THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION
In March 1860 Cavour did not foresee what would be the next step--he
only felt that it would not be long delayed. Italy, he told the
Chamber, was not sound or safe; Italy had still great wounds in her
body. "Look beyond the Mincio, look beyond Tuscany, and say if Italy
is out of danger!" He interpreted the transaction with Napoleon in
the sense that, whatever happened henceforward, he was to have a free
hand. Napoleon seemed to think, at the first, that the cession of Nice
and Savoy showed a yielding mood; he was mistaken; it shut the door on
yielding. Cavour found all sorts of excuses for protracting the date
of the official handing over of those provinces, and this helped
him in his dealings with the Emperor, whom he compelled to shelve a
particularly obnoxious project of introducing Neapolitan troops into
the Roman States. Napoleon was induced to promise to withdraw the
French in July without calling in others, on condition, however, that
all remained quiet. All was not going to remain quiet.
There were no illusions on this point at the Vatican, where no one
believed that the _status quo_ would last. It seemed to many of the
Pope's advisers that, instead of waiting for the blow, it were better
to strike one, and declare a holy war for thrones and altars. Cardinal
Antonelli, in concert with the dominant party at Naples (which
was that of the king's Austrian stepmother), evolved a scheme for
recovering Romagna, in which it was hoped that Austria would join,
Austrian aid being at all times far more desired than French. But the
more ardent spirits were not averse from action even without Austria.
The Orleanist general Lamoricière was invited to Rome, and a call was
issued which brought an influx of Irish and French volunteers. The
French Emperor let Lamoricière go, as he was glad to get him out of
the way. The Duke de Persigny told his master that the gallant general
would make trouble for him in Italy, and, as Napoleon turned a deaf
ear, he suggested that Lamoricière should be ordered to garrison Rome
while the French regular troops were sent to protect the frontier.
This simple arrangement would have commended itself to any one who was
in earnest in wishing to preserve the integrity of what remained of
the Papal States; Napoleon seemed to assent, but he allowed the matter
to drop.
It began to be clear that the Neapolitan Government would soon have
too much on its hands at home for it to indulge in crusades. But the
crisis was not hastened by Cavour, and he was one of the last to
believe it imminent. Towards the end of March he learnt with surprise
from Sir James Hudson that the reason the British Fleet had been sent
to Naples was that a catastrophe was expected. He then asked the
Sardinian Minister at the Neapolitan Court whether a Muratist
restoration was still possible, and what chances there were at Naples
for Italian unity? The Marquis Villamarina replied that the French,
who once had many partisans, had lost most of them. As to unity he
held out few hopes; it was popular in Sicily but not on the mainland,
where the king had a strong following. If the Marquis had said
"large" for "strong" his assertion would have been accurate. The
misgovernment, which Lord John Russell had lately described as almost
without a parallel in Europe, was not of a nature to be wholly
unpopular; it was national after a fashion; bribery and espionage and
the persecution of the best citizens may leave the masses content,
and, in fact, at least in the capital, the _basso popolo_ was
royalist, as was the scarcely less ignorant nobility. The bulk of the
clergy and the army was also loyal. All this support made the Bourbon
_régime_ look not insecure to those on the spot, who failed to
understand the complete rottenness of its foundations.
When a revolutionary movement broke out in Sicily, Cavour thought of
sending secretly a Piedmontese officer, who fought in the Sicilian
insurrection of 1848, to assume the direction, but he did not do
so, perhaps because he had very little faith in the success of the
attempt. Save for the undoubted fact that Sicily was already separated
in spirit not only from the Bourbon crown but from any rule which had
its seat at Naples, the insurrection did not begin under promising
circumstances. There were no signs of a concerted rising on a large
scale, such as had overthrown the Government in 1848, and the
authorities disposed of overwhelming means, if they knew how to use
them, of crushing a few guerrilla bands. Cavour was slow to believe
the catastrophe at hand, but he thought that the time was come to send
the King of Naples a warning, which was practically an ultimatum. On
April 15 Victor Emmanuel addressed a letter to Francis II, in which
he told his cousin that there was possibly still time to save his
dynasty, but that time was short. Two things must be done--the first
was to restore the Constitution (this even Russia was advising), the
second, that the kings of Sardinia and Naples should divide Italy
between them, drive out the last Austrian, and constrain the Pope, in
whatever strip of territory was left to him, to govern on the same
liberal basis as themselves. If these things were not done, and at
once, Francis would have the fate of his relative Charles X, and the
King of Sardinia might be forced to become the chief instrument of
his ruin. It cannot be said that the warning was not sufficiently
explicit.
