MISCELLANEOUS PROSE
By George Meredith
CONTENTS:
INTRODUCTION TO W. M. THACKERAY'S "THE FOUR GEORGES"
A PAUSE IN THE STRIFE.
CONCESSION TO THE CELT.
LESLIE STEPHEN.
LETTERS WRITTEN TO THE 'MORNING POST' FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY.
INTRODUCTION TO W. M. THACKERAY'S "THE FOUR GEORGES"
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY was born at Calcutta, July 18, 1811, the only
child of Richmond and Anne Thackeray. He received the main part of his
education at the Charterhouse, as we know to our profit. Thence he
passed to Cambridge, remaining there from February 1829 to sometime in
1830. To judge by quotations and allusions, his favourite of the
classics was Horace, the chosen of the eighteenth century, and generally
the voice of its philosophy in a prosperous country. His voyage from
India gave him sight of Napoleon on the rocky island. In his young
manhood he made his bow reverentially to Goethe of Weimar; which did not
check his hand from setting its mark on the sickliness of Werther.
He was built of an extremely impressionable nature and a commanding good
sense. He was in addition a calm observer, having 'the harvest of a
quiet eye.' Of this combination with the flood of subjects brought up to
judgement in his mind, came the prevalent humour, the enforced
disposition to satire, the singular critical drollery, notable in his
works. His parodies, even those pushed to burlesque, are an expression
of criticism and are more effective than the serious method, while they
rarely overstep the line of justness. The Novels by Eminent Hands do not
pervert the originals they exaggerate. 'Sieyes an abbe, now a ferocious
lifeguardsman,' stretches the face of the rollicking Irish novelist
without disfeaturing him; and the mysterious visitor to the palatial
mansion in Holywell Street indicates possibilities in the Oriental
imagination of the eminent statesman who stooped to conquer fact through
fiction. Thackeray's attitude in his great novels is that of the
composedly urbane lecturer, on a level with a select audience, assured of
interesting, above requirements to excite. The slow movement of the
narrative has a grace of style to charm like the dance of the Minuet de
la Cour: it is the limpidity of Addison flavoured with salt of a racy
vernacular; and such is the veri-similitude and the dialogue that they
might seem to be heard from the mouths of living speakers. When in this
way the characters of Vanity Fair had come to growth, their author was
rightly appreciated as one of the creators in our literature, he took at
once the place he will retain. With this great book and with Esmond and
The Newcomes, he gave a name eminent, singular, and beloved to English
fiction.
Charges of cynicism are common against all satirists, Thackeray had to
bear with them. The social world he looked at did not show him heroes,
only here and there a plain good soul to whom he was affectionate in the
unhysterical way of an English father patting a son on the head. He
described his world as an accurate observer saw it, he could not be
dishonest. Not a page of his books reveals malevolence or a sneer at
humanity. He was driven to the satirical task by the scenes about him.
There must be the moralist in the satirist if satire is to strike. The
stroke is weakened and art violated when he comes to the front. But he
will always be pressing forward, and Thackeray restrained him as much as
could be done, in the manner of a good-humoured constable. Thackeray may
have appeared cynical to the devout by keeping him from a station in the
pulpit among congregations of the many convicted sinners. That the
moralist would have occupied it and thundered had he presented us with
the Fourth of the Georges we see when we read of his rejecting the
solicitations of so seductive a personage for the satiric rod.
Himself one of the manliest, the kindliest of human creatures, it was the
love of his art that exposed him to misinterpretation. He did stout
service in his day. If the bad manners he scourged are now lessened to
some degree we pay a debt in remembering that we owe much to him, and if
what appears incurable remains with us, a continued reading of his works
will at least help to combat it.
A PAUSE IN THE STRIFE--1886
Our 'Eriniad,' or ballad epic of the enfranchisement of the sister island
is closing its first fytte for the singer, and with such result as those
Englishmen who have some knowledge of their fellows foresaw. There are
sufficient reasons why the Tories should always be able to keep together,
but let them have the credit of cohesiveness and subordination to
control. Though working for their own ends, they won the esteem of their
allies, which will count for them in the struggles to follow. Their
leaders appear to have seen what has not been distinctly perceptible to
the opposite party--that the break up of the Liberals means the defection
of the old Whigs in permanence, heralding the establishment of a powerful
force against Radicalism, with a capital cry to the country. They have
tactical astuteness. If they seem rather too proud of their victory, it
is merely because, as becomes them, they do not look ahead. To rejoice
in the gaining of a day, without having clear views of the morrow, is
puerile enough. Any Tory victory, it may be said, is little more than a
pause in the strife, unless when the Radical game is played 'to dish the
Whigs,' and the Tories are now fast bound down by their incorporation of
the latter to abstain from the violent springs and right-about-facings of
the Derby-Disraeli period. They are so heavily weighted by the new
combination that their Jack-in-the-box, Lord Randolph, will have to stand
like an ordinary sentinel on duty, and take the measurement of his
natural size. They must, on the supposition of their entry into office,
even to satisfy their own constituents, produce a scheme. Their majority
in the House will command it.
