THE GREAT MINISTRY
Cavour went abroad with the full intention of preparing for the day
when his voice would be that of Piedmont, if not of Italy. He attached
importance to personal relations, which helped him to keep in touch
with European politics and politicians, and he was anxious to find
out how the _Connubio_ was regarded by foreigners, among whom, till
lately, Rattazzi had been looked upon as a revolutionary firebrand.
But thinking men abroad understood the reasons which had dictated the
coalition. In London Cavour met with a friendly reception from Lord
Malmesbury, who was then Foreign Minister, and who assured him that
the English Government would be glad to see him back in office. With
characteristic presence of mind he framed his answer to provoke a more
definite pronouncement. He could not, he said, return to office
alone or abandon the party he had been at so much pains to create.
"Naturally," answered Lord Malmesbury, "you cannot return to power
without your friends." Reassured as to the sentiments of one great
political party, Cavour approached the other in the person of Lord
Palmerston, than whom he never had a firmer political friend or
more sincere admirer. Lord Palmerston saw the larger meaning of the
experiment of freedom in Piedmont, and he was one of the first to see
it. If that experiment succeeded, the Italian tyrannies were doomed;
how, he did not discern, but the fact was apparent to him. He heard,
therefore, with much interest what Cavour had to tell him of the
gradual taking root of constitutional government in the Sardinian
kingdom, and he promised him the moral support, not of one party or
another, but of England, "in pledge of which," he added, "we have sent
you our best diplomatist." This allusion was to Mr. (afterwards Sir
James) Hudson, whom Lord Palmerston had called back from the Brazils
in the spring of the year, because by a singular intuition he guessed
him to be the very man to help the Italian cause. It was intended to
send him to Florence, but when he reached the Foreign Office, which
Lord Palmerston had just vacated, he received instructions to go to
Turin, a fortunate change of plan. No two men were ever better fitted
to work together than Cavour and Sir James Hudson. Without ceasing to
be particularly English and strictly loyal to the interests of his own
country, the British Minister at Turin served Italy as few of her sons
have been able to do. Beneath a rather cold exterior he concealed the
warmest of hearts, and he had the power of attaching people to him, so
that they never forgot him. It is greatly to be regretted that he left
no record of the stirring years of his mission, which coincided with
the rise and ascendency of Cavour.
Enchanted with the country, and "more _Anglomane_ than ever," Cavour
left England for Paris, where he laid himself out to conciliate
political men of all shades, from Morny to Thiers, who advised him to
be patient and not to lose heart: "If, after giving you vipers
for breakfast, you have another dish served up for dinner, never
mind"--such was the diet of politicians. What Cavour once called "his
powerful intellectual organisation" made an immediate impression
on the Prince President, as he was still styled. Louis Napoleon
cultivated an impassible exterior, but at bottom his character was
emotional, and, like all emotional persons, he was susceptible to the
magnetism of a stronger brain and will. Cavour summoned Rattazzi to
Paris to present him to the future Caesar. "Whether we like it or
not," he wrote at this time, "our destinies depend on France; we must
be her partner in the great game which will be played sooner or later
in Europe." A few weeks later Napoleon declared at Bordeaux that "the
empire was peace," but like all intelligent onlookers Cavour received
the statement with incredulity. Possibly the only person who believed
in it was the speaker--for the moment; he may have thought that "bread
and games" was a formula by which he could rule France, or rather
Paris, but he was soon to find it insufficient.
Cavour sought out several of the Italian exiles who were leading a
life of privation and obscurity in Paris, one of whom was Manin, the
Dictator of Venice. With him Cavour expressed himself "very much
satisfied, though his sentiments were rather too Venetian": sentiments
which Manin sacrificed--a last act of abnegation--when he finally gave
his support to Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel, carrying with him
two-thirds of the republican party, who could brave the charge of
changed allegiance if so incorruptible a patriot led the way. Cavour
also saw Gioberti, "always the same child of genius, who would have
been a great man had he had common sense." Gioberti, however, had
made a great stride towards common sense, for instead of dreaming of
liberating popes, he was now imagining a renovating statesman, and
he had inscribed Cavour's name under his new portrait. In a book
published in Paris, Gioberti drew the Cavour of the future with a
penetration and a sureness of touch which would make a reader, who
did not know the date, suppose that the words were written ten years
later. Men of great talent, he said, rarely threw aside the chance of
becoming famous; rather did they snatch it with avidity; and what
fame more splendid could now be won than that of the minister of the
Italian prince who should re-make the country? He fixed his hopes on
Cavour, because he alone understood that in human society civilisation
is everything, all the rest, without it, nothing. "He knows that
statutes, parliaments, newspapers, all the appurtenances of free
governments, even if they are of use to individuals, are miserable
shams to the commonalty if they fail to help forward social progress."