As the insurrection dragged on, the idea gained ground in North Italy
of sending out reinforcements to the hard pressed insurgents. Landings
on the southern coast had an unfortunate history from that of Murat
downwards, but those who play at desperate hazards cannot be ruled
by past experience. Cavour seems to have lent some material aid to a
Sicilian named La Masa, who was preparing to take a handful of men
to his native island, but it is not true that he either desired or
abetted the expedition of Garibaldi. A Garibaldian venture could not
be kept quiet, it would raise complications with the Powers, and,
besides, what if it failed and cost Garibaldi his life? Some people
have supposed that Cavour sent Garibaldi to Sicily to get rid of him
at an awkward moment, for the General was planning a revolutionary
stroke at Nice to resist the annexation. Though this theory sounds
plausible, documentary evidence is all against it. Cavour had an
interview with the Garibaldian general, Sirtori, to whom he expressed
the conviction that if they went they would be all taken. Why, it may
be asked, did he not stop the whole affair by placing Garibaldi under
lock and key? It seems certain that only the king's absolute refusal
prevented this effectual measure from being resorted to. The king,
accompanied by Cavour, was paying a first visit to Tuscany; there were
rumours of stormy scenes between them on the subject of the arrest,
and Victor Emmanuel had his way. Whatever was their disagreement, it
ceased when the die was cast. It was one of Cavour's chief merits that
he instantly grasped a new situation. To let the expedition go and
then place obstacles in its way would have been an irreparable
mistake. Admiral Persano inquired whether he was to stop the steamers
carrying the Thousand to Sicily, should stress of weather drive them
into a Sardinian port? The answer by telegraph ran, "The Ministry
decides for the arrest." Persano rightly judged this to mean
that Cavour decided against it, and he telegraphed back, "I have
understood."
Garibaldi sailed from Quarto late on May 5. Not Cavour himself had
thought worse of the plan than he when it was first proposed to him,
but, with the decision to go, doubt vanished. "At last," he wrote, "I
shall be back in my element--action placed at the service of a great
idea." No one seems to have pointed out the extraordinary boldness
of choosing a fortified town of 18,000 inhabitants as the place of
landing. The leaders of similar expeditions have always selected some
quiet spot where they could land undisturbed, and the coast of Sicily
presents many such spots. If Garibaldi had done the same he would have
failed, for the success of the Thousand was a success of _prestige_.
Italian patriots at home had some uneasy days. Victor Emmanuel, as he
afterwards admitted, was in "a terrible fright"; Cavour went about
silent and gloomy. A week passed, and no news came. On May 13, at
eleven o'clock at night, a passer-by in the Via Carlo Alberto, not far
from the Palazzo Cavour, heard some one gaily whistling the air
"Di quella pira ..."
Of a sudden the individual, who was walking very quickly, vigorously
rubbed his hands. The trait revealed the man--it was Cavour; he
had just heard that Garibaldi, eluding the Neapolitan fleet, had
disembarked with all his men at Marsala. Things were entering a new
and critical phase, and it was not difficult to foretell that, while
the hero would have all the laurels, the statesman would have all the
thorns. This was a small matter to Cavour: they were again on the high
seas, he said cheerfully, but what was the good of thinking of peace
and quiet till Italy was made?
The Sardinian Government adopted the policy of assisting the
expedition now as far as they could without being compromised with the
Powers of Europe--but no farther. This _via media_ had the merit of
succeeding; it was, however, severely criticised by friends and foes
at the time. On May 24 Prince Napoleon said in the presence of Marshal
MacMahon, Prosper Mérimée, N.W. Senior, and others, that Cavour had
done too much or too little; he should have kept Garibaldi back, or
given him 5000 men; he had thrown on himself and on "my father-in-law"
all the discredit of favouring the enterprise, and he would have been
no more blamed and hated if he had given it real support. On
higher grounds Massimo d'Azeglio was horrified at the lack of
straightforwardness in mining the Bourbon edifice from below instead
of declaring war. "Garibaldi has no minister at Naples, and he has
gone to risk his skin, and long life to him, but we!!" Taking this
view, the immaculate Massimo, as governor of Milan, impounded a number
of rifles intended for the Thousand, and so nearly wrecked the
affair. The King of Naples naturally applied the same criticism. "Don
Peppino," he said, "had clean hands, but he was only a blind, behind
which was ranged Piedmont with the Western Powers, which had vowed the
end of his dynasty." Whether international law was violated or not,
there was no real deception, if the essence of deception is to
deceive, for the Neapolitan Government saw Cavour's hand everywhere,
even where it was not.
