THE JOURNALIST
In 1846, Cavour was only known at home as the most unpopular man in
Piedmont. Most people can scarcely be said to be unpopular before they
have occupied any public position, but this, strangely enough, was the
case with Cavour. He was simply a private person, but he was hated
by all parties. His writings, which had made their mark abroad, were
little known in Italy; the reviews in which they appeared could only
be obtained by stealth. No one rightly knew what his views were, but
every one disliked him. Solaro de la Margherita, the retrograde prime
minister, was detested by the liberals, but he had a strong following
among the old Savoyard nobility; Lorenzo Valerio, the radical
manufacturer, was harassed by those in power, but he was adored by the
people; Cavour was in worse odour with both parties than these two men
were with either. Under the porticoes of Turin petty private talk took
the place of anything like public discussion. "By good fortune," as
the prime minister put it, "the press was not free in Piedmont;" quite
the reverse. Gossip, especially spiteful gossip, reigned supreme.
Gossip in both spheres of society was all against Cavour. What might
be called the Court party (though whether the king belonged to it or
it to the king was not clear), with the tenacious memory of small
coteries, still recollected Cavour as the self-willed student of the
Military Academy. Charles Albert himself made an occasional polite
inquiry of the Marquis as to his son's travels and his visits to
prisons and hospitals, but, unless report erred, he was speaking of
him to others as the most dangerous man in his kingdom. The degree
to which Cavour was hated by the conservatives is shown by one small
fact: he was treasurer of an Infant Asylum, but it was thought
necessary privately to ask him to retire for the good of the charity,
his connection with which set all the higher society against it. The
case with the radicals was no better. He belonged to an agricultural
association in which Valerio was a leading spirit; one day he asked
leave to speak, upon which almost all the members present left the
building. On this side, no doubt part of the antipathy arose from
the popular feeling against Cavour's father, who still occupied the
invidious and ill-defined office of Vicario. No particular ferocity
was laid at his door, but he was supposed to serve up all the private
affairs of the good Turinese to the king, and if any one got into
trouble he was thought to be the cause. When the liberals triumphed,
the first thing they did was to oblige him to resign. Then Cavour's
elder brother, though not retrograde on economic subjects, was a
conservative of the old school in politics. In later days Gustavo
always voted against Camillo. In politics the brothers were in
admirable agreement to differ; in fact, after the first trifling jars,
they dwelt to the end in unruffled harmony in the family palace, Via
dell' Arcivescovado. At the time when Gustavo was much better known at
Turin than Camillo the suspicious radical could not persuade himself
that one brother was not as much of an aristocrat as the other.
When Mr. Cobden was cordially received by both Marquis and Count,
a would-be wit exclaimed, "There goes Free-trade in the charge of
Monopoly," which was understood to refer to the false accusation
that the Cavours had stored up a quantity of grain in that year of
scarcity, 1847, in order to sell it dear, the truth being simply that
the improved cultivation introduced at Leri had secured fair crops in
a bad season.
The festivities in honour of the English Free-trader were promoted all
over Italy by Italians who were soon to become famous. The fact that
Cobden was an Englishman, even more than the outwardly harmless object
of his campaign, deterred the different governments from interfering
with him. Cavour proposed the health of the guest of the evening at
the Cobden banquet at Turin, but almost immediately after, he retired
to Leri, as he did not wish it to appear that he meant to embark on
public life while the existing political dead-lock lasted. There was
only room for conspirators or for those who extended toleration to the
_régime_ in force. It is doubtful if anything would have driven Cavour
to conspiracy against his own king, and he would have considered it
a personal disgrace to be mixed up with the men then in power. He
thought, therefore, that he could best serve his country by keeping
himself in reserve. He realised the futility of small concessions, and
the childishness of agitating to obtain them. He was the only
strong royalist who understood how far reform must go when it once
began--farther towards democracy than his own sympathies would have
carried him. If you want to use a mill-stream you must let it flow.
