
again at the masthead under a sharp fire. Zorzi was, of course, the
small hero of the hour, especially among the women. General Pepe
commanded the sortie, with Ulloa, Fontana and Cosenz as his
lieutenants; Ugo Bassi, the patriot monk of Bologna, marched at the
head of a battalion with the crucifix, the only arms he ever carried,
in his hand. The success cost Italy dear, as Alessandro Poerio, poet
and patriot, the brother of Baron Carlo Poerio of Naples, lost his
life by a wound received at Mestre. But the confidence of Venice in
her little army was increased a hundredfold.

The most important event of the autumn of 1848 was the gradual but
continuous break-up of the Papal authority in Rome. The meeting of the
new Parliament only served to accentuate the want of harmony between
the Pope and his ministers; assassinations were frequent; what law
there was was administered by the political clubs. In Count Terenzio
Mamiani, Pius IX. found a Prime Minister who, for eloquence and
patriotism, could hardly be rivalled, but hampered as he was by the
opposition he encountered from the Sovereign, and by the absence of
any real or solid moderate constitutional party in the Chamber of
Deputies, Mamiani could carry out very few of the improvements he
desired to effect, and in August he retired from an impracticable
task, to be replaced by men of less note and talent than himself.

Wishing to create fresh complications for the Pope, the Austrians
invaded the Legations, regardless of his protests, and after the fall
of Milan, General Welden advanced on Bologna, where, however, his
forces were so furiously attacked by the inhabitants and the few
carabineers who were all the troops in the town, that they were
dislodged from the strong position they had taken up on the
Montagnola, the hill which forms the public park, and obliged to fly
beyond the city walls. Radetsky disapproved of Welden's movements on
Bologna, and ordered him not to return to the assault.

Had the Austrians returned and massacred half the population of
Bologna, the Pope might have been saved. When Rome heard that the
stormy capital of Romagna was up in arms, once more, for a moment,
there were united counsels. 'His Holiness,' ran the official
proclamation, 'was firmly resolved to repel the Austrian invasion with
all the means which his State and the well-regulated enthusiasm of his
people could supply.' The Chamber confirmed the ministerial proposal
to demand French help against Austria. But all this brave show of
energy vanished with the pressing danger, and Bologna, which, by its
manly courage, had galvanised the whole bloodless body-politic, now
hastened the hour of dissolution by lapsing into a state of deplorable
anarchy, the populace using the arms with which they had driven out
the Austrians, to establish a reign of murder and pillage. L.C. Farini
restored something like order, but the general weakness of the power
of government became every day more apparent.

The Pope made a last endeavour to avert the catastrophe by calling to
his counsels Count Pellegrino Rossi, a man of unyielding will, who was
as much opposed to demagogic as to theocratic government. Rossi,
having been compromised when very young in Murat's enterprises, lived
long abroad, and attained the highest offices under Louis Philippe,
who sent him to Rome to arrange with the Pope the delicate question of
the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, which he conducted to an
amicable settlement, though one not pleasing to the great Society.
Not being one of those who change masters as they change their boots
according to the state of the roads, the ambassador retired from the
French service when Louis Philippe was dethroned. As minister to the
Pope, he made his influence instantly felt; measures were taken to
restore order in the finances, discipline in the army, public security
in the streets, and method and activity in the Government offices. The
tax on ecclesiastical property was enforced; fomenters of anarchy,
even though they wore the garb of patriots, and perhaps honestly
believed themselves to be such, were vigorously dealt with. If anyone
could have given the Temporal Power a new lease of life, it would have
been a man so gifted and so devoted as Pellegrino Rossi, but the
entire forces, both of subversion and of reaction, were against him,
and most of all was against him the fatality of dates. Not at human
bidding do the dead arise and walk. The most deeply to be regretted
event that happened in the course of the Italian revolution gave his
inevitable failure the appearance of a fortuitous accident.

Parliament, which had been prorogued on the 26th of August, was to
open on the 15th of November. Anarchy, black and red, was in the air.
Though disorders were expected, Rossi made no provision for keeping
the space clear round the palace where Parliament met; knots of men,
with sinister faces, gathered in all parts of the square. Rossi was
warned in the morning that an attempt would be made to assassinate
him; he was entreated not to go to the Chamber, to which he replied
that it was his duty to be present, and that if people wanted his
blood they would have it sooner or later, whether he took precautions
or not. Two policemen to keep the passage free when he reached the
Chamber would, nevertheless, have saved his life. As he walked from
his carriage to the stairs, an unknown individual pushed against him
on the right side, and when he turned to see who it was, the assassin
plunged a dagger in his throat. He fell, bathed in blood, to expire
without uttering a word.

In the Chamber, the deputies proceeded to business; not one raised an
indignant protest against a crime which violated the independence of
the representatives of the nation. The mere understanding of what
liberty means is absolutely wanting in most populations when they
first emerge from servitude.

After the craven conduct of the deputies, it is no wonder if the dregs
of the people went further, and paraded the streets singing songs in
praise of the assassin. The Pope summoned the Presidents of the two
Chambers and Marco Minghetti, whom he requested to form a new
ministry. But the time for regular proceeding was past; the city was
in the hands of the mob, which imposed on the Pope the acceptance of a
ministry of nonentities nominated by it. The Swiss Guard fired on the
crowd which attempted to gain access to the Quirinal; the crowd,
reinforced by the Civic Guard, returned to the attack and fired
against the walls, a stray shot killing Monsignor Palma, who was in
one of the rooms. The Pope decided on flight. He left Rome in disguise
during the evening of the 25th of November. After gaining the
Neapolitan frontier, he took the road to Gaeta. The illusion of the
Pope Liberator ended with the Encyclical; the illusion of the
Constitutional Pope ended with the flight to Gaeta. Pius IX. was only
in a limited degree responsible for his want of success, because the
task he had set before him was the quadrature of the circle in
politics.

The weight of a less qualified responsibility rests upon him for his
subsequent actions. On the 3rd of December Parliament voted a proposal
to send a deputation to the Pope, praying him to return to his States.
To give the deputation greater authority, the Municipality of Rome
proposed that the Syndic, the octogenarian Prince Corsini, should
accompany it. It also comprised two ecclesiastics, and thus
constituted, it left Rome for Gaeta on the 5th of December. On the
borders of the Neapolitan kingdom its passage was barred by the
police, and it was obliged to retrace its steps to Terracina. Here the
deputation drew up a letter to Cardinal Antonelli (no longer the
patriotic minister of the spring), in which an audience with the
Sovereign Pontiff was respectfully requested. The answer came that the
Pope would not receive the deputation. It was an answer that he was at
liberty to make, but it should have meant abdication. If, called back
by the will of the Parliament of his own making, the Sovereign deigned
not even to receive the bearers of the invitation, in what way did he
contemplate resuming the throne? It was only too easy to guess. The
Head of Christendom had become a convert of King Ferdinand of Naples,
otherwise Bomba. By a path strewn with the sinister flowers of war did
Pius IX. meditate returning to his subjects--by that path and no
other.

The Galetti-Sterbini ministry, appointed by the Pope under popular
pressure a few days before his departure, remained in charge of
affairs, somewhat strengthened by the adhesion of Terenzio Mamiani as
Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mamiani at first declined to form part of
the ministry, but joined it afterwards with self-sacrificing
patriotism, in the hope of saving things from going to complete rack
and ruin during the interregnum caused by the withdrawal of the Head
of the State. He only retired from the ungrateful office when he saw
the imminence of a radical change in the form of government, which was
not desired by him any more than it had been by Rossi.

The mass of the population of the Roman States had desired such a
change ever since the days of Gregory; the temporary enthusiasm for
Pius, if it arrested the flow of the stream, did not prevent the
waters from accumulating beyond the dyke. One day the dyke would
burst, and the waters sweep all before them.

A Constituent Assembly was convoked for the 5th of February 1849. The
elections, which took place on the 21st of January, were on this
basis: every citizen of more than twenty-one years was allowed to
vote; every citizen over twenty-five could become a deputy; the number
of deputies was fixed at two hundred; a candidate who received less
than 500 votes would not be elected. On the 9th of February, the
Constituent Assembly voted the downfall of the Temporal Power (free
exercise of his spiritual functions being, at the same time, assured
to the Supreme Pontiff), and the establishment of a republican form of
government. The Roman Republic was proclaimed from the Capitol.

Ten votes were given against the republic. No government ever came
into existence in a more strictly legal manner. Had it not represented
the true will of the people, the last Roman Commonwealth could not
have left behind so glorious, albeit brief, a record.

A youthful poet, descendant of the Doges of Genoa, Goffredo Mameli,
whose 'Fratelli d'Italia' was the battle-hymn to which Italy marched,
wrote these three words to Mazzini: 'Roma, Repubblica, Venite.' So
Mazzini came to Rome, which confided her destinies to him, as she had
once confided them to the Brescian Arnold and to Cola di Rienzi. Not
Arnold--not Rienzi in his nobler days--dreamed a more sublime dream of
Roman liberty than did Giuseppe Mazzini, or more nearly wrote down
that dream in facts.

Originally the executive power was delegated to a committee, but this
was changed to a Triumvirate, the Triumvirs being Armellini, Saffi and
Mazzini. Mazzini's mind and will directed the whole.

On the 18th of February, Cardinal Antonelli demanded in the Pope's
name the armed intervention of France, Austria, Spain and Naples, 'as
in this way alone can order be restored in the States of the Church,
and the Holy Father re-established in the exercise of his supreme
authority, in compliance with the imperious exigencies of his august
and sacred character, the interests of the universal Church, and the
peace of nations. In this way he will be enabled to retain the
patrimony which he received at his accession, and transmit it in its
integrity to his successors.'

The Pope, who could not bring himself to stain his white robes with
the blood of the enemies of Italy, called in four armies to shoot down
his subjects, because in no other way could he recover his lost
throne.

Pius IX. was the twenty-sixth Pontiff who called the foreigner into
Italy.

The final conquest of the Pope by the party of universal reaction
could only be effected by his isolation from all but one set of
influences; this is precisely what happened at Gaeta. There are
reasons for thinking that his choice of the hospitality of the King of
the Two Sicilies, rather than that of France or Spain or Sardinia, was
the result of an intrigue in which Count Spaur, the Bavarian minister
who represented the interests of Austria in Rome after that power
withdrew her ambassador, played a principal part. Even after Pius
arrived at Gaeta, it is said that he talked of it as the first stage
of a longer journey. He had never shown any liking for the Neapolitan
Bourbons, and the willingness which he expressed to Gioberti to crown
Charles Albert King of Italy if his arms were successful, was probably
duly appreciated by Ferdinand II. To save the Pope from absorption by
the retrograde party, and to avoid the certainty of a foreign
invasion, Gioberti, who became Prime Minister of Piedmont in November
1848, was anxious to occupy the Roman states with Sardinian troops
immediately after the Pope's flight, when his subjects still
recognised his sovereignty. Gioberti resigned because this policy was
opposed by Rattazzi and other of his colleagues in the ministry. It
would have been a difficult _rôle_ to play; Sardinia, while
endeavouring to checkmate the reaction, might have become its
instrument. The failure of Gioberti's plan cannot be regretted, but
his forecast of what would happen if it were not attempted proved to
be correct.

Soon after the arrival of his exalted guest, King Ferdinand with his
family, a great number of priests, and a strong escort, moved his
residence from the capital to Gaeta. The modified Constitution,
substituted for the first charter after the events of the 15th of May,
was still nominally in force; Parliament had met during the summer,
but the King solved the riddle of governing through his ministers, on
purely retrograde principles, without paying more heed to the
representatives of the nations than to the benches on which they sat.
Prorogued on the 5th of September, Parliament was to have met on the
30th of November, but when that date approached, it was prorogued
again to the 1st of February. 'Our misery has reached such a climax,'
wrote Baron Carlo Poerio, 'that it is enough to drive us mad. Every
faculty of the soul revolts against the ferocious reactionary
movement, the more disgraceful from its execrable hypocrisy. We are
governed by an oligarchy; the only article maintained is that
respecting the taxes. The laws have ceased to exist; the Statute is
buried; a licentious soldiery rules over everything, and the press is
constantly employed to asperse honest men. The lives of the deputies
are menaced. Another night of St Bartholomew is threatened to all who
will not sell body and soul.' Ferdinand only waited till he had
recovered substantial hold over Sicily to do away with even the
fiction of parliamentary government. Messina had fallen in September,
though not till half the city was in flames, the barbarous cruelties
practised on the inhabitants after the surrender exciting the
indignation of the English and French admirals who witnessed the
bombardment. This was the first step to the subjection of Sicily, but
not till after Syracuse and Catania fell did the King feel that there
was no further cause for anxiety--the taking of the capital becoming a
mere question of time. He was so much pleased at the fall of Catania
that he had a mock representation of the siege performed at Gaeta in
presence of the Pope and of half the sacred college.

On the 13th of March Prince Torelli handed the President of the
Neapolitan Chamber of Deputies a sealed packet which contained a royal
decree dissolving Parliament. Naples was once more under an
irresponsible despotism. The lazzaroni of both the lower and higher
classes, if by lazzaroni may be understood the born allies of
ignorance, idleness and bigotry, rejoiced and were glad. Nor were they
few. Unlike the Austrians in the north, Ferdinand had his party; the
'fidelity of his subjects' of which he boasted, was not purely
mythical. Whether, considering its basis, it was much to boast of,
need not be discussed.

In March, the happy family at Gaeta was increased by a new arrival.
Had he been better advised, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, would have
never gone to breathe that malarious atmosphere. He had played no
conjuror's tricks with his promises to his people; Austrian though he
was, he had really acted the part of an Italian prince, and there was
nothing to show that he had not acted it sincerely. But a persistent
bad luck attended his efforts. Though the ministers appointed by him
included men as distinguished as the Marquis Gino Capponi, Baron
Ricasoli and Prince Corsini, they failed in winning a strong popular
support. Leghorn, where the population, unlike that of the rest of
Tuscany, is by nature turbulent, broke into open revolution. In the
last crisis, the Grand Duke entrusted the government to the extreme
Liberals, Montanelli the professor, and Guerrazzi the novelist; both
were honourable men, and Guerrazzi was thought by many to be a man of
genius. The vigorous rhetoric of his _Assedio di Firenze_ had warmed
the patriotism of many young hearts. But, as statesmen, the only
talent they showed was for upsetting any _régime_ with which they were
connected.

The Grand Duke was asked to convoke a Constituent Assembly, following
the example of Rome. If every part of Italy were to do the same, the
constitution and form of government of the whole country could be
settled by a convention of the various assemblies. The idea was worthy
of respect because it pointed to unity; but in view of the existing
situation, Tuscany's solitary adhesion would hardly have helped the
nation, while it was accompanied by serious risks to the state. The
Grand Duke seemed about to yield to the proposal, but, on receiving a
strong protest from the Pope, he refused to do so on the ground that
it would expose himself and his subjects to the terrors of
ecclesiastical censure. He still remained in Tuscany, near Viareggio,
till he was informed that a band of Leghornese had set out with the
intention of capturing his person. Then he left for Gaeta on board the
English ship _Bull Dog._ The republic had been already proclaimed at
Florence, with Montanelli and Guerrazzi as its chief administrators.
It succeeded in pleasing no one. Civil war was more than once at the
threshhold of Florence, for the peasants rose in armed resistance to
the new government. In less than two months the restoration of the
Grand. Ducal authority was accomplished almost of itself.
Unfortunately, the Grand Duke who was to come back was not the same
man as he who went away. The air of Gaeta did its work.






CHAPTER VIII

AT BAY

1849

Novara--Abdication of Charles Albert--Brescia crushed--French
Intervention--The Fall of Rome--The Fall of Venice.


In the spring of 1848, a date might be found when every Italian ruler
except the Duke of Modena wore the appearance of a friend to freedom
and independence. In the spring of 1849 no Italian prince preserved
that appearance except the King of Sardinia. Many causes contributed
to the elimination, but most of all the logic of events. It was a case
of the survival of the fittest. What seemed a calamity was a step in
advance.

Early in March, the Marquis Pallavicini, prisoner of Spielberg, had a
long interview with Charles Albert. They sat face to face talking over
Italian matters, and the King said confidently that the army was now
flourishing; if the die were cast anew, they would win. At parting he
embraced the Lombard patriot with the words: 'Dear Pallavicini, how
glad I am to have seen you again! You and I had always the same
thought; the independence of Italy was the first dream of my youth; it
is my dream still, it will be till I die.'

Some characters grow small in misfortune, others grow great. The
terrible scene at the Palazzo Greppi, the charge of treason, the
shouts of 'death,' had left only one trace on Charles Albert's mind:
the burning desire to deliver his accusers.

The armistice was denounced on the 12th of March, a truce of eight
days being allowed before the recommencement of hostilities. There is
such a thing in politics as necessary madness, and it may be doubted
if the Sardinian war of 1849 was not this thing. The programme of
_fare da sè_ had now to be carried out in stern earnest. Sardinia
stood alone, neither from south of the Apennines nor from north of the
Alps could help be hoped for. France, which was meditating quite
another sort of intervention, refused the loan even of a general.
'They were not going to offend Austria to please Piedmont,' said the
French Cabinet. Worse than this, the army was not in the flourishing
state of which the King had spoken. The miseries of the retreat, but
infinitely more, the incidents of Milan, though wiped out by the King
from his own memory, were vividly recollected by all ranks. Affection
was not the feeling with which the Piedmontese soldiers regarded the
'fratelli Lombardi.' Did anyone beside the King believe that this
army, which had lost faith in its cause, in its leaders and in itself,
was going to beat Radetsky? The old Field-Marshal might well show the
wildest joy when the denunciation of the armistice was communicated to
him. And yet the higher expediency demanded that the sacrifice of
Piedmont and of her King for Italy should be consummated.

Rattazzi announced the coming campaign to the Chambers on the 14th of
March; the news was well received; there was a general feeling that,
whatever happened, the present situation could not be prolonged. With
regard to the numbers they could put in the field, Austria and
Sardinia were evenly balanced, each having about 80,000 disposable
men. The request for a French marshal having been refused, the chief
command was given to Chrzanowski, a Pole, who did not know Italian,
had not studied the theatre of the war, and was so little favoured by
nature that, to the impressionable Italians, his appearance seemed
ludicrous. This deplorable appointment was made to satisfy the outcry
against Piedmontese generalship; as if it was not enough, the other
Polish general, Ramorino, accused of treachery by the revolutionists
in 1832, but now praised to the skies by the democratic party, was
placed in command of the fifth or Lombard division.

Though Radetsky openly gave the word 'To Turin!' Chrzanowski seems to
have failed to realise that the Austrians intended to invade Piedmont.
He ordered Ramorino, however, with his 8000 Lombards, to occupy the
fork formed by the Po and the Ticino, so as to defend the bridge at
Pavia, if, by chance, any fraction of the enemy tried to cross it.
What Ramorino did was to place his division on the right bank of the
Po, and to destroy the bridge of boats at Mezzana Corte _between_
himself and the enemy. The Austrians crossed the Ticino in the night
of the 20th of April, not with a fraction, but with a complete army.
Ramorino was deprived of his command, and was afterwards tried by
court-martial and shot. Whether his treason was intentional or
involuntary, it is certain that, had he stemmed the Austrian advance
even for half a day, the future disasters, if not averted, would not
have come so rapidly, because the Piedmontese would have been
forewarned. On the evening of the 21st, General D'Aspre, with 15,000
men, took a portion of the Sardinian army unawares near Mortara, and,
owing to the scattered distribution of the Piedmontese, who would have
outnumbered him had they been concentrated, he succeeded in forcing his
way into Mortara by nightfall. The moral effect of this first reverse
was bad, but Chrzanowski rashly decided staking the whole fate of the
campaign in a field-day, for which purpose he gathered what troops he
could collect at La Biccocca, a hill capped with a village about a
mile and a half from Novara. Not more than 50,000 men were collected;
some had already deserted, and 20,000 were doing nothing on the other
side of the Po.

Towards eleven o'clock D'Aspre arrived, and lost no time in beginning
the attack. He sent post-haste to Radetsky, Appel and Thurn to bring
all the reinforcements in their power as fast as possible. D'Aspre's
daring was rewarded by his carrying La Biccocca at about mid-day, but
the Duke of Genoa retook the position with the aid of the valorous
'Piemonte' brigade, and by two p.m. D'Aspre's brave soldiers were so
thoroughly beaten, that nothing could have saved his division from
destruction, as he afterwards admitted, had Chrzanowski joined in the
pursuit instead of staying behind with more than half the army, in
accordance with a preconceived plan of remaining on the defensive.

At two o'clock on the 23rd of March, the news started on the wings of
the wind, and, as great news will do, swiftly reached every part of
the waiting country, that the Sardinians were getting the best of it,
that the cause was saved. Men who are not very old remember this as
the first strong sensation of their lives--this, and its sequel.

Appel and Thurn, and Wratislaw and the old Field-Marshal were on the
march, and by four o'clock they were pouring their fresh troops upon
the Piedmontese, who had not known how to profit by their success.
Heroism such as few battlefields have seen, disorder such as has
rarely disgraced a beaten army, were displayed side by side in Charles
Albert's ranks. At eight in the evening, the whole Sardinian army
retired into Novara; the Austrians bivouacked on La Biccocca. The
Sardinians had lost 4000 in dead and wounded; the losses of the
victors were a thousand less.

All the day long the King courted death, pressing forward where the
balls fell like hail and the confusion was at its height, with the
answer of despair to the devoted officers who sought to hold him
back: 'Let me die, this is my last day.' But death shuns the seeker.
Men fell close beside him, but no charitable ball struck his breast.
In the evening he said to his generals: 'We have still 40,000 men,
cannot we fall back on Alessandria and still make an honourable
stand?' They told him that it could not be done. Radetsky was asked on
what terms he would grant an armistice; he replied: 'The occupation of
a large district in Piedmont, and the heir to the throne as a
hostage.' Then Charles Albert knew what he must do. 'For eighteen
years,' he said, 'I have made every effort for the good of the people;
I grieve to see that my hopes have failed, not so much for myself as
for the country. I have not found death on the field of battle as I
ardently desired; perhaps my person is the only obstacle to obtaining
juster terms. I abdicate the crown in favour of my son, Victor
Emmanuel.' And turning to the Duke of Savoy he said: 'There is your
King.'

In the night he left Novara alone for Nice. As he passed through the
Austrian lines, the sentinels were nearly firing upon his carriage;
General Thurn, before whom he was brought, asked for some proof that
he was in fact the 'Count de Barge' in whose name his passport was
made out. A Bersagliere prisoner who recognised the King, at a sign
from him gave the required testimony, and he was allowed to pass. At
Nice he was received by the governor, a son of Santorre di Santa Rosa,
and to him he addressed the last words spoken by him on Italian
ground: 'In whatever time, in whatever place, a regular government
raises the flag of war with Austria, the Austrians will find me among
their enemies as a simple soldier.' Then he continued his journey to
Oporto.

The principal side-issue of the campaign of 1849 was the revolution at
Brescia. Had the original plan been carried out, which was to throw
the Sardinian army into Lombardy (and it is doubtful whether, even
after Radetsky's invasion of Piedmont, it would not have been better
to adhere to it), a corresponding movement on the part of the
inhabitants would have become of the greatest importance. To Brescia,
which was the one Lombard town where the Piedmontese had been received
in 1848 with real effusion, the Sardinian Minister of War despatched
Count Giuseppe Martinengo Cesaresco with arms and ammunition, and
orders to reassume the colonelcy of the National Guard which he held
in the previous year, and to take the general control of the movement
as far as Brescia was concerned. Martinengo succeeded in transporting
the arms through the enemy's country from the Piedmontese frontier to
Iseo, and thence to his native city. When he reached Brescia, he found
that the Austrians had evacuated the town, though they still occupied
the castle which frowns down upon it. This was the 23rd of March:
Novara was fought and lost, Piedmont was powerless to come to the
assistance of the people she had commanded to rise. What was to be
done? Plainly common sense suggested an honourable compromise with the
Austrian commandant, by which he should be allowed to reoccupy the
city on condition that no hair of the citizens' heads was touched.
This is what Bergamo and the other towns did, nor are they to be
blamed.

Not so Brescia. Here, where love of liberty was an hereditary instinct
from the long connection of Brescia with free Venice, where hatred of
the stranger, planted by the ruthless soldiery of Gaston de Foix, had
but gone on maturing through three centuries, where the historical
title of 'Valiant,' coming down from a remote antiquity, was still no
fable; here, with a single mind, the inhabitants resolved upon as
desperate a resistance as was ever offered by one little town to a
great army.

The Austrian bombardment was begun by the Irish General,
Nugent-Lavall, who, dying in the midst of it, left all his fortune to
the heroic city which he was attacking. The Austrians, flushed with
their victory over Charles Albert's army of 80,000, were seized with
rage at the sight of their power defied by a town of less than half
that number of souls. But with that rage was mingled, even in the mind
of Haynau, an admiration not to be repressed.

Haynau who was sent to replace Nugent, was already known at Brescia,
where he had been appointed military governor after the resumption of
Austrian authority in 1848. In order to punish the 'persistent
opposition manifested to the legitimate Imperial and Royal
Government,' and as an example to the other towns, he had imposed on
the Brescian householders and the landed proprietors of the province a
fine of half a million francs.

He now returned, and what he did may be best read in his own report on
the operations. 'It was then,' he wrote, 'that began the most murderous
fight; a fight prolonged by the insurgents from barricade to barricade,
from house to house, with extraordinary obstinacy. I should never have
believed that so bad a cause could have been sustained with such
perseverance. In spite of this desperate defence, and although the
assault could only be effected in part, and with the help of cannons of
heavy calibre, our brave troops with heroic courage, but at the cost of
great losses, occupied a first line of houses; but as all my columns
could not penetrate into the town at the same time, I ordered the
suspension of the attack at nightfall, limiting myself to holding the
ground conquered. In spite of that, the combat continued late into the
night. On the 1st of April, in the earliest morning light, the tocsin
was heard ringing with more fury than ever, and the insurgents reopened
fire with an entirely new desperation. Considering the gravity of our
losses, as well as the obstinacy and fury of the enemy, it was
necessary to adopt a most rigorous measure. I ordered that no prisoners
should be taken, but that every person seized with arms in his hand
should be immediately put to death, and that the houses from which shots
came should be burnt. It is thus that conflagrations, partly caused by
the troops, partly by the bombardment, broke out in various parts of the
town.'

During the ten days' struggle, the citizens did not flinch for a
moment. Count Martinengo was the guiding spirit of the defence, and
scarcely left the most exposed of the barricades night or day. From
the nobles to the poorest of the people, all did their duty. A youth
named Tito Speri led and animated the populace. The horrors of the
repression make one think of the fall of Khartoum. Not even in
Hungary, where he went from Brescia to continue his 'system,' did
Haynau so blacken his own and his country's name as here. In a boys'
school kept by a certain Guidi, the master's wife, his mother and ten
of his pupils were slaughtered. A little hunchback tailor was carried
to the barracks to be slowly burnt alive. But stray details do not
give the faintest idea of the whole. And for all this, Haynau was in a
far higher degree responsible than the actual executants of the
vengeance to which he hounded on his ignorant soldiers, maddened with
the lust of blood.

Such was General Haynau, 'whose brave devotion to his master's service
was the veteran's sole crime,' said the _Quarterly Review_ (June
1853), but who was judged otherwise by some in England. Wherefore was
he soundly beaten by the brewers in the employment of Messrs Barclay &
Perkins; and the nice words of the _Quarterly_ could not undo that
beating, redress for which Lord Palmerston blandly advised the
complainant to seek 'before the common tribunals.' He thought it best
to neglect the advice, and to leave the country.

Among the curious taxes levied at Brescia during the six months after
its fall was one of £500 for 'the expenses of the hangman.' Count
Martinengo escaped after the Austrians were in possession of the town
through the courageous assistance given to him by a few young men of
the working class. Camozzi's band of Bergamasques, which started for
the relief of the sister city, was driven back with loss.

The end was come, but woe to the victors.

Following the Italian flag to where it still floated, we pass from
Brescia in the dust to Rome still inviolate, though soon to be
assailed by the bearers of another tricolor. A few days after Novara,
the Triumvirate issued a proclamation, in which they said: 'The
Republic in Rome has to prove to Italy and to Europe that our work is
eminently religious, a work of education and of morality; that the
accusations of intolerance, anarchy and violent upturning of things
are false; that, thanks to the republican principle, united as one
family of good men under the eye of God, and following the impulse of
those who are first among us in genius and virtue, we march to the
attainment of true order, law and power united.' Englishmen who were
in Rome at the time attest how well the pledge was kept. Peace and
true freedom prevailed under the republican banner as no man
remembered them to have prevailed before in Rome. The bitter
provocation of the quadruple attack was not followed by revengeful
acts on the parts of the government against those who were politically
and religiously associated with him at whose bidding that attack was
made. Nothing like a national party was terrorised or kept under by
fear of violence. 'That at such a time,' writes Henry Lushington, who
was not favourable to Mazzini, 'not one lawless or evil deed was done
would have been rather a miracle than a merit, but on much concurrent
testimony it is clear that the efforts of the government to preserve
order were incessant, and to a remarkable degree successful.' He adds
that the streets were far safer for ordinary passengers under the
Triumvirs than under the Papacy.

Of great help in quieting the passions of the lower orders was the
people's tribune, Ciceruacchio, who had not put on black cloth
clothes, or asked for the ministry of war, or of fine arts, according
to the usual wont of successful tribunes. Ciceruacchio had the sense
of humour of the genuine Roman _popolano_, and it never came into his
head to make himself ridiculous. His influence had been first acquired
by works of charity in the Tiber floods. Being a strong swimmer, he
ventured where no one else would go, and had saved many lives. At
first a wine-carrier, he made money by letting out conveyances and
dealing in forage, but he gave away most of what he made. He opposed
the whole force of his popularity to a war of classes. 'Viva chi c'ia
e chi non c'ia quattrini!'[4] was his favourite cry. Once when a young
poet read him a sonnet in his honour he stopped him at the line 'Thou
art greater than all patricians,' saying that he would not have that
published: 'I respect the nobility, and never dream of being higher
than they. I am a poor man of the people, and such I will always
remain.'

