AT BAY
1849
Novara--Abdication of Charles Albert--Brescia crushed--French
Intervention--The Fall of Rome--The Fall of Venice.
In the spring of 1848, a date might be found when every Italian ruler
except the Duke of Modena wore the appearance of a friend to freedom
and independence. In the spring of 1849 no Italian prince preserved
that appearance except the King of Sardinia. Many causes contributed
to the elimination, but most of all the logic of events. It was a case
of the survival of the fittest. What seemed a calamity was a step in
advance.
Early in March, the Marquis Pallavicini, prisoner of Spielberg, had a
long interview with Charles Albert. They sat face to face talking over
Italian matters, and the King said confidently that the army was now
flourishing; if the die were cast anew, they would win. At parting he
embraced the Lombard patriot with the words: 'Dear Pallavicini, how
glad I am to have seen you again! You and I had always the same
thought; the independence of Italy was the first dream of my youth; it
is my dream still, it will be till I die.'
Some characters grow small in misfortune, others grow great. The
terrible scene at the Palazzo Greppi, the charge of treason, the
shouts of 'death,' had left only one trace on Charles Albert's mind:
the burning desire to deliver his accusers.
The armistice was denounced on the 12th of March, a truce of eight
days being allowed before the recommencement of hostilities. There is
such a thing in politics as necessary madness, and it may be doubted
if the Sardinian war of 1849 was not this thing. The programme of
_fare da sè_ had now to be carried out in stern earnest. Sardinia
stood alone, neither from south of the Apennines nor from north of the
Alps could help be hoped for. France, which was meditating quite
another sort of intervention, refused the loan even of a general.
'They were not going to offend Austria to please Piedmont,' said the
French Cabinet. Worse than this, the army was not in the flourishing
state of which the King had spoken. The miseries of the retreat, but
infinitely more, the incidents of Milan, though wiped out by the King
from his own memory, were vividly recollected by all ranks. Affection
was not the feeling with which the Piedmontese soldiers regarded the
'fratelli Lombardi.' Did anyone beside the King believe that this
army, which had lost faith in its cause, in its leaders and in itself,
was going to beat Radetsky? The old Field-Marshal might well show the
wildest joy when the denunciation of the armistice was communicated to
him. And yet the higher expediency demanded that the sacrifice of
Piedmont and of her King for Italy should be consummated.
Rattazzi announced the coming campaign to the Chambers on the 14th of
March; the news was well received; there was a general feeling that,
whatever happened, the present situation could not be prolonged. With
regard to the numbers they could put in the field, Austria and
Sardinia were evenly balanced, each having about 80,000 disposable
men. The request for a French marshal having been refused, the chief
command was given to Chrzanowski, a Pole, who did not know Italian,
had not studied the theatre of the war, and was so little favoured by
nature that, to the impressionable Italians, his appearance seemed
ludicrous. This deplorable appointment was made to satisfy the outcry
against Piedmontese generalship; as if it was not enough, the other
Polish general, Ramorino, accused of treachery by the revolutionists
in 1832, but now praised to the skies by the democratic party, was
placed in command of the fifth or Lombard division.
Though Radetsky openly gave the word 'To Turin!' Chrzanowski seems to
have failed to realise that the Austrians intended to invade Piedmont.
He ordered Ramorino, however, with his 8000 Lombards, to occupy the
fork formed by the Po and the Ticino, so as to defend the bridge at
Pavia, if, by chance, any fraction of the enemy tried to cross it.
What Ramorino did was to place his division on the right bank of the
Po, and to destroy the bridge of boats at Mezzana Corte _between_
himself and the enemy. The Austrians crossed the Ticino in the night
of the 20th of April, not with a fraction, but with a complete army.
Ramorino was deprived of his command, and was afterwards tried by
court-martial and shot. Whether his treason was intentional or
involuntary, it is certain that, had he stemmed the Austrian advance
even for half a day, the future disasters, if not averted, would not
have come so rapidly, because the Piedmontese would have been
forewarned. On the evening of the 21st, General D'Aspre, with 15,000
men, took a portion of the Sardinian army unawares near Mortara, and,
owing to the scattered distribution of the Piedmontese, who would have
outnumbered him had they been concentrated, he succeeded in forcing his
way into Mortara by nightfall. The moral effect of this first reverse
was bad, but Chrzanowski rashly decided staking the whole fate of the
campaign in a field-day, for which purpose he gathered what troops he
could collect at La Biccocca, a hill capped with a village about a
mile and a half from Novara. Not more than 50,000 men were collected;
some had already deserted, and 20,000 were doing nothing on the other
side of the Po.
Towards eleven o'clock D'Aspre arrived, and lost no time in beginning
the attack. He sent post-haste to Radetsky, Appel and Thurn to bring
all the reinforcements in their power as fast as possible. D'Aspre's
daring was rewarded by his carrying La Biccocca at about mid-day, but
the Duke of Genoa retook the position with the aid of the valorous
'Piemonte' brigade, and by two p.m. D'Aspre's brave soldiers were so
thoroughly beaten, that nothing could have saved his division from
destruction, as he afterwards admitted, had Chrzanowski joined in the
pursuit instead of staying behind with more than half the army, in
accordance with a preconceived plan of remaining on the defensive.
