TUMULTUOUS YEARS (1848-1849)
The period of waiting for coming events was short. The whole Continent
of Europe was straining like a greyhound in its leash; Italy, from end
to end, was on tiptoe with excitement; and the year 1848 came rushing in
with swashbuckler fury.
In Italy the revolutionary movement began in Palermo. The people
attacked the Bourbon soldiers and drove them out. Their example was
followed throughout the island. Across the channel Naples arose and
demanded a constitution. The frightened king granted it (January 29). In
Piedmont at an assemblage of journalists, the director of a newspaper,
"The Risorgimento," declared that the time appropriate to petitions for
the banishment of the Jesuits and for the institution of a national
guard had passed, and that a constitution should be demanded. The
speaker was a stoutish man of thirty-eight, with a square face under a
high forehead. He wore spectacles, and under his chin a fringe of beard
ran round from ear to ear like a ravelled bonnet string; he looked like
a distinguished and amiable professor, except that there was a pinch to
his nostrils and a compression to his lips which suggested an arrogant
lineage and inherited notions of "Let those take that have the power,
and let them keep that can." In fact, Count Camillo Cavour belonged to
the old Piedmontese aristocracy. As a lad he served in the engineer
corps of the army, then travelled in England (which he admired greatly)
and in France, studying all kinds of social matters, from machinery to
constitutions. On his estates he was a practical farmer, and he took
keen interest in public life. It was at this time that he first became a
man of note.
The city of Turin took up Cavour's cry, and the king acceded. The Grand
Duke of Tuscany granted a constitution. The Pope was slow to bestir
himself, but the news of revolutionary success in Paris quickened his
gait, and he too granted a constitution. In the Austrian provinces,
Lombardy and Venetia, there were tumults, arrests, cavalry charges, and
martial law; then came news of the revolt in Vienna itself and word that
the scared Emperor promised a constitution. Venice accepted the promise;
but Milan, where a citizen had been killed by the soldiers, broke into
rebellion. Carts, carriages, tables, chairs, pianos, bedsteads, were
heaped up to defend the streets; sixteen hundred and fifty barricades
were erected; men snatched knives, hammers, arquebuses, axes; all took
part,--boys, lads, old men, priests. These were the famous _Five Days_
of Milan. Every street, every house was a battleground, and Field
Marshal Radetzky, with fourteen thousand men, was driven from the city.
Revolt spread through Lombardy. When the news reached Venice the
citizens rose, forced the Austrian governors to surrender, and
proclaimed anew the Republic of Venice. Daniele Manin was made
president.
This glorious news, Venice republican, Milan victorious over Radetzky,
flew to Turin. Every liberal went mad with excitement. The centuries of
national humiliation seemed past. Now had come the hour for which
Piedmont had trained and disciplined itself, for which it had hoped and
longed; now should Piedmont uplift Italy and fight its country's battle.
Cavour cried that there was but one possible course,--immediate war with
Austria. A great crowd in tremulous anxiety thronged before the royal
palace. At midnight on March 23, Carlo Alberto stepped out on his
balcony and waved a tricolour scarf. Next day a royal proclamation
stated that the Piedmontese army would march to the aid of Lombardy and
Venice. A shout of joy went up throughout Italy. Modena and Parma cast
out their dukes and sent recruits to help. The Grand Duke of Tuscany,
the Pope, even the King of Naples, compelled by necessity, each sent an
army. The war was a national crusade.
At first the campaign went well. The Italian allies numbered more than
ninety thousand men; and Carlo Alberto, leading the main body, forced
the Austrians under Radetzky within the quadrilateral made by the strong
fortresses, Verona, Peschiera, Mantua, and Legnano. But the King of
Sardinia was no general; he lacked energy, decision, character. While he
dawdled, not knowing what to do, Radetzky received reinforcements. This
hesitation and delay cooled the first glorious burst of union and
freedom. Pius IX felt doubts; what right had the Vicar of Christ to take
part in war? Were not Austrians and Italians alike in the sight of God?