When the siege came, Ciceruacchio was invaluable in providing the
troops with forage, horses, and even victuals, which he procured by
making private sorties on his own account during the night; his
intimate knowledge of every path enabling him to go unobserved. He
planned the earthworks, at which he laboured with his hands, and when
fighting was going on, he shouldered a musket and ran with his two
sons, one of them a mere child, to wherever the noise of guns directed
him. No picture of Rome in 1849 would be complete without the burly
figure and jocund face of Angelo Brunetti.

The republican government found Rome with a mere shadow of an army;
the efforts to create one had been too spasmodic to do anything but
make confusion worse confounded by changes and experiments soon
abandoned. Perseverance and intelligence now had a different result,
and the little army, called into existence by the republic, proved
admirable in discipline, various and fantastic as were its components.

Towards the end of April, Garibaldi, who had been stationed at Rieti,
was ordered to bring his legion to Rome. Those who witnessed the
arrival saw one of the strangest scenes ever beheld in the Eternal
City. The men wore pointed hats with black, waving plumes; thin and
gaunt, their faces dark as copper, with naked legs, long beards and
wild dark hair hanging down their backs, they looked like a company of
Salvator Rosa's brigands. Beautiful as a statue amidst his
extraordinary host rode the Chief, mounted on a white horse, which he
sat like a centaur. 'He was quite a show, everyone stopping to look at
him,' adds the sculptor Gibson, to whom these details are owed.
'Probably,' writes another Englishman, 'a human face so like a lion,
and still retaining the humanity nearest the image of its Maker, was
never seen.' Garibaldi wore the historic red shirt, and a small cap
ornamented with gold.

The origin of the red shirt might have remained in poetic uncertainty
had it not been mentioned a few years ago in a volume of reminiscences
published by an English naval officer. The men employed in the
Saladéros or great slaughtering and salting establishments for cattle
in the Argentine provinces wore scarlet woollen shirts; owing to the
blockade of Buenos Ayres, a merchant at Monte Video had a quantity of
these on his hands, and as economy was a great object to the
government, they bought the lot cheap for their Italian legion, little
thinking that they were making the 'Camicia Rossa' immortal in song
and story.

The coming to Rome of the 1200 legionaries aroused private fears in
the hearts of the more timid inhabitants, but Garibaldi knew how to
keep his wild followers in hand, and gallant was the service they
rendered to Roman liberty.

That liberty was now on the eve of its peril. The preliminaries of the
French intervention in Rome are tolerably well known; here it suffices
to say that every new contribution to a more precise knowledge of the
facts only serves to confirm the charge of dissimulation, or, to use a
plainer and far better adapted word, of dishonesty, brought against
the French government for their part in the matter. White, indeed, do
Austria, Spain and Naples appear--the avowed upholders of priestly
despotism--beside the ruler of republican France and his ministers,
whose plan it was not to fight the Roman republic: fighting was far
from their counsels, but to betray it. It is proved that the
restoration of the Temporal Power was the aim of the expedition from
the first; it is equally proved that the French sought to get inside
Rome by distinct disclaimers of any such intention. 'We do not go to
Italy,' they said, 'to impose with our arms a system of government,
but to assure the rights of liberty, and to preserve a legitimate
interference in the affairs of the peninsula.' They adopted a curious
method of assuring the rights of liberty.

The Pope would not have anything to do with the affair. 'If you say
openly that you are going to give me back my Temporal Power, well and
good; if not, I prefer the aid of Austria.' So he replied to the
flattering tales whispered in his ear, while tales no less flattering
were being whispered in the ear of Mazzini. He declined to give the
French any guarantees as to his future mode of governing; it cannot be
said, therefore, that they were under the delusion that they were
restoring a constitutional sovereign.

Efforts have been made to cast the responsibility of the Roman
intervention entirely on Louis Napoleon. Even Mazzini favoured that
view, but it is impossible to separate the President of the Republic
from the 325 deputies who voted the supplies for the expedition on the
2nd of April. Does anyone pretend that they were hoodwinked any more
than Ledru Rollin was hoodwinked, or the minority, which, roused by
his vigorous speech, voted against the grant? Louis Napoleon was far
less Papal in his sentiments than were most of the assenting deputies;
his own opinion was more truly represented by the letter which, as a
private citizen, he wrote to the 'Constitutionnel' in December 1848
than by his subsequent course as President. In this letter he declared
that a military demonstration would be perilous even to the interests
which it was intended to safeguard. He had but one fixed purpose: to
please France, so as to get himself made Emperor. France must be held
answerable for the means taken to please her.

General Oudinot landed at Civitavecchia on the 25th of April, his
friendly assurances having persuaded the local authorities to oppose
no resistance, an unfortunate error, but the last. The correct
judgment formed by the Roman Government of the designs of the invaders
was considerably assisted by a French officer, Colonel Leblanc, who
was sent to Rome by Oudinot to come to an agreement with Mazzini for
the amicable reception of the French, and who, losing his temper,
revealed more than he was meant to reveal. His last words, 'Les
Italiens ne se battent pas,' unquestionably expressed the belief of
the whole French force, from the general-in-chief to the youngest
drummer. They were soon going to have a chance of testing its
accuracy.

The Roman Assembly passed a vote that 'force should be repelled by
force.' Well-warned, therefore, but with the proverbial _coeur léger_,
Oudinot advanced on Rome with 8000 men early on the 30th of April. At
eleven o'clock the two columns came in sight of St Peter's, and soon
after, the first which moved towards Porta Angelica was attacked by
Colonel Masi. Garibaldi attacked the second column a mile out of Porta
San Pancrazio. At the first moment the superior numbers of the French
told, and the Italians fell back on Villa Pamphilli, but Colonel
Galetti arrived with reinforcements, and before long Garibaldi drove
the French from the Pamphilli Gardens and had them in full retreat
along the Civitavecchia road. Oudinot was beaten, Rome was victorious.
'This does not surprise us Romans; but it will astonish Paris!' ran a
manifesto of the hour; the words are a little childish, but men are
apt to be childish when they are deeply moved. And as to the
astonishment of Paris, all the words in the world would fail to paint
its proportions. Paris was indeed astonished.

Garibaldi had not the chief command of the Roman army, or he would
have done more; there was nothing to prevent the Italians from driving
Oudinot into the sea. The Triumvirate, when appealed to directly by
Garibaldi, refused their sanction, either fearing to leave the capital
exposed to the Neapolitans who were advancing, or (and this seems to
have been the real reason) still hoping that France would repudiate
Oudinot and come to terms. Garibaldi was right on this occasion, and
Mazzini was wrong. When you are at war, nothing is so ruinous as to be
afraid of damaging the enemy.

The French ministers, bombarded with reproaches by friends and foes,
and most uneasy lest their troops in Italy should be destroyed before
they could send reinforcements, did disown Oudinot's march on Rome,
and Ferdinand de Lesseps was despatched nominally 'to arrange matters
in a pacific sense,' but actually to gain time.

In a sitting in the French Assembly, a member of the opposition said
to the President of the Council: 'You are going to reinstate the
Pope!' 'No, no,' ejaculated Odilon Barrot. 'You are going to do the
same as Austria,' cried Lamoricière. 'We should be culpable if we
did,' was the answer. Lesseps' instructions, very vague, for the rest,
were given to him in this spirit. That Lesseps acted in good faith has
been generally admitted, and was always believed by Mazzini. It was to
the interest of the French Government to choose a tool who did not
see how far he was a tool. But if Lesseps had no suspicions, if he had
not strong suspicions of the real object of his employers, then he was
already at this date a man singularly easy to deceive.

The French envoy was commissioned to treat, not with the Triumvirate,
but with the Roman Assembly: a piece of insolence which the former
would have done well to reply to by sending him about his business.
Lesseps, however, thought that he would gain by speaking in person to
Mazzini, and in order that the interview should remain a secret, he
decided to go to him alone in the dead of the night and unannounced.
Having made the needful inquiries, he proceeded to the palace of the
Consulta, the doors of which seem to have been left open all night;
there were guards, but they were asleep, and the French diplomatist
traversed the long suite of splendid apartments, opening one into the
other without corridors. At last he reached the simply-furnished room
where, upon an iron bedstead, Mazzini slept. Lesseps watched him
sleeping, fascinated by the beauty of his magnificent head as it lay
in repose. He still looked very young, though there was hardly a state
in Europe where he was not proscribed. When Lesseps had gazed his
full, he called 'Mazzini, Mazzini!' The Triumvir awoke, sat up and
asked if he had come to assassinate him? Lesseps told him his name,
and a long conversation followed. One thing, at least, that Lesseps
said in this interview was strictly true, namely, that Mazzini must
not count on the French republican soldiers objecting to fire on
republicans: 'The French soldier would burn down the cottage of his
mother if ordered by his superiors to do so.' The discipline of a
great army is proof against politics.

Lesseps was himself in much fear of being assassinated. He believed
that his footsteps were dogged by three individuals, one of whom was
an ex-French convict. He complained to Mazzini, who said that he could
do nothing, which probably shows that he gave no credence to the
story. Then Lesseps had recourse to Ciceruacchio, 'a man of the people
who had great influence on the population, and who had organised the
revolution.' The tribune seems to have quieted his fears and
guaranteed his safety.

The French envoy could not help being struck by the tender care taken
of his wounded fellow-countrymen by the Princess Belgiojoso and other
noble ladies who attended the hospitals. Of prisoners who were not
wounded there were none, as they had been sent back scot-free to their
general a few days after the 30th of April. He was struck also by the
firm resolve of all classes not to restore the Pope. Some liked the
existing government, some did not, but all prayed heaven to be
henceforth delivered from the rule of an infallible sovereign.

Whatever was the measure of confidence which Mazzini felt in Lesseps,
he was firm as iron on the main point--the non-admittance of the
'friendly' French troops into Rome. Lesseps dragged on the
negotiations till his government had finished the preparations for
sending to Rome a force which should not be much less than twice in
number the whole military resources of the republic. Then they
recalled him, and, in order not to be bound by anything that he might
have said, they set about the rumour that he was mad. Indignant at
such treatment, Lesseps left the diplomatic service, and turned his
attention to engineering. This was the origin of the Suez Canal.

While all these things were going on, the Austrians moved from Ferrara
and Modena towards Bologna, the Spaniards landed at Fiumicino, and
16,000 Neapolitans, commanded by Ferdinand II., encamped near Albano.
Garibaldi was attacked on the 9th of May by the Neapolitan vanguard,
which he obliged to fall back. On the 18th, he completely defeated
King Ferdinand's army near Velletri, and the King ordered a general
retreat into his own dominions, which was accomplished in haste and
confusion.

By the end of May, Oudinot's forces were increased to over 35,000 men.
The defenders of Rome, under the chief command of General Rosselli,
were about 20,000, of whom half were volunteers. Colonel Marnara's
Lombard Legion of Bersaglieri was, in smartness of appearance and
perfect discipline, equal to any regular troops; in its ranks were the
sons of the best and richest Lombard families, such as Dandolo,
Morosini and many others. Medici's legion was also composed of
educated and well-to-do young men. The Bolognese, under the Marquis
Melara, had the impetuous daring of their race, and Count Angelo
Masina did wonders with his forty lancers. Wherever Garibaldi was--it
was always in the hottest places--there were to be seen, at no great
distance, the patriot monk, Ugo Bassi, riding upon a fiery horse, and
the young poet of Free Italy, Goffredo Mameli, with his slight, boyish
figure, and his fair hair floating in the breeze. Nor must we omit
from the list of Garibaldi's bodyguard Forbes, the Englishman, and
Anghiar, the devoted negro, who followed his master like a dog.

Oudinot formally disavowed all Lesseps' proceedings from first to
last, and announced, on the 1st of June, that he had orders to take
Rome as soon as possible. Out of regard, however, for the French
residents, he would not begin the attack 'till the morning of Monday
the 4th.' Now, though no one knew it but the French general, that
Monday morning began with Sunday's dawn, when the French attacked
Melara's sleeping battalion at the Roman outposts. It was easy for the
French to drive back these 300 men, and to occupy the Villa Corsini
('Villa,' in the Roman sense, means a garden) and the position
dominating Porta San Pancrazio; but Galetti came up and retook them
all, to lose them again by nine o'clock. Then Garibaldi, who was ill,
hurried to the scene from his sick-bed, and thrice that day he retook
and thrice he lost the contested positions--a brief statement, which
represents prodigies of valour, and the oblation of as noble blood as
ever watered the earth of Rome. Melara, Masina, Daverio, Dandolo,
Mameli: every schoolboy would know these names if they belonged to
ancient, not to modern, history. Bright careers, full of promise, cut
short; lives renounced, not only voluntarily, but with joy, and to
what end? Not for interest or fame--not even in the hope of winning;
but that, erect and crowned with the roses of martyrdom, Rome might
send her dying salutation to the world.

At sunset the French had established their possession of all the
points outside the Gate of San Pancrazio, except the Vascello, a villa
which had been seized from their very teeth by Medici, who held it
against all comers. Monte Mario was also in their hands.

Mazzini, whose judgment was obscured by his attribution of the Italian
policy of France to Louis Napoleon alone, hoped for a revolution in
Paris, but Ledru Rollin's attempt at agitation completely failed, and
the country applauded its government now that the mask was thrown
away. The reasons for revolutions in Paris have always been the same;
they have to do with something else than the garrotting of
sister-republics.

Oudinot tightened his cordon; on the 12th of June he invited the city
to capitulate. The answer was a refusal; so, with the aid of his
excellent artillery, he crept on, his passage contested at each step,
but not arrested, till, on the 27th, the Villa Savorelli, Garibaldi's
headquarters, fell into the hands of the enemy, and, on the night of
the 29th, the French were within the city walls. St Peter's day is the
great feast of Rome, and this time, as usual, the cupola of St Peter's
was illuminated, the Italian flag flying from the highest point. The
thunderstorm, which proverbially accompanies the feast, raged during
the night; the French shells flew in all directions; the fight raged
fiercer than the storm; Medici held out among the crumbling walls of
the Vascello, which had been bombarded for a week; the heroic Manara
fell fighting at Villa Spada; Garibaldi, descending into the _mêlée_,
dealt blows right and left: he seemed possessed by some supernatural
power. Those around him say that it is impossible that he would have
much longer escaped death, but suddenly a message came summoning him
to the Assembly--it saved his life. When he appeared at the door of
the Chamber, the deputies rose and burst into wild applause. He seemed
puzzled, but, looking down upon himself, he read the explanation; he
was covered with blood, his clothes were honeycombed by balls and
bayonet thrusts, his sabre was so bent with striking that it would not
go more than half into its sheath.

What the Assembly wanted to know was whether the defence could be
prolonged; Garibaldi had only to say that it could not. They voted,
therefore, the following decree: 'In the name of God and of the
People: the Roman Constituent Assembly discontinues a defence which
has become impossible, and remains at its post.' At its post it
remained till the French soldiers invaded the Capitol, where it sat,
when, yielding to brute force, the deputies dispersed.

Mazzini, who would have resisted still, when all resistance was
impossible, wandered openly about the city like a man in a dream. He
felt as though he were looking on at the funeral of his best-beloved.
How it was that he was not killed or arrested is a mystery. At the end
of a week his friends induced him to leave Rome with an English
passport.

On the 2nd of July, before the French made their official entry,
Garibaldi called his soldiers together in the square of the Vatican,
and told them that he was going to seek some field where the foreigner
could still be fought. Who would might follow him; 'I cannot offer you
honours or pay; I offer you hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles,
death.'

Three thousand followed him. Beside her husband rode Anita; not even
for the sake of the child soon to come would she stay behind in
safety. Ugo Bassi was there; Anghiar was dead, Mameli was dying in a
hospital, but there was 'the partisan or brigand Forbes,' as he was
described in a letter of the Austrian general D'Aspre to the French
general Oudinot, with a good handful of Garibaldi's best surviving
officers. Ciceruacchio came with his two sons, and offered himself as
guide. No one knew what the plan was, or if there was one. Like
knights of old in search of adventures, they set out in search of
their country's foes. It was the last desperate venture of men who did
not know how to yield.

After wandering hither and thither, and suffering severe hardships,
the column reached the republic of San Marino. The brave hospitality
of that Rock of freedom prevented Garibaldi from falling into the
clutches of the Austrians, who surrounded the republic. He treated
with the Regent for the immunity of his followers, who had laid down
their arms; and, in the night, he himself escaped with Anita, Ugo
Bassi, Forbes, Ciceruacchio and a few others. They hoped to take their
swords to Venice, but a storm arose, and the boats on which they
embarked were driven out of their course. Some of them were stranded
on the shore which bounds the pine-forest of Ravenna, and here, hope
being indeed gone, the Chief separated from his companions. Of these,
Ugo Bassi, and an officer named Livraghi, were soon captured by the
Austrians, who conveyed them to Bologna, where they were shot.
Ciceruacchio and his sons were taken in another place, and shot as
soon as taken. The boat which contained Colonel Forbes was caught at
sea by an Austrian cruiser: he was kept in Austrian prisons for two
months, and was constantly reminded that he would be either shot or
hung; but the English Government succeeded in getting him liberated,
and he lived to take part in more fortunate fights under Garibaldi's
standard.

Meanwhile, Anita was dying in a peasant's cottage, to which Garibaldi
carried her when the strong will and dauntless heart could no longer
stand in place of the strength that was finished. This was the 4th of
August. Scarcely had she breathed her last breath when Garibaldi,
broken down with grief as he was, had to fly from the spot. The
Austrians were hunting for him in all directions. All the Roman
fugitives were proclaimed outlaws, and the population was forbidden to
give them even bread or water. Nevertheless--aided in secret by
peasants, priests and all whose help he was obliged to seek--Garibaldi
made good his flight from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean, the whole
route being overrun by Austrians. When once the western coast was
reached, he was able, partly by sea and partly by land, to reach the
Piedmontese territory, where his life was safe. Not even there,
however, could he rest; he was told, politely but firmly, that his
presence was embarrassing, and for the second time he left
Europe--first for Tunis and then for the United States.

While the French besieged Rome, the Austrians had not been idle. They
took Bologna in May, after eight days' resistance; and in June, after
twenty days' attack by sea and land, Ancona fell into their hands. In
these towns they pursued means of 'pacification' resembling those
employed at Brescia. All who possessed what by a fiction could be
called arms were summarily slaughtered. At Ancona, a woman of bad
character hid a rusty nail in the bed of her husband, whom she wished
to get rid of; she then denounced him to the military tribunal, and
two hours later an English family, whose house was near the barracks,
heard the ring of the volley of musketry which despatched him. Austria
had also occupied the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; and when, in July,
Leopold II. returned to his state, which had restored him by general
consent and without any foreign intervention, he entered Florence
between two files of Austrian soldiery, in violation of the article of
the Statute to which he had sworn, which stipulated that no foreign
occupation should be invited or tolerated. The Grand Duke wrote to the
Emperor of Austria, from Gaeta, humbly begging the loan of his arms.
Francis Joseph replied with supreme contempt, that it would have been
a better thing if Leopold had never forgotten to whose family he
belonged, but he granted the prayer. Such was the way in which the
House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, that had done much in Tuscany to win
respect if not love, destroyed all its rights to the goodwill of the
Tuscan people, and removed what might have been a serious obstacle to
Italian unity.

Austria, unable alone to cope with Hungary, committed the immeasurable
blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain,
but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay. Venice, and
Venice only, continued to defy her power. Since Novara, the first
result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who
had taken over the government after the Fusion, Venice had been ruled
by Manin on the terms which he himself proposed: 'Are you ready,' he
asked the Venetian Assembly, 'to invest the Government with unlimited
powers in order to direct the defence and maintain order?' He warned
them that he should be obliged to impose upon them enormous
sacrifices, but they replied by voting the order of the day: 'Venice
resists the Austrians at all costs; to this end the President Manin is
invested with plenary powers.' All the deputies then raised their
right hand, and swore to defend the city to the last extremity. They
kept their word.

It is hard to say which was the most admirable: Manin's fidelity to
his trust, or the people's fidelity to him. To keep up the spirits, to
maintain the decorum of a besieged city even for a few weeks or a few
months, is a task not without difficulty; but when the months run into
a second year, when the real pinch of privations has been felt by
everyone, not as a sudden twinge, but as a long-drawn-out pain, when
the bare necessities of life fail, and a horrible disease, cholera,
enters as auxiliary under the enemy's black-and-yellow,
death-and-pestilence flag; then, indeed, the task becomes one which
only a born leader of men could perform.

The financial administration of the republic was a model of order and
economy. Generous voluntary assistance was afforded by all classes,
from the wealthy patrician and the Jewish merchant to the poorest
gondolier. Mazzini once said bitterly that it was easier to get his
countrymen to give their blood than their money; here they gave both.
The capable manner in which Manin conducted the foreign policy of the
republic is also a point that deserves mention, as it won the esteem
even of statesmen of the old school, though it was powerless to obtain
their help.

The time was gone when France was disposed to do anything for Venice;
no one except the Archbishop of Paris, who was afterwards to die by
the hand of an assassin, said a word for her.

In the past year, Lord Palmerston, though he tried to localise the
war, and to prevent the co-operation of the south, abounded in good
advice to Austria. He repeated till he was tired of repeating, that
she would do well to retire from her Italian possessions of her own
accord. If the French did not come now, he said, they would come some
day, and then her friends and allies would give her scanty support. As
for Lombardy, it was notorious that a considerable Austrian party was
in favour of giving it up, including the Archduke Ranieri, who was
strongly attached to Italy, which was the land of his birth. As for
Venice, Austria had against her both the principle of nationality, now
the rallying cry of Germany, and the principle of ancient prescription
which could be energetically invoked against her by a state to which
her title went back no farther than the transfer effected by
Buonaparte in the treaty of Campo Formio. These were his arguments;
but he was convinced, by this time, that arguments unsupported by big
battalions might as well be bestowed on the winds as on the Cabinet of
Vienna. From the moment that Radetsky recovered Lombardy for his
master, the Italian policy of the Austrian Government was entirely
inspired by him, and he was determined that while he lived, what
Austria had got she should keep. It was thus that, in reply to Manin's
appeal to Lord Palmerston, he only received the cold comfort of the
recommendation that Venice should come to terms with her enemy.

The Venetian army of 20,000 men was reduced by casualties and sickness
to 18,000 or less. It always did its duty. The defence of Fort
Malghera, the great fort which commanded the road to Padua and the
bridge of the Venice railway, would have done credit to the most
experienced troops in the world. The garrison numbered 2500; the
besiegers, under Haynau, 30,000. Radetsky, with three archdukes, came
to see the siege, but, tired with waiting, they went away before it
was ended. The bombardment began on the 4th of May; in the three days
and nights ending with the 25th over 60,000 projectiles fell on the
fort. During the night of the 25th the Commandant, Ulloa, by order of
Government, quietly evacuated the place, and withdrew his troops; only
the next morning the Austrians found out that Malghera was abandoned,
and proceeded to take possession of the heap of ruins, which was all
that remained.

After the beginning of July, an incessant bombardment was directed
against the city itself. Women and children lived in the cellars; fever
stalked through the place, but the war feeling was as strong as
ever--nay, stronger. Moreover, the provisions became daily scarcer, the
day came when hunger was already acutely felt, when the time might be
reckoned by hours before the famished defenders must let drop their
weapons, and Venice, her works of art and her population, must fall a
prey to the savage vengeance of the Austrians, who would enter by force
and without conditions.

And this is what Manin prevented. The cry was still for resistance;
for the first time bitter words were spoken against the man who had
served his country so well. But he, who had never sacrificed one iota
to popularity, did not swerve. His great influence prevailed. The
capitulation was arranged on the 22nd, and signed on the 24th of July.
Manin had calculated correctly; on that day there was literally
nothing left to eat in Venice.

In the last sad hours that Manin spent in Venice all the love of his
people, clouded for an instant, burst forth anew. Not, indeed, in
shouts and acclamations, but in tears and sobs; 'Our poor father, how
much he has suffered!' they were heard saying. He embarked on a French
vessel bound for Marseilles, poor, worn out and exiled for ever from
the city which he had guided for eighteen months; if, indeed, no spark
of his spirit animated the dust which it was the first care of
liberated Venice to welcome home. The Austrians broke up his doorstep
on which, according to a Venetian custom, his name was engraved.
Another martyr, Ugo Bassi, had kissed the stone, exclaiming:

'Next to God and Italy--before the Pope--Manin!' The people gathered
up the broken fragments and kept them as relics, even as in their
hearts they kept his memory, till the arrival of that day of
redemption which, in the darkest hour, he foretold.






CHAPTER IX

'J'ATTENDS MON ASTRE'

1849-1850

The House of Savoy--A King who keeps his Word--Sufferings of the
Lombards--Charles Albert's Death.


Circumstances more gloomy than those under which Victor Emmanuel II.
ascended the throne of his ancestors it would be hard to imagine.

An army twice beaten, a bankrupt exchequer, a triumphant invader
waiting to dictate terms; this was but the beginning of the inventory
of the royal inheritance. The internal condition of the kingdom, even
apart from the financial ruin which had succeeded to the handsome
surplus of two years before, was full of embarrassments of the gravest
kind. There was a party representing the darkest-dyed clericalism and
reaction whose machinations had not been absent in the disaster of
Novara. Who was it that disseminated among the troops engaged in the
battle broadsides printed with the words: 'Soldiers, for whom do you
think you are fighting? The King is betrayed; at Turin they have
proclaimed the republic'? There were other broadsides in which Austria
was called the supporter of thrones and altars. The dreadful
indiscipline witnessed towards the end of, and after the conflict was
due more to the demoralising doctrines that had been introduced into
the army than to the insubordination of panic. There was another party
strengthened by the recent misfortunes and recruited by exiles from
all parts of Italy, which was democratic to the verge of republicanism
in Piedmont and over that verge at Genoa, where a revolution broke out
before the new King's reign was a week old. Constitutional government
stood between the fires of these two parties, both fanned by Austrian
bellows, the first openly, the second in secret.

Victor Emmanuel was not popular. The indifference to danger which he
had shown conspicuously during the war would have awakened enthusiasm
in most countries, but in Piedmont it was so thoroughly taken for
granted that the Princes of the House of Savoy did not know fear, that
it was looked on as an ordinary fact. The Austrian origin of the
Duchess of Savoy formed a peg on which to hang unfriendly theories. It
is impossible not to compassionate the poor young wife who now found
herself Queen of a people which hated her race, after having lived
since her marriage the most dreary of lives at the dismallest court in
Europe. At first, as a bride, she seemed to have a desire to break
through the frozen etiquette which surrounded her; it is told how she
once begged and prayed her husband to take her for a walk under the
Porticoes of Turin, which she had looked at only from the outside. The
young couple enjoyed their airing, but when it reached Charles
Albert's ears, he ordered his son to be immediately placed under
military arrest. The chilling formalism which invaded even the private
life of these royal personages, shutting the door to 'good
comradeship' even between husband and wife, may have had much to do
with driving Victor Emmanuel from the side of the Princess, whom,
nevertheless, he loved and venerated, to unworthy pleasures, the habit
of indulgence in which is far easier to contract than to cure.

[Illustration: VICTOR IMMANUEL]

The King's address at this time was not conciliatory, and, indeed, it
never lost a bluntness which later harmonised well enough with the
reputation he gained for soldierly integrity, but which then passed
for aristocratic haughtiness. His personal friends were said to belong
to the aristocratic or even the reactionary party. In the perplexities
which encompassed him, he could not reckon on the encouragement of any
consensus of good opinion or confidence. He was simply an unknown man,
against whom there was a good deal of prejudice.

Radetsky did not refuse to treat with Charles Albert, as has been
sometimes said, but the intolerably onerous terms first proposed by
him showed that he wished to force the abdication which Charles Albert
had always contemplated in the event of new reverses of fortune.
Radetsky was favourably disposed to the young Duke of Savoy, as far as
his personal feeling was concerned, a fact which was made out in
certain quarters to be almost a crime to be marked to the account of
Victor Emmanuel. The Field-Marshal did not forget that he was the
son-in-law of the Austrian Archduke Ranieri; it is probable, if not
proved, that he expected to find him pliable; but Radetsky, besides
being a politician of the purest blood-and-iron type, was an old
soldier with not a bad heart, and some of his sympathy is to be
ascribed to a veteran's natural admiration for a daring young officer.

On the 24th of March, Victor Emmanuel, with the manliness that was
born with him, decided to go and treat himself for the conditions of
the armistice. It was the first act of his reign, and it was an act of
abnegation; but of how much less humiliation than that performed by
his father twenty-eight years before, when almost on the same day, by
order of King Charles Felix, the Prince of Carignano betook himself to
the Austrian camp at Novara, to be greeted with the derisive shout of:
'Behold the King of Italy!' Little did Radetsky think that the words,
addressed then in scorn to the father, might to-day have been
addressed in truthful anticipation to the son.

The Field-Marshal took good care, however, that nothing but respect
should be paid to his visitor, whom he received half-way, surrounded
by his superb staff, all mounted on fine horses and clad in splendid
accoutrements. As soon as the King saw him coming, he sprang from his
saddle, and Radetsky would have done the same had not he required,
owing to his great age, the aid of two officers to help him to the
ground. After he had laboriously dismounted, he made a military
salute, and then embraced Victor Emmanuel with the greatest
cordiality. The King was accompanied by very few officers, but the
presence of one of these was significant, namely, of the Lombard Count
Vimercati, whom he particularly pointed out to Radetsky.

