THE REVIVAL OF PIEDMONT
1850-1856
Restoration of the Pope and Grand Duke of Tuscany--Misrule at
Naples--The Struggle with the Church in Piedmont--The Crimean War.
The decade from 1849 to 1859 may seem, at first sight, to resemble an
interregnum, but it was an evolution. There is no pause in the life of
nations any more than in the life of individuals: they go forward or
they go backward. In these ten years Piedmont went forward; the other
Italian governments did not stand still, they went backward. The
diseases from which they suffered gained daily upon the whole
body-politic, and even those clever foreign doctors who had been the
most convinced that this or that remedy would set them on their feet,
were in the end persuaded that there was only one place for them--the
Hospital for Incurables. After the fall of Rome, Pius IX. issued a
sort of canticle from Gaeta, in which he thanked the Lord at whose
bidding the stormy ocean had been arrested, but he did not even so
much as say thank you to the French, without whom, nevertheless, the
stormy ocean would have proceeded on its way. To all suggestions from
Paris that now that victory had been won by force the time was come
for the Sovereign to give some guarantee that it would not be abused,
the Pope turned a completely deaf ear. 'The Pope,' said M. Drouyn
de Lhuys, 'prefers to return to Rome upon the dead bodies of his
subjects rather than amidst the applause which would have greeted him
had he taken our advice.' That advice referred in particular to the
secularisation of the public administration, and this was exactly what
the Pope and the ex-Liberal Cardinal Antonelli, now and henceforth his
most influential counsellor, were determined not to concede. They had
grown wise in their generation, for a priest whose ministers are
laymen is as much an anomaly as a layman whose ministers are priests.
The French government desired that the Statute should be maintained,
and demanded judicial reforms and an amnesty for political offenders.
None of these points was accepted except the last, and that only
nominally, as the amnesty of the 18th of September did not put a stop
to proscriptions and vindictive measures. Count Mamiani, whose
stainless character was venerated in all Italy, and who had devoted
all his energies to the attempt to save the Papal government after the
Pope's flight, was ruthlessly excluded, and so were many other persons
who, though liberal-minded, had shown signal devotion to the Holy See.
All sorts of means were used to serve the ends of vengeance; for
instance, Alessandro Calandrelli, a Roman of high reputation, who held
office under the republic, was condemned to death for high treason,
and to twenty years at the galleys, on a trumped-up charge of theft,
which was palpably absurd; but the Pope, while quashing the first
sentence, confirmed the second, and Calandrelli would have remained in
prison till the year of grace 1870, as many others did, but for the
chance circumstance that his father had been a friend of the King of
Prussia, who took up his cause so warmly that after two years he was
let out and sent to Berlin, where the King and A. von Humboldt
received him with open arms.
These were the auspices under which Pius IX. returned to Rome after
seventeen months' absence. A four-fold invasion restored the Temporal
Power, which Fénelon said was the root of all evil to the Church, but
which, according to Pius IX., was necessary to the preservation of the
Catholic religion. The re-established _régime_ was characterised by
Lord Clarendon at the Congress of Paris as 'the opprobrium of Europe.'
The Pope tried to compensate for his real want of independence (for a
prince who could not stand a day without foreign bayonets, whatever
else he was, was not independent) by laughing at the entreaties of
France to relieve that advanced nation from the annoyance of having
set up a government fit for the Middle Ages. He rated at its correct
value the support of Napoleon, and believing it to be purely
interested, he believed in its permanence. The President had thought
of nothing in the world but votes, and he thought of them still. The
Roman Expedition secured him the services of M. de Falloux as
minister, and won over to him the entire Clerical Party, including
Montalembert and the so-called Liberal Catholics. Thus, and thus only,
was the leap from the Presidential chair to the Imperial throne made
possible. The result was flattering, but still there are reasons to
think (apart from Prince Jérôme Napoleon's express statement to that
effect) that Napoleon III. hated the whole business from the bottom of
his soul, and that of his not few questionable acts, this was the only
one of which he felt lastingly ashamed. Seeing that the communications
of his ministers failed in their object, he tried the expedient of
writing a private letter to his friend Edgar Ney, couched in the
strongest terms of disapproval of the recalcitrant attitude of the
Papal Government. This letter was published as it was intended to be,
but in the Roman States, except that its circulation was forbidden, no
notice was taken of it. Though the incident may be regarded as a
stroke of facing-both-ways policy, the anger expressed was probably as
sincere as any of Napoleon's sentiments could be, and the letter had
the effect of awakening the idea in many minds that something of the
former Italian conspirator still existed in the ruler of France. The
question arose, What sort of pressure would be needed to turn that
germ to account for Italy?