Cavour was deterred from declaring war by the fear of foreign
intervention. England was the only Power which applauded the drama
enacting in Sicily. The cover afforded by English ships to the landing
of Garibaldi was no doubt a happy accident, but, as Signor Crispi
often repeats to this day, the landing could hardly have taken place
without it. "C'est infâme et de la part des Anglais aussi," the
Czar wrote on the telegram which announced the safe arrival of the
"brigands" at Marsala. Cavour was afraid lest Russian sympathy with
the court of Naples should take a more inconvenient form than angry
words. Russia, however, remained quiescent, though "geography" was
stated to be the only reason. Prussia also discovered that Naples
was some way off. Yet there was nothing which the Prince Regent so
disliked as to see kings overthrown, until he began to do it himself.
But the two Northern Powers (and this was the meaning of the talk
about geography) did not want to act without Austria. The Austrian
Queen Dowager did all she could to obtain help to save the crown,
which she expected would pass from the weakly Francis to her own
son, but public opinion in Austria had long been irritated by the
supineness and corruption of the Neapolitan _régime_, and though the
Government protested, it did not go to the rescue. It is a question
whether it would not have been forced to go, if, at the outset, Cavour
had declared war. France joined in the protests of the other Powers,
and Cavour's enemies spread a monstrous rumour that he was going to
give up Genoa to win Napoleon's complaisance. In reply to an anxious
inquiry from the British Government, he declared that under no
circumstances would he yield another foot of ground.
When Garibaldi visited Admiral Persano's flag-ship at Palermo, he was
received with a salute of nineteen guns, which practically recognised
his position as dictator, and Medici's contingent of 3000 men was
equipped and armed by Cavour; all secrecy as to the relations between
the minister and the Sicilian revolution was, therefore, at an end.
He wished that Sicily should be annexed at once. Though Garibaldi had
performed every act since he landed in Sicily in Victor Emmanuel's
name, Cavour was more and more afraid of the republicans in his camp.
He exaggerated their influence over their leader, who, in vital
matters, was not easy to move, and he did not believe that, in
accordance with Mazzini's instructions, they were working for unity
regardless of the form of government which might follow. Victor
Emmanuel could sound the depths of Mazzini's patriotism; Cavour never
could. The two men were made to misunderstand each other. There are
differences too fundamental for even imagination to bridge over. Had
they lived till now, when both are raised on pedestals in the Italian
House of Fame, from which time shall not remove them, Mazzini would
still have been for Cavour, and Cavour for Mazzini, the evil genius of
his country.
The nightmare of Red Republicanism taking the bit between its teeth
and bolting was not the only terror that disturbed Cavour's rest. He
shuddered at the establishment of a dictatorial democracy which placed
unlimited power in the hands of men of no experience, with only the
lantern of advanced Liberalism to guide them. He, who had tried to
make the Italian cause look respectable, as well as meritorious, asked
himself what these improvised statesmen would do next? The Garibaldian
dictatorship has not lacked defenders, and two of its administrators
lived to be prime ministers of Italy, but it was inevitable that
Cavour should judge it as he did.
A dualism began between Palermo and Turin, which would not have
reached the point that it did reach, if La Farina, who was
commissioned by Cavour to promote annexation, had not launched into
a furious personal warfare with his fellow-Sicilian Crispi, a far
stronger combatant than he. Garibaldi ended by putting La Farina on
board a Sardinian man-of-war, and begging the admiral to convey him
home. The dictator bombarded the king's Government with advice, to
which Cavour alludes without irritation: "He writes and rewrites,
and telegraphs night and day, urging us with counsels, warnings,
reproaches--I might almost say menaces." Garibaldi, he goes on to say,
has a generous character, poetic instincts, but his is an untamed
nature, on which certain impressions leave ineffaceable traces; he
feels the cession of Nice as a personal injury, and he will never
forgive it. The king has a certain influence over him, but it would be
madness to seek to employ it in favour of the Ministry; he would lose
it, which would be a great misfortune. How few ministers who, like
Cavour, were accustomed to be all-powerful, would have met unrelenting
opposition in this spirit!