While observing the most courteous forms, the Field-Marshal was not
long in coming to the point. The negotiations would be greatly
facilitated, nay, more, instead of beginning his reign with a large
slice of territory occupied by a foreign enemy for an indefinite
period, the King might open it with an actual enlargement of his
frontier, if he would only give the easy assurance of ruling on the
good old system, and of re-hoisting the blue banner of Piedmont
instead of the revolutionary tricolor. The moment was opportune;
Victor Emmanuel had not yet sworn to maintain the Constitution. But he
replied, without hesitation, that though he was ready, if needs be, to
accept the full penalties of defeat, he was determined to observe the
engagements entered into by his father towards the people over whom he
was called to reign.

One person had already received from his lips the same declaration,
with another of wider meaning. During the previous night, speaking to
the Lombard officer above mentioned, the King said: 'I shall preserve
intact the institutions given by my father; I shall uphold the
tricolor flag, symbol of Italian nationality, which is vanquished
to-day, but which one day will triumph. This triumph will be,
henceforth, the aim of all my efforts.' In 1874, on the twenty-fifth
anniversary of Novara, Count Vimercati wrote to the King of Italy from
Paris to remind him of the words he had then spoken.

When the King started for his capital, Radetsky offered to draw up his
troops as a guard of honour over the whole extent of occupied
territory between Novara and Turin. The offer was declined, and Victor
Emmanuel took a circuitous route to avoid observation. His journey was
marked throughout by a complete absence of state. Before he arrived, a
trusty hand consigned to him a note written in haste and in much
anguish by the Queen, in which she warned him to enter by night, as he
was likely to have a very bad reception. On the 27th of March he
reviewed the National Guard in the Piazza Castello on the occasion of
its taking the oath of allegiance. The ceremony was attended by Queen
Maria Adelaide in a carriage with her two little boys, the Princes
Umberto and Amedeo. There was no hostile demonstration, but there was
a most general and icy coldness.

That evening, the terms of the armistice were communicated to the
Chamber. As was natural, they evoked the wildest indignation, a part
of which fell undeservedly on the King. Twenty thousand Austrians were
to occupy the district between the Po, Sesia and Ticino and half the
citadel of Alessandria. The excitement rose to its height when it was
announced that the Sardinian Fleet must be recalled from Venetian
waters, depriving that struggling city of the last visible sign of
support from without. The Chamber sent a deputation to the King, who
succeeded in persuading its members that, hard though the terms were,
there was no avoiding their acceptance, and that the original
stipulations were harder still.

On the 29th, Victor Emmanuel took the oath to observe the Statute, to
exercise the royal authority only in virtue of the laws, to cause
justice to be fairly and fearlessly administered, and to conduct
himself in all things with the sole view to the interest, honour and
prosperity of the nation.

A trifling accident occurred which might have been far from trifling;
one of the ornaments of the ceiling of the Palazzo Madama, where the
Parliament assembled, fell close to the King. As it was of great
weight, it would have killed anyone on whom it had fallen. 'Never mind
that,' said the King in Piedmontese dialect to Colonel Menabrea, who
was near him, 'it will not be the last!'

The ministry which held office under the late King resigned; a new
one was formed, in which General Delaunay was President of the
Council, and Gioberti minister without a portfolio. The King was
advised to dissolve the Chamber, which had been elected as a war
parliament, and was ill-constituted to perform the work now required.
General La Marmora had orders to quell the insurrection at Genoa, the
motive of which was not nominally a change of government, but the
continuance of the war at all costs. Its deeper cause lay in the old
irreconcilability of republican Genoa with her Piedmontese masters,
breaking out now afresh under the strain of patriotic disappointment.
Like the 15th of May at Naples, the Genoese revolution was a folly
which can hardly be otherwise described than as a crime; it happened,
however, that in Piedmont there was a King who had not the slightest
intention of turning it into an excuse for a royal hark-back. Austria
and France offered Victor Emmanuel their arms to put down the
revolution, but, declining the not exactly disinterested attention, he
made a wise choice in La Marmora, who accomplished the ungrateful
task with expedition and humanity. An amnesty was granted to all but a
very few participators in the revolt. On the brief black list when it
was submitted to the King was the name of the Marquis Lorenzo Pareto,
who at one time had held the Foreign Office under Charles Albert. As
Colonel of the Genoese National Guard, his responsibility in joining
the insurrection was judged to be particularly heavy; but the King
refused to confirm his exclusion from the amnesty. 'I would not have
it said,' he objected, 'that I was harsh to one of my father's old
ministers.'

The conception of Victor Emmanuel as a bluff, easy-going monarch is
mistaken. Very few princes have had a keener sense of the royal
dignity, or a more deeply-rooted family pride, or, when he thought fit
to resort to it, a more decisive method of preventing people from
taking liberties with him. But he knew that, in nearly all cases,
pardon is the best of a king's prerogatives.

An instance to the point happened when he came to the throne. Two
officers of the royal household had caused him annoyance while he was
Duke of Savoy by telling tales of his unconventionality to his
easily-scandalised father. To them, perhaps, he owed the condign
punishment he had undergone for the famous promenade under the
Porticoes. At anyrate, they had procured for the Duke many bad
quarters-of-an-hour, but the King, when he became King, chose to be
completely oblivious of their conduct, and they remained undisturbed
at their posts. To those who pointed to King Leopold of the Belgians,
or to any other foreign example of a loyal sovereign who understood
the needs of his people as a model for Victor Emmanuel to imitate, he
was in the habit of replying: 'I remember the history of my fathers,
and it is enough.'

'The Persians,' says the Greek historian, 'taught their children to
ride and to speak the truth.' In a land that had seen as much of
enthroned effeminacy and mendacity as Italy had seen, a prince fond of
manly exercise and observant of his word was more valuable than a
heaven-sent genius, and more welcome than a calendar saint. Piedmont
only could give such a prince to Italy. Its kings were not Spaniards
who, by way of improvement, became lazzaroni, nor were they Austrians
condemned by a fatal law to revert to their original type; they were
children of the ice and snow, the fellow-countrymen of their subjects.
All their traditions told of obstinacy and hardihood. They brought
their useful if scarcely amiable moral qualities from Maurienne in the
eleventh century. The second Count of Savoy, known as Amadeus with the
Tail, son of Humbert of the White Hands, founder of the House, went to
the Holy Roman Emperor with such a body of retainers that the guards
refused them entrance to the Council Chamber. 'Either I shall go in
with my Tail or not at all,' said Humbert, and with his Tail he went
in. This was the metal of the race. Even at the time when they were
vassals of the Empire, they expected to dictate rather than to obey.
They studiously married into all the great royal houses of Europe.
Though they persecuted their Vaudois subjects, who were only in 1848
rewarded by emancipation for centuries of unmerited sufferings and
splendid fidelity, yet the Princes of Savoy had from the first, from
the White-Handed Humbert himself, held their heads high in all
transactions with the Holy See, between which and them there was an
ever-returning antagonism. Not to the early part of the nineteenth
century, when the rebound from revolutionary chaos did not suffice to
denationalise the Kings of Sardinia, but sufficed to ally them with
reaction, ought we to turn if we would seize the true bearings of the
development of the Counts of Maurienne into Kings of Italy. At that
moment the mission of Piedmont, though not lost, was obscured. What
has rather to be contemplated is the historic tendency, viewed as a
whole, of both reigning house and people. No one has pointed out that
tendency more clearly than the anonymous author of a pamphlet entitled
_Le Testament politique du Chevalier Walpole_ (published at Amsterdam
in 1769), who was able to draw the horoscope of the House of Savoy
with a correctness which seems almost startling. He was not helped by
either sympathy or poetic imagination, but simply by political logic.
Sardinia, he said, was the best governed state in Europe. Instead of
yielding to the indolent apathy in which other reigning families were
sunk, its princes sought to improve its laws and develop its resources
according to the wants of the population and the exigences of the
climate. Finance, police, the administration of justice, military
discipline, presented the picture of order. From the nature of the
situation, a King of Sardinia must be ambitious, and to satisfy his
ambition he had only to bide his time. Placed between two great Powers
he could choose for his ally whichever would give him the most, and by
playing this mute _rôle_, it was impossible that he would not
hereafter be called upon to play one of the most important parts in
Europe. Italy was the oyster disputed by Austria and France; might it
not happen that the King of Sardinia, becoming judge and party, would
devour the oyster and leave the shells to the rival aspirants? It was
unlikely, added this far-seeing observer, that the Italian populations
should have got so innured to their chains as to prefer the harsh,
vexatious government of Austria to the happy lot which Sardinian
domination would secure to them, but even if they had become
demoralised to this extent, they could not resist the providential
advance of a temperate, robust and warlike nation like Piedmont, led
by a prince as enlightened as the King (Charles Emmanuel) who then
reigned over it.

The metaphor of the oyster recalls another, that of Italy being an
artichoke which the House of Savoy was to devour, a leaf at a time.
Whether or not a Duke of Savoy really invented this often-quoted
comparison, it is certain that power was what the rulers of Piedmont
cared for. They were no more a race of scholars and art patrons than
their people was a people of artists and poets. There is a story to
the effect that one Duke of Savoy could never make out what poetry
was, except that it was written in half lines, which caused a great
waste of paper. The only poet born in Piedmont found the country
unlivable. Recent research among the archives at Turin revealed facts
which were thought to be not creditable to certain princely persons,
and a gleaning was therefore made of documents to which the historical
student will no longer have access. The step was ill advised; what can
documents tell us on the subject that we do not know? Did anyone
suppose that the Savoy princes were commonly saints? Sainthood has
been the privilege of the women of the family, and they have kept it
mostly to themselves. But peccable and rough though the members of
this royal house may have been, very few of them were without the
governing faculty. 'C'est bien le souverain le plus fin que j'ai connu
en Europe,' said Thiers of Victor Emmanuel, whose acquaintance he made
in 1870, and in whom he found an able politician instead of the common
soldier he had expected. The remark might be extended back to all the
race. They understood the business of kings. A word not unlike the 'Tu
regere imperio populos, Romane, memento' of Virgil was breathed over
the cradle at Maurienne. If it did not send forth sons to rule the
world, its children were, at least, to be enthroned in the capital of
the Cæsars, and to make Italy one for the first time since Augustus.

From April to August 1849, the peace negotiations dragged on. The
pretensions of Austria were still exorbitant, and she resisted the
demand which Piedmont, weak and reduced though she was, did not fear
to make, that she should amnesty her Italian subjects who had taken
part in the revolution. Unequal to cope with the difficulties of the
situation, the Delaunay ministry fell, and Massimo d'Azeglio was
appointed President of the Council. This was a good augury for
Piedmont; D'Azeglio's patriotism had received a seal in the wound
which he carried away from the defence of Vicenza. Honour was safe in
his hands, whatever were the sacrifices to which he might be obliged
to consent.

Some pressure having been put on Austria by France and England, she
agreed in July to evacuate Alessandria, and to reduce the war
indemnity from 230,000,000 francs to 75,000,000, which Piedmont
undertook to pay, onerous though the charge was in her deplorable
financial condition. But the amnesty question was the last to be
settled, and in this Piedmont stood alone. France and her. The
Piedmontese special envoy at Milan, Count Pralormo, wrote to Prince
Schwarzenberg on the 2nd of July that his Government could not give up
this point. It was a conscientious duty so universally and strongly
felt, that they were readier to submit to the consequences, whatever
they might be, than to dishonour themselves by renouncing it. In other
words, they were ready to face a new war, abandoned to their fate by
all Europe, to undergo a new invasion, which meant the utter
destruction of their country, rather than leave their Lombard and
Venetian fellow-countrymen to the revenge of Austria. Count Pralormo
added that he was speaking not only in the name of the ministry, but
of the King and the whole nation. The risk was no imaginary one; there
were many in Austria who desired an excuse for crushing the life out
of the small state which was the eternal thorn in the side of that
great Empire. Few remember now the sufferings of Piedmont for Italy,
or the perils, only too real, which she braved again and again, not
from selfish motives--for the Piedmontese of the old, narrow school,
who said that their orderly little country had nothing to gain from
being merged in a state of 25,000,000 were by no means in error--but
from genuine Italian fellow-feeling for their less happy compatriots
beyond their confines.

At last, when the armistice concluded on the morrow of Novara had been
prolonged for five months, the treaty of peace was signed. Prince
Schwarzenberg offered to further reduce the indemnity, 75,000,000 to
71,000,000, but D'Azeglio having agreed to the former figure,
preferred to abide by his agreement. He thought, probably, that he
would thus gain some concession as to the amnesty, and, in fact,
Austria finally consented to pardon all but a small number of the
persons compromised in the late events. D'Azeglio still stood out, but
finding that there was no shadow of a chance of obtaining more than
this, he reluctantly accepted it. The great mass, the hundred thousand
and more fugitives who had left their homes in Lombardy and Venetia,
were, at any rate, promised a safe return. The city of Venice, as yet
undominated, though on the brink of her fall, was totally excluded.
The list of those whose banishment from Lombardy was confirmed,
comprises the noblest names in the province; with the exception of a
few who were excluded from the amnesty on the score that, before the
revolution, they were Austrian functionaries, nearly every unpardoned
Lombard was noble: Casati, Arese, Borromeo, Litta, Greppi,
Pallavicini, and the Princess Cristina Belgiojoso of Milan, the two
Camozzis of Bergamo, and G. Martinengo Cesaresco of Brescia.

It must not be imagined that this amnesty ushered in a reign of
oblivion and mildness. It seemed, rather, that Austria, afraid of the
moral consequences of the return of so many unloving subjects,
redoubled her severity. The day following the promulgation of the
amnesty was the 18th of August, the Emperor of Austria's birthday. In
the morning, placards dissuading the citizens from taking part in the
official rejoicings were to be seen on the walls of Milan. The persons
who put these up were not caught, but in the course of the day a
crowd, consisting of all classes, made what the official report called
'a scandalous and anti-politic demonstration,' raising revolutionary
cries, and even saying uncomplimentary things of His Majesty, and
worse still, of the Austrian soldiers. During this 'shameful scene,'
of which the above is the Austrian and hence the most highly-coloured
description, the military arrested at hazard some of the crowd, who,
by a 'superior order,' were condemned to the following pains and
penalties:--

     1. Angelo Negroni, of Padua, aged thirty, proprietor, forty
      strokes;

     2. Carlo Bossi, watchmaker, aged twenty-two, forty strokes;

     3. Paolo Lodi, of Monza, student, aged twenty-one, thirty strokes;

     4. Giovanni Mazzuchetti, Milanese, barrister, aged twenty-four,
     thirty strokes;

     5. Bonnetti, Milanese, lithographer, aged thirty-one, fifty
     strokes;

     6. Moretti, Milanese, domestic servant, aged twenty-six, fifty
     strokes;

     7. Cesana, artist, aged thirty-two, forty strokes;

     8. Scotti, shopkeeper, of Monza, fifty strokes;

     9. Vigorelli, Milanese, proprietor, fifty strokes;

     10. Garavaglia, of Novara, aged thirty-nine, thirty strokes;

     11. Giuseppe Tandea, Milanese, aged forty, twenty-five strokes;

     12. Rossi, Milanese, student, thirty strokes;

     13. Carabelli, workman, forty strokes;

     14. Giuseppe Berlusconi, fifty strokes;

     15. Ferrandi, bookseller, thirty strokes;

     16. Ernestina Galli, of Cremona, operatic singer, aged twenty,
     forty strokes;

     17. Maria Conti, of Florence, operatic singer, aged eighteen,
     thirty strokes.

There were other sentences of imprisonment in irons and on bread and
water, but the roll of the bastinado, extracted from the official
_Gazzetta di Milano_ may be left to speak for all the rest, and to
tell, with a laconicism more eloquent than the finest rhetoric, what
the Austrian yoke in Italy really meant.

A few days after, the military commandant sent the Milanese
Municipality a bill for thirty-nine florins, the cost of rods broken
or worn-out, and of ice used to prevent gangrene, in the punishment
administered to the persons arrested on the 18th of August. Sixty
strokes with the Austrian stick were generally enough to prove fatal.
Women were flogged half-naked, together with the men, and in the
presence of the Austrian officers, who came to see the spectacle.

When the treaty of peace with Austria was signed, there arose a new
difficulty; the Sardinian Chamber of Deputies refused to approve it.
Some of the deputies asked why they should be called upon either to
accept or reject it, on which they were reminded of the 75,000,000
francs indemnity, funds for the discharge of which could not be
legally raised without a parliamentary vote. The reluctance to share
in an odious though necessary responsibility made these novices in
representative government anxious to throw away the greatest, if not
the sole guarantee of constitutional freedom. Brofferio, by far the
ablest man of the extreme radical party, who had opposed all peace
proposals as long as Rome and Venice still resisted, now advised his
friends to bow before the inevitable. But they did not comply, and the
ministers had no other alternative than to resort to a fresh appeal to
the country.

The crisis was serious, because no amount of loyalty on the part of
the head of the state can save liberty when the representatives of a
nation, taking the bit between their teeth, set themselves
deliberately to work to make government impossible. People are too
fond of talking of liberty as if it were something locked up in a box
which remains safe as long as the guardian of the box does not steal
it or sell it. Liberty is in the charge of all and at the mercy of
all. There were not wanting persons who blamed the new dissolution as
unconstitutional, and who called the proclamation of Moncalieri which
announced it an act of despotism and of improper interference with the
independence of the electors. It is hardly too much to say that it was
this royal proclamation that saved Piedmont. The King appealed to
Italy and to Europe for judgment on the conduct of the late Chamber.
Having signed, he said, a 'not ruinous' treaty with Austria, which the
honour of the country and the sanctity of his word required to be
faithfully executed, the majority sought to make that execution
legally impracticable. He continued: 'I have promised to save the
nation from the tyranny of parties, whatever be the name, scope and
position of the men who constitute them. These promises I fulfil by
dissolving a Chamber which had become impossible, and by convoking the
immediate assemblage of another parliament; but if the electors of the
country deny me their help, not on me will fall henceforth the
responsibility of the future; and if disorders follow, let them
complain, not of me, but of themselves. Never, up till now, has the
House of Savoy had recourse in vain to the faithfulness, wisdom and
honour of its peoples. I have therefore the right to trust in them on
the present occasion, and to hold for certain that, united together,
we shall save the constitution and the country from the dangers by
which they are menaced.'

The Proclamation produced a great effect, and the parliament which met
on the 20th of December contained a working majority of men who were
not only patriotic, but who were also endowed with common sense. When
the ratification of the peace came on for discussion, there was,
indeed, one deputy who spoke in favour of immediate war, which, in a
fortnight, was to effect the liberation, not only of Lombardy and
Venetia, but also of Hungary, a speech worth recalling, as it shows
how far madness will go. The debate concluded with a vote authorising
the King's government to fully carry out the treaty of peace which was
concluded at Milan on the 6th of August 1849, the ayes being 137
against 17 noes. Piedmont had learnt the bitter but useful lesson,
that if you play and lose, you must pay the cost.

He who had played and lost his crown had already paid the last fee to
fortune. Charles Albert was now a denizen of the Superga--of all
kings' burial places, the most inspiring in its history, the most
sublime in its situation. Here Victor Amadeus, as he looked down on
the great French army which, for three months, had besieged his
capital, vowed to erect a temple if it should please the Lord of Hosts
to grant him and his people deliverance from the hands of the enemy.
Five days later the French were in flight. All the Alps, from Mon Viso
to the Simplon, all Piedmont, and beyond Piedmont, Italy to the
Apennines, can be scanned from the church which fulfilled the royal
vow.

To the Superga the body of Charles Albert was brought from the place
of exile. Before the coffin, his sword was carried; after it, they led
the war-horse he had ridden in all the battles. After the war-horse
followed a great multitude. He had said truly that it was an opportune
time for him to die. The pathos of his end rekindled the affections of
the people for the dynasty.

As in the Mosque of dead Sultans in Stamboul, so in the Mausoleum of
the Superga, each sovereign occupied the post of honour only till the
next one came to join him. But the post of honour remains, and will
remain, to Charles Albert. His son lies elsewhere.






CHAPTER X

THE REVIVAL OF PIEDMONT

1850-1856

Restoration of the Pope and Grand Duke of Tuscany--Misrule at
Naples--The Struggle with the Church in Piedmont--The Crimean War.


The decade from 1849 to 1859 may seem, at first sight, to resemble an
interregnum, but it was an evolution. There is no pause in the life of
nations any more than in the life of individuals: they go forward or
they go backward. In these ten years Piedmont went forward; the other
Italian governments did not stand still, they went backward. The
diseases from which they suffered gained daily upon the whole
body-politic, and even those clever foreign doctors who had been the
most convinced that this or that remedy would set them on their feet,
were in the end persuaded that there was only one place for them--the
Hospital for Incurables. After the fall of Rome, Pius IX. issued a
sort of canticle from Gaeta, in which he thanked the Lord at whose
bidding the stormy ocean had been arrested, but he did not even so
much as say thank you to the French, without whom, nevertheless, the
stormy ocean would have proceeded on its way. To all suggestions from
Paris that now that victory had been won by force the time was come
for the Sovereign to give some guarantee that it would not be abused,
the Pope turned a completely deaf ear. 'The Pope,' said M. Drouyn
de Lhuys, 'prefers to return to Rome upon the dead bodies of his
subjects rather than amidst the applause which would have greeted him
had he taken our advice.' That advice referred in particular to the
secularisation of the public administration, and this was exactly what
the Pope and the ex-Liberal Cardinal Antonelli, now and henceforth his
most influential counsellor, were determined not to concede. They had
grown wise in their generation, for a priest whose ministers are
laymen is as much an anomaly as a layman whose ministers are priests.
The French government desired that the Statute should be maintained,
and demanded judicial reforms and an amnesty for political offenders.
None of these points was accepted except the last, and that only
nominally, as the amnesty of the 18th of September did not put a stop
to proscriptions and vindictive measures. Count Mamiani, whose
stainless character was venerated in all Italy, and who had devoted
all his energies to the attempt to save the Papal government after the
Pope's flight, was ruthlessly excluded, and so were many other persons
who, though liberal-minded, had shown signal devotion to the Holy See.
All sorts of means were used to serve the ends of vengeance; for
instance, Alessandro Calandrelli, a Roman of high reputation, who held
office under the republic, was condemned to death for high treason,
and to twenty years at the galleys, on a trumped-up charge of theft,
which was palpably absurd; but the Pope, while quashing the first
sentence, confirmed the second, and Calandrelli would have remained in
prison till the year of grace 1870, as many others did, but for the
chance circumstance that his father had been a friend of the King of
Prussia, who took up his cause so warmly that after two years he was
let out and sent to Berlin, where the King and A. von Humboldt
received him with open arms.

These were the auspices under which Pius IX. returned to Rome after
seventeen months' absence. A four-fold invasion restored the Temporal
Power, which Fénelon said was the root of all evil to the Church, but
which, according to Pius IX., was necessary to the preservation of the
Catholic religion. The re-established _régime_ was characterised by
Lord Clarendon at the Congress of Paris as 'the opprobrium of Europe.'
The Pope tried to compensate for his real want of independence (for a
prince who could not stand a day without foreign bayonets, whatever
else he was, was not independent) by laughing at the entreaties of
France to relieve that advanced nation from the annoyance of having
set up a government fit for the Middle Ages. He rated at its correct
value the support of Napoleon, and believing it to be purely
interested, he believed in its permanence. The President had thought
of nothing in the world but votes, and he thought of them still. The
Roman Expedition secured him the services of M. de Falloux as
minister, and won over to him the entire Clerical Party, including
Montalembert and the so-called Liberal Catholics. Thus, and thus only,
was the leap from the Presidential chair to the Imperial throne made
possible. The result was flattering, but still there are reasons to
think (apart from Prince Jérôme Napoleon's express statement to that
effect) that Napoleon III. hated the whole business from the bottom of
his soul, and that of his not few questionable acts, this was the only
one of which he felt lastingly ashamed. Seeing that the communications
of his ministers failed in their object, he tried the expedient of
writing a private letter to his friend Edgar Ney, couched in the
strongest terms of disapproval of the recalcitrant attitude of the
Papal Government. This letter was published as it was intended to be,
but in the Roman States, except that its circulation was forbidden, no
notice was taken of it. Though the incident may be regarded as a
stroke of facing-both-ways policy, the anger expressed was probably as
sincere as any of Napoleon's sentiments could be, and the letter had
the effect of awakening the idea in many minds that something of the
former Italian conspirator still existed in the ruler of France. The
question arose, What sort of pressure would be needed to turn that
germ to account for Italy?

In the kingdom of Naples, where the laws, to look at them on paper,
were incomparably better than those in force in the Roman States, the
administration was such as would have disgraced a remote province of
the Turkish Empire. The King's naturally suspicious temperament was
worked upon by his courtiers and priests till he came to detect in
every Liberal a personal antagonist, whose immunity from harm was
incompatible with his own, and in Liberalism a plague dangerous to
society, which must be stamped out at all costs. Over 800 Liberals
were sent to the galleys. The convictions were obtained, in a great
proportion of cases, by false testimony. Bribes and secret protection
in high quarters were the only means by which an innocent man could
hope to escape; 50,000 persons were under police supervision, to be
imprisoned at will. The police often refused to set at liberty those
whom the judges had acquitted. The government had a Turkish or Russian
fear of printed matter. A wretched barber was fined 1000 ducats for
having in his possession a volume of Leopardi's poems, which was
described as 'contrary to religion and morals.'

What was meant by being an inmate of a Neapolitan prison was told by
Mr Gladstone in his two 'Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen,' which the
latter sent to Prince Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Prime Minister, with
a strong appeal to him to make known their contents to the King of the
Two Sicilies, and to use his influence in procuring a mitigation of
the abuses complained of. Prince Schwarzenberg did nothing, and it was
then that the 'Letters' were published. The impression created on
public opinion was almost without a parallel. The celebrated phrase,
'The negation of God erected into a system of government,' passing
into currency as a short history of Bourbon rule at Naples, kept
alive the wrathful feelings which the 'Letters' aroused, even when
these ceased to be read. Some small errors of fact (such as that of
stating that all the prisoners were chained, whereas an exception was
made of those undergoing life sentences) were magnified by the
partisans of Ferdinand II.; but the truth of the picture as a whole
was amply confirmed from independent sources. Baron Carlo Poerio
(condemned to nineteen years' imprisonment) _was_ chained to a common
malefactor, the chain never being undone, and producing in the end a
disease of the bone from which he never recovered. His case was that
of all the political prisoners in the same category with himself.
Luigi Settembrini and the others on whom sentence of death had been
passed, but commuted into one of life imprisonment, were not chained,
but they were put to associate with the worst thieves and assassins,
while their material surroundings accorded with the moral atmosphere
they were forced to breathe.

The Neapolitan prisoners did more than suffer for freedom; they
delivered the name of their country from being a reproach among the
nations. They showed what men the South of Italy can produce. Those
who wish to know what types of probity, honour and ideal patriotism
may grow out of that soil, which is sometimes charged with yielding
only the rank weeds planted by despotism, may read the letters and
memoirs of the noble Poerios, of Settembrini, gentlest but most
fearless of human souls, of the Calabrian Morellis, all patriots and
martyrs; of the Duke of Castromediano, who lately, in his old age, has
set down a few recollections of the years he spent at the Neapolitan
galleys. He records in these notes what he calls the most perilous
moment in his life. It was when he was summoned, with six
fellow-prisoners who had asked for and obtained freedom, to hear, as
he feared, his own pardon pronounced. For pardon was equivalent to
dishonour; it was granted either in consequence of real submission and
retraction, or in order to be able to blacken the character of the
pardoned man by falsely asserting that such submission had been made.
His fear was groundless. He had been led out, perhaps, in the hope
that the example of the others would prove contagious. He was not
pardoned. As he returned to his prison, he thanked Divine Providence
for the chains which left him pure.

Strange to tell, Ferdinand II. rendered one considerable service to
the national cause; not that he saw it in that light, but the service
was none the less real because its motive was a narrow one. Austria
proposed a defensive league between the Italian Sovereigns: defensive
not only with the view to outward attack, but also and chiefly against
'internal disorder.' Piedmont was to be invited to join as soon as she
had renounced her constitutional sins, which it was sanguinely
expected she would do before very long. Meanwhile Parma, Modena,
Tuscany and Rome embraced the idea with enthusiasm, but the King of
the Two Sicilies, who dimly saw in it an opening for interference in
his own peculiar governmental ways, boldly declined to have anything
to do with it. And so, to Prince Schwarzenberg's serious
disappointment, the scheme by which he had hoped to create an
absolutist Italian federation, came to an untimely end.

The Grand Duke of Tuscany timidly inquired of the Austrian premier if
he might renew the constitutional _régime_ in his state. Schwarzenberg
replied with the artful suggestion that he should hear what the Dukes
of Modena and Parma, the Pope, and King Ferdinand had to say on the
subject. Their advice was unanimously negative: Cardinal Antonelli
going so far as to declare that Constitutionalism in Tuscany would be
regarded as a constant menace and danger to the States of the Church.
The different counsels of Piedmont, conveyed by Count Balbo, weighed
little against so imposing an array of opinion, backed as it was by
the Power which still stabled its horses in the Convent of San Marco.
The Tuscan Statute was formally suspended in September 1850.

From that day forth, Tuscany sank lower and lower in the slough. To
please the Pope, havoc was made of the Leopoldine laws--named after
the son of Maria Theresa, the wise Grand Duke Leopold I.--laws by
which a bridle was put on the power and extension of the Church. The
prosecution and imprisonment of a Protestant couple who were accused
of wishing to make proselytes, proclaimed the depth of intolerance
into which what was once the freest and best-ordered government in
Italy had descended.

The ecclesiastical question became the true test question in Piedmont
as well as in Tuscany, but there it had another issue.

