BEGINNINGS OF THE ITALIAN KINGDOM
1860-1861
Beginnings of the Italian Kingdom--The Fall of Gaeta--Political
Brigandage--The Proclamation of the Italian Kingdom--Cavour's Death.
The Neapolitan army retreated, as has been already stated, beyond the
Garigliano. Capua, isolated and surrounded, could render no material
service to the royal cause; it capitulated on the 2nd of November,
though not until the town had been bombarded for forty-eight hours.
The siege was witnessed by Victor Emmanuel, who said to General Delia
Rocca: 'It breaks my heart to think that we are sending death and
destruction into an Italian town.' Two days after the surrender of
Capua, Cialdini threw a bridge over the Garigliano near its mouth, an
operation covered by the guns of Admiral Persano's squadron. His first
attempt on the 29th of October had met with a decided repulse, another
proof that this last remnant of the Neapolitan army was not an enemy
to be despised. The second attempt, however, was successful; part of
the Neapolitans fell back upon Gaeta, and the other part fled over the
Papal frontier.
Gaeta, the refuge of the Pope and the fugitive Princes in 1848, now
became the ultimate rock of defence of the Bourbon dynasty. The
position of the fortress is extremely strong and not unlike Gibraltar
in its main features. A headland running out into the sea and rising
to a height of three or four hundred feet, it is divided by a strip of
sand from the shore-line. The principal defences were then composed of
a triple semi-circle of ditches and ramparts one higher than the
other. Had the country been flat the difficulties of the siege would
have been much increased; its hilly character allowed Cialdini to fix
his batteries on heights which commanded the top of the Gaeta hill.
But to profit by this, the Piedmontese were obliged to make fourteen
miles of roads by which to bring up their artillery. For a month,
10,000 out of the 20,000 besiegers were at work with the spade. The
defending force amounted to 11,000 men, and was commanded by General
Ritucci. From the first, it was certain that the obstinate stand made
at Gaeta could only result in what Lord John Russell called a useless
effusion of blood; nevertheless it seems to have been prompted by a
real belief that Francis would still recover his kingdom. The
precedent of his father's return from Gaeta may have strengthened the
King's illusion; every day he received highly-coloured reports of a
gathering reaction, and as the French fleet in the bay prevented
Admiral Persano from attacking from the sea, he believed that the time
which he could hold out was indefinite. This policy of the French
Government need not have greatly cheered him, as its motive was less
to help Francis than to prepare the way, by hampering the Piedmontese,
for a little fishing in troubled waters. Prince Murat, descendant of
the _Beau Sabreur_, was busy writing proclamations to remind the world
that if Francis were impossible and Victor Emmanuel 'wanted finish,'
there was an eligible young man ready to sacrifice the charms of the
Boulevards for the cares of kingship.
On the representations of the British Government the Emperor withdrew
his fleet in January, advising Francis II. to renounce a hopeless
resistance. But at this eleventh hour the King had adopted the
principle of 'no surrender,' and he meant to stick to it. It is
difficult to blame him; at anyrate, much more serious is the blame due
to the methods of warfare which he was to adopt or to approve
thereafter. His young Queen, who was frequently seen on the ramparts
encouraging the artillerymen at their guns, had probably much to do
with his virile resolution. The fortress was now attacked by land and
by sea, and the bursting of a powder-magazine inside the walls
hastened its doom. On the 15th of January the Neapolitans laid down
their arms, the King having left his dominions by sea. The first act
of the conquerors in the half-ruined town was to attend a mass for the
repose of the souls of the brave men, friends and foes, who had fallen
during the siege. Noisy rejoicings would have been unseemly, for the
vanquished were fellow-countrymen.
The telegram announcing the fall of Gaeta went to Caprera; Garibaldi
read it, and a weight was taken off his mind. 'Civil war is at an
end,' he announced to the little party round the supper-table;
'Cialdini with our army is in Gaeta; now the Italians will not cut one
another's throats any more.' Later in the evening he seemed so
depressed that they thought him ill; Colonel Vecchj went to his
bedside to discover what was the matter. He found him reading the
_Times_, and inquired why he had become so suddenly sad. After a
pause, Garibaldi said: 'Poor boy! Born at the foot of a throne and
perhaps not by his own fault, hurled from it. He too will have to feel
the bitterness of exile without preparation.' 'Is that all?' asked
Vecchj. 'Do you think it nothing?' was the answer. 'Why then,'
persisted Vecchj, half in jest, 'did you go to Marsala?' 'It was the
duty of us all to go,' Garibaldi said quickly, 'else how could there
have been one Italy?'
