Not that we would recommend a change of the national mind: the stiletto

will never work a national redemption; and the bitter prejudices,

womanish caprices, and narrow partialities of the Italian provincials,

will never combine in one general and generous view of national

independence. All the Italian’s sense of patriotism is party; all his

love of liberty is love of licence; and all his religion is the denial

of the right of judgment, and the practice of persecution.

The Italian republics of the Middle Ages were engaged in perpetual

hostilities with each other. Milan detested Mantua, Florence flamed

against Pisa. Genoa saw nothing in Venice but an enemy whose wealth

would repay war. Venice saw in Genoa nothing but a rival, which she was

pledged to level with the ground. Rome devoted them all to the fires of

purgatory. The Peninsula was a vast hornet’s nest, in which all alike

robbed the honey of others, and only employed the sting. To this hour

the same spirit lives from the Alps to the Calabrias. No man on earth

more despises the Neapolitan, than his fellow-subject the Sicilian. The

Venetian’s contempt for the Tuscan is high and haughty: the Tuscan calls

the tongue of the Venetian barbaresque, and says that his manners are

suited to his tongue. How is it possible to form an Union among those

scoffers? And without union, how is it possible to establish National

independence?

But Austria has founded her claims to Italian supremacy on stronger

grounds than even the superiority of her soldiership. There will be

errors in all things human—there must be more than errors in the

government of a despotism; the vices of despotism must be deepened where

that government is military: yet, with all those drawbacks, the

condition of Northern Italy under the Austrian government has been

almost patriarchal compared to what it was before, and to what it must

have continued, under the jealousies, antipathies, and ignorance of the

native governments.

In the first place, it preserved those provinces from civil war. In the

next, it expended immense wealth on the improvement of the country, in

bridges, canals, roads, hospitals, &c. In the next, it provided schools

to a remarkable extent, for the general training of the common people.

In the next, it made _some_ provision for civil liberty; and even for

that most improbable of all things in Popish countries, some approach to

liberty of religion.

As the great security of all, it established a firm, regular, and

systematic administration of the kingdom. A governor generally residing

at Milan, and frequently an archduke, ruled the whole. Under him were

governors of its two grand divisions; the Lombard Provinces, and the

Venetian Provinces. Those divisions were again subdivided into

Delegazioni, or minor provinces, each with an officer at its head,

entitled the Delegate. There are even further subdivisions, and each

commune had its Podesta, or local magistrate. The Lombard provinces are

nine; the Venetian provinces are eight; and the spirit of subordination,

and, we believe, of justice, was thus made to penetrate to the lowest

orders of the community.

The Italian governments of the middle ages had chiefly degenerated into

Oligarchies; the worst form of government for the progress of nations

that ever was invented by the artifice, or continued by the tyranny, of

man. With exclusiveness for its principle, suspicion for its stimulus,

and passion for its practice, it effectually renders the mind of a

people at once crafty and cruel. In its nature feeble, it has no

expedient for safety but arbitrary execution; and without any superior

authority to restrain its jealousies, its perpetual policy is to crush

all talent, honour, and character, which shows itself beyond the narrow

circle of its conclave. It concentrates all the evils of both despotism

and republicanism, and has all the remorseless sternness of the one, and

all the rapid violence of the other. Universal espionage, secret trials,

the consignment of the accused to dungeons for life or death in the

dungeon, unacknowledged and unknown, constitute the whole compass of its

theory of power.

For those wretched and desperate governments, of which, let history

develop them as it will, it can never tell the ten thousand part of the

misery, the fortunate accession of the Austrian government presented a

system which, on the testimony of every man qualified to judge, rendered

the Lombard provinces an example of agricultural prosperity, and the

cities of splendour to the capitals of Europe. Since the war with

France, and even in the short period between 1820 and 1834, the Austrian

treasury had expended forty-two millions of livres for the Lombard

provinces alone. The testimony of an intelligent French traveller

(VALERY, _Voyages en Italie_) is—“Nowhere, perhaps, on the Continent is

the administration of the roads and bridges more actively and usefully

carried on than in Lombardy. The whole of this part of Italy presents a

solid and material prosperity; it presents the _fine side_ of the

Austrian dominion. The roads are like the walks of a garden, and they

are kept in repair with the greatest care. The government, economical

and parsimonious in other respects, is great and magnificent in this.

The excellent state of the highroads of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom is

maintained at the annual expense of 1,305,000 francs for 1518 Italian

miles of road.”

But, though the habits of the empire predominate in the forms of its

government, the Austrian influence, in Italy, makes considerable

allowance for the natural love of freedom. The governors of the two

grand divisions of Milan and Venice are each assisted by a species of

parliament, consisting of landholders and deputies from the royal towns.

Each minor province returns two landholders, one being noble, and the

other not, as deputies, and the royal towns return one each. The

Communal Councils, besides, each elect three persons, of whom the

emperor selects one as deputy; those deputies are elected for six years.

Of course these provincial parliaments are not of the same rank with the

British, but they have nearly the same financial duties. They settle the

proportion of the taxes; they inspect the accounts of repairs of the

roads and bridges, and have the superintendence of the revenues of the

numerous charitable institutions. They have also a right of petition to

the throne concerning the wants of the people. But, besides those

parliaments, there is in every principal town of a province a council of

eight, six, or four, landholders, one half of them being noble, and the

other not of the nobility, whose office is to superintend the financial

concerns of their respective districts. The Communes also have their own

councils, and the system of commercial administration rounds the whole.

Thus the inhabitants of the Lombard provinces have more influence over

the collection and expenditure of the taxes, (the most important and

most permanent interest of the people,) than in any other kingdom of the

Continent.

We are not the panegyrists of Austria. We do not expect to see her

giving liberty to the Italian dominions. We do not even believe that

_any_ Popish government ever will give liberty to its people, nor that

any Popish people will ever be fit to receive liberty: the slaves of

superstition must be the slaves of power. The man into whose house a

priest can enter, at will, ransack his library, and tear the Bible from

his hands, has no right to name the name of liberty. The man whom a

priest can command to send his wife and children to the confessional, to

do penance in his own person, and to abjure the right of inquiry into

the most solemn of all human concerns, the truth of his religion, is

already in the chain—has no claim to the sympathy of freemen—and is as

incapable of civil freedom as he is of religious liberation.

But the next best government to a constitutional monarchy is a

benevolent despotism. We have adverted to the conduct of Austria in its

ancient Italian dominions. Let us next observe its conduct in its later

provincial acquisitions. Long before the extinction of the Venetian

Republic, every traveller in Italy predicted its ruin. It had been

decaying for centuries. It finally fell less by the sword of France,

than by its own inability to live. Already broken on the wheel, it

waited only the _coup-de-grace_ to hasten its dissolution. Its surrender

to Napoleon was not conquest, but ruin; its surrender to Austria was not

conquest, but restoration.

The Austrians, in 1814, found not less than 44,000 individuals, in

Venice alone, dependent more or less on _public charity_—an enormous

weight of pauperism. All the asylums, hospitals, and alms-houses, were

in the deepest state of decay. Those were reinstated by the Austrian

government—a poor government at all times—and then impoverished by a

quarter of a century of war. Of this operation the expenses were upwards

of _nine millions_ of francs! There had also been many families of the

old Venetian nobility decayed by time and casuality, and living on

pensions from the Republic. The French invasion, of course, on the

desperate maxim of “making war support war,” had plunged them into utter

destitution. The Austrian government furnished them with the means of a

decent existence. The old officials of the Republic who had retired on

pensions, and who had lost everything in the war, were put again on the

pension-list; and to make the public bounty at once permanent and

effectual, “a committee of public benevolence” was founded under the

care of the principal citizens, with the Patriarch and the Podesta at

their head, to which the government contributed 100,000 livres a-year,

and which now has an income of half a million. Besides those works of

beneficence, the government devoted itself to the objects of decoration,

the repairs of the palaces, the restoration of the state buildings, the

care of the Venetian archives, and the collection of the national arts,

at an expense of fifty-three millions of livres. The authorities for

these statements are given in the _Bolletino Statistico_, and the

_Simplice Verita_, published in 1834 and 1838.

The facts before the eyes of every man contradict the metaphorical

misery. The commerce of the Republic, perishing for fifty years before

the French invasion, and which by that invasion had almost disappeared,

amounted in 1837 to 3000 vessels and 211,000 tons. The residence of

government in Venice, with all its boards of administration and public

instruments, annually distributed two millions of livres in its

expenditure in the city. If it is impossible to make a Popish population

industrious, or a lazy population rich—if the Italian would rather beg

than work, and relieve his self-contempt by complaining of his masters,

rather than gain a competence by honest toil—the remedy is as hopeless

as the complaint is imaginary. The laws of nature cannot be subverted

for the luxuries of a Lazzarone.

The _secret_ of the Papal liberalism is still undeveloped; but it

apparently lies in the Papal principle of universal power. Gregory VII.

and Innocent III. aimed at this power by enlisting the vassal princes of

Europe; but when the princes were vassals no more, the Popes bowed to

the thrones, tried to obtain power by intrigue, and Jesuits and

confessors took the place of legates and armies. A new era had begun,

and a new source of power was to be employed. From the first French

Revolution, the populace have been an element of overthrow. The two

following French revolutions have made that element more conspicuous,

more disciplined, and consequently more dangerous; but it is an evil

acquiring strength alike with the laxity of government and the passions

of the people. A mob had twice cast down the mightiest monarchy of

continental Europe, and the Pope of Rome became a _Liberal_!

Insurrection immediately broke out in both the extremities of Italy. The

Calabrias rose, and the Lombards rose. The centre, less bold but equally

excited, threatened the seizure of its sovereigns, and the subversion of

their government. The King of Sardinia, at the head of a

well-disciplined army, and a flourishing exchequer, dazzled by the

present promise of Lombard territory, and the glory of a future

coronation in Rome, declared war, in the face of Austrian alliance, and

rushed into the field.

In the public concerns of kingdoms, the faith of treaties is so

essential to the existence of society, that probably it has never been

violated without a condign and a conspicuous punishment. The French

king’s breach of treaty with England in the American war cost France a

revolution, and Louis his throne. The French breach of treaty with

Turkey, by the invasion of Egypt, cost France a fleet, an army, and the

loss of Italy in a single campaign. And within our immediate view, the

Piedmontese breach of treaty with Austria, by the invasion of Lombardy,

cost the king his army, his military reputation, his throne, and his

death in a distant country, in a voluntary and melancholy exile.