It had also a different basis. In Piedmont there were no Leopoldine
laws to destroy; what was necessary was to create them. To privileges
dating from the Middle Ages which in the kingdom of Sardinia almost
alone had been restored without curtailment after the storm of the
French Revolution, were added the favours, the vast wealth, the
preponderating influence acquired during Charles Felix' reign, and the
first seventeen years of that of Charles Albert. Theoretically, the
Statute swept away all privileges of classes and sects, and made
citizens equal before the law, but to put this theory into practice
further legislation was needed, because, as a matter of fact, the
clergy preserved their immunities untouched and showed not the
slightest disposition to yield one jot of them. The Piedmontese
clergy, more numerous in proportion to the population than in any
state except Rome, were more intransigent than any ecclesiastical body
in the world. The Italian priest of old days, whatever else might be
said about him, was rarely a fanatic. The very nickname 'Ultramontane'
given by Italians to the religious extremists north of the Alps, shows
how foreign such excesses were to their own temperaments. But the
Ultramontane spirit had already invaded Piedmont, and was embraced by
its clergy with all the zeal of converts. There was still a _Foro
Ecclesiastico_ for the arraignment of religious offenders, and this
was one of the first privileges against which Massimo d'Azeglio lifted
his 'sacrilegious' hand. To go through all the list would be tedious,
and would demand more explanation regarding the local modes of
acquisition and tenure of religious property than would be interesting
now. The object of the Siccardi laws, as they were named after the
Minister of Grace and Justice who introduced them, and of the stronger
measures to which they led up, was to make the priest amenable to the
common law of the land in all except that which referred to his
spiritual functions; to put a limit on the amassment of wealth by
religious corporations; to check the multiplication of convents and
the multiplication of feast days, both of which encouraged the people
in sloth and idleness; to withdraw education from the sole control of
ecclesiastics; and finally, to authorise civil marriage, but without
making it compulsory. The programme was large, and it took years to
carry it out. The Vatican contended that it was contrary to the
Concordat which existed between the Holy See and the Court of
Sardinia. Massimo d'Azeglio replied that the maintenance of the
Concordat, in all its parts, meant the ruin of the state; that he had
tried every means of conciliation, made every effort towards arriving
at a compromise, and that since his endeavours had failed in
consequence of the refusal of the Vatican to abate pretensions which
it neither could nor did enforce in Austria, Naples or Spain, heaven
and the world must judge between Rome and Piedmont, between Cardinal
Antonelli and himself.

The struggle throughout was bitter in the extreme, but its most
striking incident was the denial of the last Sacraments to a member of
the Government, the Minister of Agriculture, Santa Rosa, who happened
to die soon after the passing of the Act abolishing the _Foro
Ecclesiastico_. Santa Rosa was a sincerely religious man, but he
resisted all the attempts of the priest to extort a retractation, and
died unabsolved rather than leave a dishonoured name to his children.

The popular indignation excited by this incident was in proportion
with the importance attached to outward observances of religion in
Catholic countries; the government had to protect the Archbishop of
Turin from violence, while, at the same time, they sent him for a
month to the Citadel for having forbidden his clergy to obey the law
on the _Foro Ecclesiastico_. He and one or two of the other bishops
were afterwards expelled from the kingdom. An unwelcome necessity, but
whose was the fault? In other countries, where the privileges claimed
by the Piedmontese clergy had been abolished for centuries, did the
bishops dictate revolt against the law? If not, why should they do so
in Piedmont?

The successor of Santa Rosa in the ministry was Count Cavour, who
thus in 1850 for the first time became an official servant of the
state. When D'Azeglio submitted the appointment to the King, Victor
Emmanuel remarked that, though he did not object to it in the least,
they had better take care, as this man would turn them all out before
long. This man was, in fact, to stand at the helm of Piedmont, with
short intervals, till he died, and was to carve out from the block of
formless marble, not the Italy of sublime dreams, which, owing her
deliverance to her sons alone, should arise immaculate from the grave
a Messiah among the nations, but the actual Italy which has been
accomplished; imperfect and peccable as human things mostly are,
belonging rather to prose than to poetry, to matter than to spirit,
but, for all that, an Italy which is one and is free.

Fifty years ago a great English writer pointed out what the real Italy
would be, if it were to be; 'The prosperity of nations as of
individuals,' wrote Mr Ruskin in one of his earliest papers, 'is cold
and hard-hearted and forgetful. The dead lie, indeed, trampled down by
the living; the place thereof shall know them no more, for that place is
not in the hearts of the survivors, for whose interest they have made
way. But adversity and ruin point to the sepulchre, and it is not
trodden on; to the chronicle, and it does not decay. Who would
substitute the rush of a new nation, the struggle of an awakening power,
for the dreamy sleep of Italy's desolation, for the sweet silence of
melancholy thought, her twilight time of everlasting memories?'

[Illustration: COUNT CAVOUR]

There is the case, stated with beautiful lucidity, of the somewhat
ghoulish dilettantism which, enjoying tombs, would condemn all
mankind to breathe their atmosphere. It is not, however, in order to
discuss that view that the passage is quoted, but because of its
relevancy to what Cavour attempted and what he did. Never was there a
mind which cherished fewer illusions. He believed that the pursuit of
the unattainable was still more a political crime than a political
blunder. He was, in this, what is now called an opportunist, and he
was also an opportunist in believing that though in politics you can
choose your aim, you can very rarely choose your means. He held (and
this was the reason that he was so profoundly hated by men of very
different parties) that to accomplish great changes you have to make
sacrifices, not only of the higher sort, but, in a certain sense, also
of the lower. As he thought that the Austrians could not be expelled
from Italy for good and all without foreign help, he contemplated from
the first securing that foreign help, though no one would have been
more glad than he to do without it. He thought that Italian freedom
could not be won without a closer alliance with the democratic party
than politicians like D'Azeglio, who had the fear of the ermine, of
tarnishing its whiteness, would have ever brought themselves to
acquiesce in, and he therefore immediately took steps to establish
that alliance. Cavour had no faith in the creation of ideally perfect
states, such as the Monarchy of Dante or the Republic of Mazzini, but
he did think that a living land was better than a dead one, that the
struggle of an awakening power, the rush of a new nation, was
infinitely to be preferred to the desolation of dreamy sleeps, sweet
silences, and everlasting memories that spelt regrets.

It may be possible now to see clearly that if no one had tried for the
unattainable, Cavour would not have found the ground prepared for his
work. The appreciation of his rank among Italian liberators rests on a
different point, and it is this: without a man of his positive mould,
of his practical genius, of his force of will and force of patience,
would the era of splendid endeavours have passed into the era of
accomplished facts? If the answer to this is 'No,' then nothing can
take from Cavour the glory of having conferred an incalculable boon on
the country which he loved with a love that was not the less strong
because it lacked the divinising qualities of imagination.

An aristocrat by birth and the inheritor of considerable wealth,
Cavour was singularly free from prejudices; his favourite study was
political economy, and in quiet times he would probably have given all
his energies to the interests of commerce and agriculture. He was an
advocate of free trade, and was, perhaps, the only one of the many
Italians who _fêted_ Mr Cobden on his visit to Italy who cared in the
least for the motive of his campaign. Cavour understood English
politics better than they have ever been understood by a foreign
statesman; his article on Ireland, written in 1843, may still be read
with profit. Before parliamentary life existed in Piedmont, he took
the only way open of influencing public opinion by founding a
newspaper, the _Risorgimento,_ in which he continued to write for
several years. In the Chamber of Deputies he soon made his power
felt--power is the word, for he was no orator in the ordinary sense;
his speeches read well, as hard hitting and logical expositions, but
they were not well delivered. Cavour never spoke Italian with true
grace and ease though he selected it for his speeches, and not French,
which was also allowed and which he spoke admirably. His presence,
too, did not lend itself to oratory; short and thickset, and careless
in his dress, he formed a contrast to the romantic figure of
D'Azeglio. Yet his prosaic face, when animated, gave an impressive
sense of that attribute which seemed to emanate from the whole man:
power.

It needed a more wary hand than D'Azeglio's to steer out of the
troubled waters caused by the ecclesiastical bills, and to put the
final touches to the legislation which he, to his lasting honour be it
said, had courageously and successfully initiated. In the autumn of
1852 D'Azeglio resigned, and Cavour was requested by the King to form
a ministry. He was to remain, with short breaks, at the head of public
affairs for the nine following years.

At this time the government of Lombardy and Venetia was vested in
Field-Marshal Radetsky, with two lieutenant-governors under him, who
only executed his orders. Radetsky resided at Verona. Politically and
economically the two provinces were then undergoing an extremity of
misery; the diseases of the vines and the silkworms had reached the
point of causing absolute ruin to the great mass of proprietors who,
reckoning on having always enough to live on, had not laid by. Many
noble families sank to the condition of peasants. The taxation was
heavier than in any other part of the Austrian Empire; in proof of
which it may be mentioned that Lombardy paid 80,000,000 francs into
the Austrian treasury, which, had the Empire been taxed equally, would
have given an annual total of 1,100,000,000, whereas the revenue
amounted to only 736,000,000. The landtax was almost double what it
was in the German provinces. Italians, however, have a great capacity
for supporting such burdens with patience, and it is doubtful whether
the material aspect of the case did much to increase their hatred of
foreign dominion. Its moral aspect grew daily worse; the terror became
chronic. The possession of a sheet of printed paper issued by the
revolutionary press at Capolago, on the lake of Lugano, was enough to
send a man to the gallows. These old, badly printed leaflets, with no
name of author or publisher attached, but chiefly written in the
unmistakable style of Mazzini, can still be picked up in the little
booksellers' shops in Canton Ticino, and it is difficult to look at
them without emotion. What hopes were carried by them. What risks were
run in passing them from hand to hand. Of what tragedies were they not
the cause! In August 1851, Antonio Sciesa, of Milan, was shot for
having one such leaflet on his person. The gendarmes led him past his
own house, hoping that the sight of it would weaken his nerve, and
make him accept the clemency which was eagerly proffered if he would
reveal the names of others engaged in the patriotic propaganda.
'Tiremm innanz!' ('come along') he said, in his rough Milanese
dialect, and marched incorruptible to death. On a similar charge,
Dottesio and Grioli, the latter a priest, suffered in the same year,
and early in 1852 the long trial was begun at Mantua of about fifty
patriots whose names had been obtained by the aid of the bastinado
from one or two unhappy wretches who had not the fortitude to endure.
Of these fifty, nine were executed, among whom were the priests
Grazioli and Tazzoli, Count Montanari of Verona, and Tito Speri, the
young hero of the defence of Brescia. Speri had a trifling part in the
propaganda, but the remembrance of his conduct in 1849 ensured his
condemnation. He was deeply attached to the religion in which he was
born, and his last letters show the fervour of a Christian joined to
the calmness of a stoic. If he had a regret, it was that he had been
unable to do more for his country; but here too his simple faith
sustained him. Surely the Giver of all good would not refuse to listen
to the prayers of the soul which passed to Him through martyrdom.
'To-morrow they lead me forth,' he wrote. 'I have done with this
world, but, in the bosom of God, I promise you I will do what I can.'
So did this clear and childlike spirit carry its cause from the
Austrian Assizes to a higher tribunal.

In the spring of 1853 there was an attempt at a rising in Milan from
which the mass of the citizens stood aloof, if they even knew of it
till it was over; an attempt ill-considered and not easily justified
from any point of view, the blame for which has been generally cast on
Mazzini; but though he knew of it, he was unwilling that its authors
should choose the time and mode of action which they chose. He was,
moreover, misinformed as to the extent of the preparations, since no
Milanese of any standing gave his support to the plan.

On the plea that the Lombard emigration was concerned in the abortive
movement, which was by no means consistent with facts, the Austrian
Government sequestered the landed property of the exiles and voluntary
emigrants, reducing them and their families (which in most instances
remained behind) to complete beggary. Nine hundred and seventy-eight
estates were placed under sequestration. The Court of Sardinia held
the measure to be a violation of the amnesty, which was one of the
conditions of the peace of 1850. The Sardinian Minister was recalled
from Vienna, and the relations between the two governments were once
more on a footing of open rupture.

Not less important was the moral effect of the sequestrations in
France and England, but particularly in England. They acted as the
last straw, coming as they did on the top of the flogging system which
had already enraged the English public mind to the highest degree. The
Prince Consort wrote in March to his brother: 'To give you a
conception of the maxims of justice and policy which Austria has been
lately developing, I enclose an extract of a report from Turin which
treats of the decrees of confiscation in Italy. People here will be
very indignant.' He goes on to say (somewhat too broadly) that the
English upper classes were till then thoroughly Austrian, but that she
had succeeded in turning the whole of England against her, and there
was now no one left to defend her.

Austria, through Count Buol, complained that she was 'dying of
legality,' but England took the Sardinian view that the sequestrations
directly violated the treaty between the two Powers. In the Austrian
Note of the 9th of March, it was distinctly declared that Piedmont
would be crushed if she did not perform the part of police-agent to
Austria. Cavour's uncowed attitude at this crisis was what first fixed
upon him the eyes of European diplomacy.

In the course of the summer, the Duke of Genoa, Victor Emmanuel's
brother, paid a visit to the English Court, where the Duke of
Saxe-Coburg was also staying, by whom he was described as 'one of the
cleverest and most amiable men of our time.' Sunny Italy, adds Duke
Ernest, seemed to have sent him to England so that by his mere
presence alone, in the prime of his age, he might make propaganda for
the cause of his country. The Queen presented her guest with a
handsome riding-horse, and when he thanked her in warm and feeling
terms, she spoke the memorable words, the effect of which spoken at
that date by the Queen of England can hardly be imagined: 'I hope you
will ride this horse when the battles are fought for the liberation of
Italy.'

The battle-day was indeed to come, but when it came the sword which
the young Duke wielded with such gallantry in the siege of Peschiera
would be sheathed for ever. The Prince Charming of Casa Savoia died in
February 1855, leaving a daughter to Italy, the beloved Queen
Margaret.

In the space of a few weeks, Victor Emmanuel lost his brother, his
mother, and his wife. The King, who felt keenly when he did feel, was
driven distraught with grief; no circumstance was wanting which could
sharpen the edge of his sorrow. The two Queens, both Austrian
princesses, had never interfered in foreign politics; what they
suffered they suffered in silence. But they were greatly influenced by
the ministers of the religion which had been a comfort of their not
too happy lives, and they had frequently told Victor Emmanuel that
they would die of grief if the anti-papal policy of his government
were persisted in. Now that they were dead, every partisan of the
Church declared, without a shadow of reticence, that the mourning in
which the House of Savoy was plunged was a clear manifestation of
Divine wrath. Victor Emmanuel had been brought up in superstitious
surroundings; it was hardly possible that he should listen to these
things altogether unmoved. But on this as on the other occasions in
his life when he was to be threatened with ghostly terrors, he did not
belie the name of 'Re Galantuomo,' which he had written down as his
profession when filling up the papers of the first census taken after
his accession--a jest that gave him the title he will ever be known
by. Harassed and tormented as the King was, when the law on religious
corporations had been voted by the Senate and the Chamber, and was
presented to him by Cavour for signature, he did his duty and signed
it. The commentary which came from the Vatican was the decree of
major excommunication promulgated in the Consistory of the 27th of
July against all who had approved or sanctioned the measure, or who
were concerned in putting it into execution.

The law was known as the 'Rattazziana,' from Urbano Rattazzi, whom
Cavour appointed Minister of Grace and Justice, thereby effecting a
coalition between the Right Centre, which he led himself, and the Left
Centre, which was led by Rattazzi; an alliance not pleasing to the
Pure Right or to the Advanced Left, but necessary to give the Prime
Minister sufficient strength to command the respect, both at home and
abroad, which can only be won by a statesman who is not afraid of
being overturned by every whiff of the parliamentary wind. The 'Legge
Rattazziana' certainly aimed at asserting the supremacy of the state,
but in substance it was an arrangement for raising the stipend of the
poorer clergy at the expense of the richer benefices and corporations,
and save for the bitter animosity of Rome, it would not have excited
the degree of anger that descended upon its promoters. In a country
where the Church had a rental of 15,000,000 francs, there were many
parish priests who had not an income of £20; a state of things seen to
be anomalous by the best ecclesiastics themselves, but their efforts
at conciliation failed because the Holy See would not recognise the
right of the civil authority to interfere in any question affecting
the status or property of the clergy, and this right was the real
point at issue.

In these days, Cavour came to an understanding with a friendly monk in
order that when his last hour arrived, he should not, like Santa Rosa,
go unshriven to his account. In 1861, Fra Giacomo performed his part
in the agreement, and was duly punished for having saved his Church
from a scandal which, from the position of the great minister, would
have reached European dimensions.

Cavour's work of bringing into order the Sardinian finances, which,
from the flourishing state they had attained prior to 1848, had fallen
into what appeared the hopeless confusion of a large and steadily
increasing deficit, is not to the ordinary observer his most brilliant
achievement, but it is possibly the one for which he deserves most
praise. It could not have been carried through except by a statesman
who was completely indifferent to the applause of the hour. During all
the earlier years that he held office, Cavour was extraordinarily
unpopular. The nickname of 'la bestia neira' conferred on him by
Victor Emmanuel referred to the opinion entertained of him by the
Clerical party, but he was almost as much a 'bestia neira' to a large
portion of the Liberals as to the Clericals or to the old Piedmontese
party. His house was attacked by the mob in 1853, and had not his
servants barred the entrance, something serious might have occurred.
Happily the King and the majority in the Chamber and in the country
had, if not much love for Cavour, a profound conviction that he could
not be done without, and that, consequently, he must be allowed to do
what he liked. Thus the large sacrifices he demanded of the taxpayers
were regularly voted, and Cavour could afford to despise the abuse
heaped upon himself since he saw his policy advancing to maturity
along a steady line of success.

When, in 1854, Cavour resolved that Piedmont should join France and
England in the coming war with Russia, it seemed to a large number of
his countrymen that he had taken leave of his senses, but the firm
support which in this instance he found in the King enabled him next
year to equip and despatch the contingent, 15,000 strong, commanded
by General La Marmora, which not only won the respect of friends and
foes in the field, but offered an example of efficiency in all
departments that compared favourably with the faulty organisation of
the great armies beside which it fought. Its gallant conduct at the
battle of the Tchernaja flattered the native pride, and when, in due
time, 12,000 returned of the 15,000 that had gone forth, the increased
credit of Piedmont in Europe was already felt to compensate for the
heavy cost of the expedition.

Among the Italians living abroad, Cavour's motives in taking part in
the Crimean War were, from the first, better understood than they were
at home. Piedmont, by qualifying for the part of Italian advocate in
the Councils of Europe, gave a guarantee of good faith which patriots
like Daniel Manin and Giorgio Pallavicini accepted as a happy promise
for the future. It was then that a large section of the republican
party frankly embraced the programme of Italian unity under Victor
Emmanuel. They foresaw that a repetition of the discordant action of
1848 would end in the same way. Manin wrote to Lorenzo Valerio in
September 1855: 'I, who am a republican, plant the banner of
unification; let all who desire that Italy should exist, rally round
it, and Italy will exist.' The ex-dictator of Venice was eking out a
scanty livelihood by giving lessons in Paris; he had only three years
left to live, and was not destined to see his words verified. But,
poor and sick and obscure though he was, his support was worth
legions.

It was not the first time that Italian republicans had said to the
House of Savoy: If you will free Italy we are with you; but the
circumstances of the case were completely changed since Mazzini wrote
in somewhat the same language to Charles Albert a quarter of a
century before. Both times the proposal contained an ultimatum as well
as an offer, but Manin made it without second thoughts in the
strongest hope that the pact would be accepted and full of
anticipatory joy at the prospect of its success; while by the Genoese
republican it was made in mistrust and in the knowledge that were it
accepted (which he did not believe), its acceptance, though bringing
with it for Italy a state of things which he recognised as preferable
to that which prevailed, would bring to him personally nothing but
disappointment and the forfeiture of his dearest wishes.

It is difficult to say what were at this date Cavour's own private
sentiments about Italian unity. Though he once confessed that as a
young man he had fancied himself Prime Minister of Italy, whenever the
subject was now discussed he disclaimed any belief in the feasibility
of uniting all parts of the peninsula in one whole. He even called
Manin 'a very good man, but mad about Italian unification.' It wanted,
in truth, the prescience of the seer rather than the acumen of the
politician to discern the unity of Italy in 1855. All outward facts
seemed more adverse to its accomplishment than at any period since
1815. Yet it was for Italy that Cavour always pleaded; Italy, and not
Piedmont or even Lombardy and Venetia. He invariably asserted the
right of his King to uphold the cause of all the populations from the
Alps to the Straits of Messina. If he adopted the proverb 'Chi va
piano va sano,' he kept in view the end of it, 'Chi va sano va
lontano.' In short, if he did not believe in Italian unity, he acted
in the same way as he would have acted had he believed in it.

It is evident that one thing he could not do. Whatever was in his
thoughts, unless he was prepared to retire into private life then and
there, he could not proclaim from the house-tops that he espoused the
artichoke theory attributed to Victor Amadeus. There were only too
many old diplomatists as it was, who sought to cripple Cavour's
resources by reviving that story. The time was not come when, without
manifest damage to the cause, he could plead guilty to the charge of
preparing an Italian crown for his Sovereign. 'The rule in politics,'
Cavour once observed, 'is to be as moderate in language as you are
resolute in act.'

At the end of 1855, Victor Emmanuel, with Cavour and Massimo
d'Azeglio, paid a visit to the French and English Courts. He was
received with more marked cordiality at the English Court than at the
French. No Prince Charming, indeed, but the ideal of a bluff and burly
Longobard chief, he managed to win the good graces of his
entertainers, even if they thought him a trifle barbaric. The Duchess
of Sutherland declared that of all the knights of St George whom she
had ever seen, he was the only one who would have had the best of it
in the fight with the dragon. The Queen rose at four o'clock in the
morning to take leave of him. Cavour was so much struck by the
interest which Her Majesty evinced in the efforts of Piedmont for
constitutional freedom, that he did not hesitate to call her the best
friend his country possessed in England.

It is not generally known, but it is quite true, that Victor Emmanuel
wished to contract a matrimonial alliance with the English royal
family. He did not take Cavour into his confidence, but a high English
personage was sounded on the matter, a hint being given to him to say
nothing about it to the Count. The lady who might have become Queen of
Italy was the Princess Mary of Cambridge. The negotiations were
broken off because the young Princess would not hear of any marriage
which would have required her living out of England.

The Congress which met in Paris in February 1856 for the conclusion of
the peace between the Allies and Russia was to have far more momentous
results for Italy than for the countries more immediately concerned in
its discussions, but, contrary to the general impression, it does not
appear that these results were anticipated by Cavour. He even said
that it was idle for Sardinia to send delegates to a congress in which
they would be treated like children. Cavour feared, perhaps, to lose
the ground he had gained in the previous year with Napoleon III., when
the Emperor's rather surprising question: 'Que peut-on faire pour
l'Italie?' had suggested to the Piedmontese statesman that definite
scheme of a French alliance, which henceforth he never let go. In any
case, when D'Azeglio, who was appointed Sardinian representative,
refused at the last moment to undertake a charge for which he knew he
was not fitted, it was only at the urgent request of the King that
Cavour consented to take his place. When once in Paris, however, he
warmed to the work, finding an unexpectedly strong ally in Lord
Clarendon. He won what was considered in all Europe a great diplomatic
triumph, by getting a special sitting assigned to the examination of
Italian affairs, which had as little to do with the natural work of
the Congress as the affairs of China. The chief points discussed at
the secret sitting of the 8th of April were the foreign occupations in
Central Italy, and the state of the Roman and Neapolitian governments,
which was stigmatised by Lord Clarendon in terms much more severe than
Cavour himself thought it prudent to use. Count Buol, the chief
Austrian representative, grew very angry, and his opposition was
successful in reducing the sitting to a mere conversation; but what
had been said had been said, and Cavour prepared the way for his
future policy by remarking to everyone: 'You see that diplomacy can do
nothing for us; the question needs another solution.' Lord Clarendon's
vigorous support made him think for a moment that England might take
an active part in that other solution, and with this idea in his mind
he hurried over the Channel to see Lord Palmerston, but he left
England convinced that nothing more than moral assistance was ever to
be expected from that quarter. The Marquis Emmanuel d'Azeglio, who for
many years represented Sardinia, and afterwards Italy, at the Court of
St James, has placed it on record that the English Premier repeatedly
assured him that an armed intervention on behalf of Italian freedom
would have been much to his taste, but that the country would not have
been with him. It is certain that Cavour would have preferred an
English to a French alliance; as it was not to be had, he reposed his
sole hopes in the Emperor Napoleon, who had not the French people
really more with him in this matter than Lord Palmerston had the
English--nay, he had them less with him, for in England there would
have been a party of Italian sympathisers favourable to the war, and
in France, there was no one except Prince Napoleon and the workmen of
Paris. But the French Emperor was a despotic sovereign, and not the
Prime Minister of a self-governing country. After all, some good may
come out of despotism.

Upon Cavour's return to Turin, he received not only the approval of
the King and Parliament, but also congratulations from all parts of
Italy. His position had gained immensely in strength, both at home and
abroad. Yet the power of the Clerical party in Piedmont was still such
that, in the elections of 1857--the first that had taken place since
the legislation affecting the Church--they obtained seventy seats out
of a total of two hundred. Cavour did not conceal his alarm. What if
eight years' labour were thrown away, and the movement of the State
turned backward? 'Never,' he said, 'would he advise a _coup d'état,_
nor would his master resort to one; but if the King abdicated, what
then?' Victor Emmanuel said to his Prime Minister: 'Let us do our
duty; stand firm, and we shall see!' He often declared that, sooner
than beat a retreat from the path he had entered on, he would go to
America and become plain _Monsù Savoia_; but he never lost faith in
the predominating patriotism and good sense of his subjects; and at
this time, as at others, he proved to be right. The crisis was
surmounted. On the one hand, some elections were invalidated where the
priests had exercised undue influence; and, on the other, Rattazzi,
who was especially obnoxious to the Clerical party, retired from
office. Cavour thus found himself still able to command the Chamber.






CHAPTER XI

PREMONITIONS OF THE STORM

1857-1858

Pisacane's Landing--Orsini's Attempt--The Compact of
Plombières--Cavour's Triumph.


In spite of the accusation of favouring political assassination which
was frequently launched against the Italian secret societies, only one
of the faithless Italian princes came to a violent death, and his
murder had no connection with politics. Charles III., Duke of Parma,
was mortally stabbed in March 1854; some said that the assassin was a
groom whom he had struck with a riding-whip; others, that he was the
father or brother of one of the victims of the Duke's dissolute
habits. The Duchess, a daughter of the Duke de Berry, assumed the
Regency on behalf of her son, who was a child. She began by initiating
many reforms; but a street disturbance in July gave Austria the
desired excuse for meddling in the government, when all progress was,
of course, arrested.

In December 1856, a soldier named Ageslao Milano attempted to
assassinate the King of the Two Sicilies at a review. He belonged to
no sect, but he had long premeditated the act. A few days later an
earthquake occurred in the kingdom of Naples, by which over ten
thousand persons lost their lives. Ferdinand II. grew morose, and shut
himself up in the royal palace of Caserta. The constant lectures of
France and England annoyed him without persuading him to take the
means to put a stop to them. Not till 1859 did he open the doors of
the prisons in which Poerio, Settembrini and their companions were
confined. Many plans were made, meanwhile, for their liberation, and
English friends even provided a ship by which they were to escape; but
the ship foundered: perhaps fortunately, as Garibaldi, with
characteristic disinterestedness, had agreed to direct the enterprise,
which could not have been otherwise than perilous, and was not
unlikely to end in the loss of all concerned.

Disaster attended Baron Bentivegna's attempt at a rising at Taormina
in 1856, and Carlo Pisacane's landing at Sapri in the summer of the
following year had no better result. Pisacane, a son of the Duke
Gennaro di San Giovanni of Naples, had fought in the defence of Rome
and was a firm adherent of Mazzini, in conjunction with whom he
planned his unlucky venture. Pisacane watched the growing ascendency
of Piedmont with sorrow; he was one of the few, if not the only one of
his party to say that he would as soon have the dominion of Austria as
that of the House of Savoy. But if he was an extremist in politics,
none the less he was a patriot, who took his life in his hands and
offered it up to his country in the spirit of the noblest devotion. He
had the slenderest hope of success, but he believed that only by such
failures could the people be roused from their apathy. 'For me,' he
wrote, 'it will be victory even if I die on the scaffold. This is all
I can do, and this I do; the rest depends on the country, not on me. I
have only my affections and my life to give, and I give them without
hesitation.'

With the young Baron Nicotera and twenty-three others, Pisacane
embarked on the _Cagliari_, a steamer belonging to a Sardinian
mercantile line, which was bound for Tunis. When at sea, the captain
was frightened into obedience, and the ship's course was directed to
the isle of Ponza, where several hundred prisoners, mostly political,
were undergoing their sentences. The guards made little resistance,
and Pisacane opened the prisons, inviting who would to follow him. The
first plan had been to make a descent on San Stefano, the island where
Settembrini was imprisoned, but that good citizen had refused to admit
the liberation of the non-political prisoners, which was an
unavoidable feature in the scheme. With the addition of about three
hundred men, Pisacane left Ponza for the mainland and disembarked near
the village of Sapri, in the province of Salerno. From information
received, he imagined that a revolutionary movement was on the point
of breaking out in that district. Nothing could be further from the
fact. The country people did all the harm they could to the band,
which, after making a brave stand against the local militia, was cut
to pieces by the royal troops. Pisacane fell fighting; those who were
not killed were taken, and amongst these was Nicotera, who was kept in
prison till set free by Garibaldi.

The _Cagliari_ was captured and detained with its crew. As two of the
seamen were British subjects, the English Government joined Sardinia
in demanding its restitution, which, after long delays, was conceded.

