THE CONGRESS OF PARIS
With the foreboding that this would be the last act of his political
life, Cavour started on the mission which he had almost no choice
but to assume, in spite of his extreme repugnance for the _rôle_ of
diplomatist. A few days after his arrival in Paris he was informed
that the Emperor, in concert with England, conceded the point as to
placing the representative of Sardinia on the same footing as the
others. Though it does not seem to have struck Cavour, the sudden
change of intention was evidently an involuntary tribute to himself:
how could such a man be treated as an inferior? Only the form was
won; the substance remained in doubt. Lord Clarendon hinted to the
Piedmontese plenipotentiary that he had "too much tact" to mix in
discussions which did not concern him. But Cavour was not discouraged.
With his usual quick rebound he was soon thoroughly braced up to the
work before him. As he began to see his way, he was rather spurred
on than disconcerted by the chorus of dismal predictions which the
Congress and his own part in it evoked at home. Almost every notable
man in Piedmont contributed his quota of melancholy vaticination, in
which the note, "I told you so!" was already audible. Who could plead
Italy's cause in a congress in which Austria had a voice? Was there
ever such midsummer madness? "But we knew how it would be from the
first."
Cavour had said that he hated playing at diplomacy; but some of his
smaller, as well as larger gifts, marked him out as a successful
diplomatist. He was watchful for little advantages. All who could help
the cause were enlisted in its service. Thus he made a convert of a
fair Countess, to whose charms Napoleon III was supposed not to be
insensible. Paris was full of notabilities whom he sought to turn
into useful allies. In a letter to the Marquis Emanuel d'Azeglio (the
Sardinian Minister in London) he tells how he even "made up" to Lady
Holland's dog with such success that he got it to put its large paws
on his new coat! When the Marchioness of Ely arrived to be present on
the part of the Queen at the birth of the Prince Imperial, Cavour,
knowing her to be the Queen's intimate correspondent, lost no time in
paying his court to her; but in this instance an acquaintance begun
from political motives ripened into real friendship on both sides. A
point which is worth observing is that, as minister, no one ever made
less use of what may he called the influence of society than Cavour.
He never tried to make himself agreeable at Turin, least of all to the
king. For a long time he was considered haughty by those who did not
know him, and arbitrary by those who did. But abroad he underwent a
change which probably came about from his revealing not less but more
of his natural self. "He has that petulance," Massimo d'Azeglio said,
"which is exactly what they like in Paris." Abroad he could give this
quality freer play than in Italy, where vivacity offends in a serious
man. He charmed even those who did not share his opinions. At a dinner
given by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris to all the members of the
Congress, he sat next to the Abbé Darboy, one day to succeed to the
see and meet a martyr's death in the Commune. The Abbé never forgot
his neighbour of that evening, and in 1870, at Rome during the
Oecumenical Council, when some one mentioned Cavour's name, he
exclaimed, throwing up his hands, "Ah, that was a man in a thousand!
He had not the slightest sentiment of hate in his heart."
In the two months which Cavour spent in Paris he perceived very
clearly that Walewski and the other French ministers would have to be
reckoned more as opponents than friends in the future development of
affairs. He found, however, two men who could be trusted to continue
his work by incessantly pushing Napoleon III. in an Italian direction;
one was Prince Napoleon, the other, Dr. Conneau, a person entirely in
the Imperial confidence. Henceforth Dr. Conneau was the secret, and
for a long time quite unsuspected, intermediary between Cavour and the
Emperor. The idea of establishing this channel of communication first
occurred to Count Arese, whose own influence at the Tuileries, though
exercised with prudent reserve, was of no slight importance. This
Milanese nobleman personified, as it were all the proud hatred of
the Lombard aristocracy for an alien yoke. The truest and most
disinterested friend of Queen Hortense, Arese remained faithfully
attached to her son in good and evil fortune. He would never turn the
friendship to account for himself. When Napoleon offered to ask as a
personal favour for the removal of the sequestration on his family
property, he answered that he preferred to take his chance with the
rest. He won the lasting regard of the Empress, though she knew that
he influenced Napoleon in a sense contrary to her own political
sympathies. The visits of this high-minded gentleman and devoted
friend were as welcome at a court crowded with self-seekers and
charlatans as they were to be later in the solitude of Chislehurst.
