THE LIBERATION OF ITALY 1815-1870
by the
COUNTESS EVELYN MARTINENGO CESARESCO
Author of 'Italian Characters In The Epoch Of Unification' (_Patriotti
Italiani_), etc.
With Portraits
London
Seeley And Co, Limited
Essex Street, Strand
1895
[FRONTISPIECE: GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI]
PREFACE
The old figure of speech 'in the fulness of time' embodies a truth too
often forgotten. History knows nothing of spontaneous generation; the
chain of cause and effect is unbroken, and however modest be the
scale on which an historical work is cast, the reader has a right to
ask that it should give him some idea, not only of what happened, but
of why it happened. A catalogue of dates and names is as meaningless
as the photograph of a crowd. In the following retrospect, I have
attempted to trace the principal factors that worked towards Italian
unity. The Liberation of Italy is a cycle waiting to be turned into an
epic.
In other words, it presents the appearance of a series of detached
episodes, but the parts have an intimate connection with the whole,
which, as time wears on, will constantly emerge into plainer light.
Every year brings with it the issue of documents, letters, memoirs,
that help to unravel the tangled threads in which this subject has
been enveloped, and which have made it less generally understood than
the two other great struggles of the century, the American fight for
the Union, and the unification of Germany.
I cannot too strongly state my indebtedness to the voluminous
literature which has grown up in Italy round the _Risorgimento_ since
its completion; yet it must not be supposed that the witness of
contemporaries published from hour to hour, in every European tongue,
while the events were going on, has become or will ever become
valueless. I have had access to a collection of these older writings,
formed with much care between the years 1850-1870, and some
authorities that were wanting, I found in the library of Sir James
Hudson, given by him to Count Giuseppe Martinengo Cesaresco after he
left the British legation at Turin.
There are, of course, many books in which the affairs of Italy figure
only incidentally, which ought to be consulted by anyone who wishes to
study the inner working of the Italian movement. Of such are Lord
Castlereagh's _Despatches and Correspondence_, and the autobiographies
of Prince Metternich and Count Beust.
Perhaps I have been helped in describing the events clearly, by the
fact that I am familiar with almost all the places where they
occurred, from the heights of Calatafimi to the unhappy rock of Lissa.
Wherever the language of the _Si_ sounds, we tread upon the history of
the Revolution that achieved what a great English orator once called,
'the noblest work ever undertaken by man.'
The supreme interest of the re-casting of Italy arises from the new
spectacle of a nation made one not by conquest but by consent. Above
and beyond the other causes that contributed to the conclusion must
always be reckoned the gathering of an emotional wave, only comparable
to the phenomena displayed by the mediæval religious revivals.
Sentiment, it is said, is what makes the real historical miracles. A
writer on Italian Liberation would be indeed misleading who failed to
take account of the passionate longing which stirred and swayed even
the most outwardly cold of those who took part in it, and nerved an
entire people to heroic effort.
Salò, Lago di Garda.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
RESURGAM
Italy from the Battle of Lodi to the Congress of Vienna
CHAPTER II
THE WORK OF THE CARBONARI
Revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples and in Piedmont--The Conspiracy
against Charles Albert
CHAPTER III
PRISON AND SCAFFOLD
Political Trials in Venetia and Lombardy--Risings in the South and
Centre--Ciro Menotti
CHAPTER IV
YOUNG ITALY
Accession of Charles Albert--Mazzini's Unitarian Propaganda--The
Brothers Bandiera
CHAPTER V
THE POPE LIBERATOR
Events leading to the Election of Pius IX.--The Petty Princes--Charles
Albert, Leopold and Ferdinand
CHAPTER VI
THE YEAR OF REVOLUTION
Insurrection in Sicily--The Austrians expelled from Milan and
Venice--Charles Albert takes the Field--Withdrawal of the Pope and
King of Naples--Piedmont defeated--The Retreat
CHAPTER VII
THE DOWNFALL OF THRONES
Garibaldi arrives--Venice under Manin--The Dissolution of the Temporal
Power--Republics at Rome and Florence
CHAPTER VIII
AT BAY
Novara--Abdication of Charles Albert--Brescia crushed--French
Intervention--The Fall of Rome--The Fall of Venice
