CHAPTER XXXV

THE REAWAKENING (1820-1821)

Outwardly despotism had been triumphantly reëstablished, and Popes, princes, and privileged persons in general made a gallant attempt to pretend that the French Revolution and the Napoleonic upheaval had never taken place. Nevertheless, the quiet on the surface did not extend underneath. Inwardly the new ideas and aspirations were fermenting from Piedmont to Calabria. The Carbonari (Charcoal-burners), a secret society organized against despotism, plotted for freedom and for constitutions. Their members were thickest in the Kingdom of Naples, but spread throughout Italy. The spark necessary to set ablaze this hidden discontent came from Spain. There a successful rebellion obtained a constitution. The thrill stirred Naples. A company of soldiers under two young lieutenants rebelled (1820), many joined them, a general put himself at their head. The army would not fight them. The insurgents demanded a constitution, with a parliament, a free press, trials according to law, etc. The dastardly king was frightened into promises, but as the insurgents were not content with promises, he granted a constitution, and solemnly swore to maintain it. These revolutionary tumults, however, had alarmed the comfortable, conservative ruling classes and their leaders, the Emperors of Austria, Prussia, and Russia. An Imperial conference was held at Laybach (1821), and Ferdinand attended. The new constitution, indeed, forbade him to leave the kingdom without permission from parliament, but he had obtained leave by promising to argue in favour of the new régime. Whatever his arguments were the Holy Alliance disregarded them, and charged Austria with the duty of restoring despotism in Naples. Austria obeyed. An overpowering army easily scattered the Neapolitan constitutionalists and put Ferdinand back. The constitution, parliament, free press, and all the other obnoxious revolutionary institutions were brushed away, and Ferdinand, having hung up in church a lamp of gold and silver as an offset to his perjury, inflicted punishment on the late rebels as fast as he could.

Meanwhile the North had felt the thrill. In Lombardy the hawk-eyed government pounced down on possible conspirators. Silvio Pellico, the pathetic author of "Le Mie Prigioni" (My Prisons), and his friend Maroncelli, were arrested and put into prison (1820), there to stay for ten years. A little later Confalonieri, head of the Milanese nobility, and a group of gentlemen were seized and sent to prison. They were set free only in 1836, on the accession of a new Emperor. Some of them, Castillia, Foresti, and Albinola, then sought refuge in the United States. I quote from the unpublished diary of an American to show what kind of men these conspirators were: "Castillia is an Italian, of an honourable Milanese family. At the age of twenty-three he, with other noble and brave Italians, lovers of their country, was thrown into the dungeons of Spielberg (Moravia) by Austrian despots, and there chained and confined, sometimes in total solitude, enduring the sharpest privations and basest ignominies for seventeen years. Then on the accession of a new Emperor they were released and exiled to America—they were men of superior intelligence and education, honourable gentlemen, true-hearted, loving men—Castillia possessed all the virtues that one can name and in their most attractive forms."

What these gentlemen suffered for love of their country may be read in "Le Mie Prigioni." Pellico himself was a Christian saint. After years of solitary confinement he and Maroncelli were put together. Maroncelli had a tumour on his leg, which grew so painful that whenever it was necessary to move Pellico helped him. "Sometimes to make the slightest shift from one position to another cost a quarter of an hour of agony." The wound was frightful and disgusting. I quote from Pellico: "In that deplorable condition Maroncelli composed poetry, he sang and talked, and did everything to deceive me and hide from me a part of his pain. He could not digest, or sleep; he grew alarmingly thin, and often went out of his head; and yet, in a few minutes gathered himself together and cheered me up. What he suffered for nine months is indescribable. Amputation was necessary; but first the surgeon had to get permission from Vienna. Maroncelli uttered no cry at the operation, and when he saw the leg carried off said to the surgeon, 'You have liberated me from an enemy, and I have no way to thank you.' By the window stood a tumbler with a rose in it. 'Please give me that rose,' he said to me. I handed it to him, and he gave it to the old surgeon, saying, 'I have nothing else to give you in testimony of my gratitude.' The surgeon took the rose and burst into tears." Such was the character of the men who plotted for the freedom of Italy.

The Papal States likewise had been quivering. Lord Byron was in Ravenna at the time. He enrolled in the Carbonari, and sent a thousand louis to the Neapolitan Constitutional Government with an offer to serve wherever and in whatever capacity they should desire. His letters and diary help us to understand the situation.

The news from Piedmont was true. Some officers in the army proposed to demand a constitution from the king and then force him into war with Austria. They believed that Prince Carlo Alberto, who stood next but one in succession to the throne, though only a distant cousin of the sonless king, was in sympathy with them and would act with them. How far they were justified in this belief is uncertain. The leading conspirators had an interview with him, and thought they received satisfactory assurances. In subsequent explanations he denied any such assurances. Thus encouraged, the garrisons of Alexandria and Turin hoisted the tricolour of the Carbonari, and made their demands. The old king, Vittorio Emanuele, not knowing what to do, resigned in favour of his younger brother, Carlo Felice, who was then absent, and appointed Carlo Alberto regent during the new king's absence. Carlo Alberto, always infirm of purpose, with doubt and hesitation took the opportunity and proclaimed a constitution (March, 1821). But the new king, apprised of this wild act, at once annulled it, and bade Carlo Alberto leave the country. Poor Carlo Alberto was in a sad dilemma: should he obey his king and abandon his liberal friends, or cleave to them and be disloyal to the king? He obeyed and went to Tuscany. An Austrian army aided the king to suppress the revolt. The liberals escaped as best they could. Some fled to Spain by way of Genoa, where they were seen by Giuseppe Mazzini, a lad of sixteen, who thereupon resolved "that one could, and therefore one must, struggle for the liberty of Italy."

