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About Google Book Search Google's mission is to organize the world's information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world's books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at |http: //books .google .com/I I tjj fim /ag ^-ism P '» >■. ••:■•■* J t^ if (1 1 : * ■♦: A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY ^ BEING A POLITICAL HISTORY OF ITALY FROM 1814 TO 187I BY BOLTON KING, M.A. "Now all these things happened unto them for ensamples*' VOL. I JAMES NISBET &f CO., LIMITED 21 BERNERS STREET 1899 3)Gr Printed by BiUiAnmni, Haxboh 6* Ck>. At th* BAlkntyn* Pitmi I r "^^'^Zs TO Mr MOTHER AND Mr WIFE \ i PREFACE This book is, as its title indicates, a political history only ; of social and religious life, of literature and art and science it only treats, when they border on the field of politics. Incomplete as such a work must be, the specialization is necessary, before a wider synthesis can picture the full national life. A foreigner, writing the history of a coimtry not his own, has his loss and gain. He cannot wholly grasp the subtle essence that makes the spirit of its life and insti- tutions; he cannot penetrate the side-lights, that often mean more than the patent facts, or understand each deli- cate inflection of the nation's voice. But what he loses in intimacy and colour, he may gain in perspective and impartiality. He is better able to see the problems in their true proportions, and neglect the noisy controversies of the moment for more abiding issues. His detachment from party makes him less likely to be biassed ; and though the world is small and its dividing-lines much the same every- where, it is easier for him than for the native critic to be fair. I have done my best to do justice to all sides, though I have not attempted to conceal my sympathies. I make no apology, if I have said hard things of the Papacy. For Catholicism as a religion I trust I have shown all respect ; the Papacy gvd political institution is subject to political criticism, and I have said less than the truth rather than more. My otjject in writing this book has been a twofold one. First, I ha\';e endeavoured to give a trustworthy account of a \ vii / i viu PREFACE chapter of modem history which has been most inadequately dealt with both at home and abroad. Outside a few limited studies, there is hardly an English or even a French writer who has treated the Italian history of the century with much pre- tence to accuracy or research ; and bulky as is the material published in Italy, Italian historians have not been success- ful in weaving the material into any very well-proportioned or readable whole. My second aim has been to make the re-birth of a noble and friendly nation better understood in a country which knows little really of Italy. The English- man's knowledge of the Italian Bevolution is summed, it has been said, in the belief that it had something to do with (Garibaldi and a red shirt. A leading London newspaper recently urged the Italians in all seriousness to take some steps in the direction of Cavour's Free Church, forgetting that this was done a quarter of a century ago ; and many a lecture on their recent troubles would have been spoilt by a rudimentary knowledge of their history of the last forty years. The tie, that imited so closely the English and Italians of the last generation, seems slackening, and it needs more mutual knowledge to cement the sympathy again. For the materials of the book I have had recourse to almost aU the published matter of any importance (nearly 900 works in all), except (a) contemporary journals as a rule, and (b) some literature out of print and not to be seen in England. I hope that these pages do not suffer seriously from either omission. From such small acquaintance as I have with the Italian press of the Revolution, I have found it of no great value, and it is remarkable how little such a book as Gk)ri's Staria deUa rivdnzione italiana, based on a careful study of the newspapers of the time, adds to our knowledge. The second omission has been due to an inability to consult any library outside England. The splendid collection of modem Italian books at the British Museum ha^ few gaps, but it has some, and it is singularly deficient in the govern- I PREFACE ix mental publications of the Kingdom of Italy. Hence I have only been able to study the proceedings of parliament after 1 859 in isolated collections of speeches, and I have not seen all the Green Books, which were first published in 1865. It is easy, however, to exaggerate the value of official publi- cations. Foreign Offices have so carefully bowdlerized their " books " — blue, yellow, green, — ^that they generally conceal what the historian most wants to know. They are, says Signer Bonghi, " only the stuff in the shop- window." " In- discretions," he adds, "supply the true materials;" and to discover the springs of diplomacy, the writer finds that his safest reliance is in memoirs, letters, reported conversations. Down to i860 the Italian historian is choked with the abundance of these. The eagerness of the Italians to pub- lish everything, however trivial, that bears on the Revolution, reaches almost to a literary mania. But the student, who wades through the dismal morasses of correspondence, can pick up gems. Even of ** documents," as to whose talismanic virtue I own to something of a heterodox scepticism, there is no small wealth. Historians owe much to the Revolution for publishing the records of the governments, which it upset in 1 848 and 1859. Italian statesmen have allowed papers to be published, which by diplomatic canons should have been hidden in the most secret recesses of the Foreign Ministry ; culminating of course in that masterpiece of " indiscretion," La Marmora's Un po* piu di lv4x. Even the Archives, down at least to i860, have been to a certain extent opened to a few historians, such as N. Bianchi, Nisco, Sansone. None the less it is true that all recent history must be more or less provisional, till the cupboards of government offices give up their secrets, and letters and memoirs, now withheld, see the light of day. This applies in Italian history especially to the period since 1 860. Here, though we have the great collection of Ricasoli papers and many records of considerable though less importance, we wait for the papers of Minghetti / X PREFACE and Rattazzi, CSrispi and Visoonti-Venosta, before the his- torian can tread safe ground. Still, in spite of this caution, I doubt whether future research will seriously modify the conclusions that can be drawn from existing material Of the defects of this book no one can be more conscious than the author. In spite of every care, it has no doubt its misjudgments and its inaccuracies. I shall value the kindly offices of any whose criticisms may enable me to correct these. I wish, in conclusion, to acknowledge my indebtedness to my friend Mr. Okey for very valuable assistance ; to the authorities at the British Museum ; to M. Pierre Arminjon ; to M. Clapar^e ; and to Messrs. Dent for their permission to reprint a portion of my Introduction to Mr. Oke/s translation of MazzinL BOLTON KING. Qatdon, Warwick, November 1898. CONTENTS PART I PREPARING FOR REVOLUTION CHAPTEE I NAPOLEON Italy in the Eighteenth Centoiy, i. Napolbon and Italt, 2. BeBolta of the French Rule, 2. Eug^e Beauhamais, 3 ; parties at Milan, 4 ; the Aostrians occupj Lombardy, 6. Napoleon at Elba, 6. Mubat : his campaign, 7, and death, 8. The Congbbss of Vienna, 9 ; and the Pope, 9 ; Piedmont and Austria, 10 ; annexation of Qenoa, 10. Position of Austria in Italy, 11. The national opposition, 12. CHAPTER n THE CARBONARI The Restoration in Piedmont, 14, Lombardy-Venetia, 14, Tuscany, 15, the Papal States, 15, Naples, 16, Sicily, 16. Its character, 17 ; Francis of Modena, 18. Discontent, 18. The Carbonabi, 19. The ConcUi- atore, 22. Rsyolution of Naples : Naples, 1815-20, 22 ; revolution breaks out, 23 ; constitution granted, 23 ; Murattists and Carbonari, 24; Sicily, 1815-20, 24; revolution of Palermo, 25; Naples and' Sicily, 26 ; Florestano Pepe attacks Palermo, 27 ; Austria and Naples, 28 ; Parliament repudiates Fl. Pepe's treaty, 28 ; the king goes to Laybach, 29 ; the Austrian invasion, 30. Revolution of Piedmont : the Carbonari in Piedmont, 31 ; Charles Albert^ 31 ; the army I'iBes, 33 ; Charles Albert R^ent, 33 ; the revolution collapses, 34. Character of the revolution, 35 ; weakness of feeling of Unity, 37. Ferdinand's revenge, 38, and death, 39. Charles Felix, 39. XI xu CONTENTS CHAPTER in SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITALY PiiDMONT : its growth, 41, and character, 42 ; the House of Savoj, 42 ; government, 42 ; nobles, 43 ; clergy, 43 ; army, 45 ; the class system, 45 ; justice, 46 ; education, 47 ; trade, 47 ; Gknoa, 48 ; peasants, 49 ; Fiedmontese hegemony, 5a LdCBARDT-VENKTiA. : the Austrian rule, 51 ; Milan under the Kingdom of Italy, 52 ; the bureaucracy, 52 ; taxation, 53 ; justice, 54 ; deigy, 54 ; education, 54 ; censorship, 55 ; local government, 56 ; the Con- gregations, 57 ; state-trialB, 58 ; police, 58 ; Lombard character, 59 ; nobles, 59 ; middle classes, 60 ; peasants, 60 ; nationalist sentiment^ 61 . CHAPTER IV SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITALY^ConHnued) MoDSNA, 63. Parma, 64. Luooa, 65. Tuscant : Fossombroni, 66 ; Leopold II., 66; Tuscan government, 67; the Tuscans, 68; the Qeorgofils, 69 ; clergy, 69 ; education, 70 ; peasants, 70 ; Tuscan life, 71. Papal States : the theocracy, 72 ; the Ouria, 72 ; administra- tion, 74 ; trade, 74 ; local government, 75 ; law, 76 ; justice, 77 ; police, 78 ; the Inquisition, 79 ; the Jews, 79 ; education, 79 ; religion and morality, 81 ; condition of the people, 82 ; Romagna and the Marches, 82 ; separatist movement in Romagna^ 83 ; Umbria, 83 ; Agro BtmanOy 84 ; Rome, 84. CHAPTER V SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITALY— (Confinued) Nafueb : the new land system, 87 ; theory and practice, 87 ; justice, 87 ; local government, 88 ; education, 88 ; corruption of government, 89 ; nobles, 89 ; clergy, 90 ; educated classes, 90 ; trade, 91 ; city of Naples, 91 ; peasants, 92 ; political indifference, 94. Sicilt : character, 94 ; Home Rule, 95 ; land system, 96 ; peasants, 96 ; mcUendrinaggio^ 98 ; want of education, 99. Ths Elkhkmtb of thb Italian Nation, 99 ; church, loi ; nobles, 102 ; middle dassea, 103 ; universities, 104 ; artisans and town labourers, 105 ; peasants, 106. The oppression, 107 ; absence of political life, 108 ; dawn of patriotism, 109. CONTENTS xiii CHAPTEE VI THE LATER CARBONARI loMAKTicisH, no; in Italy, in; Manzoni, 112; tlie AfdoUtg^ 113; Mazzini, 114. Thb Latbb Cabbonabi, 114. Position of Austria, 115. Hie OofiuAiAanOy 116. The Papal States, 1820-30: Leo XIL, 117; the Zekmii Cardinals, 117; the Liberak in Romagna, 118. Reyolution or Central Italy : Francis lY.'s plots, 118 ; revolation at Bologna^ 1 19 ; the Temporal Power, 119; Non-intenrention, 120; c^lapse of the first revolution, 