CHAPTER IX
'J'ATTENDS MON ASTRE'
The House of Savoy--A King who Keeps his Word--Sufferings of the
Lombards--Charles Albert's death
CHAPTER X
THE REVIVAL OF PIEDMONT
Restoration of the Pope and Grand-Duke of Tuscany--Misrule at Naples--
The Struggle with the Church in Piedmont--The Crimean War
CHAPTER XI
PREMONITIONS OF THE STORM
Pisacane's Landing--Orsini's Attempt--The Compact of
Plombières--Cavour's Triumph
CHAPTER XII
THE WAR FOR LOMBARDY
Austria declares War--Montebello--Garibaldi's Campaign--Palestro--
Magenta--The Allies enter Milan--Ricasoli saves Italian Unity--
Accession of Francis II.--Solferino--The Armistice of Villafranca
CHAPTER XIII
WHAT UNITY COST
Napoleon III. and Cavour--The Cession of Savoy and Nice--Annexations
in Central Italy
CHAPTER XIV
THE MARCH OF THE THOUSAND
Origin of the Expedition--Garibaldi at Marsala--Calatafimi--The Taking
of Palermo--Milazzo--The Bourbons evacuate Sicily
CHAPTER XV
THE MEETING OF THE WATERS
Garibaldi's March on Naples--The Piedmontese in Umbria and the
Marches--The Volturno. Victor Emmanuel enters Naples
CHAPTER XVI
BEGINNINGS OF THE ITALIAN KINGDOM
The Fall of Gaeta--Political Brigandage--The Proclamation of the
Italian Kingdom--Cavour's Death
CHAPTER XVII
'ROME OR DEATH!'
Cavour's Successors--Aspromonte--The September Convention--Garibaldi's
Visit to England
CHAPTER XVIII
THE WAR FOR VENICE
The Prussian Alliance--Custoza--Lissa--The Volunteers--Acquisition of
Venetia
CHAPTER XIX
THE LAST CRUSADE
The French leave Rome--Garibaldi's Arrest and Escape--The Second French
Intervention--Monte Rotondo--Mentana
CHAPTER XX
ROME THE CAPITAL
M. Rouher's 'Never!'--Papal Infallibility--Sédan--The Breach in Porta
Pia--The King of Italy in Rome
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI (Frontispiece)
GIUSEPPE MAZZINI
KING VICTOR EMMANUEL
COUNT CAVOUR
CHAPTER I
RESURGAM
Italy from the Battle of Lodi to the Congress of Vienna.
The unity of Italy, which the statesmen of Europe and all save a small
number of the Italians themselves still regarded as an utopia when it
was on the verge of accomplishment, was, nevertheless, desired and
foreseen by the two greatest intellects produced by the Italian race.
Dante conceived an Italy united under the Empire, which returning from
a shameful because self-imposed exile would assume its natural seat in
Rome. To him it was a point of secondary interest that the Imperial
Lord happened to be bred beyond the Alps, that he was of Teutonic, not
of Latin blood. If the Emperor brought the talisman of his authority
to the banks of the Tiber, Italy would overcome the factions which
rent her, and would not only rule herself, but lead mankind. Vast as
the vision was, Dante cannot be called presumptuous for having
entertained it. The Rome of the Cæsars, the Rome of the Popes, had
each transformed the world: Italy was transforming it for a third time
at that moment by the spiritual awakening which, beginning with the
Renaissance, led by inevitable steps to the Reformation. The great
Florentine poet had the right to dream that his country was invested
with a providential mission, that his people was a chosen people,
which, by its own fault and by the fault of others, had lost its way,
but would find it again. Such was Dante's so-called Ghibelline
programme--less Ghibelline than intensely and magnificently Italian.
His was a mind too mighty to be caged within the limits of partisan
ambitions. The same may be said of Machiavelli. He also imagined, or
rather discerned in the future, a regenerate Italy under a single
head, and this, not the advancement of any particular man, was the
grand event he endeavoured to hasten. With the impatience of a heart
consumed by the single passion of patriotism, he conjured his
fellow-countrymen to seize the first chance that presented itself,
promising or unpromising, of reaching the goal. The concluding passage
in the _Principe_ was meant as an exhortation; it reads as a prophecy.
'We ought not therefore,' writes Machiavelli, 'to let this occasion
pass whereby, after so long waiting, Italy may behold the coming of a
saviour. Nor can I express with what love he would be received in all
those provinces which have suffered from the foreign inundations; with
what thirst of vengeance, with what obstinate faith, with what
worship, with what tears! What doors would be closed against him? What
people would deny him obedience? What jealousy would oppose him? What
Italian would not do him honour? The barbarous dominion of the
stranger stinks in the nostrils of all.'
