Piedmont after 1849--Ministry of Azeglio--Cavour Prime Minister--Designs of
Cavour--His Crimean Policy--Cavour at the Conference of Paris--Cavour and
Napoleon III.--The Meeting at Plombières--Preparations in Italy--Treaty of
January, 1859--Attempts at Mediation--Austrian Ultimatum--Campaign of
1859--Magenta--Movement in Central Italy--Solferino--Napoleon and Prussia
--Interview of Villafranca--Cavour resigns--Peace of Zürich--Central Italy
after Villafranca--The Proposed Congress--"The Pope and the Congress"--
Cavour resumes office--Cavour and Napoleon--Union of the Duchies and the
Romagna with Piedmont--Savoy and Nice added to France--Cavour on this
cession--European opinion--Naples--Sicily--Garibaldi lands at Marsala--
Capture of Palermo--The Neapolitans evacuate Sicily--Cavour and the Party
of Action--Cavour's Policy as to Naples--Garibaldi on the Mainland--Persano
and Villamarina at Naples--Garibaldi at Naples--The Piedmontese Army enters
Umbria and the Marches--Fall of Ancona--Garibaldi and Cavour--The Armies on
the Volturno--Fall of Gaeta--Cavour's Policy with regard to Rome and
Venice--Death of Cavour--The Free Church in the Free State.
[Piedmont after 1849.]
In the gloomy years that followed 1849 the kingdom of Sardinia had stood
out in bright relief as a State which, though crushed on the battle-field,
had remained true to the cause of liberty while all around it the forces of
reaction gained triumph after triumph. Its King had not the intellectual
gifts of the maker of a great State, but he was one with whom those
possessed of such gifts could work, and on whom they could depend. With
certain grave private faults Victor Emmanuel had the public virtues of
intense patriotism, of loyalty to his engagements and to his Ministers, of
devotion to a single great aim. Little given to speculative thought, he saw
what it most concerned him to see, that Piedmont by making itself the home
of liberty could become the Master-State of Italy. His courage on the
battle-field, splendid and animating as it was, distinguished him less than
another kind of courage peculiarly his own. Ignorant and superstitious, he
had that rare and masculine quality of soul which in the anguish of
bereavement and on the verge of the unseen world remains proof against the
appeal and against the terrors of a voice speaking with more than human
authority. Rome, not less than Austria, stood across the path that led to
Italian freedom, and employed all its art, all its spiritual force, to turn
Victor Emmanuel from the work that lay before him. There were moments in
his life when a man of not more than common weakness might well have
flinched from the line of conduct on which he had resolved in hours of
strength and of insight; there were times when a less constant mind might
well have wavered and cast a balance between opposing systems of policy. It
was not through heroic greatness that Victor Emmanuel rendered his
priceless services to Italy. He was a man not conspicuously cast in a
different mould from many another plain, strong nature, but the qualities
which he possessed were precisely those which Italy required. Fortune,
circumstance, position favoured him and made his glorious work possible;
but what other Italian prince of this century, though placed on the throne
of Piedmont, and numbering Cavour among his subjects, would have played the
part, the simple yet all momentous part, which Victor Emmanuel played so
well? The love and the gratitude of Italy have been lavished without stint
on the memory of its first sovereign, who served his nation with qualities
of so homely a type, and in whose life there was so much that needed
pardon. The colder judgment of a later time will hardly contest the title
of Victor Emmanuel to be ranked among those few men without whom Italian
union would not have been achieved for another generation.
[Ministry of Azeglio, 1849-52.]
[Cavour Prime Minister, 1852.]
On the conclusion of peace with Austria after the campaign of Novara, the
Government and the Parliament of Turin addressed themselves to the work of
emancipating the State from the system of ecclesiastical privilege and
clerical ascendency which had continued in full vigour down to the last
year of Charles Albert's reign. Since 1814 the Church had maintained, or
had recovered, both in Piedmont and in the island of Sardinia, rights which
had been long wrested from it in other European societies, and which were
out of harmony with the Constitution now taking root under Victor Emmanuel.
The clergy had still their own tribunals, and even in the case of criminal
offences were not subject to the jurisdiction of the State. The Bishops
possessed excessive powers and too large a share of the Church revenues;
the parochial clergy lived in want; monasteries and convents abounded. It
was not in any spirit of hostility towards the Church that Massimo
d'Azeglio, whom the King called to office after Novara, commenced the work
of reform by measures subjecting the clergy to the law-courts of the State,
abolishing the right of sanctuary in monasteries, and limiting the power of
corporations to acquire landed property. If the Papacy would have met
Victor Emmanuel in a fair spirit his Government would gladly have avoided a
dangerous and exasperating struggle; but all the forces and the passions of
Ultramontanism were brought to bear against the proposed reforms. The
result was that the Minister, abandoned by a section of the Conservative
party on whom he had relied, sought the alliance of men ready for a larger
and bolder policy, and called to office the foremost of those from whom he
had received an independent support in the Chamber, Count Cavour. Entering
the Cabinet in 1850 as Minister of Commerce, Cavour rapidly became the
master of all his colleagues. On his own responsibility he sought and won
the support of the more moderate section of the Opposition, headed by
Rattazzi; and after a brief withdrawal from office, caused by divisions
within the Cabinet, he returned to power in October, 1852, as Prime
Minister.
[Cavour.]
Cavour, though few men have gained greater fame as diplomatists, had not
been trained in official life. The younger son of a noble family, he had
entered the army in 1826, and served in the Engineers; but his sympathies
with the liberal movement of 1830 brought him into extreme disfavour with
his chiefs. He was described by Charles Albert, then Prince of Carignano,
as the most dangerous man in the kingdom, and was transferred at the
instance of his own father to the solitary Alpine fortress of Bard. Too
vigorous a nature to submit to inaction, too buoyant and too sagacious to
resort to conspiracy, he quitted the army, and soon afterwards undertook
the management of one of the family estates, devoting himself to scientific
agriculture on a large scale. He was a keen and successful man of business,
but throughout the next twelve years, which he passed in fruitful private
industry, his mind dwelt ardently on public affairs. He was filled with a
deep discontent at the state of society which he saw around him in
Piedmont, and at the condition of Italy at large under foreign and clerical
rule. Repeated visits to France and England made him familiar with the
institutions of freer lands, and gave definiteness to his political and
social aims. [484] In 1847, when changes were following fast, he founded
with some other Liberal nobles the journal _Risorgimento_, devoted to
the cause of national revival; and he was one of the first who called upon
King Charles Albert to grant a Constitution. During the stormy days of 1848
he was at once the vigorous advocate of war with Austria and the adversary
of Republicans and Extremists who for their own theories seemed willing to
plunge Italy into anarchy. Though unpopular with the mob, he was elected to
the Chamber by Turin, and continued to represent the capital after the
peace. Up to this time there had been little opportunity for the proof of
his extraordinary powers, but the inborn sagacity of Victor Emmanuel had
already discerned in him a man who could not remain in a subordinate
position. "You will see him turn you all out of your places," the King
remarked to his Ministers, as he gave his assent to Cavour's first
appointment to a seat in the Cabinet.
[Plans of Cavour.]
[Cavour's Crimean policy.]
The Ministry of Azeglio had served Piedmont with honour from 1849 to 1852,
but its leader scarcely possessed the daring and fertility of mind which
the time required. Cavour threw into the work of government a passion and
intelligence which soon produced results visible to all Europe. His
devotion to Italy was as deep, as all-absorbing, as that of Mazzini
himself, though the methods and schemes of the two men were in such
complete antagonism. Cavour's fixed purpose was to drive Austria out of
Italy by defeat in the battle-field, and to establish, as the first step
towards national union, a powerful kingdom of Northern Italy under Victor
Emmanuel. In order that the military and naval forces of Piedmont might be
raised to the highest possible strength and efficiency, he saw that the
resources of the country must be largely developed; and with this object he
negotiated commercial treaties with Foreign Powers, laid down railways, and
suppressed the greater part of the monasteries, selling their lands to
cultivators, and devoting the proceeds of sale not to State-purposes but to
the payment of the working clergy. Industry advanced; the heavy pressure of
taxation was patiently borne; the army and the fleet grew apace. But the
cause of Piedmont was one with that of the Italian nation, and it became
its Government to demonstrate this day by day with no faltering voice or
hand. Protection and support were given to fugitives from Austrian and
Papal tyranny; the Press was laid open to every tale of wrong; and when,
after an unsuccessful attempt at insurrection in Milan in 1853, for which
Mazzini and the Republican exiles were alone responsible, the Austrian
Government sequestrated the property of its subjects who would not return
from Piedmont, Cavour bade his ambassador quit Vienna, and appealed to
every Court in Europe. Nevertheless, Cavour did not believe that Italy,
even by a simultaneous rising, could permanently expel the Austrian armies
or conquer the Austrian fortresses. The experience of forty years pointed
to the opposite conclusion; and while Mazzini in his exile still imagined
that a people needed only to determine to be free in order to be free,
Cavour schemed for an alliance which should range against the Austrian
Emperor armed forces as numerous and as disciplined as his own. It was
mainly with this object that Cavour plunged Sardinia into the Crimean War.
He was not without just causes of complaint against the Czar; but the
motive with which he sent the Sardinian troops to Sebastopol was not that
they might take vengeance on Russia, but that they might fight side by side
with the soldiers of England and France. That the war might lead to
complications still unforeseen was no doubt a possibility present to
Cavour's mind, and in that case it was no small thing that Sardinia stood
allied to the two Western Powers; but apart from these chances of the
future, Sardinia would have done ill to stand idle when at any moment, as
it seemed, Austria might pass from armed neutrality into active concert
with England and France. Had Austria so drawn the sword against Russia
whilst Piedmont stood inactive, the influence of the Western Powers must
for some years to come have been ranged on the side of Austria in the
maintenance of its Italian possessions, and Piedmont could at the best have
looked only to St. Petersburg for sympathy or support. Cavour was not
scrupulous in his choice of means when the liberation of Italy was the end
in view, and the charge was made against him that in joining the coalition
against Russia he lightly entered into a war in which Piedmont had no
direct concern. But reason and history absolve, and far more than absolve,
the Italian statesman. If the cause of European equilibrium, for which
England and France took up arms, was a legitimate ground of war in the case
of these two Powers, it was not less so in the case of their ally; while if
the ulterior results rather than the motive of a war are held to constitute
its justification, Cavour stands out as the one politician in Europe whose
aims in entering upon the Crimean War have been fulfilled, not mocked, by
events. He joined in the struggle against Russia not in order to maintain
the Ottoman Empire, but to gain an ally in liberating Italy. The Ottoman
Empire has not been maintained; the independence of Italy has been
established, and established by means of the alliance which Cavour gained.