To this extent, then, Mr. Gladstone has not been defeated. The question
set on fire by him will never be extinguished until the combustible
matter has gone to ashes. But personally he meets a sharp rebuff. The
Tories may well raise hurrahs over that. Radicals have to admit it, and
point to the grounds of it. Between a man's enemies and his friends
there comes out a rough painting of his character, not without a
resemblance to the final summary, albeit wanting in the justly delicate
historical touch to particular features. On the one side he is abused as
'the one-man power'; lauded on the other for his marvellous intuition of
the popular will. One can believe that he scarcely wishes to march
dictatorially, and full surely his Egyptian policy was from step to step
a misreading of the will of the English people. He went forth on this
campaign, with the finger of Egypt not ineffectively levelled against him
a second time. Nevertheless he does read his English; he has, too, the
fatal tendency to the bringing forth of Bills in the manner of Jove big
with Minerva. He perceived the necessity, and the issue of the
necessity; clearly defined what must come, and, with a higher motive than
the vanity with which his enemies charge him, though not with such high
counsel as Wisdom at his ear, fell to work on it alone, produced the
whole Bill alone, and then handed it to his Cabinet to digest, too much
in love with the thing he had laid and incubated to permit of any serious
dismemberment of its frame. Hence the disruption. He worked for the
future, produced a Bill for the future, and is wrecked in the present.
Probably he can work in no other way than from the impulse of his
enthusiasm, solitarily. It is a way of making men overweeningly in love
with their creations. The consequence is likely to be that Ireland will
get her full measure of justice to appease her cravings earlier than she
would have had as much from the United Liberal Cabinet, but at a cost
both to her and to England. Meanwhile we are to have a House of Commons
incapable of conducting public business; the tradesmen to whom the Times
addressed pathetic condolences on the loss of their season will lose more
than one; and we shall be made sensible that we have an enemy in our
midst, until a people, slow to think, have taken counsel of their native
generosity to put trust in the most generous race on earth.
CONCESSION TO THE CELT--1886
Things are quiet outside an ant-hill until the stick has been thrust into
it. Mr. Gladstone's Bill for helping to the wiser government of Ireland
has brought forth our busy citizens on the top-rubble in traversing
counterswarms, and whatever may be said against a Bill that deals roughly
with many sensitive interests, one asks whether anything less violently
impressive would have roused industrious England to take this question at
last into the mind, as a matter for settlement. The Liberal leader has
driven it home; and wantonly, in the way of a pedestrian demagogue, some
think; certainly to the discomposure of the comfortable and the myopely
busy, who prefer to live on with a disease in the frame rather than at
all be stirred. They can, we see, pronounce a positive electoral
negative; yet even they, after the eighty and odd years of our domestic
perplexity, in the presence of the eighty and odd members pledged for
Home Rule, have been moved to excited inquiries regarding measures--short
of the obnoxious Bill. How much we suffer from sniffing the vain incense
of that word practical, is contempt of prevision! Many of the measures
now being proposed responsively to the fretful cry for them, as a better
alternative to correction by force of arms, are sound and just. Ten
years back, or at a more recent period before Mr. Parnell's triumph in
the number of his followers, they would have formed a basis for the
appeasement of the troubled land. The institution of county boards,
the abolition of the detested Castle, something like the establishment of
a Royal residence in Dublin, would have begun the work well. Materially
and sentimentally, they were the right steps to take. They are now
proposed too late. They are regarded as petty concessions, insufficient
and vexatious. The lower and the higher elements in the population are
fused by the enthusiasm of men who find themselves marching in full body
on a road, under a flag, at the heels of a trusted leader; and they will
no longer be fed with sops. Petty concessions are signs of weakness to
the unsatisfied; they prick an appetite, they do not close breaches. If
our object is, as we hear it said, to appease the Irish, we shall have to
give them the Parliament their leader demands. It might once have been
much less; it may be worried into a raving, perhaps a desperate
wrestling, for still more. Nations pay Sibylline prices for want of
forethought. Mr. Parnell's terms are embodied in Mr. Gladstone's Bill,
to which he and his band have subscribed. The one point for him is the
statutory Parliament, so that Ireland may civilly govern herself; and
standing before the world as representative of his country, he addresses
an applausive audience when he cites the total failure of England to do
that business of government, as at least a logical reason for the claim.
England has confessedly failed; the world says it, the country admits it.
We have failed, and not because the so-called Saxon is incapable of
understanding the Celt, but owing to our system, suitable enough to us,
of rule by Party, which puts perpetually a shifting hand upon the reins,
and invites the clamour it has to allay. The Irish--the English too in
some degree--have been taught that roaring; in its various forms, is the
trick to open the ears of Ministers. We have encouraged by irritating
them to practise it, until it has become a habit, an hereditary
profession with them. Ministers in turn have defensively adopted the
arts of beguilement, varied by an exercise of the police. We grew
accustomed to periods of Irish fever. The exhaustion ensuing we named
tranquillity, and hoped that it would bear fruit. But we did not plant.