Another man of genius, an Italian whom a fortuitous circumstance made
the citizen and the master of a country not his own, grasped both the
vital necessity of unity from an Italian point of view, and the
certainty of its ultimate achievement. Napoleon's notes on the
subject, written at St Helena, sum up the whole question without
rhetoric but with unanswerable logic:--'Italy is surrounded by the
Alps and the sea. Her natural limits are defined with as much
exactitude as if she were an island. Italy is only united to the
Continent by 150 leagues of frontier, and these 150 leagues are
fortified by the highest barrier that can be opposed to man. Italy,
isolated between her natural limits, is destined to form a great and
powerful nation. Italy is one nation; unity of customs, language and
literature must, within a period more or less distant, unite her
inhabitants under one sole government. And Rome will, without the
slightest doubt, be chosen by the Italians as their capital.'
Unlike Dante and Machiavelli, who could only sow the seed, not gather
the fruit, the man who wrote these lines might have made them a
reality. Had Napoleon wished to unite Italy--had he had the greatness
of mind to proclaim Rome the capital of a free and independent
state instead of turning it into the chief town of a French
department--there was a time when he could plainly have done it.
Whether redemption too easily won would have proved a gain or a loss
in the long run to the populations welded together, not after their
own long and laborious efforts, but by the sudden exercise of the will
of a conqueror, is, of course, a different matter. The experiment was
not tried. Napoleon, whom the simple splendour of such a scheme ought
to have fascinated, did a very poor thing instead of a very great one:
he divided Italy among his relations, keeping the lion's share for
himself.
Napoleon's policy in Italy was permanently compromised by the
abominable sale of Venice, with her two thousand years of freedom, to
the empire which, as no one knew better than he did, was the pivot of
European despotism. After that transaction he could never again come
before the Italians with clean hands; they might for a season make him
their idol, carried away by the intoxication of his fame; they could
never trust him in their inmost conscience. The ruinous consequences
of the Treaty of Campo Formio only; ceased in 1866. The Venetians have
been severely blamed, most of all by Italian historians, for making
Campo Formio possible by opening the door to the French six months
before. Napoleon could not have bartered away Venice if it had not
belonged to him. The reason that it belonged to him was that, on the
12th of May 1797, the Grand Council committed political suicide by
dissolving the old aristocratic form of government, in compliance with
a mere rumour, conveyed to them through the ignoble medium of a petty
shopkeeper, that such was the wish of General Buonaparte. In
extenuation of their fatal supineness, it may be urged that they felt
the inherent weakness of an oligarchy out of date; and in the second
place, that the victor of Lodi, the deliverer of Lombardy, then in the
first flush of his scarcely tarnished glory, was a dazzling figure,
calculated indeed to turn men's heads. But, after all, the only really
valid excuse for them would have been that Venice lacked the means of
defence, and this was not the case. She had 14,000 regular troops,
8000 marines, a good stock of guns--how well she might have resisted
the French, had they, which was probable, attacked her, was to be
proved in 1849. Her people, moreover, that _basso popolo_ which
nowhere in the world is more free from crime, more patient in
suffering, more intelligent and public-spirited than in Venice, was
anxious and ready to resist; when the nobles offered themselves a
sacrifice on the Gallic altar by welcoming the proposed democratic
institutions, the populace, neither hoodwinked nor scared into
hysterics, rose to the old cry of San Marco, and attempted a righteous
reaction, which was only smothered when the treacherous introduction
of French troops by night on board Venetian vessels settled the doom
of Venice's independence.
'Under all circumstances,' Napoleon wrote to the Venetian Municipality,
'I shall do what lies in my power to prove to you my desire to see your
liberty consolidated, and miserable Italy assume, at last, a glorious
place, free and independent of strangers.' On the 10th of the following
October he made over Venice to Austria, sending as a parting word the
cynical message to the Venetians 'that they were little fitted for
liberty: if they were capable of appreciating it, and had the virtue
necessary for acquiring it well and good; existing circumstances gave
them an excellent opportunity of proving it.' At the time, the act of
betrayal was generally regarded as part of a well-considered plot laid
by the French Directory, but it seems certain that it was not made known
to that body before it was carried out, and that with Napoleon himself
it was a sort of after-thought, sprung from the desire to patch up an
immediate peace with Austria on account of the appointment of Hoche to
the chief command of the army in Germany. The god to which he immolated
Venice was the selfish fear lest another general should reap his German
laurels.