The Papal court was now terrified, and the Papal guards were ordered to

protect the Vatican from its new pupils of liberty in the streets; but

the guards themselves were now _Liberals_. The Papal Council, next,

_modestly_ wrote to the Austrian Emperor to entreat his peaceable

cession of the Austrian provinces, “and his acknowledgment of the

_Italian nation_, each reducing its dominions within their natural

limits with honourable compacts, and the blessing of heaven.”

But the Pope was still threatened by his people; and he took into his

councils some of the popular favourites, chequering these councils,

however, by men in his especial confidence. Thus Mamiani was placed side

by side with Soglia—the tribune beside the cardinal. All was thenceforth

confusion. A levy of twenty thousand men was ordered to march to the Po.

But, at the next consistory, the Pope declared his reluctance to engage

in hostilities with Austria. The populace clamoured, and the new

Ministry resigned.

In June 1848, an “Assembly of Legislators” met in Rome. War, in the mean

time, had broke out in the Milanese. An Austrian army threatened Rome.

All was terror in the Court, and all fury in the streets. A new Ministry

was chosen. They talked of a new code of laws, of reform, and rules of

administration: they might as well have lectured on astrology. Such was

the wisdom of choosing theorists to meet the perils of a state in the

jaws of ruin. The Legislative Assembly met on the 15th of November; the

populace crowded round the doors. The Minister, Rossi, was rash enough

to pass through the hooting multitude. On some peculiarly stinging

insult, he turned, with a smile of scorn; a ruffian rushed behind the

unfortunate man, plunged a knife into his throat, and he expired!

That blow was struck against the Papal throne. The populace instantly

took arms; the soldiery joined them; all cried out that they were

betrayed. They formed in military array, and with cannon in their front,

marched to the Quirinal, shouting for the downfall of the Pope, for the

Roman republic, for war with Austria, and for a new Ministry!

Of the councils of that night of terror, of course, no exact detail can

be given; but they were long, helpless, and distracted. The Pope is said

to have appealed to the cardinals; the appeal was in vain; and the

council terminated, with the vague but sufficient information to the

populace, that “there should be a compliance with their demands.”

In the council, the Pope asked the commandant of the troops if they were

to be relied on. His reply was, “Yes, if they are not ordered to act

against the people.” The answer was decisive. The Pope, pale and

confused, struck his hand against the table, exclaiming, “Then I have no

resource left but to invoke the thunderbolts of God against the

rebels”—and rushed out of the chamber.

Mamiani, recalled to Rome by the populace, now took the lead; the

multitude were still the masters. On the night of the 24th of November,

the Pope secretly fled from Rome in a carriage, with foreign arms, and,

it is said, in the disguise of a valet. He took the road to Gaeta, and

there remained.

Those events are worth recording, as they will yet form the essentials

of history; and they are peculiarly important to England, as developing

the principles of a domination, never more dangerous than when it is

weak—never more haughty than when it is in the lowest depths of

humiliation—and never more _aggressive_ than when it has lost all

strength, but in the folly of legislatures and the negligence of

nations.

The Roman territory was now left without a government. Deputations were

twice sent to supplicate the Pope’s return, but he refused. The

Parliament appointed a commission or Giunta of government. This

commission was the only form of power during the two months which

followed. The resolution was then adopted to form a government. The

people were called on to elect, by _universal suffrage_, in committees,

a Constituent Assembly. Of the population of the Roman States,

consisting of 2,000,000 souls, 343,000 voted.

On the 6th of February 1849, the representatives met in Rome; and on the

9th, after a sitting of fifteen hours, the _fall_ of the Papal authority

was decreed, and the Roman republic was declared from the Capitol!

Subsequently a triumvirate, consisting of Mazzini, Saffi, and Armellini,

were chosen by the Assembly, and in them the executive power was

embodied.

War was now inevitable, and the triumvirs prepared actively to meet it.

They collected the dispersed soldiery; they appointed the exiled General

Avezzana Minister of War. They provided arms, established a cannon

foundry, organised an artillery, and soon were enabled to exhibit an

army of forty thousand men. But the war, which was to dethrone the

supremacy of Austria, was instantly converted into a war of defence, by

the unexpected intelligence of a new assailant. The republic was to be

crushed by a republic; liberalism was to receive its deathblow from

liberals; and the fantasies of Roman freedom were to be scattered “into

thin air” by the more substantial force of faction in France.

On the 24th of April, an expedition, under the command of General

Oudinot, landed at Civita Vecchia. Its motives were an enigma. It was to

take part with neither the people nor the Pope; it was neither to

preserve the new constitution, nor to restore the old; it was simply to

look on, while the people settled the form of government. But it was to

prevent the possession of Rome by any other; the simple expedient being

its possession by the French arms!

But the people did not comprehend this armed _peace_; they shouted

defiance of France as they had done of Austria. The Assembly protested

“in the name of God” against this aggression by an ally. They execrated

the attempt to control the freedom of a people who had but followed the

example of France, and they contemptuously compared the immediate act of

the French government with its declaration, “that it made no war on the

liberties of nations.” To this protest General Oudinot replied by

advancing his camp to the walls of Rome; the people shut the gates, and

the siege began.

But the shock of armies was to be in northern Italy. The pamphlets on

the subject published by the contending parties are but imperfect

sources of information; but a German volume—written by one who is

neither Austrian nor Piedmontese, and so far free from the partialities

of either, and which has the additional testimony to its truth of being

translated by Lord Ellesmere—gives a remarkably intelligent view of the

campaigns of 1848 and 1849. The work is anonymous, but the author is

known to be a Swiss, and a soldier.

The first demand of revolutionists, and the first movement to revolution

everywhere, is “a National Guard!” In 1847, the Pope established a

National Guard in Rome! The example was followed by acclamation in all

the towns of the Papal States. The acclamation and the example spread to

Tuscany; they then spread to Lucca. All Italy was on fire for “National

Guards.” The Pope spoke of disbanding the Swiss regiments in his

service, amounting to 7000 men. He was thenceforth to know no protection

but “his beloved citizens.” The unlucky sovereign had now mounted the

first step of the ladder of revolution.

In Lombardy there were symptoms of conspiracy, but there was no National

Guard. The presence of an Austrian force, and the vigour of a regular

government, prevented both the acclamation and the example. The

peasantry cared little for change of masters, since they had known the

grinding of the French invasions; yet they hated the high rents of their

nobles. The people of the towns, in Italy the idlest of the population,

were the chief malcontents. The shopkeepers, with the little trade of an

uncommercial country, envied the higher orders with nothing to do. The

nobility, whose lives are spent between the opera and the Corso, longed

for politics and parliaments, if it were only to divert the monotony of

existence. In all Popish countries, the peasant believes in the church

with the blindness of ignorance; the townspeople worship the image for

the sake of the festival; and the nobility attend the altar through

fashion or fear of the priest, and are pupils of Loyola in the spirit of

Voltaire! In this mixture of ranks, of abject belief, of vulgar assent,

and of indolent infidelity, there is always enough to involve national

disturbance, and to consummate universal revolution; except where the

government is military, and where the soldier is uncorrupted. It was

soon found that even Lombardy was unsafe, and a reinforcement of sixteen

battalions was ordered for the viceroyalty.

The conspiracy advanced; and as there is always something ridiculous in

the seriousness of foreigners, the Liberals of Milan issued from their

club, in the Café Cava, a prohibition of smoking cigars in the streets.

By this formidable measure of finance, they proposed the bankruptcy of

the Austrian empire!—though their patriotism did not extend to their

firesides, for within doors the liberals themselves smoked as

inveterately as ever. But the prohibition produced quarrels: the

Austrian soldiers, not recognising the authority of the Café Cava, still

smoked their cigars, and were insulted by the mob, until two

proclamations were issued by the viceroy, the Archduke Raynier, to his

“diletti Milanese,” for “the sake of peace,” forbidding the soldiers to

smoke. Such concessions are always the reverse of conciliation, and the

“diletti Milanese” became daily more and more insulting.

But stronger measures suddenly became necessary. Charles Albert of Savoy

called out a conscription of 20,000 men, and fears were entertained for

his adoption of the LEGA ITALIANA, and an attack on Lombardy. On the

19th of January, an order appeared from the Field-Marshal Radetsky,

declaring “the determination of his imperial master to defend his states

against every assault, whether from within or _without_;” adding, “The

sword which I have borne for fifty-six years with honour, in so many

fields of battle, is still _firm in my grasp_.” This proclamation

produced a temporary lull. But the storm was now gathering from every

point of the horizon. The French revolution of the 24th of February was

answered by the rising of Vienna. On the 18th of March Milan was in open

insurrection. Within six days after, Charles Albert crossed the Tessin,

and the war was begun!

It has been the misfortune of Austria to rely on concession, where force

was essential. This policy has always been attended with the same

results. It is mistaken for royal fear, and always engenders popular

arrogance. On the 18th of March it was announced to the Milanese that

the Emperor Ferdinand had yielded to their demand of a “Constitution;”

and, on the _same day_, the citizens, with the town council at their

head, marched to the palace of the Governor Count O’Donnell, demanding

the formation of a National Guard for the city, the dissolution of the

police, and the transfer of their arms to the guard. They overpowered

the piquet at the palace, and finally took O’Donnell prisoner. Radetsky

now delayed no longer; he ordered the alarm-gun to be fired, and moved

to the attack of the Broletto, or hall of the town council, on which the

tricolor flag had been hoisted.

The city was now in arms; barricades were erected in every quarter; the

windows flanking them were filled with musketeers, who kept up a heavy

fire on the advance of the troops. Missiles of every kind were flung

from the windows and roofs; and boiling water, and even boiling oil, was

used by men and women, screaming like lunatics, and swearing destruction

to the Austrians. From want of preparation, and perhaps from compassion

for the frantic city, the troops made tardy progress, and the fighting

had lasted six hours, when the Field-Marshal gave orders that the

Broletto should be gained at any risk. The building resisted all attacks

for four hours more. It was taken, with two hundred and fifty of its

defenders, the rest escaping over roofs.