His Crimean policy is one of those excessively rare instances of
statesmanship where action has been determined not by the driving and
half-understood necessities of the moment, but by a distinct and true
perception of the future. He looked only in one direction, but in that
direction he saw clearly. Other statesmen struck blindfold, or in their
vision of a regenerated Turkey fought for an empire of mirage. It may with
some reason be asked whether the order of Eastern Europe would now be
different if our own English soldiers who fell at Balaclava had been
allowed to die in their beds: every Italian whom Cavour sent to perish on
the Tchernaya or in the cholera-stricken camp died as directly for the
cause of Italian independence as if he had fallen on the slopes of Custozza
or under the walls of Rome.
[Cavour at the Conference of Paris.]
[Change of Austrian policy, 1856.]
At the Conference of Paris in 1856 the Sardinian Premier took his place in
right of alliance by the side of the representatives of the great Powers;
and when the main business of the Conference was concluded, Count Buol, the
Austrian Minister, was forced to listen to a vigorous denunciation by
Cavour of the misgovernment that reigned in Central and Southern Italy, of
the Austrian occupation which rendered this possible. Though the French
were still in Rome, their presence might by courtesy be described as a
measure of precaution rendered necessary by the intrusion of the Austrians
farther north; and both the French and English plenipotentiaries at the
Conference supported Cavour in his invective. Cavour returned to Italy
without any territorial reward for the services that Piedmont had rendered
to the Allies; but his object was attained. He had exhibited Austria
isolated and discredited before Europe; he had given to his country a voice
that it had never before had in the Councils of the Powers; he had produced
a deep conviction throughout Italy that Piedmont not only could and would
act with vigour against the national enemy, but that in its action it would
have the help of allies. From this time the Republican and Mazzinian
societies lost ground before the growing confidence in the House of Savoy,
in its Minister and its army. [485] The strongest evidence of the effect of
Cavour's Crimean policy and of his presence at the Conference of Paris was
seen in the action of the Austrian Government itself. From 1849 to 1856 its
rule in Northern Italy had been one not so much of severity as of brutal
violence. Now all was changed. The Emperor came to Milan to proclaim a
general amnesty and to win the affection of his subjects. The sequestrated
estates were restored to their owners. Radetzky, in his ninety-second year,
was at length allowed to pass into retirement; the government of the sword
was declared at an end; Maximilian, the gentlest and most winning of the
Hapsburgs, was sent with his young bride to charm away the sad memories of
the evil time. But it was too late. The recognition shown by the Lombards
of the Emperor's own personal friendliness indicated no reconciliation with
Austria; and while Francis Joseph was still in Milan, King Victor Emmanuel,
in the presence of a Lombard deputation, laid the first stone of the
monument erected by subscriptions from all Italy in memory of those who had
fallen in the campaigns of 1848 and 1849, the statue of a foot-soldier
waving his sword towards the Austrian frontier. The Sardinian Press
redoubled its attacks on Austria and its Italian vassals. The Government of
Vienna sought satisfaction; Cavour sharply refused it; and diplomatic
relations between the two Courts, which had been resumed since the
Conference of Paris, were again broken off.
[Cavour and Napoleon III.]
[Meeting at Plombières, July, 1858.]
Of the two Western Powers, Cavour would have preferred an alliance with
Great Britain, which had no objects of its own to seek in Italy; but when
he found that the Government of London would not assist him by arms against
Austria, he drew closer to the Emperor Napoleon, and supported him
throughout his controversy with England and Austria on the settlement of
the Danubian Principalities. Napoleon, there is no doubt, felt a real
interest in Italy. His own early political theories formed on a study of
the Napoleonic Empire, his youthful alliance with the Carbonari, point to a
sympathy with the Italian national cause which was genuine if not profound,
and which was not altogether lost in 1849, though France then acted as the
enemy of Roman independence. If Napoleon intended to remould the
Continental order and the Treaties of 1815 in the interests of France and
of the principle of nationality, he could make no better beginning than by
driving Austria from Northern Italy. It was not even necessary for him to
devise an original policy. Early in 1848, when it seemed probable that
Piedmont would be increased by Lombardy and part of Venetia, Lamartine had
laid it down that France ought in that case to be compensated by Savoy, in
order to secure its frontiers against so powerful a neighbour as the new
Italian State. To this idea Napoleon returned. Savoy had been incorporated
with France from 1792 to 1814; its people were more French than Italian;
its annexation would not directly injure the interests of any great Power.
Of the three directions in which France might stretch towards its old
limits of the Alps and the Rhine, the direction of Savoy was by far the
least dangerous. Belgium could not be touched without certain loss of the
English alliance, with which Napoleon could not yet dispense; an attack
upon the Rhenish Provinces would probably be met by all the German Powers
together; in Savoy alone was there the chance of gaining territory without
raising a European coalition against France. No sooner had the organisation
of the Danubian Principalities been completed by the Conference which met
in the spring of 1858 than Napoleon began to develop his Italian plans. An
attempt of a very terrible character which was made upon his life by
Orsini, a Roman exile, though at the moment it threatened to embroil
Sardinia with France, probably stimulated him to action. In the summer of
1858 he invited Cavour to meet him at Plombières. The negotiations which
there passed were not made known by the Emperor to his Ministers; they were
communicated by Cavour to two persons only besides Victor Emmanuel. It
seems that no written engagement was drawn up; it was verbally agreed that
if Piedmont could, without making a revolutionary war, and without exposing
Napoleon to the charge of aggression, incite Austria to hostilities, France
would act as its ally. Austria was then to be expelled from Venetia as well
as from Lombardy. Victor Emmanuel was to become sovereign of North-Italy,
with the Roman Legations and Marches; the remainder of the Papal territory,
except Rome itself and the adjacent district, was to be added to Tuscany,
so constituting a new kingdom of Central Italy. The two kingdoms, together
with Naples and Rome, were to form an Italian Confederation under the
presidency of the Pope. France was to receive Savoy and possibly Nice. A
marriage between the King's young daughter Clotilde and the Emperor's
cousin Prince Jerome Napoleon was discussed, if not actually settled. [486]
[Cavour in view of the French Alliance.]
From this moment Cavour laboured night and day for war. His position was an
exceedingly difficult one. Not only had he to reckon with the irresolution
of Napoleon, and his avowed unwillingness to take up arms unless with the
appearance of some good cause; but even supposing the goal of war reached,
and Austria defeated, how little was there in common between Cavour's aims
for Italy and the traditional policy of France! The first Napoleon had
given Venice to Austria at Campo Formio; even if the new Napoleon should
fulfil his promise and liberate all Northern Italy, his policy in regard to
the centre and south of the Peninsula would probably be antagonistic to any
effective union or to any further extension of the influence of the House
of Savoy. Cavour had therefore to set in readiness for action national
forces of such strength that Napoleon, even if he desired to draw back,
should find it difficult to do so, and that the shaping of the future of
the Italian people should be governed not by the schemes which the Emperor
might devise at Paris, but by the claims and the aspirations of Italy
itself. It was necessary for him not only to encourage and subsidise the
National Society--a secret association whose branches in the other Italian
States were preparing to assist Piedmont in the coming war, and to unite
Italy under the House of Savoy--but to enter into communication with some
of the Republican or revolutionary party who had hitherto been at enmity
with all Crowns alike. He summoned Garibaldi in secrecy to Turin, and there
convinced him that the war about to be waged by Victor Emmanuel was one in
which he ought to take a prominent part. As the foremost defender of the
Roman Republic and a revolutionary hero, Garibaldi was obnoxious to the
French Emperor. Cavour had to conceal from Napoleon the fact that Garibaldi
would take the field at the head of a free-corps by the side of the Allied
armies; he had similarly to conceal from Garibaldi that one result of the
war would be the cession of Nice, his own birthplace, to France. Thus
plunged in intrigue, driving his Savoyards to the camp and raising from
them the last farthing in taxation, in order that after victory they might
be surrendered to a Foreign Power; goading Austria to some act of passion;
inciting, yet checking and controlling, the Italian revolutionary elements;
bargaining away the daughter of his sovereign to one of the most odious of
mankind, Cavour staked all on the one great end of his being, the
establishment of Italian independence. Words like those which burst from
Danton in the storms of the Convention--"Perish my name, my reputation, so
that France be free"--were the calm and habitual expression of Cavour's
thought when none but an intimate friend was by to hear. [487] Such tasks
as Cavour's are not to be achieved without means which, to a man noble in
view as Cavour really was, it would have been more agreeable to leave
unemployed. Those alone are entitled to pronounce judgment upon him who
have made a nation, and made it with purer hands. It was well for English
statesmen and philanthropists, inheritors of a world-wide empire, to
enforce the ethics of peace and to plead for a gentlemanlike frankness and
self-restraint in the conduct of international relations. English women had
not been flogged by Austrian soldiers in the market-place; the treaties of
1815 had not consecrated a foreign rule over half our race. To Cavour the
greatest crime would have been to leave anything undone which might
minister to Italy's liberation. [488]
[Treaty of January, 1859.]
[Attempts at mediation.]
[Austrian ultimatum, April 23.]
Napoleon seems to have considered that he would be ready to begin war in
the spring of 1859. At the reception at the Tuileries on the 1st of January
he addressed the Austrian ambassador in words that pointed to an
approaching conflict; a few weeks later a marriage-contract was signed
between Prince Napoleon and Clotilde, daughter of Victor Emmanuel, and part
of the agreement made at Plombières was embodied in a formal Treaty.