Thus the revolutionary storms swept by; the sbirri resumed their old methods of prying and spying, and dukes and kings deemed themselves secure of their own again.

CHAPTER XXXVI

PERTURBED INACTIVITY (1821-1847)

After 1821 followed ten years of outward repose. Times were hard for lovers of independence, but hope and purpose had been let loose, and in dark corners, cloaking themselves as best they could, the friends of freedom groped their way. Openly little was done except by exiles, but indirect aid came from literature, which followed the romantic movement, and loudly asserted the revolutionary ideas. There was Ugo Foscolo, the poet, half Venetian, half Greek, who after the return of the Austrians refused to take the oath of allegiance and fled to England, giving, as was said, "to New Italy a new institution, Exile;" Giovanni Berchet, of Milan, poet and man of letters; Gabriele Rossetti, of the Abruzzi, father of Dante Rossetti, a poet himself; and many others. By far the most distinguished was Alessandro Manzoni, a quiet, dignified Milanese gentleman, who wrote patriotic plays, and the famous romance, "I Promessi Sposi" (The Plighted Lovers). He cheered and comforted his compatriots with the thought that in him they possessed a man of letters whom Europe recognized as the peer of Scott, Byron, and Goethe. Scott praised "I Promessi Sposi" most generously, and Goethe said, "It satisfies us like perfectly ripe fruit."

Greater than Manzoni, though at the time less widely known, was the sad poet, Giacomo Leopardi, indisputably the greatest Italian poet since Tasso, and in the judgment of some men to-day, owing perhaps to greater sympathy with his sentiments, superior to Tasso. Leopardi raised Italian self-respect, as Manzoni did, by proof that the genius of the race still lived. He wrote the most patriotic odes since Petrarch. Of these the poem "To Italy" is perhaps most famous. It begins:—

Leopardi's wretchedness, in great measure purely personal, was matched by that of his country. Austrian soldiers, ducal sbirri, and Jesuits did their best to destroy all vigour, life, and freedom. The press was stifled; no allusion to freedom was allowed. In a chorus of Bellini's opera "I Puritani" the word liberty was stricken out by the censor and loyalty substituted; and a singer who forgot the change was sent to prison for three days. Things were best in Tuscany and worst in Naples, where Francis I, a rake, bigot, and coward, practised the utmost cruelty. After an insurrection in a village, twenty-six heads were cut off at his command, and exhibited in cages; and once, when a grandmother besought mercy for her two grandsons who were condemned to death, he bade her choose one. She chose one; the other was shot, and she went mad.

The ten long years of inaction at last passed away, and another wave of exasperated independence and patriotism swept over the peninsula. The French Revolution of 1830 was the proximate cause. This time, while Piedmont and Naples remained quiet, for most of their leaders were in exile or in prison, Parma, Modena, and the Romagna burst into insurrection; but the Austrian soldiers marched in, suppressed the revolt, and reseated duke, duchess, and Pope. The attention of the world, however, had been called to priestly government in the Romagna, and the five great Powers,—England, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia,—not wishing a hotbed of justifiable revolt on the same Continent with comfortable and privileged ruling classes, wrote a collective note to the Pope in which they insisted on certain reforms as indispensable. The papal Curia made promises, but did nothing, and all Italy relapsed outwardly into the condition in which she had been during the ten years of inaction.

Nevertheless, the forces underneath, plotting and conspiring for freedom, were stronger than before, and here and there indications of this growing sentiment cropped out. In 1831, after the ill-fated, melancholy, distrusting, and distrusted Carlo Alberto had succeeded to the Kingdom of Sardinia, an anonymous letter addressed to him was spread broadcast over Italy. This letter bade him choose between two courses,—either to lead the national movement, or to be basely servile to Austria. "Bend your back under the German (Austrian) whip and be a tyrant—But, if as you read these words your mind runs back to that time when you dared look higher than the lordship of a German fief, and if you hear within a voice that cries 'You were born for something great,' oh, obey that voice; it is the voice of genius, of opportunity, that offers you its hand to mount from century to century as far as immortality; it is the voice of all Italy, who awaits but one word, one single word, to make herself all your own. Give her that word. Put yourself at the head of the nation, and on your banner write Union, Freedom, Independence. Sire, according to your answer, be sure that posterity will pronounce you either the first of Italian Men, or the last of Italian Tyrants. Choose."

Carlo Alberto, melancholy as Hamlet, for the burden put upon him was greater than his strength, continued inactive, distrusted, and distrusting. His only answer was to give sharper orders against conspirators. The writer of the letter was a young Genoese of grave countenance, with a sweet mouth and sad, handsome eyes, Giuseppe Mazzini, aged twenty-six, who had already abandoned law for literature, and literature for his country. Suspected of being a Carbonaro, he had been arrested and put in prison. His father, having asked the reason, was told that "his son was a young man of talents, very fond of solitary walks at night, and habitually silent as to the subject of his meditations, and that the Sardinian government was not fond of young men of talents the subject of whose meditations it did not know." In prison Mazzini became convinced that the true aim of patriots was the unity of all Italy, and that the means should be the people, not the princes. After a few months of imprisonment he was banished. It was then that he wrote the letter.