121 ; the ''new era," 122 ; the Memo- randum of the Powers^ 122 ; second revolution of Romagna, 123 ; the French arAncona, 124 ; character of the Revolution, 124. CHAPTER Vn YOUNG ITALY ^teaddon against the Carbonari, 126 ; Mazzini, 126 ; Young Italy, 127. Piedmont, 1824-30, 132 ; Chablxs Albert, 133 ; becomes King, 135 ; Mazzini's plot, 136 ; Savoy Expedition, 136. Naples, 1824-34 : Francis I., 137 ; Ferdinand II., 137. Tuscany, 1830-40, 139. Modena, 1831-40, 140. Papal States, 1832-40: Gregory XVI., 140 ; Bemetti and the Centurions, 141 ; Lambruschini, 142. The Depression, 1833-37, 143. The literary revival, 144 ; Giusti, 145. Revolutionary movements, 145 ; Sicilian rising of 1837, 146 ; Muratori rising, 147 ; the Bandieras, 147. CHAPTER Vin THE MODERATES EUaction against Toung Italy, 149. The social reformers, 150; Scien- tific Congresses, 150; railways, 15a The Modebates : (i.) The New Guelts, 152 ; Gioberti's Primato, 153 ; (iL) The Piedmontese School, 156; Balbo's Speranze tPItaUa, 157; D'Azeglio, 158; his UUimi Casi di Romagnay 160 ; the Albertists, 161. Chables Albebt'b Reion, 162 ; his reforms, 164 ; railway schemes, 165 ; the King and Austria, 166 ; growth of Liberalism, 167 ; tariff- war with Austria, 167 ; the King and the Moderates, 168 xiv CONTENTS PART II THE REVOLUTION CHAPTER IX PIO NO NO PiUB IX., 170 ; the amnesty, 172 ; the cult of Pius, 173. Charles Albert and Pius, 174 ; the Scientific Congress at Gknoa, 174. The Austro- Jesuit opposition, 1 74. The Liberals in the Curia, 175; the Moderates in Romagna^ 176 ; the Radicals, 177. Tuscany : Pisa and the Jesuits, 177 ; the secret press, 178 ; the Florentine Liberals and the censor- ship, 179. The Romans, 179 ; the "Great Conspiracy,'' 181. Metter- nich, 182 ; Occupation of Fbbrara, 183 ; Charles Albert promises to help the Pope, 184. The Citizen Guabd at Lucca, 185, and Florence, 186 ; the Feasts of Federation, 186. The three progressive states, 186 ; the Commercial League, 187 ; Charles Albert in October 188. The Lunigiana question, 189. CHAPTER X THE CONSTITUTIONS Europe at the beginning of 1 848, 191. Schemes of war in Italy, 192. Th( Lombard revival, 193 ; the railway question, 194 ; Lombardy ii 1847, 195 ; the RomiUi demonstration, 195 ; Nazari's petition, 196 Manin at Venice, 196 ; Radetzky, 196 ; the Tobacco Riots, 197 The constitutional question, 197 ; the economic question, 198 ; th* bread riots, 199 ; revolt of Leghorn, 199. The Constitutionalists, 200 in Tuscany, 200 ; in Piedmont, 200 ; Cavour, 201. Naples and Sicily 203 ; the rising in Calabria, 203 ; Moderates and Radicals at Naples 203 ; Sicilian Revolution, 204. The Constitution in Naples, 205 in Piedmont, 206 ; in Tuscany, 207 ; at Rome, 207 ; the " Statutes, 210 ; theocracy and constitution at Rome, 211. CHAPTER XI THE NATIONAL RISING The French Revolution of 1848, 213. The Jesuits, 213. Military ru] in Lombardy, 214. Preparations for war in Piedmont, 216. Th Five Dats of Milan, 216. The National Rising at Venice, 220 \ CONTENTS XV in the Lombard cities, 222 ; in the Duchies, 223, Tuscany, 225, Papal States, 223, Naples, 223 ; character of the rising, 223. Pied- mont and the rising, 224 ; Charlss Albebt declares war, 226. CHAPTER Xn THE WAR Badetzky's retreat, 227 ; the Milanese after the Five Days, 227 ; Piedmon- tese advance, 228 ; the two armies, 229 ; the Volunteers, 229 ; Santa Lucia, 232. Beginnings of division, 232 ; Albertism, 233 ; Piedmont and the League, 234. The Pope and the war, 234 ; the Allooution OF April 29, 236. Naples : Ferdinand and Bozzelli, 236 ; the Troya ministry, 237 ; the Counter-Revolution, 239. Charles Albert and the national movement, 240. Lombardy : the question of Fusion, 241 ; Lombards and Piedmontese, 242 ; the Provisional Qovemment, 242 ; the plebiscite, 244. CHAPTER XIII THE WAR— {Continued) Fusion in Venetia, 245, and at Venice, 246 ; Piedmont and fusion, 247 ; results of fusion, 248. The war in Venetia : Nugent's advance, 248 ; Comuda, 249 ; Thum's attacks on Vicenza, 250. Piedmontese in- action, 250; Curtatone, 251 ; second battle of Qoito, 251 ; loss of Vicenza, 252, and of Venetia, 252. Palmerston's negotiations, 253. Piedmont and the war, 255. Sommacampagna, 257 ; Custozza, 257 ; Volta, 258 ; the retreat, 258 ; the defence of Milan, 259 ; the Sur- render OF Milan, 260. f CHAPTER XIV MODERA TES AND DEMOCRA TS The Salasco armistice, 261. France and Italy, 262. "The People's War,** 263 ; the Austrians at Bologna, 264. Moderates and Democrats, 265. Piedmont : Pinelli ministry, 266 ; negotiations for peace, 266 ; the war party, 267 ; fall of the ministry, 269. Tuscany : Ridolfi ministry, 269 ; the Democrats, 269 ; Capponi ministry, 270 ; Leghorn revolt, 270 ; Montanelli-Querrazzi ministry, 272. Papal States : Mamiani ministry, 273 ; Fabbri ministry, 277 ; Rossi ministry, 277. VOL. I. b J0 xvi CONTENTS CHAPTER XV THE DEMOCRATS IN POWER Rossi's Death, 280 ; the Pope flies, 282. Thb Papal Qubstion : the Pope at Oaeta, 282 ; Antonelli, 283 ; Gioberti and the Catholic Powers, 284 ; France and the Papacy, 285. The League, 286 ; the Federative Congress, 287 ; the Constituent, 288. Rome in November, 289 ; demand for a Constituent, 290 ; Muzzarelli ministry, 291 ; the Moderates in Romagna, 291 ; the Roman Constituent, 291 ; Thb Rkpublio Proclaimed, 292. Tuscany : Montanelli and Ouerrazzi, 293 ; the Tuscan Constituent, 294 ; the Qrand Duke's flight, 294 ; the Provisional Qovemment, 295 ; the Grand Duke goes to Gaeta, 296. CHAPTER XVI NOVAkA Piedmont under Gioberti, 297 ; the Democratic opposition, 299 ; Gioberti and Tuscany, 300 ; he resigns, 300. The Austrians in Lombardy, 300. Italy and war, 301 ; the war-fever in Piedmont, 303. The truce denounced, 304 ; La Cava, 305 ; Mortara, 305 ; Novara, 306 ; Charles Albert abdicates, 306. CHAPTER XVII NAPLES AND SICILY Naples : Bozzelli ministry, 307 ; Calabrian revolt, 308 ; parliamentary opposition, 309 ; the reaction unmasks, 309 ; Ferdinand at Gaeta, 310 ; parliament dissolved, 310. Sicilt : Sicilian independence, 311; negotiations with Naples, 311; forfeiture of the throne, 312 ; royalists and republicans, 312 ; Sicily and Italy, 313 ; Duke of Genoa elected King, 315 ; bombardment of Messina, 316 ; the reaction begins, 317 ; the national guard, 318 ; Ultimatum of Gaeta, 318 ; the war, 319 ; the last struggle at Palermo, 320. CHAPTER XVin THE CENTRAL REPUBLICS TusCANT : Guerrazzi, 321 ; the republicans and the government, 322 ; question of union with Rome, 323 ; the reaction, 324 ; Guerrazzi dictator, 325 ; the Counter-revolution, 326. Rome : the Executive CONTENTS xvii Committee, 326 ; Mazzini, 327 ; the Triumvirate, 327 ; the Republic and the Church, 328 ; tolerance of the government, 329 ; its weakness, 330 ; outrages at Rome, 331, and Ancona, 331 ; the people and the republic, 331. Policy of Qaeta, 332 ; French policy, 333 ; Oudinot's Expedition, 334 ; fight of April 30, 335 ; De Lc«sepe' negotiations^ 336 ; Austrian invasion of Romagna, 336 ; negotiations broken off, 337 ; the siege, 338 ; fall of the city, 340 ; Qaribaldi's retreat, 34a CHAPTER XIX VENICE UNDER MANIN Ybnick: fusion repealed, 341 ; Venice and France, 342; the blockade, 342 ; Manin's government, 343 ; the bombardment, 344 ; the surrender, 345. Manin, 345. The Causes of Failure, 347 ; provincial jealousies, 347 ; political divisions, 348 ; want of statesmen, 349 ; defects in national character, 35a The spirit of the movement, 351 ; Ugo Bassi, 351. PART III THE TEN YEARS* WAITING CHAPTER XX PIEDMONT AFTER NO VARA. THE REACTION Piedmont : after Novara, 353 ; revolt of Qenoa, 354 ; question of prolong- ing the war, 354 ; The Constitution saved, 355 ; IVAzegiio premier, 356 ; the terms of peace, 356 ; the Proclamation of Moncalieri, 359. The Hegemony of Piedmont, 359 ; the refugees, 360 ; Turin, 36a Papal States : the people and the Restoration, 362 ; the French at Rome, 362 ; the Red Triumvirate, 363 ; Napoleon's letter to Edgar Ney, 364 ; the Motu-Proprio of Portici, 364 ; the Pope returns to Rome, 365 ; Ultramontanism, 365. CHAPTER XXI THE REACTION— {Continued) Naples : Ferdinand's absolutism, 367 ; the constitution suspended, 368 ; the political trials, 368 ; Gladstone's Letters, 369. Tuscany : the XVUl CONTENTS oounter-reyolutionistB, 370 ; the Grand Duke, 371 ; the Austrian occupation, 371 ; the Qrand Duke's return, 372 ; the constitution suspended, 373. Lombardt-Venbtia : military rule, 374 ; Karl von Schwarzenberg, 375 ; Radetzky uncontrolled, 375. The Austrians in Romagna, 376 ; Modena, 377. Parma, 378. League and Concordats : position of Austria, 379 ; paternal government, 379 ; the Catholic school, 380 ; the Austrian League, 381 ; the Concordats, 382. Strength and weakness of the reaction, 383. CHAPTER XXII CAVOUR Difficulties of Piedmont, 385 ; the Conservative reaction, 387 ; parties in the Chamber, 387 ; Rattazzi, 389. D'Azeglio's policy, 390 ; the struggle with Rome, 392 ; The Sicca rdi Lawb, 394 ; Fransoni's defiance, 395 ; more anti-clerical measures, 396. Cavour, 397 ; be- comes minister, 399 ; his financial policy, 400 ; Free Trade, 401. CHAPTER XXIII THE HEGEMONY OF PIEDMONT The Hegemony of Piedmont, 402 ; Victor Emmanuel II., 403 ; Piedmont and Austria, 405. Louis Napoleon, 406 ; the cowp d!dai, 407 ; the Deforesta Press Law, 408. The connuhvo^ 409 ; Cavour leaves the ministry, 410; Civil Marriage bill, 410; D'Azeglio resigns, 411 ; Cavour premier, 411. The Republicans, 412 ; Mazzini, 412 ; Lom- bardy, 1850-52, 413 ; the republican conspiracy, 413 ; the Milan plot, 414 ; the sequestrations, 415 ; Cavour's protest, 416. A HISTORY OF ITALIAN CHAPTER I ^ff^ NAPOLEON 1814-1815 Italy in tlie Eighteenth Centiuy. Napoleon and Itali. Resnlts of the French Rule. Eugene Beauhanuua ; Parties at If ilan j the Austrians occupy Lombard^. Napoleon at Elba. Uckat : hi« campaign and death. Thb Conobbsb of Tiknna, and the Pope ; Piedmont and Anetria ; Annexation of Qenoa. Position of Austria in Italy. The national opposition. At the begiiming of the nineteenth centui^ there was little consciousness in Italy of any national existence. The memoiy, indeed, of days when Rome gave her laws to the vestem world had never been forgotten. The poUcy of the Guelfs was at bottom a half-understood struggle to &ee Italy from foreign rule. But even when the eighteenth c^ituiy saw the practical extinction of the Spanish domina- tion, saw Austria confined to the north and Piedmont advancing in its slow, patient march, Italians were still content with the loose concourse of petty states that took the place of a nation. The latter half of the century was au age of peace and reform, the f^ of Joseph II. and Leopold I., of Tannucci and Beccaria. It left Italy fairly prosperous, fairly advanced in social legislation, but a country whose life was in its memories and its arts, the beautiful woman-land of poetry, to be simg and caressed and coveted, but debarred from liberty and independence. The French Eevolution broke roughly in on this, on the soft luxuriousness, the polished immorality, the show of VOL. I. A religion. The invasions of 1796 and 1801 tumbled the princelings; and the creation of the Napoleonic republics and kingdoms roughly swept away for gWt the old political and social order. J Italy was the only country where Napoleon intentionally ^'encouraged the spirit of nationality. C!ontemptuous as he was of the men who helped to fight his battles and fill his treasury, he foresaw that unity of manners and language and literature was boimd sooner or later to make a single nation of Italy.