Napoleon undertook to support Sardinia in a war that might arise from any
aggressive act on the part of Austria, and, if victorious, to add both
Lombardy and Venetia to Victor Emmanuel's dominions. France was in return
to receive Savoy, the disposal of Nice being reserved till the restoration
of peace. [489] Even before the Treaty was signed Victor Emmanuel had
thrown down the challenge to Austria, declaring at the opening of the
Parliament of Turin that he could not be insensible to the cry of suffering
that rose from Italy. In all but technical form the imminence of war had
been announced, when, under the influence of diplomatists and Ministers
about him, and of a financial panic that followed his address to the
Austrian ambassador, the irresolute mind of Napoleon shrank from its
purpose, and months more of suspense were imposed upon Italy and Europe, to
be terminated at last not by any effort of Napoleon's will but by the rash
and impolitic action of Austria itself. At the instance of the Court of
Vienna the British Government had consented to take steps towards
mediation. Lord Cowley, Ambassador at Paris, was sent to Vienna with
proposals which, it was believed, might form the basis for an amicable
settlement of Italian affairs. He asked that the Papal States should be
evacuated by both Austrian and French troops; that Austria should abandon
the Treaties which gave it a virtual Protectorate over Modena and Parma;
and that it should consent to the introduction of reforms in all the
Italian Governments. Negotiations towards this end had made some progress
when they were interrupted by a proposal sent from St. Petersburg, at the
instance of Napoleon, that Italian affairs should be submitted to a
European Congress. Austria was willing under certain conditions to take
part in a Congress, but it required, as a preliminary measure, that
Sardinia should disarm. Napoleon had now learnt that Garibaldi was to fight
at the head of the volunteers for Victor Emmanuel. His doubts as to the
wisdom of his own policy seem to have increased hour by hour; from Britain,
whose friendship he still considered indispensable to him, he received the
most urgent appeals against war; it was necessary that Cavour himself
should visit Paris in order to prevent the Emperor from acquiescing in
Austria's demand. In Cavour's presence Napoleon seems to have lost some of
his fears, or to have been made to feel that it was not safe to provoke his
confidant of Plombières; [490] but Cavour had not long left Paris when a
proposal was made from London, that in lieu of the separate disarmament of
Sardinia the Powers should agree to a general disarmament, the details to
be settled by a European Commission. This proposal received Napoleon's
assent. He telegraphed to Cavour desiring him to join in the agreement.
Cavour could scarcely disobey, yet at one stroke it seemed that all his
hopes when on the very verge of fulfilment were dashed to the ground, all
his boundless efforts for the liberation of Italy through war with Austria
lost and thrown away. For some hours he appeared shattered by the blow.
Strung to the extreme point of human endurance by labour scarcely remitted
by day or night for weeks together, his strong but sanguine nature gave
way, and for a while the few friends who saw him feared that he would take
his own life. But the crisis passed: Cavour accepted, as inevitable, the
condition of general disarmament; and his vigorous mind had already begun
to work upon new plans for the future, when the report of a decision made
at Vienna, which was soon confirmed by the arrival of an Austrian
ultimatum, threw him into joy as intense as his previous despair. Ignoring
the British proposal for a general disarmament, already accepted at Turin,
the Austrian Cabinet demanded, without qualifications and under threat of
war within three days, that Sardinia should separately disarm. It was
believed at Vienna that Napoleon was merely seeking to gain time; that a
conflict was inevitable; and that Austria now stood better prepared for
immediate action than its enemies. Right or wrong in its judgment of
Napoleon's real intentions, the Austrian Government had undeniably taken
upon itself the part of the aggressor. Cavour had only to point to his own
acceptance of the plan of a general disarmament, and to throw upon his
enemy the responsibility for a disturbance of European peace. His reply was
taken as the signal for hostilities, and on the 29th of April Austrian
troops crossed the Ticino. A declaration of war from Paris followed without
delay. [491]
[Campaign of 1859.]
[Battle of Magenta, June 4.]
For months past Austria had been pouring its troops into Northern Italy. It
had chosen its own time for the commencement of war; a feeble enemy stood
before it, its more powerful adversary could not reach the field without
crossing the Alps or the mountain-range above Genoa. Everything pointed to
a vigorous offensive on the part of the Austrian generals, and in Piedmont
itself it was believed that Turin must fall before French troops could
assist in its defence. From Turin as a centre the Austrians could then
strike with ease, and with superior numbers, against the detachments of the
French army as they descended the mountains at any points in the semicircle
from Genoa to Mont Cenis. There has seldom been a case where the necessity
and the advantages of a particular line of strategy have been so obvious;
yet after crossing the Ticino the Austrians, above a hundred thousand
strong, stood as if spell-bound under their incompetent chief, Giulay.
Meanwhile French detachments crossed Mont Cenis; others, more numerous,
landed with the Emperor at Genoa, and established communications with the
Piedmontese, whose headquarters were at Alessandria. Giulay now believed
that the Allies would strike upon his communications in the direction of
Parma. The march of Bonaparte upon Piacenza in 1796, as well as the
campaign of Marengo, might well inspire this fear; but the real intention
of Napoleon III. was to outflank the Austrians from the north and so to
gain Milan. Garibaldi was already operating at the extreme left of the
Sardinian line in the neighbourhood of Como. While the Piedmontese
maintained their positions in the front, the French from Genoa marched
northwards behind them, crossed the Po, and reached Vercelli before the
Austrians discovered their manoeuvre. Giulay, still lingering between the
Sesia and the Ticino, now called up part of his forces northwards, but not
in time to prevent the Piedmontese from crossing the Sesia and defeating
the troops opposed to them at Palestro (May 30). While the Austrians were
occupied at this point, the French crossed the river farther north, and
moved eastwards on the Ticino. Giulay was thus outflanked and compelled to
fall back. The Allies followed him, and on the 4th of June attacked the
Austrian army in its positions about Magenta on the road to Milan. The
assault of Macmahon from the north gave the Allies victory after a
hard-fought day. It was impossible for the Austrians to defend Milan; they
retired upon the Adda and subsequently upon the Mincio, abandoning all
Lombardy to the invaders, and calling up their troops from Bologna and the
other occupied towns in the Papal States, in order that they might take
part in the defence of the Venetian frontier and the fortresses that
guarded it.
[Movement in Central Italy.]
The victory of the Allies was at once felt throughout Central Italy. The
Grand Duke of Tuscany had already fled from his dominions, and the
Dictatorship for the period of the war had been offered by a Provisional
Government to Victor Emmanuel, who, while refusing this, had allowed his
envoy, Boncampagni, to assume temporary powers at Florence as his
representative. The Duke of Modena and the Duchess of Parma now quitted
their territories. In the Romagna the disappearance of the Austrians
resulted in the immediate overthrow of Papal authority. Everywhere the
demand was for union with Piedmont. The calamities of the last ten years
had taught their lesson to the Italian people. There was now nothing of the
disorder, the extravagance, the childishness of 1848. The populations who
had then been so divided, so suspicious, so easy a prey to demagogues, were
now watchful, self-controlled, and anxious for the guidance of the only
real national Government. As at Florence, so in the Duchies and in the
Romagna, it was desired that Victor Emmanuel should assume the
Dictatorship. The King adhered to the policy which he had adopted towards
Tuscany, avoiding any engagement that might compromise him with Europe or
his ally, but appointing Commissioners to enrol troops for the common war
against Austria and to conduct the necessary work of administration in
those districts. Farini, the historian of the Roman States, was sent to
Modena; Azeglio, the ex-Minister, to Bologna. Each of these officers
entered on his task in a spirit worthy of the time; each understood how
much might be won for Italy by boldness, how much endangered or lost by
untimely scruples. [492]
[Battle of Solferino, June 24.]
In his proclamations at the opening of the war Napoleon had declared that
Italy must be freed up to the shore of the Adriatic. His address to the
Italian people on entering Milan with Victor Emmanuel after the victory of
Magenta breathed the same spirit. As yet, however, Lombardy alone had been
won. The advance of the allied armies was accordingly resumed after an
interval of some days, and on the 23rd of June they approached the
positions held by the Austrians a little to the west of the Mincio. Francis
Joseph had come from Vienna to take command of the army. His presence
assisted the enemy, inasmuch as he had no plan of his own, and wavered from
day to day between the antagonistic plans of the generals at headquarters.
Some wished to make the Mincio the line of defence, others to hold the
Chiese some miles farther west. The consequence was that the army marched
backwards and forwards across the space between the two rivers according as
one or another general gained for the moment the Emperor's confidence. It
was while the Austrians were thus engaged that the allied armies came into
contact with them about Solferino. On neither side was it known that the
whole force of the enemy was close at hand. The battle of Solferino, one of
the bloodiest of recent times, was fought almost by accident. About a
hundred and fifty thousand men were present under Napoleon and Victor
Emmanuel; the Austrians had a slight superiority in force. On the north,
where Benedek with the Austrian right was attacked by the Piedmontese at
San Martino, it seemed as if the task imposed on the Italian troops was
beyond their power. Victor Emmanuel, fighting with the same courage as at
Novara, saw the positions in front of his troops alternately won and lost.
But the success of the French at Solferino in the centre decided the day,
and the Austrians withdrew at last from their whole line with a loss in
killed and wounded of fourteen thousand men. On the part of the Allies the
slaughter was scarcely less.
[Napoleon and Prussia.]
[Interview of Villafranca, July 11.]
[Peace of Villafranca.]
[Treaty of Zürich, Nov. 10.]
Napoleon stood a conqueror, but a conqueror at terrible cost; and in front
of him he saw the fortresses of the Quadrilateral, while new divisions were
hastening from the north and east to the support of the still unbroken
Austrian army. He might well doubt whether, even against his present
antagonist alone, further success was possible. The fearful spectacle of
Solferino, heightened by the effects of overpowering summer heat, probably
affected a mind humane and sensitive and untried in the experience of war.