At two o'clock on the 23rd of March, the news started on the wings of
the wind, and, as great news will do, swiftly reached every part of
the waiting country, that the Sardinians were getting the best of it,
that the cause was saved. Men who are not very old remember this as
the first strong sensation of their lives--this, and its sequel.
Appel and Thurn, and Wratislaw and the old Field-Marshal were on the
march, and by four o'clock they were pouring their fresh troops upon
the Piedmontese, who had not known how to profit by their success.
Heroism such as few battlefields have seen, disorder such as has
rarely disgraced a beaten army, were displayed side by side in Charles
Albert's ranks. At eight in the evening, the whole Sardinian army
retired into Novara; the Austrians bivouacked on La Biccocca. The
Sardinians had lost 4000 in dead and wounded; the losses of the
victors were a thousand less.
All the day long the King courted death, pressing forward where the
balls fell like hail and the confusion was at its height, with the
answer of despair to the devoted officers who sought to hold him
back: 'Let me die, this is my last day.' But death shuns the seeker.
Men fell close beside him, but no charitable ball struck his breast.
In the evening he said to his generals: 'We have still 40,000 men,
cannot we fall back on Alessandria and still make an honourable
stand?' They told him that it could not be done. Radetsky was asked on
what terms he would grant an armistice; he replied: 'The occupation of
a large district in Piedmont, and the heir to the throne as a
hostage.' Then Charles Albert knew what he must do. 'For eighteen
years,' he said, 'I have made every effort for the good of the people;
I grieve to see that my hopes have failed, not so much for myself as
for the country. I have not found death on the field of battle as I
ardently desired; perhaps my person is the only obstacle to obtaining
juster terms. I abdicate the crown in favour of my son, Victor
Emmanuel.' And turning to the Duke of Savoy he said: 'There is your
King.'
In the night he left Novara alone for Nice. As he passed through the
Austrian lines, the sentinels were nearly firing upon his carriage;
General Thurn, before whom he was brought, asked for some proof that
he was in fact the 'Count de Barge' in whose name his passport was
made out. A Bersagliere prisoner who recognised the King, at a sign
from him gave the required testimony, and he was allowed to pass. At
Nice he was received by the governor, a son of Santorre di Santa Rosa,
and to him he addressed the last words spoken by him on Italian
ground: 'In whatever time, in whatever place, a regular government
raises the flag of war with Austria, the Austrians will find me among
their enemies as a simple soldier.' Then he continued his journey to
Oporto.
The principal side-issue of the campaign of 1849 was the revolution at
Brescia. Had the original plan been carried out, which was to throw
the Sardinian army into Lombardy (and it is doubtful whether, even
after Radetsky's invasion of Piedmont, it would not have been better
to adhere to it), a corresponding movement on the part of the
inhabitants would have become of the greatest importance. To Brescia,
which was the one Lombard town where the Piedmontese had been received
in 1848 with real effusion, the Sardinian Minister of War despatched
Count Giuseppe Martinengo Cesaresco with arms and ammunition, and
orders to reassume the colonelcy of the National Guard which he held
in the previous year, and to take the general control of the movement
as far as Brescia was concerned. Martinengo succeeded in transporting
the arms through the enemy's country from the Piedmontese frontier to
Iseo, and thence to his native city. When he reached Brescia, he found
that the Austrians had evacuated the town, though they still occupied
the castle which frowns down upon it. This was the 23rd of March:
Novara was fought and lost, Piedmont was powerless to come to the
assistance of the people she had commanded to rise. What was to be
done? Plainly common sense suggested an honourable compromise with the
Austrian commandant, by which he should be allowed to reoccupy the
city on condition that no hair of the citizens' heads was touched.
This is what Bergamo and the other towns did, nor are they to be
blamed.
Not so Brescia. Here, where love of liberty was an hereditary instinct
from the long connection of Brescia with free Venice, where hatred of
the stranger, planted by the ruthless soldiery of Gaston de Foix, had
but gone on maturing through three centuries, where the historical
title of 'Valiant,' coming down from a remote antiquity, was still no
fable; here, with a single mind, the inhabitants resolved upon as
desperate a resistance as was ever offered by one little town to a
great army.
The Austrian bombardment was begun by the Irish General,
Nugent-Lavall, who, dying in the midst of it, left all his fortune to
the heroic city which he was attacking. The Austrians, flushed with
their victory over Charles Albert's army of 80,000, were seized with
rage at the sight of their power defied by a town of less than half
that number of souls. But with that rage was mingled, even in the mind
of Haynau, an admiration not to be repressed.
Haynau who was sent to replace Nugent, was already known at Brescia,
where he had been appointed military governor after the resumption of
Austrian authority in 1848. In order to punish the 'persistent
opposition manifested to the legitimate Imperial and Royal
Government,' and as an example to the other towns, he had imposed on
the Brescian householders and the landed proprietors of the province a
fine of half a million francs.