The Party in office directed its attention to what was uppermost and
urgent--to that which kicked them. Although we were living, by common
consent; with a disease in the frame, eruptive at intervals, a national
disfigurement always a danger, the Ministerial idea of arresting it for
the purpose of healing was confined, before the passing of Mr.
Gladstone's well-meant Land Bill, to the occasional despatch of
commissions; and, in fine, we behold through History the Irish malady
treated as a form of British constitutional gout. Parliament touched on
the Irish only when the Irish were active as a virus. Our later
alternations of cajolery and repression bear painful resemblance to the
nervous fit of rickety riders compounding with their destinations that
they may keep their seats. The cajolery was foolish, if an end was in
view; the repression inefficient. To repress efficiently we have to
stifle a conscience accusing us of old injustice, and forget that we are
sworn to freedom. The cries that we have been hearing for Cromwell or
for Bismarck prove the existence of an impatient faction in our midst
fitter to wear the collars of those masters whom they invoke than to drop
a vote into the ballot-box. As for the prominent politicians who have
displaced their rivals partly on the strength of an implied approbation
of those cries, we shall see how they illumine the councils of a
governing people. They are wiser than the barking dogs. Cromwell and
Bismarck are great names; but the harrying of Ireland did not settle it,
and to Germanize a Posen and call it peace will find echo only in the
German tongue. Posen is the error of a master-mind too much given to
hammer at obstacles. He has, however, the hammer. Can it be imagined in
English hands? The braver exemplar for grappling with monstrous
political tasks is Cavour, and he would not have hinted at the iron
method or the bayonet for a pacification. Cavour challenged debate; he
had faith in the active intellect, and that is the thing to be prayed for
by statesmen who would register permanent successes. The Irish, it is
true, do not conduct an argument coolly. Mr. Parnell and his eighty-five
have not met the Conservative leader and his following in the Commons
with the gravity of platonic disputants. But they have a logical
position, equivalent to the best of arguments. They are representatives,
they would say, of a country admittedly ill-governed by us; and they have
accepted the Bill of the defeated Minister as final. Its provisions are
their terms of peace. They offer in return for that boon to take the
burden we have groaned under off our hands. If we answer that we think
them insincere, we accuse these thrice accredited representatives of the
Irish people of being hypocrites and crafty conspirators; and numbers in
England, affected by the weapons they have used to get to their present
strength, do think it; forgetful that our obtuseness to their constant
appeals forced them into the extremer shifts of agitation. Yet it will
hardly be denied that these men love Ireland; and they have not shown
themselves by their acts to be insane. To suppose them conspiring for
separation indicates a suspicion that they have neither hearts nor heads.
For Ireland, separation is immediate ruin. It would prove a very short
sail for these conspirators before the ship went down. The vital
necessity of the Union for both, countries, obviously for the weaker of
the two, is known to them; and unless we resume our exasperation of the
wild fellow the Celt can be made by such a process, we have not rational
grounds for treating him, or treating with him, as a Bedlamite. He has
besides his passions shrewd sense; and his passions may be rightly
directed by benevolent attraction. This is language derided by the
victorious enemy; it speaks nevertheless what the world, and even
troubled America, thinks of the Irish Celt. More of it now on our side
of the Channel would be serviceable. The notion that he hates the
English comes of his fevered chafing against the harness of England, and
when subject to his fevers, he is unrestrained in his cries and deeds.
That pertains to the nature of him. Of course, if we have no belief in
the virtues of friendliness and confidence--none in regard to the
Irishman--we show him his footing, and we challenge the issue. For the
sole alternative is distinct antagonism, a form of war. Mr. Gladstone's
Bill has brought us to that definite line. Ireland having given her
adhesion to it, swearing that she does so in good faith, and will not
accept a smaller quantity, peace is only to be had by our placing trust
in the Irish; we trust them or we crush them. Intermediate ways are but
the prosecution of our ugly flounderings in Bogland; and dubious as we
see the choice on either side, a decisive step to right or left will not
show us to the world so bemired, to ourselves so miserably inefficient,
as we appear in this session of a new Parliament. With his eighty-five,
apart from external operations lawful or not, Mr. Parnell can act as a
sort of lumbricus in the House. Let journalists watch and chronicle
events: if Mr. Gladstone has humour, they will yet note a peculiar smile
on his closed mouth from time to time when the alien body within the
House, from which, for the sake of its dignity and ability to conduct its
affairs, he would have relieved it till the day of a warmer intelligence
between Irish and English, paralyzes our machinery business. An ably-
handled coherent body in the midst of the liquid groups will make it felt
that Ireland is a nation, naturally dependent though she must be. We
have to do with forces in politics, and the great majority of the Irish
Nationalists in Ireland has made them a force.
