Unity Half Won
1858-1860. AETAT 53-55
The war of 1859--At Florence--Plans for the
South--Garibaldi's Expedition--Projected raid into
Umbria--At Naples.
Mazzini returned to England, weary and sad, but not discouraged, and
convinced that success was only a question of opportunity and
management. He recognised how strongly the tide was setting towards
the royalists, but he still thought he had the working classes with
him. Cavour's double play and the cruel repression of the Genoese plot
left him bitterer than ever against the monarchy and its men. "I have
never loved you," he wrote in an open letter to the premier; "now I
despise you." He attacked more angrily still the fast-cementing
alliance with France. The Emperor was maturing his plans to drive the
Austrians out of Italy. It was not, as Mazzini thought, mere policy
alone that moved him. No doubt, his waning prestige at home, and the
fear that another Orsini might arise, both had their influence; but he
was still true in a way to his nationalist ideals, and since he had
sacrificed Poland to the Russian alliance, he was the more eager to
free Italy and Hungary. Mazzini, through his private channels of
information, was among the first to have an inkling of the compact
between Cavour and the Emperor at Plombières, but, as usual, his
information was inaccurate. He believed, quite wrongly, as we know
now, that they had agreed to leave Venetia to Austria and give Central
Italy to Prince Napoleon, and that Cavour had offered to surrender the
parliamentary liberties of Piedmont as the price of Lombardy; he had
no knowledge that Napoleon had promised that half the Pope's territory
should pass to Victor Emmanuel's crown.
Events moved fast. In the spring of 1859, thanks to Cavour's
unscrupulous but supremely skilful diplomacy, war was imminent, and
all Italy was fretting for it. Cavour was hardy and shrewd enough to
use the revolutionary elements, on whose value Mazzini had laid
insistent stress. The volunteers flocked to Piedmont with Garibaldi
for their general, and, except for Mazzini and Crispi and a stranded
handful, the republicans declared definitely for Victor Emmanuel's
leadership. Even Mazzini was sometimes carried by the tide. He told
his English friends that royalists and republicans were aiming equally
at Unity; he appealed to the Piedmontese statesmen to pronounce for
the greater policy, and if the French alliance broke down, he was
prepared to support them. But he could not reconcile himself to the
hated Emperor's help. Shutting his eyes to the hard facts, he thought
that Piedmont could defeat Austria with no other allies than the
hesitating revolutionaries of Hungary. To ask assistance from a despot
blighted the country's self-respect; to win its freedom, save by its
own unaided strength, dishonoured it at the birth; and it were small
gain to change the tyranny of Austria for the domineering patronage of
France. "I am equally hostile to Austria and to Napoleon," he wrote;
"and my double aim is to get rid, if possible, of both." When war was
declared, Cavour and he both said, "the die is cast"; Cavour added,
"we have made history," Mazzini "we are beaten." But when the fighting
began, when, in spite of his previsions, the enthusiasm swept through
the land, and for a moment Louis Napoleon was, next to the king and
Garibaldi, the hero of his countrymen, he could not hold back. Be it
right or wrong, the best must be made of the war; it might yet, in the
end, make Italy. Modena and Parma, Romagna and Tuscany had driven out
their princes and declared for Victor Emmanuel's rule. While the
armies were winning Lombardy and Venetia, he wished to see the popular
forces overrun all the Centre and make an end of the Temporal Power.
He appealed to his friends at Naples to revolutionise the South,
though he urged that they should not annex themselves to Piedmont,
while the war lasted. After Solferino he was very hopeful. "The
Austrian domination in Italy," he said, "is at an end."
Suddenly came the great betrayal of Villafranca. Louis Napoleon,
afraid of defeat in Venetia, afraid of an attack from Prussia,
repentant of his promises to Cavour, made peace with Austria, and
abandoned Venetia to the enemy and Central Italy to the fugitive
princes. Mazzini took credit for prophesying it; and what came of the
Emperor's timidity and the real difficulties of the situation, he
regarded as the pre-determined treachery of Plombières. Relying again
on his imperfect private information, he thought he had discovered an
understanding between France and Russia to partition Europe into
spheres of influence, and that Villafranca was a prelude to a triple
alliance of the three Empires. He fulminated against "the European
_coup d'état_"; he appealed to English fears, and preached a league of
England, Prussia, and the smaller states in defence of Italian
freedom. At home he urged a truce to party feeling and the completing
of the work in despite of France and Austria. He voiced the feeling of
the country. Cavour had resigned in hot anger at the Emperor's
desertion; but his influence was still very powerful, and he and the
King and the men, who were at the head of affairs at Florence and
Modena, were no less determined than the democrats that at least
Central Italy should be saved. All through the autumn their obstinate
stand baffled the Emperor's half-hearted veto, and pushed on the
feeble men, who now held office at Turin. The key of the position was
at Florence, and Ricasoli, the stark Tuscan baron, who was practically
dictator there, believed with a faith as fearless as Mazzini's own
that Italian Unity, pregnant with mighty issues for the world, was
written in the decrees of God. He too detested Napoleon, and was
determined not to flinch for all his threats.