Venice remained for eight years under the Austrians, who thereby
obtained what, in flagrant perversion of the principles on which the
Congress of Vienna professed to act, was accepted in 1815 as their
title-deeds to its possession. Meanwhile, after the battle of
Austerlitz, the city of the sea was tossed back to Napoleon, who
incorporated it in the newly-created kingdom of Italy, which no more
corresponded to its name than did the Gothic kingdom of which he
arrogated to himself the heirship, when, placing the Iron Crown of
Theodolinda upon his brow, he uttered the celebrated phrase: 'Dieu me
l'a donnée, gare à qui la touche.'
This is not the place to write a history of French supremacy in Italy,
but several points connected with it must be glanced at, because,
without bearing them in mind, it is impossible to understand the
events which followed. The viceroyalty of Eugène Beauharnais in North
Italy, and the government of Joseph Buonaparte, and afterwards of
Joachim Murat, in the South, brought much that was an improvement on
what had gone before: there were better laws, a better administration,
a quickening of intelligence. 'The French have done much for the
regeneration of Italy,' wrote an English observer in 1810; 'they have
destroyed the prejudices of the inhabitants of the small states of
Upper Italy by uniting them; they have done away with the Pope; they
have made them soldiers.' But there was the reverse side of the medal:
the absence everywhere of the national spirit which alone could have
consolidated the new _régime_ on a firm basis; the danger which the
language ran of losing its purity by the introduction of Gallicisms;
the shameless robbery of pictures, statues, and national heirlooms of
every kind for the replenishment of French museums; the bad impression
left in the country districts by the abuses committed by the French
soldiery on their first descent, and kept alive by the blood-tax
levied in the persons of thousands of Italian conscripts sent to die,
nobody knew where or why; the fields untilled, and Rachel weeping for
her children: all these elements combined in rendering it difficult
for the governments established under French auspices to survive the
downfall of the man to whose sword they owed their existence. Their
dissolution was precipitated, however, by the discordant action of
Murat and Eugène Beauharnais. Had these two pulled together, whatever
the issue was it would have differed in much from what actually
happened. Murat was jealous of Eugène, and did not love his
brother-in-law, who had annoyed and thwarted him through his whole
reign; he was uneasy about his Neapolitan throne, and, in all
likelihood, was already dreaming of acquiring the crown of an
independent Italy. Throwing off his allegiance to Napoleon, he
imagined the vain thing that he might gain his object by taking sides
with the Austrians. It must be remembered that there was a time when
the Allied Powers had distinctly contemplated Italian independence as
a dyke to France, and there were people foolish enough to think that
Austria, now she felt herself as strong as she had then felt weak,
would consent to such a plan. Liberators, self-called, were absolutely
swarming in Italy; Lord William Bentinck was promising entire
emancipation from Leghorn; the Austrian and English allies in Romagna
ransacked the dictionary for expressions in praise of liberty; an
English officer was made the mouthpiece for the lying assurance of the
Austrian Emperor Francis, that he had no intention of re-asserting any
claims to the possession of Lombardy or Venetia.
In 1814, Napoleon empowered Prince Eugène to adopt whatever attitude
he thought best fitted to make head against Austria; for himself, he
resigned the Iron Crown, and his Italian soldiers were freed from
their oaths. It was not, therefore, Eugene's loyal scruples which
prevented him from throwing down a grand stake when he led his 60,000
men to the attack. It was want of genius, or of what would have done
instead, a flash of genuine enthusiasm for the Italian idea. In place
of appealing to all Italians to unite in winning a country, he
appealed to one sentiment only, fidelity to Napoleon, which no longer
woke any echo in the hearts of a population that had grown more and
more to associate the name of the Emperor with exactions which never
came to an end, and with wars which had not now even the merit of
being successful. It is estimated that although the Italian troops
amply proved the truth of Alfieri's maxim, that 'the plant man is more
vigorous in Italy than elsewhere,' by bearing the hardships and
resisting the cold in Russia better than the soldiers of any other
nationality, nevertheless 26,000 Italians were lost in the retreat
from Moscow. That happened a year ago. Exhausted patience got the
better of judgment; in April 1814, the Milanese committed the
irremediable error of revolting against their Viceroy, who commanded
the only army which could still save Italy: the pent-up passions of a
long period broke loose, the peasants from the country, who had always
hated the French, flooded the streets of Milan, and allying themselves
unimpeded with the dregs of the townsfolk, they murdered with great
brutality General Prina, the Minister of Finance, whose remarkable
abilities had been devoted towards raising funds for the Imperial
Exchequer. Personally incorruptible, Prina was looked upon as the
general representative of French voracity; he met his death with the
utmost calmness, only praying that he might be the last victim. No one
else was, in fact, killed, and next day quiet was resumed, but the
affair had another victim--Italy. You cannot change horses when you
are crossing a stream. Prince Eugène was in Mantua with a fine army,
practically intact, though it had suffered some slight reverses; the
fortress was believed to be impregnable; by merely waiting, Eugene
might, if nothing else, have exacted favourable terms. But the news of
Prina's murder, and the blow dealt at his own authority in Milan,
caused him to give over the fortress and the army to the Austrians
without more ado; an act which looked like revenge, but it was most
likely prompted by moral cowardice. The capitulation signed with
Field-Marshal Bellegarde on the 23rd of April, so exasperated the army
that the officers in command of the garrison decided to arrest Eugene,
but it was found that he was already on his way to Germany, taking
with him his treasure, in accordance with a secret agreement entered
into with the Austrian Field-Marshal. Such was the end to the Italian
career of Eugène Beauharnais.