No doubt Mr. Matthew Arnold is correct in his apprehensions of the
dangers we may fear from a Dublin House of Commons. The declarations
and novel or ultra theories might almost be written down beforehand.
I should, for my part, anticipate a greater danger in the familiar
attitude of the English metropolitan Press and public toward an
experiment they dislike and incline to dread:--the cynical comments,
the quotations between inverted commas, the commiserating shrug, cold
irony, raw banter, growl of menace, sharp snap, rounds of laughter.
Frenchmen of the Young Republic, not presently appreciated as offensive,
have had some of these careless trifles translated for them, and have
been stung. We favoured Germany with them now and then, before Germany
became the first power in Europe. Before America had displayed herself
as greatest among the giants that do not go to pieces, she had, as
Americans forgivingly remember, without mentioning, a series of flicks of
the whip. It is well to learn manners without having them imposed on us.
There are various ways for tripping the experiment. Nevertheless, when
the experiment is tried, considering that our welfare is involved in its
not failing, as we have failed, we should prepare to start it cordially,
cordially assist it. Thoughtful political minds regard the measure as a
backward step; yet conceiving but a prospect that a measure accepted by
Home Rulers will possibly enable the Irish and English to step together,
it seems better worth the venture than to pursue a course of prospectless
discord! Whatever we do or abstain from doing has now its evident
dangers, and this being imminent may appear the larger of them; but if
a weighing of the conditions dictates it, and conscience approves, the
wiser proceeding is to make trial of the untried. Our outlook was
preternaturally black, with enormous increase of dangers when the
originator of our species venturesomely arose from the posture of the
'quatre pattes'. We consider that we have not lost by his temerity. In
states of dubitation under impelling elements, the instinct pointing to
courageous action is, besides the manlier, conjecturably the right one.
LESLIE STEPHEN--1904
When that noble body of scholarly and cheerful pedestrians, the Sunday
Tramps, were on the march, with Leslie Stephen to lead them, there was
conversation which would have made the presence of a shorthand writer a
benefaction to the country. A pause to it came at the examination of the
leader's watch and Ordnance map under the western sun, and void was given
for the strike across country to catch the tail of a train offering
dinner in London, at the cost of a run through hedges, over ditches and
fellows, past proclamation against trespassers, under suspicion of being
taken for more serious depredators in flight. The chief of the Tramps
had a wonderful calculating eye in the observation of distances and the
nature of the land, as he proved by his discovery of untried passes in
the higher Alps, and he had no mercy for pursy followers. I have often
said of this life-long student and philosophical head that he had in him
the making of a great military captain. He would not have been opposed
to the profession of arms if he had been captured early for the service,
notwithstanding his abomination of bloodshed. He had a high, calm
courage, was unperturbed in a dubious position, and would confidently
take the way out of it which he conceived to be the better. We have not
to deplore that he was diverted from the ways of a soldier, though
England, as the country has been learning of late, cannot boast of many
in uniform who have capacity for leadership. His work in literature will
be reviewed by his lieutenant of Tramps, one of the ablest of writers!--
[Frederic W. Maitland.]--The memory of it remains with us, as being the
profoundest and the most sober criticism we have had in our time. The
only sting in it was an inoffensive humorous irony that now and then
stole out for a roll over, like a furry cub, or the occasional ripple on
a lake in grey weather. We have nothing left that is like it.
One might easily fall into the pit of panegyric by an enumeration of his
qualities, personal and literary. It would not be out of harmony with
the temper and characteristics of a mind so equable. He, the equable,
whether in condemnation or eulogy. Our loss of such a man is great, for
work was in his brain, and the hand was active till close upon the time
when his breathing ceased. The loss to his friends can be replaced only
by an imagination that conjures him up beside them. That will be no task
to those who have known him well enough to see his view of things as they
are, and revive his expression of it. With them he will live despite the
word farewell.
CORRESPONDENCE FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY
LETTERS WRITTEN TO THE MORNING POST FROM THE SEAT OF WAR IN ITALY
FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENT
FERRARA, June 22, 1866.
Before this letter reaches London the guns will have awakened both the
echo of the old river Po and the classical Mincio. The whole of the
troops, about 110,000 men, with which Cialdini intends to force the
passage of the first-named river are already massed along the right bank
of the Po, anxiously waiting that the last hour of to-morrow should
strike, and that the order for action should be given. The telegraph
will have already informed your readers that, according to the intimation
sent by General Lamarmora on Tuesday evening to the Austrian
headquarters, the three days fixed by the general's message before
beginning hostilities will expire at twelve p.m. of the 23rd of June.
Cialdini's headquarters have been established in this city since
Wednesday morning, and the famous general, in whom the fourth corps he
commands, and the whole of the nation, has so much confidence, has
concentrated the whole of his forces within a comparatively narrow
compass, and is ready for action. I believe therefore that by to-morrow
the right bank of the Po will be connected with the mainland of the
Polesine by several pontoon bridges, which will enable Cialdini's corps
d'armee to cross the river, and, as everybody here hopes, to cross it in
spite of any defence the Austrians may make.
