Francis Joseph’s snub to Napoleon III.—Proposal to address him as
“Sir” instead of “Brother”—The consequences—Napoleon asks: “What
can one do for Italy?”—Austria at war with France and Italy—The
crimes committed by Austria in Italy—Battles of Magenta and
Solferino—Francis Joseph compelled to surrender Lombardy, but allowed
to retain Venetia.
Other things besides his wife’s secret sorrows—or even his
own—claimed Francis Joseph’s attention through the ’fifties, ’sixties,
and ’seventies. The hour for the fulfilment of Countess Karolyi’s curse
had not yet sounded; but it did seem as if that “break-up” of Austria
which statesmen think about when they lie awake at night was imminent.
Hungary was sullen; Prussia was ambitious and jealous; the Italian
subjects of the Habsburgs hated them. It was the Italians who were
destined to speak first.
They had already spoken in 1848; but then they had been silenced,
because Radetzky had been a good general, and Charles Albert a bad
one. But Victor Emmanuel was a greater man than Charles Albert, and
he had Cavour to guide him. _Italia fara da se_—Italy will work out
her own destiny—had been Charles Albert’s motto. Victor Emmanuel and
Cavour played a more subtle game, and looked out for allies; and in
Napoleon III. they found an ally who was quite willing to help them; a
sympathetic man who had once been involved in the Carbonari movement; a
sensitive man whom the head of the House of Habsburg had snubbed as a
_parvenu_ by proposing to address him as “Sir” instead of “Brother.”
So Napoleon’s sympathies were worked upon, and the wires were pulled.
It is said that the beautiful Countess Castiglioni helped to pull
them, adding the influence of her charms to that of her arguments; and
the statement is probable enough, for the Emperor of the French was
susceptible. At any rate, he presently asked Cavour the point-blank
question: “What can one do for Italy?” and a little later, in July,
1858, he had a quiet talk with Cavour at the Baths of Plombières, and
arranged what should be done, and what should be his own share of the
plunder.
Francis Joseph may have guessed what was coming when he read the
reports of Victor Emmanuel’s speech at the opening of his Parliament,
in January, 1859, containing the pregnant declaration that, “while
respecting treaties, we cannot disregard the cry of grief which
rises to us from so many parts of Italy.” His guesses must have
become certainties when, at the New Year’s reception of the _corps
diplomatique_, Napoleon remarked, with chilly politeness, to Hübner,
now Austrian Ambassador, in the hearing of all the other Ambassadors:—
“I regret that our relations with your Government are not so good as
they have been; but I beg you to assure your Emperor that my personal
sentiments towards him have undergone no change.”
A double-edged saying; for his feelings were hardly likely to be
friendly towards the originator of the scheme for snubbing him as “Sir”
instead of saluting him as “Brother.” In any case it was a saying which
meant war; and war was not long delayed. Francis Joseph, in fact,
anticipated the inevitable by summoning Sardinia to disarm within three
days; but Sardinia refused to disarm, and the French came over the
Alps, beat Francis Joseph at Magenta and Solferino, and turned him out
of Lombardy, though allowing him to retain Venetia.
That was the beginning of the end; and the event contains an important
moral,—the moral that the one permanent peril to European peace arises
out of the hatred invariably felt for persons of German nationality by
the races subjected to their rule.
The trouble with the German, whether of the North or of the South, is
always this: that he regards himself as a heaven-sent ruler of men, but
can, as a matter of fact, only govern in a state of siege. He can win
battles, and organise a civil service; but he can neither conciliate
nor assimilate his subjects. The German Empire is sometimes compared
(by Germans) to the Roman Empire; but the difference between the two
things is wide. The Romans, when they conquered the world, made it
contentedly Roman. The French, similarly, when they took over Savoy
from Italy, made it contentedly French. But no German dependency is
ever contentedly German. Alsace is not; nor is Schleswig-Holstein, or
Prussian Poland. In all these places, the German, in his jack-boots,
strides about among a people who find his language barbarous, his
culture ridiculous, and himself an odious interloper. And it has been
the same thing in Austrian Italy, where, even to this day, the few
Italians who remain “unredeemed” refuse so much as to join the Austrian
Alpine Club, but have preferred to form a smaller Alpine Club of their
own.