^ Pride in his Italian descent, sympathy for the historic home of Csesarism, the traditional policy of France which bade him erect here a barrier against Austria, made his Italian schemes dear to him. t In more .'^ senses than one Napoleon is the founder of modern Italy. Materially and socially she gained much from the French rule. It abolished feudalism, ^where it still survived, gave her uniform and enhghtened laws, opened a career to talent, stimulated industry into new life. The dissolution of the monasteries helped to redeem the national debt and revo- lutionised the land system. V Primary schools covered all Lombardy and Naples. ) Italian soldiers brought back from Napoleon's campaigns a proud name for bravery and endurance, and the whole nation braced itself to a more strenuous life. Politically the results of Napoleon's system i^were as far-reaching. Theprestige of the princes was shaken for ever. The ten slates of the peninsula had vanished; the east — Piedmont, the Genovesate, Parma, Tuscany, and the Papal States up to the Apennines — had been annexed to France; Lombardy, Venetia, Modena, Romagna, and the Marches formed the kingdom of Italy under the emperor's stepson, Eugene Beauhamais, as viceroy; Naples was a dependant kingdom under Murat. The three states had many mutual connections, and even something of a common administration. Thought and speech, though not yet free, were less stifled than under / the old order. The middle landed and professional classes had a share in the government ; and though in the annexed ^ M^moirei de NapoUon, III. 118, 119; Louis Napol^n, Id^ NapoUon- tennef, 150. NAi>OLEON 3 proyinces the civil service was filled with Frenchmen, in the kingdom of Italy every official save the viceroy was a native. But Napoleon- fell, and with him his Italian creation. His work, in spite of the good it wrought, had clashed too much with national sentiment and prejudices. Over 60,000 ^ Italians had perished in Spain and Russia for a cause that was not their own ; the financial burdens were heavy ; the political police and censorship betrayed that the Empire and libefty could not live together ; the cities resented the plunder of their art-galleries; Napoleon's affironts to the Pope offended the religion and patriotism of the mass o£ Italians. But his work survived his rule, and the memory of the Kingdom of Italy remained enshrined with the patriots, a glorified ideal, its tyranny and its burdens forgotten, " an augury and an incitement to greater things." His enemies were forced to recognise the national life, to which he had given birth; and in the last great struggle against him, the Allies had tried to rouse the country with the cry of Italian Independence. In 1 8 14 the Napoleonic system was crumbling fast in Italy as elsewhere. When the emperor fell back across the Rhine in the preceding autumn, he ordered Eugene to evacuate Italy and join him with hia forces. The viceroy refused ; he was not altogether disloyal, and he indignantly refused to share in the treachery that Murat was contem- plating; but in his half-hearted way he loved his adopted country, and hoped in the Empire's impending wreck to snatch the crown of Northern Italy for his own head. To keep his fortune independent of Napoleon's was indeed his only hope of success, for the French rule had become hateful, since the disasters of the Russian campaign had thrown its failings into blacker prominence. The army and much of the civil service were faithful to him ; and a few others, who saw in his crown the fairest hope of Italian independence, gave him a lukewarm backing. But he was too closely bound up with the order that was passing; Italian patriot as in a way he was, he was still a Frenchman; the im- morality of his court, the dishonesty of many of his officials, / 4 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY his refusal to turn against the emperor, all helped to destroy his remaining shreds of popularity. At Milan the mass of opinion was divided between the partisans of Austria and the so-called Italian Party. All who cared only for peace, all who still regarded France as the greater danger, all who, in Foscolo's phrase, " were willing to bow to any foreigner who promised them the thousandth part of what he robbed them of," were preparing the road for Austria's return. They remembered the mild semi-independence of Maria Theresa's and Joseph's reigns,-^ during the-past year the Viennese statesmen had been profuse in promises to respect liberty and nationality ; and there were honest patriots, who hoped to win from them Home Rule and something of constitutional liberty. But the majority of the Milanese nobles were as opposed to Austria as to Eugene, and under the lead of Federigo C!onfalonieri they organised the " Italian Liberal Party." Their policy belied their name; so long as they secured the independence of the existing Kingdom of Italy, they cared little whether it were imder an Austrian or an English or an Italian prince. Few had any thought of a bigger national life. Confalonieri himself perhaps had some conception of an united Italy under the House of Savoy ;^ but the majority thought more of preserving for Milan its metropolitan rank and court, of winning back for the Lombard nobles the privileges that the French had destroyed ; none would accept the one man who might have saved Italian freedom. Eugene, deserted by the nobles, saw that his only chance lay in summoning the electoral colleges (the pseudo-representative element in Napoleon's constitution) and appealing to the people. But he shrank from a step which seemed to stamp him as disloyal to Napoleon. He took a cowardly middle course, and asked the Milanese Senate to take the responsibility he himself declined, and beg his crown from the Allies. The senate substituted a pale eulogy of the viceroy, which showed too plainly that it was weary of him. It was itself, however, hardly ^ Casati, ConfaUmierif I. 84, 261; Bonfadini, Mezzotecolo, 78, 157; Bianchi, Diplomazia, I. 79, 448; Botta, Storia, IV. 531-532. For the full titles of works referred to in the footnotes, see Bibliography in Vol. II. NAPOLEON 5 more popular than Eugene, and the rival parties outside combined to overthrow senate and viceroy together. As soon as the news of Napoleon's abdication arrived, the Italian Party seized the weapon that Eugene had refused, and demanded the convocation of the electoral colleges. The mob was set in motion to frighten the senate into acquiescence (April 20, 18 14), and when it had sacked the senate-house, it hurried off to find a victim in Prina, the hated Minister of Finance. Half- murdering him, they dragged his still living body through the streets till it was mangled past recognition. With whom lay the responsi- bility of the crime is a problem still unsolved. Some of the Austrian party doubtless wished to furnish a pretext for occupation; Confalonieri was charged with playing a more or less guilty part, and probably he helped to raise a storm, which escaped his control, and went to excesses he did not foresee.^ Pino, the commander of the garrison^ hoping perhaps to win a crown, as his brother-generals, Bemadottd and Murat, had done before him, had neglected to send the troops that might have saved Prina's life. But whatever share of guilt lay with each party, the advantage rested with the friends of Austria. Eugfene*s army indeed was eeiger to march on Milan and avenge Prina's death, but the viceroy shrank from civil war. The senate quietly disappeared, and the mimicipal council appointed a pro- visional regency, composed almost solely of the men, whose interests stopped short at the old Duchy of Milan, and who were willing to see it parted from the destinies of Italy and imder Austrian rule. The electoral colleges were summoned, but only from the small fraction of the kingdom, that " spoke the pure Lombard dialect." To satisfy public opinion, the regency sent Confalonieri to the AUies to ask for indepen- dence and a constitution ; but consciously or unconsciously they were playing the Austrian game. When CJonfalonieri arrived at Paris, he found that the fate of Lombardy was sealed. Eugfene ha^ already tamely surrendered to Belle- 1 Casati, op. eii., L 81-85, 267-270 ; Botta, op. cO., IV. 533 ; Maroncelli, Addizioni, ii; Bonfadini, op. cit., 113. 147; GuaMerio, RivolffimerUi, I. 385- 386 ; Lezat de Pons, £tudet, 63-64 ; D'Ancona, Confalonieri, 210-21 6 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY garde, the Austrian general, and abdicated (April 26) ; and Bellegarde, using gentle words, arrived late in May at Milan, where he threw off the mask, and proclaimed the annexation of Lombardy to the Austrian Empire. But his position was still not secure. An edict dissolving the Freemason Lodges showed how much he feared the secret societies, which the French had left behind. The army was prepared to support Murat, and only the cowardice of its generals and Fine's treachery delayed the plot, till Bellegarde could take his pre- cautions and send the generals to the prison of the Spielberg. Even then the Italian patriots did not despair. So long as Napoleon was at Elba, he might return to power, and the triumph of the reaction had identified his cause with the people's. Negotiations ran briskly between him and the patriots, who hoped that he might yet lead the Italians to victory, and make their national unity his last great work.^ Another man was trying to attach the Nationalist and Napoleonic parties to himself. Joachim Murat had risen from humble origins to be one of iS^^Teon's greatest generals, his brother-in-law, and King of Naples, a fearless soldier, a good-natured ruler, but luxurious, capricious, unprincipled, with little real affection for his people, and an overweening belief in his own state- craft. His position had long been a dangerous one. His independent policy had drawn down on him Napoleon's anger, and the emperor was prepared to sacrifice him to the Neapolitan Bourbons, if it served his designs. On the other hand if Napoleon fell, the Allies were little likely to spare his lieutenant. Between the two dangers he saw his safest course in winning Italian affection. As early as 1 8 1 1 he had been ready to pose as the champion of Italian autonomy against France. But he was equally ready to trim to the Allies; he had intrigued with them in 18 13, before he went to Dresden to command Napoleon's cavalry, and early in the next year (January 11) he concluded a ^ Bianchi, op. eiL, I. 78, quoting from La veriU lur le$ cent joun ; Cantd, Orcnuioria, II. 33-35; Castlereagb Corretpofidenee, 3rd series, II. 211. See Napoleon's carious remarks in Wellington, Supp. DespateheM, IX. 269. When he escaped from Elba, Talleyrand thought that he would go to Italy and raijM ftlM flag of Italian Independence. rk NAPOLEON 7 secret treaty with Austria (to which England was a party), by which she promised him Naples and a slice of Papal territory in return for his recognition of her claims to Lombardy.