For the _Beau Sabreur_ another ending was in store. Back on Napoleon's
side in 1815, his Austrian allies having given him plenty of reason
for suspecting their sincerity, he issued from Rimini, on the 30th of
March, the proclamation of an independent Italy from the Alps to
Sicily. There was no popular reply to his call. Italy, prostrate and
impoverished, was unequal to a great resolve. The Napoleonic legend
was not only dead, but buried; Napoleon had literally no friends left
in Italy except those of his old soldiers who had managed to get back
to their homes, many of them deprived of an arm or a leg, but so
toughened that they lived to great ages. These cherished to their last
hour the worship of their Captain, which it was his highest gift to be
able to inspire. 'I have that feeling for him still, that if he were
to rise from the dead I should go to him, if I could, wherever he
was,' said the old conscript Emmanuele Gaminara of Genoa, who died at
nearly a hundred in a Norfolk village in 1892: the last, perhaps, of
the Italian veterans, and the type of them all.
But a few scattered invalids do not make a nation, and the Italian
nation in 1815 had not the least wish to support any one who came in
the name of Napoleon. So Murat failed without even raising a strong
current of sympathy. Beaten by the Austrians at Tolentino on the 3rd
of May, he retreated with his shattered army. In the last desperate
moment, he issued the constitution which he ought to have granted
years before. Nothing could be of any avail now; his admirable Queen,
the best of all the House of Buonaparte, surrendered Naples to the
English admiral; and Murat, harried by a crushing Austrian force,
renounced his kingdom on the 30th of May. After Waterloo, when a price
was set on his head in France, he meditated one more forlorn hope;
but, deserted by the treachery of his few followers, and driven out of
his course by the violence of the waves, he was thrown on the coast of
Calabria with only twenty-six men, and was shot by order of Ferdinand
of Naples, who especially directed that he should be only allowed
half-an-hour for his religious duties after sentence had been
delivered by the mock court-martial. His dauntless courage did not
desert him: he died like a soldier. It was a better end for an Italian
prince than escaping with money-bags to Germany. Great as were Murat's
faults, an Italian should remember that it was he who first took up
arms to the cry which was later to redeem Italy: independence from
Alps to sea; and if he stand on the ill-omened shore of Pizzo, he
need not refuse to uncover his head in silence.
When Mantua surrendered, the Milanese sent a deputation to Paris with
a view of securing for Lombardy the position of an independent kingdom
under an Austrian prince. They hoped to obtain the first by
acquiescing in the second. They were aroused from their unheroic
illusions with startling rapidity. Lord Castlereagh, to whom they went
first (for they fancied that the English were interested in liberty),
referred them 'to their master, the Austrian Emperor.' The Emperor
Francis replied to their memorial that Lombardy was his by right of
conquest; they would hear soon enough at Milan what orders he had to
give them. Even after that, the distracted Lombards hoped that the
English at Genoa would befriend them. All uncertainty ceased on the
23rd of May 1814, when Field-Marshal Bellegarde formally took
possession of Lombardy on behalf of his Sovereign, dissolved the
Electoral Colleges, and proclaimed himself Regent. There was no
question of reviving the conditions under which Austria ruled Lombardy
while there was still a German Empire: conditions which, though
despotic in theory, were comparatively easy-going in practice, and did
not exclude the native element from the administration. Henceforth the
despotism was pure and simple; for Italians to even think of politics
was an act of high treason.