The night was stormy, the lanterns in the streets were extinguished, and

the troops were exhausted by the fatigues of the day, and by the

inclemency of the night. But at morning the attack was renewed. The

populace fought fiercely—defending the entrance of every street, and

manning the barricades, but less defending them in front than by the

fire from the windows. Thus the insurgents were to be fought only hand

to hand, and every house was a fortress. Still the troops made progress,

till the Field-Marshal, probably thinking that his troops ought to be

preserved for nobler contests, abandoned the interior quarters of Milan,

concentrated them at some distance, and threatened Milan with a

bombardment.

This retreat was magnified into a victory; the Provisional Government

ordered every man from twenty to sixty to be enrolled in the National

Guard, attacked and mastered one of the city gates, and announced war

against the empire. The intelligence from Piedmont, and even from

Switzerland, now began to be formidable. It was said that thirty

thousand Swiss were in march. The army of Charles Albert was already in

the field; further delay might have compromised the fate of the Austrian

army; it was evident that the fate of the Austrian provinces, while

Vienna was in the hands of the rebels, must depend on the conduct of the

Field-Marshal’s divisions; and in order to keep up the communication

with the Austrian territories, and at the same time meet the shock of

the Piedmontese forces, it was resolved to retreat to the line of the

Adige or the Mincio.

The Austrian troops in Italy were seventy thousand; the Field-Marshal

had demanded, even before the tumults, a hundred and fifty thousand as

the least force with which he could be answerable for the defence of the

provinces; he now declared it “to be a terrible necessity that Milan

should be abandoned.” He withdrew the garrison from the citadel, called

in the regiments, which had been widely posted on the frontier, and,

after sustaining a succession of attacks from the insurgents, now

flushed with apparent triumph, moved in the night of the 22d, encumbered

by an immense baggage-train, containing the government effects, the

wounded, and the public servants, in five columns, on the way to Lodi.

The career of the able soldier by whom such services were achieved at

the age of eighty-three, is singularly interesting. Born in 1766, of a

distinguished Bohemian line, he began his military life in the regiment

of Francis’s Cuirassiers, serving against the Turks, and against the

French in the Netherlands. In that regiment he attained the rank of

captain. In the famous campaign of Suwarrow in Italy, 1799, he obtained

the rank of lieutenant-colonel on the general staff, a preferment which

vouched for his strategical talents. In 1805 he commanded, as

major-general, a cavalry brigade in the army in Italy. He fought in the

campaign of Aspern and Wagram. In 1813 he acted as chief of the general

staff in the “Grand Army” of invasion under Prince Schwartzenburg, a

position which required not merely the qualities of a soldier, but the

intelligence of the diplomatist and minister.

Promoted to the rank of general of cavalry in 1829, and appointed to the

command in Italy in 1833, he devoted himself to a study of the country,

as the seat of a campaign, by holding his great annual reviews in the

territory between the Adige and the Mincio—the very line of country in

which the mastery of the Austrian provinces must always be sustained.

During the interval from the peace of 1815 to his commission in 1829, he

had employed himself in military studies, and, as their result,

published “a System of Instruction for Generals and the Staff in command

of troops of all classes, over all varieties of ground.” Thus,

accomplished by science, trained by long service, and feeling nothing of

age, but its experience, his appointment to the baton of field-marshal

in 1836 placed in the highest rank of the service an officer unsurpassed

by the ablest of his continental competitors. He is covered with

decorations of his own sovereign and of foreign princes—not the toys and

trinkets of courts, but the tributes of men who have been his comrades

in the field. They have been gallantly earned, and their honours will

stand the test of time.

The retreat from Milan was blazoned as the conquest of Austria. “The

enemy flies from Milan,” was the language of the Milanese proclamation

to the rural clergy and authorities, calling on them for the

“annihilation of the remnant of those savage hordes.” But the retreat

was not too early. On the same day which saw the Austrian columns moving

from the gates, a proclamation appeared from the King of Sardinia to the

people of Lombardy and Venice, declaring for “Italian Unity,” and

announcing the advance of his army into those governments. His force was

about forty-five thousand men, in a state of preparation such as no army

of an Italian sovereign had exhibited for a hundred years.

Savoy and its princes form one of the most striking examples of

character resulting from condition. As the key of Italy, Savoy has been

compelled to have its arms constantly in readiness for action. Thus the

whole long line of its princes have been compelled to be perpetually in

the saddle, and among them have been some of the first warriors and

diplomatists of Europe.

Commencing with Amadeus the First, son of the Count of Maurienne and

Susa, and thus possessing the great pass of Mont Cenis, then almost the

only one into Italy, this brave mountaineer exhibited the independence

of a man who knew his power. It is recorded, that on attending the

Emperor, Henry the Third, at Verona, followed by a train of his

officers, the Emperor refused to admit him “with his tail.” Amadeus

spiritedly refused to be admitted on this condition. The Emperor

eventually complied, and Amadeus was thenceforth called “Caudatus,” the

man with the tail. The phrase, which has since become so familiar to us,

thus finds its origin in the eleventh century, and among the Alps.

The long succession of the princes of Savoy were almost constantly

belligerent, and in every war increasing their influence and their

territories. Amadeus the Sixth, in the fourteenth century, was the

arbiter of Italy. Amadeus the Eighth was even elected Pope at the

council of Basle, by the title of Felix V. During the Italian wars of

Louis XIV. the princes of Savoy figured constantly in battle and

negotiation; and when, by the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Philip V. of

Spain was forced to surrender Sardinia to the Emperor of Germany, by him

it was given to the Duke of Savoy, who then assumed the title of King of

Sardinia.

In the War of the French Revolution, the king, Charles Emmanuel, being

expelled from his throne by the French, abdicated in favour of his

brother, Victor Emmanuel, who remained in Sardinia until the fall of

Napoleon in 1814.

The Prince of Carignan, the late Charles Albert, during the life of his

predecessor, Charles Felix, had the character of a _liberal_ of the

newest school. His accession to the throne inevitably changed his

political sensibilities, and he became a monarch, in the sense of Duke

Philibert, the founder of absolute monarchy in Savoy. With a revenue of

sixty-nine millions of francs from his Continental States, and nearly

three millions from Sardinia, with a regular army of between fifty and

sixty thousand men, the best troops of Italy, and possessing one of the

most defensible countries of Europe; with a considerable navy, and with

a debt of but eighty-seven millions of francs, (scarcely more than a

year’s revenue,) he might have seemed beyond the caprices of fortune, if

not beyond the follies of ambition. The King himself was fond of

soldiership. He had served in the Spanish Invasion as a volunteer, under

the Duc d’Angouleme, and was present at the storming of the Trocadero.

He was tall, robust, and bold in the field. Yet his political feelings

were hostile to all change. He had completely thrown off the absurdities

of liberalism; he was a rigid supporter of the ancient principles of the

government, a champion of the privileged, and a protector of the peasant

classes. In the midst of these rational principles, and the solid

prosperity of the State, the temptation of territory was thrown out to

him. To unite Lombardy with his hereditary dominions was the snare; and

in an hour of calamity to his country, and of ruin to himself, breaking

his treaties with Austria, and assuming the foolish, feeble, and frantic

resolution of overthrowing the imperial sovereignty, he invaded the

Lombardo-Venetian kingdom.

At this crisis the situation of the Austrian army was perilous in the

extreme. One-third of its force was composed of _Italian_ regiments. Of

those some openly passed over to the insurgents; some remained faithful,

but they were daily diminishing by desertion. The Austrians were

enveloped in an excited population of eighteen millions; National Guards

were already arming everywhere. In this moment a decisive movement by

the gallant General d’Aspre probably alone saved Verona, the most

important post in all Italy. A National Guard had been formed in the

city; it demanded to share the garrison duty of the citadel. The

governor refused the demand; but the population were sixty thousand,

already tampered with. D’Aspre on receiving this intelligence determined

at once to leave Padua, where he was stationed, to its fate; marched

with his whole force for Verona; disarmed the National Guard, and saved

the city. Mantua, the fortress next in importance, was entered by an

Austrian brigade, and thus the defensive line of the campaign was

established. Marshal Radetsky transferred his headquarters to Verona in

April, and published an order of the day to the troops, containing the

expressive words, “On military grounds, and in my capacity as commander,

I, _not you_, have retired before the enemy; _you_ have not been

conquered!”

At this time, in every great town of Italy, with the exception of Verona

and Mantua, the tricolor had been hoisted, a revolutionary government

formed, and the population summoned to arms. Such was the result of the

trumpet blown from Rome! The Papal troops, at the disposal of the

League, were about seven thousand Italians, including a regiment of

dragoons, besides a body of Swiss—capital soldiers—amounting to upwards

of four thousand men. The whole amount of the forces of the League,

including bands of volunteers, acting separately, probably amounted to

one hundred thousand; which the first defeat of the Austrian army might

have increased to ten times the number.

An inspection of the map will show the singularly difficult nature of

the country through which the Austrian army had now to make its retreat.

The Po, on the right hand, forms the natural boundary of Northern Italy,

as the Alps form it on the left: the country between is intersected by

the spurs of the mountains, and by the great rivers flowing from

them—the Tessin, the Oglio, the Mincio, and the Adige. But a march along

the right, or southern bank of the Po, may turn all those positions; and

the position of Venice finally outflanks them all. On the parallelogram

formed by Peschiera, Verona, Legnago, and Mantua, is the battle of

Northern Italy to be fought; and that battle once won, either army must

conclude the campaign.

It has been already observed, that the provident eye of the Austrian

Field-Marshal had made this platform his especial study: he had

instructed his staff to examine all its features with especial

exactness, and had aided their practical knowledge of the ground by

making it the scene of his Grand Reviews, from 1832. But new

difficulties soon threatened him—the Tyrol was in danger. The portion

verging on Italy was revolutionised, and thus his communications with

Germany might be cut off. The Marshal instantly despatched a brigade to

Trent; they took possession of the castle, and paraded the town with

patrols of cavalry—arrested the conspirators, chiefly consisting of

nobles—disarmed the citizens—prohibited party colours—and declared that,

in case of disturbance, they would set the town in flames. The only

successful mode of dealing with rebels is to punish them; and the

knowledge that the Austrians would not now be chicaned into concession,

put an end to their disloyalty.