Mazzini hurried to Florence, and arrived there early in August. The
Piedmontese government, to its shame, had excluded the greatest of
living Italians from the amnesty, which it granted at the beginning of
the war; but Ricasoli allowed Mazzini to remain unmolested, on his
parole that his presence at Florence should not be publicly known.
There was not a little in common between the two men,--both stainless
in their private lives, brave, honest, single-minded patriots. They
were, indeed, too uncompromising to work together; but they sincerely
respected each other, and Ricasoli had none of the narrowness, that
made the Turin statesmen shrink from contact with a democrat.
Mazzini's policy was the same as it had been during the war. The
people must make the movement as far as possible their own. He
addressed to them a rhapsodical appeal to nerve themselves for the
great work. "You are called," he said, "to a task like the tasks of
God, the creation of a people." The free provinces of the Centre must
hold fast to their freedom. Louis Napoleon, he knew, could not enforce
his veto; the Powers would accept accomplished facts; the danger of an
Austrian attack he said little of. At heart, though, he knew that the
perils were thicker than he publicly owned, and he confessed in
private letters that "the position was more than difficult," that, if
the suggested Congress of the Powers met and declared in favour of the
exiled princes, Italy could only make an ineffectual "protest in
action." He almost hoped that Napoleon would use force after all, and
that a war with France would come to simplify the situation.
With a good deal of hesitation, he was prepared to support annexation
to Piedmont. He promised to foment no republican agitation, so long as
the royalists marched towards Unity; and he wrote the King an
irritating but dignified appeal to have done with the subserviency to
France and bid openly for the crown of Italy. "The day you speak this
language," he said, "parties will disappear; there will be only two
living forces in Italy,--the People and yourself." He does not seem
however to have really expected to win him. "The King," he wrote
privately in reference to the letter, "is wavering and weak, but on
him I did not reckon." Victor Emmanuel appears, though, to have read
the appeal and taken it to heart, and perhaps it had its influence on
the events that followed. Mazzini's supreme aim was to spread the
movement for Unity. If the government would not act, the people must
do the work themselves. He wanted to make Tuscany and Romagna the base
for an invasion of the Pope's remaining territory; and then--onward to
Naples and the South. The hope was shared by all the democrats and
many of the moderates; but with Mazzini it meant something even more
than Unity. It meant the triumph of religious liberty at Rome, the
downfall of "the Vicar of the Genius of Evil," the chance that on the
wreck of the Papacy Rome would send forth the gospel of the new
religion. "The liberty of Rome," he wrote, "is the liberty of the
world. If Rome revolts, she must proclaim the victory of God over
Idols, of eternal Truth over Falsehood, the inviolability of the human
conscience." He urged his English and German friends to stir public
opinion against the French occupation of Rome, and put pressure on
Napoleon in the name of the principle of non-intervention.
Meanwhile he sent his agents to prepare a Sicilian rising, and
agitated feverishly for an advance of Garibaldi and the troops of the
Central States into Umbria, which the Papal volunteers had recovered
from the nationalists. He had thoughts of leading the invasion
himself, but he feared that his name "would frighten the mass of the
people," and he humoured Garibaldi by promising to make him the hero
of the movement and "abdicating my own individuality, which is the
easiest part." He won Farini, the dictator of Modena, once a member of
Young Italy, to countenance the raid. He tried to win Ricasoli, but
Ricasoli, though he had threatened to join hands with Mazzini rather
than let Tuscany lose its freedom, knew that the dangers of a forward
movement were too great at present, that if the Pope were attacked,
the outcry of Catholic Europe would compel Napoleon to withdraw his
indispensable, however irritating, patronage, and that Italy would
find herself caught in a hopeless single-handed fight with Austria.
His own strong will and the King's common-sense stopped Garibaldi's
projects. Mazzini, ignorant of the real position, underrated the
difficulties in the way; he never realised the strength of Catholic
opinion, he thought that Austria was not in a position to fight, or
that, if she did, it meant an uprising of all Italy and her eventual
defeat. He charged the King's veto to mere truckling to Napoleon. But
he felt his own powerlessness. He was incensed by the harshness, with
which the government had treated some of his friends, by the
intolerance that drove himself to live in hiding. "To be a prisoner
among our own people is too much to bear." "I have never," he wrote,
"felt so wretched and worn out in mind and soul as at certain moments
now." Ricasoli intimated that he must leave Tuscany, and hopeless of
doing any good there, he left for Lugano and returned to England at
the end of the year.