On my way to this ancient city last evening I met General Cadogan and two
superior Prussian officers, who by this time must have joined Victor
Emmanuel's headquarters at Cremona; if not, they have been by this time
transferred elsewhere, more on the front, towards the line of the Mincio,
on which, according to appearance, the first, second, and third Italian
corps d'armee seem destined to operate. The English general and the two
Prussian officers above mentioned are to follow the king's staff, the
first as English commissioner, the superior in rank of the two others in
the same capacity.
I have been told here that, before leaving Bologna, Cialdini held a
general council of the commanders of the seven divisions of which his
powerful corps d'armee is formed, and that he told them that, in spite of
the forces the enemy has massed on the left bank of the Po, between the
point which faces Stellata and Rovigo, the river must be crossed by his
troops, whatever might be the sacrifice this important operation
requires. Cialdini is a man who knows how to keep his word, and, for
this reason, I have no doubt he will do what he has already made up his
mind to accomplish. I am therefore confident that before two or three
days have elapsed, these 110,000 Italian troops, or a great part of them,
will have trod, for the Italians, the sacred land of Venetia.
Once the river Po crossed by Cialdini's corps d'armee, he will boldly
enter the Polesine and make himself master of the road which leads by
Rovigo towards Este and Padua. A glance at the map will show your
readers how, at about twenty or thirty miles from the first-mentioned
town, a chain of hills, called the Colli Euganei, stretches itself from
the last spur of the Julian Alps, in the vicinity of Vicenza, gently
sloping down towards the sea. As this line affords good positions for
contesting the advance of an army crossing the Po at Lago Scuro, or at
any other point not far from it, it is to be supposed that the Austrians
will make a stand there, and I should not be surprised at all that
Cialdini's first battle, if accepted by the enemy, should take place
within that comparatively narrow ground which is within Montagnana, Este,
Terradura, Abano, and Padua. It is impossible to suppose that Cialdini's
corps d'armee, being so large, is destined to cross the Po only at one
point of the river below its course: it is extremely likely that part of
it should cross it at some point above, between Revere and Stellata,
where the river is in two or three instances only 450 metres wide. Were
the Italian general to be successful--protected as he will be by the
tremendous fire of the powerful artillery he disposes of--in these
twofold operations, the Austrians defending the line of the Colli Euganei
could be easily outflanked by the Italian troops, who would have crossed
the river below Lago Scuro. Of course these are mere suppositions, for
nobody, as you may imagine, except the king, Cialdini himself, Lamarmora,
Pettiti, and Menabrea, is acquainted with the plan of the forthcoming
campaign. There was a rumour at Cialdini's headquarters to-day that the
Austrians had gathered in great numbers in the Polesine, and especially
at Rovigo, a small town which they have strongly fortified of late, with
an apparent design to oppose the crossing of the Po, were Cialdini to
attempt it at or near Lago Scuro. There are about Rovigo large tracts of
marshes and fields cut by ditches and brooks, which, though owing to the
dryness of the season [they] cannot be, as it was generally believed two
weeks ago, easily inundated, yet might well aid the operations the
Austrians may undertake in order to check the advance of the Italian
fourth corps d'armee. The resistance to the undertaking of Cialdini may
be, on the part of the Austrians, very stout, but I am almost certain
that it will be overcome by the ardour of Italian troops, and by the
skill of their illustrious leader.
As I told you above, the declaration of war was handed over to an
Austrian major for transmission to Count Stancowick, the Austrian
governor of Mantua, on the evening of the 19th, by Colonel Bariola,
sous-chef of the general staff, who was accompanied by the Duke Luigi
of Sant' Arpino, the husband of the amiable widow of Lord Burghersh.