He was willing to forgive him the generous error of treating a
province as if it were a nation, when he compared it with the
pettiness of those who treated the nation as if it were a province. He
invoked some great and solemn act of _Italianità_ on his part, which
should pledge him irrevocably to the national cause. Cavour was too
little influenced by others for it to be safe to say that this was
one of the prophecies which tend to their own fulfilment; still it is
worth noticing that he read the passage and was struck by it.
Cavour had scarcely returned to Piedmont when a ministerial crisis
occurred through the rejection by the Senate of a far from stringent
Bill for permitting civil marriage, which had passed in the Chamber of
Deputies. The situation was further complicated by the state of mind
into which the king had been driven by the remonstrances of his wife
and mother, both near their end, and by the answer which he received
from Rome in reply to a direct appeal to settle matters amicably, the
Pope having said, in effect, that he was not going to help him to
legalise concubinage in his dominions. D'Azeglio, harassed on all
sides and ill through the reopening of his wound, resigned office, and
advised the king to send for Cavour. "The other one, whom you know, is
diabolically active, and fit in body and soul, and then, he enjoys
it so much!" he wrote to a friend, with the pathetic wonder of the
artist, romancist, and _grand seigneur_, who had never been able to
make out what there was to enjoy in politics. Victor Emmanuel followed
his advice, but he allowed Cavour to see that he hoped that the new
ministry would make up the quarrel with Rome. Cavour knew that only
one path could lead to peace--surrender. Though anxious for office he
declined to take it on these terms, and he recommended the king to
call Count Balbo to his counsels; but Balbo, persuaded that a ministry
only supported by the Extreme Right could not stand even for a few
weeks, in his turn suggested the recall of D'Azeglio. Here the saving
good sense of the king interposed; little as he liked Cavour he
recognised that he was the only man possible, and he charged him,
without conditions, with the formation of a ministry. D'Azeglio had
fallen on a point on which Cavour was for and not against him; his
successor desired to show that there would be no violent change of
policy, and he therefore reconstructed the Cabinet as it was before,
except for the change of head. He reserved for himself the Presidency
of the Council and the Ministry of Finance. Rattazzi, who still
occupied the Speaker's chair, was willing to wait for the present for
a seat in the Cabinet, especially when he heard that the king, who was
at first very hostile to the _Connubio_, had quite expected him to
take office.
So the _gran ministero_, as it was called, entered upon its functions:
great by reason of its chief, who infused his own life and vigour
into what was before a weak administration. Cavour was a born man of
business; he hated disorder in everything--except, indeed, dress, in
which his carelessness was proverbial. He had not the common belief
that, muddle them how you may, there will always be a providence which
looks after the affairs of the State and prevents the collapse that
would attend a private commercial enterprise conducted on the same
system. He took in hand the financial renewal of Piedmont in the
same spirit in which, when he had only just reached maturity, he
volunteered to restore his father's dilapidated fortune. It was for
this that he chose the Ministry of Finance: Piedmont, as he saw, could
never sustain a national and Italian policy abroad without having
first set its own house in order. He started with two principles:
taxation must be increased and the resources of the country must be so
developed as to enable it to pay its way without sinking into hopeless
stagnation. It was a disappointment to some to see Cavour devoting
himself with more ardour to putting on new taxes than to producing any
of those decorative schemes for hastening the millennium which are
expected from a new and ambitious minister. But, though ambitious, he
cared for the substance, power--not for the shadow, popularity.
