After the Renaissance, when the great towns fell from their splendour and independence and came again largely under foreign rule, Italy dropped behind the progress movement of the North. Armies came and went, dukes and emperors appeared and disappeared, kings passed by, German, French, Spanish tongues sounded in authority through the land. And under all this the Italians remained provincial and local, ignorant, apart from the changing world. Catholic in spirit, attached by warm blood-passion to their native place, they kept to that which was sure, the fellowship of their own townsmen, the abiding rock of the Catholic Church. In the towns they governed their own affairs under alien masters, they felt safe and sure in their own piazza, the open square where the church stood, where the priest passed and gave a sense of permanency, where nobles rode gaily through. Their own affairs, their own passions, these alone interested them. And the peasant in the country woke to the clanging of bells: at noon the bells rang sharp across the field to bid him rest awhile and eat: he waited for the bells to call him home at dusk. The church gave him the day and marked it out for him: the priest gave him peace after confession; and a little wine, a little excited talk with his neighbours, with singing and merrymaking at the church feasts, filled his life well enough. Why should he bother about what was beyond? He clung sensitively to his own place, his own village fellows, his own priest, the sound of the sacred, sudden bells from the campanile.
So the years passed, while the North, England, Germany, France were struggling with kings and parliaments and commerce. The Italians let those rule who must rule,: those think and struggle who must. For their part, they I had enough with their own private troubles and passions j and intrigues. Out of the bitter Beyond came armies of j Germans, French, Spaniards, and into the bitter Beyond they disappeared again. Or else they did not disappear, but remained like a necessary evil.
In the eighteenth ccntury Spanish power practically ‘ came to an end in Italy. Austrian possession was confined to the North. The various states of the peninsula were fairly prosperous, poorest in the South; and on the whole, the people were as free as elsewhere in Europe, save Britain. Those in one state did not bother about those in another state. The subjects of the Pope felt they had no more connection with the subjects of Piedmont in Turin than with the subjects of France in Paris. There was no Italy — only a bunch of states with their peoples and their petty princes or their great princes, the luxurious, refined, profligate courts, the indifferent rule. Feudal conditions still existed, almost mediaeval serfdom, and in parts the peasants were bitterly poor. But men were men, and on the whole, rich and poor alike, they were perhaps more human in Italy than in the progressive countries.
Into all this Napoleon Bonaparte burst roughly, in his campaigns of 1796 and 1801. He defeated Austria, he brought the peninsula to his feet, and let in a blast of fresh air from the North which startled the soft Italians. He made Italy a kingdom of his own, took all the power from princes and Pope, set Murat, his general, on the throne of Bourbon Naples, and established a French republican government. Feudalism was abolished, and men were made free to rise in the world, instead of being tied down to one condition. The land system was revolutionised, the peasants given their share. Monasteries were suppressed to help to pay the great national debt. Primary schools were established all over Lom- bardy and Naples, and priests were put into the background.
So, quite suddenly, Italy came into the grasp of the modern world. And quite quickly, men began to appreciate the change. They breathed a new air, they felt more alive, new doors seemed opened. Italian soldiers brought back a proud name for bravery from Napoleon’s great victories. And Napoleon, who hated Austria and the Pope, encouraged Italians in all parts to be Italian, not to think of themselves as Papal or Austrian or Neapolitan subjects. New ideas spread: ideas of equality and liberty and free thought. The old monotony was gone, the old submissiveness interrupted. Doctors, lawyers, middle-class citizens were given a share in state government. The power of princes was shaken for ever, and the ten states into which the peninsula had been divided suddenly had disappeared. Italy was all suddenly united.
But it was too sudden. There were new grievances. More than 60,000 Italians fell in Spain and Russia, conscripted by Napoleon for a quarrel that was none of theirs. Taxation became very heavy. Napoleon insulted the Pope and angered Italian instincts. After the Russian campaign French rule became hateful in the peninsula, particularly in the dark-minded South.
Waterloo made an end of Napoleon’s Italy. Down in the South, the brave Murat was chased away, and finally killed. With British help, the ignominious Bourbons returned to the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, as Naples with South Italy and Sicily was called. At the dividing up of Europe, the Pope added to his papal states the Romagna and the Marches, the large and valuable province along the Adriatic, whose towns are Bologna, Ravenna, Ancona; Austria recovered Lombardy, and was given Venice and the Venetian territory, which before had been a republic; in the North, the one strong Italian power of Piedmont, ruled by the House of Savoy, called Kings of Sardinia, held its own against Austria and added to itself the Riviera territory and Genoa, so that the Genoese republic disappeared, like the Venetian; Austrian Leopold returned to the independent Grand-Duchy of Tuscany, where he ruled, however, with Tuscan ministers; Duke Francis, another Austrian prince, ruled in Modena; Napoleon’s Austrian wife, Maria Louisa, became Duchess of Parma and ruled kindly enough; while a princess of a Spanish house had the little duchy of Lucca.