In the kingdom of Naples, where the laws, to look at them on paper,
were incomparably better than those in force in the Roman States, the
administration was such as would have disgraced a remote province of
the Turkish Empire. The King's naturally suspicious temperament was
worked upon by his courtiers and priests till he came to detect in
every Liberal a personal antagonist, whose immunity from harm was
incompatible with his own, and in Liberalism a plague dangerous to
society, which must be stamped out at all costs. Over 800 Liberals
were sent to the galleys. The convictions were obtained, in a great
proportion of cases, by false testimony. Bribes and secret protection
in high quarters were the only means by which an innocent man could
hope to escape; 50,000 persons were under police supervision, to be
imprisoned at will. The police often refused to set at liberty those
whom the judges had acquitted. The government had a Turkish or Russian
fear of printed matter. A wretched barber was fined 1000 ducats for
having in his possession a volume of Leopardi's poems, which was
described as 'contrary to religion and morals.'
What was meant by being an inmate of a Neapolitan prison was told by
Mr Gladstone in his two 'Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen,' which the
latter sent to Prince Schwarzenberg, the Austrian Prime Minister, with
a strong appeal to him to make known their contents to the King of the
Two Sicilies, and to use his influence in procuring a mitigation of
the abuses complained of. Prince Schwarzenberg did nothing, and it was
then that the 'Letters' were published. The impression created on
public opinion was almost without a parallel. The celebrated phrase,
'The negation of God erected into a system of government,' passing
into currency as a short history of Bourbon rule at Naples, kept
alive the wrathful feelings which the 'Letters' aroused, even when
these ceased to be read. Some small errors of fact (such as that of
stating that all the prisoners were chained, whereas an exception was
made of those undergoing life sentences) were magnified by the
partisans of Ferdinand II.; but the truth of the picture as a whole
was amply confirmed from independent sources. Baron Carlo Poerio
(condemned to nineteen years' imprisonment) _was_ chained to a common
malefactor, the chain never being undone, and producing in the end a
disease of the bone from which he never recovered. His case was that
of all the political prisoners in the same category with himself.
Luigi Settembrini and the others on whom sentence of death had been
passed, but commuted into one of life imprisonment, were not chained,
but they were put to associate with the worst thieves and assassins,
while their material surroundings accorded with the moral atmosphere
they were forced to breathe.
The Neapolitan prisoners did more than suffer for freedom; they
delivered the name of their country from being a reproach among the
nations. They showed what men the South of Italy can produce. Those
who wish to know what types of probity, honour and ideal patriotism
may grow out of that soil, which is sometimes charged with yielding
only the rank weeds planted by despotism, may read the letters and
memoirs of the noble Poerios, of Settembrini, gentlest but most
fearless of human souls, of the Calabrian Morellis, all patriots and
martyrs; of the Duke of Castromediano, who lately, in his old age, has
set down a few recollections of the years he spent at the Neapolitan
galleys. He records in these notes what he calls the most perilous
moment in his life. It was when he was summoned, with six
fellow-prisoners who had asked for and obtained freedom, to hear, as
he feared, his own pardon pronounced. For pardon was equivalent to
dishonour; it was granted either in consequence of real submission and
retraction, or in order to be able to blacken the character of the
pardoned man by falsely asserting that such submission had been made.
His fear was groundless. He had been led out, perhaps, in the hope
that the example of the others would prove contagious. He was not
pardoned. As he returned to his prison, he thanked Divine Providence
for the chains which left him pure.
Strange to tell, Ferdinand II. rendered one considerable service to
the national cause; not that he saw it in that light, but the service
was none the less real because its motive was a narrow one. Austria
proposed a defensive league between the Italian Sovereigns: defensive
not only with the view to outward attack, but also and chiefly against
'internal disorder.' Piedmont was to be invited to join as soon as she
had renounced her constitutional sins, which it was sanguinely
expected she would do before very long. Meanwhile Parma, Modena,
Tuscany and Rome embraced the idea with enthusiasm, but the King of
the Two Sicilies, who dimly saw in it an opening for interference in
his own peculiar governmental ways, boldly declined to have anything
to do with it. And so, to Prince Schwarzenberg's serious
disappointment, the scheme by which he had hoped to create an
absolutist Italian federation, came to an untimely end.
The Grand Duke of Tuscany timidly inquired of the Austrian premier if
he might renew the constitutional _régime_ in his state. Schwarzenberg
replied with the artful suggestion that he should hear what the Dukes
of Modena and Parma, the Pope, and King Ferdinand had to say on the
subject. Their advice was unanimously negative: Cardinal Antonelli
going so far as to declare that Constitutionalism in Tuscany would be
regarded as a constant menace and danger to the States of the Church.