^ But neither side was sincere ; Austria was in- triguing to depose him, and he was negotiating with Eugene for a common defence of Italy. Eugene's comparative loyalty to Napoleon prevented an understanding with one whom he regarded as a traitor; and with the emperor's fall and the entry of the Austrians into Lombardy, Murat's position became daily more critical. It was the maxim of the Allies, that, except where it was inconvenient to their own ambitions, the "legitimate" governments should be everywhere restored, and in their eyes Murat could only count as an usurper. Still they would probably have left him in possession, for at present they had no actual proof of his dupUcity, and failmg proof. Lord Liverpool urged that honour and prudence alike forbade any attempt to oust him.« But whUe pleading hi. cause to the Mies, and protesting his especial devotion to Austria, Murat was corresponding with Napoleon, and again making overtures to the Italian patriots. He hurried on reforms at Naples long-delayed. The purchasers of church lands, fearing that a restoration would confiscate their properties, were united in his support ; and his generals, who were the real power in the country, were prepared to back his designs, if he would grant a constitution. Napoleon's escape from Elba decided him to make a bold bid for Italian favour. Parrying his generals' demands, he marched his army northwards, and, raising the cry of Italian Independence, declared war against Austria (March 30, 181 5). The Pope, though he had professed his sym- pathy,^ fled from Rome, and Murat overran the Marches and Umbria. Defeating the Austrians at Cesena, he ad- vanced to Bologna^ and Modena; and had he gone on ^ Pepe, Memoirs, I. 316 ; Golletta, Storia, II. 181 ; contra Poggi, Storia, I. 18. ' WelliDgtoD, op, cit., IX. 212, 399, 486-492, 496-497 ; Castlereagb, op, cit., I. 432 ; II. 3, 243 ; Bianchi, op, eit,, I. 4-5. * Maroncelli, op. cU., 18. ^ Where Rossini composed a Hymn of Independence for him. 8 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY boldly to Milan, he might have rallied the veterans of Pied- mont and Lombardy to his flag, and for the moment at least have crushed the Austrians. But Bentinck's treacher- ous advice ^ dissuaded him ; and when he learned that England's professed friendliness was only a cloak, and found little enthusiasm for his cause outside Bologna, he fell back by slow stages. He was stm successful in several skirmishes, and a pitched battle at Macerata (May 3) was undecided But the same night the news came that the Austrians had captured Aquila, and were cutting off his retreat. The loyalty of his generals was doubtful ; the retiring troops were more or less demoralised. He still hoped to rouse the Neapolitans by granting a constitution, and prolong the defence behind the Voltumo. But his fleet surrendered to the English, the Anglo-Sicilian forces were advancing from the south, the Neapolitans themselves were paralysed by panic ; and Murat, recognising that his case was desperate, gave up his sword to the English admiral. The last hope of Italian freedom had vanished, but the restless indomitable man made one more bid for power. Obliged after Waterloo to fly from the White Terror in Provence, he retired to Corsica, where he found himself still strong in the lustre of Napoleon's memory. Encouraged to try what his prestige coidd win in Italy,* he started in September for the Neapo- litan shore. But his ships were scattered by a storm, and he landed with a handful of men at Pizzo in Calabria. His appeals to the people found no response, and he was easily captured. In vain the English tried to save his life, id, vain he claimed to be tried by his peers, the sovereigns of Europe. The Bourbons were resolved upon his doom, and the bold adventurer who, from whatever motive, had been the first champion of ItaUan independence, had a mock trial, and was shot in cold blood. Now that Napoleon was crushed, the Allies made haste to bury their pledges. The Congress of Vienna had already ^ BiancU, op. eit, I. 169 ; lee Wellington, op, eiL, IX. 593. ' The mmours that he wa« decoyed by the Bourbon gOTermnent were porobftblj onfonnded. See Riv. tUnr, dd ritorg,, I. 987, in review of De Sasse- naj't Lei dermitn moii de Murat, ST NAPOLEON 9 sealed the fate of Italy. England and Austria repudiated with small compunction the promises their generals had made in their name. The sovereigns had had their use of the national spirit, and threw it over when it claimed its pay; all but the Czar Alexander put off the mask of hberalism, and Castlereagh told the Lombard deputies that constitutions were " expensive experiments." To the states- men at Vienna the Italian question was merely one of political equilibrium, and De Maistre in vain protested that ** nations are something in the world." ^ Besides, Italy was a convenient spoil, where portions might be carved for im- portunate claimants of thrones. But though the Allies were at one in ignoring Italian aspirations, each had its theory as to the methods of partition. England and Russia could not allow the peninsula to become an appanage of Austria. They would perhaps have preferred her entire exclusion ; but Russia was greedy to swallow new territory in Poland, and to smooth her way to this was ready to compromise in Italian questions. Austria was confirmed in her earlier possession of Lombardy, and won Venetia (already held for the eight years between Campoformio and Presburg) and the Valtelline. But neither Mettemich's proposal to abolish the Temporal Power in her favour,* nor his more modest attempt to secure a slice of Romagna, found any encour- agement from the Allies. Still, in the early days of the Congress, there was no thought of restoring the northern Legations to the Pope ; Prussia wanted them for the King of Saxony, Alexander for his new client Eugfene Beauhamais, Francis of Modena for himself. It was not till Napoleon had landed from Elba and bid for the Pope's support by offering to guarantee his dominions in their entirety, that the adroit diplomacy of Cardinal Consalvi won back Romagna. Even now the Allies wished to grant it Home Rule,^ and it needed all Consalvi*s strategy to secure full rights of sovereignty for his master. ^ De Maistre, Oorrupondenee, II. 8 ; ^ Maison de Savoie, 21 ; see Cantii, op, cit,, II. 89-9a De Maistre at this time was Piedmontese ambassador at St. Petersburg. « Bianchi, op,eiL,L 7. ' This was the Aldini scheme of Home Rule, aee below, Vol. II., p. 17. « lo A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Foiled in Central Italy, Austria turned for compensation to the north, and found a yet stiffer foe in Piedmont. Either state recognised that there was no lasting room in Italy for both. Early in the Congress Piedmont made a bid for Lombardy; but though five years before the Allies had arranged to give it to her, she now foimd herself imsup- ported.^ Austria retaliated by a long and persistent effort to gain the Upper Novarese, which gave the command of the Simplon. But though the Powers were willing to let her take Lombardy, they had no desire to see her too powerful, and in spite of English support, she had to content herself with the Ticino frontier. In its early days the Congress had intended to give Savoy to France ; but the Piedmon- tese played a helpful part in the Hundred Days, and the Allies, anxious after Waterloo to weaken France by every possible means, were glad, in spite of Austria s protest, to reward them with the ancient patrimony of theu- kings. Austria, baulked again, was probably intriguing to bar from the succession the Carignano branch of the Savoy House, and thus, as King Victor Emmanuel had no children, to eventually secure the throne of Piedmont through the female hne for the Austrian Duke of Modena.* But Victor Emmanuel would have no dictation from the Austrians; and when they seemed indisposed to withdraw their troops from Ale^anZia, the king^ prepared to fight rather thS suffer their lengthened presence in his territory. In vain Austria spread before him offers of favourable alliance, and schemes of an Italian league under her own presidency. To escape her special tutelage, he was willing, at De Maistre's advice, to join the Holy Alliance. It was from no good will towards her that Piedmont came from the Congress with a territorial gain. The Allies had decreed the doom of Genoa. " Republics were no longer fashionable," as the Czar told the Genoese deputation ; the Congress, always possessed by dread of French aggression, wished to see a military state in possession of the Riviera, ^ BUmchi, op. e»(., I. 51, 57, 58. I can find no sapport for the statement in Onalterio, op. eit., I. 500^ and Pinelli, Stona, II. 393, that England offered Lombardy to Victor Emmanael on condition of his granting a constitution. * Bianohi, op. dL, I. 10S-114. 'n NAPOLEON 1 1 and Castlereagh, who thought less of English honour than of crippling France, was quick to repudiate Bentinck's pledges to the Genoese that their independence should be respected.^ Their country was consigned to its old rival, Piedmont* »' In vain they protested against a " foreign domination " ; in vain they oflTered to sacrifice the republic, if only they might keep their independence, or at least Home Rule. They pleaded to deaf ears, and Genoa was tossed a few poor crumbs of local government for her solace. At the time, however, it seemed doubtful whether the annexation would add to the strength of Piedmont The old enmity between the two states, the incompatibility of a semi-feudal despotism and a commercial democracy, made men despair of any real fusion. But the pressure of a common despotism and common commercial interests were too strong for ancient grudges, and the removal of one more boundary helped on the unity of Italy. But while Piedmojit alone among Italian states came out stronger from the Congress, Austria, in spite of her re- buffs, had won fot herself a commanding power in Italy. Indirectly her strength reached far beyond the limits of her own provinces. Austrian princes ruled in Tuscany, and Modena, and Parma. She garrisoned by treaty rights Piacenza, and Ferrara; and Comacchio; some day she hoped to have the whole of Romagna.