The first collision of the armies was on the 7th of April. Colonel

Benedek, an officer already distinguished in Gallicia, surprised a

patrol of Genoa dragoons, and brought his prisoners into Mantua. Charles

Albert moved on the Mincio, and a column of four thousand men attacked

the Austrian post at Goito, on the right bank, two leagues above Mantua.

The attack was gallantly resisted by the Tyrolese Jagers, and other

troops; but after an action of four hours, the Piedmontese succeeded in

crossing a bridge imperfectly blown up, and the Austrians retired, with

the loss of their four guns, on the glacis of Mantua. In this action the

two brothers Hofer, nephews of the famous Andreas Hofer—the one a cadet,

and the other a lieutenant in the Tyrolese Jagers—were unfortunately

killed. The Field-Marshal immediately advanced with eighteen thousand

men to give battle; but the Piedmontese stopped, to leave the main body

time to advance and enter upon the true field of the campaign.

The Field-Marshal now determined to leave the line of the Mincio. The

Piedmontese were daily receiving reinforcements. On the 20th, General

d’Arco Ferrari, the Tuscan commander, conducted a column of five

thousand men into the royal camp. This number included fifteen hundred

volunteers of the best families of Florence and Sienna, a corps of

students from Pisa, officered by their professors, and a corps of two

hundred and fifty Neapolitans, raised by a Neapolitan enthusiast. When

this man took leave of the King of Naples, he asked him, “Your majesty,

what shall I say to the Lombards on the part of my king?” The reply was,

“Tell them that I will come to their assistance with all my forces, and

will myself fight by the side of their humblest grenadier.” His majesty

appears to have soon changed his mind.

The Austrians continued to retire, and Charles Albert commenced the

siege of Peschiera, and the investment of Mantua. In the mean time the

Austrian Council, though the whole empire was in confusion, made the

most strenuous efforts to reinforce the army in Italy; and General

Nugent, with some corps of Croats, joined the Field-Marshal.

Under the general name of Croat, in Austrian military language, are

included all the Borderers of the Austrian dominions, who serve as light

infantry. But of the eighteen regiments of Border light infantry, eight

only are of the real Croat race. This race belongs to the great Sclave

family, and passed from Bohemia to their present province at a remote

period. The Hungarians, on the contrary, came from the far East. In

Bohemia and Moravia the German and Sclave races are mingled; in Hungary,

the Magyar, the Sclave, the Wallach, and the Saxon. From Hungary, at

this period, nothing was to be hoped, for the Hungarian nobility had

extorted from the emperor an independent administration. They had even

gone so far as to demand the government of the military frontier towards

the Turkish dominions. This innovation, which would have included the

subordination of Croatia, was resisted by its gallant people, who now

proved a firm and loyal defence of their country, and recovered a fame

obscured since the wars of Maria Theresa.

Even in the briefest narrative of this anxious period, the governor of

Croatia deserves a record.

Joseph, Baron Jellachich de Buzim, was the son of a military man of

rank, who had served in the French war. Educated for the army, he did

not neglect the studies which accomplish man in every condition; and he

has been even distinguished as a poet. His family connection with

Croatia, and his character for intelligence and intrepidity, rapidly

attracted notice, and he was appointed to the Viceroyalty of the

province. The march of the corps of Croats to Vienna gave the first

favourable turn to the fortunes of the empire, and in the trying

Hungarian campaigns, the Ban of Croatia was among the foremost officers

of the service, as his troops were among the bravest. On the demand of

the army in Italy for reinforcement, he did not hesitate a moment, but

despatched from his force those battalions which had so large a share in

the ultimate victories of the campaign.

Hostilities now rapidly advanced. On the 5th of May, Charles Albert

attacked the celebrated position of Rivoli, but after a heavy cannonade,

was repulsed. On the 7th, the Piedmontese army, amounting to forty-five

thousand men, with sixty-six guns, attacked the Austrian front on the

heights of Sena, near Verona. A defeat on this point would have left

Verona open to a bombardment, and might have been the ruin of the

Austrian cause in Italy. The battle began at nine in the morning. The

Austrians were posted in a line of villages, partly fortified. The

Piedmontese fought well, but they failed in all their attacks. The

Austrian fire of artillery was heavy; and at four, a movement of

Radetsky precipitated the retreat of the enemy. The king was in the

field, as were the Archdukes Joseph (the present emperor) and Albert,

the son of the famous Archduke Charles.

The action lasted till six in the evening. The returns of the loss, on

both sides, are equally unintelligible. The Piedmontese loss was

returned at only 87 killed! and 659 wounded; and this in a conflict

which lasted nine hours, under a perpetual cannonade. The Austrians

naturally lost less than their assailants; but foreign bulletins are

always a trial to English credulity.

The prospect still darkened: the emperor fled from Vienna, and took

refuge in the Tyrol. News of the insurrection in Naples, and fighting in

the streets, arrived. Peschiera was besieged, without the hope of being

relieved; it was already famishing; horse-flesh and maize were its only

provision: it had withstood forty thousand cannon shots; and for every

two guns remaining on its ramparts, there was but one artilleryman! On

the 30th it capitulated. Intelligence next came that Vienna was in

complete possession of the populace, and a provisional government

installed! This put an end to all expectation of reinforcements. It now

even became a question, whether the Austrian army should not abandon the

field, and take shelter in Mantua. “What a misfortune,” said a German

paper, “for an army to be so commanded. What has happened justifies the

warning which we gave, months ago, that the conduct of such a struggle

should not be committed to a man eighty-four years of age.”

On the night of the 5th of June, only two days after the disastrous news

from Vienna, that old man commenced a movement which decided the war!

The whole army suddenly moved to the attack of Vicenza; swept the plain

of the enemy’s detachments; assailed the fortified heights of Monte

Berico, the key of Vicenza, defended by fifteen thousand Papal troops,

with Swiss and volunteers; and forced the town to a capitulation next

day. This daring exploit stopped Charles Albert at once; convinced him

that he could advance no farther; and changed the whole face of the

campaign.

The most interesting part in the history of nations at war is the sudden

ebbs and flows of fortune. The Field-Marshal had hitherto been compelled

to keep a watchful eye on the Alps; for if the French army, already

collected at Grenoble, had joined the Italians, there was no resource

for him but to have retired from the Peninsula. But the four days’

fighting in the streets of Paris, in June, satisfied him that the French

would be fully occupied at home, and relieved him of anxiety in that

quarter. The next news was, that the insurrection at Prague had been

crushed, and that reinforcements were sure to be despatched; the next

was, that Count Latour, the minister, had actually despatched twelve

thousand men to the army. In a short period, his troops, which had been

reduced to forty thousand men, of whom a large proportion were in

hospital, were increased to a hundred and thirty-two thousand. The

cavalry were raised to upwards of eight thousand, and the artillery to

two hundred and fifty pieces.

On the 22d, in the evening, the troops moved to the attack of the entire

Piedmontese position. It was on a range of hills rising in successive

lines of heights. The troops were stopped by a heavy storm at midnight.

They halted till dawn, and on the 23d attacked and carried the whole

line of the Piedmontese. On the next day Charles Albert advanced against

them, made a vigorous flank movement, broke an Austrian Brigade, and

fought desperately till nightfall. On the 25th the battle was resumed,

the heat was intense, and the ascent of the hills was fearfully

exhausting. In one of the regiments a third of the men sank on the road,

and sixteen died of _coup-de-soleil_. Such are the toils and the horrors

of war. Charles Albert fought bravely, and manœuvred ably, but he was

everywhere repulsed. Fortune had deserted him. The Austrians slept on

the heights which they had won. Thus ended the great battle of Costazza.

General Radetsky now gave orders for a vigorous pursuit. In one of the

towns occupied by the retreating enemy, the inhabitants took part in the

skirmish. In this instance we find the first military use of gun-cotton,

and it appears to have excited equal surprise and alarm in the pursuers.

“It was _terrible_,” says one of of those describers, “to hear the

whistling of the ball without the detonation. No despatch could be read,

because the enemy fired from their concealment at every light that

showed itself. Alarms were frequent, and occasioned momentary confusion

among us; it was an awful night.”

After an unsuccessful attack on the Austrian outposts, the enemy

retired. Soon afterwards, a flag of truce arrived, proposing an

armistice, taking the Oglio for the line of demarcation. The Austrian

general demanded the Adda, the cession of the captured fortresses, and

the withdrawal of the king’s troops from Venice, Modena, and Parma.

Those conditions were rejected, and the royal army renewed its retreat.

The command of the troops was now relinquished by the king, and given up

to General Bava.

All, thenceforth, was confusion; the army began to dissolve; there was

neither rest for it, nor food. Many threw themselves down by the

roadside and refused to go farther. An armistice was suggested by the

British minister at Turin, but the answer was decisive: “No armistice

till the imperial provinces are cleared.”

The retreat should have been by the right bank of the Po; but Charles

Albert, in a chivalric spirit, resolved to defend Milan. The pursuit was

still continued through the defensible and intricate country which

surrounds Milan. On the evening of the 4th of August, the Austrian army

was at the gates of the city. In the night a council was held, which

determined on the evacuation of Milan. The populace, partly in terror,

and partly in rage, denounced the king as a traitor to their cause, and

even fired shots at his palace. In the night of the 6th the king was

conveyed from Milan under escort; the report reached the populace in the

morning, and they proceeded to plunder. A deputation of the magistracy

were sent to the Field-Marshal. He entered the city at the head of a

column of troops by the Porta Romana; and on the 7th, an order of the

day appeared, thanking the troops, and containing these words: “The

imperial flag is again waving from the walls of Milan; there is no

longer an enemy on Lombard ground.” This fixed the fate of the imperial

provinces.

The campaign which followed in 1849 may be described in a few words. The

mortified pride of Charles Albert provoked him to make preparations for

a renewal of the war. He raised his army by the conscription—that

terrible tool in the hands of an ambitious or an absurd government, to a

hundred and forty-eight thousand men—(of whom, however, eighteen

thousand were in the hospitals.) But the army had known the disasters of

war, and its romance had died away. None but the orators were advocates

for a contest with the mighty force of the empire. General Bava, an able

and brave officer, who had conducted the retreat, was displaced, and the

command was given to Chrozanowski, a Pole, who had served on the Russian

staff. The Austrian force, exclusive of sick and garrisons, was about

eighty thousand men.