The condition of the French army, there is reason to believe, was far
different from that represented in official reports, and likely to make the
continuance of the campaign perilous in the extreme. But beyond all this,
the Emperor knew that if he advanced farther Prussia and all Germany might
at any moment take up arms against him. There had been a strong outburst of
sympathy for Austria in the south-western German States. National
patriotism was excited by the attack of Napoleon on the chief of the German
sovereigns, and the belief was widely spread that French conquest in Italy
would soon be followed by French conquest on the Rhine. Prussia had
hitherto shown reserve. It would have joined its arms with those of Austria
if its own claims to an improved position in Germany had been granted by
the Court of Vienna; but Francis Joseph had up to this time refused the
concessions demanded. In the stress of his peril he might at any moment
close with the offers which he had before rejected; even without a distinct
agreement between the two Courts, and in mere deference to German public
opinion, Prussia might launch against France the armies which it had
already brought into readiness for the field. A war upon the Rhine would
then be added to the war before the Quadrilateral, and from the risks of
this double effort Napoleon might well shrink in the interest of France not
less than of his own dynasty. He determined to seek an interview with
Francis Joseph, and to ascertain on what terms peace might now be made. The
interview took place at Villafranca, east of the Mincio, on the 11th of
July. Francis Joseph refused to cede any part of Venetia without a further
struggle. He was willing to give up Lombardy, and to consent to the
establishment of an Italian Federation under the presidency of the Pope, of
which Federation Venetia, still under Austria's rule, should be a member;
but he required that Mantua should be left within his own frontier, and
that the sovereigns of Tuscany and Modena should resume possession of their
dominions. To these terms Napoleon assented, on obtaining a verbal
agreement that the dispossessed princes should not be restored by foreign
arms. Regarding Parma and the restoration of the Papal authority in the
Romagna no stipulations were made. With the signature of the Preliminaries
of Villafranca, which were to form the base of a regular Treaty to be
negotiated at Zürich, and to which Victor Emmanuel added his name with
words of reservation, hostilities came to a close. The negotiations at
Zürich, though they lasted for several months, added nothing of importance
to the matter of the Preliminaries, and decided nothing that had been left
in uncertainty. The Italian Federation remained a scheme which the two
Emperors, and they alone, undertook to promote. Piedmont entered into no
engagement either with regard to the Duchies or with regard to Federation.
Victor Emmanuel had in fact announced from the first that he would enter no
League of which a province governed by Austria formed a part, and from this
resolution he never swerved. [493]
[Resignation of Cavour.]
[Central Italy.]
Though Lombardy was gained, the impression made upon the Italians by the
peace of Villafranca was one of the utmost dismay. Napoleon had so
confidently and so recently promised the liberation of all Northern Italy
that public opinion ascribed to treachery or weakness what was in truth an
act of political necessity. On the first rumour of the negotiations Cavour
had hurried from Turin, but the agreement was signed before his arrival.
The anger and the grief of Cavour are described by those who then saw him
as terrible to witness. [494] Napoleon had not the courage to face him;
Victor Emmanuel bore for two hours the reproaches of his Minister, who had
now completely lost his self-control. Cavour returned to Turin, and shortly
afterwards withdrew from office, his last act being the despatch of ten
thousand muskets to Farini at Modena. In accordance with the terms of
peace, instructions, which were probably not meant to be obeyed, were sent
by Cavour's successor, Rattazzi, to the Piedmontese Commissioners in
Central Italy, bidding them to return to Turin and to disband any forces
that they had collected. Farini, on receipt of this order, adroitly
divested himself of his Piedmontese citizenship, and, as an honorary
burgher of Modena, accepted the Dictatorship from his fellow-townsmen.
Azeglio returned to Turin, but took care before quitting the Romagna to
place four thousand soldiers under competent leaders in a position to
resist attack. It was not the least of Cavour's merits that he had gathered
about him a body of men who, when his own hand was for a while withdrawn,
could pursue his policy with so much energy and sagacity as was now shown
by the leaders of the national movement in Central Italy. Venetia was lost
for the present; but if Napoleon's promise was broken, districts which he
had failed or had not intended to liberate might be united with the Italian
Kingdom. The Duke of Modena, with six thousand men who had remained true to
him, lay on the Austrian frontier, and threatened to march upon his
capital. Farini mined the city gates, and armed so considerable a force
that it became clear that the Duke would not recover his dominions without
a serious battle. Parma placed itself under the same Dictatorship with
Modena; in the Romagna a Provisional Government which Azeglio had left
behind him continued his work. Tuscany, where Napoleon had hoped to find a
throne for his cousin, pronounced for national union, and organised a
common military force with its neighbours. During the weeks that followed
the Peace of Villafranca, declarations signed by tens of thousands, the
votes of representative bodies, and popular demonstrations throughout
Central Italy, showed in an orderly and peaceful form how universal was the
desire for union under the House of Savoy.
[Cavour's Plans before Villafranca.]
[Central Italy after Villafranca. July-November.]
[Mazzini and Garibaldi. August-November.]
Cavour, in the plans which he had made before 1859, had not looked for a
direct and immediate result beyond the creation of an Italian Kingdom
including the whole of the territory north of the Po. The other steps in
the consolidation of Italy would, he believed, follow in their order. They
might be close at hand, or they might be delayed for a while; but in the
expulsion of Austria, in the interposition of a purely Italian State
numbering above ten millions of inhabitants, mistress of the fortresses and
of a powerful fleet, between Austria and those who had been its vassals,
the essential conditions of Italian national independence would have been
won. For the rest, Italy might be content to wait upon time and
opportunity. But the Peace of Villafranca, leaving Venetia in the enemy's
hands, completely changed this prospect. The fiction of an Italian
Federation in which the Hapsburg Emperor, as lord of Venice, should forget
his Austrian interests and play the part of Italian patriot, was too gross
to deceive any one. Italy, on these terms, would either continue to be
governed from Vienna, or be made a pawn in the hands of its French
protector. What therefore Cavour had hitherto been willing to leave to
future years now became the need of the present. "Before Villafranca," in
his own words, "the union of Italy was a possibility; since Villafranca it
is a necessity." Victor Emmanuel understood this too, and saw the need for
action more clearly than Rattazzi and the Ministers who, on Cavour's
withdrawal in July, stepped for a few months into his place. The situation
was one that called indeed for no mean exercise of statesmanship. If Italy
was not to be left dependent upon the foreigner and the reputation of the
House of Savoy ruined, it was necessary not only that the Duchies of Modena
and Parma, but that Central Italy, including Tuscany and at least the
Romagna, should be united with the Kingdom of Piedmont; yet the
accomplishment of this work was attended with the utmost danger. Napoleon
himself was hoping to form Tuscany, with an augmented territory, into a
rival Kingdom of Etruria or Central Italy, and to place his cousin on its
throne. The Ultramontane party in France was alarmed and indignant at the
overthrow of the Pope's authority in the Romagna, and already called upon
the Emperor to fulfil his duties towards the Holy See. If the national
movement should extend to Rome itself, the hostile intervention of France
was almost inevitable. While the negotiations with Austria at Zürich were
still proceeding, Victor Emmanuel could not safely accept the sovereignty
that was offered him by Tuscany and the neighbouring provinces, nor permit
his cousin, the Prince of Carignano, to assume the regency which, during
the period of suspense, it was proposed to confer upon him. Above all, it
was necessary that the Government should not allow the popular forces with
which it was co-operating to pass beyond its own control. In the critical
period that followed the armistice of Villafranca, Mazzini approached
Victor Emmanuel, as thirty years before he had approached his father, and
offered his own assistance in the establishment of Italian union under the
House of Savoy. He proposed, as the first step, to overthrow the Neapolitan
Government by means of an expedition headed by Garibaldi, and to unite
Sicily and Naples to the King's dominions; but he demanded in return that
Piedmont should oppose armed resistance to any foreign intervention
occasioned by this enterprise; and he seems also to have required that an
attack should be made immediately afterwards upon Rome and upon Venetia. To
these conditions the King could not accede; and Mazzini, confirmed in his
attitude of distrust towards the Court of Turin, turned to Garibaldi, who
was now at Modena. At his instigation Garibaldi resolved to lead an
expedition at once against Rome itself. Napoleon was at this very moment
promising reforms on behalf of the Pope, and warning Victor Emmanuel
against the annexation even of the Romagna (Oct. 20th). At the risk of
incurring the hostility of Garibaldi's followers and throwing their leader
into opposition to the dynasty, it was necessary for the Sardinian
Government to check him in his course. The moment was a critical one in the
history of the House of Savoy. But the soldier of Republican Italy proved
more tractable than its prophet. Garibaldi was persuaded to abandon or
postpone an enterprise which could only have resulted in disaster for
Italy; and with expressions of cordiality towards the King himself, and of
bitter contempt for the fox-like politicians who advised him, he resigned
his command and bade farewell to his comrades, recommending them, however,
to remain under arms, in full confidence that they would ere long find a
better opportunity for carrying the national flag southwards. [495]
[The proposed Congress.]
Soon after the Agreement of Villafranca, Napoleon had proposed to the
British Government that a Congress of all the Powers should assemble at
Paris in order to decide upon the many Italian questions which still
remained unsettled. In taking upon himself the emancipation of Northern
Italy Napoleon had, as it proved, attempted a task far beyond his own
powers. The work had been abruptly broken off; the promised services had
not been rendered, the stipulated reward had not been won. On the other
hand, forces had been set in motion which he who raised them could not
allay; populations stood in arms against the Governments which the
Agreement of Villafranca purported to restore; the Pope's authority in the
northern part of his dominions was at an end; the Italian League over which
France and Austria were to join hands of benediction remained the
laughing-stock of Europe. Napoleon's victories had added Lombardy to
Piedmont; for the rest, except from the Italian point of view, they had
only thrown affairs into confusion. Hesitating at the first between his
obligations towards Austria and the maintenance of his prestige in Italy,
perplexed between the contradictory claims of nationality and of
Ultramontanism, Napoleon would gladly have cast upon Great Britain, or upon
Europe at large, the task of extricating him from his embarrassment. But
the Cabinet of London, while favourable to Italy, showed little inclination
to entangle itself in engagements which might lead to war with Austria and
Germany in the interest of the French Sovereign. Italian affairs, it was
urged by Lord John Russell, might well be governed by the course of events
within Italy itself; and, as Austria remained inactive, the principle of
non-intervention really gained the day. The firm attitude of the population
both in the Duchies and in the Romagna, their unanimity and self-control,
the absence of those disorders which had so often been made a pretext for
foreign intervention, told upon the mind of Napoleon and on the opinion of
Europe at large. Each month that passed rendered the restoration of the
fallen Governments a work of greater difficulty, and increased the
confidence of the Italians in themselves. Napoleon watched and wavered.