The duke is the eldest son of Prince San Teodoro, one of the wealthiest
noblemen of Naples. In spite of his high position and of his family
ties, the Duke of Sant' Arpino, who is well known in London fashionable
society, entered as a volunteer in the Italian army, and was appointed
orderly officer to General Lamarmora. The choice of such a gentleman for
the mission I am speaking of was apparently made with intention, in order
to show the Austrians, that the Neapolitan nobility is as much interested
in the national movement as the middle and lower classes of the Kingdom,
once so fearfully misruled by the Bourbons. The Duke of Sant' Arpino is
not the only Neapolitan nobleman who has enlisted in the Italian army
since the war with Austria broke out. In order to show you the
importance which must be given to this pronunciamiento of the Neapolitan
noblemen, allow me to give you here a short list of the names of those of
them who have enlisted as private soldiers in the cavalry regiments of
the regular army: The Duke of Policastro; the Count of Savignano Guevara,
the eldest son of the Duke of Bovino; the Duke d'Ozia d'Angri, who had
emigrated in 1860, and returned to Naples six months ago; Marquis
Rivadebro Serra; Marquis Pisicelli, whose family had left Naples in 1860
out of devotion to Francis II.; two Carraciolos, of the historical family
from which sprung the unfortunate Neapolitan admiral of this name, whose
head Lord Nelson would have done better not to have sacrificed to the
cruelty of Queen Caroline; Prince Carini, the representative of an
illustrious family of Sicily, a nephew of the Marquis del Vasto; and
Pescara, a descendant of that great general of Charles V., to whom the
proud Francis I. of France was obliged to surrender and give up his sword
at the battle of Pavia. Besides these Neapolitan noblemen who have
enlisted of late as privates, the Italian army now encamped on the banks
of the Po and of the Mincio may boast of two Colonnas, a prince of Somma,
two Barons Renzi, an Acquaviva, of the Duke of Atri, two Capece, two
Princes Buttera, etc. To return to the mission of Colonel Bariola and
the Duke of Sant' Arpino, I will add some details which were told me this
morning by a gentleman who left Cremona yesterday evening, and who had
them from a reliable source. The messenger of General Lamarmora had been
directed to proceed from Cremona to the small village of Le Grazie,
which, on the line of the Mincio, marks the Austrian and Italian
frontier.
On the right bank of the Lake of Mantua, in the year 1340, stood a small
chapel containing a miraculous painting of the Madonna, called by the
people of the locality 'Santa Maria delle Grazie.' The boatmen and
fishermen of the Mincio, who had been, as they said, often saved from
certain death by the Madonna--as famous in those days as the modern Lady
of Rimini, celebrated for the startling feat of winking her eyes--
determined to erect for her a more worthy abode.
Hence arose the Santuario delle Grazie. Here, as at Loretto and other
holy localities of Italy, a fair is held, in which, amongst a great
number of worldly things, rosaries, holy images, and other miraculous
objects are sold, and astounding boons are said to be secured at the most
trifling expense. The Santuario della Madonna delle Grazie enjoying a
far-spread reputation, the dumb, deaf, blind, and halt-in short, people
afflicted with all sorts of infirmities--flock thither during the fair,
and are not wanting even on the other days of the year. The church of Le
Grazie is one of the most curious of Italy. Not that there is anything
remarkable in its architecture, for it is an Italian Gothic structure of
the simplest style. But the ornamental part of the interior is most
peculiar. The walls of the building are covered with a double row of wax
statues, of life size, representing a host of warriors, cardinals,
bishops, kings, and popes, who--as the story runs--pretended to have
received some wonderful grace during their earthly existence. Amongst
the grand array of illustrious personages, there are not a few humbler
individuals whose history is faithfully told (if you choose to credit it)
by the painted inscriptions below. There is even a convict, who, at the
moment of being hanged, implored succour of the all-powerful Madonna,
whereupon the beam of the gibbet instantly broke, and the worthy
individual was restored to society--a very doubtful benefit after all.
On Colonel Bariola and the Duke of Sant' Arpino arriving at this place,
which is only five miles distant from Mantua, their carriage was
naturally stopped by the commissaire of the Austrian police, whose duty
was to watch the frontier. Having told him that they had a despatch to
deliver either to the military governor of Mantua or to some officer sent
by him to receive it, the commissaire at once despatched a mounted
gendarme to Mantua. Two hours had scarcely elapsed when a carriage drove
into the village of Le Grazie, from which an Austrian major of infantry
alighted and hastened to a wooden hut where the two Italian officers were
waiting. Colonel Bariola, who was trained in the Austrian military
school of Viller Nashstad, and regularly left the Austrian service in
1848, acquainted the newly-arrived major with his mission, which was that
of delivering the sealed despatch to the general in command of Mantua and
receiving for it a regular receipt. The despatch was addressed to the
Archduke Albert, commander-in-chief of the Austrian army of the South,
care of the governor of Mantua. After the major had delivered the
receipt, the three messengers entered into a courteous conversation,
during which Colonel Bariola seized an opportunity of presenting the
duke, purposely laying stress on the fact of his belonging to one of the
most illustrious families of Naples. It happened that the Austrian major
had also been trained in the same school where Colonel Bariola was
brought up--a circumstance of which he was reminded by the Austrian
officer himself. Three hours had scarcely elapsed from the arrival of
the two Italian messengers of war at Le Grazie, on the Austrian frontier,
when they were already on their way back to the headquarters of Cremona,
where during the night the rumour was current that a telegram had been
received by Lamarmora from Verona, in which Archduke Albert accepted the
challenge. Victor Emmanuel, whom I saw at Bologna yesterday, arrived at
Cremona in the morning at two o'clock, but by this time his Majesty's
headquarters must have removed more towards the front, in the direction
of the Oglio. I should not be at all surprised were the Italian
headquarters to be established by to-morrow either at Piubega or
Gazzoldo, if not actually at Goito, a village, as you know, which marks
the Italian-Austrian frontier on the Mincio. The whole of the first,
second, and third Italian corps d'armee are by this time concentrated
within that comparatively narrow space which lies between the position of
Castiglione, Delle Stiviere, Lorrato, and Desenzano, on the Lake of
Garda, and Solferino on one side; Piubega, Gazzoldo, Sacca, Goito, and
Castellucchio on the other. Are these three corps d'armee to attack when
they hear the roar of Cialdini's artillery on the right bank of the Po?