In 1857, the Emperor of Austria relieved Field-Marshal Radetsky, then
in his ninety-third year, of the burden of office. He was given the
right of living in any of the royal palaces, even in the Emperor's own
residence at Vienna, but he preferred to spend the one remaining year
of his life in Italy. At the same time, the Archduke Maximilian was
appointed Viceroy of Lombardy and Venetia. A more naturally amiable
and cultivated Prince never had the evil fate forced upon him of
attempting impossible tasks. Just married to the lovely Princess
Charlotte of Belgium, he came to Italy radiant with happiness, and
wishing to make everyone as happy as he was himself. Not even the
chilling welcome he received damped his enthusiasm, for he thought the
aversion of the population depended on undoubted wrongs, which it was
his full intention to redress. He was to learn two things; firstly,
that the day of reconciliation was past: there were too many ghosts
between the Lombards and Venetians, and the House of Hapsburg.
Secondly, that an unseen hand beyond the Brenner would diligently
thwart each one of his benevolent designs. The system was, and was to
remain, unchanged. It was not carried out quite as it was carried out
in the first years after 1849. The exiles were allowed to return and
the sequestrations were revoked. It should be said, because it shows
the one white spot in Austrian despotism, its civil administration,
that on resuming their rights of ownership the proprietors found that
their estates had not been badly managed. But the depressing and
deadening influence of an anti-national rule continued unabated.
Lombardy and Venetia were governed not from Milan, but from Vienna.
Very small were the crumbs which the Viceroy obtained, though he went
on a journey to Austria expressly to plead for concessions. It is sad
to think what an enlightened heir to the great Austrian empire was
lost, when Napoleon III. and his own family sent Maximilian of
Hapsburg to Queretaro.

While Cavour had come to the conclusion that the aid which he believed
essential for the expulsion of the Austrians could only come from the
French Emperor, this sovereign was regarded by a not inconsiderable
party of Italians as the greatest, if not the sole, obstacle to their
liberation. All those, in particular, who came in contact with the
French exiles, were impressed by them with the notion that France, the
real France, was only waiting for the disappearance of the Man of
December to throw herself into their arms. Among the Italians who held
these opinions, there were a few with whom it became a fixed idea that
the greatest service they could render their country was the removal
of Napoleon from the political scene. They conceived and nourished
the thought independently of one another; they belonged to no league,
but for that reason they were the more dangerous; somewhere or other
there was always someone planning to put an end to the Emperor's life.
It is not worth while to pause to discuss the ethics of political
assassination; civilisation has decided against it, and history proves
its usual failure to promote the desired object. What benefit did the
Confederate cause derive from the assassination of the good President
Lincoln, or the cause of Russian liberty from that of Alexander II.?
What will Anarchy gain by the murder of Carnot? It is certain,
however, that never were men more convinced that they were executing a
wild kind of justice than were the men who plotted against Napoleon
III. They looked upon him as one of themselves who had turned traitor.
There is a great probability that, in his early days when he was
playing at conspiracy in Italy, he was actually enrolled as a
Carbonaro. At all events, he had conspired for Italian freedom, and
afterwards, to serve his own selfish interests, he extinguished it in
Rome. The temporal power of the Pope was kept alive through him.

A true account of the attempts on Napoleon's life will never be written,
because the only persons who were able and willing to throw light on the
subject, ex-police agents and their kind, are authorities whose word is
worth a very limited acceptance. It is pretty sure that there were more
plots than the public ever knew of, and that in some cases the plotters
were disposed of summarily. Most of them were poor, ignorant creatures,
but in January 1858 an attempt was made by a man of an entirely
different stamp, Felice Orsini.

Born at Meldola in Romagna in 1819, he was of the true Romagnol type
in mind and body; daring, resourceful, intolerant of control. From his
earliest youth all his actions had but one object, the liberation of
his country. His youthful brain was enflamed by Alfieri and Foscolo,
who remained his favourite authors. He hated Austria well, and he
hated the Papal government as no one but one of its own subjects could
hate it. 'When the French landed in Italy' (he told his judges) 'it
was hoped that they were come as friends, but they proved the worst of
enemies. For a time they were repulsed, then they resumed the cloak of
friendship, but only to wait for reinforcements. When these arrived
they returned to the assault, a thousand against ten, and we were
judicially assassinated.' A succinct and true narrative.

During the republic Orsini was sent to Ancona, where anarchy had
broken out; by vigorous measures he restored perfect order. In 1854 he
was arrested in Hungary and condemned to death, but he escaped from
Mantua under romantic circumstances and reached England, where the
story of his audacious flight won for him many sympathisers. He was
often seen in society. On one occasion he was asked to meet Prince
Lucien Buonaparte. Orsini knew Mazzini, but he was impatient of his
mystical leanings, and he disapproved of such enterprises as
Pisacane's, by which, as he thought, twenty or thirty men were
sacrificed here or there without anything coming of it. He finally
repudiated Mazzini's leadership, and in March 1857 he wrote to Cavour,
asking him for a passport to return to Italy, and placing at the
disposal of the Sardinian government 'the courage and energy which it
had pleased God to give him,' provided that government left wavering
behind, and showed its unmistakable will to achieve the independence
of Italy. Cavour sent no reply, 'because,' he said later, 'the letter
was noble and energetic, and I should have had to pay Orsini
compliments which I did not deem fitting. 'Unlike Victor Emmanuel, who
in after years carried on regular negotiations with Mazzini, Cavour,
while ready to make an alliance with the Radicals in the Chamber, was
extremely loth to have anything to do with actual revolutionists. His
not answering Orsini's letter certainly led up to the attempt of the
14th of January 1858.

Having quarrelled with Mazzini, and receiving no encouragement from
Cavour, Orsini evolved the plan which on that day he endeavoured to
put into execution. He would have preferred to act alone, but since
that was impossible, he sought and found without much difficulty two
or three accomplices. One of these, Pieri, a teacher of languages, was
arrested by the police, who recognised him as an old conspirator,
before he threw the bomb which he was carrying. The other bombs were
thrown just as the carriage containing the Imperial party drove up to
the opera house. A number of people in the street were killed or
injured, but the Emperor and Empress escaped unhurt. When they entered
the theatre the Rutli scene of the conspirators in _Guillaume Tell_
was being performed. Not a breath of applause greeted them, though
everyone knew what had happened. Napoleon III. had a striking proof of
how little hold he possessed on the affections of his subjects.

When at his trial Orsini was asked what he expected would happen if he
had succeeded in killing the Emperor he answered: 'We were convinced
that the surest way of making a revolution in Italy was to excite one
in France, and that the surest way of making a revolution in France
was to kill the Emperor.' There is a good deal of curious evidence to
show that very elaborate preparations had been made for a revolution
in Paris. The French police had orders, however, to keep all this
aspect of the affair out of sight. It was to be made to appear the
isolated act of a misguided Italian patriot. 'The world possesses an
Orsini legend,' writes the late Duke of Saxe-Coburg, who was present
at the event, having been invited to join the Emperor at the opera,
'which is quite at variance with facts.' The duke clearly thinks that
the conviction of the instability of his throne which was brought home
to the Emperor on this occasion, was one of the causes which decided
him to try the diversion of public opinion into other channels by
means of a foreign war.

Everything was done to make Orsini a hero in the eyes of the French
public, and to excite sympathy in his cause. Jules Favre by his
eloquent defence in which he pleaded not for the life, but for the
honour of his client, and still more Orsini's own letter to the
Emperor, produced a powerful impression; there was a dramatic interest
in the man who, disdaining to crave clemency for himself, tried a last
supreme effort in the service of the country he had loved too well.
'Deliver my fatherland, and the blessings of twenty-five million
citizens will be with you.' So concluded the letter in which Orsini
told Napoleon, that till Italy was free there would be no peace for
Europe--nor for him. It was whispered that the Emperor had a secret
interview with the condemned man at the Mazas prison; at any rate,
when Orsini mounted the scaffold, he was borne up, not only by his
invincible courage, but by the strongest hope, if not the certainty
that his last prayer would have only a short time to wait for
fulfilment.

Though persons who were able to read the signs of the times no longer
doubted that Napoleon had resolved to solve the Italian question by
force of arms, it suited his purpose to occupy the public mind for the
moment with the furious agitation against England and Piedmont as
'dens of assassins,' which led to the fall of the Palmerston
administration on the Conspiracy Bill, and seemed to almost place in
jeopardy the throne of Victor Emmanuel. Napoleon sent the King of
Sardinia demands so sweeping in language so threatening, that the old
Savoy blood was fired, and Victor Emmanuel returned the answer: 'Tell
the Emperor in whatever terms you think best that this is not the way
to treat a faithful ally; that I have never tolerated violence from
anyone; that I follow the path of unstained honour, and for that
honour I am only answerable to God and to my people. That we have
carried our head high for 850 years, and no one will make me lower it;
and that, nevertheless, I desire nothing better than to remain his
friend.' This reply was benevolently received; Cavour passed through
the Chambers a bill which, though not corresponding to the extravagant
pretensions of the French Government, gave reasonable security against
the concoction of plots of a criminal nature; Napoleon expressed
himself satisfied, and three months after, despatched Dr Conneau to
Turin, to mention, quite by the way, to the Piedmontese minister, that
he would be glad to have a conversation with him on Italian affairs.
This was the preliminary of the interview of Plombières.

Plombières is a watering-place in the Vosges, which became famous on
the 20th of July 1858, the day on which Napoleon III. and Cavour
entered into the compact that laid down the conditions of the Italian
war. The Emperor was to bring 200,000 men into Italy, and the King of
Sardinia undertook to furnish 100,000. The Austrians were to be
expelled from Italy. The kingdom of Upper Italy would embrace the
Legations and the Marches then under the Pope. Savoy would be ceded
to France. The marriage of the Emperor's cousin with the Princess
Clotilde was not made a condition of the war, and only in case it had
been made a condition, was Cavour empowered to agree to it. He,
therefore, left it uncertain; but he came away from Plombières
convinced that nearly everything depended upon its happening. Napoleon
was beyond measure anxious for a marriage which would ally him with
one of the oldest reigning families in Europe. It would be a fatal
mistake, Cavour thought, to join the Emperor, and at the same time, to
offend him in a way which he would never forget. Directly after the
interview, he wrote a long letter to the King to persuade him to yield
the point. After all, where would the Princess find a more promising
match? Was it easy to provide husbands for princesses? Were not they
generally extremely unhappy in marriage? What had happened to the
King's four aunts, all charming princesses, who had married the Duke
of Modena, the Duke of Lucca, the Emperor Ferdinand of Austria, and
the King of Naples? Had they been happy? Prince Napoleon could not be
so very bad, as he was known to have hurried to Cannes to pay a last
visit to a woman whom he had loved, a great actress, then upon her
deathbed. This reminiscence was a singular one to evoke under the
circumstances, but Cavour was not an Englishman, and he was not
impressed by the propriety of drawing a veil over facts which everyone
knew.

The King's instinct told him that his young daughter, pious and simple
and destitute even of that seasoning of vanity which is so good and
necessary a thing in a woman, but proud at heart like all her race,
would derive no compensation from the outward brilliancy of the
Imperial Court for the absence of domestic joy which would be her
wedded lot unless a surprising change came over the bridegroom. When,
however, he was persuaded of the importance, or rather, of the
essential character of the concession, he said to Cavour: 'I am making
a great sacrifice, but I yield to your arguments. Still my consent is
subordinate to the freely given consent of my daughter.' The matter
was referred to the Princess, who answered: 'It is the wish of my
father; therefore this marriage will be useful to my family and my
country, and I accept.' An answer worthy of one who, twelve years
later, when the members of the Imperial House were flying, remained
quietly in Paris, saying: 'Savoy and fear are not acquainted.'

The marriage was celebrated at Turin in January. The King made a
present to Cavour, as a souvenir of the event, of a ring representing
two heartseases. In thanking him, the minister said: 'Your Majesty
knows that I shall never marry.' 'I know,' replied the King; 'your
bride is the country.'

Though warlike rumours circulated off and on, the secret of the
understanding arrived at in the Plombières interview was well
preserved, and the words spoken by Napoleon to the Austrian Ambassador
at the New Year's Day reception fell on Europe with the effect of a
bombshell. Turning to Baron Hubner, he said: 'Je regrette que les
relations entre nous soient si mauvaises; dîtes cependant à votre
souverain que mes sentiments pour lui ne sont pas changés.'

Even Cavour was startled. Probably till that moment he had never felt
sure that Napoleon would not after all throw the Italian cause to the
winds. The Emperor's invariable method in dealing with men was to
mystify them. He was pleased to pose as a faithful ally, but human
intellect was insufficient to fathom what he meant. On this system,
skilfully pursued, was reared the whole fabric of Louis Napoleon's
reputation for being a profound politician. Bearing the fact in mind,
we can easily see why that reputation crumbled away almost entirely
when the present became the past. There are few cases in which there
is more disagreement between the judgment of contemporaries and that
of immediate posterity than the case of the French Emperor.

The least surprised, and, among Italians, the most dissatisfied at the
New Year's Day pronouncement was Mazzini, who when he read it in the
_Times_ next morning felt that the Napoleonic war closed the heroic
period of Italian Liberation. To men like Mazzini failure is apt to
seem more heroic than success, and the war of 1859 did close the
period of failure. The justification for calling in foreign arms could
only be in necessity, and Mazzini denied the necessity. Charles Albert
denied it in 1848 with no less confident a voice. Then, indeed, there
did appear a chance of Italy making herself, but was there the
slightest prospect, eleven years later, of that chance being repeated?
Each student of history may answer for himself. What is plain is, that
France and Sardinia _together_ were to find it an exceedingly hard
task even to drive the Austrians out of Lombardy.

The unconquerable dislike of men of principle, like Mazzini, to
joining hands with the author of the _coup d'état_ was perfectly
explicable. There were doubtless some sincere Bulgarian patriots who
disliked joining hands with the Autocrat of all the Russias. The gift
of freedom from a despot means a long list of evils. Mazzini grasped
the maleficent influence which Napoleon III. would be in a position to
exercise over the young state; he knew, moreover, when only two or
three other persons in Europe knew it, that the bargain of Plombières
was on the principle of give-and-take. How Mazzini was for many years
better informed than any cabinet in Europe, remains a secret. 'I know
positively,' he wrote on the 4th of January 1859, 'that the idea of
the war is only to hand over a zone of Lombardy to Piedmont, and the
cession of Savoy and Nice to France: the peace, upon the offer of
which they count, would abandon the whole of Venetia to Austria.' A
month before this he had disclosed what was certainly true, namely,
that Napoleon wanted to place a Murat on the throne of Naples, and to
substitute Prince Napoleon for the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The point
that is doubtful in the above revelation is the statement that the
Emperor never meant to emancipate Venetia. The probabilities are
against this. He may, however, have questioned all along whether his
troops, with those of the King of Sardinia, would display a
superiority over the Austrian forces sufficiently incontestable for
him to risk taking them into the mouse-trap of the Quadrilateral. In
this one thing Napoleon was amply justified--in having no sort of
desire to take a beaten army back to Paris.

Mazzini, with the more extreme members of the Party of Action
(including Crispi), issued a protest against the Napoleonic war, with
the advice to have nothing to do with it or its authors. But Italy
thought otherwise, and Garibaldi, the man who of all others most
nearly represented the heart of Italy, rejoiced and was glad. He did
not believe a word about the proposed cession of Savoy and Nice; no
one did, except Mazzini and his few disciples. What he saw was, that a
great step towards independence was about to be taken. In 1856, he not
only adhered to Manin's call to all Italians to rally round the house
of Savoy, but went further than Manin in accepting unconditionally
what he called the 'Savoy Dictatorship,' to which he left full liberty
of choice in the matter of ways and means. He did justice then to
Cavour's patriotism: it was only after the sacrifice of Nice that a
feeling of bitter antagonism grew up in him for the man who he thought
had deceived Italy and himself. In December 1858, on a summons from
Cavour, he left Caprera (the island which he had bought with a little
inheritance falling to him on the death of his brother) and proceeded
to Turin, where he was informed of a plan for a rising in Massa and
Carrara, which was originally intended to be the signal of the war.
The plan was given up, but in March 1859, Garibaldi was told by Victor
Emmanuel in person of the imminence of war, and was invited to take
part in it as commander of an auxiliary corps of volunteers which took
the name of 'Cacciatori delle Alpi.' In this way, all his own
followers, not only those in arms, but the great mass of the people
which was obedient to his lead, became enrolled in the service of the
Sardinian monarchy; a fact of capital importance in the future
development of affairs. Without it, the Italian kingdom could not have
been formed. And this fact was due to Cavour, who had to fight the
arrayed strength of the old, narrow, military caste at Turin, which
had succeeded in getting Garibaldi's sword refused in 1848, and wished
for nothing in the world more than to get it refused in 1859. Near the
end of his life, Cavour said in the Chamber that the difficulties he
encountered in inducing the Sardinian War Office to sanction the
appointment were all but insurmountable. Unfortunately, the jealousy
of the heads of the regular army for the revolutionary captain never
ceased. As for Cavour, even when he opposed Garibaldi politically, he
always strove to have the highest personal honour paid to the man of
whom he once wrote 'that he had rendered Italy the greatest service
it was possible to render her.'

True to his _rôle_ of mystification, one week after the shot fired on
the 1st of January, Napoleon inserted an official statement in the
_Moniteur_ to the effect that, although public opinion had been
agitated by alarming rumours, there was nothing in the foreign
relations of France to justify the fears these rumours tended to
create. He continued on this tack, with more or less consistency, to
the very verge of the outbreak of hostilities. 'The Empire was peace,'
as it was always announced to be in the intervals when it was not war;
there was no more harmless dove in Europe than the person enthroned in
the Tuileries. These assurances were given more credence than they
deserved by the Conservative Cabinet then in power in England, and the
British ministers believed to the last that war would be averted, to
which end they strained every nerve. Besides the wish felt by every
English government to preserve European peace, there was at this
juncture, not only in the Cabinet, but in the country, so much fear of
Napoleon's ambition and restlessness, that for the time being,
sympathy with Italy was relegated to a second place.

Meanwhile there was no want of plainness in the language employed in
Piedmont. In opening the second session of the sixth Sardinian
Parliament, Victor Emmanuel pronounced, on 10th January, the historic
phrase declaring that he could not remain insensible to the cry of
grief, _il grido di dolore_, that reached him from all parts of Italy.
Every corner of the fair country where the _Si_ sounds was electrified.
The words, as has since become known, were introduced into the speech by
the King himself. As Cavour had foreseen, Austria played into his hands.
To Lord Malmesbury's appeal to evacuate the Roman Legations, and to use
Austrian influence with the Italian princes in procuring the concession
of necessary reforms, Count Buol replied in terms that were the reverse
of obliging: 'We do not mean to abdicate our right of intervention, and
if we are called upon to help the Italian sovereigns with our arms, we
shall do so. We shall not recommend their governments to undertake any
reforms. France plays the part of protectress of nationalities; we are,
and shall be, protectors of dynastic rights.' Finally, England proposed
a congress with a view to general disarmament. Piedmont, counting on the
madness of her adversary, risked agreement with this plan. Austria gave
a peremptory refusal to have anything to do with it.

Cavour now asked Parliament to vote a war loan of £2,000,000, which
was passed by a majority of 81 out of 151 votes. No foreign banker
would undertake to negotiate the loan, but it was twice covered by
Italian buyers, nearly all small capitalists, who put their money into
it as a patriotic duty. Amongst the few deputies who opposed the loan
was the old apostle of retrogression, Count Solaro della Margherita,
who raised his solitary voice against the tide of revolution; and the
Savoyard the Marquis Costa de Beauregard whose speech was pathetic
from the melancholy foreboding which pervaded it that the making
of Italy meant the unmaking of Savoy. Speaking in the name of his
fellow-countrymen, the Marquis reconfirmed the profound love of
Savoy for her Royal House and her total lack of solidarity with the
aspirations of Italy. With time the Savoyards might have learnt to be
Italians as their king had learnt to be an Italian king. Or they might
not. Possibly the best solution would have been to join Savoy to the
Swiss Confederation, though the martial instincts of the race were not
favourable to their Conversion into peaceful Helvetic citizens. From
one point of view, that of military defence, the retention of the
province was of infinitely more moment to the future Italy than to
little Piedmont. Sardinia could keep the peace with France for an
indefinite period; Italy cannot. What is true of Savoy is far more
true of Nice. To have it in foreign keeping is to have a very
partially reformed burglar inside your house.

'Notre roi,' said an old ragged fisherman of the Lac de Bourget to the
writer of this book,--'Notre roi nous a vendus.' Not willingly did
Victor Emmanuel incur that charge, in which the rebound from love to
hate was so clearly heard; not willingly did he give up Maurienne,
cradle of his race, Hautecombe, grave of his fathers. It was the
greatest sacrifice, he said, that Italy could have asked of him. Nor
is there any reason to doubt his word. But it is incorrect to suppose,
as many have supposed, that Cavour promised at Plombières to give up
Savoy (Nice he did not promise) without the King's knowledge. Before
he went there, he had brought Victor Emmanuel over to his own belief,
justified or not, that without a bait Napoleon could not be got to
move. Directly after the interview, he wrote a full account of it to
the King, in which he said: 'When the future fate of Italy was
arranged, the Emperor asked me what France would have, and if your
Majesty would cede Savoy and the county of Nice?' To which Cavour
answered 'Yes' as to Savoy, but objected that Nice was essentially
Italian. The Emperor twirled his moustache several times, and only
said that these were secondary questions, about which there would be
time to think later.

Austria was always appealing to the right of treaties and the right
of nations; not, as it happened, with much reason, for she had ridden
or tried to ride rough-shod through as many treaties and through quite
as many rights as most European Powers. In 1816 she was so determined
to possess herself of Alessandria and the Upper Novarese that Lord
Castlereagh advised Piedmont to join the Austrian Confederation, as
then and only then the Emperor might withdraw his pretensions to this
large slice of territory of a Prince with whom he was at peace. If he
did withdraw them, it was not from respect for the treaties which, a
year before, had confirmed the King of Sardinia's rights as an
independent sovereign, but from respect for the untoward results to
himself which he was afraid, on reflection, might arise from enforcing
his claims with the bayonet. But people forget; and it was of vital
consequence that virtuous Austria should figure in the coming conflict
not as the victim of aggression but as the aggressor. On all sides it
was said that the Austrian Government would never commit an error of
such magnitude; only Cavour thought the contrary. 'I shall _force_ her
to declare war against us,' he told Mr Odo Russell in December 1858.
When asked by the incredulous diplomatist at what date he expected to
perform so great a feat, Cavour quietly answered: 'In the first week
of May.' War was actually declared a few days sooner.

For months Austria had been pouring troops into Italy, a large portion
of which were massed on the frontier line of the Ticino. Who shall
count the number of the men brought to fight and die in the Italian
plains between 1848 and 1866 to sustain for that short time the weight
of a condemned despotism? The supply was inexhaustible; they came from
the Hungarian steppes, from the green valleys of Styria, from the
mountains of Tyrol, from the woodlands of the Banat and of Bohemia; a
blind million battling for a chimera. They came, and how many did not
return?

Austria's final refusal to adhere to the Congress scheme meant, of
course, war, and Cavour called the Chamber and demanded a vote
conferring upon Government the power to take such prompt measures as
the situation required. 'We trust,' he said, 'that the Chamber will
not hesitate to sanction the proposal to invest the King with plenary
powers. Who could be a better guardian of our liberty? Who more worthy
of the faith of the nation? He it is whose name a ten years' reign had
made synonymous with honour and loyalty; who has always held high the
tricolor standard of Italy, who now prepares to unsheath his sword for
freedom and independence.'

When Cavour walked out of the Chamber after the vote had been taken,
he said: 'I am leaving the last sitting of the Piedmontese Parliament,
the next will be that of the Kingdom of Italy.' At that moment, if
ever in his career, the great minister who had fought so long a fight
against incalculable obstacles learnt what it is to taste the
sweetness of triumph.






CHAPTER XII

THE WAR FOR LOMBARDY

1859

Austria declares War--Montebello--Garibaldi's
Campaign--Palestro--Magenta--The Allies enter Milan--Ricasoli saves
Italian Unity--Accession of Francis II.--Solferino--The Armistice of
Villafranca.


Baron von Kellersperg reached Turin on the 23rd of April, bringing
with him the Austrian ultimatum: 'Disarmament within three days, or
war.' Cavour read the document, and then drew his watch out of his
pocket. It was half-past five in the afternoon. At the same hour on
the 26th, he gave Baron von Kellersperg the answer: 'Sardinia having
accepted the principle of a general disarmament, as formulated by
England, with the adhesion of France, Prussia and Russia, the
Sardinian Government has no other explanation to make.' The retort was
justified. Austria, which now required Sardinia to disarm, had refused
to disarm herself. She must take the consequences.

The British Government made a last desperate effort to maintain peace,
and the Austrians always said that this was their ruin, as it delayed
the invasion of Piedmont for a week. On the 29th appeared the Emperor
Francis Joseph's Declaration of War, and on the same day the first
Austrian columns crossed the Ticino. The Austrian commander-in-chief
was Count Gyulai, who was in high favour with the aristocratic party,
by which his appointment was suggested to, if not forced upon, the
Emperor. The latter, not altogether easy in his mind about Gyulai's
capabilities, commissioned General Hess, in whom he placed full
confidence, to keep his eye on him. Hess could not, however, do much
more than take notes of one of the most remarkable and providential
series of blunders ever committed by the commander of an army.

In spite of the delay which the Austrians ascribed to the English
peace negotiations, there was time for them to destroy the Sardinian
army before the French came up. Gyulai had 100,000 men in the theatre
of war, a number increased up to 200,000 during the campaign. Both
Sardinia and her ally mustered much fewer men than were spoken of at
Plombières. The Piedmontese could dispose of 56,000 infantry, formed
in five divisions, one division of cavalry numbering 4,000, and one
brigade of volunteers, to which the name was given of 'Cacciatori
delle Alpi.' The enrolment of these was stopped when it had reached
the small figure of 4,500 men, a figure that looks out of all
proportion with the brilliant part they played. The same influences
which cut short the enrolment prevented Cavour from keeping his
distinct promise to give Garibaldi, now invested with the official
rank of major-general, 10,000 regulars, with a battery and a troop of
horse.

The French army consisted of 128,000 men, including about 10,000
cavalry. The Emperor's Government had notified beforehand to Vienna
that the passage of the Ticino by the Austrian troops would be
considered equivalent to a declaration of war, and accordingly, on the
29th of April, diplomatic relations between the two Powers were broken
off. The French forces had been really on the move for more than a
week--ever since, in fact, by what the Marquis of Normanby called 'an
unpardonable breach of confidence,' the intention of Austria to invade
Sardinia was communicated to Paris. The mobilisation was conducted
with rapidity; in spite of the snow, which lay deep on the Mont Cenis,
the first corps, under Marshal Baraguay d'Hilliers, made a swift march
over the Alps, and the foremost division entered Turin on the 30th of
April. The troops of Canrobert and Niel, who commanded the third and
fourth corps, were sent by Toulon and Marseilles, while the generals
themselves went on to Turin in advance. MacMahon's corps, which was
the second, was on its way from Algiers. The fifth corps, under the
command of Prince Napoleon, was despatched at a later date to Tuscany,
where it was kept in a state of inactivity, which suggested rather a
political than a military mission. General Regnault de Saint-Jean
d'Angély commanded the Imperial Guard. Napoleon III assumed the
supreme command of the allied armies, with General Vaillant as head of
the staff.

The condition of neither French nor Austrian army was satisfactory.
The former had more modern arms and a greater proportion of old
soldiers, but it was generally thought that the French cavalry, so far
superior to the Prussian in the war of 1870, was inferior to the
Austrian in 1859. The commissariat and ambulance arrangements of the
French were disgraceful, though they had this advantage, that when
there was food to be had the soldiers were allowed to eat it, while
the Austrians were limited to half-a-pound of beef a day, and were
only allowed to cook once in the twenty-four hours, which led to their
having constantly to fight fasting. In point of discipline, they were
probably superior to the French, who fought, however, and this should
always be remembered of them in Italy, with the best will in the
world. They carried about their pet monkeys and dogs, and were always
good-humoured and in good spirits, even when wounded. What would have
been the effect on them of even a single defeat is a question which it
is useless to discuss.

In Napoleon's proclamation to the French people it was stated that the
scope of the war was to give Italy to herself, not to make her change
masters; the recompense of France would be to have upon her frontiers
a friendly people which owed its independence to her. As things stood
there were but two alternatives: Austria supreme as far as the Alps,
or Italy free to the Adriatic. On the 12th of May, the Imperial yacht,
the _Reine Hortense_, steamed into the harbour of Genoa with the
Emperor on board. A splendid reception awaited him, and amongst the
first to greet him was Cavour. 'You may well rejoice,' said Napoleon,
as he embraced the Sardinian statesman, 'for your plans are being
realised.'

Gyulai, who had insisted on invading Piedmont, contrary to the opinion
of Hess (who counselled waiting for reinforcements on the left bank of
the Mincio), wasted his time after crossing the Ticino in making plans
and changing them while he could unquestionably have thrown himself on
Turin had he possessed more resolution, and this was the only
operation that could have justified the initial folly of the invasion.
The taking of the capital might not have altered the fortunes of the
war, but it would have had all the appearance of a triumph, and would
have raised the _moral_ of the Austrian soldiers. The allies had time
to concentrate their forces near Tortona, and it was left to them to
assume the offensive. The Austrians retired towards the Apennines, but
made a forward movement on the 20th of May with the object of seizing
the heights of Casteggio which command the road to Piacenza; they were
met by the allies at the village of Montebello where Marshal Lannes
obtained a victory in 1800. The allies were completely successful in
this first battle, the honours of the day falling to the Sardinian
cavalry, which showed great gallantry. The Austrian forces were
considerably superior in strength.