In exile he began the task of rousing the Italian people throughout the peninsula to the need of common effort for a common end. He organized a secret society, and named it Young Italy. Its purpose was to make Italy free, united, and republican. The first article of its constitution read: "This society is instituted for the destruction, now become indispensable, of all the governments of the peninsula, and for the union of all Italy in a single state under republican government." The new society spread rapidly, and was, perhaps, the greatest individual cause of final success.

Mazzini was a master conspirator, a very St. Paul of the Risorgimento. His whole life was a passionate renunciation of all the pleasures and comforts for which most men live, and a passionate dedication of himself to his ideals. He is a striking illustration of the saying, The man whose heart is lifted up within him shall not find the path smooth before him, but the just shall live by his faith. His ideals soared higher and higher; not content with hope for Italy, he made plans for helping all Europe. He became an object of suspicion all over the Continent, and was driven from country to country, till he finally went to England, but he never ceased to preach and teach, to urge and encourage, to plot and counterplot. He believed in sacrifice, both of himself and of others, and instigated desperate uprisings. One of these, a wild invasion of Piedmont which came to nothing, is memorable because among the list of those who were subsequently proscribed for participation in it was a young seaman, a native of Nice, then a part of Savoy, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazzini himself stayed in England, where the cruelest accusations were made against him. He endured slander, malice, poverty, outward failure, still steadfast at his task. He says, "I have not for an instant thought that unhappiness may influence our actions." He knew Carlyle, who bore witness in his favour: "I have had the honour to know Mr. Mazzini for a series of years, and whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who, in silence, piously in their daily life understand and practise what is meant by that."

While Young Italy and the Carbonari worked in secret, literature continued to carry on the task of arousing enthusiasm for national achievements and national ideals. The patient piety of Silvio Pellico's "Le Mie Prigioni" was a most effective denunciation of Austrian tyranny; the plays of Giovan Battista Niccolini, of Florence, on subjects famous for Italian patriotism, were stirring appeals against despotism, civil and ecclesiastical; the romantic novels of Massimo d'Azeglio, of Piedmont, the patriot painter and statesman, reminded youth of the great days of old; other novels, passionate and patriotic, by Tommaso Grossi, of Belluno, and by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, of Leghorn, did likewise. These romances so pitifully uninteresting to-day did much; but a book of a different character had in its way a still more brilliant career. Vincenzo Gioberti, of Turin, began life by taking orders; he became patriotic, was suspected, imprisoned, exiled; in exile he studied, taught, and thought. In 1843 he published in Brussels "Il primato morale e civile degli Italiani" (The Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians), a book that rehearsed the old glory of Italy and pointed out new ways by which that ancient glory might be renewed. Gioberti advocated a confederation of the Italian States (excluding the Austrian provinces) with the Pope at its head. The book had tremendous success; its ideas were accepted and became a party creed; and Gioberti is entitled to rank as one of the factors in the Risorgimento. Oddly enough, as it seems to us now, his plan was on the verge of execution.

At this time Gregory XVI was Pope, a reactionary man, devoted to ecclesiastical history, and, according to his detractors, to Orvietan wine. He showed the extreme of papal incapacity for civil administration; in the papal cities was squalor, in the country brigandage, in both dense ignorance. But on Gregory's death Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti, an amiable, smiling, charming, handsome, liberal-minded cardinal, who had applauded Gioberti, became Pius IX (July, 1846). Within a month or two Pius granted amnesty to political prisoners, appointed a commission to study the necessary reforms in his states; permitted, tacitly at least, liberty of the press; announced a Council of State to consist of lay members; and authorized the organization of a civic guard. He was hailed with enthusiasm throughout the peninsula. Here was Gioberti's ideal Pope. Here was the man to lead the Italian Guelfs and drive the Barbarians from Italy.

That the ecclesiastical head of organized conservatism, the great bulwark of authority, the maintainer of ancient things, should be hailed as a saviour by men desiring independence, freedom, and war, needs a word of further explanation. In this period of decadence and servitude, while Austrian officers played the peacock on every piazza from Milan to Naples, Italians could remember that an Italian Pope was head of the greatest corporate body in the world, that tribute was paid into his treasury from every country in Europe, that kings treated him with deference, and that from East and West hundreds of servant bishops came to the foot of his throne. These thoughts, coupled with inapplicable memories and desperate hopes, led men to regard Pius IX as the predestined leader of the liberal movement; and shouts of "Hurrah for Italy, the Pope, and the Constitution!" were heard throughout the peninsula.

Hope, too, arose in Piedmont. King Carlo Alberto received Massimo d'Azeglio in audience (1845), and bade his astonished subject tell his friends that when the occasion should present itself, his own life, his sons' lives, his treasure, and his army would all be spent for the Italian cause. A year later the king withstood Austria in a dispute over customs; and a little later still, at an agrarian congress a member rose and read a letter from the king which ended, "If ever God shall give us grace to be able to undertake a war of independence, no one but me shall command the army. Oh, what a glorious day will that be when we shall be able to utter the cry of national independence!"

Thus encouraged by king and Pope, patriots, from Piedmont to Sicily, waited in tremulous expectation for the coming of great events.

CHAPTER XXXVII

TUMULTUOUS YEARS (1848-1849)

The period of waiting for coming events was short. The whole Continent of Europe was straining like a greyhound in its leash; Italy, from end to end, was on tiptoe with excitement; and the year 1848 came rushing in with swashbuckler fury.