The different counsels of Piedmont, conveyed by Count Balbo, weighed
little against so imposing an array of opinion, backed as it was by
the Power which still stabled its horses in the Convent of San Marco.
The Tuscan Statute was formally suspended in September 1850.
From that day forth, Tuscany sank lower and lower in the slough. To
please the Pope, havoc was made of the Leopoldine laws--named after
the son of Maria Theresa, the wise Grand Duke Leopold I.--laws by
which a bridle was put on the power and extension of the Church. The
prosecution and imprisonment of a Protestant couple who were accused
of wishing to make proselytes, proclaimed the depth of intolerance
into which what was once the freest and best-ordered government in
Italy had descended.
The ecclesiastical question became the true test question in Piedmont
as well as in Tuscany, but there it had another issue.
It had also a different basis. In Piedmont there were no Leopoldine
laws to destroy; what was necessary was to create them. To privileges
dating from the Middle Ages which in the kingdom of Sardinia almost
alone had been restored without curtailment after the storm of the
French Revolution, were added the favours, the vast wealth, the
preponderating influence acquired during Charles Felix' reign, and the
first seventeen years of that of Charles Albert. Theoretically, the
Statute swept away all privileges of classes and sects, and made
citizens equal before the law, but to put this theory into practice
further legislation was needed, because, as a matter of fact, the
clergy preserved their immunities untouched and showed not the
slightest disposition to yield one jot of them. The Piedmontese
clergy, more numerous in proportion to the population than in any
state except Rome, were more intransigent than any ecclesiastical body
in the world. The Italian priest of old days, whatever else might be
said about him, was rarely a fanatic. The very nickname 'Ultramontane'
given by Italians to the religious extremists north of the Alps, shows
how foreign such excesses were to their own temperaments. But the
Ultramontane spirit had already invaded Piedmont, and was embraced by
its clergy with all the zeal of converts. There was still a _Foro
Ecclesiastico_ for the arraignment of religious offenders, and this
was one of the first privileges against which Massimo d'Azeglio lifted
his 'sacrilegious' hand. To go through all the list would be tedious,
and would demand more explanation regarding the local modes of
acquisition and tenure of religious property than would be interesting
now. The object of the Siccardi laws, as they were named after the
Minister of Grace and Justice who introduced them, and of the stronger
measures to which they led up, was to make the priest amenable to the
common law of the land in all except that which referred to his
spiritual functions; to put a limit on the amassment of wealth by
religious corporations; to check the multiplication of convents and
the multiplication of feast days, both of which encouraged the people
in sloth and idleness; to withdraw education from the sole control of
ecclesiastics; and finally, to authorise civil marriage, but without
making it compulsory. The programme was large, and it took years to
carry it out. The Vatican contended that it was contrary to the
Concordat which existed between the Holy See and the Court of
Sardinia. Massimo d'Azeglio replied that the maintenance of the
Concordat, in all its parts, meant the ruin of the state; that he had
tried every means of conciliation, made every effort towards arriving
at a compromise, and that since his endeavours had failed in
consequence of the refusal of the Vatican to abate pretensions which
it neither could nor did enforce in Austria, Naples or Spain, heaven
and the world must judge between Rome and Piedmont, between Cardinal
Antonelli and himself.
The struggle throughout was bitter in the extreme, but its most
striking incident was the denial of the last Sacraments to a member of
the Government, the Minister of Agriculture, Santa Rosa, who happened
to die soon after the passing of the Act abolishing the _Foro
Ecclesiastico_. Santa Rosa was a sincerely religious man, but he
resisted all the attempts of the priest to extort a retractation, and
died unabsolved rather than leave a dishonoured name to his children.
The popular indignation excited by this incident was in proportion
with the importance attached to outward observances of religion in
Catholic countries; the government had to protect the Archbishop of
Turin from violence, while, at the same time, they sent him for a
month to the Citadel for having forbidden his clergy to obey the law
on the _Foro Ecclesiastico_. He and one or two of the other bishops
were afterwards expelled from the kingdom. An unwelcome necessity, but
whose was the fault? In other countries, where the privileges claimed
by the Piedmontese clergy had been abolished for centuries, did the
bishops dictate revolt against the law? If not, why should they do so
in Piedmont?