When the Treaty of Zürich was signed his policy was still undetermined. By
the prompt and liberal concession of reforms the Papal Government might
perhaps even now have turned the balance in its favour. But the obstinate
mind of Pius IX. was proof against every politic and every generous
influence. The stubbornness shown by Rome, the remembrance of Antonelli's
conduct towards the French Republic in 1849, possibly also the discovery of
a Treaty of Alliance between the Papal Government and Austria, at length
overcame Napoleon's hesitation in meeting the national demand of Italy, and
gave him courage to defy both the Papal Court and the French priesthood. He
resolved to consent to the formation of an Italian Kingdom under Victor
Emmanuel including the northern part of the Papal territories as well as
Tuscany and the other Duchies, and to silence the outcry which this act of
spoliation would excite among the clerical party in France by the
annexation of Nice and Savoy.
["The Pope and the Congress," Dec. 24.]
[Change of Ministry at Paris, Jan. 5, 1860.]
[Cavour resumes office, Jan. 16.]
The decision of the Emperor was foreshadowed by the publication on the 24th
of December of a pamphlet entitled "The Pope and the Congress." The
doctrine advanced in this essay was that, although a temporal authority was
necessary to the Pope's spiritual independence, the peace and unity which
should surround the Vicar of Christ would be best attained when his
temporal sovereignty was reduced within the narrowest possible limits. Rome
and the territory immediately around it, if guaranteed to the Pope by the
Great Powers, would be sufficient for the temporal needs of the Holy See.
The revenue lost by the separation of the remainder of the Papal
territories might be replaced by a yearly tribute of reverence paid by the
Catholic Powers to the Head of the Church. That the pamphlet advocating
this policy was written at the dictation of Napoleon was not made a secret.
Its appearance occasioned an indignant protest at Rome. The Pope announced
that he would take no part in the proposed Congress unless the doctrines
advanced in the pamphlet were disavowed by the French Government. Napoleon
in reply submitted to the Pope that he would do well to purchase the
guarantee of the Powers for the remainder of his territories by giving up
all claim to the Romagna, which he had already lost. Pius retorted that he
could not cede what Heaven had granted, not to himself, but to the Church;
and that if the Powers would but clear the Romagna of Piedmontese intruders
he would soon reconquer the rebellious province without the assistance
either of France or of Austria. The attitude assumed by the Papal Court
gave Napoleon a good pretext for abandoning the plan of a European
Congress, from which he could hardly expect to obtain a grant of Nice and
Savoy. It was announced at Paris that the Congress would be postponed; and
on the 5th of January, 1860, the change in Napoleon's policy was publicly
marked by the dismissal of his Foreign Minister, Walewski, and the
appointment in his place of Thouvenel, a friend to Italian union. Ten days
later Rattazzi gave up office at Turin, and Cavour returned to power.
[Cavour and Napoleon, Jan-March.]
[Union of the Duchies and the Romagna with Piedmont, March.]
[Savoy and Nice ceded to France.]
Rattazzi, during the six months that he had conducted affairs, had steered
safely past some dangerous rocks; but he held the helm with an unsteady and
untrusted hand, and he appears to have displayed an unworthy jealousy
towards Cavour, who, while out of office, had not ceased to render what
services he could to his country. Cavour resumed his post, with the resolve
to defer no longer the annexation of Central Italy, but with the heavy
consciousness that Napoleon would demand in return for his consent to this
union the cession of Nice and Savoy. No Treaty entitled France to claim
this reward, for the Austrians still held Venetia; but Napoleon's troops
lay at Milan, and by a march southwards they could easily throw Italian
affairs again into confusion, and undo all that the last six months had
effected. Cavour would perhaps have lent himself to any European
combination which, while directed against the extension, of France, would
have secured the existence of the Italian Kingdom; but no such alternative
to the French alliance proved possible; and the subsequent negotiations
between Paris and Turin were intended only to vest with a certain
diplomatic propriety the now inevitable transfer of territory from the
weaker to the stronger State. A series of propositions made from London
with the view of withdrawing from Italy both French and Austrian influence
led the Austrian Court to acknowledge that its army would not be employed
for the restoration of the sovereigns of Tuscany and Modena. Construing
this statement as an admission that the stipulations of Villafranca and
Zürich as to the return of the fugitive princes had become impracticable,
Napoleon now suggested that Victor Emmanuel should annex Parma and Modena,
and assume secular power in the Romagna as Vicar of the Pope, leaving
Tuscany to form a separate Government. The establishment of so powerful a
kingdom on the confines of France was, he added, not in accordance with the
traditions of French foreign policy, and in self-defence France must
rectify its military frontier by the acquisition of Nice and Savoy (Feb.
24th). Cavour well understood that the mention of Tuscan independence, and
the qualified recognition of the Pope's rights in the Romagna, were no more
than suggestions of the means of pressure by which France might enforce the
cessions it required. He answered that, although Victor Emmanuel could not
alienate any part of his dominions, his Government recognised the same
popular rights in Savoy and Nice as in Central Italy; and accordingly that
if the population of these districts declared in a legal form their desire
to be incorporated with France, the King would not resist their will.
Having thus consented to the necessary sacrifice, and ignoring Napoleon's
reservations with regard to Tuscany and the Pope, Cavour gave orders that a
popular vote should at once be taken in Tuscany, as well as in Parma,
Modena, and the Romagna, on the question of union with Piedmont. The voting
took place early in March, and gave an overwhelming majority in favour of
union. The Pope issued the major excommunication against the authors,
abettors, and agents in this work of sacrilege, and heaped curses on
curses; but no one seemed the worse for them. Victor Emmanuel accepted the
sovereignty that was offered to him, and on the 2nd of April the Parliament
of the united kingdom assembled at Turin. It had already been announced to
the inhabitants of Nice and Savoy that the King had consented to their
union with France. The formality of a _plébiscite_ was enacted a few
days later, and under the combined pressure of the French and Sardinian
Governments the desired results were obtained. Not more than a few hundred
persons protested by their vote against a transaction to which it was
understood that the King had no choice but to submit. [496]
[Cavour on the cession of Nice and Savoy.]
That Victor Emmanuel had at one time been disposed to resist Cavour's
surrender of the home of his race is well known. Above a year, however, had
passed since the project had been accepted as the basis of the French
alliance; and if, during the interval of suspense after Villafranca, the
King had cherished a hope that the sacrifice might be avoided without
prejudice either to the cause of Italy or to his own relations with
Napoleon, Cavour had entertained no such illusions. He knew that the
cession was an indispensable link in the chain of his own policy, that
policy which had made it possible to defeat Austria, and which, he
believed, would lead to the further consolidation of Italy. Looking to
Rome, to Palermo, where the smouldering fire might at any moment blaze out,
he could not yet dispense with the friendship of Napoleon, he could not
provoke the one man powerful enough to shape the action of France in
defiance of Clerical and of Legitimist aims. Rattazzi might claim credit
for having brought Piedmont past the Treaty of Zürich without loss of
territory; Cavour, in a far finer spirit, took upon himself the
responsibility for the sacrifice made to France, and bade the Parliament of
Italy pass judgment upon his act. The cession of the border-provinces
overshadowed what would otherwise have been the brightest scene in Italian
history for many generations, the meeting of the first North-Italian
Parliament at Turin. Garibaldi, coming as deputy from his birthplace, Nice,
uttered words of scorn and injustice against the man who had made him an
alien in Italy, and quitted the Chamber. Bitterly as Cavour felt, both now
and down to the end of his life, the reproaches that were levelled against
him, he allowed no trace of wounded feeling, of impatience, of the sense of
wrong, to escape him in the masterly speech in which he justified his
policy and won for it the ratification of the Parliament. It was not until
a year later, when the hand of death was almost upon him, that fierce words
addressed to him face to face by Garibaldi wrung from him the impressive
answer, "The act that has made this gulf between us was the most painful
duty of my life. By what I have felt myself I know what Garibaldi must have
felt. If he refuses me his forgiveness I cannot reproach him for it." [497]
[The cession in relation to Europe and Italy.]
The annexation of Nice and Savoy by Napoleon was seen with extreme
displeasure in Europe generally, and most of all in England. It directly
affected the history of Britain by the stimulus which it gave to the
development of the Volunteer Forces. Owing their origin to certain
demonstrations of hostility towards England made by the French army after
Orsini's conspiracy and the acquittal of one of his confederates in London,
the Volunteer Forces rose in the three months that followed the annexation
of Nice and Savoy from seventy to a hundred and eighty thousand men. If
viewed as an indication that the ruler of France would not be content with
the frontiers of 1815, the acquisition of the Sub-Alpine provinces might
with some reason excite alarm; on no other ground could their transfer be
justly condemned. Geographical position, language, commercial interests,
separated Savoy from Piedmont and connected it with France; and though in
certain parts of the County of Nice the Italian character predominated,
this district as a whole bore the stamp not of Piedmont or Liguria but of
Provence. Since the separation from France in 1815 there had always been,
both in Nice and Savoy, a considerable party which desired reunion with
that country. The political and social order of the Sardinian Kingdom had
from 1815 to 1848 been so backward, so reactionary, that the middle classes
in the border-provinces looked wistfully to France as a land where their
own grievances had been removed and their own ideals attained. The
constitutional system of Victor Emmanuel, and the despotic system of Louis
Napoleon had both been too recently introduced to reverse in the minds of
the greater number the political tradition of the preceding thirty years.
Thus if there were a few who, like Garibaldi, himself of Genoese descent
though born at Nice, passionately resented separation from Italy, they
found no considerable party either in Nice or in Savoy animated by the same
feeling. On the other hand, the ecclesiastical sentiment of Savoy rendered
its transfer to France an actual advantage to the Italian State. The Papacy
had here a deeply-rooted influence. The reforms begun by Azeglio's Ministry
had been steadily resisted by a Savoyard group of deputies in the interests
of Rome. Cavour himself, in the prosecution of his larger plans, had always
been exposed to the danger of a coalition between this ultra-Conservative
party and his opponents of the other extreme. It was well that in the
conflict with the Papacy, without which there could be no such thing as a
Kingdom of United Italy, these influences of the Savoyard Church and
Noblesse should be removed from the Parliament and the Throne. Honourable
as the Savoyard party of resistance had proved themselves in Parliamentary
life, loyal and faithful as they were to their sovereign, they were yet not
a part of the Italian nation. Their interests were not bound up with the
cause of Italian union; their leaders were not inspired with the ideal of
Italian national life. The forces that threatened the future of the new
State from within were too powerful for the surrender of a priest-governed
and half-foreign element to be considered as a real loss.