Francis II. would have been happy had he found counsellors to persuade
him to keep pure such titles to sympathy as he then possessed.
Decorum, if not humanity, should have urged him to retire, surrounded
by the solitary flash of glory cast on his fallen cause by the brave
defence of Gaeta. But the revolution, the new Islam, if it could not
be conquered must be made to suffer for its triumph. Hence the exiled
King was advised to call in murder, pillage and rapine as
accomplices. The political brigandage which followed the downfall of
the King of the Two Sicilies began after the battle of the Volturno
and extended over five years. Its effect on the general situation was
nil; it harassed and distracted the Italian Government and created the
odious necessity of using severe repressive measures, but it never
placed the crown in danger. One effect it did have, and that was to
raise all over Italy a feeling of reprobation for the late dynasty,
which not all the crimes and follies of the two Ferdinands and the
first Francis had succeeded in evoking. How many bright lives, full of
promise, were lost in that warfare which even the sacred name of duty
could not save from being ungrateful and inglorious! Italians who have
lost their children in their country's battles have never been heard
to complain; nowhere was the seemliness of death for native land
better understood than it has been in the Italy of this century, but
to lose son or brother in a brigand ambush by the hand of an escaped
galley-slave--this was hard. The thrust was sharpened by the knowledge
that the fomenter of the mischief was dwelling securely in the heart
of Italy, the guest of the Head of the Church. From Rome came money
and instructions; from Rome, whether with or without the cognizance of
the authorities, came recruits. The Roman frontier afforded a means of
escape for all who could reach it, however red their hands were with
blood. What further evidence was needed of the impossibility of an
indefinite duration of this state within a state?
King Francis held back at first, but his uncle, the Count of Trapani,
who openly abetted the brigand partisans, drew him more and more into
collusion with them and their works. The Belgian ecclesiastic, Mgr. de
Mérode, who had then an influence at the Vatican not possessed even
by Antonelli, looked, unless he was much belied, with a very kind eye
upon the new defenders of throne and altar. Efforts have been made to
represent the war as one carried on by loyal peasants. No one denies
that every peasants' war must assume, more or less, an aspect of
brigandage; nevertheless there have been righteous and patriotic
peasants' wars, such as that of the Klephts in Greece. The question
is, Whether the political brigandage in South Italy had any real
affinity with the wars of the Klephts, or even of the Carlists? And
the answer must be a negative.
The partisan chiefs in the kingdom of Naples were brigands, pure and
simple, most of whom had either been long wanted by the police, or had
already suffered in prison for their crimes. They organised their
troops on the strict principles of brigand bands, and proposed to them
the same object: pillage. 'Lieut-General' Chiavone who had a mania for
imitating Garibaldi, was the least bad among them; unlike his
prototype, he did not like being under fire, but neither did he care
to spill innocent blood. What, however, can be said for Pilone,
'commander of His Majesty's forces' on Vesuvius; for Ninco Nanco,
Bianco dei Bianchi, Tardio, Palma; for Carusso, who cut the throats of
thirteen out of fourteen labourers and told the one left to go and
tell the tale; for the brothers La Gala, who roasted and ate a priest?
It was said that no horror committed during the Indian Mutiny was here
without a parallel.
Of respectable Neapolitans who held responsible posts under the late
_régime_ not one joined the bands, but they contained French, Austrian
and Belgian officers, and one Prussian. A nephew of Mgr. de Mérode,
the young Marquis de Trazégnies, was with Chiavone; the Carlist, Josè
Borjès, was with a scoundrel named Crocco. Borjès' case is a hard one.