^ She had almost unlimited control over the duchies of the Po valley. Tus- cany, though it stood out against her larger claims of suzerainty, bound itself to make neither peace nor war without her consent. Ferdinand of Naples had concluded a secret treaty, pledging himself to make no separate alliances, and grant no liberties to his subjects beyond those which obtained in Lombardy and Yenetia. But strong as Austria was, the very fact of her pre- dominance roused more or less suspicion in almost every ^ It is difficult to say whether Bentinok had any authority from the English Government for his promises. Castlereagh denied it ; Wellington, op. eit., IX. 64 ; Castlereagh, op. et^., I. 434. Bat from t6. II. 18, 221, it would appear that Bentinok made his promise with Gastlereagh's knowledge. ' Bianchi, op. cii.y I. 222 ; Gualterio, op. ciL, III. 338 ; OouvememerU Tempord^ 109 ; contra Mettemich, Mimoirea, III. 82 ; see Hiv. ttor. dd riaorg. I. 340. ^m 12 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Italian Court. Piedmont, fronted by the unbroken stretch of the empire from the Ticino to the Carpathians, feared for her very existence. The Pope, knowing well that Austria's designs on the Legations only slumbered, could not but be suspicious of her every move. Tuscany was ruled by patriotic statesmen, who struggled long and successfully to free their country from her tutelage. Already there were signs of open opposition. Piedmont had killed the schemes of an Austrian league; Rome refused with coolness the alliance, which Mettemich offered her as the best '' protection against the gates of hell " ; the two states joined with Tuscany to reject proposals, which would have given him control of the postal communications of the peninsula. The princes might fall back on her in a struggle with their subjects, but they would never willingly become her vassals. The spirit of Italian independence had reached even to the Courts. \ And vague and disorganised though it was, the sense of i a common nationaUty was making quick strides among the people. Genoa, it is true, was as yet irreconcilable to Turin ; the Milanese had tried to sever their lot from that of North Italy ; Venice wanted her old independence ; SicOy and Naples were at bitter feud. But in spite of all, com- munity of memories and wrongs was consolidating a national sense, and the contrast of the Restoration with the enlighten- ment of the French rule was creating a movement hostile alike to native oppression and Austrian domination. For a moment patriots had hoped that Murat would free, perhaps unite, all Italy .^ Now they were beginning to look to the House of Savoy as the " one Italian race of princes," and though Piedmont was reluctant to sink herself in a wider state, Lombards and Romagnuols were looking for the day when she must expand into a North Italian king- dom. And though they were very few who as yet dared hope in an imited Italy, there were plans abroad among the thinkers to reorganise the peninsula in a federation of three constitutional states, which would leave no room for either Austria or the Temporal Power. ^ Oouvemement Tempord, 97. *s?^ CHAPTER II ^ THE CARBONARI 1 8 15-1824 ^ Thb Restoratiok in ^iedmon^ Lombardy-Venetia, Tuscany, the Papal States, Naples, Sicily. Its character; Francis of Mcdena. Dis- content The Carbonabi. The cimciliatore. REVOLnTiON of Naples: Naples, 18 15- 1820; revolution breaks out; constitution granted; Murattists and Carbonari; Sicily, 18 15-1820; revolution of Palermo ; Naples and Sicily ; Florestano Pepe attacks Palermo ; Austria and Naples ; Parliament repudiates FL Pepe's treaty ; the king goes to Laybach ; the Austrian, invasion. RsvoLnTiON ov Piedmont : the Carbonari in Piedmont ; Charles Albert ; the army rises ; Charles Albert Regent ; the revolution collapses. Movements in Modena and Romagna. Character of the revolution ; weakness of feeling of Unity. Ferdinand's revenge and death. Charles Felix. The Congress of Vienna partitioned Italy into eight states. Piedmont and the Austrian provinces divided the north; the JP§paL States, Tuscany, the petty duchies of Modena, Parma, and Lucca occupied the centre; the kingdom' of Na]^es covered t*he southern mainland and Sicily. Parma was given to Maria Louisa, the Austrian princess, who liad b^n Napoleon's wife ; Lucca went to another Maria Louisa, of the Spanish Bourbons who reigned at Parma before the revolution. All the other states, except the suppressed republics of Venice and Genoa, returned to their old rulers. As in Spain and Germany, the princes were welcomed back not billy by the friends of the old order but by the mass of the people, to whom they represented the national protest, against French absorption. Even a tyrant like Ferdinand of Naples met the same welcome that greeted the better princes. Safe on their thrones, better and worse alike set themselves to undo the revolution. It was impossible, M 14 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY indeed, to ignore much of the reform that the French had introduced ; but even where the form of the new order was preserved, the Restoration tried to kill its spirit y^tor Emmanuel was welcomed back to Piedmont with clamorous loyalty. He had the quaUties of his race; he was kindly and well-intentioned. But he hated innovation ; all reform smacked to him of revolution, and now that he had, as he believed, the revolution at his feet, he hastened to sweep away its every trace. He threatened to recognise no law passed during his exile, to own no civil servant who did not figure in the directory of the year when the French drove him out. The anachronisms of the old order came : back, the legal abuses, the feudal privileges, monasteries and ecclesiastical courts, the disabilities of Jews and Protestatits. For the moment it was feared that civil marriages contracted under the French rule would not be recognised, that pur- chasers of church lands would be compelled to surrender. But the Restoration was soon shorn of its worst excesses. Victor Emmanuel found himself forced to compromise with the passive resistance of his people. The directory of 1798 was qiiietly dropped; provincial coimcils were instituted; the prerogative was less used to override the law. Officials of the French period found their way into the Ministry itself, and the accession to office of Prospero Balbo (18 17), their most distinguished administrator, seemed to herald further reforms. But though some real progress was made, the Jesuits crept back, and critics complained that the govern- ment still united the worst features of the old order and of the French rule, — the obscurantism of the first, the poUtical police and centralization of the latter. The mass of the Lombards and Venetians were well pleased when the Austrians, in taking possession, erected the provinces into a kingdom, and instituted the Central Congregations,^ which in time, it was hoped, would grow into representative institutions. The new rule, Metternich promised, should '' conform to Italian character and customs," and it seemed as if the rights of nationality were to obtain recognition even from the Austrian government. All the * See below, p. 57. THE CARBONARI 15 more pungent was the disappointment, when the Lombards fomid that the taking phrases were empty words. The^^^^.. Austrian law was introduced; contrary, it seems, to Met- temich's advice, Austrians and Tyrolese seized on the higher posts in the administration; conscription was enforced in spite of the promises of 18 14. The emperor let it be known that he "wanted not learned men, but submissive and loyal subjects " ; and the brutality and insolence of the Austrian soldiery showed the Italians in what light they were regarded by they: new rulers. In Tuscany the reaction was less pronounced. No at- tempt was made indeed to restore LeopoldT I.^s liberal local institutions, which Napoleon had sacrificed to his centraliza- tion. But though most of Napoleon's Code was swept away, Leopold's Code, which came back again, was in some respects as advanced. The Tuscan statesmen of the Restoration were not blind to the world's growth: the Grand Duke, it is said, would have given a representative Parliament, but for the veto of Vienna.^ The police system, execrable in theory, was mild in practice; after angry debate with Rome the monks were restored to only a part of their possessions, and the Jesuits, as in Lombardy, were rigorously shut out. Rome was saved by Consalvi from the worst extremes of reaction. Many of the ecclesiastics would have welcomed a root-and-branch destruction of the French reforms, and the prayer of the great Roman nobles for a lay government was scornfully tossed back; Pius VII., the gentle, amiable Pope, whom Napoleon had dragged into captivity, could easily have been won to the bigots. But Consalvi returned triumphant from Vienna, and his success at the Congress made him master of the government. The state, which he had saved, he hoped to make strong by centralization and moderate reform. He had learnt, with the other statesmen of Europe, how much of the strength of France lay in the unity of her administration. He was no blind reactionary, and, though far from being a Liberal, he was sensitive to the- opinion of Europe, and wished to see the Papal * Tivaroni, Bcminio AuHriaeOt II. 5. ^^ 1 6 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY dominions creditably governed and their peoples prosperous. Even the Papacy, he saw, must recognise ** the new habits^ new opinions, new lights, which poUtical economy had fortified and spread." His aim was to create a strong^ bureaucracy, immediately dependent on the Pope, and free alike from control of cardinals and people. The Legates who ruled the provinces were made to feel that they were no longer sovereign princes as of old. But, though Consalvi earnestly attempted to moderate the excesses of the restora- tion, he was not able, perhaps he hardly wished, to prevent it from bringing back many of the old abuses, the feudal privileges, the obsolete administration, the uncertain and compUcated law. Church lands were restored, and the pur- chasers imperfectly indemnified ; the Jesuits were solemnly reinstated. And when the great cardinal tried to reform the law and encourage education, the growing opposition foiled him ; he had the support of the nobles and educated middle classes, but he found himself bafiied by priestly and popular antagonism, and Pius' timid scruples. He gave up reform in disgust, and devoted his remaining years to the embeUishment of Rome. At Naples, Ferdinand, obliged to outbid Murat, had prepared a proclamation promising a constitution^ (May i, 1815), but suppressed it when the news came of his rival's rapid downfall. The government kept its hand on the 6migr4s and clergy, who returned hot for revenge. But though the purchasers of church lands were recognised, the imigris got back their property, and the promised amnesty found limited observance. Sicily, which^ had sheltered the king in his exile, was rewarded with true Bourbon ingrati- tude. The old Norman Constitutton- had remained intact till 1812, when an attempt on the part of the king to tax without consent of Parliament led to a quarrel be- tween crown and barons, and, under the influence of Lord William Bentinck, who commanded the English garrison the popular party carried what was practically a copy of the English Constitution. Liberties, to which the king had ^ Sansone, RivoLuzionet 274; Colletta, Storia^ \ll, 410; Gualterio, Rivol gimenJti^ II. 169 ; Pepe, Narrative, 86, THE CARBONARI 17 sworn, and England given her moral guarantee, might seem secure in spite of triumphant reaction. But the court at Naples feared the contagion of parliamentary government so close at hand; and^erdinand, by his treaty with Austria/ had implicitly pledgea himself to abolish the constitution. The English Gk)vemment, after some hesitation,^ was per- suaded to throw over the Sicilians, and A' Court, the British minister at Naples, lent himself to undo Bentinck's work, and perjure his coimtry in Sicilian eyes. The ancient autonomy of Sicily was destroyed by an Act of Union (December 18 16), which joined the island to Naples, and abolished the Sicilian flag and army. Despite a remnant of illusory privileges, Sicily had lost its independence ; every one realised that it had lost its constitution too, and that, though parliament was still nominally recognized, it would never be simimoned again. Ferdinand and Castlereagh, in defiance of legal right and plighted word, had reduced the proud and ancient state to an appanage of Naples.