What had the Universal Church to do with national divisions? And might
not Austria become heretic and secede from the papal rule? He said he
would not fight. So great, however, were the tumults in Rome that he was
forced to face about once again, but his tergiversation gave a fatal
blow to the cause. In Naples the watchful Ferdinand, eager for a
pretext, took advantage of some street riots to dissolve parliament, and
bade his army come home. One general with a few hundred men disobeyed,
but the rest turned back.
In the north the old jealousies between the Italian States wedged
themselves in and broke the new-made union. Venice, instead of uniting
with Piedmont in a joint political confederation, insisted upon
remaining an independent republic, and Milan hesitated out of jealousy
of Turin. Of these discords and hesitations the octogenarian Radetzky
took advantage. Within thirty days the Tuscan army had been destroyed,
the papal army made prisoners, and Piedmont was left alone to maintain
the Italian cause in the field. In a three days' battle at Custoza (July
23-25) the issue was decided. The beaten Piedmontese were forced to
surrender Milan, and to retreat across the river Ticino into their own
land, and Austria returned triumphant into full possession of her
provinces, except the city of Venice. The little Dukes of Parma and
Modena returned also.
Elsewhere the current of events ran equally fast. In Sicily Ferdinand
bombarded the revolted city of Messina (hence his nickname Bomba), and
forced it to surrender; and in Naples he made a mock of the
constitution. Rome was in horrid confusion. Pius IX appointed Pellegrino
Rossi prime minister, in hope that his energy and vigour might restore
peace and quiet; but Rossi was murdered on the steps of the
_Cancelleria_. Rioters wandered at will about the city. Shots were fired
near the papal palace on the Quirinal. The Pope, terribly frightened,
fled from the city, and took refuge across the Neapolitan border at
Gaeta. He was besought to return, but would not. The revolutionary
leaders convoked an assembly of Roman citizens to decide what form of
government to adopt, and, though the Pope hurled excommunications at all
who should take part, the radicals met (February 5, 1849), declared the
Temporal Power at an end, and established the Roman Republic. In Tuscany
the republican fire likewise blazed up; the Grand Duke ran after the
Pope to Gaeta, and a provisional government was appointed with a
triumvirate at its head.
In the north, Piedmont and Austria renewed the war. On March 23, at
Novara, a little town on the Piedmontese side of the Ticino, the
deciding battle was fought. The Austrians were completely victorious.
King Carlo Alberto asked for a truce. Radetzky's terms were so severe
that the king, feeling himself the chief cause of this severity,
resolved to be of no further detriment to his country. He abdicated in
favour of his son, Vittorio Emanuele II, and went into exile, where he
soon died. The young king made peace on harsh terms.
All rational hope for the Italian cause was at an end, but the
dismembered parts struggled on. The men of Brescia defended themselves
gloriously for days, barricading every alley and making a fort of every
house, but they were overpowered; the Austrian general Haynau inflicted
atrocities that made his name a byword throughout Europe. His own report
says, "I ordered that no prisoner should be taken, but that every person
seized with arms in his hands should be immediately put to death, and
that the houses from which shots came should be burned."[23] In Sicily
the revolutionists resisted in vain, and the king's authority was
reestablished throughout the island. In Naples all liberals were
shamefully and most cruelly persecuted. In Tuscany the mild-mannered
Tuscans, dismayed at their own radical government, invited the Grand
Duke to return; so he came, bringing Austrian soldiers with him.
In Rome still more notable events happened. Mazzini, as member of the
revolutionary triumvirate, was at the head of the government. His task
was hard, for the Pope had asked the Catholic Powers to restore him, and
Spain, Naples, Austria, and France, hastened to obey. France interfered
because Louis Napoleon, president of the new republic, wished the
support of the French clerical party; nevertheless, he had to proceed
cautiously in order not to vex the liberals, and pursued a wavering
course. He said he would send an army to defend real liberty, and would
let the Romans decide for themselves what they wanted. The French
soldiers advanced to the walls of Rome (April 29, 1849); the Roman
republicans were naturally suspicious and treated them as enemies.