If there had been no other reason for the compact with the moderate
liberals, the necessity for fresh taxation would have been a sufficing
one. The Extreme Right and Left proposed to meet the existing
difficulties by cutting down expenditure, but, if sound in theory,
in practice this policy would have reduced Piedmont to complete
impotence. While a part of the Left Centre voted with the extremists,
it was only by the greatest efforts that a grant of £100,000 was
obtained for the fortifications of Casale, which had been declared
by the war minister, La Marmora, to be absolutely necessary for the
defence of the State. The radical deputy Brofferio said that States
wanted no other defence than the breasts of their citizens. From the
Chamber, as then constituted, there was little hope of obtaining
the imposition of new burdens, in part designed to meet Sardinian
liabilities, but in part also to render possible the reorganisation of
the army, which was urgently required if the future was not to witness
disasters worse than those already experienced. Prince Metternich had
said that, even if Piedmont were so troublesome as to persist in her
liberal infatuation, she would have to keep quiet, at a moderate
computation, for twenty years--just the time which it took her king to
unite Italy. The two campaigns of 1848-1849 and the war indemnity had
cost about 300,000,000 frs. The annual expenditure was doubled. Added
to this, the one source of wealth, agriculture, was almost ruined by
the oidium disease which destroyed the vines, and by harvests so bad
that the like had not been seen since the celebrated scarcity which
followed the wars of Napoleon. As Cavour saved his father's property
not by burying the last talent in a safe place but by laying it out in
bold improvements, so now he did not fear to spend largely and even
lavishly, not only on the army, but also on public works. He completed
the railway system and employed what Brofferio called "a portentous
activity" in extending the roads, canals, and all the means of
communication which could stimulate industry. It must be remembered
that Piedmont was then lamentably backward; a long obscurantist
_régime_, succeeded by war and havoc, had left her destitute of all
the accessories of modern life. This was changed as if by the wand
of the magician. In his first budget, Cavour put on new taxes to the
amount of 14,000,000 frs., one being the so-called tax on patents, or
on the exercise of trades and professions, which excited much adverse
criticism. At the same time he reduced the salt tax and initiated
several free-trade measures, to be ultimately crowned by the abolition
of the corn laws. On the whole, however, his line of policy was not
such as would recommend itself to the crowd, and in October 1853 a
furious mob attacked the Palazzo Cavour, repeating the old cry that
the minister was a monopolist who robbed the poor of their bread.
Luckily the doors were barred, but next day Cavour was threatened as
he walked along the streets. Just then the Ministry of Justice fell
vacant, and it was offered to Rattazzi, who, to his credit be it
said, did not hesitate to take office at a time when the head of the
Government was the target of unscrupulous abuse, and it was even
thought that his life was in danger. Rattazzi was afterwards
transferred to the Home Ministry, which he held till the _Connubio_
broke up, more on personal than on political grounds, in 1858.
Though Cavour's alliance with Rattazzi was not eternal, it lasted till
it had served its purpose. By help of it he imposed his will on king
and country until he was strong enough to impose it by force of his
own commanding influence. He always considered the _Connubio_ one of
the wisest acts of his political life. It is not uncommon to hear
it still denounced in Italy as the origin of the political
demoralisation, the mixing up of private and public interests, the
lack of fixed principles; which later times have witnessed. If the
fact were admitted, it would not show that Cavour could have governed
in any other way. Had the country trusted him from the first it would
have been different, but the country did not trust him. Even after the
combination of the two Centres, whenever there was a general election
it was doubtful if the Government would obtain a working majority. The
accusation of corruption was frequently made against the Ministry in
general and Rattazzi in particular, since it was he who presided over
the electoral campaigns. Of corruption in the literal sense there was
probably little, but constituencies were led to believe that it would
be to their advantage to return the ministerial candidate. On one
occasion Rattazzi tried to prove that such hints did not constitute
"interference." Cavour got up in the course of the same debate and
not only acknowledged the "interference," but said that without it
constitutional government in Piedmont would collapse. His biographers
have preferred to be silent on this subject, but he would have
despised a reserve which conceals historical facts. The apathy of
one section of the electors, the fads and jealousies of another, the
feverish longing to pull down whomsoever was in power, inherited from
a great revolutionary crisis, the indefatigable propaganda of clerical
wire-pullers, all tended to the formation of parliaments so composed
as to bring government to a standstill. The result of a protracted
interruption might be the fall of the constitution itself, or it might
be civil war. Cavour took the means open to him to prevent it, and,
whether he was right or wrong, his career cannot be judged if the
difficulties with which he had to cope are kept out of sight.
Piedmont needed some years, not of rest, but of active and consecutive
labour before it could enter the lists again as armed champion of
Italian independence. The disastrous issue of the last conflicts had
been attributed to every cause except that which was most accountable
for it: a badly led and badly organised army. The "We are betrayed"
theory was caught up alike by republicans and conservatives, who
accused each other of ruining the country rather than give the victory
to the rival faction. Whatever grain of truth there was in these
taunts, the military inefficiency of the forces which Charles Albert
led across the Ticino in March 1848 remained the main reason why
Radetsky was able to get back Lombardy and Venetia for his master.