The situation in Piedmont was briefly this: Charles Albert's heart was
with the growing cry for independence, but he wished for independence
without liberty. This was the "secret of the king" which has been
sought for in all kinds of recondite suppositions: this was the key to
his apparently vacillating and inconsistent character. Yet he revealed
it himself in some words spoken to Roberto d'Azeglio, the elder
brother of Massimo. "Marquis d'Azeglio," he said, "I desire as much
as you do the enfranchisement of Italy, and it is for that reason,
remember well, that I will never give a constitution to my people."
While his government was a priestly despotism, he employed his leisure
in translating the sublime appeals to national sentiment in the
history of the Maccabees, of which, by a curious coincidence, Mazzini
once said that it seemed written for Italians. Charles Albert made the
mistake of forgetting the age in which he lived. His ancestors fought
the stranger without troubling themselves about representative
government--why should not he? But his ancestors represented in their
own persons the nerve and sinew of the State, its most adventurous
spirit, its strongest manhood, whereas Charles Albert represented only
the party of reaction which was with him in his absolutism but not
in his patriotism. He was accused of having changed sides, but, even
allowing his complicity in the movement of 1821 to have been greater
than he admitted, it is plain that the one thing which drew him into
that movement was its championship of Italian independence. Unlike the
Neapolitan revolutionists who disclaimed adventures for the freeing
of Italy, at least till they had made sure of their own freedom, the
liberals of Piedmont rose with the avowed purpose of rushing into an
immediate war with Austria. A madder scheme was never devised, but the
madness of one day is often the wisdom of the next. In politics really
disinterested acts bear fruit, whatever be their consequences to
individuals.
The question which agitated all minds in 1847 was whether or not
Charles Albert could be gained to the liberal cause. Many despaired,
for by many even his Italian ambition was denied. Cavour had no
favourable opinion of the king, but it was one of his theories that
erroneous ideas always yield in the end to facts. He believed that
Charles Albert's support could be secured if he were fully persuaded
that the interests of his dynasty were not imperilled. He was not
afraid, as others were, that even after the first surrender the
wavering mind of the king would make retrogression probable; he
understood that, if reforms were more difficult to obtain in Piedmont
than elsewhere, they would be more durable when obtained. At last a
concession of real value was wrung from the king: the censure was
revoked. Cavour saw that the press, which till then had been a cipher,
would instantly become of vast importance. He left his retirement to
found a newspaper, to which he gave the name by which the Italian
movement will be known in history--_Il Risorgimento_. He was not a
born journalist, but he set himself with his usual determination to
learn the art. In after times he said that the experience gained in a
newspaper office was almost as profitable to him as the knowledge
of mathematics. Count Cesare Balbo was asked by Cavour to write the
prospectus of the new journal, in which its aims were described as
Independence, union between the princes and people, and reforms.
Cavour's name appeared as acting and responsible editor.
Balbo's work, _Le Speranze d'Italia_, had lately created an
impression, only second to that made by the Primato of Gioberti.
Practical men like Cavour preferred the simple programme which Balbo
put forward--the liberation of Italy from foreign yoke before all
things--to Gioberti's mystical outpourings, much as they pleased
the general. Gioberti, once a follower of Mazzini, and afterwards a
priest, imagined a United Italy, with the Pope at its head, which, to
unthinking souls, seemed to be on the road to miraculous realisation
when the amiable and popular Cardinal Mastai Feretti was invested with
the tiara. Cavour never had any hope in the Papacy as a political
institution.