The successor of Santa Rosa in the ministry was Count Cavour, who
thus in 1850 for the first time became an official servant of the
state. When D'Azeglio submitted the appointment to the King, Victor
Emmanuel remarked that, though he did not object to it in the least,
they had better take care, as this man would turn them all out before
long. This man was, in fact, to stand at the helm of Piedmont, with
short intervals, till he died, and was to carve out from the block of
formless marble, not the Italy of sublime dreams, which, owing her
deliverance to her sons alone, should arise immaculate from the grave
a Messiah among the nations, but the actual Italy which has been
accomplished; imperfect and peccable as human things mostly are,
belonging rather to prose than to poetry, to matter than to spirit,
but, for all that, an Italy which is one and is free.
Fifty years ago a great English writer pointed out what the real Italy
would be, if it were to be; 'The prosperity of nations as of
individuals,' wrote Mr Ruskin in one of his earliest papers, 'is cold
and hard-hearted and forgetful. The dead lie, indeed, trampled down by
the living; the place thereof shall know them no more, for that place is
not in the hearts of the survivors, for whose interest they have made
way. But adversity and ruin point to the sepulchre, and it is not
trodden on; to the chronicle, and it does not decay. Who would
substitute the rush of a new nation, the struggle of an awakening power,
for the dreamy sleep of Italy's desolation, for the sweet silence of
melancholy thought, her twilight time of everlasting memories?'
[Illustration: COUNT CAVOUR]
There is the case, stated with beautiful lucidity, of the somewhat
ghoulish dilettantism which, enjoying tombs, would condemn all
mankind to breathe their atmosphere. It is not, however, in order to
discuss that view that the passage is quoted, but because of its
relevancy to what Cavour attempted and what he did. Never was there a
mind which cherished fewer illusions. He believed that the pursuit of
the unattainable was still more a political crime than a political
blunder. He was, in this, what is now called an opportunist, and he
was also an opportunist in believing that though in politics you can
choose your aim, you can very rarely choose your means. He held (and
this was the reason that he was so profoundly hated by men of very
different parties) that to accomplish great changes you have to make
sacrifices, not only of the higher sort, but, in a certain sense, also
of the lower. As he thought that the Austrians could not be expelled
from Italy for good and all without foreign help, he contemplated from
the first securing that foreign help, though no one would have been
more glad than he to do without it. He thought that Italian freedom
could not be won without a closer alliance with the democratic party
than politicians like D'Azeglio, who had the fear of the ermine, of
tarnishing its whiteness, would have ever brought themselves to
acquiesce in, and he therefore immediately took steps to establish
that alliance. Cavour had no faith in the creation of ideally perfect
states, such as the Monarchy of Dante or the Republic of Mazzini, but
he did think that a living land was better than a dead one, that the
struggle of an awakening power, the rush of a new nation, was
infinitely to be preferred to the desolation of dreamy sleeps, sweet
silences, and everlasting memories that spelt regrets.
It may be possible now to see clearly that if no one had tried for the
unattainable, Cavour would not have found the ground prepared for his
work. The appreciation of his rank among Italian liberators rests on a
different point, and it is this: without a man of his positive mould,
of his practical genius, of his force of will and force of patience,
would the era of splendid endeavours have passed into the era of
accomplished facts? If the answer to this is 'No,' then nothing can
take from Cavour the glory of having conferred an incalculable boon on
the country which he loved with a love that was not the less strong
because it lacked the divinising qualities of imagination.
An aristocrat by birth and the inheritor of considerable wealth,
Cavour was singularly free from prejudices; his favourite study was
political economy, and in quiet times he would probably have given all
his energies to the interests of commerce and agriculture. He was an
advocate of free trade, and was, perhaps, the only one of the many
Italians who _fêted_ Mr Cobden on his visit to Italy who cared in the
least for the motive of his campaign. Cavour understood English
politics better than they have ever been understood by a foreign
statesman; his article on Ireland, written in 1843, may still be read
with profit. Before parliamentary life existed in Piedmont, he took
the only way open of influencing public opinion by founding a
newspaper, the _Risorgimento,_ in which he continued to write for
several years. In the Chamber of Deputies he soon made his power
felt--power is the word, for he was no orator in the ordinary sense;
his speeches read well, as hard hitting and logical expositions, but
they were not well delivered. Cavour never spoke Italian with true
grace and ease though he selected it for his speeches, and not French,
which was also allowed and which he spoke admirably. His presence,
too, did not lend itself to oratory; short and thickset, and careless
in his dress, he formed a contrast to the romantic figure of
D'Azeglio. Yet his prosaic face, when animated, gave an impressive
sense of that attribute which seemed to emanate from the whole man:
power.
It needed a more wary hand than D'Azeglio's to steer out of the
troubled waters caused by the ecclesiastical bills, and to put the
final touches to the legislation which he, to his lasting honour be it
said, had courageously and successfully initiated. In the autumn of
1852 D'Azeglio resigned, and Cavour was requested by the King to form
a ministry. He was to remain, with short breaks, at the head of public
affairs for the nine following years.