It is not generally known that a British army ultimately sent to Spain
was intended for Italy,[1] but its destination was changed because the
Italians showed so little disposition to rise against Napoleon. The
English Government was continually advised by its agents in Italy to
make Sicily, which was wholly in its power, the _point d'appùi_ for a
really great intervention in the destinies of the peninsula. 'The
grand end of all the operations in the Mediterranean,' wrote one of
Lord Castlereagh's correspondents, 'is the emancipation of Italy, and
its union in one great state.' Lord William Bentinck urged that if
Sicily were reunited to Naples under the Bourbons, liberty,
established there by his own incredible efforts, would be crushed, and
the King would wreck vengeance on the Constitution and its supporters.
Universal terror, he said, was felt at 'the unforgiving temper of
their Majesties.' He strongly supported a course proposed for her own
reasons by Queen Caroline: the purchase of Sicily by the English
Government which could make it 'not only the model but the instrument
of Italian independence.'
This way of talking was not confined to private despatches, and it was
no wonder if the Italians were disappointed when they found that
England declined to plead their cause with the Allies in Paris, and
afterwards at Vienna. When charged directly with breach of faith
before the House of Commons, Lord Castlereagh said that Austria, being
'in truth the great hinge on which the fate of mankind must ultimately
depend,' had to be paid (this was exactly the sense, though not the
form, of his defence) by letting her do what she liked with Italy.
There is a certain brutal straightforwardness in the line of argument.
Lord Castlereagh did not say that independence was not a good thing.
He had tried to obtain it for Poland and had failed; he had not tried
to obtain it for Italy, because he was afraid of offending Austria. At
least he had the courage to tell the truth, and did not prate about
the felicity of being subjects of the Austrian Emperor, as many
English partisans of Austria prated in days to come.
The political map of Italy in the summer of 1814 showed the Pope (Pius
VII.) reinstated in Rome, Victor Emmanuel I. at Turin, Ferdinand III.
of Hapsburg-Lorraine in Tuscany, the Genoese Republic for the moment
restored by the English, Parma and Piacenza assigned to the Empress
Marie-Louise, and Modena to the Austrian Archduke Francis, who was
heir through the female line to the last of the Estes. Murat was still
at Naples, Ferdinand IV. in Sicily, Austria acknowledged supreme in
Lombardy and Venetia, and the island of Elba ironically handed over to
Napoleon. These were the chief features, so far as Italy was
concerned, of the Treaty of Paris, signed on the 30th of May 1814.
Next year the Congress of Vienna modified the arrangement by providing
that the Spanish Infanta Maria Louisa, on whom had been bestowed the
ex-republic of Lucca, should have the reversion of Parma and Piacenza,
while Lucca was to go in the end to Tuscany. Murat having been
destroyed, the Neapolitan Bourbons recovered all their old
possessions. San Marino and Monaco were graciously recognised as
independent, which brought the number of Italian states up to ten. The
Sardinian monarchy received back the part of Savoy which by the Treaty
of Paris had been reserved to France. It was also offered a splendid
and unexpected gift--Genoa.
Lord William Bentinck entered Genoa by a convention concluded with the
authorities on the 18th of April 1814. A naval demonstration following
an ably-conducted operation, by which Bentinck's hybrid force of
Greeks and Calabrese, with a handful of English, became master of the
two principal forts, hastened this conclusion, but the Genoese had no
reluctance to open their gates to the English commander, who inspired
them with the fullest confidence. He came invested with the halo of a
constitution-maker-under-difficulties; it was known that he had
stopped at nothing in carrying out his mission in Sicily; not even at
getting rid of the Queen, who found in Bentinck the Nemesis for having
led a greater Englishman to stain his fame in the roads of Naples.
Driven rather than persuaded to leave Sicily, Marie Antoinette's
sister encountered so frightful a sea voyage that she died soon after
joining her relations at Vienna. Lord William had acquired the art of
writing the finest appeals to the love of freedom; a collection of his
manifestoes would serve as handy-book to anyone instructed to stir up
an oppressed nationality. He immediately gave the Genoese some
specimens of his skill as a writer, and by granting them at once a
provisional constitution, he dispelled all doubts about the future
recognition of their republic. What was not, therefore, their dismay,
when they were suddenly informed of the decision of the Holy Alliance
to make a present of them to the people whom, of all others, they
probably disliked the most. Italians had not ceased yet from reserving
their best aversion for their nearest neighbours.