The Genoese, impatient of the extreme slowness with which reforms were
meted out, proposed to send a deputation with a petition for a civic
guard, and the expulsion of the Jesuits, to whom the delay was
attributed, and who were regarded as the worst enemies of the liberal
Pope. The principal editors, with other influential citizens of Turin,
met at the Hôtel d'Europe to consider how the deputation should be
received, and if their demands were to be supported. The list of the
journalists present comprises the best names in the country; it would
be difficult to find more distinguished or disinterested pressmen than
those who were then writing for the Piedmontese newspapers. Valerio
was there to represent his new journal, _Concordia_, in which he
carried on war to the knife with Cavour. His high personal character,
as well as his talents, made him no inconsiderable opponent. It was at
this meeting that Cavour first entirely revealed himself. He showed
that faith in _the prudence of daring_ which was the keynote to his
great strokes of policy. The demands of the Genoese, he said, were not
too large, but too small. They hit wide of the mark, and the second of
them was idle, because the king, while he remained an absolute prince,
was certain not to consent to it. The government was now neither one
thing nor the other; it had lost the authority of an autocracy, and
had not gained that of a _régime_ based on the popular will. The
situation was intolerable and dangerous; what was wanted was not this
or that reform, but a constitution.
Constitutions seem tame to us now, but to speak of a constitution at
Turin on January 18, 1848, was almost as audacious as it would be to
speak of it at St. Petersburg at the present time. Europe stood at the
brink of a precipice, but knew it not. The news had only just spread
of the first symptom of revolution--the rising in Sicily. Cavour's
speech was a moral bomb-shell. Most politicians begin by asking for
more or less than the measure which finally contents them; those
who cried for a republic have been known to put up with a limited
monarchy; those who preached the most moderate reforms, at a later
stage have danced round trees of liberty. Cavour asked at once
for what he wanted and all that he wanted as far as the internal
organisation of the State was concerned. From first to last he
believed that a constitutional monarchy was the only form of
government which, in a country like Italy, could combine freedom with
order. Under no narrower system would he accept office, and when in
office nothing could make him untrue to his constitutional faith; "no
state of siege" was the axiom of his political life.
How his proposal was received shows the difficulties with which he had
to contend from the outset. The more moderate members of the meeting
thought that he had taken leave of his senses. This was natural. Less
natural was the tooth and nail opposition of Valerio, who declared
that a constitution much exceeded the desires of the people, and that
a petition for it would only frighten the king. He carried all the
radicals with him except Brofferio, an honest patriot and the writer
of charming poems in the Piedmontese dialect, which gave him a great
popularity. Brofferio was an ultra-democrat, but he was no party man,
and he had the courage to walk over to the unpopular editor of the
_Risorgimento_ with the remark, "I shall always be with those who ask
the most." Valerio made no secret among his private friends of the
real reasons of his conduct. What was the good of wasting efforts on
some sort of English constitution, perhaps with a House of Lords and
other such abominations? Was it likely that anything worth having
would be excogitated by Milord Camillo, the greatest reactionary in
the kingdom, the sworn foe of revolution, "un Anglomane pur sang?" A
constitution could only check the revolution and stifle the legitimate
aspirations of the people. The nickname of "Milord Camillo" or "Milord
_Risorgimento_" was in everyone's mouth when speaking of Cavour.
A short time sufficed to show not only the expediency but the
necessity of granting a constitution, and that at once. Events never
moved so fast as in the first two months of 1848. The throne of Louis
Philippe was tottering, and, with the exception of the Duke of Modena,
the princelings of Italy snatched the plank of safety of a statute
with the alacrity of drowning men. In this crisis Charles Albert
thought of abdication. Besides the known causes of his hesitancy,
there was one then unknown: the formal engagement, invented by
Metternich and forced upon him by his uncle Charles Felix, to govern
the country as he found it governed. He called the members of the
royal family together and informed them that if there must be a
constitution there must, but the decree which bestowed it would be
signed by his son. The queen and the Duchess of Savoy, who were both
extremely afraid of him, sat in silence; the handsome Duke of Genoa
tried to prove that constitutions were not such dreadful things;
Victor Emmanuel opposed his intention of abdicating in resolute terms.
Then he summoned a high ecclesiastic, who succeeded in convincing him
that it would be a greater sin to abandon his people in their need
than to break a promise he could no longer maintain. After mortifying
the flesh with fasts and vigils, he yielded, and the famous decree
bore the signature "C. Alberto" after all,--not written indeed in the
king's usually beautiful character, but betraying rather a trembling
hand, which nevertheless registered a great because a permanent
fact. This was not the prelude to perjury and expulsion. Around the
Sardinian statute were united the scattered limbs of Italy, and after
fifty years Charles Albert's grandson commemorated its promulgation at
the Capitol.