In Italy the revolutionary movement began in Palermo. The people attacked the Bourbon soldiers and drove them out. Their example was followed throughout the island. Across the channel Naples arose and demanded a constitution. The frightened king granted it (January 29). In Piedmont at an assemblage of journalists, the director of a newspaper, "The Risorgimento," declared that the time appropriate to petitions for the banishment of the Jesuits and for the institution of a national guard had passed, and that a constitution should be demanded. The speaker was a stoutish man of thirty-eight, with a square face under a high forehead. He wore spectacles, and under his chin a fringe of beard ran round from ear to ear like a ravelled bonnet string; he looked like a distinguished and amiable professor, except that there was a pinch to his nostrils and a compression to his lips which suggested an arrogant lineage and inherited notions of "Let those take that have the power, and let them keep that can." In fact, Count Camillo Cavour belonged to the old Piedmontese aristocracy. As a lad he served in the engineer corps of the army, then travelled in England (which he admired greatly) and in France, studying all kinds of social matters, from machinery to constitutions. On his estates he was a practical farmer, and he took keen interest in public life. It was at this time that he first became a man of note.

The city of Turin took up Cavour's cry, and the king acceded. The Grand Duke of Tuscany granted a constitution. The Pope was slow to bestir himself, but the news of revolutionary success in Paris quickened his gait, and he too granted a constitution. In the Austrian provinces, Lombardy and Venetia, there were tumults, arrests, cavalry charges, and martial law; then came news of the revolt in Vienna itself and word that the scared Emperor promised a constitution. Venice accepted the promise; but Milan, where a citizen had been killed by the soldiers, broke into rebellion. Carts, carriages, tables, chairs, pianos, bedsteads, were heaped up to defend the streets; sixteen hundred and fifty barricades were erected; men snatched knives, hammers, arquebuses, axes; all took part,—boys, lads, old men, priests. These were the famous Five Days of Milan. Every street, every house was a battleground, and Field Marshal Radetzky, with fourteen thousand men, was driven from the city. Revolt spread through Lombardy. When the news reached Venice the citizens rose, forced the Austrian governors to surrender, and proclaimed anew the Republic of Venice. Daniele Manin was made president.

This glorious news, Venice republican, Milan victorious over Radetzky, flew to Turin. Every liberal went mad with excitement. The centuries of national humiliation seemed past. Now had come the hour for which Piedmont had trained and disciplined itself, for which it had hoped and longed; now should Piedmont uplift Italy and fight its country's battle. Cavour cried that there was but one possible course,—immediate war with Austria. A great crowd in tremulous anxiety thronged before the royal palace. At midnight on March 23, Carlo Alberto stepped out on his balcony and waved a tricolour scarf. Next day a royal proclamation stated that the Piedmontese army would march to the aid of Lombardy and Venice. A shout of joy went up throughout Italy. Modena and Parma cast out their dukes and sent recruits to help. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, even the King of Naples, compelled by necessity, each sent an army. The war was a national crusade.

At first the campaign went well. The Italian allies numbered more than ninety thousand men; and Carlo Alberto, leading the main body, forced the Austrians under Radetzky within the quadrilateral made by the strong fortresses, Verona, Peschiera, Mantua, and Legnano. But the King of Sardinia was no general; he lacked energy, decision, character. While he dawdled, not knowing what to do, Radetzky received reinforcements. This hesitation and delay cooled the first glorious burst of union and freedom. Pius IX felt doubts; what right had the Vicar of Christ to take part in war? Were not Austrians and Italians alike in the sight of God? What had the Universal Church to do with national divisions? And might not Austria become heretic and secede from the papal rule? He said he would not fight. So great, however, were the tumults in Rome that he was forced to face about once again, but his tergiversation gave a fatal blow to the cause. In Naples the watchful Ferdinand, eager for a pretext, took advantage of some street riots to dissolve parliament, and bade his army come home. One general with a few hundred men disobeyed, but the rest turned back.

In the north the old jealousies between the Italian States wedged themselves in and broke the new-made union. Venice, instead of uniting with Piedmont in a joint political confederation, insisted upon remaining an independent republic, and Milan hesitated out of jealousy of Turin. Of these discords and hesitations the octogenarian Radetzky took advantage. Within thirty days the Tuscan army had been destroyed, the papal army made prisoners, and Piedmont was left alone to maintain the Italian cause in the field. In a three days' battle at Custoza (July 23-25) the issue was decided. The beaten Piedmontese were forced to surrender Milan, and to retreat across the river Ticino into their own land, and Austria returned triumphant into full possession of her provinces, except the city of Venice. The little Dukes of Parma and Modena returned also.

Elsewhere the current of events ran equally fast. In Sicily Ferdinand bombarded the revolted city of Messina (hence his nickname Bomba), and forced it to surrender; and in Naples he made a mock of the constitution. Rome was in horrid confusion. Pius IX appointed Pellegrino Rossi prime minister, in hope that his energy and vigour might restore peace and quiet; but Rossi was murdered on the steps of the Cancelleria. Rioters wandered at will about the city. Shots were fired near the papal palace on the Quirinal. The Pope, terribly frightened, fled from the city, and took refuge across the Neapolitan border at Gaeta. He was besought to return, but would not. The revolutionary leaders convoked an assembly of Roman citizens to decide what form of government to adopt, and, though the Pope hurled excommunications at all who should take part, the radicals met (February 5, 1849), declared the Temporal Power at an end, and established the Roman Republic. In Tuscany the republican fire likewise blazed up; the Grand Duke ran after the Pope to Gaeta, and a provisional government was appointed with a triumvirate at its head.