Bentinck did not mean to deceive; perhaps he thought that by going
beyond the letter of his instructions he should draw his government
after him. That he did, in effect, deceive, cannot be denied; even
Lord Castlereagh, while necessarily refusing to admit that definite
promises had been made, yet allowed that, 'Of course he would have
been glad if the proclamation issued to the Genoese had been more
precisely worded.' The motive of the determination to sacrifice the
republic was, he said, 'a sincere conviction of the necessity of a
barrier between France and Italy, which ought to be made effectual on
the side of Piedmont. The object was to commit the defence of the Alps
and of the great road leading round them by the Gulf of Genoa, between
France and Italy, to the same power to which it had formerly been
entrusted. On that principle, the question relating to Genoa had been
entertained and decided upon by the allied sovereigns. It was not
resolved upon because any particular state had unworthy or sordid
views, or from any interest or feeling in favour of the King of
Sardinia, but solely to make him, as far as was necessary, the
instrument of the general policy of Europe.'
A better defence might have been made. Piedmont was destined to serve
as a bulwark, not so much against France, which for the time was not
to be feared, as against Austria, absolute except for the subalpine
kingdom in all Italy. But this belongs to the shaping of rough-hewn
ends, which is in higher hands than those of English ministers. The
ends then looked very rough-hewn.
Piedmont was a hotbed of reaction and bigotry. True, she had a history
differing vastly from that of the other Italian states, but the facts
of the hour presented her in a most unattractive light. The Genoese
felt the keenest heart-burnings in submitting to a decision in which
they had no voice, and which came to them as a mandate of political
extinction from the same powers that confirmed the sentence of death
on Genoa's ancient and glorious rival. The seeds were laid of
disaffection, always smouldering among the Genoese, till Piedmont's
king became King of Italy. It might almost be said that the
reconciliation was not consummated till the day when the heir and
namesake of Humbert of the White Hands received the squadrons of
Europe in the harbour of Genoa, and the proud republican city showed
what a welcome she had prepared for her sovereign of the Savoy race.
After the Congress of Vienna finished its labours, there were, as has
been remarked, ten states in Italy, but out of Sardinia (whose
subjugation Prince Metternich esteemed a mere matter of time) there
was one master. The authority of the Emperor Francis was practically
as undisputed from Venice to the Bay of Naples as it was in the Grand
Duchy of Austria. The Austrians garrisoned Piacenza, Ferrara and
Commacchio; Austrian princes reigned in Tuscany, Parma, Modena and
Lucca; the King of Naples, who paid Austria twenty-six million francs
for getting back his throne, thankfully agreed to support a German
army to protect him against his subjects. In the secret treaty
concluded between himself and the Emperor of Austria, it was
stipulated that the King of the Two Sicilies should not introduce into
his government any principles irreconcilable with those adopted by His
Imperial Majesty in the government of his Italian provinces. As for
the Roman States, Austria reckoned on her influence in always
securing the election of a Pope who would give her no trouble. Seeing
herself without rivals and all-powerful, she deemed her position
unassailable. She forgot that, by giving Italy an unity of misery, she
was preparing the way for another unity. Common hatred engendered
common love; common sufferings led on to a common effort. If some
prejudices passed away under the Napoleonic rule, many more still
remained, and possibly, to eradicate so old an evil, no cure less
drastic than universal servitude would have sufficed. Italians felt
for the first time what before only the greatest among them had
felt--that they were brothers in one household, children of one mother
whom they were bound to redeem. Jealousies and millennial feuds died
out; the intense municipal spirit which, imperfect as it was, had yet
in it precious political germs, widened into patriotism. Italy was
re-born.