At this time the government of Lombardy and Venetia was vested in
Field-Marshal Radetsky, with two lieutenant-governors under him, who
only executed his orders. Radetsky resided at Verona. Politically and
economically the two provinces were then undergoing an extremity of
misery; the diseases of the vines and the silkworms had reached the
point of causing absolute ruin to the great mass of proprietors who,
reckoning on having always enough to live on, had not laid by. Many
noble families sank to the condition of peasants. The taxation was
heavier than in any other part of the Austrian Empire; in proof of
which it may be mentioned that Lombardy paid 80,000,000 francs into
the Austrian treasury, which, had the Empire been taxed equally, would
have given an annual total of 1,100,000,000, whereas the revenue
amounted to only 736,000,000. The landtax was almost double what it
was in the German provinces. Italians, however, have a great capacity
for supporting such burdens with patience, and it is doubtful whether
the material aspect of the case did much to increase their hatred of
foreign dominion. Its moral aspect grew daily worse; the terror became
chronic. The possession of a sheet of printed paper issued by the
revolutionary press at Capolago, on the lake of Lugano, was enough to
send a man to the gallows. These old, badly printed leaflets, with no
name of author or publisher attached, but chiefly written in the
unmistakable style of Mazzini, can still be picked up in the little
booksellers' shops in Canton Ticino, and it is difficult to look at
them without emotion. What hopes were carried by them. What risks were
run in passing them from hand to hand. Of what tragedies were they not
the cause! In August 1851, Antonio Sciesa, of Milan, was shot for
having one such leaflet on his person. The gendarmes led him past his
own house, hoping that the sight of it would weaken his nerve, and
make him accept the clemency which was eagerly proffered if he would
reveal the names of others engaged in the patriotic propaganda.
'Tiremm innanz!' ('come along') he said, in his rough Milanese
dialect, and marched incorruptible to death. On a similar charge,
Dottesio and Grioli, the latter a priest, suffered in the same year,
and early in 1852 the long trial was begun at Mantua of about fifty
patriots whose names had been obtained by the aid of the bastinado
from one or two unhappy wretches who had not the fortitude to endure.
Of these fifty, nine were executed, among whom were the priests
Grazioli and Tazzoli, Count Montanari of Verona, and Tito Speri, the
young hero of the defence of Brescia. Speri had a trifling part in the
propaganda, but the remembrance of his conduct in 1849 ensured his
condemnation. He was deeply attached to the religion in which he was
born, and his last letters show the fervour of a Christian joined to
the calmness of a stoic. If he had a regret, it was that he had been
unable to do more for his country; but here too his simple faith
sustained him. Surely the Giver of all good would not refuse to listen
to the prayers of the soul which passed to Him through martyrdom.
'To-morrow they lead me forth,' he wrote. 'I have done with this
world, but, in the bosom of God, I promise you I will do what I can.'
So did this clear and childlike spirit carry its cause from the
Austrian Assizes to a higher tribunal.
In the spring of 1853 there was an attempt at a rising in Milan from
which the mass of the citizens stood aloof, if they even knew of it
till it was over; an attempt ill-considered and not easily justified
from any point of view, the blame for which has been generally cast on
Mazzini; but though he knew of it, he was unwilling that its authors
should choose the time and mode of action which they chose. He was,
moreover, misinformed as to the extent of the preparations, since no
Milanese of any standing gave his support to the plan.
On the plea that the Lombard emigration was concerned in the abortive
movement, which was by no means consistent with facts, the Austrian
Government sequestered the landed property of the exiles and voluntary
emigrants, reducing them and their families (which in most instances
remained behind) to complete beggary. Nine hundred and seventy-eight
estates were placed under sequestration. The Court of Sardinia held
the measure to be a violation of the amnesty, which was one of the
conditions of the peace of 1850. The Sardinian Minister was recalled
from Vienna, and the relations between the two governments were once
more on a footing of open rupture.
Not less important was the moral effect of the sequestrations in
France and England, but particularly in England. They acted as the
last straw, coming as they did on the top of the flogging system which
had already enraged the English public mind to the highest degree. The
Prince Consort wrote in March to his brother: 'To give you a
conception of the maxims of justice and policy which Austria has been
lately developing, I enclose an extract of a report from Turin which
treats of the decrees of confiscation in Italy. People here will be
very indignant.' He goes on to say (somewhat too broadly) that the
English upper classes were till then thoroughly Austrian, but that she
had succeeded in turning the whole of England against her, and there
was now no one left to defend her.