His ideas had passed to men more competent to execute them. In January
Cavour was again prime minister, resolute to have Unity with Rome for
the capital, prepared, if the Emperor deserted him, to attack Austria,
rouse Hungary in her rear, and, so he hoped in sanguine moments, "go
to Vienna." But he knew how heavy was the stake, and he would keep the
Emperor's protection if he could. When he found that Napoleon would
guarantee the annexation of the free provinces at the price of Nice
and Savoy, he sadly and reluctantly consented to the humiliating
bargain. Mazzini read him by his despatches, and knew nothing of his
real ambitions. He thought that the premier was opposed to Unity, even
to the annexation of Tuscany, that he clung to the French alliance to
safeguard himself from democracy at home. He was indignant at the
cession of Savoy, bartered without reference to the wishes of its
people, still more at the desertion of Italian Nice. He was eager to
drive from office the man, on whom depended the attainment of his
hopes. He was right, however, in thinking that Cavour could not
initiate the revolution in the South, that the government would only
follow up what the free lances began; and he was willing to make the
road easier for it, by promising, when revolution broke out in the
South, to support annexation to Piedmont and leave Rome alone for the
present. He was persuaded that Austria would not attack, and that the
Bourbon army would dissolve or join the insurgents.
The programme seemed so simple, that he hoped to unite all the
democrats upon it. But the saner men among them saw that, as usual,
Mazzini had underrated the danger. They knew that it meant harder
fighting than he supposed, and they dreaded a repetition of his
earlier ill-starred risings. They insisted that, if the volunteers
went to Sicily, Garibaldi must lead them and Cavour's moral support
must be secured. Mazzini was ready to welcome Garibaldi's leadership,
though there was no very cordial feeling between them; but he knew how
reluctant Garibaldi was to go, and he refused to let the movement hang
on any one man's action. Early in March, while Garibaldi was still
hesitating,[26] he sent Rosalino Pilo, a young Sicilian noble, to lead
the insurgents in the island, spending every available shilling of his
own in the preparations. He was terribly overwrought and excited, for
he must have realised something of the tremendous danger and
responsibility; and he travelled to Lugano to be nearer the scene of
action. There he learnt that his long efforts had had their fruit,
that the impatience he had done so much to rouse had borne down
Garibaldi's doubts, and that he and his Thousand had started for
Sicily. "God be praised," he wrote, "Italy is not dead." When the news
came of Garibaldi's victory at Calatafimi, "Sicily saves us," he said,
"Italy will be."
On May 7, two days after Garibaldi started, he arrived at Genoa, still
compelled to live in hiding, and able to see his friends only by
night. Characteristically, he amused himself in leisure moments by
taming sparrows, which came to him at meal-times, followed by two hens
("I have always been fond of hens," he writes), "whom I feed after
dinner, sometimes with bread and wine to strengthen their
constitutions against shocks and adversities." He was not welcomed by
the men who had organised the expedition, and he found himself
regarded as "a self-intruding man," he who was ever ready to take the
risk and give others the honour, who was bracing his frail body only
by sheer sense of duty. "God knows," he wrote, "that morally and
physically exhausted as I am, everything I do is a real effort." But
the suspicion of his motives was inevitable. Absolutely disinterested
as he was, ever ready to spend and be spent, he was again playing an
ill-informed and equivocal part, thrusting in his unwise projects
among the well-laid schemes of shrewder men; and those who had
organised Garibaldi's movement with consummate skill--Bertani and
Medici and Bixio--felt that his independent action might spoil the
game.[27] He clung to his insensate prejudice against Cavour, at a
time when Cavour,--with whatever lapse of political morality,--was
straining every nerve to back Garibaldi and win all Italy. In his
persistent distrust of the government and its connections with the
Emperor, he wanted to act independently of though not in hostility to
the monarchy, and while he urged annexation in Sicily to checkmate the
separatists in the island, he was eager to prevent it on the mainland,
and reserved his freedom to preach his own doctrines there. While
Garibaldi snatched victory after victory against tremendous odds in
Sicily, he was planning a raid into Papal territory, more or less
under his own direction; his volunteers, he hoped, would not only free
the rest of Central Italy and attack the Bourbons from the North, but
would create an influence, independent alike of Cavour and Garibaldi,
which might perhaps in the chapter of accidents upset the monarchy, or
at least compel it to break with France. He did not suspect how
perilous the situation was, that it was still only Louis Napoleon's
protection, that stood between Italy and a terrible conflict with
Austria in the North and Bourbons in the South, with utter disaster as
its almost certain sequel. Ricasoli and, it seems, the King[28] gave
some countenance to the raid, for which Mazzini and Bertani were, with
Garibaldi's approval, completing the preparations. But Cavour knew
that it meant the forfeiture of the Emperor's friendship, and arranged
with Bertani, who was throughout lukewarm for the scheme, terms which
would at all events save his own credit with the Emperor. The force,
which had been destined for the Papal coast, sailed to join Garibaldi
in Sicily. Mazzini either did not know of the agreement or refused to
be bound by it; he went to Florence, where another body of volunteers
was waiting in the neighbourhood ready to cross the frontier, and
intended to lead them to a desperate attack on Perugia. Cavour
insisted that the men should be disbanded, and Ricasoli, tempering
the premier's orders, persuaded them to go to Garibaldi.