He now returned, and what he did may be best read in his own report on
the operations. 'It was then,' he wrote, 'that began the most murderous
fight; a fight prolonged by the insurgents from barricade to barricade,
from house to house, with extraordinary obstinacy. I should never have
believed that so bad a cause could have been sustained with such
perseverance. In spite of this desperate defence, and although the
assault could only be effected in part, and with the help of cannons of
heavy calibre, our brave troops with heroic courage, but at the cost of
great losses, occupied a first line of houses; but as all my columns
could not penetrate into the town at the same time, I ordered the
suspension of the attack at nightfall, limiting myself to holding the
ground conquered. In spite of that, the combat continued late into the
night. On the 1st of April, in the earliest morning light, the tocsin
was heard ringing with more fury than ever, and the insurgents reopened
fire with an entirely new desperation. Considering the gravity of our
losses, as well as the obstinacy and fury of the enemy, it was
necessary to adopt a most rigorous measure. I ordered that no prisoners
should be taken, but that every person seized with arms in his hand
should be immediately put to death, and that the houses from which shots
came should be burnt. It is thus that conflagrations, partly caused by
the troops, partly by the bombardment, broke out in various parts of the
town.'
During the ten days' struggle, the citizens did not flinch for a
moment. Count Martinengo was the guiding spirit of the defence, and
scarcely left the most exposed of the barricades night or day. From
the nobles to the poorest of the people, all did their duty. A youth
named Tito Speri led and animated the populace. The horrors of the
repression make one think of the fall of Khartoum. Not even in
Hungary, where he went from Brescia to continue his 'system,' did
Haynau so blacken his own and his country's name as here. In a boys'
school kept by a certain Guidi, the master's wife, his mother and ten
of his pupils were slaughtered. A little hunchback tailor was carried
to the barracks to be slowly burnt alive. But stray details do not
give the faintest idea of the whole. And for all this, Haynau was in a
far higher degree responsible than the actual executants of the
vengeance to which he hounded on his ignorant soldiers, maddened with
the lust of blood.
Such was General Haynau, 'whose brave devotion to his master's service
was the veteran's sole crime,' said the _Quarterly Review_ (June
1853), but who was judged otherwise by some in England. Wherefore was
he soundly beaten by the brewers in the employment of Messrs Barclay &
Perkins; and the nice words of the _Quarterly_ could not undo that
beating, redress for which Lord Palmerston blandly advised the
complainant to seek 'before the common tribunals.' He thought it best
to neglect the advice, and to leave the country.
Among the curious taxes levied at Brescia during the six months after
its fall was one of £500 for 'the expenses of the hangman.' Count
Martinengo escaped after the Austrians were in possession of the town
through the courageous assistance given to him by a few young men of
the working class. Camozzi's band of Bergamasques, which started for
the relief of the sister city, was driven back with loss.
The end was come, but woe to the victors.
Following the Italian flag to where it still floated, we pass from
Brescia in the dust to Rome still inviolate, though soon to be
assailed by the bearers of another tricolor. A few days after Novara,
the Triumvirate issued a proclamation, in which they said: 'The
Republic in Rome has to prove to Italy and to Europe that our work is
eminently religious, a work of education and of morality; that the
accusations of intolerance, anarchy and violent upturning of things
are false; that, thanks to the republican principle, united as one
family of good men under the eye of God, and following the impulse of
those who are first among us in genius and virtue, we march to the
attainment of true order, law and power united.' Englishmen who were
in Rome at the time attest how well the pledge was kept. Peace and
true freedom prevailed under the republican banner as no man
remembered them to have prevailed before in Rome. The bitter
provocation of the quadruple attack was not followed by revengeful
acts on the parts of the government against those who were politically
and religiously associated with him at whose bidding that attack was
made. Nothing like a national party was terrorised or kept under by
fear of violence. 'That at such a time,' writes Henry Lushington, who
was not favourable to Mazzini, 'not one lawless or evil deed was done
would have been rather a miracle than a merit, but on much concurrent
testimony it is clear that the efforts of the government to preserve
order were incessant, and to a remarkable degree successful.' He adds
that the streets were far safer for ordinary passengers under the
Triumvirs than under the Papacy.
Of great help in quieting the passions of the lower orders was the
people's tribune, Ciceruacchio, who had not put on black cloth
clothes, or asked for the ministry of war, or of fine arts, according
to the usual wont of successful tribunes. Ciceruacchio had the sense
of humour of the genuine Roman _popolano_, and it never came into his
head to make himself ridiculous. His influence had been first acquired
by works of charity in the Tiber floods. Being a strong swimmer, he
ventured where no one else would go, and had saved many lives. At
first a wine-carrier, he made money by letting out conveyances and
dealing in forage, but he gave away most of what he made. He opposed
the whole force of his popularity to a war of classes. 'Viva chi c'ia
e chi non c'ia quattrini!'[4] was his favourite cry. Once when a young
poet read him a sonnet in his honour he stopped him at the line 'Thou
art greater than all patricians,' saying that he would not have that
published: 'I respect the nobility, and never dream of being higher
than they. I am a poor man of the people, and such I will always
remain.'