In the days of which we are speaking, Austria ruled Lombardy and
Venetia as subject provinces. At the same time, other Habsburgs reigned
in Modena and Tuscany, while the abominable Bomba of Naples was the
Empress Elizabeth’s brother-in-law. Not in his own provinces only, but
throughout Italy, popular representation was roughly refused. Italy, it
was held, was “a geographical expression,” and must behave as such. If
it did not, then leading Italian citizens must be hanged; and, if there
were any difficulty in getting evidence to hang them on, it must be
obtained by torture.
It is a fact, incredible as it may seem, that the Austrians used, in
the ‘fifties, to torture their Italian subjects in prison. It is a
fact that they flogged, and sometimes executed, Italian civilians for
“failing in outward respect” towards the Austrian soldiery. It is a
fact that they flogged women for the comments which they passed on such
proceedings. It is a fact that they shot a butcher, found in possession
of a butcher’s knife, for carrying forbidden arms, and a lunatic for
going through the motions of drill in a public thoroughfare. It is a
fact, finally, that, exasperated at the manner in which every official
Austrian institution was boycotted, they notified the public that “if
anybody by criminal political obstinacy persisted in not frequenting
the theatre, such conduct would be regarded as the silent demonstration
of a criminal disposition, which merited to be sought out and
punished.” The policy was as childish as it was savage, and as savage
as it was childish. Gladstone had it in mind when he made his famous
remark that nowhere on the map of Europe could one lay one’s finger
and say: “Here Austria has done good.” His mistake lay not in offering
that criticism, but in afterwards apologising for having offered it.
What the Italians themselves thought of the matter is best shown by the
written declaration which one of their victims handed in to his judges
after his condemnation to death:—
“I declare” (he said) “that, rather than deny the sacred principles
on which the cause of Italian liberty and independence repose, rather
than adhere to the rapacious policy of Austria, rather than sanction
its claims by any act which might seem to concede them, or by any
submission to its authority, I, Pietro Fortunato Calvi, once officer
of the Austrian Army, and late Colonel of the Italian Army during
the War of Independence, now condemned to death for the crime of high
treason, go joyfully to this death, declaring from the scaffold that
what I have done I have done knowingly, and that I would be ready to
do it again in order to drive the Austrians out of the States which
they have infamously usurped.”
His judges asked him, in their arrogance, whether he would ask the
pardon of the Austrians for his disloyalty to them. His reply was that
he desired neither their pardon nor any other favour:
“I hate, and will always hate, the Austrians, until the end of my
life, for all the ill they have done to Italy.”
The Austrians, that is to say, behaved as shamefully in Italy as in
Hungary; and this time Francis Joseph was held responsible. When he
took his bride to pay his Italian dominions a ceremonial visit, the
Italians made it clear to him, as they subsequently made it clear to
the Archduke Maximilian and the Archduchess Charlotte, that what was
desired was not his condescension, or that of any member of his family,
but both his and their ejection.
They made it clear in various ingeniously offensive ways. When the
Archduke Maximilian appeared, with the Archduchess, in the Piazza at
Venice, the whole population withdrew, leaving them alone there, as if
they were lepers who might spread contamination. When Francis Joseph,
accompanied by the Empress Elizabeth, drove through the streets of
Milan, not a head was uncovered, and not a cheer was heard; all the
acclamations being pointedly reserved for the Italian Syndic, who was
compelled, as an official, to follow in the procession. The Italian
ladies, at the same time, dressed so as to display, by a cunning
arrangement of stuffs, the colours of the Italian flag; and, when the
“Guerra, guerra” chorus, from _Norma_, was sung in the Scala, the
audience applauded it as if they would never stop.