Almost at the same time as the engagement of Montebello, Garibaldi
with his diminutive army (which through the weeding-out of men unfit
for service was reduced to about 3,500 before it took the field),
crossed the Lago Maggiore, and advanced boldly into the heart of the
enemy's country. The volunteers had no artillery, and by way of
cavalry only some forty or fifty were mounted on their own horses and
dignified with the name of 'guides.' They were badly armed and worse
equipped; the only good thing they had was an excellent ambulance
organised by Dr Bertani, Garibaldi's surgeon-general from Roman days
downwards. But they formed a picturesque sight as they marched along
gaily to the everlasting song, 'Addio, mia bella, addio'; and a
physiognomist would have been struck by their intelligent and often
distinguished faces: nobles and poets, budding doctors and lawyers,
bristled in the ranks, while the officers were the still young
veterans of 1848-1849: Cosenz, hero of Venice; Medici, the defender of
the Vascello; Bixio, Sirtori, Cairoli--all the Knights of the Legend.

Moving swiftly from place to place, and appearing where and when he
was least expected, Garibaldi took the entire country of the Lombard
lakes. Gyulai, who at first looked upon the Garibaldian march as a
simple diversion intended to draw off his attention, now became
concerned, and dispatched Urban with 10,000 men to destroy the
volunteers, and stem the insurrection which everywhere followed in
their wake. On the 27th of May Garibaldi drove Urban from his position
near San Fermo, and that commander had his mission still unfulfilled
when he received the order to retreat after the battle of Magenta. The
volunteers were free to pursue their way to Brescia and the
Valtellina, where they performed many feats in the latter period of
the war, winning the admiration of Hayn, the Austrian general opposed
to them, which he was generous enough to express in no measured terms.

The great war was meanwhile approaching its climax. After Montebello
the whole French army executed a secret flank movement, changing its
position from Voghera, where Gyulai believed it to be, and whence he
expected it to move on to Piacenza, to the line of the Sesia, between
Cameriano and Casale. To mask the main operations, the Sardinian
forces were sent to Palestro, on the other side of the Sesia. On the
30th of May, they drove in the outposts of the enemy, and on the 31st
fought the important engagement by which the Austrian attempt to
retake Palestro was repelled, and great damage caused to Zobel's
corps, which was obliged to leave eight guns sticking in the mud. The
French Zouaves of the 3rd regiment fought with the Piedmontese, and
made the battle famous by the reckless valour of their bayonet
charges. Victor Emmanuel, deaf to all remonstrances, placed himself at
their head, in consequence of which they elected him their corporal,
an honour once paid to the first Napoleon.

There is reason to think that after Palestro, Gyulai, having at last
realised what Napoleon was about, wished to evacuate Lombardy, but was
prevented from doing so by strong protests sent by the Emperor Francis
Joseph, who was at Verona. The Austrian army was in full retreat when
it was pulled up near Magenta, with the object of checking the advance
of the French, who had already begun to cross the Ticino by the
bridges of San Martino and Buffalora, which the Austrians had tried to
blow up, but had not succeeded from want of proper powder. In the
great battle of the 4th of June, Austrians and French numbered
respectively about 60,000 men; no Piedmontese were engaged till the
evening, when a battalion of Bersaglieri arrived. The Imperial Guard,
with which was Napoleon, had to bear the brunt of the fight for four
hours, and ran a good chance of being annihilated; not a brilliant
proof of French generalship, but happily the Austrians also committed
grave mistakes. MacMahon's arrival at five in the afternoon prevented
a catastrophe, and the fighting, which continued far into the night,
was from this moment attended by results on the whole advantageous to
the French. Not much more can be said. Magenta was very like a drawn
battle. The Austrians are calculated to have lost 10,000 men, the
French between 4,000 and 5,000. It was expected that the Austrians
would renew the attack, but on the 5th, Gyulai ordered the retreat,
which was the last order he had the opportunity of giving, as he was
deprived of his command immediately after.

At mid-day on the 5th, Milan, which was trembling on the verge of
revolution, made the pleasurable discovery that there were no
Austrians left in the town. The municipality sent out delegates with
the keys of the city to Victor Emmanuel. At ten a.m. on the 7th,
MacMahon's corps began to file down the streets. Words cannot describe
the welcome given to them. How MacMahon lifted to his saddle-bow a
child that was in danger of being crushed by the crowd will be
remembered from the pretty incident having passed into English poetry.
On the 8th, the King and the Emperor made their entry amidst a new
paroxysm of enthusiasm. Napoleon is reported to have exclaimed: 'How
this people must have suffered!' In his proclamation 'to the Italian
people,' which bears the same date as his entry into Milan, he renewed
the assurance of the disinterested motives which had brought him to
Italy: 'Your enemies, who are also mine, have endeavoured to diminish
the universal sympathy felt in Europe for your cause, by causing it to
be believed that I am making war for personal ambition, or to
increase French territory. If there are men who fail to comprehend
their epoch, I am not one of them. In the enlightened state of public
opinion now prevailing, true greatness lies in the moral influence
which we exercise rather than in sterile conquests.' The proclamation
ended with the words: 'To-morrow you will be the citizens of a great
country.' Not the least effusive demonstrations were reserved for
Cavour, who joined his Sovereign a few days after the battle of
Magenta.

       *       *       *       *       *

Leaving the Milanese to put their faith in princes while yet there was
time, a glance must be taken at what had been going on in the rest of
Italy, which was becoming a great nation far more rapidly, and in a
much fuller sense than Napoleon III. expected or wished. When Austria
sent her ultimatum to Turin, the Sardinian minister at the Court of
Tuscany invited the Grand Duke's Government to take part in the war of
liberation. This they refused to do. On perceiving, however, that he
could not depend on his troops, the Grand Duke promised to co-operate
with Piedmont, but his advisers did not now think it possible to save
the grand ducal throne, unless Leopold II. abdicated in favour of his
son, who was not burdened with the fatal associations of the reaction
of ten years before. Leopold probably thought that even his abdication
would not keep out the deluge, and he took the more dignified course
of declining to yield to force. On the 27th of April, accompanied by
the Corps Diplomatique as far as the frontier, he left Tuscany. A
Provisional Government was formed with Peruzzi at its head, which
hastily raised 8000 men for immediate service under the command of
General Ulloa. Before long Prince Napoleon, with the fifth corps of
the French army, landed, for no reason that could be avowed, at
Leghorn. The real motive was to prepare the way for the fabrication
of a new kingdom of Etruria, which existed already in Napoleon's
brain. This masterpiece of folly had but a lukewarm supporter in
Prince Napoleon, who was the only Napoleon and about the only
Frenchman (if he could be called one) who grasped the idea of the
unity of Italy and sincerely applauded it. Had Jérôme Napoleon been
born with the least comprehension of self-respect and personal
dignity, his strong political intelligence and clear logical
discernment must have produced something better than the most
ineffectual career of the century.

On the 8th of May, Baron Ricasoli took office under the Provisional
Government as Minister of the Interior, and for nearly twelve months
he was the real ruler of Tuscany. He had an ally of great strength,
though of humble origin, in Giuseppe Dolfi, the baker, of whom it was
currently said that any day he could summon 10,000 men to the Piazza
della Signoria, who would obey him to the death. To Dolfi it was due
that there were no disorders after the Grand Duke left. What Italy
owes to the Lord of Brolio, history will never adequately state,
because it is well-nigh impossible fully to realise how critical was
her position during all that year, from causes external and internal,
and how disastrous would have been the slightest mistake or wavering
in the direction of Tuscan affairs, which formed the central hinge of
the whole complicated situation. Fortunate, indeed, was it that there
was a man like the Iron Baron, who, by simple force of will, outwitted
the enemies of Italy more thoroughly than even Cavour could do with
all his astuteness. Austere, aristocratic, immovable from his purpose,
indifferent to praise or blame, Ricasoli aimed at one point--the
unity of the whole country; and neither Cavour's impatience for
annexation to Piedmont, nor the scheme of Farini and Minghetti for
averting the wrath of the French Emperor by a temporary and
preparatory union of the central states, drew him one inch from the
straight road, which was the only one he had ever learnt to walk in.

In June, the Duke of Modena and the Duchess-Regent of Parma found it
impossible to remain in their states, now that Austrian protection was
withdrawn. The latter had done what she could to preserve the duchy
for her young son, but the tide was too strong. These revolutions were
accomplished quietly; but, some months after, on the incautious return
to Parma of a man deeply implicated in the abuses of Charles III.'s
government--Colonel Anviti--he was cruelly murdered; an act of
vengeance which happily remained alone.

After the battle of Magenta, when the Austrian troops were recalled
from the Marches and Romagna, those districts rose and demanded the
dictatorship of Piedmont. Napoleon foresaw that this would happen as
far back as the Plombières interview, and at that date it did not
appear that he meant to oppose it. But now, in Paris, the Clerical
party were seized with panic, and the Empress-Regent, then, as always,
completely under their control, did all in her power to arouse the
Emperor's opposition. The Pope, on his part, knowing that he was
secure in Rome--thanks to the French garrison, which, though it hated
its office, as the French writer Ampère and others bore witness, was
sure to perform it faithfully--had the idea of sending his Swiss
troops to put down the growing revolution. With these, and a few Roman
troops of the line, Colonel Schmidt marched against Perugia, where, in
restoring the Papal authority, he used a ferocity which, though denied
by clerical writers, was attested by all contemporary accounts, and
was called 'atrocious' by Sir James Hudson in a despatch to Lord John
Russell. The significance of such facts, wrote the English minister at
Turin, could only be the coming fall of the Pope's Temporal Power.

L.C. Farini was sent by Victor Emmanuel to administer the provinces of
Modena and Parma, and Massimo d'Azeglio was charged with the same
mission in Romagna. The Marches of Ancona had been recovered by the
Papal troops, which were concentrated in the district called La
Cattolica, near Rimini. A volunteer corps, under the Piedmontese
General Mezzacapo, was entrusted with the task of preventing them from
crossing into the Legations.

In the month of May, when the allies were reaping their first
successes, an event occurred at Caserta which precipitated crisis in
the South Italy. Ferdinand II. died at forty-eight years of age of a
terrible complaint which had attacked him a few months earlier, when
he went to meet his son's bride, the Princess Maria Sofia of Bavaria,
sister of the Empress of Austria. The news from Upper Italy hastened
his end; he is said to have exclaimed not long before he died: 'They
have won the cause!'

The accession of a youth, of whom nothing bad was known, to a throne
that had been occupied by a sovereign so out of place in modern
civilisation as Ferdinand, would appear at first sight a fortunate
circumstance for the chances of the dynasty; but it was not so. In an
eastern country it matters little whether the best of the inhabitants
loathe and detest their ruler; but it matters much whether he knows
how to cajole and frighten the masses, and especially the army, into
obedience. Naples, more Oriental than western, possessed in Ferdinand
a monarch consummately expert in this side of the art of government.
Though without the higher military virtues, his army was his favourite
plaything; he always wore uniform, never forgot a face he had once
seen, and treated the officers with a rather vulgar familiarity,
guessing at their weaknesses and making use of them on occasion. The
rank and file regarded him as a sort of supernatural being. Francis
II., who succeeded him, could scarcely appear in this light even to
the most ignorant. Popular opinion considered him not quite sound in
his mind. Probably his timorous, awkward ways and his seeming
stupidity were simply the result of an education conducted by bigoted
priests in a home that was no home: populated as it was by the
offspring of a stepmother who hated him. His own mother, the charming
Princess Cristina of Savoy, died while the city was rejoicing at his
birth. The story is well known of how, shortly after the marriage,
Ferdinand thought it diverting to draw a music-stool from under his
wife, causing her to fall heavily. It gives a sample of the sufferings
of her brief married life. An inheritance of sorrow descended from her
to her child.

If Francis II. was not popular, neither was the new queen. Far more
virile in character and in tastes than her husband, her high spirit
was not what the Neapolitans admire in women, and those who were
devoted to the late King accused her of having shown impatience during
his illness for the moment when the crown would fall to Francis.
Malicious gossip of this kind, however false, serves its end. Thus,
from one cause or another, the young King exercised a power sensibly
weaker than that of his father, while, besides other enemies, he had
an inveterate one in his stepmother, who began weaving a conspiracy to
oust him from the throne and place on it the eldest of his
half-brothers. This plot received, however, very little popular
support.

The Sardinian Government sought to persuade Francis to join in the
war against Austria; disinterested counsel, as in taking it lay his
only hope, but it was opposed by England, Russia and France. In July
two of the Swiss regiments at Naples mutinied. The Swiss Government,
becoming alive to the discredit cast on the country by mercenary
service, had decided that Swiss subjects serving abroad should lose
their rights as citizens of the Confederation whilst so employed, and
that they should no longer introduce the arms of their respective
cantons into their regimental colours. This was the immediate cause of
their insubordination. The mutineers, most of whom were unarmed, were
ruthlessly shot down in the Campo di Marte to the terror of the
population, and the two Swiss regiments which remained quiet were
dissolved; by which the monarchy lost the troops that were chiefly to
be depended on in emergencies. The Austrians and Bavarians imported in
their stead did not form separate regiments, but were incorporated
among the native troops, though the regiments that contained them were
commonly called 'Bavarian.' They only partially filled the place of
the Swiss.

       *       *       *       *       *

Between the 4th and the 24th of June, no engagement of any magnitude
was fought in Lombardy except the attack on Benedek at Melegnano, a
battle in which the French lost most men, and gained no strategical
advantage. It was supposed to have been fought because Napoleon I. had
gained a victory in the same neighbourhood. The Austrians retreated to
the Mincio, destroying the bridges over the Adda, Serio, Oglio and
Mella as they went; these rivers the allies had to make repassable,
which is the excuse given for the dilatory nature of their pursuit of
the enemy. The Emperor Francis Joseph had now assumed the command,
with Hess as his principle adviser, and Wimpffen and Schlick, famous
as the 'One-eyed,' as heads of the two great corps into which the army
was divided.

On the 22nd of June, the Austrians were ranged along the left bank of
the Mincio from Peschiera to Mantua, and the French were massed near
Montechiaro, on the Brescia road, which Napoleon had made his
headquarters. In withdrawing all their men from the right bank of the
river, the Austrians desired to create the impression that they had
finally abandoned it. It was their plan, which did not lack boldness,
to throw the whole army back upon the right bank, and to perform a
concentric movement on Montechiaro, where they hoped to fall unawares
on the French and destroy them. They were confident of success, for
they knew what a good stand they had made at Magenta, and now that
Gyulai was got rid of, and the young Emperor had taken the field, they
did not doubt that fortune would turn her wheel. To these men of many
nations, the presence of their Emperor was the one inspiration that
could rouse them, for if they were fighting for anything, it was for
him in the most personal sense; it was to secure his mastery of the
splendid land over which he looked from the castle of Valleggio, on
the 23rd of June, whilst his brilliant staff stood round, waiting for
the signal to mount and clatter down the steep road to the Mincio
bridge. The army now advanced along all its line.

Even the soberest writers have not resisted making some reference to
the magnificent scene of to-morrow's battle. On one side, the mountain
bulwarks rising tier on tier, gorgeous with the trancendent beauty of
colour and light of the Italian summer; on the other, the vine-clad
hillocks which fall gently away from the blue lake of Garda till they
are lost in the

  ............harvest shining plain
  Where the peasant heaps his grain
  In the garner of his foe.

The 24th of June was to decide how much longer the Lombard peasant
should labour to fill a stranger's treasury.

The calculations of the Austrians were founded on the slowness which
had hitherto characterised Napoleon's movements. Hess thought that two
days might be safely allowed for the Austrian advance, and that the
enemy would remain passive on the west bank of the river Chiese,
waiting to be attacked on the 25th. If the operation could have been
performed in one day, and it is thought that it could, there would
have been more prospect of success. But even then, the original plan
of attacking the allies west of the Chiese could not have been carried
out, as on the 23rd the whole allied army moved forward, the French
occupying Castiglione and Lonato, and the Sardinians Rezzato and
Desenzano, on the lake of Garda. It is not clear how far the allies
believed in the Austrian advance; that they had warning of it from
several quarters is certain. For instance, a gentleman living at
Desenzano heard from the country people, who, for marketing or other
purposes, constantly go to and fro between that place and Peschiera,
that the Austrians had ordered a quantity of country carts and
transport waggons to be in readiness on the 23rd, and he hastened with
the intelligence to the Piedmontese General Delia Rocca, who, in a
fine spirit of red-tapism, pooh-poohed the information. The French
encountered several Austrian patrols in the course of the day, but
they were inclined to think that the Austrians were only executing a
reconnaissance. On the whole, it seems that the conflict came as a
surprise to both sides.

The Emperor of Austria, after accompanying the advance for a short
distance, returned with Hess to Valleggio for the night. Napoleon
slept at Montechiaro. The Austrian forces bivouacked on the little
hills between Solferino and Cavriana. They rested well, still
confident that no fighting would be done next day. At two in the
morning, the French began to move in the direction of Solferino, and
the Sardinians in that of Peschiera. There is a legend, that in the
grey mists of dawn an advance party of French cavalry espied a huge
and gaunt hussar standing by the roadside. For a moment the figure was
lost sight of, but it reappeared, and after running across the road in
front of the French, it turned and dealt the officer who led the party
so tremendous a blow that he fell off his horse. Then the adventurous
Austrian fled, followed by a volley from the French troopers; the
sound vibrating through the dawn stillness gave the call to arms to
the contrasted hosts. The battle of Solferino had begun.

The news flew to Montechiaro and to Valleggio. Napoleon started for
the scene of action with the Imperial Guard; Francis Joseph's staff
was sent forward at six a.m., but the Emperor and Hess did not start
till later. At near nine, the staff was looking for the Emperor, and
the Emperor was looking for the staff in the open country about Volta;
the sixty or seventy staff-officers dashed across ploughed fields and
over hedges and ditches, in a style which would have done credit to an
English fox-hunt. This remarkable incident was in keeping with the
general management of the battle on the part of the Austrians, who had
been fighting for many hours before the commander-in-chief arrived.
After his arrival, they continued fighting without any visible plan,
according to the expedients of the divisional generals. The particular
expedient adopted by General Zedwitz was to withdraw 15,000 men,
including six regiments of cavalry, from the field. At a critical
moment, Count Clam Gallas had the misfortune to lose his artillery
reserve, and sent everywhere to ask if anyone had seen it. The Prince
of Hesse, acting without orders, or against orders, separated his
division from Schwarzenberg's and brought it up at the nick of time to
save the Austrians, when they were threatened with actual destruction,
at two o'clock in the afternoon.

At that hour the French were in possession of the Spia d'Italia, and
of all the heights of Solferino. They had been engaged in attacking
them since eight in the morning, Napoleon having seen at once that
they were the key to the position, and must be taken, cost what it
might. The cost was great; if there is any episode in French military
history in which soldiers and officers earned all the praise that can
be given to brave men, it is the taking of these Solferino hills.
Again and again Forey's division and Bazaine's brigade returned to the
charge; the cemetery and streets of Solferino were piled up with their
dead, mingled with the dead of the defenders, who contested every inch
of ground. The individual valour of the French soldiers in that six
hours' struggle made it possible to win the battle.

The Austrians, however, after their desperate straits at two o'clock
recovered to so great an extent that, had Zedwitz returned with his
cavalry, as the Emperor was hoping that he would, the day might still
have been theirs. Even as it was, MacMahon's corps swerved under
Zobel's repulse of his attack on San Cassiano, and Niel, in the plain,
was dangerously hard pressed by Schwarzenberg. But, by degrees, the
French recommenced gaining and the Austrians losing ground, and at six
p.m., the latter were retreating in good order, defending each step
before they yielded it.

In the last stage of the battle the French limbered up their guns in
the belief that a vast reserve of Austrian cavalry was galloping into
action. What made them think so was a dense yellowish wall advancing
through the air. Had they been natives, they would have recognised the
approach of one of those frightful storms which bring devastation in
their train, and which, as they move forward in what appears a solid
mass, look to the inexperienced eye exactly like the clouds of dust
raised by innumerable horsemen. The bursting of the storm hastened the
end of the fight.

All the day another fight, separate from this, had been going on
between Benedek and the Sardinian army near the knoll of San Martino,
overlooking the lake of Garda. The battle, which began in the early
morning among the cypresses that crown the hillock, raged till seven
p.m. with a fury which cost the Piedmontese over 4,000 in dead and
wounded. It consisted largely in hand-to-hand fighting, which now gave
an advantage to the Austrians, now to the Italians; many of the
positions were lost and re-taken more than half-a-dozen times; the
issue seemed long doubtful, and when Benedek, who commanded his side
with unquestionable ability, received orders from the field of
Solferino to begin a retreat, each combatant was firmly convinced that
he was getting the best of it. Austrian writers allege that this order
saved the Sardinians from defeat, while in both Italian and French
narratives, the Piedmontese are represented as having been already
sure of success. The courage shown alike by Piedmontese and Austrians
could not be surpassed. Victor Emmanuel, as usual, set an example to
his men.

An incident in the battle brings into striking relief what it was this
bloody strife was meant to end. An Austrian corporal fell, mortally
wounded by a Bersagliere whom he conjured, in Italian, to listen to
what he had got to say. It was this: Forced into the Austrian army, he
had been obliged to serve through the war, but had never fired his
rifle on his fellow-countrymen; now he preferred to die rather than
defend himself. So he yielded up his breath with his hand clasped in
the hand which had slain him.

The Austrians lost, on the 24th of June, 13,000 men in killed and
wounded; the French, 10,000. It was said that the frightful scene of
carnage on the battlefield after Solferino influenced Napoleon III. in
his desire to stop the war. Had that scene vanished from his
recollection in June 1870?

Even a field of battle, with its unburied dead, speaks only of a small
part of the miseries of a great war. Those who were at that time at
Brescia, to which town the greater portion of the French wounded and
all the worst cases were brought, still shudder as they recall the
dreadful human suffering which no skill or devotion could do more than
a very little to assuage. The noble Brescian ladies who had once
nursed Bayard, turned, with one accord, into sisters of charity; every
house, every church, became a hospital, all that gratitude and pity
could do was done; but many were to leave their bones in Italy, and
how many more to go home maimed for life, or bearing with them the
seeds of death.

Other reasons than those of sentiment in reality decided Napoleon's
course. Though these can only be guessed at, the guess, at the present
date, amounts to certainty. In the first place, the skin-deep
rejoicings in Paris at the news of the victories did not hide the fact
that French public opinion, never genuinely favourable to the war, was
becoming more and more hostile to it. Then there was the military
question. It is true that the Fifth Corps, estimated at 30,000 men,
had, at last, emerged from its crepuscular doings in Tuscany, and was
available for future operations. Moreover, Kossuth paid a visit to the
Imperial headquarters, and held out hopes of a revolution in Hungary
which would oblige the Austrian Emperor to remove part of his troops
from the scene of the war. Nevertheless, Napoleon was by no means
convinced that his army was sufficient to take the Quadrilateral. He
realised the bad organisation and numerous shortcomings of the forces
under him so vividly that it seems incredible that, in the eleven
following years, he should have done nothing to remedy them. He
attributed his success mainly to chance, though in a less degree to a
certain lack of energy in the Austrians, joined with the exaggerated
fear of responsibility felt by their leaders. He never could
thoroughly understand why the Austrians had not won Solferino.
Naturally, he did not express these opinions to his marshals, but
there is ample proof that he held them; and if the fact stood alone,
it ought not to be difficult to explain why he was not anxious for a
continuance of the war.

But it does not stand alone. Napoleon feared being defeated on the
Rhine as well as in the Quadrilateral. Prussia had six army corps
ready, and she was about to move them. That, after her long
hesitations, she resolved to intervene was long doubted, but it
cannot be so after the evidence which recent years have produced.

At the time things wore a different complexion. Europe was never more
amazed than when, on the 6th of July, Napoleon the victor sent General
Fleury to Francis Joseph the vanquished with a request for an
armistice. One point only was plain; an armistice meant peace without
Venetia, and never did profound sorrow so quickly succeed national joy
than when this, to contemporaries astonishing intelligence, went
forth. But the blow fell on no Italian with such tremendous force as
on Cavour.

There are natives of Italy who appear to be more cool, more
calculating, more completely masters of themselves, than the men of
any other nationality. Cavour was one of these. But there comes,
sooner or later, the assertion of southern blood, the explosion of
feeling the more violent because long contained, and the cool, quiet
Italian of yesterday is not to be recognised except by those who know
the race intimately well, and who know the volcano that underlies its
ice and snow as well as its luxuriant vegetation.

On Wednesday, the 6th of June, the French army was spread out in
battle array along the left bank of the Mincio, and everything led to
the supposition that a new and immediate battle was in contemplation.
The Piedmontese were engaged in making preparations to invest
Peschiera. Napoleon's headquarters were at Valleggio, those of the
King at Monzambano. By the evening a very few persons had picked up
the information that Napoleon had sent a messenger to Verona. Victor
Emmanuel knew nothing of it, nor did any of the French generals except
Marshal Vaillant, but such things leak out, and two or three
individuals were aware of the journey to Verona, and spent that night
in racking their brains as to what it might mean. Next day at eleven
o'clock General Fleury returned; the Austrian Emperor had accepted the
armistice. Further secrecy was impossible, and like lightning the news
flashed through the world.

Cavour rushed from Turin to Desenzano, where he arrived the day before
the final meeting between Napoleon and Francis Joseph. He waited for a
carnage in the little _café_ in the piazza; no one guessed who it was,
and conversation went on undisturbed: it was full of curses on the
French Emperor. Mazzini, someone said, was right; this is the way the
war was sure to end. When a shabby conveyance had at length been
found, the great statesman drove to Monzambano. There, of course, his
arrival did not escape notice, and all who saw him were horrified by
the change that had come over his face. Instead of the jovial, witty
smile, there was a look of frantic rage and desperation. What passed
between him and his Sovereign is partly a matter of conjecture; the
exact sense of the violent words into which his grief betrayed him is
lost, in spite of the categorical versions of the interview which have
been printed. Even in a fit of madness he can hardly have spoken some
of the words attributed to him. That he advised the King to withdraw
his army or to abdicate rather than agree to the peace which was being
plotted behind his back, seems past doubting. It is said that after
attempting in vain to calm him, Victor Emmanuel brought the interview
to a sudden close. Cavour came out of the house flushed and exhausted,
and drove back to Desenzano. He had resigned office.

The King showed extraordinary self-control. Bitter as the draught was,
he saw that it must be drunk, and he was determined to drink it with
dignity. Probably no other Italian grasped as clearly as he did the
real reason which actuated Napoleon; at any rate his chivalrous
appreciation of the benefits already received, closed his lips to
reproaches. 'Whatever may be the decision of your Majesty,' he said to
the Emperor on the eve of Villafranca, 'I shall feel an eternal
gratitude for what you have done for the independence of Italy, and I
beg you to believe that under all circumstances you may reckon on my
complete fidelity.'

If there was sadness in the Sardinian camp, so there was in that of
Austria. The Austrians by no means thought that the game was up for
them. It would be interesting to know by what arguments Napoleon
persuaded the young Emperor to renounce the hope of retrieving his
disasters, whilst he slowly pulled to pieces some flowers which were
on the table before which he and Francis Joseph sat. When they left
the house, the heir to all the Hapsburgs looked pale and sad. Did he
remember the dying counsels of 'Father' Radetsky--not to yield if he
was beaten on the Mincio, on the Tagliamento, on the Isonzo, before
the gates of Vienna.

When, on the evening of the same day, the Emperor of Austria signed
the preliminaries of peace, he said to Prince Napoleon, who took the
document to Verona for his signature: 'I pray God that if you are ever
a sovereign He may spare you the hour of grief I have just passed.'
Yet the defeat of Solferino and the loss of Lombardy were the first
steps in the transformation of Radetsky's pupil from a despot, who
hourly feared revolution in every land under his sceptre, to a wise
and constitutional monarch ruling over a contented Empire. To some
individuals and to some states, misfortune is fortune.






CHAPTER XIII

WHAT UNITY COST

1859-1860

Napoleon III. and Cavour--The Cession of Savoy and Nice--Annexations
in Central Italy.


Napoleon's hurried journey to Turin on his way back to France was
almost a flight. Everywhere his reception was cold in the extreme. He
was surprised, he said, at the ingratitude of the Italians. It was
still possible to ask for gratitude, as the services rendered had not
been paid for; no one spoke yet of the barter of Savoy and Nice. But
Napoleon, when he said these words to the Governor of Milan, forgot
how the Lombards, in June 1848, absolutely refused to take their
freedom at the cost of resigning Venice to Austria. And if Venice was
dear to them and to Italy then, how much dearer had she not become
since the heroic struggle in which she was the last to yield. The
bones of Manin cried aloud for Venetian liberty from his grave of
exile.

Venice was the one absorbing thought of the moment; yet there were
clauses in the brief preliminaries of peace more fraught with
insidious danger than the abandonment of Venice. If the rest of Italy
became one and free, it needed no prophet to tell that not the might
of twenty Austrias could keep Venetia permanently outside the fold.
But if Italy was to remain divided and enslaved, then, indeed, the
indignant question went up to heaven, To what end had so much blood
been shed?

When he resolved to cut short the war, Napoleon still had it in his
power to go down to history as the supreme benefactor of Italy. He
chose instead to become her worst and by far her most dangerous enemy.
The preliminaries of peace opened with the words: 'The Emperor of
Austria and the Emperor of the French will favour the creation of an
Italian Confederation under the honorary presidency of the Holy
Father.' Further, it was stated that the Grand Duke of Tuscany and
the Duke of Modena would return to their states. Though Napoleon
proposed at first to add, 'without foreign armed intervention,' he
waived the point (Rome was in his mind) and no such guarantee was
inserted. Here, then, was the federative programme which all the
personal influence and ingenuity of the French Emperor, all the arts
of French diplomacy, were concentrated on maintaining, and which was
only defeated by the true patriotism and strong good sense of the
Italian populations, and of the men who led them through this, the
most critical period in their history.