When the siege came, Ciceruacchio was invaluable in providing the
troops with forage, horses, and even victuals, which he procured by
making private sorties on his own account during the night; his
intimate knowledge of every path enabling him to go unobserved. He
planned the earthworks, at which he laboured with his hands, and when
fighting was going on, he shouldered a musket and ran with his two
sons, one of them a mere child, to wherever the noise of guns directed
him. No picture of Rome in 1849 would be complete without the burly
figure and jocund face of Angelo Brunetti.
The republican government found Rome with a mere shadow of an army;
the efforts to create one had been too spasmodic to do anything but
make confusion worse confounded by changes and experiments soon
abandoned. Perseverance and intelligence now had a different result,
and the little army, called into existence by the republic, proved
admirable in discipline, various and fantastic as were its components.
Towards the end of April, Garibaldi, who had been stationed at Rieti,
was ordered to bring his legion to Rome. Those who witnessed the
arrival saw one of the strangest scenes ever beheld in the Eternal
City. The men wore pointed hats with black, waving plumes; thin and
gaunt, their faces dark as copper, with naked legs, long beards and
wild dark hair hanging down their backs, they looked like a company of
Salvator Rosa's brigands. Beautiful as a statue amidst his
extraordinary host rode the Chief, mounted on a white horse, which he
sat like a centaur. 'He was quite a show, everyone stopping to look at
him,' adds the sculptor Gibson, to whom these details are owed.
'Probably,' writes another Englishman, 'a human face so like a lion,
and still retaining the humanity nearest the image of its Maker, was
never seen.' Garibaldi wore the historic red shirt, and a small cap
ornamented with gold.
The origin of the red shirt might have remained in poetic uncertainty
had it not been mentioned a few years ago in a volume of reminiscences
published by an English naval officer. The men employed in the
Saladéros or great slaughtering and salting establishments for cattle
in the Argentine provinces wore scarlet woollen shirts; owing to the
blockade of Buenos Ayres, a merchant at Monte Video had a quantity of
these on his hands, and as economy was a great object to the
government, they bought the lot cheap for their Italian legion, little
thinking that they were making the 'Camicia Rossa' immortal in song
and story.
The coming to Rome of the 1200 legionaries aroused private fears in
the hearts of the more timid inhabitants, but Garibaldi knew how to
keep his wild followers in hand, and gallant was the service they
rendered to Roman liberty.
That liberty was now on the eve of its peril. The preliminaries of the
French intervention in Rome are tolerably well known; here it suffices
to say that every new contribution to a more precise knowledge of the
facts only serves to confirm the charge of dissimulation, or, to use a
plainer and far better adapted word, of dishonesty, brought against
the French government for their part in the matter. White, indeed, do
Austria, Spain and Naples appear--the avowed upholders of priestly
despotism--beside the ruler of republican France and his ministers,
whose plan it was not to fight the Roman republic: fighting was far
from their counsels, but to betray it. It is proved that the
restoration of the Temporal Power was the aim of the expedition from
the first; it is equally proved that the French sought to get inside
Rome by distinct disclaimers of any such intention. 'We do not go to
Italy,' they said, 'to impose with our arms a system of government,
but to assure the rights of liberty, and to preserve a legitimate
interference in the affairs of the peninsula.' They adopted a curious
method of assuring the rights of liberty.
The Pope would not have anything to do with the affair. 'If you say
openly that you are going to give me back my Temporal Power, well and
good; if not, I prefer the aid of Austria.' So he replied to the
flattering tales whispered in his ear, while tales no less flattering
were being whispered in the ear of Mazzini. He declined to give the
French any guarantees as to his future mode of governing; it cannot be
said, therefore, that they were under the delusion that they were
restoring a constitutional sovereign.
Efforts have been made to cast the responsibility of the Roman
intervention entirely on Louis Napoleon. Even Mazzini favoured that
view, but it is impossible to separate the President of the Republic
from the 325 deputies who voted the supplies for the expedition on the
2nd of April. Does anyone pretend that they were hoodwinked any more
than Ledru Rollin was hoodwinked, or the minority, which, roused by
his vigorous speech, voted against the grant? Louis Napoleon was far
less Papal in his sentiments than were most of the assenting deputies;
his own opinion was more truly represented by the letter which, as a
private citizen, he wrote to the 'Constitutionnel' in December 1848
than by his subsequent course as President. In this letter he declared
that a military demonstration would be perilous even to the interests
which it was intended to safeguard. He had but one fixed purpose: to
please France, so as to get himself made Emperor. France must be held
answerable for the means taken to please her.
General Oudinot landed at Civitavecchia on the 25th of April, his
friendly assurances having persuaded the local authorities to oppose
no resistance, an unfortunate error, but the last. The correct
judgment formed by the Roman Government of the designs of the invaders
was considerably assisted by a French officer, Colonel Leblanc, who
was sent to Rome by Oudinot to come to an agreement with Mazzini for
the amicable reception of the French, and who, losing his temper,
revealed more than he was meant to reveal. His last words, 'Les
Italiens ne se battent pas,' unquestionably expressed the belief of
the whole French force, from the general-in-chief to the youngest
drummer. They were soon going to have a chance of testing its
accuracy.