Not a man in the crowd at Turin dared to anticipate such a result:
yet their joy was frantic. Fifty thousand people, arranged in guilds,
defiled before the king, who sat like a statue on his bay horse,
upright and impassible. Cavour walked in the company of journalists,
and all those who had opposed him a few weeks before were there too,
with Valerio at their head. They sang their strophe of Mameli's hymn,
"Fratelli d'Italia," very badly. Cavour whispered to his neighbour,
"We are so many dogs!"
That neighbour, a Milanese named Giuseppe Torelli, has left an
interesting description of Cavour's appearance as it was then. He was
fresh-coloured, and his blue eyes had not yet lost their brightness,
but they were so changeful in expression that it was difficult to fix
their distinctive quality. Though rather stout he was not ungainly, as
he tended to become later. He stooped a little, and two narrow lines
were visible on either side of a mouth, cold and uneffusive; but these
lines, by their trembling or contraction, showed the play of inward
emotion which the rest of the face concealed. In after days people
used to watch them in order to guess his state of mind. It was his
large and solid forehead that chiefly gave the idea of power which
every one who saw him carried away, despite of the want of dignity in
his person and of strongly-marked features in his face. His manners
were simple, but distinguished by an unmistakably aristocratic ease
and courtesy. He spoke generally low and without emphasis, and always
appeared to pay great attention to what was said to him, even by the
least important person.
Nothing, on the face of it, could seem more extraordinary than the
exclusion of Cavour from office in the momentous year of 1848. But
he had no popular party at his back whose cry could overrule the
disinclination which the king certainly felt towards making him his
Minister. Moreover, his abilities, though now generally recognised,
contributed to keeping him in the background: it was felt
instinctively that if he got the reins there would be only one driver.
He was known to be indifferent to criticism, and while he listened
patiently to advice, he rarely took it. He had mortally offended the
conservatives by the liberalism of his means, and the liberals by the
conservatism of his ends. Count Balbo, on assuming the office of the
first Prime Minister under the Statute, not only retired from the
directing council of the _Risorgimento_, but went out of his way to
disavow the policy supported in it by Cavour. "The little rascal," he
was heard to say, "will end by ruining the splendid edifice raised
by the wisdom and moderation of so many estimable men!" The
splendid edifice was on the verge of being nearly ruined, but by
timidity--which has lost a score of thrones,--not by audacity. The new
Cabinet entered upon their duties on March 16. Two days later
occurred an event utterly unforeseen--the rising of Milan against the
Austrians. It took them unprepared. They had talked so much about war
that perhaps they thought it would happen in the next century. When
the "now or never" sounded, which does sound sooner or later in all
human affairs, they hesitated or suffered the king to hesitate, which
came to the same thing. That Charles Albert stood for one instant in
doubt when the hour was come desired by him all his life, as he had
often stated, and there is no reason to think untruly, is possibly the
most serious stain on his memory. There are moments when to reflect
is criminal: a man has no right to reflect when his mother is in a
burning house. The reflections which held Charles Albert back were
two. He was afraid that the Milan revolution would breed a republic,
and he was afraid of England and of Russia. England, which during the
previous autumn had sent Lord Minto to urge upon the Italian princes
a line of policy rightly described by Prince Metternich as inevitably
leading to an attack on Austria, now applied the whole force of her
diplomacy to stop the ball she had herself set running. The spectacle
of Lord Palmerston trying to save or serve Austria, which he detested,
in obedience to the atavistic tendencies of the Foreign Office, is
a lesson in history. For English politicians of whatever party or
private sentiments, Austria was still what Lord Castlereagh called
her: "The great hinge on which the fate of Europe must ultimately
depend." Sir Ralph Abercromby assured the king that "the least act of
aggression" would place his throne in jeopardy. His throne was already
in jeopardy, but from the contrary reason. Each minute that passed
while the Milanese were fighting their death struggle and he stood
inactive threatened to deprive him and his house of that power of
progress on which not only their fortune but their existence depended.