So there was a great return of princes and rulers back to their states, whilst republics vanished, after the Congress of Vienna. In Italy, as in Spain and in Germany, the people wildly and joyfully welcomed back their old masters. Even the vile Ferdinand of Naples met with the same reception as sonic of the better princes of the North, and was hailed as if he were a god. Whereas Murat had been a much finer man.
Safe on their thrones once more, these princes set about to pull to pieces the work of the hated Bonaparte. The world must go back, back. But some of Napoleon’s reforms were too obvious to be done away with. Yet the spirit was killed even when the letter remained. Life was driven back. And soon Italians were thinking with wonder and admiration of the great days of Napoleonic government and Murat’s kingdom. Feudal privileges, monasteries, government by priests, courts of clerical justice — all the old abuses were restored. Only in Piedmont the people stubbornly but passively resisted the pushing back of life, and before long certain of the ministers of Napoleonic days were in office under the King of Sardinia.
In Lombardy and Venctia the famous Austrian Minister, Metternich, had promised a rule ‘ conforming to Italian character and custom.’ Bitter was the chagrin when the people saw Austrian law introduced, conscription enforced, and Austrians and Tyrolese seizing all the higher posts of civil government. The emperor let it be known that he ‘ wanted not learned men, but loyai subjects.’ Austrian soldiers in their white coats were everywhere in the North — Vcnice, Milan, Verona — brutal and insolent with the populace, despising the Italians as a race.
In Tuscany the Tuscan statesmen held their own, Archduke Leopold was kind and stupid. Florence grudgingly restored some of the monastic possessions, and, following Lombardy, determinedly shut out the sly, retrogressive, intriguing, masterful Jesuits.
Rome and the papal states returned to old clerical rule, depending on spies and police and cunning and cruelty; and the Jesuits, with their determination not to let men escape their clutches, soon had their net over the Romagna, and over brave Bologna and Ravenna, the two fierce cities.
But it was too late to set the tide right back to the old Catholic submissiveness and mindlessness and the feudal rule. The army had become infected with democratic notions, the people were touched by the spirit of liberty, and educated men of the middle classes, longing for their day to come, watched the movements of the British and French Parliaments, of the Greek hetsera, and followed the pamphlets and writings published by leaders of freedom in the foreign countries.
And thus, in the South, the first quick result appeared. In the South the Freemasons had for a long time been a strong secret society, binding men together apart from Church and State. A number of the better-class Freemasons, hating the Bonapartist rule, took to the mountains. There they formed a new society, calling themselves the Carbonari. The Carbonari were a mysterious society, with the same rules, very nearly, and the same ritual as the Freemasons, vowed to purity and a good life like the Freemason, worshipping the Divine Order in the universe, expressing themselves in profound religious phraseology and occult symbolism, having a Crucifix in every lodge, and calling Jesus the ‘ first victim of tyrants,’ yet amounting in actuality to no more than a political society of republican tendency. What their actual ideas were they kept secret among the higher members of the cult, the initiated. Certainly one of their aims was to have power, unlimited power. But they only taught the rank and file vaguely to worship liberty and resist tyrants.
Great numbers flocked to join the society, and soon anybody was admitted. There was a secrecy, a mystery, a semi-religious, semi-worldly mysticism about it all which fascinated the South. The old dark religious impulse was now grafted on to a political purpose.
And in this way the movement for liberty began in Italy. Now, when so much is accomplished and achieved, we cannot help regretting that ever the deep religious spirit in man tacked itself on to politics. Politics, even liberty from a foreign master, is not a religious affair. Man fights for his liberty as a wolf fights for its liberty, because he wants to go his own way. And politics, at last, works out to nothing more than a mere arranging of the material conditions of life. It is not a religious activity. It is a sort of great commissariat organisation among men: nothing godly. You can’t save mankind by politics. Liberty isn’t salvation. We must have liberty. But having liberty, we have only got food to eat, clothes to wear, roads to walk on, and language to fill our mouths with. And still we have not even touched the inward satisfaction which the deep spirit demands.
Be that as it may, the liberty movement in Italy started, and ended, as a dual thing: a deep, religious passion, and a clever material scheming. It was both things, and the two things are really contradictory. And so, all the way, we feel a certain dividedness, a breach in our sympathy.
The Carbonari movement, being a secret society, naturally started in the South. But it spread to the North, where men naturally think and act more openly. The Austrians ruled well enough in Lombardy. Steamboats and spinning-jennies were being introduced. Milan was to be lighted by gas. Milan was the go-ahead city. The Carbonari were active there. They even started a newspaper of their own. But Austrian governors, smelling powder, snuffed out the flame.
Encouraged by the sudden bloodless revolution in Spain, a revolt broke out all at once in the Neapolitan kingdom in 1820. King Ferdinand was forced to promise a constitution, and put Carbonari liberals into power. Then Sicily, which loathed Naples, broke into insurrection, with wild mob atrocities. Europe was scared. Metternich sent an Austrian army southwards. It was met by the new militia and army of the liberals, which was broken. Austrians entered Naples, and Ferdinand sat tighter on his unscrupulous throne.