The armistice concluded on the 20th of March. The Polish general’s order

of the day was in the theatrical style of Napoleon’s bulletins.

“Soldiers! the greater your vigour in advance, the speedier will be your

victory, and the earlier your return, crowned with laurels!” The

manlier, because the more intelligible sentiment of the Field-Marshal’s

order was, “Soldiers! forward, with Turin for your watchword!”

In twenty-four hours the Austrian army was in march for the Tessin, the

boundary of Piedmont and Lombardy. The decisive battle was fought at

Novara, a town on the left bank of the Agogna. In the rear of the town,

the ground, consisting of water-courses and walled gardens, and with

substantial villas, and a slope towards the town for artillery, is

favourable for defence. The sons of Charles Albert, the Dukes of Savoy

and Genoa, commanded brigades, the whole force amounting to fifty

thousand men, with one hundred and eleven guns.

The battle began at eleven in the morning of the 23d of March, by an

attack of the Archduke Albert on a fortified post. The combat continued

in a succession of attacks on the Piedmontese positions, which were

stoutly defended, till four o’clock; when, all the Austrian brigades

having reached the field, the Field-Marshal gave orders for a general

advance of the line. The enemy now fell into disorder, and retreated.

The battle was won. The Austrian army bivouacked on the field. The king,

who had remained under fire during the day, was in despair. He exclaimed

to General Durando, who led him away, “General, this is my last day—let

me die.” Later in the evening, he called his princes and chief officers

about him, and declared his determination to resign the crown to the

Duke of Savoy. He then dismissed them, wrote a letter of farewell to his

wife, and made his appearance at the quarters of the Austrian officer,

Count Thurn, at one in the morning, under the title of a Count; and

being allowed to pass the Austrian lines, (of course his person being

known,) went to Nice. From Nice he went to Portugal, and remained at

Oporto until he died.

Thus ended the life of a king, and thus closed the first powerful effort

of that consummation of violence and folly, misery, and popular ruin,

which are all included in the name of ITALIAN INDEPENDENCE.

Let it not be supposed, from the tone of our observations, that we are

hostile to the freedom of nations. Hostility of that order would

contradict the character of our country. We have exposed only the

_pretences_ to patriotism—the love of plunder under the plea of reform,

the hatred of order under the pretext of right, and the convulsion of

society under the affectation of independence.

We affirm, in the most unequivocal manner, that, to be free, nations

must be Protestant. The Popish religion is utterly incompatible with

freedom in _any_ nation. The _slave_ of the altar is essentially the

_slave_ of the throne. We prove this by the fact, that _no_ Popish

country in the world has been able to preserve, or even to have a

conception of, the simplest principles of civil liberty. If we are told

that France is free, the obvious reply is, that though France is the

least Popish of Popish countries, it still has the _Conscription_; it is

wholly under military government; it has _no Habeas Corpus_; and no

journalist can discuss any subject without exposing himself to

Government, by giving his name. Would this be called liberty in England?

LEVANTINE RAMBLES.[3]

Egotism is a shoal upon which literary travellers are particularly apt

to damage their barks. Before us are two cases in point, although of

different degree. Monsieur Gerard de Nerval, a Frenchman of letters, Mr

F. A. Neale, an Englishman attached to the consular service, have each

written a couple of volumes concerning Syria and adjacent lands, visited

at about the same period. We need hardly say that there is little

resemblance between the books. The numerous points of dissimilarity

between the French and English characters are never more strikingly

elicited than upon the road. Set the travellers to write down their

experiences, and you have the palpable exposition of the diverting

contrast. In two respects, however, Messrs Neale and Nerval resemble

each other. Both are very amusing; each is more or less of an egotist.

The Frenchman is the _more_, the Englishman the _less_. Mr Neale’s

egotism is artless and inoffensive. His book is a collection of notes

made for the amusement of himself and friends, and which in course of

years grew to considerable bulk. Long a resident and rambler in the

country he writes about, he unites the advantages of an observant eye,

an agreeable style, a happy discrimination of what is most likely to

interest and prove novel to the public. His greatest fault is not to

have more carefully weeded his manuscript of trivial personal incidents,

quite in place in a letter to a friend, but which have no claim to the

honours of type. Forgive this defect, and there is little else to pardon

in a book that gives us an excellent notion of the aspect and mode of

life of a country with which, considering its proximity to Europe, and

the all-important events in sacred and profane history that have

occurred upon its soil, we can hardly say that our acquaintance is as

intimate as it ought to be. Monsieur de Nerval is a gentleman of far

different pretensions from Mr Neale, whose faults are the result of

literary inexperience, not of conceit or affectation. There is more of

malice prepense about the Frenchman’s egotism. Quite as amusing as his

English rival, he makes us laugh twice as much; but probably he would be

the last man to suspect the chief motive of our mirth. Deeply sensible

of the strong interest personally attaching to him, he keeps his most

private feelings and proceedings constantly before the reader. Withdraw

from his work all those passages in which Gerard de Nerval figures as

the hero, and the corpulent octavos would shrink into pamphlets. As we

read, fancy presents us with his portrait upon every page. It simpers at

us out of a graceful vignette, or peeps through the fantastical wreaths

of a decorative capital; draped in Oriental robes, surmounted with a

Turkish head-dress, the scalp despoiled by Mahomedan razor of all its

flowing honours, save one tress upon its summit, the beard trimmed in

conformity with the latest fashion of Stamboul. Turn the page and behold

him galloping, with drawn yataghan, and glowing with military ardour, in

the suite of a prince of Lebanon, out for a foray amongst the Maronites.

A little farther he languishes at the feet of the lovely daughter of a

Druse Sheik, or exerts his influence—far from inconsiderable—to obtain

the release of her captive parent. But however occupied, whether

martially, amorously, or philanthropically, Gerard de Nerval is always

before us, the principal figure upon his own canvass. He is nothing if

not egotistical. As to the value and extent of his information

concerning the countries he visited, it is impossible to rate them

highly, since he admits that his knowledge of Arabic was for some time

limited to the single word _tayeb—it is good_—which conveys, he says, an

infinity of meanings, according to the tone of its utterance, and which

he takes to be the root of the Arabic tongue. It is quite clear, from

various passages of his book, that he attained no great proficiency in

his oriental studies, and that for the greater portion, if not for the

whole period, of his stay in the East, he was at the mercy of roguish

dragomans and casual acquaintances. He began his peregrinations farther

south than did Mr Neale. After an introduction, somewhat pedantic and

not much to the purpose, addressed, as well as the epilogue, to a mythic

Hibernian, one _Timothy O’Neddy_, he abruptly opens his book at Cairo,

by informing us that there the women are more hermetically veiled than

in any other of the Levantine towns. The ladies, it must be observed,

play a most important part in the narrative of this gallant and airy

Frenchman, and have supplied subordinate titles to his volumes, the

first of which is called _The Women of Cairo_, the second _The Women of

Lebanon_. At the Egyptian city he had projected a residence of six

months, and was mortally disheartened by the dull aspect of the place

when, upon the first day of his arrival, he had passed some hours in

wandering, mounted on a jackass and escorted by a dragoman, through its

confused labyrinth of narrow dusty streets. The dragoman, whose name is

Abdallah, is a character, and deserves better than to be passed over

without a paragraph. M. de Nerval, who desired to husband his travelling

purse, soon began to fear that he was too magnificent an attendant for

so small a personage as himself.

“It was at Alexandria,” says Abdallah’s employer, “on the deck of the

Leonidas steamer, that he first appeared to me in all his glory. He

came alongside in a boat of his own, with a little black to carry his

long pipe, and a younger dragoman to bear him company. A flowing white

tunic covered his clothes, and contrasted with the colour of his face,

in which the Nubian blood tinted features borrowed from the head of

some Egyptian sphynx. Doubtless he was the offspring of two mixed

races. Large golden rings weighed down his ears, and his indolent gait

in his long garments completed to my imagination the ideal portrait of

some freedman of the lower empire.

“There were no English amongst the passengers, and Abdallah, rather

vexed at this, attached himself to me for want of a better. We

disembarked; he hired four asses for himself, for his suite, and for

me, and took me straight to the English hotel, where they were good

enough to take me in, at the rate of sixty piastres a-day; as for

himself, he limited his pretensions to half that sum, out of which he

undertook to keep the second dragoman and the little black. After

dragging this imposing escort at my heels for a whole day, I was

struck by the inutility of the second dragoman, and even of the little

boy. Abdallah made no objection to dismiss his young colleague; as to

the little black, he kept him at his own charges, reducing, at the

same time, his own salary to twenty piastres (about five francs)

a-day. Arrived at Cairo, the asses carried us straight to the English

hotel on the Esbekieh Square; but I checked their ardour on learning

that the charges at this hotel were the same as at the one in

Alexandria.

“‘You prefer, then, to go to the Waghorn hotel in the Frank quarter?’

said honest Abdallah.

“‘I should prefer a hotel which was not English.’

“‘Well! there is Domergue’s French hotel.’

“‘Let us go to it.’

“‘Pardon me, I will accompany you thither, but I cannot remain there.’

“‘Why not?’

“‘Because it is an hotel that only charges forty piastres a-day; I

cannot go to it.’

“‘But I find it quite good enough for me.’

“‘You are unknown; I belong to the town; I am accustomed to attend

English gentlemen; I must keep up my rank.’

Nevertheless, I considered the price of this hotel tolerably high for

a country where everything is about six times less dear than in

France, and where a piastre, or five sous of our money, is a

labourer’s daily wage.

“‘There is a way of arranging matters,’ said Abdallah. ‘You shall go

to Domergue’s for two or three days, and I will visit you as a friend;

during that time I will take a house for you in the town, and then

there will be no obstacle to my remaining in your service.’

“On inquiry, I found that many Europeans take houses in Cairo if they

propose remaining there any time, and, having ascertained this, I gave

full powers to Abdallah.”