Skirmishes were fought, and the French constrained to retire. Meanwhile,
an Austrian army came from the north, the Neapolitans from the south,
and the Spaniards landed at the mouth of the Tiber. The French intimated
to the Austrians that this was their affair; the Romans, reinforced by
Garibaldi and his Legion, drove back the Neapolitans; and the Spaniards
retired quietly, thus leaving France to deal with the situation as she
deemed best. French reinforcements arrived, and fighting was begun
again.
The Italians defended themselves for three weeks; their soldiers, though
brave, were raw, many of them mere volunteers, and ineffectual against
regular troops. As Mazzini was the hero in council, so Garibaldi was the
hero on the field of battle. The last of knight-errants, he was the very
incarnation of Romance and Revolution. Bred to the sea, this Savoyard
from Nice always retained the jaunty, gallant bearing of a mariner. His
countenance (childlike and lionlike),--with its broad, tranquil brow,
benign eye, and resolute mouth,--in youth all sparkling, gradually
changed with care and disillusion, but he still kept the seaman's mien
and the seaman's lightsome eye. He was the beau ideal of a romantic
hero. After his unsuccessful raid into Piedmont he had gone to South
America, where he lived a wild life of guerilla warfare, fighting like a
Paladin on behalf of republican revolutionaries who were struggling for
their freedom. All the time he was training a band of Italian
adventurers, his Legion, so that they should be ready when their country
had need of them. These men rushed to the defence of Rome. Their entry
into the city was most picturesque. The gaunt soldiers, wearing red
shirts and pointed hats topped with plumes, their legs bare, their
beards full-grown, their faces tanned to copper colour, with their long
black hair dangling unkempt, looked like so many Fra Diavolos. At their
head Garibaldi, in his red shirt, with loose kerchief knotted round his
throat, the regular beauty of his noble, leonine face set off by his
waving hair, mounted on a milk-white horse, rode like a demi-god.
Besides this Legion, troops of volunteers came from all over Italy. The
character of these patriots may be learned from Mazzini's account of the
young Genoese poet Goffredo Mameli, who was killed there. "For me, for
us exiles of twenty years who have grown old in illusions, he was like a
melody of youth, a presentiment of times that we shall not see, in which
the instinct of goodness and sacrifice will dwell unconscious in the
human soul, and will not be, as virtue is in us, the fruit of long and
hard struggles. Of a disposition lovingly yielding, he was only happy
when he could abandon himself to those he loved, as a child in his
mother's caress; and yet Mameli was unshakably firm in what touched the
faith he had embraced. He was handsome, but careless of his appearance,
and sensitive as a woman to the charm of flowers and sweet scents. Such
was he when I knew him first at Milan in 1848, and we loved each other
at once. It was impossible to see him and not love him. Only twenty-two,
he joined the extremes rarely found united, a childlike gentleness and
the energy of a lion, to be revealed, and which was revealed, in supreme
emergencies."
The defence of Rome was vain. Mazzini escaped by means of an English
passport, and Garibaldi led a handful of men eastward hoping to reach
Venice. The French soldiers marched into the city, and reestablished the
Temporal Power of the Pope. Venice alone remained. Daniele Manin, the
valiant dictator, maintained a stout defence for four months, but
cholera and hunger came to the enemy's aid. On August 24 the city
capitulated, and on the 30th Marshal Radetzky heard the _Te Deum_ of
Austrian gratitude played in St. Mark's. In all Italy, except Piedmont,
the reaction had triumphed; Piedmont alone was left to become the centre
of whatever hopes of independence and unity still existed.
FOOTNOTES:
[23] _The Liberation of Italy_, Evelyn M. Cesaresco, p. 144.