Three days after the Neapolitan Revolution was defeated, Piedmont rose. The Piedmontese wanted a constitution, and a war with Austria. For they hated the Austrians, 1 the white leeches,’ as they called the white- coat soldiers. The revolution had effect at first. The King abdicated. A charter was granted. And then it all fizzled out, the old regime seized power again.
In Modena Duke Francis had to crush an incipient revolt. In the ever-stirring Romagna, in the pine forest round Ravenna a brigade of Carbonari called the American Hunters drilled and prepared to rise, while Lord Byron, hand in glove with them at Ravenna, had his house filled with arms in readiness for the rising. It failed to come off, however.
Now the whole country lay prostrate under its tyrants. Metternich indeed tried to prevent persecution and the exasperation of Italy. But Emperor Francis played with his victims cruelly, and we have only to read Silvio Pellico’s My Prisons to know what the leaders suffered.
Francis of Modena wreaked a savage vengeance. Ferdinand of Naples evaded Metternich’s order against persecution, public whippings shocked Naples, liberals were proscribed and fled to the hills, armed bands wandered about, assassinations and reprisals took place. Ferdinand was a superstitious brute, and when he died in 182.5 men hated the Bourbon name.
Exiles from Italy were scattered throughout England, France, and Spain. Santa Rosa, one of the heroes, taught languages in Nottingham. Piedmont pursued her liberals with as much vigour as did Austria or Naples.
So, in 1821, the Italian question began to trouble Europe, and the Carbonari made their first great failure. After this, repression was the order in all Italian states. Men were not to think. Above all, they were not to read seditious literature. The censorship on speech and books was more than severe.
Naples had its martyrs and its saints of liberty, men of high birth and understanding who rotted in horrible prisons, yet who would utter no word against their oppressors: pure spirit of love, that is all love, and chooses never to fight. In the South exists the old oriental spirit, all the old abandon to an impulse. The North is more qualified. If the first strange spirit of abandon came from the South, all the fight came from the North.
Piedmont was the one true Italian state, politically. Not that it was Italian by race. The nobles prided themselves on their old Proven£al blood, the races at the foot of the Alps claimed to be old Celts, and there was considerable German infusion. The language was not Italian even. But Piedmont had a spirit of independence which finally gathered Italy together.
The Counts of Savoy, lords of a few Burgundian fiefs, had for centuries been wedged in between the power of France and Austria. Fighters, and masters of a mountain people, they bad sold their help first to one side then to another, usually coming out with the winners. And so, bit by bit, they added to their territories, first on one side then on the other. Wary and sly, they were always good at a bargain. And thus they became Kings of Sardinia, and ruled after Waterloo from Nice to Lake Magiore, and southwards to the Apennines. Turin was the capital, a dull, unintellectual, provincial sort of town, with a people who spoke a half-comprehensible dialect, who despised books or art, scorned the Italians to the South, were cunning at getting their own advantage, and looked upon the King as a sort of military father. In some respects, Piedmont resembled Prussia. Trade and commerce were encouraged after 1821, silk and wine and oil flourished, Genoa was a busy port. Piedmont knew how to look after himself.
The people, as in Prussia, were cowed and docile under their Savoy masters. But, subalpine, they were kept trained as soldiers, in all the manly fighting virtues so uncommon in Italy. The hate of Austria in Lombardy, and the uneasy fear of France in their rear alone made them Italian by policy.
But in Piedmont were born the four great heroes of the Risorgimento, as the uprising of Italy is called. In 1805 was born in Genoa a certain Giuseppe Mazzini, a doctor’s son. Two years later, not far away along the coast, at Nice, was born another Giuseppe, Giuseppe Garibaldi, son of a small sea captain. Mazzini, a thoughtful, quiet, solitary nature, played among the narrow alleys of the port of Genoa. Garibaldi, a robust fellow, led his companions in exploits by the sea.
Both grew up Piedmontese subjects. Mazzini read and brooded and thought, yearning over Italy, and hard against autocrats. He saw the failure of Carbonari revolutions, and his more northern soul resolved itself. His writings, full of passion on behalf of the oppressed, had a hard hostility to tyranny which the South could never show. He was determined that the meek should inherit the earth — in Italy at least — and he had all the indomitable persistence of the meek. His words and his spirit flew through the peninsula, as the Carbonari spirit had flown. But Mazzini’s was no secret doctrine. Mystery and secret power, dear to southern hearts, were left out. All was plain and open and ideal, purely ideal. Once more politics and liberty became a religion, a self-sacrificing religion of abstract ideals.
Round Mazzini’s writings gradually gathered the Young Italy party, vowed to unite Italy into one free republic. The second important Carbonari risings took place in Central Italy in 1831. Young Louis Napoleon, nephew of the great Napoleon, having joined the Carbonari, breathed fire against the Pope in Rome. At the same time Mazzini published his Young Italy Manifesto. A real Italy was to be founded on independence, unity, and liberty. Austria must go, autocrats must be deposed, the various small states must be united in one, under a democratic government. Here was a definite programme, no Carbonarist vagueness any more. It seemed like an absurd dream at the time, none the less.