Whilst this most dignified of dragomans was house-hunting, M. de Nerval

passed his time as well as he could at the despised French hotel, which

he found very comfortable, and which is built round a square

white-washed court, covered with a light trellis-work, overgrown with

vines. In an upper gallery of this court, a French artist, talented and

amiable, but very deaf, had established his easel and his daguerreotype,

and there he studied and sketched the forms of the principal Egyptian

races. He had no difficulty in obtaining models amongst the lower

classes of the Cairo women, most of whom, however, were exceedingly

punctilious in veiling their features, however much of their persons

they might be induced to expose to the artist’s gaze. The face is the

last refuge of Oriental modesty. Besides the resource of the painter’s

society, M. de Nerval found a very fair _table d’hôte_ at the hôtel

Domergue, several Anglo-Indians to laugh at, a piano, and a

billiard-table. He began to think he might almost as well have remained

at Marseilles. Impatient to commence a more Oriental mode of life, he

allowed Abdallah to conduct him to various houses that were to let.

House-rent is almost nominal in Cairo. He found that he might have a

palace for about three pounds a-year. Abdallah showed him several

such—stately mansions many stories high, with marble-paved halls and

cooling fountains, with galleries and staircases as in Genoese and

Venetian palaces, with courts surrounded by columns, and gardens shaded

by rare trees. An army of slaves and servants was all that was needed to

make them fitting residences for a prince. The engagement of such a

retinue not entering into M. de Nerval’s calculations, he was glad to

take a much smaller house, with glazed windows, (there was not a pane of

glass in any of the palaces,) which had recently been occupied by an

Englishman. Hiring a house in Cairo is rather a complicated operation.

An act was drawn up in Arabic, and paid for; presents were made to the

Sheik of the quarter, to the lawyer, and to the chief of the nearest

guard-house; the scribes and servants had also to be fee’d. When M. de

Nerval had complied with all these forms, the Sheik handed him the key.

This was a piece of wood “like a baker’s tally, at one end of which five

or six nails were driven in as if at random; but there was no random in

the matter: this strange key is introduced into a hole in the door, the

nails correspond with little holes, invisible from without, pass through

them, and raise a wooden bolt.” In possession of the key, the next thing

to be done was to furnish the house. Little money and less time sufficed

to accomplish this. Some cotton and cloth were bought at a bazaar, and

converted, in a few hours, into divan cushions, which served as

mattresses at night. A basket-maker put together a sort of bedframe of

palm twigs; a little round table, some cups and pipes—and the house was

furnished and fit to receive the best company in Cairo. M. de Nerval’s

first visitor was an officious Jew, a breeder of silk-worms, who

established himself on one of the divans, took coffee and a pipe, and

undertook to prove that his host had been swindled by Abdallah and the

merchant at the bazaar, and had paid twice too much for everything he

had bought. The Jew was followed by the Sheik, who came early the next

morning and waited in the opposite coffee-house till M. de Nerval was

up. He was a venerable old man with a white beard, and was attended by

his secretary and negro pipe-bearer. When he was installed upon a divan,

and supplied with the inevitable pipe and coffee, he informed M. de

Nerval, through the medium of Abdallah, that he had brought him back the

money he had paid for the house. It was an intimation that he was not

approved of as a tenant. Greatly astonished, the Frenchman asked the

reason. “His morality was suspicious,” was the reply; “he had no wife or

female slave.” This was quite contrary to the custom of the country. He

must supply the deficiency or quit the premises. His neighbours, who

were better provided, would be uneasy at the proximity of a bachelor

resident. In short, he had the option given him to marry or move. For

the latter he had no fancy, when he had just furnished a house that

suited him well; he was averse to matrimony, and his European scruples

opposed the purchase of a female slave. Doubting the Sheik’s right to

compel him to decamp or conjugate, he requested the functionary to take

patience for a few days whilst he consulted his friends, to do which he

at once sallied forth. We need hardly inform the discerning reader that

this dilemma is the peg upon which the ingenious and facetious Frenchman

contrives to hang a whole volume. On his way to seek advice from his

countryman the painter, he falls in with a Turk, whose acquaintance he

had made on board the steamboat, confides his difficulty to him, and the

conversation that ensues fills a chapter. Then, whilst rambling about

with the deaf artist, he gets into an adventure with two veiled ladies,

whom he follows home, and who prove to be Frenchwomen, wife and

sister-in-law of a renegade French officer. But the most practical

information he obtained on the knotty point of acquiring a harem was

from Yusef, the Jew silk-grower, who came daily to take a pipe on his

divan and improve himself in the French language. From him he

ascertained that there are four ways of contracting marriage at Cairo.

The first and least binding is with a Cophtic woman before a Turkish

santon; a union that, in fact, amounts exactly to nothing, the

contracting parties being both Christians, and the officiating priest

Mahometan. Then there is the marriage before a Cophtic priest, which

admits of divorce on payment of a small sum in compensation; a third

sort is binding so long as the husband remains in the country; whilst

the fourth (celebrated both at the Cophtic church and Franciscan

convent) gives the wife a right to follow him, and is a _bonâ fide_ and

permanent union—too permanent for M. de Nerval’s taste; who, considering

the other three modes as merely so many recognised forms of concubinage,

ended by purchasing, for twenty-five pounds sterling, a yellow slave of

Malay or Javanese origin, with a sun tatooed upon her breast and

forehead, and a lance-head upon her chin, and who had a hole through her

left nostril, intended to receive a nose-ring. Having made this precious

acquisition, he found she had pretensions to be treated as a _cadine_,

(lady,) and esteemed it quite below her dignity to attend to domestic

matters; and, in short, the unlucky Frenchman’s ill-advised acquiescence

in Eastern customs brought upon him a host of troubles and annoyances,

of which he makes the most for the benefit of his readers. The whole

account of the author’s Egyptian proceedings reads more like a

fantastical tale, invented at leisure, than a narrative of actual

events; but in a note at the end of his work he protests that all he has

written down really occurred. He had reckoned on making a considerable

stay at Cairo; but notwithstanding the extraordinary cheapness of that

city, he soon found his purse getting very low, as a consequence of the

extravagance and caprices of the yellow woman, of his disorderly mode of

housekeeping, and of the inexactness and roguery of most of those with

whom he had any dealings. So he was obliged to shorten his term of

residence, lest he should find himself without sufficient funds to reach

Syria, which was his next destination. Having resolved on departure, he

offered her liberty to the slave, whose name was Zeynab, if she chose to

remain at Cairo. This proposal, instead of being gratefully received,

excited the indignation of the _cadine_. What was she to do with her

liberty? She requested him to sell her again to Abd-el-Kerim, the

wealthy slave-dealer from whom he had bought her. But although he had

not scrupled to buy her, he could not make up his mind to take money for

human flesh and blood, and began to philosophise on the strange state of

a country where slaves would not accept their freedom. Meanwhile Zeynab

wept at the prospect of starvation, for she could do nothing to earn her

bread, and was too proud to take service. The European, by aping the

Turkish manner of life, had got himself into a perfect labyrinth of

embarrassments. He had changed his dress and his diet, and had taken the

first step towards the formation of a harem; but he would not change his

religion, nor could he divest himself of certain civilised ideas,

incompatible with the conditions of his new existence. He found all the

inconveniences of his ambiguous manner of life, and evidently, although

he does not care to confess it, wished he had abstained from his social

experiments, and had followed the example of the sober-sided English,

whom he laughs at for their constancy to roast-beef, porter, and

potatoes, and whom he ludicrously sketches wandering about Cairo on

donkeys, with long legs nearly touching the ground, with green veils

fastened to their white hats, and blue spectacles protecting their eyes,

with India-rubber overcoats, long sticks to keep off suspicious Arabs,

and a groom and a dragoman on their right hand and on their left. The

die was cast, however; he was too compassionate to leave the

gold-coloured incubus to her fate; and the upshot was, that she was

allowed to follow him to Syria, causing him, upon the way, almost as

many annoyances as she had occasioned him at Cairo. The voyage was

accomplished on board of a Levantine vessel, the Santa Barbara,

commanded by a Greek named Nicholas. This was a one-masted craft, with a

black, collier-like hull, a long yard, and a single triangular sail,

manned by Turks, and laden with rice. The deck was encumbered with boxes

of poultry—provisions for the voyage. The little den known as the

captain’s cabin, for the use of which M. de Nerval had bargained, was

infested with enormous red beetles, so that he was glad to resign his

claim, and to establish himself in the longboat. This was suspended

before the mast, and, with the help of cotton cushions and sail-cloth

awning, it was converted into a very tolerable refuge, so long as the

weather continued fine. A young Armenian scribe, who composed verses,

and was in quest of employment, and to whom M. de Nerval had given a

passage in his boat down the Nile, had also embarked in the Santa

Barbara, and supplied the place of Abdallah as an interpreter. Captain

Nicholas, an easy-going, hospitable, lubberly mariner, who had been half

a pirate in the time of the Greek war, invited his passenger to partake

of his pillau and Cyprus wine, and confided to him all his affairs. The

indolent Greek passed his time in strumming one invariable tune on an

old guitar, and in playing at chess with the pilot; his nautical talents

were anything but brilliant, and his compass was out of order, so that

it was hardly to be wondered at that, on the third day of the voyage,

when they should have sighted Syria, Syria was nowhere to be seen. There

was little or no wind; now and then a puff of air filled the sail, but

soon died away, and the canvass flapped idly against the mast. Captain

Nicholas troubled not his head about the matter: he had his chessmen and

his guitar; they sufficed to occupy his attention. The Armenian was not

quite so tranquil, and that evening he communicated to his French

acquaintance the cause of his uneasiness. Although but three days from

port, they were running short of water. M. de Nerval could not credit

this.

“‘You have no notion of the carelessness of these people,’ said the

Armenian. ‘To obtain fresh water, they must have sent a boat as far as

Damietta, that at the mouth of the Nile being salt; and as the town

was in quarantine, they dreaded the forms—at least, that is the reason

they give; but the fact is, they never thought about it.’

“‘Astonishing!’ said I; ‘and yonder is the captain, singing as if our

situation were the most natural in the world;’ and I went with the

Armenian to question him on the subject.

“Captain Nicholas rose and showed me the water-casks, which were

entirely empty, with the exception of one, which might still contain

some five or six bottles of water; then he resumed his seat upon the

poop, took up his guitar, and resumed his eternal song, lolling back

his head against the bulwarks.