Arese was in Paris during the Congress, having been chosen by the
king, at Cavour's urgent request, to carry his congratulations to the
Emperor on the birth of the Prince Imperial.
At the earlier sittings of the Congress, Cavour kept in the
background; his instinct as a man of the world, and that mixture of
astuteness and simplicity which he shared with many of his countrymen
(even those of no education), guided him in filling a difficult and,
in some respects, an embarrassing position. He spoke, when he did
speak, in as brief terms as could serve to express his opinion.
But this modest attitude only threw into relief his inalienable
superiority. He cast about the shadow of future greatness. The
representative of the second-rate Power, who sat there only by favour,
was to make so much more history than any of his colleagues! Curiously
enough the only one of the plenipotentiaries who had a prior
acquaintance with Cavour was the Austrian, Count Buol, who was
formerly ambassador at Turin. In old days, before 1848, he had played
whist with him. "I know M. de Cavour," he said; "I am afraid he will
give us _de fil à retordre_." Cavour carefully avoided, however,
unnecessary friction. Loyal to both the allies, he managed to steer
between their not always consonant aims while preserving his own
independence, by taking what seemed, on the whole, the most liberal
side in debated questions. With Count Buol he maintained courteous
if formal relations, and he soon made a thorough conquest of Count
Orloff, who did not begin by being prepossessed in favour of the
minister who alone had caused the Sardinian attack on Russia, but who
ended on far better terms with him than with his Austrian colleague,
of whom he said to Cavour in a voice meant to be heard, "Count Buol
talks exactly as if Austria had taken Sebastopol!"
With regard to Cavour's real business, the fate of Italy, he was
obliged to proceed with a restraint which few men would have had the
self-control to observe. This was what had been predicted; how, in
fact, putting aside Austria, could an Italian patriot speak freely
of nationality, of alien dominion, of the rights of peoples, in an
assembly of old diplomatists, conservative by the nature of their
profession and religiously in awe of treaties by the responsibility
of their office? It was only just before the signature of peace that
Cavour cautiously launched his bolt in the shape of a note on the
situation of affairs in Italy, addressed to the English and French
plenipotentiaries. It was conceived on the same lines as the letter
to Walewski: the Austrian occupation of the Roman Legations was again
made a sort of test question, to which particular weight was attached.
One reason why Cavour dwelt so much on this point was that the
occupation could be assailed on legal grounds, leaving nationality
alone. As, moreover, it was admitted that the Papal Government would
fall in Romagna were the Austrians withdrawn, the principle of the
destruction of the temporal power of the Pope would be granted
from the moment that their departure was declared expedient. While
D'Azeglio thought that the separation of Romagna from the States of
the Church would be "positively mischievous," Cavour looked upon it in
the light of the first step to far greater changes. Many other schemes
were floating in his brain for which he worked feverishly in private,
though he did not venture to support them officially. The object
nearest his heart was the union or rather reunion of Parma and
Modena with Piedmont, to which those duchies had annexed themselves
spontaneously in 1848. In order to get rid of the Duke of Modena and
Duchess of Parma with the consent of Europe, Cavour was desperately
anxious to find them--other situations. Every throne that was or could
be made vacant was reviewed in turn; Greece, Wallachia, and Moldavia,
anywhere out of Italy would do; the Duchess, not a very youthful
widow, was to marry this or that prince to obligingly facilitate
matters:--abortive projects, which seem absurd now, but Cavour was
willing to try everything to gain anything. In weaving these plans
Cavour employed the energy of which Prince Napoleon complained that he
did not show enough in the Congress, though to have shown more would
have led to a rebuff, or, perhaps, to enforced retirement. Still there
was one point which, in the Congress, as out of it, he never treated
with moderation: this was the sequestration of Lombard estates. When
Count Buol spoke of an amnesty including _nearly_ all cases, he
replied that he would not renew diplomatic relations with Vienna
while one exception remained. In an audience with the Emperor, after
Walewski had ingeniously tried to excuse Austria for exercising her
"rights" over her ex-subjects, Cavour burst out with the declaration
that if he had 150,000 men at his disposal he would make it a _casus
belli_ with Austria that very day.