The news from Milan reached Turin on March 19; on the 23rd, the last
of the Milan days, king and ministry were still hesitating. On that
day Cavour printed in the _Risorgimento_ the most impassioned piece
of writing that ever came from his pen. The conservative, the
reactionary, once more cried aloud that audacity was prudence,
temerity wisdom. The supreme hour of the Savoy dynasty had struck,
the hour of strong resolves, on which hangs the fate of empires, the
destinies of peoples. Hesitation, doubt, delay, were no more possible:
they could only prove fatal. "We, men of calm minds, accustomed to
listen more to the dictates of reason than to the impulses of the
heart, after deliberately weighing each word we utter, are bound in
conscience to declare that only one path is open to the nation, the
government, the king: war, immediate war!" It was said, he continued,
that Russia and England were on the point of uniting against Italy. In
common times such an argument would be conclusive, not now. When Milan
was struggling for life, was perhaps getting worsted, at all costs
they were bound to fly to the rescue. Duty, brotherhood, policy,
commanded it. Woe unto them if they crossed the frontier to find that
Milan had fallen.
Russia, through her ambassador, intimated that she would regard the
crossing of the Ticino as a _casus belli._ The threat made less
impression at Turin than the warnings of Sir Ralph Abercromby; it was
the possibility of English intervention, therefore, that Cavour went
on to examine. The _Anglomane_ "Milord _Risorgimento_" was less
surprised at the current of English official thought than were his
radical critics, but would any English minister, he asked, enter on a
European war to prevent the liberation of Italy, which was an object
sacred in the eyes of the mass of the English people? He believed it
to be impossible, but were it so, so be it! England would have against
her a mighty coalition, not of princes, as in former days, but of
peoples, in the old world and in the new. Victory in such a matricidal
strife would be as fatal to the first-born of liberty as defeat.
Thus Cavour was prepared to fight Austria, Russia, and England. The
division of parties at that time was in its essence the division of
those who were willing to accept a republican solution and those
who were not. It does not follow that all the liberals wished for a
republic, but they would all have taken office under it. Of this there
is little doubt. Cavour never would have become a republican any more
than an absolutist minister. But he saw what the other conservatives
failed to see, that the dynasty of Savoy could only live if it led.
On March 22, Charles Albert was still assuring the Austrian Ambassador
that his intentions were pacific. Next day Cavour's article appeared,
and in the evening the king decided for instant war. Only two of
the ministers assented at once; the others gave in after a long
discussion. War was declared on the 25th. Time lost cannot be
recalled; the happy moment had been let go by; Piedmont went not to
Lombardy engaged in a dangerous struggle, but to Lombardy victorious.
Cavillers said that the king had come to eat the fruits others had
gathered. Confidence in the ultimate result reached the point of
madness, but with revolution stalking through the streets of Vienna
the Austrian eagle seemed to have lost its talons. In May 1848, in
Austria itself, Lombardy was looked upon as completely lost, and with
it the Southern Tyrol as far as Meran, for no one at that period
thought of separating this Italian district from Italy; the most
sanguine Austrians only hoped to save Venetia. Radetsky alone expected
to save all, because he knew what he could do, and he had judged
Sardinian generalship correctly. Charles Albert's staff seemed to have
but one idea--to reverse the tactics which had led the first Napoleon
to victory on the same ground.
The brightest gleam of success which shone on the king of Sardinia's
arms was at Goito, in the battle of May 30. It was on that occasion
that Cavour's nephew, Augusto di Cavour, was killed. The _enfant
terrible_ grew up to be a young man of singular promise, on whom
Cavour had fixed all his hopes for the future of his name and house.
His uncle's last letter of encouragement to do his duty was found on
Augusto's body. The blow unnerved Cavour; he was found lying prostrate
in an agony of speechless grief. Through his life he kept the
blood-stained uniform in which the young officer received his
death-wound in a glass case in his bedroom, a piece of enduring
sentiment which shows how unlike Cavour was the coldly calculating
egotist whose portrait has passed for his.