It seemed, therefore, to be Victor Emmanuel’s clear mission to help the
Italians to fulfil an obvious destiny; and Victor Emmanuel’s mission
was Napoleon’s opportunity to show Francis Joseph, as he had already
shown the Tsar, that Emperors who treated him as a _parvenu_ did so at
their peril. So he and Victor Emmanuel fought shoulder to shoulder,
and made a typical little bit of Austrian history: typical because,
as we shall see when we proceed, Italia Irredenta is only one of many
districts whose inhabitants regard themselves as “unredeemed,” and
desire to work out their salvation with the help of their “nationals”
over the border. There is also, as we shall note presently, a Servia
Irredenta and a Roumania Irredenta, of which we are likely to hear
a good deal in the immediate future, though this is not the place
for speaking of them. Here we will merely note that Francis Joseph
himself took part in the Italian campaign, heading a charge with the
cry: “Forward, my lads! I, too, am a married man with a family!”—an
exclamation not without its irony for those, if there were any, among
his hearers who knew the particulars of his married life.
Though a brave soldier, however, he was by no means a soldier
of genius. Apparently, indeed, it is only as a linguist and a
figure-head—the sublime figure-head of the Habsburgs who need a
figure-head so badly—that he possesses genius; in other respects
he seems to have been, as Herr Wulfling was, at a later date, to
the Princess Louisa of Tuscany, “a very ordinary man.” In any case,
he proved himself a very ordinary general, whom very ordinary
generals were able to defeat—partly, perhaps, because his Hungarian
soldiers showed great alacrity in deserting him; but he sulked, with
characteristic Habsburg sullenness, over the terms of peace. In
particular, he sulked over the following article:—
“The Emperor of Austria cedes his rights over Lombardy to the Emperor
of the French, who, in accordance with the wishes of the population,
will hand them over to the King of Sardinia.”
What, he asked Prince Napoleon, who was charged with the negotiations,
was the meaning of that odd expression—“the wishes of the population”?
Prince Napoleon replied that it meant just what it seemed to mean—that
there was not an Italian in Lombardy who was not eager to see the
Austrians turned out of that province. Whereupon Francis Joseph smote
the table and raised his voice:
“For my own part” (he said) “I recognise no rights except those which
are incorporated in treaties. According to the treaties, Lombardy
belongs to me. My arms having been unfortunate, I am quite willing to
cede the territory to the Emperor Napoleon; but I cannot recognise
the wishes of the population, for that is only another phrase for
the right of revolution. Use the phrase if you must in your treaty
with the King of Sardinia, and in your proclamations to the Italian
people—that is no business of mine; but you must clearly understand
that I, the Emperor of Austria, emphatically refuse to put my
signature to such a form of words.”
It did not matter; so Napoleon did not insist. The Head of the
Habsburgs was quite welcome to make the gestures of pride while
munching the pie of humility—a way of keeping up their dignity in
depressing circumstances in which the Habsburgs are the worthy rivals
of the Bourbons, and Francis Joseph in particular is the worthy rival
of Louis XVIII., who treated the allied sovereigns as his lackeys when
they restored him to his throne. A more important matter was that,
though Francis Joseph had been given his lesson, he had not learnt it,
and that Napoleon, owing to dangers near home, had not been able to
make the lesson as complete as he would have liked.
Napoleon had promised that Italy should be free “from the Alps to the
Adriatic”; but he heard that Prussia was mobilising on the Rhine, and
left his work unfinished. Not only was Venetia left to Austria; but
Habsburg Dukes of Tuscany and Modena were also restored to the States
from which their subjects had expelled them, though the latter had
actually shot his political prisoners, after first flogging them,
before taking to flight. Whence, of course, two consequences followed.
In the first place Francis Joseph was confirmed in his stubborn view
that he did really possess the right of ruling over Italians who
loathed him. In the second place, the Italians continued to loathe him;
and it was as certain as anything could be that, when his struggle with
Prussia for the German hegemony came to a head, he would have to face a
second day of reckoning with Victor Emmanuel.