The Roman Assembly passed a vote that 'force should be repelled by
force.' Well-warned, therefore, but with the proverbial _coeur léger_,
Oudinot advanced on Rome with 8000 men early on the 30th of April. At
eleven o'clock the two columns came in sight of St Peter's, and soon
after, the first which moved towards Porta Angelica was attacked by
Colonel Masi. Garibaldi attacked the second column a mile out of Porta
San Pancrazio. At the first moment the superior numbers of the French
told, and the Italians fell back on Villa Pamphilli, but Colonel
Galetti arrived with reinforcements, and before long Garibaldi drove
the French from the Pamphilli Gardens and had them in full retreat
along the Civitavecchia road. Oudinot was beaten, Rome was victorious.
'This does not surprise us Romans; but it will astonish Paris!' ran a
manifesto of the hour; the words are a little childish, but men are
apt to be childish when they are deeply moved. And as to the
astonishment of Paris, all the words in the world would fail to paint
its proportions. Paris was indeed astonished.
Garibaldi had not the chief command of the Roman army, or he would
have done more; there was nothing to prevent the Italians from driving
Oudinot into the sea. The Triumvirate, when appealed to directly by
Garibaldi, refused their sanction, either fearing to leave the capital
exposed to the Neapolitans who were advancing, or (and this seems to
have been the real reason) still hoping that France would repudiate
Oudinot and come to terms. Garibaldi was right on this occasion, and
Mazzini was wrong. When you are at war, nothing is so ruinous as to be
afraid of damaging the enemy.
The French ministers, bombarded with reproaches by friends and foes,
and most uneasy lest their troops in Italy should be destroyed before
they could send reinforcements, did disown Oudinot's march on Rome,
and Ferdinand de Lesseps was despatched nominally 'to arrange matters
in a pacific sense,' but actually to gain time.
In a sitting in the French Assembly, a member of the opposition said
to the President of the Council: 'You are going to reinstate the
Pope!' 'No, no,' ejaculated Odilon Barrot. 'You are going to do the
same as Austria,' cried Lamoricière. 'We should be culpable if we
did,' was the answer. Lesseps' instructions, very vague, for the rest,
were given to him in this spirit. That Lesseps acted in good faith has
been generally admitted, and was always believed by Mazzini. It was to
the interest of the French Government to choose a tool who did not
see how far he was a tool. But if Lesseps had no suspicions, if he had
not strong suspicions of the real object of his employers, then he was
already at this date a man singularly easy to deceive.
The French envoy was commissioned to treat, not with the Triumvirate,
but with the Roman Assembly: a piece of insolence which the former
would have done well to reply to by sending him about his business.
Lesseps, however, thought that he would gain by speaking in person to
Mazzini, and in order that the interview should remain a secret, he
decided to go to him alone in the dead of the night and unannounced.
Having made the needful inquiries, he proceeded to the palace of the
Consulta, the doors of which seem to have been left open all night;
there were guards, but they were asleep, and the French diplomatist
traversed the long suite of splendid apartments, opening one into the
other without corridors. At last he reached the simply-furnished room
where, upon an iron bedstead, Mazzini slept. Lesseps watched him
sleeping, fascinated by the beauty of his magnificent head as it lay
in repose. He still looked very young, though there was hardly a state
in Europe where he was not proscribed. When Lesseps had gazed his
full, he called 'Mazzini, Mazzini!' The Triumvir awoke, sat up and
asked if he had come to assassinate him? Lesseps told him his name,
and a long conversation followed. One thing, at least, that Lesseps
said in this interview was strictly true, namely, that Mazzini must
not count on the French republican soldiers objecting to fire on
republicans: 'The French soldier would burn down the cottage of his
mother if ordered by his superiors to do so.' The discipline of a
great army is proof against politics.
Lesseps was himself in much fear of being assassinated. He believed
that his footsteps were dogged by three individuals, one of whom was
an ex-French convict. He complained to Mazzini, who said that he could
do nothing, which probably shows that he gave no credence to the
story. Then Lesseps had recourse to Ciceruacchio, 'a man of the people
who had great influence on the population, and who had organised the
revolution.' The tribune seems to have quieted his fears and
guaranteed his safety.
The French envoy could not help being struck by the tender care taken
of his wounded fellow-countrymen by the Princess Belgiojoso and other
noble ladies who attended the hospitals. Of prisoners who were not
wounded there were none, as they had been sent back scot-free to their
general a few days after the 30th of April. He was struck also by the
firm resolve of all classes not to restore the Pope. Some liked the
existing government, some did not, but all prayed heaven to be
henceforth delivered from the rule of an infallible sovereign.
Whatever was the measure of confidence which Mazzini felt in Lesseps,
he was firm as iron on the main point--the non-admittance of the
'friendly' French troops into Rome. Lesseps dragged on the
negotiations till his government had finished the preparations for
sending to Rome a force which should not be much less than twice in
number the whole military resources of the republic. Then they
recalled him, and, in order not to be bound by anything that he might
have said, they set about the rumour that he was mad. Indignant at
such treatment, Lesseps left the diplomatic service, and turned his
attention to engineering. This was the origin of the Suez Canal.