[Naples.]
Nice and Savoy had hardly been handed over to Napoleon when Garibaldi set
out from Genoa to effect the liberation of Sicily and Naples. King
Ferdinand II., known to his subjects and to Western Europe as King Bomba,
had died a few days before the battle of Magenta, leaving the throne to his
son Francis II. In consequence of the friendship shown by Ferdinand to
Russia during the Crimean War, and of his refusal to amend his tyrannical
system of government, the Western Powers had in 1856 withdrawn their
representatives from Naples. On the accession of Francis II. diplomatic
intercourse was renewed, and Cavour, who had been at bitter enmity with
Ferdinand, sought to establish relations of friendship with his son. In the
war against Austria an alliance with Naples would have been of value to
Sardinia as a counterpoise to Napoleon's influence, and this alliance
Cavour attempted to obtain. He was, however, unsuccessful; and after the
Peace of Villafranca the Neapolitan Court threw itself with ardour into
schemes for the restoration of the fallen Governments and the overthrow of
Piedmontese authority in the Romagna by means of a coalition with Austria
and Spain and a counterrevolutionary movement in Italy itself. A rising on
behalf of the fugitive Grand Duke of Tuscany was to give the signal for the
march of the Neapolitan army northwards. This rising, however, was expected
in vain, and the great Catholic design resulted in nothing. Baffled in its
larger aims, the Bourbon Government proposed in the spring of 1860 to
occupy Umbria and the Marches, in order to prevent the revolutionary
movement from spreading farther into the Papal States. Against this Cavour
protested, and King Francis yielded to his threat to withdraw the Sardinian
ambassador from Naples. Knowing that a conspiracy existed for the
restoration of the House of Murat to the Neapolitan throne, which would
have given France the ascendency in Southern Italy, Cavour now renewed his
demand that Francis II. should enter into alliance with Piedmont, accepting
a constitutional system of government and the national Italian policy of
Victor Emmanuel. But neither the summons from Turin, nor the agitation of
the Muratists, nor the warnings of Great Britain that the Bourbon dynasty
could only avert its fall by reform, produced any real change in the spirit
of the Neapolitan Court. Ministers were removed, but the absolutist and
anti-national system remained the same. Meanwhile Garibaldi was gathering
his followers round him in Genoa. On the 15th of April Victor Emmanuel
wrote to King Francis that unless his fatal system of policy was
immediately abandoned the Piedmontese Government itself might shortly be
forced to become the agent of his destruction. Even this menace proved
fruitless; and after thus fairly exposing to the Court of Naples the
consequence of its own stubbornness, Victor Emmanuel let loose against it
the revolutionary forces of Garibaldi.
[Sicily.]
[Garibaldi starts for Sicily, May 5.]
[Garibaldi at Marsala, May 11.]
Since the campaign of 1859 insurrectionary committees had been active in
the principal Sicilian towns. The old desire of the Sicilian Liberals for
the independence of the island had given place, under the influence of the
events of the past year, to the desire for Italian union. On the
abandonment of Garibaldi's plan for the march on Rome in November, 1859,
the liberation of Sicily had been suggested to him as a more feasible
enterprise, and the general himself wavered in the spring of 1860 between
the resumption of his Roman project and an attack upon the Bourbons of
Naples from the south. The rumour spread through Sicily that Garibaldi
would soon appear there at the head of his followers. On the 3rd of April
an attempt at insurrection was made at Palermo. It was repressed without
difficulty; and although disturbances broke out in other parts of the
island, the reports which reached Garibaldi at Genoa as to the spirit and
prospects of the Sicilians were so disheartening that for a while he seemed
disposed to abandon the project of invasion as hopeless for the present. It
was only when some of the Sicilian exiles declared that they would risk the
enterprise without him that he resolved upon immediate action. On the night
of the 5th of May two steamships lying in the harbour of Genoa were seized,
and on these Garibaldi with his Thousand put to sea. Cavour, though he
would have preferred that Sicily should remain unmolested until some
progress had been made in the consolidation of the North Italian Kingdom,
did not venture to restrain Garibaldi's movements, with which he was well
acquainted. He required, however, that the expedition should not touch at
the island of Sardinia, and gave ostensible orders to his admiral, Persano,
to seize the ships of Garibaldi if they should put into any Sardinian port.
Garibaldi, who had sheltered the Sardinian Government from responsibility
at the outset by the fiction of a sudden capture of the two merchant-ships,
continued to spare Victor Emmanuel unnecessary difficulties by avoiding the
fleet which was supposed to be on the watch for him off Cagliari in
Sardinia, and only interrupted his voyage by a landing at a desolate spot
on the Tuscan coast in order to take up artillery and ammunition which were
waiting for him there. On the 11th of May, having heard from some English
merchantmen that there were no Neapolitan vessels of war at Marsala, he
made for this harbour. The first of his two ships entered it in safety and
disembarked her crew; the second, running on a rock, lay for some time
within range of the guns of a Neapolitan war-steamer which was bearing up
towards the port. But for some unknown reason the Neapolitan commander
delayed opening fire, and the landing of Garibaldi's followers was during
this interval completed without loss. [498]
[Garibaldi captures Palermo, May 26.]
On the following day the little army, attired in the red shirts which are
worn by cattle-ranchers in South America, marched eastwards from Marsala.
Bands of villagers joined them as they moved through the country, and many
unexpected adherents were gained among the priests. On the third day's
march Neapolitan troops were seen in position at Calatafimi. They were
attacked by Garibaldi, and, though far superior in number, were put to the
rout. The moral effects of this first victory were very great. The
Neapolitan commander retired into Palermo, leaving Garibaldi master of the
western portion of the island. Insurrection spread towards the interior;
the revolutionary party at Palermo itself regained its courage and prepared
to co-operate with Garibaldi on his approach. On nearing the city Garibaldi
determined that he could not risk a direct assault upon the forces which
occupied it. He resolved, if possible, to lure part of the defenders into
the mountains, and during their absence to throw himself into the city and
to trust to the energy of its inhabitants to maintain himself there. This
strategy succeeded. While the officer in command of some of the Neapolitan
battalions, tempted by an easy victory over the ill-disciplined Sicilian
bands opposed to him, pursued his beaten enemy into the mountains,
Garibaldi with the best of his troops fought his way into Palermo on the
night of May 26th. Fighting continued in the streets during the next two
days, and the cannon of the forts and of the Neapolitan vessels in harbour
ineffectually bombarded the city. On the 30th, at the moment when the
absent battalions were coming again into sight, an armistice was signed on
board the British man-of-war _Hannibal_. The Neapolitan commander gave
up to Garibaldi the bank and public buildings, and withdrew into the forts
outside the town. But the Government at Naples was now becoming thoroughly
alarmed; and considering Palermo as lost, it directed the troops to be
shipped to Messina and to Naples itself. Garibaldi was thus left in
undisputed possession of the Sicilian capital. He remained there for nearly
two months, assuming the government of Sicily as Dictator in the name of
Victor Emmanuel, appointing Ministers, and levying taxes. Heavy
reinforcements reached him from Italy. The Neapolitans, driven from the
interior as well as from the towns occupied by the invader, now held only
the north-eastern extremity of the island. On the 20th of July Garibaldi,
operating both by land and sea, attacked and defeated them at Milazzo on
the northern coast. The result of this victory was that Messina itself,
with the exception of the citadel, was evacuated by the Neapolitans without
resistance. Garibaldi, whose troops now numbered eighteen thousand, was
master of the island from sea to sea, and could with confidence look
forward to the overthrow of Bourbon authority on the Italian mainland.
[The Party of Action.]
During Garibaldi's stay at Palermo the antagonism between the two political
creeds which severed those whose devotion to Italy was the strongest came
clearly into view. This antagonism stood embodied in its extreme form in
the contrast between Mazzini and Cavour. Mazzini, handling moral and
political conceptions with something of the independence of a
mathematician, laid it down as the first duty of the Italian nation to
possess itself of Rome and Venice, regardless of difficulties that might be
raised from without. By conviction he desired that Italy should be a
Republic, though under certain conditions he might be willing to tolerate
the monarchy of Victor Emmanuel. Cavour, accurately observing the play of
political forces in Europe, conscious above all of the strength of those
ties which still bound Napoleon to the clerical cause, knew that there were
limits which Italy could not at present pass without ruin. The centre of
Mazzini's hopes, an advance upon Rome itself, he knew to be an act of
self-destruction for Italy, and this advance he was resolved at all costs
to prevent. Cavour had not hindered the expedition to Sicily; he had not
considered it likely to embroil Italy with its ally; but neither had he
been the author of this enterprise. The liberation of Sicily might be
deemed the work rather of the school of Mazzini than of Cavour. Garibaldi
indeed was personally loyal to Victor Emmanuel; but around him there were
men who, if not Republicans, were at least disposed to make the grant of
Sicily to Victor Emmanuel conditional upon the king's fulfilling the will
of the so-called Party of Action, and consenting to an attack upon Rome.
Under the influence of these politicians Garibaldi, in reply to a
deputation expressing to him the desire of the Sicilians for union with the
Kingdom of Victor Emmanuel, declared that he had come to fight not for
Sicily alone but for all Italy, and that if the annexation of Sicily was to
take place before the union of Italy was assured, he must withdraw his hand
from the work and retire. The effect produced by these words of Garibaldi
was so serious that the Ministers whom he had placed in office resigned.
Garibaldi endeavoured to substitute for them men more agreeable to the
Party of Action, but a demonstration in Palermo itself forced him to
nominate Sicilians in favour of immediate annexation. The public opinion of
the island was hostile to Republicanism and to the friends of Mazzini; nor
could the prevailing anarchy long continue without danger of a reactionary
movement. Garibaldi himself possessed no glimmer of administrative faculty.
After weeks of confusion and misgovernment he saw the necessity of
accepting direction from Turin, and consented to recognise as Pro-Dictator
of the island a nominee of Cavour, the Piedmontese Depretis. Under the
influence of Depretis a commencement was made in the work of political and
social reorganisation. [499]
[Cavour's policy with regard to Naples.]