Peace was signed on March 30. A supplementary sitting was held on
April 8, when the President, Count Walewski, by express order of
the Emperor, and to the astonishment of all present, proposed for
discussion the French and Austrian occupations of the Roman States
and the conduct of the king of Naples (his own favourite monarch) as
likely to provoke grave complications and to compromise the peace of
Europe. This was a victory for Cavour, as it was the direct result
of his "note," but he was afraid that the discussion of the Roman
question would be kept within the narrowest limits in consequence of
its affecting France as well as Austria. Walewski wished so to limit
it; he was embarrassed by the analogy of the French in Rome, and by
the fear of saying something unflattering of the Pope. But Napoleon
would not have risked the discussion at all had he shared his
minister's sensitiveness. The truth was, that he was always looking
out for an excuse which would serve with the clerical party in
France for recalling his troops from Rome. He was thinking then of
withdrawing them so as to oblige Austria to withdraw her forces from
the Legations. It does not appear that Cavour guessed this. In his own
speech he glided over the presence of the French, in Rome as lightly
as he could, merely saying that his Government "desired" the complete
evacuation of the Roman States; but his reserve was not imitated by
Lord Clarendon, nor could Napoleon have expected that it would
be. When some one asked Lord Palmerston for a definition of the
difference between "occupation" and "business," he answered on the
spur of the moment--"There is a French occupation of Rome, but they
have no business there;" and this witticism correctly represented
English opinion on the subject. It was natural, therefore, that the
British plenipotentiary should make no distinction between the French
in Rome and the Austrians at Bologna: he denounced both occupations as
equally to be condemned and equally calculated to disturb the
balance of power, but at the root of the matter was the abominable
misgovernment, which made it impossible to leave the Pope to his
subjects without fear of revolution. The papal administration was the
opprobrium of Europe. As to the king of Naples, if he did not soon
mend his ways and listen to the advice of the Powers, it would become
their duty to enforce it by arguments of a kind which he could not
refuse to obey. An extraordinary sensation was created by the speech
of which this is a bald summary; it might have been spoken, Cavour
said, "by an Italian radical," and the vehemence with which it was
delivered doubled its effect. Lord Clarendon, who, at the beginning of
the Congress, was nervous as to what Cavour might do, had been worked
up to such a pitch of indignation by the private conversations of his
outwardly discreet colleague that he himself threw diplomatic reserve
to the winds. Walewski, dreadfully uncomfortable about the Pope, tried
to bring the discussion back within politer bounds; Buol was stiffly
indignant; Orloff, indifferent about the Pope, was on tenter-hooks as
to Russia's friend, the king of Naples; the Prussian plenipotentiary
said that he had no instructions; the Grand Vizier was the only person
who remained quite calm. Cavour's concluding speech was dignified and
prudent; his real comment on the proceedings was the remark which he
made to every one after the sitting was over: "You see there is only
one solution--the cannon!"
On April 11 he called on Lord Clarendon with the intention of driving
home this inference. Two things, he said, resulted from what had
passed: firstly, that Austria was resolved to make no concession;
secondly, that Italy had nothing to expect from diplomacy. This being
so, the position of Sardinia became extremely difficult: either she
must make it up with the Pope and with Austria, or she must prepare,
with prudence, for war with Austria. In the first alternative he
should retire, to make place for the retrogrades; in the second he
wished to be sure that his views were not in opposition to those of
"our best ally," England. Lord Clarendon "furiously caressed his
chin," but he seemed by no means surprised "You are perfectly right,"
he said, "only it must not be talked about." Cavour then said that war
did not alarm him, and, when once begun, they were determined that
it should be to the knife (using the English phrase); he added that,
however short a time it lasted, England would be obliged to help them.