In the north, Piedmont and Austria renewed the war. On March 23, at Novara, a little town on the Piedmontese side of the Ticino, the deciding battle was fought. The Austrians were completely victorious. King Carlo Alberto asked for a truce. Radetzky's terms were so severe that the king, feeling himself the chief cause of this severity, resolved to be of no further detriment to his country. He abdicated in favour of his son, Vittorio Emanuele II, and went into exile, where he soon died. The young king made peace on harsh terms.

All rational hope for the Italian cause was at an end, but the dismembered parts struggled on. The men of Brescia defended themselves gloriously for days, barricading every alley and making a fort of every house, but they were overpowered; the Austrian general Haynau inflicted atrocities that made his name a byword throughout Europe. His own report says, "I ordered that no prisoner should be taken, but that every person seized with arms in his hands should be immediately put to death, and that the houses from which shots came should be burned."[23] In Sicily the revolutionists resisted in vain, and the king's authority was reëstablished throughout the island. In Naples all liberals were shamefully and most cruelly persecuted. In Tuscany the mild-mannered Tuscans, dismayed at their own radical government, invited the Grand Duke to return; so he came, bringing Austrian soldiers with him.

In Rome still more notable events happened. Mazzini, as member of the revolutionary triumvirate, was at the head of the government. His task was hard, for the Pope had asked the Catholic Powers to restore him, and Spain, Naples, Austria, and France, hastened to obey. France interfered because Louis Napoleon, president of the new republic, wished the support of the French clerical party; nevertheless, he had to proceed cautiously in order not to vex the liberals, and pursued a wavering course. He said he would send an army to defend real liberty, and would let the Romans decide for themselves what they wanted. The French soldiers advanced to the walls of Rome (April 29, 1849); the Roman republicans were naturally suspicious and treated them as enemies. Skirmishes were fought, and the French constrained to retire. Meanwhile, an Austrian army came from the north, the Neapolitans from the south, and the Spaniards landed at the mouth of the Tiber. The French intimated to the Austrians that this was their affair; the Romans, reinforced by Garibaldi and his Legion, drove back the Neapolitans; and the Spaniards retired quietly, thus leaving France to deal with the situation as she deemed best. French reinforcements arrived, and fighting was begun again.

The Italians defended themselves for three weeks; their soldiers, though brave, were raw, many of them mere volunteers, and ineffectual against regular troops. As Mazzini was the hero in council, so Garibaldi was the hero on the field of battle. The last of knight-errants, he was the very incarnation of Romance and Revolution. Bred to the sea, this Savoyard from Nice always retained the jaunty, gallant bearing of a mariner. His countenance (childlike and lionlike),—with its broad, tranquil brow, benign eye, and resolute mouth,—in youth all sparkling, gradually changed with care and disillusion, but he still kept the seaman's mien and the seaman's lightsome eye. He was the beau ideal of a romantic hero. After his unsuccessful raid into Piedmont he had gone to South America, where he lived a wild life of guerilla warfare, fighting like a Paladin on behalf of republican revolutionaries who were struggling for their freedom. All the time he was training a band of Italian adventurers, his Legion, so that they should be ready when their country had need of them. These men rushed to the defence of Rome. Their entry into the city was most picturesque. The gaunt soldiers, wearing red shirts and pointed hats topped with plumes, their legs bare, their beards full-grown, their faces tanned to copper colour, with their long black hair dangling unkempt, looked like so many Fra Diavolos. At their head Garibaldi, in his red shirt, with loose kerchief knotted round his throat, the regular beauty of his noble, leonine face set off by his waving hair, mounted on a milk-white horse, rode like a demi-god.

Besides this Legion, troops of volunteers came from all over Italy. The character of these patriots may be learned from Mazzini's account of the young Genoese poet Goffredo Mameli, who was killed there. "For me, for us exiles of twenty years who have grown old in illusions, he was like a melody of youth, a presentiment of times that we shall not see, in which the instinct of goodness and sacrifice will dwell unconscious in the human soul, and will not be, as virtue is in us, the fruit of long and hard struggles. Of a disposition lovingly yielding, he was only happy when he could abandon himself to those he loved, as a child in his mother's caress; and yet Mameli was unshakably firm in what touched the faith he had embraced. He was handsome, but careless of his appearance, and sensitive as a woman to the charm of flowers and sweet scents. Such was he when I knew him first at Milan in 1848, and we loved each other at once. It was impossible to see him and not love him. Only twenty-two, he joined the extremes rarely found united, a childlike gentleness and the energy of a lion, to be revealed, and which was revealed, in supreme emergencies."

The defence of Rome was vain. Mazzini escaped by means of an English passport, and Garibaldi led a handful of men eastward hoping to reach Venice. The French soldiers marched into the city, and reestablished the Temporal Power of the Pope. Venice alone remained. Daniele Manin, the valiant dictator, maintained a stout defence for four months, but cholera and hunger came to the enemy's aid. On August 24 the city capitulated, and on the 30th Marshal Radetzky heard the Te Deum of Austrian gratitude played in St. Mark's. In all Italy, except Piedmont, the reaction had triumphed; Piedmont alone was left to become the centre of whatever hopes of independence and unity still existed.

FOOTNOTE:

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE UNITY OF ITALY (1849-1871)

After the uprisings of 1848-49, the old tyrannical system prevailed for eight years and seemed heavier than ever. Liberalism meant suspicion, disfavour, danger. The liberals were not very numerous and did not agree among themselves. Some looked for hope to Piedmont, some to England, some to France. Some were for a republic, some for a confederation, some for unity; some wished insurrection, others lawful agitation.