This Cavour knew, and he was anxious not to precipitate matters till
La Marmora, to whom he privately gave _carte blanche_, could say that
his work was done. He began treating Austria with more consideration
than she had received from Massimo d'Azeglio, who was a bad hand at
dissembling. Count Buol was gratified, almost grateful. But these
relatively harmonious relations did not last long. In February 1853
there was an abortive attempt at revolution in Milan, of which not one
person in a thousand knew anything till it was suppressed. It was the
premature and ill-advised explosion of a conspiracy by which Mazzini
hoped to repeat the miracle of 1848: the ejection of a strong military
power by a blast of popular fury. But miracles are not made to order,
though Mazzini never came to believe it. As a reprisal for this
disturbance, the Austrian Government, not content with executions and
bastinadoes, decreed the sequestration of the lands of those Lombard
emigrants who had become naturalised in Piedmont. Cavour charged
Austria with a breach of international law and recalled the Sardinian
minister from Vienna. It was risking war, but he knew that even
for the weakest state there are some things worse than war. It was
reversing the policy of prudence with which he had set out, but when
prudence meant cowardice, Cavour always cast it to the winds. The
outcry in all Europe against the sequestration decree deterred the
Austrian Government from treating the Sardinian protest as a _casus
belli_. Liberal public opinion everywhere approved of Cavour's course,
and in France and England increased confidence was felt in him by
those in authority. Governments like to deal with a strong man who
knows when not to fear.
Only such a man would have conceived the idea which was now taking
concrete form in Cavour's mind. This was the plan of an armed alliance
with the Western Powers on the outbreak of the war, which as early
as November 1853 well-informed persons looked upon as henceforth
inevitable. Cavour would never have been a Chauvinist, but he was not
by nature a believer in neutrality. He was constitutionally inclined
to think that in all serious contingencies to act is safer than not
to act. The world is divided between men of this mould and their
opposites. La Marmora told him that the army, which had made
incredible progress considering the state in which it was a short time
before, could place in the field a force for which no country would
have reason to blush. If not a great general, the Piedmontese Minister
of War might fairly be called a first-class organiser. For the rest,
Cavour believed that the ultimate school of any army is war. Above
all, he believed that this was the hour for a great resolve or a _gran
rifiuto_. If the House of Savoy stood still with folded arms it might
retire into the ranks of small ruling families, which leave the
rearrangement of maps to their betters. It was secretly reported to
Cavour that Napoleon III. was beginning to drop enigmatical remarks
about Italian affairs, and it was these reports that finally decided
him to strain every nerve to make his audacious design a reality.
Russia had broken off diplomatic relations with Sardinia in 1848,
and when Victor Emmanuel communicated the death of his father to the
Powers, the only one which returned no response was the empire of the
Czar. It would be absurd to adduce this lack of courtesy as an excuse
for war; still it gave a slightly better complexion to an attack which
the Russian Government was justified in calling "extraordinarily
gratuitous." Cavour had one person of great importance on his side,
the king. In January 1854 he broached the subject with the tentative
inquiry, "Does it not seem to your Majesty that we might find some way
of taking part in the war of the Western Powers with Russia?" To which
Victor Emmanuel answered simply, "If I cannot go myself I will send
my brother." But it is not too much to say that the whole country was
against him. The old Savoyard party opposed the war tooth and nail,
and from the "Little Piedmont" point of view it was perfectly right.
The radicals, headed by Brofferio, denounced it as "economically
reckless, militarily a folly, politically a crime." Most of the
Lombard emigration thought ill of it, and the heads of the army were
lukewarm or contrary; this was not the war they wanted. The Tuscan
romancist Guerrazzi wrote, with unpardonable levity, that republicans
ought to rejoice because this was the final disillusion given to
Italians by monarchy, limited or not. One republican, however, Manin,
saw in the Italian tricolor displayed with the French and English
flags in Paris the first ray of hope that had gladdened his eyes since
he left Venice, and Poerio; when he heard of the alliance in his
dungeon, "felt his chain grow lighter." It seemed as if those who had
suffered most for Italy had a clearness of vision denied to the rest.
What, if persisted in, would have been the most serious obstacle was
the opposition of Rattazzi, but he was won over to assent, if not to
approval, by Giuseppe Lanza, a new figure on the parliamentary scene,
who had lately been elected Vice-President of the Chamber. Lanza (who
was destined to be Prime Minister when the Italians went to Rome) was
then only slightly acquainted with Cavour; from being independent, his
favourable opinion carried more weight. With Rattazzi's adhesion
the majority of the Centres was secured. It was not an enthusiastic
majority, but it quieted its forebodings by the argument which was
beginning to take hold of people's minds: that Cavour must be let do
as he chose. Hardly any one liked him, but to see him stand there,
absolutely unhesitating and sure, among the politicians of Buts and
Ifs, began to generate the belief that he was a man of fate who must
be allowed to go his way.