While all these things were going on, the Austrians moved from Ferrara
and Modena towards Bologna, the Spaniards landed at Fiumicino, and
16,000 Neapolitans, commanded by Ferdinand II., encamped near Albano.
Garibaldi was attacked on the 9th of May by the Neapolitan vanguard,
which he obliged to fall back. On the 18th, he completely defeated
King Ferdinand's army near Velletri, and the King ordered a general
retreat into his own dominions, which was accomplished in haste and
confusion.
By the end of May, Oudinot's forces were increased to over 35,000 men.
The defenders of Rome, under the chief command of General Rosselli,
were about 20,000, of whom half were volunteers. Colonel Marnara's
Lombard Legion of Bersaglieri was, in smartness of appearance and
perfect discipline, equal to any regular troops; in its ranks were the
sons of the best and richest Lombard families, such as Dandolo,
Morosini and many others. Medici's legion was also composed of
educated and well-to-do young men. The Bolognese, under the Marquis
Melara, had the impetuous daring of their race, and Count Angelo
Masina did wonders with his forty lancers. Wherever Garibaldi was--it
was always in the hottest places--there were to be seen, at no great
distance, the patriot monk, Ugo Bassi, riding upon a fiery horse, and
the young poet of Free Italy, Goffredo Mameli, with his slight, boyish
figure, and his fair hair floating in the breeze. Nor must we omit
from the list of Garibaldi's bodyguard Forbes, the Englishman, and
Anghiar, the devoted negro, who followed his master like a dog.
Oudinot formally disavowed all Lesseps' proceedings from first to
last, and announced, on the 1st of June, that he had orders to take
Rome as soon as possible. Out of regard, however, for the French
residents, he would not begin the attack 'till the morning of Monday
the 4th.' Now, though no one knew it but the French general, that
Monday morning began with Sunday's dawn, when the French attacked
Melara's sleeping battalion at the Roman outposts. It was easy for the
French to drive back these 300 men, and to occupy the Villa Corsini
('Villa,' in the Roman sense, means a garden) and the position
dominating Porta San Pancrazio; but Galetti came up and retook them
all, to lose them again by nine o'clock. Then Garibaldi, who was ill,
hurried to the scene from his sick-bed, and thrice that day he retook
and thrice he lost the contested positions--a brief statement, which
represents prodigies of valour, and the oblation of as noble blood as
ever watered the earth of Rome. Melara, Masina, Daverio, Dandolo,
Mameli: every schoolboy would know these names if they belonged to
ancient, not to modern, history. Bright careers, full of promise, cut
short; lives renounced, not only voluntarily, but with joy, and to
what end? Not for interest or fame--not even in the hope of winning;
but that, erect and crowned with the roses of martyrdom, Rome might
send her dying salutation to the world.
At sunset the French had established their possession of all the
points outside the Gate of San Pancrazio, except the Vascello, a villa
which had been seized from their very teeth by Medici, who held it
against all comers. Monte Mario was also in their hands.
Mazzini, whose judgment was obscured by his attribution of the Italian
policy of France to Louis Napoleon alone, hoped for a revolution in
Paris, but Ledru Rollin's attempt at agitation completely failed, and
the country applauded its government now that the mask was thrown
away. The reasons for revolutions in Paris have always been the same;
they have to do with something else than the garrotting of
sister-republics.
Oudinot tightened his cordon; on the 12th of June he invited the city
to capitulate. The answer was a refusal; so, with the aid of his
excellent artillery, he crept on, his passage contested at each step,
but not arrested, till, on the 27th, the Villa Savorelli, Garibaldi's
headquarters, fell into the hands of the enemy, and, on the night of
the 29th, the French were within the city walls. St Peter's day is the
great feast of Rome, and this time, as usual, the cupola of St Peter's
was illuminated, the Italian flag flying from the highest point. The
thunderstorm, which proverbially accompanies the feast, raged during
the night; the French shells flew in all directions; the fight raged
fiercer than the storm; Medici held out among the crumbling walls of
the Vascello, which had been bombarded for a week; the heroic Manara
fell fighting at Villa Spada; Garibaldi, descending into the _mêlée_,
dealt blows right and left: he seemed possessed by some supernatural
power. Those around him say that it is impossible that he would have
much longer escaped death, but suddenly a message came summoning him
to the Assembly--it saved his life. When he appeared at the door of
the Chamber, the deputies rose and burst into wild applause. He seemed
puzzled, but, looking down upon himself, he read the explanation; he
was covered with blood, his clothes were honeycombed by balls and
bayonet thrusts, his sabre was so bent with striking that it would not
go more than half into its sheath.
What the Assembly wanted to know was whether the defence could be
prolonged; Garibaldi had only to say that it could not. They voted,
therefore, the following decree: 'In the name of God and of the
People: the Roman Constituent Assembly discontinues a defence which
has become impossible, and remains at its post.' At its post it
remained till the French soldiers invaded the Capitol, where it sat,
when, yielding to brute force, the deputies dispersed.