In Naples the king busied himself with putting the liberals in dungeons. According to the general belief the number of prisoners for political offences in the Two Sicilies was between fifteen and thirty thousand. Among them was Baron Carlo Poerio, "a refined and accomplished gentleman, a respected and blameless character," at one time one of the ministers of the Crown. It happened that Mr. Gladstone, travelling for the benefit of a daughter's health, passed several months in Naples at this time (1850-51). He attended trials of the liberal prisoners, listened to a "long tissue of palpable lies told by witnesses suborned by the government," and visited the horrible and filthy prisons. After his return to England he published his "Letters to the Earl of Aberdeen." He set forth before the English people "the horrors—amidst which the government of that country (Naples) is now carried on." He said that "the present practices of the Government of Naples in reference to real or supposed political offenders are an outrage upon religion, upon civilization, upon humanity, and upon decency." He described the "incessant, systematic, deliberate violation of the law by the Power appointed to watch over and maintain it." "It is the wholesale persecution of virtue,—it is the awful profanation of public religion,—it is the perfect prostitution of the judicial office,—this is 'The negation of God erected into a system of government.'" He recounted Poerio's trial at length, and told how Poerio and fifteen others were confined in a room about thirteen feet long and eight feet high, in which they slept, always chained two by two. These chains were never taken off, day or night. He ended by saying, "It is time that either the veil should be lifted from scenes fitter for hell than earth, or some considerable mitigation should be voluntarily adopted. I have undertaken this wearisome and painful task, in the hope of doing something to diminish a mass of human suffering as huge, I believe, as acute, to say the least, as any that the eye of Heaven beholds."

These letters were sent by Lord Palmerston to every government in Europe, and helped to awaken general European sympathy for the oppressed liberals of Italy.

In the Papal States Pius IX put himself wholly in the hands of the reactionaries and the Jesuits. His government was practically imbecile. Brigands came and went at will. In Forlimpopoli, for instance, a city of the Romagna, a famous highwayman and his band appeared on the stage of a theatre, and made the spectators empty their pockets of their money and of their front-door keys. In Modena, Parma, and Tuscany the governments did whatever they deemed would be pleasing to Austria; and in Lombardy and Venice the Austrians repressed the slightest signs of patriotism.

In Piedmont alone was there light ahead. The young king was the embodiment of the best qualities of his race. The statues of him, carved in the first fury of patriotism, which disfigure many a piazza, reveal only his corpulence, his monstrous mustachios, and the forceful ugliness of his shrewd face. Victor Emmanuel was a soldier born, of careless manners, imperious and brusque, yet with a charm of obvious honesty that won men's hearts and gained for him the title of il re galantuomo. He reminds one of Henry of Navarre, in his dash, his impetuous energy, his shrewdness, his deserved popularity, and his eternally youthful readiness to fall in love. After the defeat at Novara (1849) pressure was put upon him to return to the autocratic system, and, it is said, Austria offered him easier terms if he would. He had been brought up with the old ideas of the royal position, but he was statesman enough to perceive that if Piedmont and the House of Savoy were to lead in the movement of Italian independence, they must win the confidence of the liberals; and he had sworn to maintain the constitution. He was always a man of his word, whatever policy might advise, and answered that he should be loyal to the constitution.

Piedmont's history for the next few years is a record of liberal legislation, as it was then understood. This legislation was especially directed against antiquated ecclesiastical privileges, with the purpose of realizing Cavour's principle, "A free Church in a free State." A little later Cavour was called to the head of the government, and for ten years, with certain brief exceptions, he remained the chief figure on the Italian stage. There are diverse judgments on the very diverse merits of the master-builders of the Italian kingdom; some admire most Mazzini, the indefatigable conspirator, the dreamy idealist, the nobly fanatical republican; others, Garibaldi, the man after Petrarch's heart, the rival of Roland or the Cid; others, Victor Emmanuel, the honourable, bold, shrewd, resolute king; but all agree that Cavour's brilliant diplomacy entitles him to rank as one of the world's great statesmen, and that his work was indispensable to the establishment of the Italian kingdom.

This period prior to the war with Austria is Cavour's. He set the finances of Piedmont on a better basis; he began a series of measures for the development of her resources; he secured various internal reforms, but his brilliant achievement was in his foreign policy. He knew that the Austrians could not be dispossessed without a war, that Piedmont was not strong enough of herself, and that in order to gain allies she must get a hearing before Europe. The Crimean War gave Cavour an opportunity. England and France would have preferred Austria as an ally, and there was much cautious proceeding; but Austria hesitated, and Piedmont offered herself. Many Italians deemed the plan of taking part in a war with which Piedmont had no visible concern a piece of folly; but Cavour carried his point. The Piedmontese army went, behaved with credit, and effaced the unfavourable impression left by the disastrous campaigns of 1848-49. The fruits of the Crimean expedition were gathered at the Congress of Paris (1856), where Cavour, supported by England and France, was able to call the attention of the Congress to the condition of Italy. He pointed to the tyranny of Austria in Lombardy and Venetia, to the abominable condition of the Papal States, to the horrible misgovernment in the Two Sicilies; and he pointed to Piedmont as the bulwark against Austrian preponderance on the one hand, and against the revolutionary spirit on the other. Nothing definite was done, but the Italian question had been broached, and Cavour's participation in the Congress was recognized as a great achievement.