“The next morning I awoke early, and walked forward, thinking it might

be possible to discern the shores of Palestine. But in vain did I

polish the glasses of my telescope; the line of sea at the extreme

horizon was as sharp and unbroken as the curved blade of a Damascus

sabre. It was probable we had hardly changed our place since the

previous evening. I returned towards the stern of the vessel.

Everybody was fast asleep, with the exception of the cabin-boy, who

was copiously washing his hands and face in water which he drew from

our last cask of potable liquid!”

Fortunately a light westerly breeze sprang up in the evening. The next

morning, so said Nicholas, the blue peaks of Mount Carmel would be

visible in the horizon. Suddenly shouts of horror and consternation were

heard. “A fowl overboard!” was the cry. M. de Nerval was disposed to

treat this misfortune pretty lightly. Not so the owner, a Turkish

sailor, who was in despair, and with whom his messmates warmly

sympathised. The fowl floated astern, making signals of distress; the

Turk had to be forcibly held, to prevent him jumping overboard; and, to

M. de Nerval’s astonishment and disgust, the captain, after a moment’s

hesitation, ordered the vessel to be brought to. After two days’ calm,

and when running short of water, this seemed a singular way of profiting

by a favourable breeze. M. de Nerval hoped to accelerate matters by

giving the bereaved sailor a couple of piastres, a sum for which an Arab

would at any time risk his life. The man’s countenance brightened, he

pocketed the coins, pulled off his clothes, jumped into the sea, swam a

prodigious distance, and returned in half-an-hour, so exhausted, that he

had to be lifted on board, but bringing back his chicken, which he

rubbed and warmed with as much care as if it had been an only child, and

which at last he had the satisfaction of seeing hop about the deck. Once

more sail was made, and the ship advanced. “The devil take the hen!”

quoth the exasperated Nerval, “we have lost an hour. I have plenty of

fowls, and would have given him several for that one.” The Armenian

explained. It was a religious, or at least a superstitious question. The

sailor had been on the point of cutting his fowl’s throat, when it flew

away over his left shoulder. According to Turkish belief, had it been

drowned, its owner had not three days to live. M. de Nerval began to

weary of ship and crew, and his weariness became anger when he

discovered that one of the sailors, an elderly Turk who had great

influence over the others, as being a _hadji_ or pilgrim returned from

Mecca, was endeavouring to persuade the yellow woman that a Christian

had no right to own a Mahometan slave of white blood, (she was the

colour of saffron.) Captain Nicholas, as a Greek Christian, had little

real authority over his Turkish crew, and that little he showed himself

indisposed to exercise. Some rather animated scenes ensued, which were

near ending in a fight between the Frenchman and the hadji. A sort of

sullen hollow truce was brought about, but M. de Nerval’s position was

not very agreeable, nor perhaps quite safe, when he suddenly remembered

that he had in his pocket-book a letter of recommendation to Méhmed

Réchid, pasha of Acre, from a Turkish friend of his who for some time

had been member of the divan at Constantinople. He himself had been

acquainted with the Pasha during his abode at Paris as member of the

Turkish embassy, and, as luck would have it, all this was duly set forth

in the letter, which was properly indited in Arabic, and which the

Armenian, after placing it on his head in token of respect, read aloud

to the captain and crew. It so happened that the ship was now off Acre,

where she was compelled to put in for water; and the bastinado which M.

de Nerval had threatened to procure for the crew, on their arrival in

that port, no longer appeared to them in the light of an empty menace.

The hadji and his shipmates drew in their horns, and were all humility;

the Greek master apologised for the little vigour he had shown in

repressing their insolence; and as to the yellow slave—“since you are

the friend of Méhmed Pasha, who shall say she is not lawfully yours; who

would dare to contend against the favour of the great?” So spoke Captain

Nicholas, a true modern Greek in falseness and servility. And Zeynab,

who had been refractory and had called her master a giaour, was sent for

a short space to keep company with the beetles in the captain’s cabin.

However delightful may be a cruise in the Levant, on board a well-found

vessel and with a competent crew, it is unpleasant, and at times almost

perilous, in native craft, and with the deceitful and ignorant Greek and

Arab captains. Mr Neale gives a shocking picture of his discomforts in

an Arab felucca, on board which he coasted from Gaza to Caipha, and

again from Caipha to Sidon. By special stipulation, he and his servant

were to be the sole passengers. “_Allah Rassi_ (by my head) it shall be

as you desire,” vowed the lying Reis, when entering into his agreement

in presence of the quarantine authorities; but when the “only passenger”

went on board, he found the little vessel crowded with men, women, and

children, and passed a night of extreme discomfort and irritation. Most

of his journeys were by land. Starting from Gaza, the southernmost port

of Syria, he made excursions to Hebron, Jaffa, and Jerusalem, returned

to Gaza, and then went northwards along the coast, branching off inland

to visit Antioch, Aleppo, and other places, and concluding with a trip

into Asia Minor. Some of the Syrian towns he appears to have visited

repeatedly during the eight years he spent in the country, and in most

of them he made some stay. To any traveller proposing to visit Syria,

his book will serve as a useful itinerary. He had, over M. de Nerval,

the advantage of being well acquainted with Arabic. Like him, he has a

fling at the eccentricities of English tourists, and exposes the

rogueries of dragomans. He gives a ludicrous account of the proceedings

of these worthies at Gaza, where he passed some months. The new

Lazaretto and quarantine establishment at that place form a vast

edifice, situated on a plain, about three hours’ journey from the

Egyptian frontier. The construction was completed in the spring of 1850,

at great expense to the Turkish government. The apartments allotted to

Europeans are airy and wholesome in summer, warm and comfortable in

winter; the charges made are very trifling; and the term of detention is

but five days, including the day of entry and that of _pratique_: so

that, waiving the question of the expediency of quarantine against

Egypt, travellers might fairly be expected to submit patiently, and with

a good grace, to the brief incarceration within walls thirty feet high.

And so they for the most part do. The refractory ones, almost without

exception, are natives of the British isles. In 1850, the Nazir, or

director of the quarantine, was Achmet Effendi, an affable Turkish

gentleman who had been educated in Italy, spoke and wrote Italian

fluently, was a good musician, and altogether a civilised and agreeable

person, very different from the usual run of pompous pipe-smoking Syrian

effendis. The medical officer was Doctor Esperon, from whose plan and

under whose directions the Lazaretto had been built. These two gentlemen

made heavy complaints of the trouble occasioned by the majority of their

English visitors.

“Spanish grandees, Italian nobles, German barons, and Frenchmen, whose

families had pedigrees more antediluvian than Noah, were wont to

submit calmly to the rules and regulations of the establishment, and

quitted it on an intimate footing of friendship with the authorities;

but no sooner was the proximity of a caravan of Englishmen announced

than every one was thrown into a state of excitement, and all the

twenty soldiers, with their truculent lieutenant, were immediately

drawn up in battle array. The two hundred guardians looked hot and

fierce; ferocious-looking camel-drivers were pressed into the service.

The Nazir twirled his huge mustachios; and the doctor, to be prepared

for an emergency, had a table placed in the gateway, on which he made

a diabolical display of surgical instruments. After a great deal of

excitement and impatience, a little cloud of dust proclaimed the

arrival of the dreaded individuals. First came a couple of guardians,

with drawn swords and very hoarse voices, having been wrangling with

the dragoman all the way from the outposts. Then one, or perhaps two,

nondescript animals, in costumes hitherto unheard of, with sinister

faces and mustachios nine inches from point to point. These were the

dragomans, or interpreters, who always accompany ‘milords’ on their

travels, speaking a little English, just sufficient to misunderstand

what you say, and making themselves a little useful at times, in

amends for which sacrifices they are exceedingly skilled in the art of

fleecing or plucking their employers. After these, the milords

themselves heave in sight, generally wearing large felt hats, covered

with calico, the whiteness of which contrasts admirably with their own

highly inflamed countenances. Once opposite the quarantine gates, a

violent argument instantly ensues. The orator on these occasions is

generally the dragoman, for the travellers are too weary and hot to

take any active part. The first concession for which the fiery

interpreter contends is, that they may be permitted to pitch their own

tents in the vicinity of the quarantine, and be allowed to stroll as

far as the beach (accompanied by guardians) for the sake of healthful

recreation. This point is vainly combated by the authorities, who

‘_show cause why_’ such privileges should not be allowed them—viz.,

such as the wind accidentally blowing a bit of straw or a rag against

some passenger, causing the said unhappy individual to be immediately

arrested and incarcerated as impure. Finally, the camels on which the

tents are laden are forcibly seized and dragged into the quarantine,

which act settles this question eternally; but there are others to be

arranged, and these are disputed step by step, and inch by inch. The

first set of guardians who are placed to guard the separate apartments

of the strangers are forthwith kicked out of their rooms. But the

uproar that ensues when the travellers and their servants are

disarmed, and their guns, pistols, and swords taken from them and

lodged in the armoury—this, I was told, beggars all description. The

interpreters on such occasions become maniacs; they lie on the flat of

their backs, and kick and bite like monkeys, until, overcome by

numbers and their injured feelings, they go into fits, and come out of

them again, the very points of their mustachios hanging down in

despair, and then slink about like dogs in a strange street,

‘effendi-ing’ and cringing to every one they come across.”