He had been made to believe in the genuine character of the
insurrection and thought that he was giving his sword to an honourable
cause. The melancholy disillusion can be traced in the pages of a
note-book which he kept from day to day, and which fell into the hands
of the Italians when he was captured. The brief entries show a poetic
mind; he observes the fertile soil, deploring, only, that it is not
better cultivated; he admires the smiling valleys and the magnificent
woods whose kings of the forest show no mark of the centuries that
passed over their fresh verdure. At first Borjès was pleased with the
peasants who came to him, but as they were few, he was obliged to join
Crocco's large band, and he now began to see, with horror, what kind
of associates he had fallen amongst. He had no authority; the brigands
laughed at his rebukes; never in his life, he writes, had he come
across such thieves. Before the enemy they ran away like a flock of
sheep, but when it was safe to do so, they murdered both men and
women. In desperation, Borjès resolved to try and get to Rome, that he
might lay the whole truth before the King, but after suffering many
hardships, he was taken with a few others close to the Papal frontier
and was immediately shot. He died bravely, chanting a Spanish litany.
Borjès' journal notes the opposition of all classes, except the very
poorest and most ignorant. Was it to be believed, therefore, that this
mountain warfare, however long drawn out, could alter one iota the
course of events? If Francis II. supposed the insurrection to be the
work of a virtuous peasantry, why did he allow them to rush to their
destruction?
The task of restoring order was assigned to General Cialdini. He
found the whole country, from the Abruzzi to Calabria, terrorised by
the league of native assassins and foreign noblemen. The Modenese
general was a severe officer who had learnt war in Spain, not a gentle
school. If he exceeded the bounds of dire necessity he merits blame;
but no one then hoped in the efficacy of half measures.
One element in the epidemic of brigandage, and looking forward, the
most serious of all, was an unconscious but profoundly real socialism.
If half-a-dozen socialistic emissaries had assumed the office of
guides and instructors, it is even odds that the red flag of communism
would have displaced the white one of Bourbon. This feature became
more accentuated as the struggle wore on, and after experience had
been made of the new political state. The economic condition of a
great part of the southern population was deplorable, but liberty, so
many thought, would exercise an instantaneous effect, filling the
mouths of the hungry, clothing the naked, providing firing in winter,
sending rain or sunshine as it was wanted. But liberty does none of
these things. The disappointment of the discovery did not count for
nothing in the difficulties of that period; it counts for everything
in the difficulties of this.
The reorganisation of the southern provinces proceeded very slowly. The
post of Lieutenant-Governor was successively conferred on L.C. Farini,
Prince Eugene of Carignano, and Count Ponza di San Martino; for a short
time Cialdini was invested with the supreme civil as well as military
power. None of these changes met with entire success. The government was
sometimes too weak, sometimes too arbitrary; of the great number of
Piedmontese officials distributed through the south, a few won general
approval, but the majority betrayed want of knowledge and tact, and were
judged accordingly. It was a misfortune for the new administration that
it was not assisted by the steam power of moral enthusiasm which
appeared and disappeared with Garibaldi. There is a great amount of
certainty that the vast bulk of the population desired union with Italy;
but it is equally certain that the new Government, though not without
good intentions, began by failing to please anybody, and the seeds of
much future trouble were planted.
On the 18th of February 1861, the first Italian legislature assembled
at Turin in the old Chamber, where, by long years of patient work and
self-sacrificing fidelity to principle, the possibility of
establishing an Italian constitutional monarchy had been laboriously
tested and established. Only the deputies of Rome and Venice were
still missing. The first act of the new parliament was to pass an
unanimous vote to the effect that Victor Emmanuel and his heirs should
assume the title of King of Italy. The Italian kingdom thus
constituted was recognised by England in a fortnight, by France in
three months, by Prussia in a year, by Spain in four years, by the
Pope never.
After the merging of Naples in the Italian body-politic, one of the
thorniest questions that arose was the disposal of the Garibaldian
forces. The chief implored Victor Emmanuel to receive his comrades
into his own army, a prayer which the King had not the power, even if
he had the will, to grant, as in the constitutional course of things
the decision was referred to the ministers, who, again, were crippled
in their action by the military authorities at Turin. Though it is
natural to sympathise with Garibaldi in his eagerness to obtain
generous terms for his old companions-in-arms, it may be true that his
demand was not one that could be satisfied in its full extent. The
volunteers were not inferior to the ordinary soldier; about half of
them were decidedly his superior, but they were a political body
improvised for a special purpose, and it is easy to see how many were
the reasons against their forming a division of a conventional army
like that of Piedmont. Nevertheless, the means ought to have been
found of convincing them that their King and country were proud of
them, that their great, their incalculable services were appreciated.