Lord Clarendon, taking his hand from his chin, replied, "Certainly,
with all our hearts."
When, after Cavour's death, the text of this conversation was printed,
Lord Clarendon denied in the House of Lords having ever encouraged
Piedmont to go to war with Austria. Nevertheless, it is impossible
that Cavour, who wrote his account of the interview directly after it
occurred, could have been mistaken about the words which may well have
escaped from the memory of the speaker in an interval of six years.
With regard to the sense, the sequel proved that Lord Clarendon did
not attach the official value to what he said which, for a moment,
Cavour hoped to find in it. Lord Clarendon's speech before the
Congress gives evidence of a state of mind wrought to the utmost
excitement by the tale of Italy's sufferings, and it is not surprising
if, speaking as a private individual, he used still stronger
expressions of sympathy. Nor is it surprising that Cavour attributed
more weight to these expressions than they merited. Up till now, he
had never counted on more than moral support from England; he admitted
to himself that the English alliance, which he would have infinitely
preferred to any other, was a dream. But the thought now flashed on
him that it might become a reality. He decided to pay a short visit
to England, which was useful, because it dispelled illusions, always
dangerous in politics. In the damp air of the Thames, Lord Clarendon
seemed no longer the same enthusiast, and Lord Palmerston pleaded the
excuse of a domestic affliction for seeing very little of Cavour. The
Queen was kind as ever, but the momentary hope conceived in Paris
vanished. One after-consequence of this visit was Lord Lyndhurst's
motion, which nearly caused an estrangement between the British and
Sardinian Governments. Cavour had taken too literally the assurance
that on the subject of Italy there was no division of parties. The
warmly Italian speech of the veteran conservative statesman which had
been inspired by him was not meant to embarrass the ministry, but
that was its effect, and it was natural that they should feel some
resentment. Fortunately the cloud soon passed away, and if Cavour
imagined to gain anything from flirtations with the Tory party he
was undeceived by the violently pro-Austrian speech delivered by Mr.
Disraeli in July. The sincere goodwill of individuals such as Lord
Lyndhurst and Lord Stanhope (who invented the phrase "Italy for
the Italians," so often repeated later) did not represent the then
prevailing sentiment of the party as a whole.
Cavour returned to Turin without bringing, as Massimo d'Azeglio
expressed it, "even the smallest duchy in his pocket"; yet satisfied
with his work, for he rightly judged that, though there was no
material gain, the moral victory was complete. The recalcitration of
Austria, which had reached the point of threatening war if Parma were
joined to Piedmont, contained the germs of her dissolution as an
Italian power. The temporal power of the Pope had been called in
question for the first time, not in the lodge of a secret society, but
in the council chamber of Europe. Beaten on the lower plane, Cavour
had won on the higher; checked as a Piedmontese, he was triumphant
as an Italian. In spite of the approval voted by both Houses of
Parliament, some shade of disappointment existed in Piedmont, but
throughout Italy there was exultation. The Tuscan patriots sent the
statesman a bust of himself, with the happily chosen inscription:
"Colui che la difese a viso aperto."[1]
[Footnote 1: "He who defended her with open face" (Dante).]
The position of Piedmont after the Congress of Paris was one to which
it would be difficult to find a parallel. States are commonly at peace
or at war; if at peace, even where there are smouldering enmities, an
appearance is kept up of mutual toleration. But in Piedmont the king,
government, and people were already morally at war with Austria. When
Cavour said in the Chamber that the two months during which he sat
side by side with the Austrian plenipotentiaries had left in his
mind no personal animus against them, as he was glad to admit their
generally courteous conduct, but the most intimate conviction that
any understanding between the two countries was unattainable, he
was certainly aware of the grave significance of his words. Great
solutions were not the work of the pen, and diplomacy was powerless
to change the fate of peoples: these were the conclusions which he
brought away from Congress. Every one knew that they meant war. Except
for the order for marching, the truce imposed by Novara was broken.