Austria, through Count Buol, complained that she was 'dying of
legality,' but England took the Sardinian view that the sequestrations
directly violated the treaty between the two Powers. In the Austrian
Note of the 9th of March, it was distinctly declared that Piedmont
would be crushed if she did not perform the part of police-agent to
Austria. Cavour's uncowed attitude at this crisis was what first fixed
upon him the eyes of European diplomacy.
In the course of the summer, the Duke of Genoa, Victor Emmanuel's
brother, paid a visit to the English Court, where the Duke of
Saxe-Coburg was also staying, by whom he was described as 'one of the
cleverest and most amiable men of our time.' Sunny Italy, adds Duke
Ernest, seemed to have sent him to England so that by his mere
presence alone, in the prime of his age, he might make propaganda for
the cause of his country. The Queen presented her guest with a
handsome riding-horse, and when he thanked her in warm and feeling
terms, she spoke the memorable words, the effect of which spoken at
that date by the Queen of England can hardly be imagined: 'I hope you
will ride this horse when the battles are fought for the liberation of
Italy.'
The battle-day was indeed to come, but when it came the sword which
the young Duke wielded with such gallantry in the siege of Peschiera
would be sheathed for ever. The Prince Charming of Casa Savoia died in
February 1855, leaving a daughter to Italy, the beloved Queen
Margaret.
In the space of a few weeks, Victor Emmanuel lost his brother, his
mother, and his wife. The King, who felt keenly when he did feel, was
driven distraught with grief; no circumstance was wanting which could
sharpen the edge of his sorrow. The two Queens, both Austrian
princesses, had never interfered in foreign politics; what they
suffered they suffered in silence. But they were greatly influenced by
the ministers of the religion which had been a comfort of their not
too happy lives, and they had frequently told Victor Emmanuel that
they would die of grief if the anti-papal policy of his government
were persisted in. Now that they were dead, every partisan of the
Church declared, without a shadow of reticence, that the mourning in
which the House of Savoy was plunged was a clear manifestation of
Divine wrath. Victor Emmanuel had been brought up in superstitious
surroundings; it was hardly possible that he should listen to these
things altogether unmoved. But on this as on the other occasions in
his life when he was to be threatened with ghostly terrors, he did not
belie the name of 'Re Galantuomo,' which he had written down as his
profession when filling up the papers of the first census taken after
his accession--a jest that gave him the title he will ever be known
by. Harassed and tormented as the King was, when the law on religious
corporations had been voted by the Senate and the Chamber, and was
presented to him by Cavour for signature, he did his duty and signed
it. The commentary which came from the Vatican was the decree of
major excommunication promulgated in the Consistory of the 27th of
July against all who had approved or sanctioned the measure, or who
were concerned in putting it into execution.
The law was known as the 'Rattazziana,' from Urbano Rattazzi, whom
Cavour appointed Minister of Grace and Justice, thereby effecting a
coalition between the Right Centre, which he led himself, and the Left
Centre, which was led by Rattazzi; an alliance not pleasing to the
Pure Right or to the Advanced Left, but necessary to give the Prime
Minister sufficient strength to command the respect, both at home and
abroad, which can only be won by a statesman who is not afraid of
being overturned by every whiff of the parliamentary wind. The 'Legge
Rattazziana' certainly aimed at asserting the supremacy of the state,
but in substance it was an arrangement for raising the stipend of the
poorer clergy at the expense of the richer benefices and corporations,
and save for the bitter animosity of Rome, it would not have excited
the degree of anger that descended upon its promoters. In a country
where the Church had a rental of 15,000,000 francs, there were many
parish priests who had not an income of £20; a state of things seen to
be anomalous by the best ecclesiastics themselves, but their efforts
at conciliation failed because the Holy See would not recognise the
right of the civil authority to interfere in any question affecting
the status or property of the clergy, and this right was the real
point at issue.
In these days, Cavour came to an understanding with a friendly monk in
order that when his last hour arrived, he should not, like Santa Rosa,
go unshriven to his account. In 1861, Fra Giacomo performed his part
in the agreement, and was duly punished for having saved his Church
from a scandal which, from the position of the great minister, would
have reached European dimensions.
Cavour's work of bringing into order the Sardinian finances, which,
from the flourishing state they had attained prior to 1848, had fallen
into what appeared the hopeless confusion of a large and steadily
increasing deficit, is not to the ordinary observer his most brilliant
achievement, but it is possibly the one for which he deserves most
praise. It could not have been carried through except by a statesman
who was completely indifferent to the applause of the hour. During all
the earlier years that he held office, Cavour was extraordinarily
unpopular. The nickname of 'la bestia neira' conferred on him by
Victor Emmanuel referred to the opinion entertained of him by the
Clerical party, but he was almost as much a 'bestia neira' to a large
portion of the Liberals as to the Clericals or to the old Piedmontese
party. His house was attacked by the mob in 1853, and had not his
servants barred the entrance, something serious might have occurred.