Piedmont's leadership was helped by rash revolts elsewhere, easily put down and cruelly punished; and it became plainer and plainer that through the steady, orderly monarchy of Sardinia deliverance was to come, if at all, and not through the visionary schemes of Mazzini. The dark, mysterious plans of Napoleon III now loomed on the horizon. Relations between him and Cavour became closer. Cavour, no doubt, would have liked to gain his ends without French aid, but that could not be done. The only other possible ally, England, would not interfere. In the summer of 1858 an understanding was reached between him and Napoleon that in case of Austrian aggression France would aid Piedmont. On January 1, 1859, Napoleon hinted to the world what had happened; on January 10, Victor Emmanuel at the opening of the Piedmontese parliament said that the political situation was not free from perils ahead, "for while we respect treaties, we cannot disregard the cry of pain which comes to us from so many parts of Italy." Count Cavour asked for a loan of 50,000,000 lire. Affairs moved fast. Relations between Piedmont and Austria were strained taut; but it was essential that Austria should be the aggressor. Russia and England, in order to prevent war, suggested a European Congress to consider matters. Napoleon consented; and Cavour, who knew that freedom for Italy could only be obtained by war, feared that his chance had gone. There was talk of disarmament, but no agreement had been reached, when Austria, impatient and arrogant, sent an ultimatum to Piedmont that she must disarm prior to the Congress. Victor Emmanuel refused and war was declared.

The French Emperor crossed the Alps, and in June the allies won the battles of Magenta and Solferino. The Italians believed that Austria would now be driven from every foot of Italian soil: when, suddenly, without consulting Piedmont, Napoleon, for reasons of French policy, made peace with Austria. The Emperor of Austria ceded Lombardy to Napoleon, and Napoleon transferred it to Piedmont; and, as a sop to the spirit of Italian unity, both Emperors agreed to favour the scheme of a confederation of the Italian States with the Pope at its head, but the latter plan was left in the air. This was the end of the high hopes of Italian freedom and unity. Italy had received a slap in the face. Cavour was furious; he had a stormy interview with his king, and passionately urged him not to consent, but the king had the good sense to see that he must. Cavour immediately resigned.

Meanwhile the war had caused the recall of the Austrian troops south of the Po, and the patriots had risen in joy. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Duke of Modena, the Duchess Regent of Parma, the papal legates of the Romagna, ran away, and provisional governments were established; but a permanent political disposition was attended with difficulties. The states themselves wished to join Piedmont, but the wish was not unanimous, for many people wanted to preserve local autonomy and their old historic boundaries. Napoleon favoured his vague confederacy, and a European Congress supported his view. Indecision reigned, but the cause of national union triumphed through the vigour of Count Bettino Ricasoli, a man of iron character, head of the provisional government in Tuscany. "We must," he wrote, "no longer speak of Piedmont, nor of Florence, nor of Tuscany; we must speak neither of fusion nor annexation, but of the union of the Italian people under the constitutional government of Victor Emmanuel."[24] Certainly the fugitive dukes could only return by force, and though Continental Europe approved their return, there was nobody to supply the force. The little states voted to join Piedmont. Piedmont, however, hesitated, in fear of European contradiction. Nobody but Cavour could manage the matter, and he was recalled to office (1860). Cavour appealed to the doctrine of the popular will to be expressed by a plebiscite. France, however, would only consent upon cession of Savoy and Nice, a measure already talked of as the price of the French alliance; and in spite of the reluctance of the king to surrender Savoy, the cradle of his race, the price had to be paid. The cession was made, and Parma, Modena, Tuscany, and the Romagna were united with the Kingdom of Sardinia under the name of the Kingdom of Italy (April 15, 1860).

In the mean time Ferdinand II, King of the Two Sicilies, had died, hated and despised by everybody, and his son Francis II, a weak, ignorant, bigoted lad, had mounted the throne. He refused a suggestion of Victor Emmanuel to join in the war against Austria, threw himself into the arms of the reactionary party, and made an alliance with the Pope. The discontented liberals took courage at the news from the north. In April, 1860, the revolt began in Palermo, and, though suppressed there, spread. Two young patriots, Francesco Crispi and Rosalino Pilo, went about stirring the people to action. Garibaldi was begged to put himself at the head of the proposed revolution. On the night of May 6, two ships, the Lombardy and the Piedmont, secretly left Genoa, and took Garibaldi and a thousand volunteers aboard. This band, known as i Mille, is nearly as famous and as legendary as King Arthur and his Round Table. On May 11, the ships landed at Marsala. Two Neapolitan cruisers came up, but two English men-of-war happened to be there also; and the English captains, under guise of friendly notification to the Neapolitans, took some action which delayed the latter long enough to let the last Garibaldians disembark. Once on shore, Garibaldi's volunteers ran to secure the telegraph office. They arrived just after the operator had telegraphed that two Piedmontese ships, filled with troops, had come into the harbour; a Garibaldian was able to add to the message, "I have made a mistake; they are two merchantmen." The answer came back, "Idiot." The volunteers marched inland. A provisional government was organized; Garibaldi was made dictator, and Crispi secretary of state. The cry was "Italy and Victor Emmanuel!" Garibaldi was joined by insurgent Sicilians, and, with numbers considerably increased, fought and defeated the Bourbon army. The story reads like the exploits of Hector before the Greek trenches. Victory followed victory. Palermo fell, Milazzo and Messina; then he crossed the straits and invaded Calabria (August). This marvellous triumph, for there had been thirty thousand regular troops to oppose Garibaldi, frightened King Francis; he proclaimed a constitution, appealed to Napoleon, and even to Victor Emmanuel, for help. It was too late. Garibaldi swept on victorious, and the king fled from Naples (September 6); the next day Garibaldi marched in and assumed dictatorship of the kingdom.