The risings had a brief success, then failed. Rigorous repression followed, for there had been a scare. The brave Menotti was hanged. Mazzini found himself in prison, and then exiled from Piedmont. He took himself to Marseilles, busily continuing his work, issuing pamphlets and addresses which were secretly circulated, at the peril of those who touched them.
Meanwhile Garibaldi, a young sea captain, carrying on his life rather aimlessly, met in the Black Sea in 1833 a certain Cuneo, a patriot. Cuneo told Garibaldi all about Young Italy, and a light seemed to enter the young captain’s soul. ‘ Columbus,’ he said, ‘ was not as happy at discovering America as I was when I found a man actually engaged in the redemption of our country.’ Garibaldi’s passion was now fixed. The new pseudo- religion had fired his soul. Returning home, he went to Mazzini at Marseilles, and joined the Young Italy Society, under the brotherhood name of Borel. The two young men enhanced the enthusiasm in each other.
Piedmont was harshly anti-liberal at this time, so the Young Italy workers turned their activity against their oppressor. Conspiracies in 1833 were followed by torture and executions. Garibaldi and Mazzini tried to raise an insurrection: failed, and fled. On reaching Marseilles, Garibaldi saw his name for the first time in print — in the newspaper, announcing that the Piedmont Government at Turin had condemned him to death.
For a time Garibaldi went to South America, lived a free life on the pampas, fought for the republics and became famous as a guerrilla chief out there. Mazzini kept his fame alive in Italy, and the national feeling fanned gradually up.
The year 1848 was the meteor year of revolution on the continent of Europe. As before, the fire appeared first in the South — in Sicily. It spread up the mainland. Ferdinand ir. of Naples was forced to grant a constitution. On January 27 he rode through the streets of his capital swearing fidelity to the statute, and being hailed as the darling of the people. On February 8 Charles Albert of Piedmont promised a charter. On February 11 the Grand Duke of Tuscany granted a constitution. The Pope granted a charter to Rome.
In the North the flame flew fiercer. Bohemia and Hungary under Kossuth rose against Austria, demanding independence. The Viennese were even turning upon their adored Hapsburgs. Berlin was barricaded, the Prussian king was yielding.
The French Revolution of 1848 changed the face of European diplomacy. Again France was a republic, the Bourbon power expelled for ever. Again the Napoleonic tradition revived the terror of Europe.
Italy was trembling with rage against her tyrants, Piedmont expelled the Jesuits, the Fathers fled for the time from Naples, the Roman crowd demanded the expulsion of the order from their city. In vain the Jesuits hoisted the red-white-and-green tricolour which the Young Italy had chosen as the flag of Italy United. In vain the Pope tried to protect these creatures and their agents. The College of Jesuits had to be closed.
On March 17 the news of the Hungarian revolt and the Insurrection of Vienna reached Milan, where the Austrians with their white-coat soldiers swaggered in the Lombard capital. All at once arose a tremendous insurrection of almost unarmed citizens. The veteran old tyrant, General Radctzky, had 20,000 Austrian and Hungarian troops with him in the city. But such was the passion and determination of the citizens, that after five days of the most intense and awful struggle in streets and squares, Radetzkv was forced to evacuate the vast castle, and retreat from the victorious city. The young hero, Manara, remained leader of a dazed populace.
The news of the famous Five Days of Milan thrilled every Italian nerve. Venice rang the tocsin from St. Mark’s, hoisted the red-white-and-green tricolour from the two immense flag-poles in front of the cathedral, and cut the cords so that the Austrians could not get the colours down. Venetian citizens too were beyond themselves. In an almost inspired hour Manin got rid of the Austrians, garrison and all, out of Venice. There was a rising everywhere against the hated white-coats, till at last nothing Austrian remained in Italy but the Quadrilateral, and Radetzky slowly dragging his way there over the Lombard roads, with his army.
The feeling against Austria was intense. Austrian rule in Lombardy-Venetia was probably the best in Italy, the most free, the most prosperous. But it was foreign, and it was powerful, and men were beginning to feel they would die rather than live under foreign domination. And, moreover, the Austrian white-coats had all the northern and Hungarian Magyar insolence, all the northern contempt for the southern Italian race.
Charles Albert of Piedmont now declared war on Austria, wrapped himself in the tricolour and offered his help, in the name of God and the Pope, to the peoples of Lombardy and Venetia. But when kings fight against emperors in the name of the people, crowns are bound to tumble. So Charles Albert went very half-heartedly. He was not at all fond of that red-white-and-grecn tricolour. He knew the Young Italy wanted a republic. They might use him, Charles Albert, King of Sardinia, military lord of Piedmont, as a leader, and then drag his throne from underneath him when he was going to sit down again. Emperors are not such enemies to a king as republican peoples are. So he went half-heartedly, whilst Radetzky had time to reach the famous Quadrilateral, the four massive forts of Verona, Mantua, Peschiera, and Legnano that guard the entrance of the ancient imperial road where it debouches from the Brenner Pass on to the Italian plain. The Quadrilateral formed the four great Austrian gateposts in Italy.