Mazzini, who would have resisted still, when all resistance was
impossible, wandered openly about the city like a man in a dream. He
felt as though he were looking on at the funeral of his best-beloved.
How it was that he was not killed or arrested is a mystery. At the end
of a week his friends induced him to leave Rome with an English
passport.
On the 2nd of July, before the French made their official entry,
Garibaldi called his soldiers together in the square of the Vatican,
and told them that he was going to seek some field where the foreigner
could still be fought. Who would might follow him; 'I cannot offer you
honours or pay; I offer you hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles,
death.'
Three thousand followed him. Beside her husband rode Anita; not even
for the sake of the child soon to come would she stay behind in
safety. Ugo Bassi was there; Anghiar was dead, Mameli was dying in a
hospital, but there was 'the partisan or brigand Forbes,' as he was
described in a letter of the Austrian general D'Aspre to the French
general Oudinot, with a good handful of Garibaldi's best surviving
officers. Ciceruacchio came with his two sons, and offered himself as
guide. No one knew what the plan was, or if there was one. Like
knights of old in search of adventures, they set out in search of
their country's foes. It was the last desperate venture of men who did
not know how to yield.
After wandering hither and thither, and suffering severe hardships,
the column reached the republic of San Marino. The brave hospitality
of that Rock of freedom prevented Garibaldi from falling into the
clutches of the Austrians, who surrounded the republic. He treated
with the Regent for the immunity of his followers, who had laid down
their arms; and, in the night, he himself escaped with Anita, Ugo
Bassi, Forbes, Ciceruacchio and a few others. They hoped to take their
swords to Venice, but a storm arose, and the boats on which they
embarked were driven out of their course. Some of them were stranded
on the shore which bounds the pine-forest of Ravenna, and here, hope
being indeed gone, the Chief separated from his companions. Of these,
Ugo Bassi, and an officer named Livraghi, were soon captured by the
Austrians, who conveyed them to Bologna, where they were shot.
Ciceruacchio and his sons were taken in another place, and shot as
soon as taken. The boat which contained Colonel Forbes was caught at
sea by an Austrian cruiser: he was kept in Austrian prisons for two
months, and was constantly reminded that he would be either shot or
hung; but the English Government succeeded in getting him liberated,
and he lived to take part in more fortunate fights under Garibaldi's
standard.
Meanwhile, Anita was dying in a peasant's cottage, to which Garibaldi
carried her when the strong will and dauntless heart could no longer
stand in place of the strength that was finished. This was the 4th of
August. Scarcely had she breathed her last breath when Garibaldi,
broken down with grief as he was, had to fly from the spot. The
Austrians were hunting for him in all directions. All the Roman
fugitives were proclaimed outlaws, and the population was forbidden to
give them even bread or water. Nevertheless--aided in secret by
peasants, priests and all whose help he was obliged to seek--Garibaldi
made good his flight from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean, the whole
route being overrun by Austrians. When once the western coast was
reached, he was able, partly by sea and partly by land, to reach the
Piedmontese territory, where his life was safe. Not even there,
however, could he rest; he was told, politely but firmly, that his
presence was embarrassing, and for the second time he left
Europe--first for Tunis and then for the United States.
While the French besieged Rome, the Austrians had not been idle. They
took Bologna in May, after eight days' resistance; and in June, after
twenty days' attack by sea and land, Ancona fell into their hands. In
these towns they pursued means of 'pacification' resembling those
employed at Brescia. All who possessed what by a fiction could be
called arms were summarily slaughtered. At Ancona, a woman of bad
character hid a rusty nail in the bed of her husband, whom she wished
to get rid of; she then denounced him to the military tribunal, and
two hours later an English family, whose house was near the barracks,
heard the ring of the volley of musketry which despatched him. Austria
had also occupied the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; and when, in July,
Leopold II. returned to his state, which had restored him by general
consent and without any foreign intervention, he entered Florence
between two files of Austrian soldiery, in violation of the article of
the Statute to which he had sworn, which stipulated that no foreign
occupation should be invited or tolerated. The Grand Duke wrote to the
Emperor of Austria, from Gaeta, humbly begging the loan of his arms.
Francis Joseph replied with supreme contempt, that it would have been
a better thing if Leopold had never forgotten to whose family he
belonged, but he granted the prayer. Such was the way in which the
House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, that had done much in Tuscany to win
respect if not love, destroyed all its rights to the goodwill of the
Tuscan people, and removed what might have been a serious obstacle to
Italian unity.
Austria, unable alone to cope with Hungary, committed the immeasurable
blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain,
but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay. Venice, and
Venice only, continued to defy her power. Since Novara, the first
result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who
had taken over the government after the Fusion, Venice had been ruled
by Manin on the terms which he himself proposed: 'Are you ready,' he
asked the Venetian Assembly, 'to invest the Government with unlimited
powers in order to direct the defence and maintain order?' He warned
them that he should be obliged to impose upon them enormous
sacrifices, but they replied by voting the order of the day: 'Venice
resists the Austrians at all costs; to this end the President Manin is
invested with plenary powers.' All the deputies then raised their
right hand, and swore to defend the city to the last extremity. They
kept their word.