The influence of the king was sought by Napoleon to induce Garibaldi
to stop short at Messina, but he can hardly have been surprised when
the General showed no disposition to serve his sovereign so ill as to
obey him. He then proposed that the French and British admirals should
be instructed to inform Garibaldi that they had orders to prevent him
from crossing the straits. Lord John Russell replied that, in the
opinion of Government, the Neapolitans should be left to receive or
repel Garibaldi as they pleased; nevertheless, if France interfered
alone, they would limit themselves to disapproving and protesting. But
Napoleon did not wish to interfere alone; the effect would be to make
British influence paramount in Italy, and possibly even to cause
Sicily to crave a British protectorate. In great haste he assured the
Foreign Secretary that his chief desire was to act about Southern
Italy in whatever way was approved by England. Italy was saved from a
great peril in 1860, firstly, by English goodwill, and, secondly, by
the absence of any real agreement between the Continental Powers. Had
there been a concert of Europe, the passage of Garibaldi to Calabria
would have been barred.
By this time no one was more determined than Cavour himself that not
a palm of ground should be left to the Bourbon dynasty, but he still
thought it necessary to save appearances. Thus he met the too late
advances of the Neapolitan Government, not by a refusal to treat, but
by proposing a condition with which Francis, as an obedient son of
the Church, could not comply: the formal recognition of the union of
Romagna with Piedmont. Strict moralists, like Lanza, would have
wished him to send the ambassadors of the King of Naples about their
business, and to declare war on any pretext, and so escape from
"a hybrid and perilous game." Cavour looked upon the Neapolitan
Government as doomed, and that by its own fault, its own obstinacy,
its own rejection of the plank of safety, which, almost at the risk
of doing a wrong to Italy, he had advised his king to offer it three
months before. He felt no scruples in accelerating its fall. The means
he took may not have been the best means, but he thought them good
enough in dealing with a system which was a by-word for bad faith and
corruption. He wished that the end might come before Garibaldi crossed
the straits, or, at least, when he was still far from Naples. Thus a
repetition of the Sicilian dictatorship would be impossible. To what
measures he resorted is not known with any accuracy; he was carrying
on a policy without the knowledge of the king or the cabinet, and no
trustworthy account exists of it. What is known is that Cavour, as a
conspirator, failed.
Till the Captain of the Thousand appeared, the people would not move.
They knew nothing of the merits of a limited monarchy, but they could
vibrate to the electric thrill of a great emotion, such as that which
made their hearts rise and swell when the organ in the village
church pealed forth the airs of Bellini or Donizetti on a feast day.
Garibaldi was the Mahdi of a new dispensation, which was to end
earthquakes, the cholera, poverty, to heal all wounds, dry all tears.
Yes, it was worth while to rise now! King Francis seems to have
understood the situation; he sat down to wait for Destiny in a red
shirt. When the liberator was sufficiently near, he is reported
to have called the commanders of the National Guard, and to have
addressed them in these words: "As your--that is, our common friend,
Don Peppe, approaches, my work ends and yours begins. Keep the peace.
I have ordered the troops that remain to capitulate."
The British Government had all along recommended Cavour to leave
Garibaldi alone to finish the task he had so well begun; he did not
take the advice, but in the end he must have recognised its wisdom.
At the very last moment it might have been possible to get Victor
Emmanuel's authority proclaimed at Naples before Garibaldi entered the
city, or, at any rate, Cavour thought so; but the attempt would have
worn a graceless look at that late hour, and it was not made. Cavour
never forgot the services which Garibaldi had rendered to Italy; "the
greatest," he said, "that a man could render her." When the dissension
between them began, he might have convoked Parliament and fought out
the battle before the Chamber, but, though he would have saved his
_prestige_, he would have lost Italy. He preferred to risk his
reputation and to save Italy. In order to make Italy, he believed it
to be of vital importance to keep the hero on good terms with the
king. Garibaldi was a great moral power, not only in Italy, but in
Europe. If Cavour entered into a struggle with him, he would have the
majority of old diplomatists on his side, but European public opinion
would be against him, and it would be right. He argued thus with those
who mistook his forbearance for weakness, when it was really strength.
Cavour seriously thought that among the inconvenient consequences of
Garibaldi's ascendency might be a war with Austria, forced on the
Government by the victorious _condottiere_ in the intoxication of
success. He was resolved as a statesman to do what he could to prevent
so great an imprudence. He had assured the British Government in
writing that he had no present intention of attacking Austria, and
in this he was perfectly sincere. Still he did not shrink from the
possibility. He wrote to Ricasoli: "If we were beaten by overwhelming
force, the cause of Italy would not be lost; she would arise from her
ruins, as Piedmont arose from the field of Novara." To another friend
he made what was, perhaps, the only boast he ever uttered: "I would
answer for the result if I possessed the art of war as I possess the
art of politics." For the rest, he added characteristically, When
a course became the only one, what was the good of counting up its
dangers? You ought to find out the way of overcoming them.