Meanwhile volunteers flocked from Naples, Tuscany, Modena to the Piedmontese standard. The white cross of Savoy waved beside the tricolour. Now it waves in the centre of the tricolour.
Garibaldi arrived from Monte Video and offered his sword to Charles Albert, and was refused. He took service with the provisional government of Milan.
Meanwhile news flew in from outside. The French Republic stood firm. The hated Metternich had fallen. Viennese students were driving the Imperial Court from Vienna (May 17). Hungary and Bohemia had won a short-lived triumph; the German National Assembly was meeting on May 18. Never had the cause of liberty looked so flourishing in Europe. Yet the unhappy Charles Albert hesitated and floundered, could not gather his resolution.
So Radetzky marched out against him from Verona and defeated the Italian army cruelly at Custozza on July 25. Blunders of king and generals lost the battle, notwithstanding the magnificent courage of the troops. The royal forces were driven back into Milan. The frantic people, beside themselves, besieged the unhappy Charles Albert in the Greppi Palace. ‘ Ah, what a day, what a day! ‘ he said, wringing his hands. On August 5 he was forced to yield Milan back to the Austrians, for there was no food. He agreed to an armistice.
So Austria recovered all in Lombardy, and prepared to besiege Manin in Venice. Men were beside themselves with anger against Charles Albert. He had saved his crown and betrayed the people, they said. Mazzini and Garibaldi hoisted a republican banner, ‘ Dio e Popolo,’ ‘ God and the People.’
And thus the defeated Italians hated Austria all the more.
The next events took place in Rome, in this wild year of ‘48. Garibaldi had moved into the Romagna to gather to himself the fierce spirits that still held out as Car- bonarists against the spying priests and the Pope’s vicious, secret, police-cruel rule. Bologna and Ravenna were centres of revolt then as they are centres of rebellious Socialism now. So from the Romagnese Garibaldi formed his first legion to fight for free Italy.
Whilst in the Romagna he heard the startling news that Rossi, the Pope’s minister, was murdered by the democrat agents in Rome. The people of Rome were enraged because the Pope had refused to have any fighting against Austria, had even issued his censure against Catholics who took part in the struggle. Roused by liberal street orators, inflamed after the murder of Rossi, the angry Romans marched to demonstrate against their Sacred Master before his palace of the Quirinal on November 16, firing on his Swiss guard, and behaving very much as the crowd had behaved outside the Tuileries on June 2, 1792. But Pope Pio Nono, Pius ix., did not stand it out as Louis xvi. had done. On November 24 he fled, disguised as a simple monk, across the Neapolitan border to his friend King Ferdinand, called Bomba, because he had bombarded his own subjects in Messina.
When the Romans learned that their Pope had gone they felt as if the sun had fallen out of heaven. They were all uneasy, and did not know what to do. Republican feeling gradually became stronger, and in February 1849 the Roman Republic was proclaimed. Mazzini arrived in March, and was received rather timidly as Rome’s last and greatest citizen.
Meanwhile in the North Charles Albert, a haunted man, in bitterness ‘ eating Austria in his bread ‘ broke off the armistice, marched over the Lombard border, and was defeated by Radetzky on March 23 at Novara. Heartbroken, having in vain sought death in the battle, he abdicated, rode away in disguise, and died in a few months’ time in a Portuguese convent. Victor Emmanuel, his son, came to the throne, and confirmed the liberal charter.
Hearing of Novara, the Roman Republic immediately formed a Triumvirate or Rule of Three Men — Mazzini, Saffi, Armellini. Mazzini had much the same powers that Napoleon had when First Consul. But Mazzini tried to rule Rome according to the ideal of abstract righteousness, in purity, forgiveness, gentleness, and complete liberty. That was his will. Such a rule was successful enough in many ways, the city was quiet and good. But it is no use turning the other cheek when men come with cannon. Rome, the Roman Republic, must fight for its existence. And there was no money, no military equipment, no powerful authority.
Garibaldi, with his wild-looking legion, had ridden into Rome, received with suspicion at first, afterwards with enthusiasm. Those were wonderful days in Rome, when men were inspired to be good, freed from real authority, exalted by the unchangeable idealist simplicity of the first citizen, Mazzini. Picturesque troops bivouacked in the convent yards and the squares, everybody talked in excitement.
But it could not continue. Interference was bound to come. It came from the new French Republic. The French had chosen the young Louis Napoleon for their president. And though Louis Napoleon had been an old Carbonaro, he now depended on the strong Catholic party in France to keep him in his conspicuous position. Also he was posing as the saviour of Europe against Socialism. Hence he must rescue the Holy Father, and nip the Roman Republic in the bud. Troops were dispatched under General Oudinot.
Garibaldi was recalled into Rome from keeping his eye on the Pope. In his red shirt he was seen galloping through the city streets, preparing defences. The citizens digged and slaved at the entrenchments, fearless and full of inspiration for the moment. The French were driven off from the first attack on the city, with shame, and Louis Napoleon had a blot to wipe off the French military honour.