Are they destined to force the passage of the Mincio either at Goito or
at Borghetto? or are they destined to invest Verona, storm Peschiera,
and lay siege to Mantua? This is more than I can tell you, for, I repeat
it, the intentions of the Italian leaders are enveloped in a veil which
nobody--the Austrians included--has as yet been able to penetrate. One
thing, however, is certain, and it is this, that as the clock of Victor
Emmanuel marks the last minute of the seventy-second hour fixed by the
declaration delivered at Le Grazie on Wednesday by Colonel Bariola to the
Austrian major, the fair land where Virgil was born and Tasso was
imprisoned will be enveloped by a thick cloud of the smoke of hundreds
and hundreds of cannon. Let us hope that God will be in favour of right
and justice, which, in this imminent and fierce struggle, is undoubtedly
on the Italian side.
CREMONA, June 30, 1866.
The telegraph will have already informed you of the concentration of the
Italian army, whose headquarters have since Tuesday been removed from
Redondesco to Piadena, the king having chosen the adjacent villa of
Cigognolo for his residence. The concentrating movements of the royal
army began on the morning of the 27th, i.e., three days after the bloody
fait d'armes of the 24th, which, narrated and commented on in different
manners according to the interests and passions of the narrators, still
remains for many people a mystery. At the end of this letter you will
see that I quote a short phrase with which an Austrian major, now
prisoner of war, portrayed the results of the fierce struggle fought
beyond the Mincio. This officer is one of the few survivors of a
regiment of Austrian volunteers, uhlans, two squadrons of which he
himself commanded. The declaration made by this officer was thoroughly
explicit, and conveys the exact idea of the valour displayed by the
Italians in that terrible fight. Those who incline to overrate the
advantages obtained by the Austrians on Sunday last must not forget that
if Lamarmora had thought proper to persist in holding the positions of
Valeggio, Volta, and Goito, the Austrians could not have prevented him.
It seems the Austrian general-in-chief shared this opinion, for, after
his army had carried with terrible sacrifices the positions of Monte
Vento and Custozza, it did not appear, nor indeed did the Austrians then
give any signs, that they intended to adopt a more active system of
warfare. It is the business of a commander to see that after a victory
the fruit of it should not be lost, and for this reason the enemy is
pursued and molested, and time is not left him for reorganization.
Nothing of this happened after the 24th--nothing has been done by the
Austrians to secure such results. The frontier which separates the two
dominions is now the same as it was on the eve of the declaration of war.
At Goito, at Monzambano, and in the other villages of the extreme
frontier, the Italian authorities are still discharging their duties.
Nothing is changed in those places, were we to except that now and then
an Austrian cavalry party suddenly makes its appearance, with the only
object of watching the movements of the Italian army. One of these
parties, formed by four squadrons of the Wurtemberg hussar regiment,
having advanced at six o'clock this morning on the right bank of the
Mincio, met the fourth squadron of the Italian lancers of Foggia and were
beaten back, and compelled to retire in disorder towards Goito and
Rivolta. In this unequal encounter the Italian lancers distinguished
themselves very much, made some Austrian hussars prisoners, and killed a
few more, amongst whom was an officer. The same state of thing, prevails
at Rivottella, a small village on the shores of the Lake of Garda, about
four miles distant from the most advanced fortifications of Peschiera.
There, as elsewhere, some Austrian parties advanced with the object of
watching the movements of the Garibaldians, who occupy the hilly ground,
which from Castiglione, Eseuta, and Cartel Venzago stretches to Lonato,
Salo, and Desenzano, and to the mountain passes of Caffaro. In the last-
named place the Garibaldians came to blows with the Austrians on the
morning of the 28th, and the former got the best of the fray. Had the
fait d'armes of the 24th, or the battle of Custozza, as Archduke Albrecht
calls it, been a great victory for the Austrians, why should the imperial
army remain in such inaction? The only conclusion we must come to is
simply this, that the Austrian losses have been such as to induce the
commander-in-chief of the army to act prudently on the defensive. We are
now informed that the charges of cavalry which the Austrian lancers and
the Hungarian hussars had to sustain near Villafranca on the 24th with
the Italian horsemen of the Aorta and Alessandria regiments have been so
fatal to the former that a whole division of the Kaiser cavalry must be
reorganised before it can be brought into the field main.