^ Reactionary, however, as the Restoration was, it was not cruel. The nobles and clergy sometimes thirsted for pro- scription, but, with the exception of Ferdinand, the princes who returned were men of honesty and elevated purpose; However unable to understand the spirit of the new age, they had the welfare of the people at heart, and their government between 18 14 and 1820 was mild and in- creasingly so. But to the men of the Restoration the French rule had meant the breaking-up of the moral safe- guards on which society rested. It had, so they thought Qot without reason, weakened religion and endangered the family. They insisted on the re-establishment *of strict paternal authority over the young, on the repeal of civil oaarriage and of the Napoleonic law of divorce. I^ducation svas given up to the clergy ,\ security was taken for the ^ See above, p. 1 1. ^M-^ » * Metternich, Mimoires, III. 80 ; Castlereagh, op, eU,, III. 287-289. (j ' British and Foreign Staie Papers, 1816-17, 552-564; Bianchini, iVapo/*, 534 ; Uaatlereagh, op, eit., II. im, 113, 237; Parliamentary Debates, Commons, Tune 21, 1821 ; De la SiciU ; SicUy and England; Palmieri, Saggio; Fyffe, \£odem Europe, II. 88 n. The Sicilians called Bentinck "William the Good,'* ind A' Court " WUliam the Bad." VOL. I. ' ^ Jl 1 8 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY obligatory teaclimg of Catholic doctrine, the Universities were suspected and watched by the poUce. They had their best exponent in Duke Francis of Modena. The prince, who has been painted, perhaps justly, as the worst tyrant of modem Italy, was in private life a patient, kindly, courteous man, a devoted husband and father, a capable and hard-working ruler. His interest in his people was very real. He ^hed to see justice speedy, taxation light and regular ; he aided with easy loans the needy peasants of his state ; in time of famine his generosity was princely. He tried to raise public morality by a bastardy law and the reclamation of the fallen. But beyond the rudiments of morality and material well-being his light failed. He dreaded the political results of education, though a generous patron of art and such research as was safely dissevered from politics. The teacher who led the young to liberal doctrines was in his eyes the greatest of sinners. He held it a prince's sacred duty, at whatever cost to himself and subjects, to save society from Liberalism and its disinteg- rating influences. For this he supported the nobles and priests, (restored the suppressed monasteries, scattered dis- tinctions broadcast, for "rich proprietors," he said, "are always grateful to any one who gives them titles." And more than on baronial favour or priestly education he relied on the sword of the magistrate. In the "epidemic of criticism and insubordination, which leads to the loss of eternal salvation and of earthly tranquillity," it was " a false \ philanthropy," he thought, to pimish fightly. "The Liberals," he said, " are sinners ; pray for their repentance, but punish the imrepentant." ^ ^ But mild as the reaction was, it was bound to come y into conflict with all that was progressive in the nation. ^ The great middle class, which had learnt its strength under the French rule, found its commerce paralysed by the customs-lines that divided state irom state, by the obsolete > Galvani, Franeueo /F., III. 126-140, 194; Bianchi, Duoati, I. 74, 75; Cantti, Cronutoria^ II. 140-142. I am inclined to discredit the stories of nis commercial speculations, respecting which see TiTaroni, op. eiUj I. 611, 624. THE CARBONARI 19 eoonomy that still informed the law; it angrily resented the return of privilege, of arbitrary law, of clerical assertion, of intellectual stagnation. The armies, which had caught the democratic sense, which even in its worst times was present in the Napoleonic system, chafed at the loss of social liberties, the promotion of 4migr6 officers, the presence of the domineering Austrians, whom they had so often defeated. Theories < ;>f fionst.if.nt.innfl,] liberty t-^rivfl real government of Uie country. Malcontents from every/ class joined them — the overtaxed small proprietors, the lower ranks of the civil service, unsatisfied office-hunters, many of the lower clergy. The army, ill-dis ciplined and smarting imder a reduction of its privileges and the partiality shown to the 4migr4s, was largely affiliated ; the magistrates joined perforce. There was no longes the careful scrutiny of noviciates ; all sorts and conditions were admitted; and at whatever sacrifice of the society's high standard, it could count its numbers by tens of thousands. The provincial militia, nimibering over 50,000 men, fell into its hands. The militia had been organized to protect thie country from the brigands by Guglielmo ^^fipe, a yoimg Calabrian officer ; a Carbonaro himself, he was preparing to turn them to political uses, and a plot to seize the King with the Emperor of Austria and Mettemich only failed through a misadventure.^ Pepe was maturing the con- spiracy, when he was anticipated by a military revolt. The bloodless Spanish Revolution inspired two young cavalry officers, Morelli and Salvati, to imitate that model of military democracy. Deserting with a troop of cavalry from their depot at Nola, they marched to Avellino, cheering for king and constitution (July 2, 1820).^ Disconnected as the movement was, its success showed how ripe the coimtry was for revolt. In forty-eight hours the Revolution had spread through the Capitinata and Basilicata, a day later it had reached the Terra di Lavoro in one direction, and Puglia in the other, and several regiments had followed Pepe to the insurgent camp. ' There were now at least 1 2,000 armed constitutionalists at Avellino, and Pepe was preparing to take the offensive, when on the night of July 5 the King, " of his own free will," granted a constitution, but without defining ite terms^ Suspicious of the King's sincerity, the Carbonari » Pepe. Memoirs, II. 182-183. * The Neapolitan Reyolution inspired Shelley's Odes to Naples and Libertj. i 24 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY cbmaocled the Spanish Constitution of 1 8 1 2^ under which a parliament of a single chamber oversaw every detail of the executive. It was a masterpiece of doctrinairism, complicated and im workable ; few or none knew more of it than that it was ultra-democratia But it made a popular cry, and the King's eldest son, Francis, who had been appomted Regent, was swept away by the tide and proclaimed its adoption. Army and people hailed it with ignorant enthusiasm; the Regent swore to defend it with his blood ; the King pro- fessed himself a happy man to have Hved to grant it, and swore fealty to it on the GrospeL The ministers resigned when the constitution was granted, and their place was taken by statesmen of Murat's time. In comparison with the Bourbonists they were in a way Liberals, but they had been trained in a school that had little popular fibre in it, and they looked with suspicion on the more democratic Carbonari. Pepe alone among them represented the forces that had made the Revolution. It was inevitable that they should come into conflict with the Carbonaro organization. Not that there was, as they fancied, any real danger of disorder ; fears of agrarian laws or attacks oa the Church were absurd, when the strength of the Car- bonari lay among the landed proprietors, and the Spanish Constitution tolerated no religion but CathoUcism. But none the less they were a state within the state; they controlled the miUtia and the local bodies, and the courts were afraid to proceed against their members. Even Pepe for a time was inclined to put them down with a high hand.^ The position, difficult enough in itself, was complicated by a revolution in Sicily. The Sicilians were exasperated by the loss of their independence, by the ingratitude of the King, by the odious subje^ction to Austria. The old local government had been destroyed, and the restraint which the new system laid qn baronial tjnranny was dearly bought by enslavement tc^^*" corrupt bureaucracy. The departure of the English garrison at the Peace had been followed by 1 Text in La Farina, Storia. V. 169. ' Carrascosa, Mimoires, 135. THE CARBONARI 25 a scarcity of money and fall in prices, and the peasant could obtain no corresponding reduction in his rent The misery, which was mainly due to economic changes, was set down to the loss of independence. So strong was the hatred to the rule of Naples, that in the greater portion of the island it hid the deep divisions that parted the propertied classes from the masses. To the nobles independence meant the return of feudalism, immunity from the better laws of the mainland, a free hand to monopolise the soil and lord it over their vassals. To the masses in the towns it brought vague hopes of plimder, or at best of agrarian decrees. It was only a few, the heirs of the Liberals of 181 2, who saw in a return to parUamentary government a road to progress and reform. The news of the Revolution at Naples rQ0x;hed Palermo on the festival of its patron-saint, Santa Rosalia, and the city's great holiday (July 14). The Spanish Constitution was hailed with enthusiasm, and it seemed for the moment as if Sicilians and Neapolitans might forget their differences in the common Liberal triumph. But the nobles dreaded the new development, for the Spanish Constitution would be fatal to their power ; some of the Liberals themselves were at one with them in wanting separation or Home Rule; and the earlier notes of reconciliation were drowned in the cry for mdependence and the Sicilian constitution of 1812.