It is easy to be wise after the event, and it may seem strange now
that the alliance with the Western Powers found so few, so very few
cordial supporters. But Cavour himself called the risks which attended
it "enormous." The great question for Sardinia was what Austria
would do. If she did nothing, the pros and cons were perhaps evenly
balanced; if she joined Russia, the pros would be strengthened; if she
joined the allies, the situation for Sardinia would be grave indeed.
The republicans were already calling the war an alliance with Austria.
Were the description verified, it was hard to see how the utmost
genius or skill could draw aught but evil from so unnatural a union.
The first invitation to Sardinia to co-operate came separately from
England, which had vetoed a monstrous proposal on the part of Austria
to occupy Alessandria, in order, in any case, to prevent Piedmont from
attacking her during the war. Lord Clarendon instructed Sir James
Hudson to represent to Cavour that Austria's fears would be set at
rest if a portion of the Sardinian army were sent to the East. The
chief English motive was really the conviction that numbers were
urgently required if the war was to succeed, and also the desire to
lessen the large numerical superiority of the French. In the first
instance Cavour replied that although he had been all along in favour
of participating in the war, his Cabinet was too much against the idea
for him to take any immediate action. But the subject was revived. An
alliance with Piedmont was popular in England, where the Government
was in an Italian mood, having been made terribly angry by the King of
Naples' prohibition of the sale of mules for transport purposes in the
East. In December 1854 Cavour was formally invited to send a corps
which would enter the English service and receive its pay from the
British Exchequer. He would rather have sent it on these terms than
not at all, but the scheme met with such unqualified condemnation from
La Marmora and General Dadormida, the Foreign Minister, that it was
set aside as not becoming to the dignity of an independent nation.
Meanwhile something had occurred which reinforced the arguments of
those who were against sending troops at all. After hedging for a
year, Austria signed a treaty couched in vague terms, but which
appeared to debar her, at any rate, from taking sides with
Russia--Italy's most flattering prospect. Napoleon III. expected
much more from it than this; he thought that Austria was too much
compromised to avoid throwing in her cause with the allies. It must be
said of Napoleon that among the men responsible for the Crimean War
he alone aimed at an object which, from a political, let alone moral
view, could justify it. He did not think that it would be enough to
obtain a few restrictions, not worth the paper on which they were
written, and the prospect of a new lease of life to Turkish despotism.
He certainly had one paltry object of his own; he wished to gratify
his subjects by military glory. He began to suspect the hollowness of
the testimony of the plebiscite; the French people did not like him,
and never would like him. A war would please the populace and the
army; it would also make him look much more like a real Napoleon.
But when he had decided to go to war, he hoped to do something worth
doing. He thought (to use his own words) "that no peace would be
satisfactory which did not resuscitate Poland." There, and nowhere
else, were the wings of the Russian eagle to be clipped. Moreover,
the entire French nation, which cared so little for Italy, would
have applauded the deliverance of Poland. On the Polish question the
ultramontane would have embraced the socialist. France was never so
united as in the sympathy which she then felt for Poland, except in
that which she now feels for Russia. But Napoleon did not think that
he could resuscitate Poland without Austrian assistance. At the close
of 1854 he made sure of getting it.
Cavour clung to his project. Probably his penetrating mind guessed
that Austria could not fight Russia, which had saved her from
destruction in 1849. There now arose a demand for some guarantee
which should give Piedmont, if she took part in the war, at least
the certainty of a moral advantage. The king remarked to the French
Ambassador that all this wrangling about conditions was folly "If we
ally ourselves promptly and frankly, we shall gain a great deal more"
Doubtless Cavour thought the same, but to satisfy the country it was
necessary to demand, if nothing else, a promise from the Western
Powers that they would put pressure on Austria to raise the
sequestrations on the property of the Lombard exiles. But the Powers,
which were courting Austria, refused to make any such promise,
on which the Foreign Minister, General Dadormida, resigned,
notwithstanding that the Lombard emigrants generously begged the
Government not to think of them. Cavour offered the Foreign Office and
the Presidency of the Council to D'Azeglio; under whom he would have
consented to serve, but D'Azeglio declined to enter the Ministry,
whilst engaging not to oppose its policy Cavour then took the Foreign
Office himself, and at eight o'clock on the evening of the same day,
January 10, 1855, the protocol of the offensive and defensive alliance
of Sardinia with France and England was, at last, signed.
Wilting of the Crimean War in after days, Louis Kossuth observed that
never did a statesman throw down a more hazardous and daring stake
than Cavour when he insisted on clenching the alliance after he had
found out that it must be done without any conditions or guarantees.
Cicero's _Partem fortuna sibi vindicat_ applies to diplomacy as well
as to war, "but the stroke was very bold and very dangerous."