Those who had been edified by Cavour's cautious language in Paris
stood aghast. It was well enough that Piedmont should protest in a
calm, academic way, but protest was now abandoned for defiance. The
change was the more unwelcome, because both in France and England the
pendulum of the clock was swinging towards Austria. Napoleon disliked
to commit himself to any policy, and after seeming to adopt one side
he invariably swayed to the other. There was not the same intentional
inconsistency in England, but the fact that Austria was undergoing
a detachment from Russia improved her relations with England. Lord
Palmerston suspected Cavour of being too friendly with Russia. In
addition to this, there was a real fear in England lest Piedmont
should pay dearly for what was considered its rashness. The British
Government put the question to Cavour, whether it would not be
better to disarm the opposition of Austria by depriving her of every
plausible reason for combating the policy of Piedmont? He replied
that only Count Solaro de la Margherita and his friends could live on
amicable terms with the oppressors of Italy; England was at liberty to
renew her old alliance with Austria if she chose, but upon that
ground he could not follow her; Lord Palmerston might end where Lord
Castlereagh began, but they would remain faithful to their principles
whatever happened.
Two causes tended to prolong a coldness that was new in the
intercourse between England and Piedmont. One was the frontier
question of Bolgrad, in which, however, Cavour finally acted as
mediator, his suggestion being accepted both by the English and
the Russian Governments. The other was the _Cagliari_ affair: the
_Cagliari_, a Sardinian merchant ship, which carried the ill-fated
expedition of Pisacane to Sapri, was captured by the Neapolitan
Government, and the crew, two of whom were English, were taken in
chains to Salerno. At first the English Foreign Office seemed inclined
to back up an energetic demand for restitution, but afterwards it
deprecated strong measures, and left Sardinia somewhat in the lurch.
Circumstances combined, therefore, to render Cavour isolated, but he
understood that this was a reason to advance, not to retreat. Had
Sardinia seemed to bend to the peaceable advice of her friends abroad,
her ascendency in Italy would have been gone for ever. Cavour drilled
the army, and drew nearer to those great popular forces that were
destined to make Italy, which could be freed, but never regenerated,
by the sword. Piedmontese statesmen had always looked askance at these
forces; Cavour was becoming fully alive to the vast motive power they
would place in the hands of the man who could command them, and whom
they could not command. He was free from the caste prejudices which
caused many even good patriots of that date to hold the masses in
horror. If he had prejudices they were against the men of his own
order. Once, in summing up the results of an unsatisfactory general
election, he wrote: "A dozen marquises, two dozen counts, without
reckoning barons and cavalieri--it was enough to drive one mad!" When
he had to do with men born of the people, he instinctively treated
them on a perfect equality, not a common trait, if the truth were
told. In August 1856 an event took place which had far-reaching
consequences: the first interview between Cavour and Garibaldi. Cavour
was one of Garibaldi's earliest admirers; he applauded his exploits
at Montevideo and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party tried to
belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to decline his services. In
one way the hero was a man after the minister's own heart: he was
absolutely practical; he might be obstinate or rash, but he was no
doctrinaire. Cavour never changed his opinion of people, and even
after the General became his enemy he still admired and esteemed
him. In 1856 he received him with flattering courtesy, the first
recognition he had met with from any person in authority in his own
state, from which, after 1849, he had been, not exactly banished, but
invited to depart. During the same autumn Cavour began to see much of
Giuseppe La Farina, a Sicilian exile, who was intimately connected
with the new party, which, despairing alike of the existing
governments and of the republic, took for its watchword, "Italy under
Victor Emmanuel." In the first instance, La Farina was commissioned to
ask Cavour to explain his views. His answer was perfectly frank. He
had faith, he said, in the ultimate union of Italy in one state, with
Rome for its capital; but he was not sufficiently acquainted with the
other provinces to know whether the country was ripe for so great a
transformation. He was minister of the king of Sardinia, and he could
not and ought not to do anything which would compromise the dynasty.