^ The puzzled crowd found its vent in sacking the house of the hated Greneral Church, and destroying the tax-offices. But generally it was the blind tool of the nobles, and it was to serve their own ends that the nobles persuaded the Viceroy to allow it to arm itself from the government's stores.. At first the troops had been inclined to fraternize, but the generals were frightened when they saw how events were drifting, and on the 1 7th the soldiers attacked the mob and were ignominiously beaten. But the barons had used a double-edged tool. The prisons were forced, and the escaped convicts made the mob even more ready for mischief than before. Two of the great peers were barbarously murdered ; ^USansone, Rivoluzionef 28 et teq. ; Famio, lU%x)luHont 21 ; Colletta, Storia, ILjjISrPalmieri, Safjgio, 323 ; Afan di Riyera, Sieilia 24. ■. • .4^ 26 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY plunder and assassination terrorized the city, and a Junta of nobles and " consuls " of the artisan crafts tried in vain to stem the disorder. It was not till they had taken the con- victs and unemployed into their pay and enrolled them into squadre, that modified order was restored. The riot made the insurrection a hopeless one from the start. Power had passed to ^ coalition of feudalism and anarchy. The Liberals feared that an independent Sicily would be the sport of foreign powers, or that its parUament would be controlled by the barons ; and though if the Union were preserved, the Sicilian deputies would be in a minority at Naples, they hoped to win from a free government re- forms that a king had refused. Messina and much of the east of the island were loyal to Naples. Through the centre and west the officials and middle classes followed the Liberals of the capital, and savage faction-fights raged through the island between the friends of the Spanish Con- stitution and the masses, whose hatred of their employers and sympathy with the Palermo mob made them fierce par- tisans of the Constitution, of 1812. The Palermitans sent the squadre of the capital to help their friends. The squadre^ which reappear at every crisis of Sicilian history, were irre- gular bands, sometimes of peasants armed and officered by the local lord, sometimes of criminal or semi- criminal prole- tarians from the cities, capable at times of reckless bravery, but easily discouraged; on the whole, of little military value, and often a terror to the populations they professed to de- fend. They carried fire and sword through the districts that refused allegiance to the capital; Caltanisetta was sacked and burnt, and the opposition was cowed in two-thirds of the island. But there was intimidation on both sides, and it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that with the great mass of Sicilians in the west and centre the one absorbing motive was the passionate demand for independenca^ The news roused bewilderment and indignation at Naples. Exaggerated rumours of the atrocities exasperated the people ; the Liberals regarded the movement as feudal 1 Sansone, op. eii,, 76-77, 84-89, loi ; Famin, op, cit,, 86, 132-133 ; Pepe, Memoin, II. 334 ; Pahnieri, op. eii., 365, et seq. THE CARBONARI 27 and reactionary, and the refusal to accept the Spanish Con-^ stitution seemed the working of mere faction. Except in Calabria, they were unanimous in calling for severe repres- sion. But the government hesitated. The Ejng, perhaps with deUberate design to sow dissension, had promised the Sicilians the Constitution of 1812,^ and he and the Regent were playing the barons with hopes of Home Rule. At the end of August (August 31) the Regent, with the consent of the ministers, offered a separate parliament, provided that the island as a whole demanded it ; but at the same time Florestano Pepe, the brother of the minister, was sent with 7000 men to frighten the home-rulers from their programme, and give the government its chance to escape from its promises.^ Advancing with his troops on Palermo, Pepe found the Junta ready to come to terms. The propertied classes were willing to accept any compromise as an escape from anarchy. They had organized a citizen-guard, which had had daily skirmishes with the assassin gangs, and was beginning to control the capital. The Junta willingly ac- cepted Pepe's promise to grant an amnesty, and refer the decision between Union or Home Rule to a representative assembly of the island (September 22). But the mob, frenzied by fears for its own safety (for the amnesty specially excluded common crime), and impelled by their wild passion of patriotism, turned on the Junta as Pepe's accomplices, and fired on the citizen guard. Again the gangs, superior in numbers and courage, were easily victorious ; again the prisons were opened and palaces were sacked, while Pepe was attacking by land and sea. Ten days they fought him with desperate bravery, and again and again he was driven back, till his position became critical. But reaction was in full tide at Palermo. All but the mob were sick of the anarchy, and pillage, and savagery ; the squadre had lost ter- ribly in the ten days' fighting, and each day saw more who were weary of the struggle. On October 5 one of the nobles cajoled the imconquered people into surrender. The terms that were offered and accepted, repeated Pepe's earlier pro- ^ Sansone, op. eit., 23, 58, 59. 76., 112-114, 3^> Pantaleone e Lumia, Mimoiref 216-218. 28 A HISTORY OF ITALUN UNITY posals, but stipulated that in any case Sicily should remain under the crown of Naples, and accept the Spanish Con- stitution,^ Sicily had been conquered, but a more formidable danger was showing on the horizon. The Revolution had broken like a thunderclap on Mettemich's security ; it had been his boast that he had built a system safe from revolutionary disturbance, and the NeapoUtan rising " upset all his calcula- tions." Already threats were heard from Vienna, and it became more than probable that Austria would attempt to strangle the new-bom constitution. But the Neapolitans were rejoicing in their deliverance too much to think of danger. The taxes were paid before they fell due, and the better-to- do enrolled themselves in the militia. Parliament met on. October i, and the King again swore to protect the constitu- tion. There had been pressure, perhaps intimidation, at the elections; but the majority of the deputies were moderate men, taken almost exclusively from the middling proprietors and professional classes ; well-meaning amateurs, their heads full of schemes of reform, but inexperienced, and preferring rhetoric to legislation. Despite the show of peace and har- mony, the future was thick with diiSSculties. Nothing had been done to prepare the country for invasion. The Car- bonari seemed bent on cowing or superseding parliament. The reactionary party was recovering from its first shock, and a Bourbon's word could never be relied on. There was only too much ground to suspect that treason was hatching in the palace, and that the feeble ministers, were making themselves its tools. Parliament opened with a fatal blunder. Florestano Pepe's treaty had laid the foundations of peace with Sicily, and the islanders had offered 10,000 men for the common defence. Blinded by the prejudice against the Sicilians, the Chamber repudiated the treaty (October 15), and the ministers were only too ready to escape behind it from their obligations. It was as dishonourable as it was fatuous, but Pepe protested in vain against the unworthy act. General CoUetta was sent to supersede him, and the new 1 Famln, op, ciL, 141-187 ; CoUetta, op, eU., 395, 396. V f ••4 \ THE CARBONARI 29 governor's stem rule produced a show of order. But Sicilian hate only smouldered the more. Except in the eastern provinces, deputies to the parliament at Naples were elected only imder pressure or by the official vote. The Sicilian Carbonari were preparing a general conspiracy, through the winter, and the Neapolitans not only lost the Sicilian contingent, but had to keep 6000 of their best troops to overawe the island. Parliament then turned to attack the ministry. The men who composed it had neither the training nor the capacity for the times. They were afraid of popular forces, they felt how little they had in common with a democratic movement, thjof knew the strength of Austria; and their policy, so far as they had one, was to temporize, to hamper the revolution, to himiour the King and Mettemich ; and so with good fortune to save the country from iuvasion. But they were the King's dupes. Ferdinand knew that Austria would never sanction the constitution, and when the allied sovereigns iuvited him from Troppau to meet their adjourned conference at Laybach, he asked permission of parliament to go (December 6), and meant to dissolve it by force, if it refused.^ There were two feasible policies before the deputies. They might with good prospect of success have bid for the support of France, and appeased the Allies by consenting to a house of peers and a large increase in the power of the crown.* Or, deposing Ferdinand in favour of his son, and throwing down the gauntlet to Austria, they might have roused the country to a brave defence and carried the revolution across the Papal border. They did neither. Guglielmo Pepe alone stood for the bolder alter- native. The Carbonaro doctrinaires would not abate an iota of the constitution ; but anxious to give no pretext for invasion, perhaps trapped by the prospect of getting rid of the king, they resolved that he should go. The £jng wrote amiably from Laybach about his * La Cecilia, Mimoirt^ 26 ; Carrascosa, Mimoires, 237. « Palma, Napoli, 237, 238; Le comte D., Precis, 41 ; Carrascosa, op. ci7., 230, 231 ; Bianchi, Diplomazia, II. 37 ; Wellington, Supp, Despatches, N.S., I. 401. 30 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY greyhounds. Then, dropping the mask, he warned his ministers that the Allies were determined to put down the constitution, and with feeble apologies announced his incurrence in their plans. Despite the suspicions of the Powers, Mettemich had won their consent to send an Austrian army to restore him to absolute power.