England approved, but Continental Europe looked askance at this irregular proceeding, and Victor Emmanuel and Cavour began to feel uneasy, apprehensive lest the Great Powers should intervene in Italian affairs. It was a difficult situation. Garibaldi was moving on northward, and proclaimed his intention of going to Rome, regardless of the French army stationed there, and then to Venice, regardless of the European treaties that gave Venice to Austria. Besides, the Pope had collected an army (largely of foreign recruits) to suppress the liberal movements in Umbria and the Marches, and to give aid to the Neapolitan king. Here were further opportunities for foreign intervention. Evidently Cavour must act promptly if he wished Piedmont to continue to control the national movement. He requested the Pope to dismiss his new army. The Pope refused. The Piedmontese army crossed the pontifical border, scattered the papal army, and took possession of all the papal territory, except the city of Rome and the country immediately about it, and then marched on across the Neapolitan boundary. Here the Bourbon army was holding Garibaldi at bay. The arrival of the Piedmontese determined the issue. A less noble man might have shown resentment at having another come at the eleventh hour and seize the fruits of victory, but Garibaldi hailed Victor Emmanuel as King of Italy, refused the proffered honours and rewards, and went home, a poor man, to the little island of Caprera. The Two Sicilies and the liberated parts of the Papal States voted to join the Kingdom of Italy. In February, 1861, the first Italian parliament was held, and Victor Emmanuel formally received the title King of Italy. Excepting Rome and Venice, Italy was free and independent.

Rome was the more pressing question of the two. A history of twenty-five hundred years, a profound sentiment, a patriotic, poetic, romantic love, had inevitably determined that Rome must be the capital of United Italy. On the other hand, opposed to the Italian national sentiment was the historic Catholic sentiment, diffused throughout Europe and strongest in France. The Pope naturally deemed his Italian birth inferior in obligation to his Catholic position. Moreover, the Temporal Power of the Popes had endured for more than a thousand years, and since the time of Julius II the pontifical title had been as good as the title to public or private property anywhere. Catholics honestly believed that this political kingdom was necessary to the independence of the Church. How could the world, they said, believe in papal impartiality if the Papacy were under the thumb of the Italian government? The difference in point of view inevitably brought the ardent Papist and the patriotic Nationalist to mutual injustice. The Italians looked on Pius IX as their worst enemy; the Roman Curia deemed the Italians robbers. French sympathy with the Papists, and especially the presence of a French army in Rome, made the question exceedingly difficult. A special circumstance aggravated the difficulty. The King of Naples, having taken refuge in Rome, armed and subsidized gangs of brigands, who raided the Neapolitan provinces and committed unspeakable outrages. These rascals, when pursued by the Piedmontese army, crossed the pontifical border and were safe. This condition was intolerable.

At this juncture the great statesman who had steadfastly pursued his policy,—a free Church in a free State,—and never lost hope of a peaceful solution of the Roman difficulty, died (June 6, 1861). The priest who shrived him was summoned to Rome, deprived of his parish, suspended from his office, and sent to finish his days in a remote monastery; so strongly did the Roman Court feel that Cavour and his abettors were wicked men.

Cavour's successors, Ricasoli and Rattazzi, with feebler gait, followed his policy as best they could; but uncertainty and hesitation prevailed. The two great questions, Rome and Venice, pressed for solution. The radicals clamored to have the Italian army march on Rome. Garibaldi's impatience would not brook further inaction. He left his island home at Caprera, and betook himself to Sicily, crying, "Rome or Death!" With a little army of hot-tempered radicals he crossed into Calabria. The Italian government had no choice. Regular troops met Garibaldi at Aspromonte, near Reggio, and bade him withdraw; he refused; shots were fired. Which side fired first is uncertain. Garibaldi was wounded and made prisoner (August 29, 1862). This indignity to the national hero roused much hard feeling, but reasonable men perceived that the solution of the Roman question had to be found in some other way than by a filibustering expedition against a city held by the troops of a power with whom the nation was at peace.

The liberation of Venice came first. Prussia occupied a position in Germany somewhat similar to that of Piedmont in Italy. Both had somewhat similar problems. Both felt antagonism to Austria, and also a suspicion of France. In April, 1866, the two states made an alliance against Austria, who, fearing the combination, tried to break it by offering to cede Venetia to Italy if she would abandon the Prussian alliance. Victor Emmanuel refused, and war began in June. The Italians were beaten both on land and sea, to their great mortification and chagrin. The crushing Prussian victory at Sadowa, however, forced Austria to accept the victor's terms, including the cession of Venice. On November 7 Victor Emmanuel entered the city. Rome alone was left.

Garibaldi made another desperate attempt, but was defeated by the French at Mentana (1867). Not by Italian victories, but in consequence of Prussian victories, the conquest of Rome was finally effected. The French were obliged to withdraw their garrison during the Franco-Prussian War, and then the Italian government, which, to the shame of ardent patriots, had so long forborne out of obedience to the will of the French, gave notice to the world that it would annex Rome. After a useless call upon the Pope for peaceful surrender, Victor Emmanuel directed his army to march on the city. Real resistance was out of the question, but Pius IX had decided to yield only to force. On the 20th of September, 1870, a breach was made in the wall near Porta Pia, a few shots were fired, a few score soldiers killed and wounded, and the Italian army marched in and took possession of the city. A plebiscite was held, and by a vote of 133,681 to 1507 the city voted to become a part of Italy. In June, 1871, the seat of government was formally removed from Florence, and Rome once again, after fifteen hundred years, became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy.

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