It is hard to say which was the most admirable: Manin's fidelity to
his trust, or the people's fidelity to him. To keep up the spirits, to
maintain the decorum of a besieged city even for a few weeks or a few
months, is a task not without difficulty; but when the months run into
a second year, when the real pinch of privations has been felt by
everyone, not as a sudden twinge, but as a long-drawn-out pain, when
the bare necessities of life fail, and a horrible disease, cholera,
enters as auxiliary under the enemy's black-and-yellow,
death-and-pestilence flag; then, indeed, the task becomes one which
only a born leader of men could perform.
The financial administration of the republic was a model of order and
economy. Generous voluntary assistance was afforded by all classes,
from the wealthy patrician and the Jewish merchant to the poorest
gondolier. Mazzini once said bitterly that it was easier to get his
countrymen to give their blood than their money; here they gave both.
The capable manner in which Manin conducted the foreign policy of the
republic is also a point that deserves mention, as it won the esteem
even of statesmen of the old school, though it was powerless to obtain
their help.
The time was gone when France was disposed to do anything for Venice;
no one except the Archbishop of Paris, who was afterwards to die by
the hand of an assassin, said a word for her.
In the past year, Lord Palmerston, though he tried to localise the
war, and to prevent the co-operation of the south, abounded in good
advice to Austria. He repeated till he was tired of repeating, that
she would do well to retire from her Italian possessions of her own
accord. If the French did not come now, he said, they would come some
day, and then her friends and allies would give her scanty support. As
for Lombardy, it was notorious that a considerable Austrian party was
in favour of giving it up, including the Archduke Ranieri, who was
strongly attached to Italy, which was the land of his birth. As for
Venice, Austria had against her both the principle of nationality, now
the rallying cry of Germany, and the principle of ancient prescription
which could be energetically invoked against her by a state to which
her title went back no farther than the transfer effected by
Buonaparte in the treaty of Campo Formio. These were his arguments;
but he was convinced, by this time, that arguments unsupported by big
battalions might as well be bestowed on the winds as on the Cabinet of
Vienna. From the moment that Radetsky recovered Lombardy for his
master, the Italian policy of the Austrian Government was entirely
inspired by him, and he was determined that while he lived, what
Austria had got she should keep. It was thus that, in reply to Manin's
appeal to Lord Palmerston, he only received the cold comfort of the
recommendation that Venice should come to terms with her enemy.
The Venetian army of 20,000 men was reduced by casualties and sickness
to 18,000 or less. It always did its duty. The defence of Fort
Malghera, the great fort which commanded the road to Padua and the
bridge of the Venice railway, would have done credit to the most
experienced troops in the world. The garrison numbered 2500; the
besiegers, under Haynau, 30,000. Radetsky, with three archdukes, came
to see the siege, but, tired with waiting, they went away before it
was ended. The bombardment began on the 4th of May; in the three days
and nights ending with the 25th over 60,000 projectiles fell on the
fort. During the night of the 25th the Commandant, Ulloa, by order of
Government, quietly evacuated the place, and withdrew his troops; only
the next morning the Austrians found out that Malghera was abandoned,
and proceeded to take possession of the heap of ruins, which was all
that remained.
After the beginning of July, an incessant bombardment was directed
against the city itself. Women and children lived in the cellars; fever
stalked through the place, but the war feeling was as strong as
ever--nay, stronger. Moreover, the provisions became daily scarcer, the
day came when hunger was already acutely felt, when the time might be
reckoned by hours before the famished defenders must let drop their
weapons, and Venice, her works of art and her population, must fall a
prey to the savage vengeance of the Austrians, who would enter by force
and without conditions.
And this is what Manin prevented. The cry was still for resistance;
for the first time bitter words were spoken against the man who had
served his country so well. But he, who had never sacrificed one iota
to popularity, did not swerve. His great influence prevailed. The
capitulation was arranged on the 22nd, and signed on the 24th of July.
Manin had calculated correctly; on that day there was literally
nothing left to eat in Venice.
In the last sad hours that Manin spent in Venice all the love of his
people, clouded for an instant, burst forth anew. Not, indeed, in
shouts and acclamations, but in tears and sobs; 'Our poor father, how
much he has suffered!' they were heard saying. He embarked on a French
vessel bound for Marseilles, poor, worn out and exiled for ever from
the city which he had guided for eighteen months; if, indeed, no spark
of his spirit animated the dust which it was the first care of
liberated Venice to welcome home. The Austrians broke up his doorstep
on which, according to a Venetian custom, his name was engraved.
Another martyr, Ugo Bassi, had kissed the stone, exclaiming:
'Next to God and Italy--before the Pope--Manin!' The people gathered
up the broken fragments and kept them as relics, even as in their
hearts they kept his memory, till the arrival of that day of
redemption which, in the darkest hour, he foretold.