That such means were not found was supposed to be the fault of Cavour.
It was only in 1885, on the publication of the fourth volume of the
Count's letters, that it became known how strenuously he had fought
for justice. Military prejudice was what was really to blame; General
Fanti, the Minister of War, even provoked Cavour into telling him
'that they were not in Spain, and that in Italy the army obeyed.' 'A
cry of reprobation would be raised,' he wrote, 'if, while the Bourbon
officers who ran away disgracefully were confirmed in their rank, the
Garibaldians who beat them were coolly sent about their business.
Rather than bear the responsibility of such an act of black
ingratitude, I would go and bury myself at Leri. I despise the
ungrateful to the point of not feeling angered by them, and I forgive
their abuse. But, by Heaven, I could not bear the merited blot of
having failed to recognise services such as the conquest of a kingdom
of 9,000,000 inhabitants.'
Cavour, in fact, did obtain something; much more than the army
authorities wished to give, but much less than Garibaldi asked or than
the Count would doubtless have given had not his hands been tied. And,
doubtless, he would have given it with more grace.
As it was, the volunteers were deeply offended and sent their griefs
by every post to Caprera. Garibaldi, who refused every favour and
honour for himself, was worked up into a state of fury by what he
deemed the wrongs of his faithful followers, and in April he arrived
unexpectedly at Turin to plead their cause before the Chamber of
Deputies. Perhaps by a wise presentiment he had refused to stand for
any constituency; but when Naples elected him her representative,
almost without opposition, he submitted to the popular will. At Turin
he fell ill with rheumatic fever, but on the day of the debate on the
Southern Army he rose from his bed to take his seat in the Chamber.
The case for the volunteers was opened, and this is worthy of note, by
Baron Ricasoli, aristocrat and conservative. Afterwards Garibaldi got
up--at first he tried to make out the statistics and particulars which
he had on paper, but blinded by passion and by fever, he threw down
his notes and launched into a fierce invective against 'the man who
had made him a foreigner in his own birthplace and the government
which was driving the country straight into civil war.' At the words
'civil war' Cavour sprang to his feet, unwontedly moved, and uttered
some expressions of protest, which were lost in the general uproar.
When this was quieted, Garibaldi finished his speech in a moderate
tone, and then General Bixio rose to make that noble appeal to concord
which, had he done nothing else for Italy, should be a lasting title
to her gratitude. 'I am one of those,' he said, 'who believe in the
sacredness of the thoughts which have guided General Garibaldi, but
I am also one of those who have faith in the patriotism of Count
Cavour. In God's holy name let us make an Italy superior to the
strife of parties.' He might not be making a parliamentary speech,
he added, but he would give his children and his life to see peace
established--words flowing so plainly from his honest heart that
savage indeed would have been the enmity which, for the time, at
least, was not quelled. Cavour grasped the olive branch at once; all
his momentary ire vanished. He made excuses for his adversary; from
the grief which he had felt himself when he advised the King to cede
Savoy and Nice, he could understand the general's resentment. He had
always been, he said in general terms, a friend to the volunteers.
What he did not even remotely suggest was the dissension which existed
between himself and his military colleague on the subject of the
Garibaldians. The least hint would have gained for Cavour any amount
of applause and popularity; but he preferred to bear all the blame
rather than bring the national army into disfavour. Garibaldi replied
'that he had never doubted the Count's patriotism;' but at the end of
the three days' debate he declared himself dissatisfied with the
Ministerial assurances touching the volunteers in particular and the
country's armaments as a whole. As Cavour left the Chamber after the
final night's sitting, he remarked to a friend--all his fine
equanimity returned: 'And yet, and yet, when the time comes for war, I
shall take General Garibaldi under my arm and say: "Let's go and see
what they are about inside Verona!"'