More forces were sent from France. Rome, isolated, fell. On July 2 Garibaldi marched out at night, slipped past the French, and escaped into the mountains. Finally he escaped to Piedmont, was moved on, and at last went to America, where he worked as a journeyman candle- maker, then as a sea captain, then a farmer. Mazzini wandered about the streets of Rome for a few days, and the French dared not touch him, for fear of the people. Then he, too, fled, made his way to England, his home by choice. ‘ Italy is my country, but England is my home, if I have any,’ he said. He worked and waited, sending out his threads of conspiracy from London.
The Pope came back, all the old secrecy and spying, police terror, prisons, and galleys. The papal government was as ruinous to land and people as it well could be.
Meanwhile a new phase was starting. Victor Emmanuel, a plucky little king, was on the throne in Turin. Count Cavour, his minister, was as clever a statesman as Europe has seen. Profoundly intelligent politically, a man of understanding and of liberal tendency, of great subtlety and of slippery obstinacy, Cavour was determined to have his own way, to make an united Italy by uniting all under the House of Savoy. It was bis great scheme, and he carried it out. On the one side we have the political- religious passion of the idealists like Mazzini and Garibaldi, on the other the vigorous, scheming determination to make a big united power out of a small, divided power, the determination which filled the breasts of Victor Emmanuel and of Cavour. Piedmont should become Italy.
Europe at that time w as wobbling about in the nervous balance of power. Britain was rather afraid of France: France was jealous of Austria, and was keeping her eye on Prussia: Prussia was looking askance first at Russia, then at Austria, then at Francc. Everybody was wanting to keep his own end up, and afraid lest anybody else should get his end up too high. So it was a game of beggar-my- neighbour. Piedmont, sharp as usual, made a great win in the South, Prussia in the North. Little Piedmont stroked and soothed the mane of the variable Louis Napoleon, become Napoleon in., Lion of Europe for the moment. Little Piedmont had a big bone to pick with Austria. Cavour looked imploringly to Britain, whose mighty navy patrolled the seas, to throw the shadow of her liberal wing over him.
Now Cavour wanted a war with Austria, and he wanted Napoleon hi. to help him, for he was not half strong enough alone. But the big powers did not want war: they were afraid of that shaky balance of power. So it was a great day for Cavour when he had cajoled Napoleon into friendship and taunted unwary Austria into an attack on Piedmont in April 1859. Napoleon marchcd over the Alps, joined the Picdmontese, won the battle of Magenta in Lombardy, and after this, with Victor Emmanuel, the bigger battle of Solferino: where the dear emperor wept, seeing the carnage. Now Napoleon felt he had done enough. Half a loaf must be better than no bread for Piedmont. He made peace with the Austrians — who had evacuated Milan and Lombardy — and retired into the Quadrilateral.
During the struggle the smaller states of Italy seized their opportunity. Austrian armies once withdrawn from their cities and borders, Tuscany, Romagna, and Modena suddenly declared themselves free Italian republics, and drove out their rulers. But then came the news of Napoleon’s Peace Treaty at Villafranca. Piedmont was to have Lombardy, but Austria was to keep her hold on Venetia, and the old rulers were to go back into the other states. Cavour cried with rage and disappointment, threw up his post and went to sulk in Geneva, when he heard the news. But Victor Emmanuel had nothing to do but sign. Piedmont was only the mountain cat between the two lions.
At this moment came Britain’s turn. ‘ The policy of Her Majesty’s Government,’ declared Lord John Russell, ‘ is not to interfere at all, but to let the Italian people settle their own affairs.’ Which was as good as saying that the policy of Her Majesty’s Government was to oppose any one else’s interfering in the affairs of the Italian people. Italian people meant, not Piedmont, but the new republics. And so the old rulers did not come back. Tuscany, Modena, and the Romagna united as the free Italian States of Central Italy, soon asking to be united with Piedmont, for safety’s sake, since Piedmont was the fighting power and Austria kept Venetia. But Piedmont was not so badly off after all.
The eyes of Europe were also on Naples. Mr. Gladstone had been in the southern city in 1850, for his daughter’s health. He had seen the horrors of King Bomba’s vile nde, his injustice, and his ghastly prisons for political offenders. All these horrors Mr. Gladstone told to the world in his Letters to Lord Aberdeen, in 1851. Naples became the disgraced state in the eyes of Europe, the pariah among the kingdoms.
In January 1860 Cavour came back into office in Turin. Tuscany, Modena, and the Romagna were annexed to Turin, and Savoy, with Nice and the strip of the present French Riviera, was ceded to Napoleon. Piedmont gave an acre and got a mile. But Britain was displeased at France’s increase, and Garibaldi enraged at the loss of his home-place, Nice. Victor Emmanuel had forfeited his ancestral territory of Savoy. But it was a sprat compared to the mackerel he was catching.
What was the next step? There remained Venice, the Pope, and Naples — or the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, to be exact. Venice was too far off for the moment, a second attack on Austria not possible. Quite impossible also to attack the Holy Father in the papal states, because he was still under Napoleon’s wing, and the French troops were guarding him safely. What about the Bourbon in Naples?