The story of the years of revolution in Italy is a story of great
things and small, like most human records; but, when all is said, the
great predominate, for no blunders could efface the readiness for
self-sacrifice displayed by the whole people. The experience of these
years was bitter, but possibly necessary. It destroyed illusions.
It showed, for instance, that in the nineteenth century a free and
independent Italy under the hegemony of the Pope belonged to political
mythology. Here was a Pope who was, at heart, patriotic, but who drew
back at the crucial moment, precisely as Mazzini (almost alone) had
predicted. The first threat of a schism was enough to make him wear
dust and ashes for his patriotism. The Bourbons of Naples were
ascertained to have learnt nothing and unlearnt nothing; perfidy alone
could be expected from them. It was proved that the princes of the
other states, Piedmont excepted, must gravitate towards Austria even
if they did not wish it. All this was useful, if dearly bought,
knowledge.
At the first general elections in Piedmont, Cavour failed to obtain a
seat. He told the electors in his address that he had always desired
_Italia unita e libera_, and if "united" did not yet imply "under
one king," the phrase was still significant. Two months later he was
elected in four divisions; probably the death of his nephew in
the interim on the field of battle modified, for the time, his
unpopularity. He took his seat for the first college of Turin. He did
not make an immediate impression; his short stature, and still more
the imperfect accent with which he spoke Italian, were not in his
favour. French was allowed in the Sardinian Chamber, but Cavour never
opened his lips in it in Parliament. By degrees his speeches became
marvels of close reasoning, and they even soared, sometimes, when
he was deeply moved, into a kind of eloquence superior to that of
rhetoric, but the accent was never such as would satisfy a fastidious
ear. The day came, however, when people hung with too much anxiety on
the least of his utterances for any one to notice this defect. Cavour
sat on the Right, and from the first he horrified his colleagues on
the same benches by the enunciation of views which to them were rank
heresies. They existed in a state of perpetual uneasiness as to what
he might say or do next.
Cavour was not re-elected when Parliament was dissolved in January
1849; he was therefore not in the Chamber during the debates which
preceded and followed the last desperate throw of Novara. A letter
written by him six days after the battle shows what he thought of
those events. The Conservative party, he says, which represented the
great majority in the country, had been badly supported by it (an
assertion as true now as then). The king threw himself into the arms
of demagogues who thought that freedom and independence were to be won
by phrases and proclamations. The army had been disheartened, the best
officers kept inactive; twelve months' sacrifices of men and money
placed them in a worse condition than before the Milan revolution.
Self-love might, he concluded, warp his judgment, but he had the
intimate conviction that, if he had held the reins of power, he could
have saved the country without any effort of genius, and planted the
Italian flag on the Styrian Alps. But his friends joined with his foes
to keep him out of power, and he had passed his time in deploring
faults which it would have been very easy to avoid.
Remembering what Cavour afterwards accomplished, these are words which
should not be set lightly aside. Yet it is possible that the complete
disaster into which Charles Albert rushed at Novara was the only thing
to save the country and to lay the foundations of Italian unity. The
king was more eager for war than the most unthinking democrat. Reviled
by all parties, he sought the great conciliator, death. "The Italians
will never trust me," he exclaimed. "My son, Victor, will be king of
Italy, not I." When the death he would have chosen was denied him, he
went away, a crownless exile. He could do no more.
It was necessary, as Charles Albert had seen, that the king who was to
carry out the destinies of Italy should be trusted. Victor Emmanuel
came to the throne with few advantages; he was unpopular, his private
friends were said to be reactionaries, his brusque manners offended
most people. He had practically no advisers in these critical moments,
but the moral courage with which he refused the Austrian offers of
lenient terms if he would repudiate the Statute and his father's word,
won for him the nation's trust, which he never lost. Cavour, with all
his genius, could not have made the kingdom of Italy if the Italians
had doubted their king.