Cialdini tried to stir up the quarrel anew by a letter full of foolish
personalities; but to this sort of attack Garibaldi was impervious. It
mattered nothing to him that a man should make rude remarks about his
wearing a red shirt. He admired the victor of Castelfidardo as one of
Italy's best soldiers. He was, therefore, perfectly ready to embrace
Cialdini at the King's request before he left Turin for Caprera. It
cost him more to consent to an interview of reconciliation with the
Prime Minister in the royal presence, because his disagreement with
Cavour was purely political and impersonal, and was rooted more deeply
in his heart than any private irritation could be; but he did consent,
and the interview took place on the 23rd of April. Probably Victor
Emmanuel in after days was never gladder of anything he had done than
of having caused his two great subjects--both his subjects born--to
part for the last time in this mortal life in peace.
On one other memorable occasion the man who, at twenty-two, said that
he meant to be Prime Minister of Italy, and who now, at fifty-one, was
keeping his word, filled with his presence the Chamber of which he
seemed to incarnate the life and history--which may be said to have
been his only home, for Cavour hardly had a private life. Very soon
the familiar figure was to vacate the accustomed place for ever.
An obscure deputy put a question on the 25th of May, which gave Cavour
the opportunity of expounding his views about Rome still more
explicitly than in the previous autumn. It was impossible, he said, to
conceive Italian unity without Rome as capital. Were there any other
solution to the problem he would be willing to give it due
consideration, but there was not. The position of a capital was not
decided by climatic or topographical reasons: a glance at capitals of
Europe was sufficient to certify the fact; it was decided by moral
reasons. Now Rome, alone out of the Italian cities, had an undisputed
moral claim to primacy. 'As far as I am personally concerned,' he
said, 'I shall go to Rome with sorrow; not caring for art, I am sure
that among the most splendid monuments of ancient and modern Rome I
shall regret the sedate and unpoetic streets of my native town.' It
grieved him to think that Turin must resign her most cherished
privilege, but he knew his fellow-citizens, and he knew them to be
ready to make this last sacrifice to their country. Might Italy not
forget the cradle of her liberties when her seat of government was
firmly established in the Eternal City!
He went on to say that he had not lost the hope that France and the
Head of the Church would yield to the inexorable logic of the
situation, and that the same generation which had resuscitated Italy
would accomplish the still grander task of concluding a peace between
the State and the Church, liberty and religion. These were no formal
words; Cavour's whole heart was set on their realisation. He did not
doubt that the knot, if not untied, would be cut by the sword sooner
or later. He felt as sure as Mazzini felt that this would happen; but
more than any man of any party he had reckoned the cost of ranging the
Church with its vast potential powers for good, for order, for public
morality, among the implacable enemies of the nascent kingdom. And,
therefore, his last public utterance was a cry for religious peace.
Always an immense worker, in these latter months Cavour had been
possessed by a feverish activity. 'I must make haste to finish my
work,' he said; 'I feel that this miserable body of mine is giving way
beneath the mind and will which still urge it on. Some fine day you
will see me break down upon the road.' On the 6th of June, after two
or three days of so-called sudden illness, he broke down upon the
road.
Fra Giacomo, faithful to his old promise, administered the sacraments
to the dying minister, who told Farini 'to tell the good people of
Turin that he died a Christian.' After this his mind rambled, but
always upon the themes that had so completely absorbed it: Rome,
Venice, Naples--'no state of siege,' was one of his broken sayings
that referred to Naples. It was his farewell protest against brute
force in which he had never believed. 'Cleanse them, cleanse them,' he
repeated; cleanse the people of the South of their moral contagion;
that, not force, was the remedy. He was able to recognise the King,
but unable to collect the ideas which he wished to express to him.
Cavour's death caused a profound sensation in Europe, and in Italy and
in England awakened great sorrow. Hardly any public man has received
so splendid a tribute as that rendered to his memory in the British
Houses of Parliament. The same words were on the lips of all: What
would Italy do without him? Death is commonly the great reminder that
no man is necessary. Nations fulfil their destinies even though their
greatest sons be laid under the turf. And Italy has fulfilled her
destinies, but there are Italians who believe that had Cavour lived to
complete his task, although his dream of an Eirenicon might never have
been realised, their country would not have passed through the _selva
selvaggia_ of mistakes and humiliations into which she now entered.