Cavour dared not send an army to the South, because Napoleon would not have it, Austria would not have it, the Pope would not have it, and Britain would not quite consent. It would look too much like grabbing. Only, if the Southerners would rise in revolt, then the Italian people would be deciding their own affairs, according to Lord John, and Piedmont could help them in the decision. At least she could send volunteers, who would count as Italian people. Piedmont as a state dared not interfere.
Cavour worked and worked for a Neapolitan revolution: without result. But there was trouble in Sicily. The Sicilians invited Garibaldi: Cavour dared not send Garibaldi openly. He let the lion-faced general know that whatever was done, Piedmont could not have any part in it — for fear of offending the other powers. None the less Garibaldi gathered his famous Thousand from the northern cities, took two steamers from Genoa port, and sailed for Sicily. The troops embarked on the night of May 5, 1860. Cavour knew. But he kept his public eye shut, and pretended he did not know at all.
This was Italy’s great year. And perhaps the wonderful adventure of Garibaldi and the Thousand in Sicily is the most moving event of the year. With a thousand untrained volunteers armed with wretched old muskets, and dressed in the civilian clothes in which they had left their offices, their studios, their work-benches, the general captured a great island and expelled a great army of regular troops, complete with arms and ammunition. On the morning of June 7, 1860, the British admiral and his captains watchcd from their ships two long columns of red-and-blue Neapolitan soldiers file along the esplanade of Palermo, past the ragged red-shi rted officers of the remnant of the ragged Thousand; twenty thousand regulars with all their equipment capitulating and evacuating the capital, leaving the island in the hands of the few hundred worn men of Garibaldi. In amusement and contempt the British watched this spectacle from the bay. Bomba had said of his soldiers, ‘ You may drill them as you like, they will run away just the same.’
And it seemed like it. Yet the troops were not really such cowards. There was room rather for wonder than contempt. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad, said the Romans. And so it was with the Neapolitans — they acted as if they were mad. But in truth they were sensitive Southerners. Somewhere in their souls they felt that life was against them, their position was hopeless, obsolete. Bewildered, therefore, they were huddled about in masses like sheep, their will and their integrity gone.
Europe was amazed, shocked, and delighted as may be, when the news of the fall of Palermo ran through the world. Now Cavour was free to act. Now the Italian people of Lord John’s declaration had started their own affair in the South, and Piedmont could come in. Cavour sent 20,000 volunteers to Garibaldi.
Foliowed the next great adventure, Garibaldi crossing the Straits of Messina, dodging the enemy’s fleet, defeating one army after another as by magic, driving the huddled thousands northwards to Naples. On the night of September 6 the young King Francis of Naples, son of Bomba, and his Queen fled by ship from their capital to Gaeta. Their admiral signalled to his fleet to follow. The fleet did not move, but remained lying in Naples bay. When next day Garibaldi arrived, and the city received him with frenzy of joy, the Neapolitan fleet came over to him and the Italian cause. Garibaldi handed the fleet to Victor Emmanuel, to the command of the Piedmontese Admiral Persano.
Cavour was delighted but uneasy. Garibaldi was too wonderful, too successful, too much beloved. He might want after all to establish himself as Dictator of a new Italy, work into the hands of the republican Mazzinians. This would not suit Cavour and Victor Emmanuel at all.
Meanwhile Garibaldi was in a fever to march on Rome, the capital, the heart of Italy. But the Neapolitan troops would not desert to his side. They retired northwards towards their king, and blocked the way effectively at Capua, at the river Volturno. The great Vauban had fortified Capua. The royal soldiers were determined. They had their king amongst them, and would stand by him. Garibaldi and his red-shirts and his volunteers from the North could do nothing but face the enemy. It was a deadlock. Out of her half million inhabitants Naples sent eighty to help Garibaldi. His dream of a united Italian people, inspired with one free spirit, was broken for ever. The South could never be as the North.
All this was lucky for Cavour. The Pope was the one enemy left, and fortunately Garibaldi could not get at him. Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. It was the Pope’s turn. And so Pio Nono proceeded in pure madness to offend and insult Napoleon III. and to cast slights on the French honour. Napoleon was the one protector of the Papacy, and Pius ix. insisted on regarding him as a wolf and kingdom-breaker, a vile Bonapartist. So that when Cavour cajoled Napoleon to allow an invasion of the papal states, Napoleon consented, so long as Rome itself was not attacked. ‘ And be quick,’ said the Emperor of the French.
Cavour was quick. He had Austria to fear. And Austria had to fear Cavour’s plots with Kossuth and the Hungarians. Flying in the face of all the powers except Britain, Cavour marched the Piedmontese troops across the Papal frontier on September 11. They wrere to take Ancona, the port on the Adriatic at which Austria usually entered Central Italy.
On September 16 the Piedmontese met the Pope’s army of Crusaders — Italian, French, Austrian, Swiss, Belgian, Irish — at Castelfidardo, near Loreto. The papal forces were scattered. Ten days later the Piedmontese captured Ancona. Austria could not move. The Pope was confined to Rome and his small province around Rome.