[Garibaldi crosses to the mainland, Aug. 19.]
Cavour, during Garibaldi's preparation for his descent upon Sicily and
until the capture of Palermo, had affected to disavow and condemn the
enterprise as one undertaken by individuals in spite of the Government, and
at their own risk. The Piedmontese ambassador was still at Naples as the
representative of a friendly Court; and in reply to the reproaches of
Germany and Russia, Cavour alleged that the title of Dictator of Sicily in
the name of Victor Emmanuel had been assumed by Garibaldi without the
knowledge or consent of his sovereign. But whatever might be said to
Foreign Powers, Cavour, from the time of the capture of Palermo, recognised
that the hour had come for further steps towards Italian union; and,
without committing himself to any definite line of action, he began already
to contemplate the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty at Naples. It was in
vain that King Francis now released his political prisoners, declared the
Constitution of 1848 in force, and tendered to Piedmont the alliance which
he had before refused. Cavour, in reply to his overtures, stated that he
could not on his own authority pledge Piedmont to the support of a dynasty
now almost in the agonies of dissolution, and that the matter must await
the meeting of Parliament at Turin. Thus far the way had not been
absolutely closed to a reconciliation between the two Courts; but after the
victory of Garibaldi at Milazzo and the evacuation of Messina at the end of
July Cavour cast aside all hesitation and reserve. He appears to have
thought a renewal of the war with Austria probable, and now strained every
nerve to become master of Naples and its fleet before Austria could take
the field. He ordered Admiral Persano to leave two ships of war to cover
Garibaldi's passage to the mainland, and with one ship to proceed to Naples
himself, and there excite insurrection and win over the Neapolitan fleet to
the flag of Victor Emmanuel. Persano reached Naples on the 3rd of August,
and on the next day the negotiations between the two Courts were broken
off. On the 19th Garibaldi crossed from Sicily to the mainland. His march
upon the capital was one unbroken triumph.
[Persano and Villamarina at Naples.]
[Departure of King Francis, Sept. 6.]
[Garibaldi enters Naples, Sept. 7.]
It was the hope of Cavour that before Garibaldi could reach Naples a
popular movement in the city itself would force the King to take flight, so
that Garibaldi on his arrival would find the machinery of government, as
well as the command of the fleet and the army, already in the hands of
Victor Emmanuel's representatives. If war with Austria was really
impending, incalculable mischief might be caused by the existence of a
semi-independent Government at Naples, reckless, in its enthusiasm for the
march on Rome, of the effect which its acts might produce on the French
alliance. In any case the control of Italian affairs could but half belong
to the King and his Minister if Garibaldi, in the full glory of his
unparalleled exploits, should add the Dictatorship of Naples to the
Dictatorship of Sicily. Accordingly Cavour plied every art to accelerate
the inevitable revolution. Persano and the Sardinian ambassador,
Villamarina, had their confederates in the Bourbon Ministry and in the
Royal Family itself. But their efforts to drive King Francis from Naples,
and to establish the authority of Victor Emmanuel before Garibaldi's
arrival, were baffled partly by the tenacity of the King and Queen, partly
by the opposition of the committees of the Party of Action, who were
determined that power should fall into no hands but those of Garibaldi
himself. It was not till Garibaldi had reached Salerno, and the Bourbon
generals had one after another declined to undertake the responsibility of
command in a battle against him, that Francis resolved on flight. It was
now feared that he might induce the fleet to sail with him, and even that
he might hand it over to the Austrians. The crews, it was believed, were
willing to follow the King; the officers, though inclined to the Italian
cause, would be powerless to prevent them. There was not an hour to lose.
On the night of September 5th, after the King's intention to quit the
capital had become known, Persano and Villamarina disguised themselves, and
in company with their partisans mingled with the crews of the fleet, whom
they induced by bribes and persuasion to empty the boilers and to cripple
the engines of their ships. When, on the 6th, King Francis, having
announced his intention to spare the capital bloodshed, went on board a
mail steamer and quitted the harbour, accompanied by the ambassadors of
Austria, Prussia, and Spain, only one vessel of the fleet of followed him.
An urgent summons was sent to Garibaldi, whose presence was now desired by
all parties alike in order to prevent the outbreak of disorders. Leaving
his troops at Salerno, Garibaldi came by railroad to Naples on the morning
of the 7th, escorted only by some of his staff. The forts were still
garrisoned by eight thousand of the Bourbon troops, but all idea of
resistance had been abandoned, and Garibaldi drove fearlessly through the
city in the midst of joyous crowds. His first act as Dictator was to
declare the ships of war belonging to the State of the Two Sicilies united
to those of King Victor Emmanuel under Admiral Persano's command. Before
sunset the flag of Italy was hoisted by the Neapolitan fleet. The army was
not to be so easily incorporated with the national forces. King Francis,
after abandoning the idea of a battle between Naples and Salerno, had
ordered the mass of his troops to retire upon Capua in order to make a
final struggle on the line of the Volturno, and this order had been obeyed.
[500]
[The Piedmontese army enters Umbria and the Marches. Sept. 11.]
[Fall of Ancona, Sept. 25.]
As soon as it had become evident that the entry of Garibaldi into Naples
could not be anticipated by the establishment of Victor Emmanuel's own
authority, Cavour recognised that bold and aggressive action on the part of
the National Government was now necessity. Garibaldi made no secret or his
intention to carry the Italian arms to Rome. The time was past when the
national movement could be checked at the frontiers of Naples and Tuscany.
It remained only for Cavour to throw the King's own troops into the Papal
States before Garibaldi could move from Naples, and, while winning for
Italy the last foot of ground that could be won without an actual conflict
with France, to stop short at those limits where the soldiers of Napoleon
would certainly meet an invader with their fire. The Pope was still in
possession of the Marches, of Umbria, and of the territory between the
Apennines and the coast from Orvieto to Terracina. Cavour had good reason
to believe that Napoleon would not strike on behalf of the Temporal Power
until this last narrow district was menaced. He resolved to seize upon the
Marches and Umbria, and to brave the consequences. On the day of
Garibaldi's entry into Naples a despatch was sent by Cavour to the Papal
Government requiring, in the name of Victor Emmanuel, the disbandment of
the foreign mercenaries who in the previous spring had plundered Perugia,
and whose presence was a continued menace to the peace of Italy. The
announcement now made by Napoleon that he must break off diplomatic
relations with the Sardinian Government in case of the invasion of the
Papal States produced no effect. Cavour replied that by no other means
could he prevent revolution from mastering all Italy, and on the 10th of
September the French ambassador quitted Turin. Without waiting for
Antonelli's answer to his ultimatum, Cavour ordered the King's troops to
cross the frontier. The Papal army was commanded by Lamoricière, a French
general who had gained some reputation in Algiers; but the resistance
offered to the Piedmontese was unexpectedly feeble. The column which
entered Umbria reached the southern limit without encountering any serious
opposition except from the Irish garrison of Spoleto. In the Marches, where
Lamoricière had a considerable force at his disposal, the dispersion of the
Papal troops and the incapacity shown in their command brought the campaign
to a rapid and inglorious end. The main body of the defenders was routed on
the Musone, near Loreto, on the 19th of September. Other divisions
surrendered, and Ancona alone remained to Lamoricière. Vigorously attacked
in this fortress both by land and sea, Lamoricière surrendered after a
siege of eight days. Within three weeks from Garibaldi's entry into Naples
the Piedmontese army had completed the task imposed upon it, and Victor
Emmanuel was master of Italy as far as the Abruzzi.
[Cavour, Garibaldi, and the Party of Action.]
Cavour's successes had not come a day too soon, for Garibaldi, since his
entry into Naples, was falling more and more into the hands of the Party of
Action, and, while protesting his loyalty to Victor Emmanuel, was openly
announcing that he would march the Party of on Rome whether the King's
Government permitted it or no. In Sicily the officials appointed by this
Party were proceeding with such violence that Depretis, unable to obtain
troops from Cavour, resigned his post. Garibaldi suddenly appeared at
Palermo on the 11th of September, appointed a new Pro-Dictator, and
repeated to the Sicilians that their union with the Kingdom of Victor
Emmanuel must be postponed until all members of the Italian family were
free. But even the personal presence and the angry words of Garibaldi were
powerless to check the strong expression of Sicilian opinion in favour of
immediate and unconditional annexation. His visit to Palermo was answered
by the appearance of a Sicilian deputation at Turin demanding immediate
union, and complaining that the island was treated by Garibaldi's officers
like a conquered province. At Naples the rash and violent utterances of the
Dictator were equally condemned. The Ministers whom he had himself
appointed resigned. Garibaldi replaced them by others who were almost
Republicans, and sent a letter to Victor Emmanuel requesting him to consent
to the march upon Rome and to dismiss Cavour. It was known in Turin that at
this very moment Napoleon was taking steps to increase the French force in
Rome, and to garrison the whole of the territory that still remained to the
Pope. Victor Emmanuel understood how to reply to Garibaldi's letter. He
remained true to his Minister, and sent orders to Villamarina at Naples in
case Garibaldi should proclaim the Republic to break off all relations with
him and to secure the fleet. The fall of Ancona on September 28th brought a
timely accession of popularity and credit to Cavour. He made the Parliament
which assembled at Turin four days later arbiter in the struggle between
Garibaldi and himself, and received from it an almost unanimous vote of
confidence. Garibaldi would perhaps have treated lightly any resolution of
Parliament which conflicted with his own opinion: he shrank from a breach
with the soldier of Novara and Solferino. Now, as at other moments of
danger, the character and reputation of Victor Emmanuel stood Italy in good
stead. In the enthusiasm which Garibaldi's services to Italy excited in
every patriotic heart, there was room for thankfulness that Italy possessed
a sovereign and a statesman strong enough even to withstand its hero when
his heroism endangered the national cause. [501]
[The armies on the Volturno.]
[Meeting of Victor Emmanuel and Garibaldi, Oct. 26.]
[Fall of Gaeta, Feb. 14, 1861.]
The King of Naples had not yet abandoned the hope that one or more of the
European Powers would intervene in his behalf. The trustworthy part of his
army had gathered round the fortress of Capua on the Volturno, and there
were indications that Garibaldi would here meet with far more serious
resistance than he had yet encountered. While he was still in Naples, his
troops, which had pushed northwards, sustained a repulse at Cajazzo.