Happily the King and the majority in the Chamber and in the country
had, if not much love for Cavour, a profound conviction that he could
not be done without, and that, consequently, he must be allowed to do
what he liked. Thus the large sacrifices he demanded of the taxpayers
were regularly voted, and Cavour could afford to despise the abuse
heaped upon himself since he saw his policy advancing to maturity
along a steady line of success.
When, in 1854, Cavour resolved that Piedmont should join France and
England in the coming war with Russia, it seemed to a large number of
his countrymen that he had taken leave of his senses, but the firm
support which in this instance he found in the King enabled him next
year to equip and despatch the contingent, 15,000 strong, commanded
by General La Marmora, which not only won the respect of friends and
foes in the field, but offered an example of efficiency in all
departments that compared favourably with the faulty organisation of
the great armies beside which it fought. Its gallant conduct at the
battle of the Tchernaja flattered the native pride, and when, in due
time, 12,000 returned of the 15,000 that had gone forth, the increased
credit of Piedmont in Europe was already felt to compensate for the
heavy cost of the expedition.
Among the Italians living abroad, Cavour's motives in taking part in
the Crimean War were, from the first, better understood than they were
at home. Piedmont, by qualifying for the part of Italian advocate in
the Councils of Europe, gave a guarantee of good faith which patriots
like Daniel Manin and Giorgio Pallavicini accepted as a happy promise
for the future. It was then that a large section of the republican
party frankly embraced the programme of Italian unity under Victor
Emmanuel. They foresaw that a repetition of the discordant action of
1848 would end in the same way. Manin wrote to Lorenzo Valerio in
September 1855: 'I, who am a republican, plant the banner of
unification; let all who desire that Italy should exist, rally round
it, and Italy will exist.' The ex-dictator of Venice was eking out a
scanty livelihood by giving lessons in Paris; he had only three years
left to live, and was not destined to see his words verified. But,
poor and sick and obscure though he was, his support was worth
legions.
It was not the first time that Italian republicans had said to the
House of Savoy: If you will free Italy we are with you; but the
circumstances of the case were completely changed since Mazzini wrote
in somewhat the same language to Charles Albert a quarter of a
century before. Both times the proposal contained an ultimatum as well
as an offer, but Manin made it without second thoughts in the
strongest hope that the pact would be accepted and full of
anticipatory joy at the prospect of its success; while by the Genoese
republican it was made in mistrust and in the knowledge that were it
accepted (which he did not believe), its acceptance, though bringing
with it for Italy a state of things which he recognised as preferable
to that which prevailed, would bring to him personally nothing but
disappointment and the forfeiture of his dearest wishes.
It is difficult to say what were at this date Cavour's own private
sentiments about Italian unity. Though he once confessed that as a
young man he had fancied himself Prime Minister of Italy, whenever the
subject was now discussed he disclaimed any belief in the feasibility
of uniting all parts of the peninsula in one whole. He even called
Manin 'a very good man, but mad about Italian unification.' It wanted,
in truth, the prescience of the seer rather than the acumen of the
politician to discern the unity of Italy in 1855. All outward facts
seemed more adverse to its accomplishment than at any period since
1815. Yet it was for Italy that Cavour always pleaded; Italy, and not
Piedmont or even Lombardy and Venetia. He invariably asserted the
right of his King to uphold the cause of all the populations from the
Alps to the Straits of Messina. If he adopted the proverb 'Chi va
piano va sano,' he kept in view the end of it, 'Chi va sano va
lontano.' In short, if he did not believe in Italian unity, he acted
in the same way as he would have acted had he believed in it.
It is evident that one thing he could not do. Whatever was in his
thoughts, unless he was prepared to retire into private life then and
there, he could not proclaim from the house-tops that he espoused the
artichoke theory attributed to Victor Amadeus. There were only too
many old diplomatists as it was, who sought to cripple Cavour's
resources by reviving that story. The time was not come when, without
manifest damage to the cause, he could plead guilty to the charge of
preparing an Italian crown for his Sovereign. 'The rule in politics,'
Cavour once observed, 'is to be as moderate in language as you are
resolute in act.'