Black, however, was the present outlook. Total commercial stagnation
and famine increased the sentiment of unmitigated hopelessness which
spread through the land. The poet Monti, who, alas! sang for bread the
festival songs of the Austrians as he had sung those of Napoleon, said
in private to an Englishman who asked him why he did not give his
voice to the liberties of his country which he desired, though he did
not expect to see them: 'It would be _vox clamantis in deserto_;
besides, how can the grievances of Italy be made known? No one dares
to write--scarcely to think--politics; if truth is to be told, it must
be told by the English; England is the only tribunal yet open to the
complaints of Europe.' A greater poet and nobler man, Ugo Foscolo, had
but lately uttered a wail still more despondent: 'Italy will soon be
nothing but a lifeless carcass, and her generous sons should only
weep in silence without the impotent complaints and mutual
recriminations of slaves.' That as patriotic a heart as ever beat
should have been afflicted to this point by the canker of despair
tells of the quagmire--not only political but spiritual--into which
Italy was sunk. The first thing needful was to restore the people to
consciousness, to animation of some sort, it did not matter what, so
it were a sign of life. Foscolo himself, who impressed on what he
wrote his own proud and scornful temperament, almost savage in its
independence, fired his countrymen to better things than the
despairing inertia which he preached. Few works have had more effect
than his _Letters of Jacobo Ortis_. As often happens with books which
strongly move contemporaries, the reader may wonder now what was the
secret of its power, but if the form and sentiment of the Italian
_Werther_ strike us as antiquated, the intense, though melancholy
patriotism that pervades it explains the excitement it caused when
patriotism was a statutory offence. Such mutilated copies as were
allowed to pass by the censor were eagerly sought; the young read it,
women read it--who so rarely read--the mothers of the fighters of
to-morrow. Foscolo's life gave force to his words: when all were
flattering Napoleon, he had reminded him that no man can be rightly
praised till he is dead, and that his one sure way of winning the
praise of posterity was to establish the independence of Italy. The
warning was contained in a 'discourse' which Foscolo afterwards
printed with the motto from Sophocles: 'My soul groans for my country,
for myself and for thee.' Sooner than live under the Austrians, he
went into voluntary exile, and finally took refuge in England, where
he was the _fêted_ lion of a season, and then forgotten, and left
almost without the necessaries of life. No one was much to blame;
Foscolo was born to misunderstand and to be misunderstood; he hid
himself to hide his poverty, which, had it been known, might have been
alleviated. His individual tragedy seemed a part of the universal
tragedy.
With Foscolo, his literary predecessor Alfieri must be mentioned as
having helped in rekindling the embers, of patriotic feeling, because,
though dead, he spoke; and his plays, one of which was prophetically
dedicated _al libero Popolo Italiano_, had never been so much read.
The _Misogallo_, published for the first time after the fall of
Napoleon, though aimed at the French, served equally well as an
onslaught on every foreign dominion or even moral or intellectual
influence. 'Shall _we_ learn liberty of the Gauls, _we_ who taught
every lofty thing to others?' was a healthy remonstrance to a race
that had lost faith in itself; and the Austrians were wise in
discountenancing the sale of a work that contained the line which gave
a watchword to the future:--
_Schiavi or siam si; ma schiavi almen frementi_.
Like Foscolo's, Alfieri's life was a lesson in independence: angry at
the scant measure of freedom in Piedmont, he could never be induced to
go near his sovereign till Charles Emmanuel was staying at Florence as
a proscript. Then the poet went to pay his respects to him, and was
received with the good-humoured banter: 'Well, Signor Conte, here am
I, a king, in the condition you would like to see them all.'
Against the classical, not to say pagan, leanings of these two poets,
a reaction set in with Alessandro Manzoni, the founder of Italian
Romanticism, to which he gave an aspect differing from that which the
same movement wore in France, because he was an ardent Catholic at a
time when Christianity had almost the charm of novelty. His religious
outpourings combine the fervour of the Middle Ages with modern
expansion, and he freed the Italian language from pedantic
restrictions without impairing its dignity. It was once the fashion to
inveigh against Manzoni for, as it was said, inculcating resignation;
but he did nothing of the kind. As a young man he had sung of the
Italians as 'Figli tutti d'un solo Riscatto,' and though he was not of
those who fight either with the sword or the pen, yet that 'Riscatto'
was the dream of his youth and manhood, and the joy of his old age.
His gentleness was never contaminated by servility, and the love for
his country, profound if placid, which appears in every line of his
writings, appealed to a class that could not be reached by fiery
turbulence of thought.
In an age when newspapers have taken the place of books, it may seem
strange to ascribe any serious effect to the works of poets and
romancists; but in the Italy of that date there were no newspapers to
speak of; the ordinary channels of opinion were blocked up. Books were
still not only read, but discussed and thought over, and every slight
allusion to the times was instantly applied. In the prevailing
listlessness, the mere fact of increased mental activity was of
importance. A spark of genius does much to raise a nation. It is in
itself the incontrovertible proof that the race lives: a dead people
does not produce men of genius. Whatever awakes one part of the
intelligence reacts on all its parts. You cannot lift, any more than
you can degrade, the heart of man piecemeal. In this sense not
literature only but also music helped, who can say how effectually, to
bring Italy back to life. The land was refreshed by a flood of purely
national song, full of the laughter and the tears of Italian
character, of the sunshine and the storms of Italian nature. Music,
the only art uncageable as the human soul, descended as a gift from
heaven upon the people whose articulate utterance was stifled. And
... No speech may evince
Feeling like music.