Emboldened by this success, the Neapolitan army at the beginning of October
assumed the offensive. It was with difficulty that Garibaldi, placing
himself again at the head of his forces, drove the enemy back to Capua. But
the arms of Victor Emmanuel were now thrown into the scale. Crossing the
Apennines, and driving before him the weak force that was intended to bar
his way at Isernia, the King descended in the rear of the Neapolitan army.
The Bourbon commander, warned of his approach, moved northwards on the line
of the Garigliano, leaving a garrison to defend Capua. Garibaldi followed
on his track, and in the neighbourhood of Teano met King Victor Emmanuel
(October 26th). The meeting is said to have been cordial on the part of the
King, reserved on the part of Garibaldi, who saw in the King's suite the
men by whom he had been prevented from invading the Papal States in the
previous year. In spite of their common patriotism the volunteers of
Garibaldi and the army of Victor Emmanuel were rival bodies, and the
relations between the chiefs of each camp were strained and difficult.
Garibaldi himself returned to the siege of Capua, while the King marched
northwards against the retreating Neapolitans. All that was great in
Garibaldi's career was now in fact accomplished. The politicians about him
had attempted at Naples, as in Sicily, to postpone the union with Victor
Emmanuel's monarchy, and to convoke a Southern Parliament which should fix
the conditions on which annexation would be permitted; but, after
discrediting the General, they had been crushed by public opinion, and a
popular vote which was taken at the end of October on the question of
immediate union showed the majority in favour of this course to be
overwhelming. After the surrender of Capua on the 2nd of November, Victor
Emmanuel made his entry into Naples. Garibaldi, whose request for the
Lieutenancy of Southern Italy for the space of a year with full powers was
refused by the King, [502] declined all minor honours and rewards, and
departed to his home, still filled with resentment against Cavour, and
promising his soldiers that he would return in the spring and lead them to
Rome and Venice. The reduction of Gaeta, where King Francis II. had taken
refuge, and of the citadel of Messina, formed the last act of the war. The
French fleet for some time prevented the Sardinians from operating against
Gaeta from the sea, and the siege in consequence made slow progress. It was
not until the middle of January, 1861, that Napoleon permitted the French
admiral to quit his station. The bombardment was now opened both by land
and sea, and after a brave resistance Gaeta surrendered on the 14th of
February. King Francis and his young Queen, a sister of the Empress of
Austria, were conveyed in a French steamer to the Papal States, and there
began their life-long exile. The citadel of Messina, commanded by one of
the few Neapolitan officers who showed any soldierly spirit, maintained its
obstinate defence for a month after the Bourbon flag had disappeared from
the mainland.
[Cavour's policy with regard to Rome and Venice.]
[The Free Church in the Free State.]
Thus in the spring of 1861, within two years from the outbreak of war with
Austria, Italy with the exception of Rome and Venice was united under
Victor Emmanuel. Of all the European Powers, Great Britain alone watched
the creation of the new Italian Kingdom with complete sympathy and
approval. Austria, though it had made peace at Zürich, declined to renew
diplomatic intercourse with Sardinia, and protested against the assumption
by Victor Emmanuel of the title of King of Italy. Russia, the ancient
patron of the Neapolitan Bourbons, declared that geographical conditions
alone prevented its intervention against their despoilers. Prussia, though
under a new sovereign, had not yet completely severed the ties which bound
it to Austria. Nevertheless, in spite of wide political ill-will, and of
the passionate hostility of the clerical party throughout Europe, there was
little probability that the work of the Italian people would be overthrown
by external force. The problem which faced Victor Emmanuel's Government was
not so much the frustration of reactionary designs from without as the
determination of the true line of policy to be followed in regard to Rome
and Venice. There were few who, like Azeglio, held that Rome might be
permanently left outside the Italian Kingdom; there were none who held this
of Venice. Garibaldi might be mad enough to hope for victory in a campaign
against Austria and against France at the head of such a troop as he
himself could muster; Cavour would have deserved ill of his country if he
had for one moment countenanced the belief that the force which had
overthrown the Neapolitan Bourbons could with success, or with impunity to
Italy, measure itself against the defenders of Venetia or of Rome. Yet the
mind of Cavour was not one which could rest in mere passive expectancy as
to the future, or in mere condemnation of the unwise schemes of others. His
intelligence, so luminous, so penetrating, that in its utterances we seem
at times to be listening to the very spirit of the age, ranged over wide
fields of moral and of spiritual interests in its forecast of the future of
Italy, and spent its last force in one of those prophetic delineations
whose breadth and power the world can feel, though a later time alone can
judge of their correspondence with the destined course of history. Venice
was less to Europe than Rome; its transfer to Italy would, Cavour believed,
be effected either by arms or negotiations so soon as the German race
should find a really national Government, and refuse the service which had
hitherto been exacted from it for the maintenance of Austrian interests. It
was to Prussia, as the representative of nationality in Germany, that
Cavour looked as the natural ally of Italy in the vindication of that part
of the national inheritance which still lay under the dominion of the
Hapsburg. Rome, unlike Venice, was not only defended by foreign arms, it
was the seat of a Power whose empire over the mind of man was not the sport
of military or political vicissitudes. Circumstances might cause France to
relax its grasp on Rome, but it was not to such an accident that Cavour
looked for the incorporation of Rome with Italy. He conceived that the time
would arrive when the Catholic world would recognise that the Church would
best fulfil its task in complete separation from temporal power. Rome would
then assume its natural position as the centre of the Italian State; the
Church would be the noblest friend, not the misjudging enemy, of the
Italian national monarchy. Cavour's own religious beliefs were perhaps less
simple than he chose to represent them. Occupying himself, however, with
institutions, not with dogmas, he regarded the Church in profound
earnestness as a humanising and elevating power. He valued its independence
so highly that even on the suppression of the Piedmontese monasteries he
had refused to give to the State the administration of the revenue arising
from the sale of their lands, and had formed this into a fund belonging to
the Church itself, in order that the clergy might not become salaried
officers of the State. Human freedom was the principle in which he trusted;
and looking upon the Church as the greatest association formed by men, he
believed that here too the rule of freedom, of the absence of
State-regulation, would in the end best serve man's highest interests. With
the passing away of the Pope's temporal power, Cavour imagined that the
constitution of the Church itself would become more democratic, more
responsive to the movement of the modern world. His own effort in
ecclesiastical reform had been to improve the condition and to promote the
independence of the lower clergy. He had hoped that each step in their
moral and material progress would make them more national at heart; and
though this hope had been but partially fulfilled, Cavour had never ceased
to cherish the ideal of a national Church which, while recognising its Head
in Rome, should cordially and without reserve accept the friendship of the
Italian State. [503]
[Death of Cavour, June 6, 1861.]
[Free Church in Free State.]
It was in the exposition of these principles, in the enforcement of the
common moral interest of Italian nationality and the Catholic Church, that
Cavour gave his last counsels to the Italian Parliament. He was not himself
to lead the nation farther towards the Promised Land. The immense exertions
which he had maintained during the last three years, the indignation and
anxiety caused to him by Garibaldi's attacks, produced an illness which
Cavour's own careless habits of life and the unskilfulness of his doctors
rendered fatal. With dying lips he repeated to those about him the words in
which he had summed up his policy in the Italian Parliament: "A free Church
in a free State." [504] Other Catholic lands had adjusted by Concordats
with the Papacy the conflicting claims of temporal and spiritual authority
in such matters as the appointment of bishops, the regulation of schools,
the family-rights of persons married without ecclesiastical form. Cavour
appears to have thought that in Italy, where the whole nation was in a
sense Catholic, the Church might as safely and as easily be left to manage
its own affairs as in the United States, where the Catholic community is
only one among many religious societies. His optimism, his sanguine and
large-hearted tolerance, was never more strikingly shown than in this
fidelity to the principle of liberty, even in the case of those who for the
time declined all reconciliation with the Italian State. Whether Cavour's
ideal was an impracticable fancy a later age will decide. The ascendency
within the Church of Rome would seem as yet to have rested with the
elements most opposed to the spirit of the time, most obstinately bent on
setting faith and reason in irreconcilable enmity. In place of that
democratic movement within the hierarchy and the priesthood which Cavour
anticipated, absolutism has won a new crown in the doctrine of Papal
Infallibility. Catholic dogma has remained impervious to the solvents which
during the last thirty years have operated with perceptible success on the
theology of Protestant lands. Each conquest made in the world of thought
and knowledge is still noted as the next appropriate object of denunciation
by the Vatican. Nevertheless the cautious spirit will be slow to conclude
that hopes like those of Cavour were wholly vain. A single generation may
see but little of the seed-time, nothing of the harvests that are yet to
enrich mankind. And even if all wider interests be left out of view, enough
remains to justify Cavour's policy of respect for the independence of the
Church in the fact that Italy during the thirty years succeeding the
establishment of its union has remained free from civil war. Cavour was
wont to refer to the Constitution which the French National Assembly
imposed upon the clergy in 1790 as the type of erroneous legislation. Had
his own policy and that of his successors not been animated by a wiser
spirit; had the Government of Italy, after overthrowing the Pope's temporal
sovereignty, sought enemies among the rural priesthood and their
congregations, the provinces added to the Italian Kingdom by Garibaldi
would hardly have been maintained by the House of Savoy without a second
and severer struggle. Between the ideal Italy which filled the thoughts not
only of Mazzini but of some of the best English minds of that time--the
land of immemorial greatness, touched once more by the divine hand and
advancing from strength to strength as the intellectual and moral pioneer
among nations--between this ideal and the somewhat hard and commonplace
realities of the Italy of to-day there is indeed little enough resemblance.
Poverty, the pressure of inordinate taxation, the physical and moral habits
inherited from centuries of evil government,--all these have darkened in no
common measure the conditions from which Italian national life has to be
built up. If in spite of overwhelming difficulties each crisis has hitherto
been surmounted; if, with all that is faulty and infirm, the omens for the
future of Italy are still favourable, one source of its good fortune has
been the impress given to its ecclesiastical policy by the great statesman
to whom above all other men it owes the accomplishment of its union, and
who, while claiming for Italy the whole of its national inheritance, yet
determined to inflict no needless wound upon the conscience of Rome.