The regiment of Haller hussars and two of volunteer uhlans were almost
destroyed in that terrible charge. To give you an idea of this cavalry
encounter, it is sufficient to say that Colonel Vandoni, at the head of
the Aorta regiment he commands, charged fourteen times during the short
period of four hours. The volunteer uhlans of the Kaiser regiment had
already given up the idea of breaking through the square formed by the
battalion, in the centre of which stood Prince Humbert of Savoy, when
they were suddenly charged and literally cut to pieces by the Alessandria
light cavalry, in spite of the long lances they carried. This weapon and
the loose uniform they wear makes them resemble the Cossacks of the Don.
There is one circumstance, which, if I am not mistaken, has not as yet
been published by the newspapers, and it is this. There was a fight on
the 25th on a place at the north of Roverbella, between the Italian
regiment of Novara cavalry and a regiment of Hungarian hussars, whose
name is not known. This regiment was so thoroughly routed by the
Italians that it was pursued as far as Villafranca, and had two squadrons
put hors de combat, whilst the Novara regiment only lost twenty-four
mounted men. I think it right to mention this, for it proves that, the
day after the bloody affair of the 24th, the Italian army had still a
regiment of cavalry operating at Villafranca, a village which lay at a
distance of fifteen kilometres from the Italian frontier. A report, which
is much accredited here, explains how the Italian army did not derive the
advantages it might have derived from the action of the 24th. It appears
that the orders issued from the Italian headquarters during the previous
night, and especially the verbal instructions given by Lamarmora and
Pettiti to the staff officers of the different army corps, were either
forgotten or misunderstood by those officers. Those sent to Durando,
the commander of the first corps, seem to have been as follows: That he
should have marched in the direction of Castelnuovo, without, however,
taking part in the action. Durando, it is generally stated, had strictly
adhered to the orders sent from the headquarters, but it seems that
General Cerale understood them too literally. Having been ordered to
march on Castelnuovo, and finding the village strongly held by the
Austrians, who received his division with a tremendous fire, he at once
engaged in the action instead of falling back on the reserve of the first
corps and waiting new instructions. If such was really the case, it is
evident that Cerale thought that the order to march which he had received
implied that he was to attack and get possession of Castelnuovo, had this
village, as it really was, already been occupied by the enemy. In
mentioning this fact I feel bound to observe that I write it under the
most complete reserve, for I should be sorry indeed to charge General
Cerale with having misunderstood such an important order.
I see that one of your leading contemporaries believes that it would be
impossible for the king or Lamarmora to say what result they expected
from their ill-conceived and worse-executed attempt. The result they
expected is, I think, clear enough; they wanted to break through the
quadrilateral and make their junction with Cialdini, who was ready to
cross the Po during the night of the 24th. That the attempt was ill-
conceived and worse-executed, neither your contemporary nor the public at
large has, for the present, the right to conclude, for no one knows as
yet but imperfectly the details of the terrible fight. What is certain,
however, is that General Durando, perceiving that the Cerale division was
lost, did all that he could to help it. Failing in this he turned to his
two aides-de-camp and coolly said to them:
'Now, gentlemen, it is time for you to retire, for I have a duty to
perform which is a strictly personal one--the duty of dying.' On saying
these words he galloped to the front and placed himself at about twenty
paces from a battalion of Austrian sharp-shooters which were ascending
the hill. In less than five minutes his horse was killed under him, and
he was wounded in the right hand. I scarcely need add that his aides-de-
camp did not flinch from sharing Durando's fate. They bravely followed
their general, and one, the Marquis Corbetta, was wounded in the leg; the
other, Count Esengrini, had his horse shot under him. I called on
Durando, who is now at Milan, the day before yesterday. Though a
stranger to him, he received me at once, and, speaking of the action of
the 24th, he only said: 'I have the satisfaction of having done my duty.
I wait tranquilly the judgement of history.'
Assuming, for argument's sake, that General Cerale misunderstood the
orders he had received, and that, by precipitating his movement, he
dragged into the same mistake the whole of Durando's corps--assuming,
I say, this to be the right version, you can easily explain the fact that
neither of the two contending parties are as yet in a position clearly to
describe the action of the 24th. Why did neither the one nor the other
display and bring into action the whole forces they could have had at
their disposal? Why so many partial engagements at a great distance one
from the other? In a word, why that want of unity, which, in my opinion,
constituted the paramount characteristic of that bloody struggle? I may
be greatly mistaken, but I am of opinion that neither the Italian
general-in-chief nor the Austrian Archduke entertained on the night of
the 23rd the idea of delivering a battle on the 24th. There, and only
there, lies the whole mystery of the affair. The total want of unity of
action on the part of the Italians assured to the Austrians, not the
victory, but the chance of rendering impossible Lamarmora's attempt to
break through the quadrilateral. This no one can deny; but, on the other
hand, if the Italian army failed in attaining its object, the failure-
owing to the bravery displayed both by the soldiers and by the generals-
was far from being a disastrous or irreparable one. The Italians fought
from three o'clock in the morning until nine in the evening like lions,
showing to their enemies and to Europe that they know how to defend their
country, and that they are worthy of the noble enterprise they have
undertaken.