The riotous proceedings thus humorously described by Mr Neale were often

the fault of the dragomans alone, whose employers, ignorant of any other

language than English, and completely at their mercy, were unwittingly

made accomplices of their turbulent and vexatious manœuvres. The

helplessness of Englishmen abroad, when they get off those beaten tracks

along which their language is considered the necessary accomplishment of

hotel-waiters and railway-clerks, is notorious and laughable, and is not

likely to diminish until a good practical knowledge of at least one

foreign language is set down as an indispensable part of the most

ordinary education. Both in purse and comfort, Englishmen pay dearly for

their lingual deficiencies, and for the apparent stiffness and reserve

which are their inevitable consequences. Travelling in the course of the

year perhaps as much as all the rest of Europe put together, they are

the helpless and often unsuspicious victims of guides, interpreters,

_valets-de-place_, and innkeepers. It is notorious that in most parts of

the Continent there are two tariffs—one for the English, and one for all

other foreigners. The practice extends even to Syria. At Beyrout, M. de

Nerval, attracted by savoury odours, walked one day into the _trattoria_

of the Signor Battista, then the only Frank hotel-keeper in the place,

which he had previously abstained from visiting, from a dread of

exorbitant charges. Upon that occasion, however, he thought he would

venture to try the _table d’hôte_, which was spread upon a terrace

beneath a red and white awning. Upon an adjacent door he read the

following inscription: _Qui si paga 60 piastres per giorno_. Sixty

piastres, or fifteen francs, for every twenty-four hours’ board and

lodging at a Beyrout hotel, seemed to him rather a heavy price. He took

his seat, however, and ate his dinner, side by side with an English

missionary, who had been on a converting expedition into the mountains,

and who triumphantly exhibited to him a book full of the signatures of

proselytes, one of the most brilliant of whom, a lad from the vicinity

of Bagdad, he had with him in the double capacity of a servant and of a

sample of his success. After dinner, on leaving the hotel, “I was

surprised to have only ten piastres (two francs and a half) to pay for

my meal. Signor Battista took me aside, and reproached me in a friendly

manner for not having gone to stay at his hotel. I pointed to the

inscription announcing sixty piastres a-day to be the price of

admission, which was at the rate of eighteen hundred piastres a-month.

‘_Ah! corpo di me!_’ cried he, ‘that is for the English, who have a

great deal of money, and are all heretics; but for the French, and other

Romans, it is only five francs.’” “Beyrout,” says Mr Neale, “is a very

expensive place to live in, and a very easy one to die in.” It is a most

flourishing town, although an unpleasant residence. Mr Neale visited it

many times during his stay in Syria, and always found it increasing in

wealth, population, and dimensions. In a commercial point of view, it is

the capital of Syria; it contains more European inhabitants than any

other town, is the residence of the various consuls-general, and the

place of adjustment of the oft-recurring disputes between the Druses and

Maronites of the Lebanon. The scenery around it is beautiful. M. de

Nerval was in raptures with the place. “A landscape all freshness, shade

and silence; a view of the Alps taken from the bosom of a Swiss lake.

Such,” he says, “is Beyrout.” Mr Neale says little about the surrounding

scenery, but dwells at some length upon the creature-comforts of the

place, its social resources and mercantile advantages, its hosts of

fleas and mosquitoes, and horribly noisy barracks, the two greatest

nuisances in the town, in whose very centre, close to the dwellings of

some of the most respectable merchants, the latter are situated.

Released from quarantine, M. de Nerval engaged a lodging in the house of

a Maronite family, half a league from the town. During his brief

residence beneath the shadow of the yellow flag, he had taken it into

his head, or rather the blundering Greek Nicholas had made him believe,

that an attachment had sprung up between the young Armenian scribe and

the yellow slave. With a base affectation of magnanimity, but evidently

with secret delight at the prospect of getting rid of the tatooed beauty

whom he had so imprudently associated with his fortunes, he declared her

emancipated, and told the Armenian to marry her. The poor scribe, whose

only possessions were the clothes he stood in, and the copper inkhorn

suspended at his girdle, had never dreamed of falling in love—far less

of marrying; and as to Zeynab, she was monstrously offended at its being

supposed she could bestow a thought upon a mere _raya_, the servant

alternately of Turks and Franks. M. de Nerval found he had been misled

by the officious Greek, and by his own very imperfect knowledge of the

Oriental tongues. The Maronites with whom he went to lodge strongly

advised him to sell his encumbrance, and proposed to fetch a Turk who

would buy her; but he could not bring himself to do this, and ended by

sending her to board with a Marseilles lady who kept a school at

Beyrout, and who promised to treat her kindly, and convert her to

Christianity. This matter settled, M. de Nerval started for the

mountains. A few days previously, a young Emir, or Christian prince of a

district of Lebanon, had come to lodge in the same house with

himself—had sought his acquaintance, and had asked him to go and pass a

few days with him in the interior of the country; an invitation which he

eagerly accepted, and which consoled him in some measure for being

compelled to abandon a tour in Palestine, marked upon his itinerary.

“For the five purses,” he mournfully exclaims, “expended in the

purchase of this gold-coloured daughter of the Malaccas, I could have

visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the Dead Sea and the

Jordan! Like the prophet whom God punished, I pause upon the frontier

of the Promised Land, of which I can scarcely obtain, from the

mountain’s summit, a distant and dejected view. Grave people will here

say that it is always wrong to act differently from everybody else,

and to attempt to play the Turk, when one is but a mere Nazarene from

Europe. Are they perhaps in the right?—Who knows?”

And the eccentric rambler, trying to persuade himself that all is for

the best in this best of all possible worlds, suggests the probability

of his five purses becoming the spoil of Bedouins during his journey

across the desert, talks of the fatality attaching to all things

Eastern, mounts a hired nag purveyed for him by the conscientious

Battista, and gallops off with his friend Abou Miran, Emir of Lebanon,

belonging to the most illustrious family in the district of Kesrawan,

and lord of ten villages, who smiles good-humouredly at the Frenchman’s

difficulty in riding Arab fashion, perched on a high saddle, with legs

doubled up and brass stirrups as big as fire-shovels. “We had ridden

about a league when they showed me the grotto whence had issued the

famous dragon which was on the point of devouring the daughter of the

King of Beyrout, when St. George pierced it with his lance. The place is

held in great reverence by the Greeks, and even by the Turks, who have

built a little mosque on the spot where the combat occurred.” For its

afternoon meal, the cavalcade halted in the village of Bethmeria,

situated on a mountain platform. Here was evidence of the constant feuds

between Maronites and Druses.

“We passed a large house, whose crumbling roof and blackened beams

told of a recent conflagration. The prince informed me that the Druses

had set fire to the building, whilst several Maronite families were

celebrating a wedding within its walls. Fortunately, the inmates had

time to escape, but the strangest circumstance was that the

incendiaries were inhabitants of the same village. Bethmeria contains

a mixed population of about a hundred and fifty Maronites and sixty

Druses, with an interval of scarcely two hundred paces between the

houses of the two sects. In consequence of the aggressions of the

Druses, a bloody struggle took place, and the Pasha hastened to

interpose between the hostile divisions of the village a little camp

of Albanians, who lived at the expense of the rival populations. We

had just finished our repast, consisting of curdled milk and fruit,

when the Sheik of the village returned home. After the first

salutations, he began a long conversation with the prince, complaining

bitterly of the presence of the Albanians, and of the general

disarming that had been enforced in his district. He seemed to think

that this measure should have been enforced upon the Druses only, as

they had been guilty of the nocturnal attack and incendiarism. Whilst

continuing our march, my guide informed me that the Maronite

Christians of the province of El Garb, in which we were, had

endeavoured to expel the Druses scattered through several villages,

and that the latter had called to their assistance their

co-religionists of the Anti-Lebanon. Hence one of those struggles

which so often occur. The great strength of the Maronites is in the

province of Kesrawan, situated behind Djebaïl and Tripoli, whilst the

largest masses of the Druses inhabit the provinces that extend from

Beyrout to St Jean d’Acre. The Sheik of Bethmeria complained to the

prince that, in the recent circumstances I have spoken of, the people

of Kesrawan had not stirred; but they had had no time, the Turks

having set up the hue and cry with a promptitude very unusual on their

part. The quarrel had occurred just at the moment of paying the

_miri_. Pay first, said the Turks; afterwards you may fight as much as

you please. It would certainly be rather difficult to collect tribute

from people who were ruining themselves and cutting each other’s

throats at the very moment of the harvest.”

M. de Nerval was invited to take coffee with the Turkish commandant, of

whom he inquired whether he could safely visit the Druse portion of the

village. “In all safety,” was the reply. “These people are very

peaceable since our arrival, otherwise you would have had to fight for

the one or the other—for the white cross or the white hand;” the emblems

that distinguish the banners of the two parties, both having red

grounds. M. de Nerval’s predilection is evidently for the Maronites, who

acknowledge the spiritual authority of the Pope, and are particularly

patronised by France and Austria. But he did the Druses less than

justice if he anticipated other than a good reception at their hands,

and soon he was compelled to admit and admire their patriarchal

hospitality. He was kindly greeted as he passed, attended only by a lad,

before their gardens and houses; the women brought him fresh water and

new milk, and positively refused reward. He was delighted with this

“more than Scottish hospitality.” At the further end of the village he

sat down in the shadow of a wall. He was weary, and the sun was

scorching hot.

“An old man came out of the house and pressed me to go in and rest

myself. I thanked him, but declined, for it was growing late, and I

feared my companions might be uneasy at my absence. Seeing that I also

refused refreshment, he said I must not leave him without accepting

something, and he went indoors, and fetched some little apricots and

gave them me; then he insisted upon accompanying me to the end of the

street. He appeared vexed to learn from Moussa that I had breakfasted

with the Christian Sheik. ‘’Tis I who am the true Sheik,’ he said,

‘and _I have a right_ to show hospitality to strangers.’ Moussa told

me that this old man had been the Sheik or lord of the village in the

time of the Emir Béchir; but having espoused the cause of the

Egyptians, the Turkish authorities refused any longer to recognise

him, and the election had fallen on a Maronite.”

The day after his arrival at the Emir’s castle—a Gothic pile with a vast

internal court—M. de Nerval was presented to the ladies of the family.

They were two in number, and were magnificently dressed for the

occasion, with heavy girdles of jewellery, and ornaments of diamonds and

rubies, a species of luxurious display carried to a great extent in

Syria even amongst women of rank inferior to these.

“As to the horn which the mistress of the house balanced upon her

forehead, and which made her movements resemble those of a swan, it

was of chased enamel studded with turquoises; her hair flowed down

upon her shoulders in tresses intermingled with clusters of sequins,

according to the fashion prevalent in the Levant. The feet of these

ladies, doubled up upon the divan, were stockingless, which is usual

in this country, and gives to beauty an additional charm, very remote

from our ideas. Women who hardly ever walk, who perform, several times

a day, perfumed ablutions, and whose toes are uncramped by shoes,

succeed, as may be imagined, in rendering their feet as charming as

their hands. The henna dye, which reddens the nails, and the

ankle-rings, rich as bracelets, complete the grace and charm of this

portion of the female person, in Europe rather too much sacrificed to

the glory of shoemakers.