Meanwhile Garibaldi was fixed in the South before Capua, craving to get to Rome. On October 1 the Neapolitan Royalist troops marched out against him, over the Volturno. After twelve hours of tremendous fighting, Garibaldi beat back the enemy. They retired into Capua, and the position was unchanged. The Bourbon army still held up Garibaldi.
Cavour must now be quick. Italy was in his grasp. The white cross of Savoy was to stand in the centre of the tricolour. He persuaded Garibaldi, for the sake of Italy, to invite Victor Emmanuel and the troops of Ancona to join him in Naples. It meant yielding all to the King; but the Italian people wanted it. They wanted a king. ‘ Victor Emmanuel should be our Garibaldi,’ they began to say.
A plebiscite was taken in Naples and Sicily. Should Naples and Sicily be annexed to Piedmont, or not? The result was, on the mainland 1,302,064 votes for, 10,312 against annexation: Sicily, 432,053 for, 667 against. That was an end of Dictators or Mazzini republics: even of Garibaldi.
On October 26 Garibaldi advanced to meet the King, across the Volturno. Victor Emmanuel was a little, strutting man with huge moustaches. Garibaldi had a lion face — stupid, Mazzini called it — and a blond beard, bis head bound in a silk kerchief, southern fashion, under his hat. He wore his red shirt.
‘ I greet the first King of Italy,’ he cried, saluting Victor Emmanuel, and hinting that he not only greeted but created the first King of Italy.
‘ How are you, dear Garibaldi? ‘
‘ Well, your Majesty. And you? ‘
‘ First class.’
The two shook hands. But they no longer loved each other.
The King treated the Garibaldini shabbily enough, though he was ready to give money and such stuff, which they did not want. ‘ I am squeezed like an orange and thrown into a corner,’ said Garibaldi. The King said he did not want the Garibaldi volunteers in the army; they were to be disbanded.
So, in pouring rain, Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel rode into Naples side by side, both in bad tempers. They got on each other’s nerves, but the loudest cheering was for Garibaldi, which annoyed Victor Emmanuel.
Next day, rather wistful, Garibaldi left for his little island farm on Caprera, a poor man, choosing to be poor. The King and his party were not sorry he was gone. After all, such a man was a threat to their class privileges, by his very existence, and a thorn in the flesh of royal importance.
Francis of Naples was besieged in Gaeta, and yielded at last on February 13, 1861, to the Piedmontese. The Citadel of Messina capitulated in March, and Bourbon power was extinct.
Italy was now united, she entered the ranks of the great states of Europe, under her king, Victor Emmanuel. Probably it was best: certainly it was safest so. An Italian republic would hardly have held together, and would certainly never have been safe from the lions of the day.
Cavour died in 1861, a great loss to the young kingdom. His last cry was for a free Church in a free State. His last words: ‘ Italy is made, all is safe.’
But the Pope was in Rome, a serpent in the heart of the kingdom. Francis of Naples was with him, encouraging brigandage in the South. Austria still held Venetia and the Trentino. It was no rosy task, ruling Italy.
The great craving was to take Rome, without incurring war with the great Catholic powers, particularly France. In 1862 Garibaldi and his volunteers landed again in the extreme South, to march on the Eternal City. But the King’s government forbade it. Victor Emmanuel’s troops met the Garibaldians on Aspromonte, down in the toe of Italy, and fired on the men. Garibaldi was wounded in the foot. But he had set his face against civil war. He would not fire back, but withdrew.
In 1866 Italy joined Prussia against Austria, and though she failed before the Quadrilateral, she received Venice when Prussia made peace after her great victory of Koniggriitz.
Remained now only Rome. Italy needed Rome. Milan, Turin, Florence quarrelled as to which should be capital of the kingdom, there was great jealousy among the old states. Italy must have Rome. But France and the Catholic powers forbade it.
In 1867 Garibaldi again set out, invaded the papal territory with a motley band of volunteers. But he had lost his cunning. He seemed like a shorn Samson since he yielded to Victor Emmanuel; he could do nothing. He was repulsed. Then new French troops arrived, and at the miserable village of Mentana, twenty miles from Rome, on the Campagna, the Garibaldians were utterly routed. Many fled, many were mown down mercilessly by the French from behind the walls. It was a bitter event, a cruel blow to Italian prestige, a painful memory for ever — Mentana.
Italy must wait for Rome until 1870, when French troops were withdrawn on the outbreak of the Franco- Prussian War. On September 20, 1870, three weeks after Sedan, Victor Emmanuel’s Bersaglieri entered Rome by the breach near the Porta Pia, and the Temporal Power fell. The Royal Court came and occupied the Quirinal, the Pope retired and shut himself up in the Vatican, after pronouncing the Greater Excommunication against those who deposed him.
And so Italy was made — modern Italy. Fretfulness, irritation, and nothing in life except money: this is what the religious fervour of Garibaldians and Mazzinians works out to — in united, free Italy as in other united, free countries. No wonder liberty so often turns to ashes in the mouth, after being so fair a fruit to contemplate. Man needs more than liberty.