In England Lord Derby's administration had fallen and the Liberals
were again in power. Napoleon was so strangely deluded as to expect to
find support in that quarter for his anti-unionist conspiracy. His
earliest scheme was that the federative plan should be presented to
Europe by Great Britain. Lord John Russell answered: 'We are asked to
propose a partition (_morcellement_) of the peoples of Italy, as if we
had the right to dispose of them.' It was a happy circumstance for
Italy that her unity had no better friends than in the English
Government during those difficult years. Cavour's words soon after
Villafranca, 'It is England's turn now,' were not belied.

One thing should have made Napoleon uneasy; a man like Cavour, when
his blood is roused, when his nature is fired by the strongest
passions that move the human heart, is an awkward adversary. If there
was an instant in which the great statesman thought that all was lost,
it was but an instant. With the quick rebound of virile characters he
recovered his balance and understood his part. It was to fight and
conquer.

'Your Emperor has dishonoured me,' he said to M. Pietri in the
presence of Kossuth (the interview taking place at Turin on the 15th
of July). 'Yes, sir, he has dishonoured me,' and he set forth how,
after promising to hunt the last Austrian out of Italy, after secretly
exacting the price of his assistance to which Cavour had induced his
good and honest King to consent, he now left them solemnly in the
lurch; Lombardy might suffice! And, for nothing to be wanting, the
King was to be forced into a confederation with Austria and the
Italian princes under the presidency of the Pope. After painting the
situation with all the irony and scorn of which he was master, he gave
his note of warning: 'If needs be, I will become a conspirator, I will
become a revolutionist, but this treaty shall never be executed; a
thousand times no--never!'

The routine business of the Prime Minister still fell to Cavour, as
Rattazzi, who succeeded him, had not yet formed his cabinet. He was
obliged, therefore, to write officially to the Royal Commissioners at
Modena, Bologna and Florence to abandon their posts. But in the
character of Cavour, the private citizen, he telegraphed to them at
the same time to remain and do their duty. And they remained.

On one point there was a temporary lull of anxiety. Almost the last
words spoken by Napoleon to Victor Emmanuel before he left Turin were:
'We shall think no more about Nice and Savoy.' The mention of Nice
shows that though it had not been promised, Napoleon was all along set
upon its acquisition. It is impossible to say how far, at the moment,
he was sincere in the renunciation. That, very soon after his return
to Paris, he was diligently weaving plans for getting both provinces
into his net, is evident from the tenor of the articles and notes
published in the 'inspired' French newspapers.

Two chief motives can be divined for Napoleon's determined opposition
to Italian unity which never ceased till Sedan. The first was his
wish, shared by all French politicians, that Italy should be weak. The
second was his regard for the Temporal Power which proceeded from his
still being convinced that he could not reign without the Clerical
vote. The French prelates were perpetually giving him reminders that
this vote depended on his keeping the Pope on his throne. For
instance, Cardinal Donnet told him at Bordeaux in October 1859, that
he could not choose a better way of showing his appreciation of the
Blessed Virgin than 'en ménageant un triomphe à son Fils dans la
personne de son Vicaire.' It would be a triumph which the Catholic
world would salute with transport. Hints of this sort, the sense of
which was not hard to read, in spite of their recondite phraseology,
reached him from every quarter. He feared to set them aside. The
origins of his power were too much tainted for him to advance boldly
on an independent policy. Thus it was that bit by bit he deliberately
forfeited all title to the help of Italy when the same whirlwind that
dashed him to earth, cleared the way for the final accomplishment of
her national destinies.

Whilst Victor Emmanuel was more alive than Cavour to the military
arguments in favour of stopping hostilities when the tide of success
was at its height, he was not one whit more disposed to stultify his
past by becoming the vassal at once of Paris and Vienna. In a letter
written to the Emperor of the French in October, in answer to a very
long one in which Napoleon sought to convert him to the plan of an
Austro-Italian Confederation, he wound up by saying: 'For the
considerations above stated, and for many others, I cannot, Sire,
second your Majesty's policy in Italy. If your Majesty is bound by
treaties and cannot revoke your engagements in the (proposed)
congress, I, Sire, am bound on my side, by honour in the face of
Europe, by right and duty, by the interests of my house, of my people
and of Italy. My fate is joined to that of the Italian people. We can
succumb, but never betray. Solferino and San Martino may sometimes
redeem Novara and Waterloo, but the apostasies of princes are always
irreparable. I am moved to the bottom of my soul by the faith and love
which this noble and unfortunate people has reposed in me, and rather
than be unworthy of it, I will break my sword and throw the crown away
as did my august father. Personal interest does not guide me in
defending the annexations; the Sword and Time have borne my house from
the summit of the Alps to the banks of the Mincio, and those two
guardian angels of the Savoy race will bear it further still, when it
pleases God.'

The events in Central Italy to which the King alludes were of the
highest importance. L.C. Farini, the Sardinian Royal Commissioner at
Modena, when relieved of his office, assumed the dictatorship by the
will of the people. L. Cipriani became Governor of Romagna, and at
Florence Ricasoli continued at the head of affairs, undismayed and
unshaken in his resolve to defeat the combined machinations of France
and Austria. In August the populations of Modena, Reggio, Parma and
Piacenza declared their union with Piedmont by an all but unanimous
popular vote, the two last provinces placing themselves for temporary
convenience under the Dictator Farini. A few days later, Tuscany and
Romagna voted a like act of union through their Constituent
Assemblies. The representatives of the four States, Modena, Parma,
Romagna and Tuscany, formally announced to the great Powers their
choice of Victor Emmanuel, in whose rule they recognised the sole hope
of preserving their liberties and avoiding disorder. Delegates were
sent to Turin with the offer of the crown.

Peace, of which the preliminaries only were signed at Villafranca, was
not yet definitely concluded, and a large French army was still in
Italy. The King's government feared therefore to adopt the bold course
of accepting the annexations outright, and facing the responsibilities
which might arise. Victor Emmanuel thanked the delegates, expressing
his confidence that Europe would not undo the great work that had been
done in Central Italy. The state of things, however, in these
provinces, whose elected King could not yet govern them, was
anomalous, most of all in what related to defence; they being menaced
on the Austrian side by the Duke of Modena, and on the South by the
Papal troops in the Cattolica. An armed force of 25,000 men was
organised, of which the Tuscan contingent was under the command of
Garibaldi, and the rest under that of the Sardinian General Fanti,
'lent' for the purpose. Garibaldi hoped not merely to defend the
provinces already emancipated, but to carry war into the enemy's camp
and make revolution possible throughout the States of the Church. To
the Party of Action the chance seemed an unique one of hastening the
progress of events. Unaccustomed as they were to weigh diplomatic
difficulties, they saw the advantages but not the perils of a daring
course. Meanwhile Napoleon threatened to occupy Piacenza with 30,000
men on the first forward step of Garibaldi, who, on his side, seemed
by no means inclined to yield either to the orders of the Dictator
Farini, or to the somewhat violent measures taken to stop him by
General Fanti, who instructed the officers under his command to
disobey him. It was then that Victor Emmanuel tried his personal
influence, rarely tried without success, over the revolutionary chief,
who reposed absolute faith in the King's patriotism, and who was
therefore amenable to his arguments when all others failed. The
general was summoned to Turin, and in an audience given on the 16th of
November, Victor Emmanuel persuaded him that the proposed enterprise
would retard rather than advance the cause of Italian freedom.
Garibaldi left for Caprera, only insisting that his 'weak services'
should be called into requisition whenever there was an opportunity to
act.

Before quitting the Adriatic coast the hero of Rome went one evening
with his two children, Menotti and Teresita, to the Chapel in the Pine
Forest, where their mother was buried. Within a mile was the farmhouse
where he had embraced her lifeless form before undertaking his
perilous flight from sea to sea. In 1850, at Staten Island, when he
was earning his bread as a factory hand, he wrote the prophetic words:
'Anita, a land of slavery holds your precious dust; Italy will make
your grave free, but what can restore to your children their
incomparable mother?' Garibaldi's visit to Anita's grave closes the
story of the brave and tender woman who sacrificed all to the love she
bore him.

After sitting for three months, the Conference which met at Zurich to
establish the definite treaty of peace finished its labours on the
10th of November. The compact was substantially the same as that
arranged at Villafranca. Victor Emmanuel, who had signed the
Preliminaries with the reservation implied in the note: 'In so far as
I am concerned,' preserved the same liberty of action in the Treaty of
Zurich. He still hesitated, however, in assuming the government of the
central provinces, and even the plan of sending the Prince of
Carignano as governor fell through in consequence of Napoleon's
opposition. His hesitations sprang from the general apprehension that
a hint from Paris might any day be followed by a new eruption of
Austrians in Modena and Tuscany for the purpose of replacing the
former rulers of those states on their thrones. Such a fear existed at
the time, and Rattazzi's timid policy was the result; it is impossible
not to ask now whether it was not exaggerated? 'What statesman,' wrote
the Prince Consort in June 1859, 'could adopt measures to force
Austrian rule again upon delighted, free Italy?' If this was true
in June was it less true in November? For the rest, would not the
supreme ridicule that would have fallen on the French Emperor if he
encouraged the Austrians to return to Central Italy after driving
them out of Lombardy, have obliged him to support the principle of
non-intervention, whether he wished it or not? England was prepared to
back up the government of Piedmont, in which lay a great moral force.
It is plain that the long wavering about what ought to be done with
the central provinces is what cost the country Savoy and Nice, or at
any rate, Nice. Napoleon did all in his power to prevent and to retard
the annexations, especially that of Tuscany, which, as he said, 'would
make Italian unity a mere question of time,' but when he found that
neither threats nor blandishments could move the population from their
resolve to have Victor Emmanuel for their king, he decided to sell his
adhesion for a good price. Compelled for the sake of appearances to
withdraw his claim after the abrupt termination of the war, he now saw
an excellent excuse for reviving it, and he was not likely to let the
opportunity slip.

At this period there was continual talk, which may or may not have
been intended to end in talk, of a Congress to which the affairs of
Italy were to be referred. It gave an opening to Napoleon for
publishing one of the anonymous pamphlets by means of which he was in
the habit of throwing out tentative ideas, and watching their effect.
The chief idea broached in _Le Pape et le Congrès_ was the voluntary
renunciation by the Pope of all but a small zone of territory round
Rome; it being pointed out that his position as an independent
sovereign would remain unaffected by such an act, which would smooth
the way to his assuming the hegemony of the Italian Confederation. The
Pope, however, let it be clearly known that he had no intention of
ceding a rood of his possessions, or of recognising the separation of
the part which had already escaped from him. Anyone acquainted with
the long strife and millennial manoeuvres by which the Church had
acquired the States called by her name, will understand the
unwillingness there was to yield them. To do Pius IX. justice, an
objection which merits more respect weighed then and always upon his
mind. He thought that he was personally debarred by the oath taken on
assuming the tiara from giving up the smallest part of the territory
he received from his predecessor. The Ultramontane party knew that
they had only to remind him of this oath to provoke a fresh assertion
of _Non possumus._ The attitude of the Pope was one reason why the
Congress was abandoned; but there was a deeper reason. A European
Congress would certainly not have approved the cession of Nice and
Savoy, and to that object the French Emperor was now turning all his
attention.

At Turin there was an ignoble cabal, supported not so much, perhaps,
by Rattazzi himself as by followers, the design of which was to
prevent Cavour from returning to power. Abroad, the Empress Eugénie,
who looked on Cavour as the Pope's worst foe, did what she could to
further the scheme, and its promoters counted much on the soreness
left in Victor Emmanuel's mind by the scene after Villafranca. That
soreness did, in fact, still exist; but when in January the Rattazzi
ministry fell, the King saw that it was his duty to recall Cavour to
his counsels, and he at once charged him to form a cabinet.

That Cavour accepted the task is the highest proof of his abnegation
as a statesman. He was on the point of getting into his carriage to
catch the train for Leri when the messenger reached the Palazzo Cavour
with the royal command to go to the castle. If he had refused office
and returned to the congenial activity of his life as a country
gentleman, his name would not be attached to the melancholy sacrifice
which Napoleon was now determined to exact from Italy. The French
envoy, Baron de Talleyrand, whose business it was to communicate the
unwelcome intelligence, arrived at Turin before the collapse of
Rattazzi; but, on finding that a ministerial crisis was imminent, he
deferred carrying out his mission till a more opportune moment.

On the 18th of January 1860, the Emperor admitted to Lord Cowley
that, though there was as yet no arrangement between himself and
Victor Emmanuel on the subject, he intended to have Savoy. After the
long series of denials of any such design, the admission caused the
most indignant feeling in the English ministers and in the Queen, who
wrote to Lord John Russell: 'We have been made regular dupes.' She
went on to say that the revival of the English Alliance, and the hymns
of universal peace chanted in Paris on the occasion of the Commercial
Treaty, had been simply so many blinds, 'to hide from Europe a policy
of spoliation.' Cavour came in for a part of the blame, as, during the
war, he denied cognisance of the proposal to give up Savoy. The best
that can be said of that denial is, that it was diplomatically
impracticable for one party in the understanding of Plombières to make
a clean breast of the truth, whilst the other party was assuring the
whole universe that he was fighting for an idea.

When the war was broken off, Cavour fully expected that Napoleon, of
whom he had the worst opinion, would then and there demand whole pay
for his half service; and this had much to do with his furious anger
at Villafranca; but later, in common with the best-informed persons,
he believed that the claim was finally withdrawn. When, however,
Napoleon asked again for the provinces--not as the price of the war,
but of the annexations in Central Italy--Cavour instantly came to the
conclusion that, cost what it might (and he thought that, amongst
other things, it would cost his own reputation and popularity), the
demand must be granted. Otherwise Italian unity would never be
accomplished.

In considering whether he was mistaken, it must not be forgotten that
the French troops were still in Italy. Not to speak of those in Rome,
Marshal Vaillant had five divisions of infantry and two brigades of
cavalry in Lombardy up to the 20th of March 1860. The engagement had
been to send this army home as soon as the definite peace was
concluded; why, then, was it still south of the Alps four months
after?

In spite of this, however, and in spite of the difficulty of judging
an act, all the reasons for which may not, even now, be in possession
of the world, it is very hard indeed to pardon Cavour for having
yielded Nice as well as Savoy to France. The Nizzards were Italians as
the lower class of the population is Italian still; they had always
shown warm sympathy with the hopes of Italy, which could not be said
of the Savoyards; and Nice was the birthplace of Garibaldi!

England would have supported and applauded resistance to the claim for
Nice on general grounds, though her particular interest was in Savoy,
or rather in that part of the Savoy Alps which was neutralised by
treaty in 1814. It was the refusal of Napoleon to adopt the compromise
of ceding this district to Switzerland which caused the breach between
him and the British ministry. From that moment, also, Prussia began to
increase her army, and resolved, when she was ready, to check the
imperial ambition by force of arms. 'The loss of Alsace and Lorraine,'
writes an able publicist, M.E. Tallichet, 'was the direct consequence
of the annexation of Nice and Savoy.'

If anything could have rendered more galling to Italy the deprivation
of these two provinces, it was the tone adopted in France when
speaking of the transaction. What were Savoy and Nice? A barren rock
and an insignificant strip of coast! The French of thirty-four years
ago travelled so little that they may have believed in the
description. The vast military importance of the ceded districts has
been already referred to. Some scraps on the Nice frontier were saved
in a curious way: They were spots which formed part of the favourite
playground of the Royal Hunter of the Alps, and it was pointed out to
Napoleon that it would be a graceful act to leave these particular
'barren rocks' to his Sardinian Majesty. The zig-zags in the line of
demarcation which were thus introduced are said to be of great
strategic advantage to Italy. So far, so good; but it remains true
that France is _inside_ the Italian front-door.

At the elections for the new Chamber in March 1860, the Nizzards chose
Garibaldi; and this was their real plebiscite--not that which followed
at a short interval, and presented the phenomenon of a population
which appeared to change its mind as to its nationality in the course
of a few weeks. In voting for Garibaldi, they voted for Italy.

The Nizzard hero made some desperate efforts on behalf of his
fellow-citizens in the Chamber, not his natural sphere, and was on the
brink of making other efforts in a sphere in which he might have
succeeded better. He had the idea of going to Nice with about 200
followers, and exciting just enough of a revolution to let the real
will of the people be known, and to frustrate the wiles of French
emissaries and the pressure of government in the official plebiscite
of the 15th of April. The story of the conspiracy, which is unknown in
Italy, has been told by one of the conspirators, the late Lawrence
Oliphant. The English writer, who reached Turin full of wrath at the
proposed cession, was introduced to Garibaldi, from whom he received
the news of the proposed enterprise. Oliphant offered his services,
which were accepted, and he accompanied the general to Genoa, where he
engaged a diligence which was to carry the vanguard to Nice. But, on
going to Garibaldi for the last orders, he found him supping with
twenty or thirty young men; 'All Sicilians!' said the chief. 'We must
give up the Nice programme; the general opinion is that we shall lose
all if we try for too much.' He added that he had hoped to carry out
the Nice plan first, but now everything must be sacrificed to freeing
Sicily. And he asked Oliphant to join the Thousand, an offer which the
adventurous Englishman never ceased to regret that he did not accept.
As it was, he elected to go all the same to Nice, where he was the
spectator and became the historian of the arts which brought about the
semblance of an unanimous vote in favour of annexation to France.

The ratification of the treaty--which, by straining the constitution,
was concluded without consulting Parliament--was reluctantly given by
the Piedmontese Chambers, the majority of members fearing the
responsibility of upsetting an accomplished fact. Cavour, when he laid
down the pen after signing the deed of cession, turned to Baron de
Talleyrand with the remark: 'Now we are accomplices!' His face, which
had been depressed, resumed its cheerful air. In fact, though
Napoleon's dislike of the central annexations was unabated, he could
no longer oppose them. Victor Emmanuel accepted the four crowns of
Central Italy, the people of which, during the long months of waiting,
and under circumstances that applied the most crucial test to their
resolution, had never swerved from the desire to form part of the
Italian monarchy under the sceptre of the _Re Galantuomo_. The King of
Sardinia, as he was still called, had eleven million subjects, and on
his head rested one excommunication the more. The Bull fulminated
against all who had, directly or indirectly, participated in the
events which caused Romagna to change hands, was published a day or
two before the opening of the new Parliament at Turin.

Addressing for the first time the representatives of his widened
realm, Victor Emmanuel said: 'True to the creed of my fathers, and,
like them, constant in my homage to the Supreme Head of the Church,
whenever it happens that the ecclesiastical authority employs
spiritual arms in support of temporal interests, I shall find in my
steadfast conscience and in the very traditions of my ancestors, the
power to maintain civil liberty in its integrity, and my own
authority, for which I hold myself accountable to God alone and to my
people.'

The words: 'Della quale debbo ragione a Dio solo ed ai miei popoli,'
were added by the King to the speech prepared by his ministers; it was
noticed that he pronounced them with remarkable energy. The speech
concluded: 'Our country is no more the Italy of the Romans, nor the
Italy of the Middle Ages; no longer the field for every foreign
ambition, it becomes, henceforth, the Italy of the Italians.'






CHAPTER XIV

THE MARCH OF THE THOUSAND

1860

Origin of the Expedition--Garibaldi at Marsala--Calatafimi--The
Taking of Palermo--Milazzo--The Bourbons evacuate Sicily.


During the journey from Turin to Genoa, Garibaldi was occupied in
opening, reading and tearing up into small pieces an enormous mass of
letters, while his English companion spent the time in vainly
speculating as to what this vast correspondence was about. When they
approached Genoa, the floor of the railway carriage resembled a
gigantic wastepaper basket. It was only afterwards that Lawrence
Oliphant guessed the letters to be responses to a call for volunteers
for Sicily.

The origin of the Sicilian expedition has been related in various
ways; there is the version which attributes it entirely to Cavour, and
the version which attributes it to not irresponsible personages in
England. The former was the French and Clerical official account; the
latter has always obtained credence in Germany and Russia. For
instance, the late Duke Ernest of Saxe-Coburg said that 'the mystery
of how 150,000 men were vanquished by a thousand Red-shirts was
wrapped in English bank-notes!' Of this theory, it need only be said
that the notion of Lord Palmerston (for it comes to that) supporting a
foreign revolution out of the British exchequer is not one that
commends itself to the belief of the average Englishman. With regard
to the other theory--namely, that Cavour 'got up' the Sicilian
expedition, it has been favoured to a certain degree, both by his
friends and foes; but it will not bear careful examination. As far as
Sicily goes (Naples is another thing), the most that can be brought
home to Cavour is a complicity of toleration; and even this statement
should be qualified by the addition, 'after the act.' It is true that,
in the early days after Villafranca, he had exclaimed: 'They have cut
me off from making Italy from the north, by diplomacy; very well, I
will make her from the south, by revolution!' True, also, that
earlier still, in 1856, he expressed the opinion, shared by every man
of common sense, that while the Bourbons ruled over the Two Sicilies
there would be no real peace for Italy. Nevertheless, in April 1860,
he neither thought the time ripe for the venture nor the means
employed adequate for its accomplishment. He was afraid that Garibaldi
would meet with the death of the Bandieras and Pisacane. No one was
more convinced than Cavour of the importance of Garibaldi's life to
Italy; and it is a sign of his true superiority of mind that this
conviction was never entertained more strongly than at the moment when
the general was passionately inveighing against him for the cession of
Nice. To Cavour such invectives seemed natural, and even justified
from one point of view; they excited in him no bitterness, and he was
only too happy that they fell upon himself and not upon the King,
since it was his fixed idea that, without the maintenance of a good
understanding between Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, Italy would not
be made. Few men under the sting of personal attacks have shown such
complete self-control.

As has been stated, when Francis II. ascended the Neapolitan throne,
he was invited to join in the war with Austria, and he refused. Since
then, the same negative result had attended the reiterated counsels of
reform which the Piedmontese Government sent to that of Naples--the
young King showing, by repeated acts, that not Sardinia but Rome was
his monitress and chosen ally in Italy. The Pope had lately induced
the French General Lamoricière to take the command of the Pontifical
troops, and he and the King of Naples were organising their armies,
with a view to co-operating at an early date against the common enemy
at Turin. In January 1860, Lord Russell wrote to Mr Elliot, the
English Minister at Naples: 'You will tell the King and his Ministers
that the Government of her Majesty the Queen does not intend to accept
any part in the responsibility nor to guarantee the certain
consequences of a misgovernment which has scarcely a parallel in
Europe.' Mr Elliot replied, early in March: 'I have used all
imaginable arguments to convince this Government of the necessity of
stopping short on the fatal path which it has entered. I finished by
saying that I was persuaded of the inevitable fall of his Majesty and
the dynasty if wiser counsels did not obtain a hearing, and requested
an audience with the King; since, when the catastrophe occurs, I do
not wish my conscience to reproach me with not having tried all means
of saving an inexperienced Sovereign from the ruin which threatens
him. The Ministers of France and Spain have spoken to the same
effect.' Even Russia advised Francis to make common cause with
Piedmont. In April, Victor Emmanuel wrote to his cousin, 'as a near
relative and an Italian Prince,' urging him to listen while there was
yet time to save something, if not everything. 'If you will not hear
me,' he said, 'the day may come when I shall be obliged to be the
instrument of your ruin!'

It has been said that the Sardinian Government, in tendering similar
advice, hoped for its refusal and contemplated the eventuality hinted
at with the reverse of apprehension. Of course this is true. Yet the
responsibility of declining to take the only course which might by any
possibility have saved him must rest with the King of Naples and not
with Victor Emmanuel and his Ministers. The attempt to make Francis
appear the innocent victim of a diabolical conspiracy will never
succeed, however ingenious are the writers who devote their abilities
to so unfruitful a task.

To trace the real beginning of the expedition we must go back to the
summer of 1859. When the war ended in the manner which he alone had
foreseen, Mazzini projected a revolutionary enterprise in the south
which should restore to the Italian movement its purely national
character and defeat in advance Napoleon's plans for gathering the
Bourbon succession for his cousin, Prince Murat. He sent agents to
Sicily, and notably Francesco Crispi, who, as a native of the island
and a man of resource and quick intelligence, was well qualified to
execute the work of propaganda and to elude the Bourbon police. Crispi
travelled in all parts of Sicily for several months, and in September
he was able to report to Mazzini that the insurrection might be
expected in a few weeks--which proved incorrect, but only as to date.
Mazzini forbade his agents to agitate in favour of a republic; unity
was the sole object to be aimed at; unity in whatever form and at
whatever cost.

In March 1860 he had an interview in London with the man who was to
become the actual initiator of the revolutionary movement in South
Italy. This was Rosalino Pilo, son of the Count di Capaci, and
descended through his mother from the royal house of Anjou, whose
name, Italianised into Gioeni, is still borne by several noble
families in Sicily. Rosalino Pilo, who was now in his fortieth year,
had devoted all his life to his country's liberties. After 1849, when
he was obliged to leave Sicily, he sold his ancestral acres to supply
the wants of his fellow exiles, and help the work of revolutionary
propaganda. Handsome in person, cultivated in mind, ready to give his
life, as he had already given most of what makes life tolerable, to
the Italian cause, he won the affection of all with whom he was
brought in contact, and especially of Mazzini, from whom he parted
after that last interview radiant with hope, and yet with a touch of
sadness in his smile, as if in prevision that the place allotted to
him in the ranks of men was among the sowers, not among the reapers.

Rosalino Pilo believed, as Mazzini believed, that Sicily was ripe for
revolution, but he realised the fact that under existing circumstances
there was an exceeding probability of a Sicilian revolution being
rapidly crushed. It was the tendency of Mazzini's mind to think the
contrary; to put more faith in the people themselves than in any
leader or leaders; to imagine that the blast of the trumpet of an
angered population was sufficient to bring down the walls of all the
citadels of despotism, however well furnished with heavy artillery.
Pilo saw that there was only one man who could give a real chance of
success to a rising in his native island, and that man was Garibaldi.
As early as February he began to write to Caprera, urging the general
to give his co-operation to the projected movement. It is notorious
that the scheme, until almost the last moment, did not find favour
with Garibaldi. In spite of his perilous enterprises, the chief had
never been a courtier of failure, and he understood more clearly than
his correspondent what failure at that particular juncture would have
meant. The ventures of the Bandieras and of Pisacane, similar in their
general plan to the one now in view (though on a smaller scale). ended
in disasters, but disasters that were useful to Italy. A disaster now
would have been ruinous to Italy. Garibaldi's hesitations do not, as
some writers of the extreme party have foolishly assumed, detract from
his merit as victorious leader of the expedition; they only show him
to have been more amenable to political prudence than most people
have supposed.

Rosalino Pilo wrote, finally, that in any case he was determined to go
to Sicily himself to complete the preparations, and he added: 'The
insurrection in Sicily, consider it well, will carry with it that of
the whole south of the peninsula,' by which means not only would the
Muratist plots be frustrated, but also a new army and fleet would
become available for the conquest of independence and the liberation
of Venetia. The writer concluded by wishing the general 'new glories
in Sicily in the accomplishment of our country's redemption.'

True to his word Rosalino Pilo embarked at Genoa on the 24th of March,
on a crazy old coasting vessel, manned by five friendly sailors. He
had with him a single companion, and carried such arms and ammunition
as he had been able to get together. Terrible weather and the
deplorable condition of their craft kept them at sea for fifteen days,
during which time something of great importance happened at Palermo.
On the 4th of April the authorities became aware that arms and
conspirators were concealed in the convent of La Gancia, which was to
have been the focus of the revolution. Troops were sent to besiege the
convent, which they only succeeded in taking after four hours'
resistance; its fall was the signal for a general slaughter of the
inmates, both monks and laymen. The insurrection was thus stifled in
its birth in the capital, but from this time it began to spread in the
country, and when, at last, Rosalino Pilo landed near Messina on the
10th of April, he found that several armed bands were already roving
the mountains, as yet almost unperceived by the Government, which had
gone to sleep again after its exhibition of energy on the 4th. Events
were, however, to awake it from its slumbers, and to cause it to renew
its vigilance. It required all Rosalino Pilo's skill and courage to
sustain the revolution of which he became henceforth the responsible
head, till the fated deliverer arrived.

Pilo's letters, brought back to Genoa by the pilot who guided him to
Sicilian waters, were what decided Garibaldi to go to the rescue.
Some, like Bixio and Bertani, warmly and persistently urged him to
accept the charge; others, like Sirtori, were convinced that the
undertaking was foredoomed, and that its only result would be the
death of their beloved captain: but this conviction did not lessen
their eagerness to share his perils when once he was resolved to go.

Like all born men of action, Garibaldi did not know what doubt was
after he came to a decision. From that moment his mental atmosphere
cleared; he saw the goal and went straight for it. In a surprisingly
short time the expedition was organised and ready to leave. 'Few and
good,' had been the rule laid down by Garibaldi for the enrolments; if
he had chosen he could have taken with him a much more numerous host.
When it was the day to start few they were (according to the most
recent computation the exact number was 1072 men), and they were
certainly good. The force was divided into seven companies, the first
entrusted to the ardent Nino Bixio, who acted in a general way as
second-in-command through both the Sicilian and Neapolitan campaigns,
and the seventh to Benedetto Cairoli, whose mother contributed a large
sum of money as well as three of her sons to the freeing of Southern
Italy. Sirtori, about whom there always clung something of the
priestly vocation for which he had been designed, was the head of the
staff; Türr (the Hungarian) was adjutant-general. The organisation was
identical with that of the Italian army 'to which we belong,' said
Garibaldi in his first order of the day.

One name is missing, that of Medici, who was left behind to take the
command of a projected movement in the Papal States. By whom this plan
was invented is not clear, but simultaneous operations in different
parts of the peninsula had been always a favourite design of the more
extreme members of the Party of Action, and Garibaldi probably yielded
to their advice. All that came of it was the entry into Umbria of
Zambianchi's small band of volunteers, which was promptly repulsed
over the frontier. Medici, therefore, remained inactive till after the
fall of Palermo; he headed the second expedition of 4,000 volunteers
which arrived in time to take part in the final Sicilian battles.