Less than a month after, the Piedmontese declared war against the
Pope, and Fanti,--Mazzini's follower once in the days of the Savoy
raid,--overran such of the Pope's remaining territory as was not
occupied by the French. Garibaldi, victoriously advancing from the
South, had entered Naples, and save for Rome and its neighbourhood and
a small district held by the remnants of the Bourbon army, all the
Centre and the South were free. Austria, frightened by Napoleon's
threats, had been a passive spectator, while her allies were crushed.
Italian Unity was nearly won, but the splendid consummation was dashed
by the dread of civil strife. Garibaldi, careless of obstacles, was
impatient to march on to Rome; Cavour knew that that meant war with
France and would have it at no cost. Crispi and Bertani were trying to
organise the South in an opposition to Cavour and his party, that
might easily take a republican colour. Mazzini went to Naples, and
warmly backed them. He urged Garibaldi to go on, though by preference
to Venice rather than to Rome, for he saw now almost as acutely as
Cavour did the danger of a conflict with France. If Garibaldi
advances, he wrote to England, "we shall have Unity within five
months; if he does not, we shall have slumber, then anarchy, then--a
little later--Unity." He appealed to the Neapolitans to save the
principle of popular sovereignty by conditioning their annexation to
Victor Emmanuel's crown with the stipulation that an Italian National
Assembly should meet to draw up a new constitution. The cry was a
futile and dangerous one, for the mass of the people were impatient
for annexation on any terms; and with trouble threatening the young
country on every side, it were madness to throw its future into the
melting-pot of the constitution-mongers. It was easy to paint Mazzini
as an enemy of Unity; and a Neapolitan mob shouted 'death' under the
windows of the man, who had given everything for them. Pallavicino,
the pro-dictator, Manin's old co-worker and Garibaldi's friend,
courteously appealed to him to leave. "Even against your wish," he
said, "you divide us." Mazzini refused to waive an Italian's right to
live on Italian soil; and he was molested no more. Garibaldi
indignantly intervened on his behalf; the King probably protected him.
"Leave Mazzini alone," he had said, "if we make Italy, he is
powerless; if we cannot, let him do it, and I will be _Monsù Savoia_
and clap my hands for him." But Mazzini was bitterly pained and weary
of it all. "I am worn out morally and physically," he wrote; "for
myself the only really good thing would be to have unity achieved
quickly through Garibaldi, and one year before dying of Walham
Green[29] or Eastbourne, long silences, a few affectionate words to
smooth the ways, plenty of sea-gulls, and sad dozing." Early in
November, after a friendly interview with Garibaldi, at which they
laid their schemes for winning Rome and Venice, he left Naples.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] The following letter from Garibaldi has, I believe, not been
published: I have translated it.
CAPRERA, _March 27, '60_.
DEAR MAZZINI,--I am thinking of leaving for Genoa on April 1, from
there I shall go to Nice, where I am summoned by my fellow-citizens,
who are afraid of falling into the wolf's mouth. I enclose two lines
for McAdam [Mr John McAdam of Glasgow]. If you come, let me
know.--Your brother, GIUSEPPE.
_P.S._--Mr Adam of Glasgow will send Mr William Ashurst a sum for the
Million Rifles Fund; please spend it in the purchase of the rifles in
question.--G. GARIBALDI.
[27] Rival funds for Mazzini and Garibaldi were collected in England
and there was some strong feeling between their respective backers.
[28] According to a letter from Mazzini to Brofferio, published in
_Roma e Venezia_, January 15, 1861, (the full text of which I have not
seen), the King seems to have asked for an interview with him, and he
had "no shadow of difficulty in principle" to it.
[29] Where Mr Stansfeld had his brewery and sometimes lived.