If the Italians were really ready for unity, he had the hope that the
opportunity of getting it would not be very long delayed; meanwhile,
as not one of his political friends believed in its possibility, the
cause would only be injured were it known that he had direct dealings
with the men who were working for it. He was willing to receive La
Farina whenever he liked, but on the understanding that he came in the
morning before it was light, and that, if Parliament or diplomacy got
wind of their relations, he should reply that he knew nothing about
him. The interviews took place almost daily for four years, without
any one knowing of them. Some hours before dawn La Farina ascended the
narrow secret staircase which led directly to Cavour's bedroom, and he
was gone when the city awakened. In spite of the almost melodramatic
complexion of these secret meetings, it must not be supposed, as some
have supposed, that Cavour pulled the wires of all the conspiracies
in Italy. His visitor kept him informed of the progress made, the
propaganda carried on, but he rarely interfered. He still thought
that his own business was to make Piedmont an object-lesson in
constitutional monarchy, and to get the Austrians out of Italy. That
done, the country, left to itself, must decide whether it would unite
or not.
After the Congress of Paris, Cavour took the Foreign Office in
addition to the Ministry of Finance. He could not trust either of
these departments to other hands; and the country approved, for the
conviction gained ground that, whether he was mad or not, only he
could extricate it from the situation into which he had drawn it. When
one senator called him a dictator, he retorted that, if Parliament
refused him its support, he should go away, which was not the habit
of dictators. But the mere threat of resignation brought the most
recalcitrant to reason. Thus he continued to obtain large sums to
carry out the works he deemed necessary, one of the greatest of which
was the transfer of the arsenal from Genoa to Spezia--a step
which angered the Genoese on one side, and on the other the old
conservatives, who asked what had little Piedmont to do with big
fleets? "But the fact was," Count Solaro said with a sneer, "the Prime
Minister had all Italy in view, and was preparing for the future
kingdom." Cavour also forced Parliament to vote the supplies required
for undertaking the boring of Mont Cenis, which most of the deputies
expected would be a total failure. In proposing this vote he declared
that they must advance or perish. He was delighted with a phrase with
which Lord Palmerston concluded a congratulatory letter sent to
the Sardinian legation in London, and written in elegant Italian:
"Henceforth no one will talk of the works of the ancient Romans." This
little episode wiped out the last traces of misunderstanding between
the two statesmen, who became again what fate had meant them to be,
friends and fellow-workers. Cavour's budgets had the inherent defect
that they continued to show increased expenditure and a deficit,
but no minister who had lacked the power and the courage to brave
criticism by a financial policy which would have been certainly
indefensible if Piedmont alone was concerned, could have done what
he did. Meanwhile, on the whole, the economic state of the country
improved in spite of heavy taxation: the exports and imports
increased; there were signs of industrial activity; agriculture
revived. Cavour was often bitterly blamed for favouring and sparing
the landowning class, though whether he did this because he had
estates at Leri, as his detractors alleged, or because agriculture
must always be the most vital of all Italian interests, need not be
discussed now. Improved education stimulated enterprise. That there
was room for improvement may be supposed, when it is known that in
1848 the number of persons who could not read was three to one to the
number of those who could.
The most severe phase in the financial difficulties was past when,
at the beginning of 1858, Cavour consigned the exchequer to Lanza,
assuming himself the Ministry of the Interior, which was vacant
through the resignation of Rattazzi. The breach between the two men,
who were never in entire intellectual harmony, had been growing
inevitable for some months. It was final; Cavour resolved never again
to have Rattazzi for a colleague. The elections of the autumn before,
which Cavour thought that Rattazzi had mismanaged, lessened his
confidence in him; but the actual cause of their rupture was briefly
this. Cavour wished to put an end to the king's relations with the
Countess Mirafiori, whom he married by the rite of the Church during
his serious illness near Pisa in 1868--an interference in the private
affairs of the sovereign which, though inspired by regard for the
decorum of the Crown, must be admitted to have been unwise, as
(amongst other reasons) it was certain not to attain its object. In
this matter Cavour thought that Rattazzi ought to have stood by him,
instead of which he took the part of the deeply offended king, who
went so far as to say that only his position and his duty to the
country prevented him from challenging his prime minister then and
there.