Garibaldi's political programme was the cry of the Hunters of the Alps
in 1859: _Italy and Victor Emmanuel._ Those who were strict
republicans at heart, while abstaining from preaching the republic
till the struggle was over, would have stopped short at the first word
_Italy_. But Garibaldi told Rosalino Pilo, who was of this way of
thinking, that either he marched in the King's name or he did not
march at all. This was the condition of his acceptance, because he
esteemed it the condition on which hung the success of the enterprise,
nay more, the existence of an united Italy.

The Thousand embarked at Quarto, near Genoa, during the night of the
5th of May on the two merchant vessels, the _Piemonte_ and _Lombardo_,
which, with the complicity of their patriotic owner, R. Rubattino, had
been sequestered for the use of the expedition. On hearing of
Garibaldi's departure, Cavour ordered Admiral Persano, whose squadron
lay in the gulf of Cagliari, to arrest the expedition if the steamers
entered any Sardinian port, but to let it go free if they were
encountered on the high seas. Persano asked Cavour what he was to do
if by stress of storms Garibaldi were forced to come into port? The
answer was that 'the Ministry' decided for his arrest, which Persano
rightly interpreted to mean that Cavour had decided the contrary. He
resolved, therefore, not to stop him under any circumstances, but the
case did not occur, for the fairest of May weather favoured the
voyage, and six days after the start the men were quietly landed at
Marsala without let or hindrance from the two Neapolitan warships
which arrived almost at the same time as the _Piemonte_ and
_Lombardo_, an inconceivable stroke of good fortune which, like the
eventful march that was to follow, seems to belong far more to romance
than to history.

On the day before, the British gunboat _Intrepid_ (Captain Marryat),
and the steam vessel _Argus_, had cast anchor in the harbour of
Marsala. Their presence was again and again spoken of by Garibaldi as
the key to the mystery of why he was not attacked. No matter how it
was done--it may have been a mere accident--but it can hardly be
doubted that the English men-of-war did practically cover the landing
of the Thousand. Lord John Russell denied emphatically to the House of
Commons that they were sent there for the purpose, as to this day is
believed by some grateful Italians, and by every Clerical writer who
handles the subject. The British Government had early information of
Italian revolutionary doings, just then, through Sir James Hudson, who
was in communication with men of all shades of opinion, and it is
credible that orders which must necessarily have been secret, were
given to afford a refuge on board English ships to the flying patriots
in the anticipated catastrophe. More than this is not credible, but
the energy shown by Captain Marryat in safeguarding the interests of
the British residents at Marsala caused the Neapolitan ships to delay
opening fire till the very last Red-shirt was out of harm's way on dry
land. Then and then only did they direct their guns on the _Piemonte_
and _Lombardo_, and fire a few shots into the city, which caused no
other damage than the destruction of two casks of wine.

On the 12th, Garibaldi left Marsala for Salemi, a mountain city
approached by a steep, winding ascent, where he was sure of a warm
reception, as it had already taken arms against the Bourbon king.
Hence he promulgated the decree by which he assumed the dictatorship
of Sicily in the name of Victor Emmanuel.

The Neapolitan army numbered from 120,000 to 130,000 men; of these
30,000 were actually in Sicily at the time the Thousand landed at
Marsala, 18,000 being in and about Palermo, and the rest distributed
over the island. At Salemi, Garibaldi reviewed his united forces: he
had been joined by 200 fresh volunteers, and by a fluctuating mass of
Sicilian irregulars, which might be estimated to consist of 2,000 men,
but it increased or decreased along the road, because it was formed of
peasants of the districts traversed, who did not go far from their
homes. These undisciplined bands were not useless, as they gave the
Bourbon generals the idea that Garibaldi had more men than he could
ever really count upon, and also the peasants knew the country well.
When they came under fire they behaved better than anyone would have
expected. The first batch joined the Thousand half-way between Marsala
and Salemi. There might have been fifty of them, dressed in
goat-skins, and armed with the old flint muskets and rusty pistols
dear to the Sicilian heart, which he would not for the world leave
behind were he going no farther than to buy a lamb at the fair. The
feudal lord marched at the head of his uncouth retainers--a company
of bandits in an opera--yet, to Garibaldi, they seemed the blessed
assurance that this people whom he was come to save was ready and
willing to be saved. He received the poor little band with as much
rapture as if it had been a powerful army, and, in their turn, the
impressionable islanders were enraptured by the affability of the man
whom the population of Sicily soon came seriously to consider as a new
Messiah. It is a fact that the people of Southern Italy did believe
that Garibaldi had in him something superhuman, only the Bourbon
troops looked rather below than above for the source of it. The
picturesque incidents of the historic march were many; one other may
be mentioned. While the chief watered his horse at a spring a
Franciscan friar threw himself on his knees, and implored to be
allowed to follow him. Some of the volunteers thought the friar a
traitor in disguise, but larger in faith, Garibaldi said: 'Come with
us, you will be our Ugo Bassi.' Fra Pantaleo proved of no small use to
the expedition.

A glance at the map makes clear the military situation. Garibaldi's
objective was Palermo, and if anything shows his genius as a
Condottiere it is this immediate determination to make straight for
the capital where the largest number of the enemy's troops was massed,
instead of seeking an illusionary safety for his weak army in the open
country. As the crow flies the distance from Marsala to Palermo is not
more than sixty or seventy miles, but the routes being mountainous,
the actual ground to be covered is much longer. About midway lies
Calatafimi, where all the roads leading from the eastern coast to
Palermo converge, and above it towers the immensely strong position
called Pianto dei Romani, from a battle in which the Romans were
defeated. These heights command a vast prospect, and here General
Landi, with 3,000 men and four pieces of artillery, prepared to
intercept the Garibaldians with every probability of driving them back
into the sea.

The royal troops took the offensive towards ten o'clock on the 15th of
May. They met the Red-shirts half way down the mountain, but were
driven up it again, inch by inch, till, at about three o'clock, they
were back at Pianto dei Romani. A final vigorous assault dislodged
them from this position, and they retreated in disorder to Calatafimi.
Not wishing to tempt fortune further for that day, Garibaldi
bivouacqued on the field of battle. In a letter written to Bertani, on
the spur of the moment, he bore witness with a sort of fatherly pride
to the courage displayed by the Neapolitans: 'It was the old
misfortune,' he said, 'a fight between Italians; but it proved to me
what can be done with this family when united. The Neapolitan
soldiers, when their cartridges were exhausted, threw stones at us in
desperation.' How then, with much superior numbers and a seemingly
impregnable position, did they end in ignominious flight? The answer
may be found in the reply given to Bixio, bravest of the brave, who
yet feared, at one hotly-contested point, that retreat was inevitable.
'Here,' retorted the chief,'we _die_.' Men who really mean to conquer
or die can do miracles.

The moral effect of the victory was tremendous. The world at large had
made absolutely sure of the destruction of the expedition. 'Garibaldi
has chosen to go his own way,' said Victor Emmanuel; 'but if you only
knew the fright I was in about him and the brave lads with him!' In
Sicily, where the insurrectionary activity of April was almost totally
spent, the news sent an electric shock of revolution through the
whole island. In the mountains Rosalino Pilo still resisted, weary of
waiting for the help that came not, discouraged or hopeless, but
unyielding. Food and ammunition were almost gone; his ragged band,
held together only by the magnetism of his personal influence, began
to feel the pangs of hunger. A price was set on his head, and he was
harassed on all sides by the Neapolitan troops, whose attacks became
more frequent now that the Government realised that there was danger.
He knew nothing of Garibaldi's movements; but he was resolved to keep
his promise as long as he could: to hold out till the chief came. At
the hour when everything looked most desperate, a messenger arrived in
his camp with a letter in Garibaldi's handwriting, which bore the date
of the 16th of May. 'Yesterday,' it ran, we fought and conquered.'
Never was unexpected news more welcome. Filled with a joy such as few
men have tasted, Rosalino read the glad tidings to his men. 'The cause
is won,' he said. 'In a few days, if the enemy's balls respect me, we
shall be in Palermo.'

Meanwhile Garibaldi had occupied Calatafimi, and was proceeding
towards Monreale, from which side he contemplated a descent on the
capital. On the high tableland of Renda he met Rosalino Pilo with his
reanimated band. That day the Garibaldian army, all told, amounted to
5,000 men. On the 21st of May, Rosalino was ordered to make a
reconnaissance in the direction of Monreale; while carrying out this
order a Neapolitan bullet struck his forehead, causing almost
instantaneous death. 'I am happy to be able to give my blood to Italy,
but may heaven be propitious once for all,' he had written when he
first landed, words realised to the letter.

The Neapolitans were put in high spirits by Rosalino Pilo's death; the
discomfiture of Calatafimi was forgotten; they represented Garibaldi
as a mouse that was obligingly walking into a well-laid trap. In fact,
his position could not have been more critical, but he had recourse to
a stratagem which saved him. He succeeded in placing the enemy upon a
completely false scent. Abandoning the idea of reaching Palermo from
the east (Monreale), he decided to attempt the assault from the south
(Piana de' Greci and Misilmeri), but, all the while, he continued to
throw the Sicilian _Picciotti_ on the Monreale route, and gave them
orders to fire stray shots in every direction and to light innumerable
camp-fires. These troops frequently came in contact with the
Neapolitans in trifling skirmishes, and kept their attention so well
occupied that General Colonna, in command of the force sent in search
of the 'Filibuster,' did not doubt that the whole Garibaldian army was
concentrated over Monreale. Garibaldi rapidly moved his own column by
night to its new base of operations. The ground was steep and
difficult, and a storm raged all the night; fifteen years later he
declared that none of his marches in the virgin forests of America was
so arduous as this. While the Neapolitans remained in ignorance of
these changes, three English naval officers, guided by a sort of
sporting dog's instinct, happened to be driving through the village of
Misilmeri just after Garibaldi established his headquarters in that
neighbourhood. Of course it was by chance; still, Misilmeri is an odd
place to go for an afternoon drive, and the escapade ended in the
issue of a severe warning to Her Majesty's officers and marines to
keep in future 'within the bounds of the sentinels of the royal
troops.' Luckily record exists of the experiences of Lieutenant Wilmot
and his two companions at Misilmeri. Garibaldi, on hearing that three
English naval officers were in the village, sent to invite them to the
vineyard where he was taking his dinner. They found him standing in a
large enclosure in the midst of a group of followers who all, like
himself, wore the legendary red flannel shirt and grey trousers. Fra
Pantaleo's brown habit formed the only exception. Several Hungarian
officers were present, and by his father stood Menotti, then a stout
youth of nineteen, with his arm in a sling from the severe wound he
received at Calatafimi. Around were soldiers who looked like mere
boys. They gazed with delight on the English uniforms. Garibaldi
requested his guests to be seated and to partake of some
freshly-gathered strawberries. He spoke of his affection and respect
for England, and said it was his hope soon to make the acquaintance of
the British admiral. He mentioned how he had seen and admired from the
heights the beautiful effect of the salutes fired in honour of the
Queen's birthday, two days before. He then retired into his tent, made
of an old blanket stretched over pikes; a child, under the name of a
sentry, paced before it to keep off the crowd.

To complete the deception of the enemy the Garibaldian artillery,
under Colonel Orsini, was ordered to make a retrograde march on
Corleone previous to joining the main force at Misilmeri. Orsini
narrowly escaped getting caught while executing this movement, and for
the sake of celerity was obliged to throw his five cannon (including
one taken at Calatafimi) down deep water courses. He returned to pull
them out again when the immediate danger was past. General Colonna,
who followed him closely, was convinced that the whole of the
Garibaldians were in disorderly retreat as witnessed by the mules and
waggons purposely abandoned by Orsini along the route. For four days
Colonna believed that he had Garibaldi flying before him, and sent
intelligence to that effect to Naples, whence it was published through
the world. On the fifth day he was immeasurably surprised by hearing
that Garibaldi had entered Palermo!

It was at early dawn on Whitsunday, the 27th of May, that Garibaldi
reached the threshold of the capital, and after overcoming the guard
at Ponte dell' Ammiraglio, pushed on to Porta Termini, the strategic
key to the city. The royalists, though taken by surprise in the first
instance, had time to dispose a strong force behind walls and
barricades before Garibaldi could reach the gate, and it required two
hours of severe fighting to take the position. Many Red-shirts were
killed, and Benedetto Cairoli received the severe wound from which he
never wholly recovered. Success, however, was complete, and the
Palermitans got up to find, to their frantic joy, the Liberator within
their gates. According to the old usage their first impulse was to run
to the belfries in order to sound the tocsin, but they found that the
royalists had removed the clappers of the bells. Nothing daunted, they
beat the bells all day with hammers and other implements, and so
produced an indescribable noise which had a material influence on the
nerves of the terrified Neapolitan troops. Being disarmed, the only
other help which the inhabitants could render to their deliverers was
the erection of barricades.

Even after Garibaldi's entry, it is thought that General Lanza could
have crushed him in the streets by sheer force of superiority in
numbers and artillery had he made proper use of his means. However, at
about three p.m., he chose the less heroic plan of ordering the castle
and the Neapolitan fleet to bombard the city. Most of his staff
opposed the decision, and one officer broke his sword, but Lanza was
inexorable. The measure so exasperated the Palermitans that even had
it achieved its end for the moment, never after would they have proved
governable from Naples. Thirteen hundred shells were thrown into the
city. Lord Palmerston denounced the bombardment and its attendant
horrors as 'unworthy of our time and of our civilisation.' The
soldiers helped the work by setting fire to some quarters of the city.
Among the spots where the shells fell in most abundance was the
convent of the Sette Angeli. The Garibaldians escorted the nuns to a
place of safety and carried their more valuable possessions after
them. The good sisters were charmed by the courtesy with which the
young Italians performed these duties.

Fighting in the streets went on more or less continuously, and the
liberators kept their ground, but every hour brought fresh perils. A
Bavarian regiment arrived to reinforce General Lanza, and the return
of the Neapolitan column from Corleone was momentarily expected. The
Garibaldians, and this was the gravest fact of all, had used almost
their last cartridge. The issue of the struggle was awaited with
varying sentiments on board the English, French, Austrian, Spanish and
Sardinian warships at anchor in the bay. Admiral Mundy had placed his
squadron so close to the land that the ships were in danger of
suffering from the bombardment, a course attributed to the humane
desire to afford a refuge for non-combatants, and in fact, the
officers were soon engaged in entertaining a frightened crowd of
ladies and children. The _Intrepid_ in particular, was so near the
Marina that a fair swimmer could have reached it in a few minutes;
nobody guessed, least of all Garibaldi, that her mission in the mind
of the British admiral was to save the chiefs own life in what seemed
the likely case of its being placed in peril.

Admiral Mundy begged the authorities to stop the bombardment before
the city was destroyed, but Lanza appeared to have no intention of
yielding to his counsels, and it is still uncertain what at last
induced him on the 30th of May to sue the Filibuster, hastily
transformed into his Excellency, for an armistice of twenty-four
hours. 'God knows,' writes Garibaldi, 'if we had want of it!' The
royalists had lost nearly the whole city except the palace and its
surroundings, and, cut off from the sea, they began to feel a scarcity
of food, but not to a severe extent. It seems most probable that with
his men panic-stricken and constantly driven back in spite of the
bombardment, Lanza looked upon the game as lost, when had he known the
straits to which the Garibaldians were reduced for ammunition, he
might have considered it as won.

An unforeseen incident now occurred; the royalist column, recalled
from Corleone, which was largely composed of Bavarians, reached Porta
Termini and opened a furious fire on the weak Garibaldian detachment
stationed there. Was it ignorance or bad faith? Lieutenant Wilmot, who
happened to be passing by, energetically waved his handkerchief and
shouted that a truce was concluded; the assailants continued the
attack till an officer of the Neapolitan staff who was in conference
with Garibaldi at the time hurried to the spot, at his indignant
request, and ordered them to desist. A few minutes later, Garibaldi
himself rode up in a wrathful mood, and while he was renewing his
protests, a shell fell close by him, thrown from a ship which
re-opened the bombardment on its own account. Lieutenant Wilmot, who
witnessed the whole affair, was convinced that there was a deliberate
plan to surprise and capture the Italian chief after he had granted
the armistice.

At a quarter past two on this eventful day, the 30th of May 1860,
Garibaldi and the Neapolitan generals, Letizia and Chretien, stepped
on board the flag-ship _Hannibal_ which Admiral Mundy offered as
neutral ground for their meeting. Curiously enough, both parties,
reaching the mole simultaneously, were rowed out in the same ship's
boat, which was waiting in readiness. The Neapolitans insisted that
Garibaldi should go on board first, either from courtesy or, as the
admiral suspected, out of desire to find out whether he would be
received with military honours. With instinctive tact he had donned
his old and rather shabby uniform of a major-general in the Sardinian
army; the admiral's course was, therefore, marked out, and Garibaldi
received the same salute as the two generals who followed him. After a
foolish attempt on the part of the Neapolitan officers to make
themselves disagreeable, which was repressed with dignified decision
by Admiral Mundy, business began, and things went smoothly till the
fifth article of the proposed convention came under discussion: 'That
the municipality should direct a humble petition to his Majesty the
King expressing the real wants of the city.' 'No,' cried Garibaldi,
starting to his feet, 'the time for humble petitions to the King, or
to anyone else, is past; I am the municipality, and I refuse.' General
Letizia grew excited at this declaration, but afterwards he agreed to
submit the question of quashing the fifth article to his chief,
General Lanza. The armistice was prolonged till nine the next morning.

As soon as he was back on shore, Garibaldi issued a manifesto, in
which he announced that he had refused a proposal dishonouring the
city, and that to-morrow, at the close of the armistice, he should
renew hostilities. There was a splendid audacity in the threat; his
powder was literally exhausted; nothing was left for him to do but to
die with all his men, and to do this he and they were unquestionably
ready. The conduct of the citizens was on a level with the occasion.
As soon as the manifesto came to be known, the inhabitants rushed to
the Palazzo Pretorio, where the man who had so proudly answered in
their name, addressed them in these terms: 'People of Palermo; the
enemy has made me propositions which I judged humiliating to you, and
knowing that you are ready to bury yourselves under the ruins of your
city, I refused.' Those who were present say that never did Garibaldi
seem so great as at that moment. The answer was one deafening shout,
in which the women and children joined, of 'War! war!' In the evening
the city was illuminated as on a feast-day.

Once more in history, the game of greatly daring succeeded. Appalled
by the reports of the dreadful threats emanating from a population
without arms, and a handful of volunteers without powder, distrustful
henceforth of the courage of his soldiers, and, if the truth must
be told, of the fidelity of his fleet, Lanza sent General Letizia
to Garibaldi betimes, on the 31st of May, with an unconditional
demand for the continuance of the armistice. A convention was drawn up,
which conceded the fullest liberty to the royalists to supply their
material wants, succour the wounded, and, if they desired, embark
them on board ships with their families for Naples. Garibaldi, always
humane, had a special tenderness for the victims of that civil strife
which his soul abhorred, and he never forgot that the enemy was his
fellow-countryman. His influence sufficed to secure to the royal
troops an immunity from reprisals which was the more creditable
because some horrid crimes had been done by miscreants in their ranks
when they found that they were getting the worst of it in the
street-fighting. Unfortunately the same mercy was not extended to some
of the secret agents of Maniscalco, head of the Sicilian police, who,
discovered in hiding-places by the mob, were murdered before any
protection could be given them. At the time the act of barbarity was
judged, even by English observers, with more leniency than it deserved
(because cruelty can have _no_ excuse), so great was the disgust
excited by the most odious system of espionage ever put in practice.

The convention bore the signatures of 'Ferdinando Lanza,
General-in-Chief,' and of 'Francesco Crispi, Secretary of State to the
Provisional Government of Sicily.' One article provided for the
consignment of the Royal Mint to the victors; a large sum was stored
in its coffers, and Garibaldi found himself in the novel position of
being able to pay his men and the Sicilian _squadre_, and to send
large orders for arms and ammunition to the Continent.

General Letizia made two journeys to Naples, and on his return from
the second he came invested with full powers to treat with Garibaldi
for the evacuation of the city. On the 7th of June, 15,000 royal
troops marched down to the Marina to the ships that were to take them
away. At the entrance of the Toledo, the great main street of Palermo,
Menotti Garibaldi was on guard, on a prancing black charger, with a
few other Red-shirts of his own age around him, and before this group
of boys defiled the might and pomp of the disciplined army to which
King Bomba had given the thoughtful care of a life-time.

The closing formalities which wound up these events at Palermo formed a
fitting ending to the dramatic scenes which have been briefly narrated.
On the 19th, General Lanza went on board the _Hannibal_ to take leave of
the British admiral. He was covered with decorations and attended by his
brilliant personal staff. There, in the beautiful bay, lay the ship on
board which he was to sail at sunset, and twenty-four steam transports
were also there, each filled with Neapolitan troops. The defeated
general was deeply moved as he walked on to the quarter-deck. 'We have
been unfortunate,' he said--words never spoken by one officer of
unquestioned personal courage to another without striking a responsive
chord. When he quitted the _Hannibal_, the English admiral ordered the
White Flag of the King of the Two Sicilies to be hoisted at the
foretop-gallant masthead for the last time in Sicilian waters; and a
salute of nineteen guns, the salute due to the direct representative or
_alter ego_ of a sovereign, speeded the parting guest. Thus, wrapped in
the dignity of misfortune, vanished the last semblance of the graceless
and treacherous thraldom of the Spanish Bourbons in the capital of
Sicily. The flag of Italy was run up on the tower of the Semaphore.
Everywhere the revolution triumphed except at Messina, Milazzo and
Syracuse. Even Catania, where a rising had been put down after a
sanguinary struggle, was now evacuated and left to itself.

So the 20th of June dawned, and the Queen's ships in the harbour put
forth all their bravery of flags in commemoration of her accession,
which display was naturally interpreted by the Palermitans as a
compliment to the Dictator, who had fixed that day for calling on the
British, French and Sardinian admirals and on the captain of the
United States frigate _Iroquois_. With what honours the American
captain received him is not recorded; for certain it was with cordial
goodwill; of the others, Admiral Mundy treated him as on the previous
occasion; the French admiral affected to consider him a 'simple
monsieur' who had unexpectedly come to call, whilst Admiral Persano,
on board the _Maria Adelaide_, gave him a salute of nineteen guns,
which formed a virtual recognition on the part of Piedmont of his
assumption of the dictatorship. Cavour had ordered Persano to act on
his own responsibility as the exigencies of the hour demanded, and the
admiral knew that these vague instructions assigned him a more
vigorous policy than the other ministers would have agreed to
officially. His bold initiative was therefore justified. As some
severe words will have to be said of Persano in a later chapter, it is
well to remark here that during his Sicilian command he behaved like a
thorough patriot, although it was not in his power to render such
great moral services to freedom as were undoubtedly rendered by
Admiral Mundy, who at the same time acted with so much tact that his
neutrality was not impugned, and he even won the equal personal
gratitude of both parties. On the other hand, the Austrian commodore,
Baron von Wüllersdorf, succeeded in pleasing no one and no one pleased
him. He did not expect that the Garibaldians would lose much love to
him, but he took it unkindly that the royalists fired at his boat with
himself in it, and the Austrian flag at the stern. In high dudgeon he
related this grievance to his British colleague, who gently suggested
that since Austria had always supported the Bourbon system of
Government, it was hardly strange if the royalists were hurt at
receiving neither assistance nor even sympathy from the Austrian
squadron which witnessed their destruction. The remark was acute; even
Austria was, in fact, tired of the Bourbons of Naples; a portent of
their not distant doom. But it was not likely that the royalists
should appreciate the phlegmatic attitude of their erewhile
protectors.

The concluding military operations in Sicily presented a more arduous
task than, in the first flush of success, might have been anticipated.
In the general panic, one, if one only, royalist officer, Colonel Del
Bosco, turned round and stood at bay. His spirited course was not far
from undoing all that had been done. Fortunately Garibaldi had
received important reinforcements. General Medici touched the Sicilian
shores three days after the evacuation of Palermo with 3500
volunteers, well-armed and equipped out of the so-called 'Million
Rifle Fund,' which was formed by popular subscription in the north of
Italy. The Dictator went as far as Alcamo to meet the hero of the last
glorious fight of Rome, whom he greeted with delight and affection.
Later, arrived the third and last expedition, consisting of 1500 men
under Cosenz, till recently commander-in-chief of the Italian army.
The Sicilian _squadre_ had been brought into something like military
organisation; and an Englishman, Colonel Dunne, had raised a picked
corps of 400 Palermitans which contained, besides its commander,
between thirty and forty of his countrymen, and was hence called the
English Regiment. This battalion was ready to do anything and go
anywhere; it performed excellent work both in Sicily and on the
mainland.[5]

Garibaldi arranged his forces in three divisions; one, under Türr, was
sent to Catania; the second, under Bixio, to Girgenti; the third,
under Medici, was to follow the northern sea-coast towards Messina,
the strongest position still in the enemy's hands. All three were
ultimately to converge with a view to the grand object of crossing
over to the mainland. Medici had 2500 men; the royalists in and about
Messina could dispose of 15,000. The Garibaldians did not expect much
opposition till they got near Messina, but when they reached
Barcelona they heard that the garrison of Milazzo had been reinforced
by Del Bosco with 4000 men, with the evident design of cutting off
their passage to Messina. It is said that this move was made in
consequence of direct communications between that officer and Francis
II., whose ministers had already decided to abandon the whole island.
But Del Bosco secretly assured his King that such a measure was not
necessary, and that he would undertake not only to bar Medici's
advance, but to march over the dead bodies of the Garibaldians to
Palermo. Milazzo is a small hilly peninsula, on which stands a fort
and a little walled city. The spot was well chosen. On the 17th of
July, Del Bosco attacked the Garibaldian right, and it was not without
difficulty that Medici retained his positions. Some further
reinforcements were sent to Del Bosco from Messina, though not so
numerous as they ought to have been, but they would have almost
ensured him the victory had not Medici also received help; Cosenz'
column, and, yet more important, Garibaldi himself with the 1000 men
he had kept in Palermo, hastening at full speed to the rescue. The
belligerents were, for once, about equally balanced in numbers when on
the 20th of July Garibaldi attacked Del Bosco with the purpose of
driving him on to the tongue of the peninsula, thus cutting him off
from Messina and leaving the road open. A desperate engagement
followed. The Neapolitans showed that they could fight if they were
properly led, and inflicted a loss of 800 in killed and wounded (heavy
out of a total of 5000) on their gallant opponents. Garibaldi's own
life was nearly sacrificed. He was standing in a field of prickly
pears in conversation with Major Missori when a party of the enemy's
cavalry rode up, the captain of which dealt a violent blow at him with
his sword, without knowing who it was. Garibaldi coolly parried the
blow, and struck down his assailant, while Missori shot the three
nearest dragoons with his revolver. Hearing the noise, other
Garibaldians hurried up, and the chief was saved. For a long time the
issue of the battle remained uncertain, and it was only after hours of
severe fighting that Del Bosco was compelled to recognise his defeat,
and to take refuge on the projecting strip of land as Garibaldi had
meant that he should do.

A few days later, four transports arrived in the bay of Milazzo to
carry Del Bosco and his men to Naples. The ministry had prevailed, and
the complete abandonment of the island was decreed. General Clary,
commandant of Messina, informed Garibaldi that he had orders to
evacuate the town and its outlying forts; the citadel would be also
handed over if the Dictator would engage not to cross to the mainland,
but this conditional offer was declined. The citadel of Messina
therefore remained in the power of the royalists, but on agreement
that it should not resume hostilities unless attacked. It only
capitulated in March 1861. Garibaldi reigned over the rest of the
island. The convention was signed on the 28th of July by Marshal
Tommaso de Clary for the King of Naples, and Major-General Giacomo
Medici for the Dictator.

Before following Garibaldi across the Straits, some allusion is called
for to the general political situation both in Sicily and in Italy.
And first as regards Sicily. When a government is pulled down another
must be set up, and the last task is often not the easiest. Garibaldi
appointed a ministry in which the ruling spirit was Francesco Crispi.
A Sicilian patriot from his youth, and one of the Thousand, he has
been judged the man best fitted to direct the helm of United Italy in
days of unexampled difficulty. This is enough to prove that he was not
the first-come ignoramus or madman that some people then liked to
think him. But Crispi had the art of making enemies, nor has he lost
it. Though volumes have been written on the civil administration under
the dictatorship, the writers' judgments are so warped by their
political leanings that it is not easy to get at the truth. It would
have been strange had no confusion existed, had no false steps been
made; yet some of the old English residents in Sicily say that the
island made more real progress during the few months of Garibaldi's
reign than in all the years that have followed. Towards the end of
June, Garibaldi appointed Agostino Depretis as Pro-Dictator. Of the
many decrees formulated and measures adopted at this period,
Garibaldi, who had many other things to think of, was personally
responsible only for those of a philanthropic nature. Busy as he was,
he found time to inquire minutely into the State of the population of
Palermo, and he was horrified at the ignorance and misery in which the
poorer classes were plunged. Forthwith, out came a bushel-basket of
edicts and appeals on behalf of these poor children of the sun. He
visited the orphan asylum and found that eighty per cent. of the
inmates died of starvation. One nurse had to provide for the wants of
four infants. Garibaldi wrote off an address to the ladies of Palermo,
in which he implored them to interest themselves in the wretched
little beings created in the image of God, at the sight of whose
wasted and puny bodies he, an old soldier, had wept. He had money and
food distributed every morning to the most destitute, at the gates of
the royal palace, where he lived with a frugality that scandalised the
aged servants of royalty whom he kept, out of kindness, at their
posts. Theoretically, he disapproved of indiscriminate almsgiving, but
in the misery caused by the recent bombardment, such theories could
not be strictly applied, or, at any rate, Garibaldi was not the man to
so apply them; whence it happened that though, as _de facto_ head of
the State, he allowed himself a civil list of eight francs a day, the
mo