At the end of 1855, Victor Emmanuel, with Cavour and Massimo
d'Azeglio, paid a visit to the French and English Courts. He was
received with more marked cordiality at the English Court than at the
French. No Prince Charming, indeed, but the ideal of a bluff and burly
Longobard chief, he managed to win the good graces of his
entertainers, even if they thought him a trifle barbaric. The Duchess
of Sutherland declared that of all the knights of St George whom she
had ever seen, he was the only one who would have had the best of it
in the fight with the dragon. The Queen rose at four o'clock in the
morning to take leave of him. Cavour was so much struck by the
interest which Her Majesty evinced in the efforts of Piedmont for
constitutional freedom, that he did not hesitate to call her the best
friend his country possessed in England.
It is not generally known, but it is quite true, that Victor Emmanuel
wished to contract a matrimonial alliance with the English royal
family. He did not take Cavour into his confidence, but a high English
personage was sounded on the matter, a hint being given to him to say
nothing about it to the Count. The lady who might have become Queen of
Italy was the Princess Mary of Cambridge. The negotiations were
broken off because the young Princess would not hear of any marriage
which would have required her living out of England.
The Congress which met in Paris in February 1856 for the conclusion of
the peace between the Allies and Russia was to have far more momentous
results for Italy than for the countries more immediately concerned in
its discussions, but, contrary to the general impression, it does not
appear that these results were anticipated by Cavour. He even said
that it was idle for Sardinia to send delegates to a congress in which
they would be treated like children. Cavour feared, perhaps, to lose
the ground he had gained in the previous year with Napoleon III., when
the Emperor's rather surprising question: 'Que peut-on faire pour
l'Italie?' had suggested to the Piedmontese statesman that definite
scheme of a French alliance, which henceforth he never let go. In any
case, when D'Azeglio, who was appointed Sardinian representative,
refused at the last moment to undertake a charge for which he knew he
was not fitted, it was only at the urgent request of the King that
Cavour consented to take his place. When once in Paris, however, he
warmed to the work, finding an unexpectedly strong ally in Lord
Clarendon. He won what was considered in all Europe a great diplomatic
triumph, by getting a special sitting assigned to the examination of
Italian affairs, which had as little to do with the natural work of
the Congress as the affairs of China. The chief points discussed at
the secret sitting of the 8th of April were the foreign occupations in
Central Italy, and the state of the Roman and Neapolitian governments,
which was stigmatised by Lord Clarendon in terms much more severe than
Cavour himself thought it prudent to use. Count Buol, the chief
Austrian representative, grew very angry, and his opposition was
successful in reducing the sitting to a mere conversation; but what
had been said had been said, and Cavour prepared the way for his
future policy by remarking to everyone: 'You see that diplomacy can do
nothing for us; the question needs another solution.' Lord Clarendon's
vigorous support made him think for a moment that England might take
an active part in that other solution, and with this idea in his mind
he hurried over the Channel to see Lord Palmerston, but he left
England convinced that nothing more than moral assistance was ever to
be expected from that quarter. The Marquis Emmanuel d'Azeglio, who for
many years represented Sardinia, and afterwards Italy, at the Court of
St James, has placed it on record that the English Premier repeatedly
assured him that an armed intervention on behalf of Italian freedom
would have been much to his taste, but that the country would not have
been with him. It is certain that Cavour would have preferred an
English to a French alliance; as it was not to be had, he reposed his
sole hopes in the Emperor Napoleon, who had not the French people
really more with him in this matter than Lord Palmerston had the
English--nay, he had them less with him, for in England there would
have been a party of Italian sympathisers favourable to the war, and
in France, there was no one except Prince Napoleon and the workmen of
Paris. But the French Emperor was a despotic sovereign, and not the
Prime Minister of a self-governing country. After all, some good may
come out of despotism.
Upon Cavour's return to Turin, he received not only the approval of
the King and Parliament, but also congratulations from all parts of
Italy. His position had gained immensely in strength, both at home and
abroad. Yet the power of the Clerical party in Piedmont was still such
that, in the elections of 1857--the first that had taken place since
the legislation affecting the Church--they obtained seventy seats out
of a total of two hundred. Cavour did not conceal his alarm. What if
eight years' labour were thrown away, and the movement of the State
turned backward? 'Never,' he said, 'would he advise a _coup d'état,_
nor would his master resort to one; but if the King abdicated, what
then?' Victor Emmanuel said to his Prime Minister: 'Let us do our
duty; stand firm, and we shall see!' He often declared that, sooner
than beat a retreat from the path he had entered on, he would go to
America and become plain _Monsù Savoia_; but he never lost faith in
the predominating patriotism and good sense of his subjects; and at
this time, as at others, he proved to be right. The crisis was
surmounted. On the one hand, some elections were invalidated where the
priests had exercised undue influence; and, on the other, Rattazzi,
who was especially obnoxious to the Clerical party, retired from
office. Cavour thus found himself still able to command the Chamber.