^ Nothing was left now but to make a brave defence. There was still no small chance of success. The government could put 40,000 regulars and at least as many militia into the field. Even if the army were driven back along the coast, parlia- ment could retire to Calabria, and keep up a defence in the Apennines, which would weary out the invader. Piedmont, though the Neapolitans did not know it, was at the point of rising ; revolution was fermenting in Romagna and the Marches, and a prolonged resistance might have stirred a movement there, which would cut the Austrian communi- cations. The people were eager for war;* all that was needed was a vigorous lead. But of this there was none ; the Regent was playing a double game; the incurable optimism of the government gave the reactionaries free play ; parliament buried its head in the faith that because its cause was "innocent," nobody would attack it» The army distrusted its officers ; there was no matured plan of defence; and it was not till the last moment that the militia was called out. The Austrians crossed the Po late in January, and' advanced slowly southwards. The Neapolitans, who mus- tered between 40,000 and 50,000, half of them militia, were •divided into two bodies ; the first corps, under Carrascosa, defending the line of the Garigliano, the second, under Fepe, occupying the Abruzzi passes. It would probably have been wise strat^y to remain on the defensive. But Carras- cosa and Colletta, who was now minister of war, were dis- posed to treat with the enemy ;^ and it was possibly the knowledge of this that induced Pepe, who had the whole 1 Gastlereagh, op. eU., IV. 312-317, 350, 372. * Pepe, Narrative^ 31, 33, 38 ; Id. Memoirt, III. 108, 128, 135 ; Voce dd Popolo, 119 ; Colletta, op, eit,, II. 434. ' Carrascosa, op, dL, 330-331 ; Colletta, op. eU., II. 435 ; Pepe, Memoin^ III. 143-144- 1 THE CARBONARI 31 Austrian army in front of him, to cross the frontier andi attack them at Rieti (March 7). The militia fought well* for the raw soldiers that they were, and retreated in good order after seven hours' fighting. But defeat destroyed their confidence ; proclamations from the King, threatening death and confiscation to all who resisted, scared the popu- lation, and the army melted away among the moimtains. At Naples the guards declared for the King, and parliament, giving up the game, humbly appealed to his clemency. The Austrians entered Naples without another blow (March 23).f Three days after Pope's defeat at Rieti the Revolution broke out in Piedmont. ^ The whole strength of Piedmontese conservatism had mustered to wreck Prospero Balbo's efforts for reform, and the discontent became the more acute for the hopes that he had raised. Constitutionalism became the_ fashion of the young nobles, and the army was led by men who had fought at Austerlitz, to whom Austria was always the enemy, and who dared to think that Piedmont must "choose between vassalage to her and the Italian crown." The Carbonari gathered together the threads of discontent But whatever it was elsewhere, in Piedmont Carbonarism was not republican. Victor Emmanuel's ani- mosity to the "white leeches" of Austria was still smoul- derin&r and De Maistre was intriguing at St. Petersburg for . N.!th IfUaa kingdom underRulta p^teotion." 'ih. Carbonan were not entirely building on sand, when they looked to the King to champion them and draw the nationalists of all Italy to his flag.^ But before the war of independence came, the conspirators wished to secure reform at home, and the majority determined to demand the Spanish ' Constitution. Even to this they fondly hoped the King would accede, and to assist them they looked for the con- nivance of ( Charles Albert), the yoimg Prince of Carignano, and heir presiunptive to the crown. He came of a younger branch of the House of Savoy. His father had copied Philippe flgalit^ in miniature at the ^ Bianchi, Diplomtuia, I. 454. ' Id, Santa Bota, no; Sania Rota, JHemorie, 31. 32 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY time of the revolutionary wars; himself had been brought up at Paris as a French citizen, had held rank inNagoleoj army, and been a Count of the Empire. He was now twenty-two years old, tall, manly, devoted to arms; brave and proud, but without strong affection, and with a youth's morbid sensitiveness for his own freedom. ^The Liberals had long looked to him as the one prince from whom they might find real sympathy^ Monti had sung his praises, and, th e prince had not concealed his hope s of reform and^ independence. Though it might suit him at court to parade an orthodox horror of modem thought, he openly encour- aged the Liberals, and had relations with the Carbonari/ though probably he was never initiated into the society.^ The Neapolitan revolution fired him with ambition to lead the nationalists, to drive the Austrians from Italy, and extend the boimds of Piedmont. The plan of the conspirators was to extort the Spanish Constitution, then move the army rapidly across the Ticino join their forces with the conspurators, whom Confalonieri was preparing for revolt at Milan and Brescia, overpower the denuded garrisons,* and cut off the Austrian retreat from Naples. They took for granted that the Piedmontese troops would win an easy victory, and the Lombards promised to summon a representative assembly to vote on the question of fusion with Piedmont. An accidental aflfray at Turin between the university students and the military (January 1 821) brought the exasperation against the government to a point, and for two months the court and the people faced each other. Early in March the real or supposed discovery of the plot decided the Liberals to rise at once. They only waited to pledge Charles Albert to the revolution, and an interview took place between the prince and some of the leading conspirators. Of what passed there, we have directly conflicting statements ; but the probability is that the prince promised his adhesion, when satisfied that no hostility was intended against the Eong.^ But on the morrow, ^ Cantti, ConciUatoref 164-165. ' There were 13,000 Austrian troops left in the North : Gastlereagh, op. eit.t IV. 375* 378 ; Casati, op, eU., I. 118 ; Carte segrete, II. 195. ' Vol. II., Appendix A. THE CARBONARI 33 frightened and penitent, above all, anxious to have no share in suborning the army, he betra^'ed the secret to the govern- ment. Discovering his defection, the Turin conspirators tried to defer the rising ; but their accomplices in the garri- son at Alessandria, whether ignorant of the prince's treachery or impatient of waiting, proclaimed the revolution and the Spanish Constitution, and saluted Victor Emmanuel- as King of Italy (March lo). In the capital itself the students clamoured for the constitution, and the garrison began to waver (March 1 2). The officers refused to march against the rebel city, and the movement seemed to have friends in the government itself. In the Council the Queen was alone in opposing concession. The King, perhaps, had pledged himself to the Powers at Laybach to part with none of his absolute authority ; but he shrank from a resistance that meant civil war, and when the garrison threatened to bombard the city, unless the constitution were granted, he solved the dilemma by abdication. It was a heavy blow to the conspirators, who had been careful to proclaim their loyalty, and boasted that they were setting the King free " to follow the promptings of his Italian heart." Before his abdication he had appointed Charles Albert regent, pending the arrival of the new king, his brother Charles Felix. The young prince, left alone and uncounselled (for the ministers had resigned), had a task beyond his years. He was loyal to the royal family, but tied by his relations with the in- surgents ; he had to save the capital from anarchy, the country from foreign occupation. He probably knew how imready the army was to fight the Austrians. To a deputa- tion that urged the immediate adoption of the constitution, he replied that he was ready to die for the royal cause, which he represented ; but a day later, as the garrison grew more threatening, and the Notables, whom he consulted, advised surrender, he granted the Spanish Constitution " under the stress of circumstances and to preserve the state to the new King." For the moment he seemed to revert to his earlier enthusiasms ; he spoke of union with Naples and national glory, and made no secret of his nationalist sympathies to the Lombard messengers, who came from VOL. I. c 34 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Coiifalomeri to urge him to march to Milan.^ But he was frightened back by an imcompromizing manifesto, in which Charles Felix refused to recognize any concessions; and when he received from the new King a peremptory order to go to Novara, he secretly fled with a portion of the garrison. After this there was little hope for the Revolution* Confalonieri played an ambiguous and irresolute part, and the Lombards would take no action till the Piedmontese had crossed the frontier. The Grenoese indeed rose angrily on receiving Charles Felix's manifesto, the reserves came up well to join their colours, and the Revolution was willingly accepted in many of the cities. But the capital was cold ; the nobles disliked the Spanish Constitution, and after Charles Albert's desertion the moderate men lost hope and drifted away. The new ministers might have done some- thing to rouse the country, but they had no stuff for vigorous action. Santa Rosa, perhaps the only earnest man among them, tried, when it was too late, to give life to the Revolu- tion by a rush on Lombardy. ** Sink domestic differences and hasten to the Ticino ; Lombardy waits for you, and France is stirring." It was the one hope of success. But the sol^diers had lost their enthusiasm, and more and more troops went over to the loyalist camp at Novara. The tidings of Rieti deepened the gloom, and the Turin ministers in despair, Santa Rosa dissenting, accepted Russian media- tion in the hopes of staving off an Austrian invasion. But Charles Felix on the one side and the Alessandrian Jimj^a on the other would have no compromise. The Austrians crossed the Ticino, and the constitutional troops advanced on Novara. To the last they refused to believe that the loyalist regiments would fight on the Austrian side. But the patriotism of the army had little root, and the 9O0O constitutionalists foimd themselves confronted by an almost ,\ equal force of Piedmontese and a large Austrian contingent ^ Leopardi, op, ett., 253; Poggi, Storiti, I. 346; Bollati, Fcuti, I. 13; Pallavicino, Memorie, I. 22-23 ; Arriyabene, IrUomo, 118; Mario, M> the sentiment of Unity. A few like Santa Rosa hoped to combine the national forces of north and south; Man- zoni had an ode ready on Italy, " one in arms, in speech, in laws, in heart" But the Piedinontese conspirators left the \ Neapolitans in ignorance of their plans, and delayed their r. rising till the Neapolitan movement was nearly doomed. Piedmont, Lombardy, Romagna, Naples, Sicily, each had its unconnected policy, sometimes with divergent or hostile aims. The Piedmontese and Lombards were already dis- puting whether Turin or Milan should be the future capital.* The Sicilians were so dominated by hatred of Naples, that after the repudiation of Florcstano Pope's treaty many of them welcomed the Austrians and rejoiced in their success. The Neapolitans preferred to sacrifice the national cause rather than give Sicily home rule, and rejected the appeal from the nationalists of the Marches to carry the Revolution into Papal territory.* It was clear that the work of the Carbonari was on wrong lines or incomplete. The Liberal , movement had yet to become popular and national. t The Revolution had its feeble echoes through the Po vaUey. At Modena Francis had been frightened from his plottings with the Pope against Austria, to crush an incipient revolt. Conspiracy was busy in Romagna, where the " American Hunters " drilled in the forest of Ravenna, and Byron stored his house with arms for a rising that failed to come off.* Now the whole country lay crushed, and at the mercy of the victors. The statesmen at Lay- bach had been prompt to stamp out the Revolution, but they were anxious not to exasperate the country by an excessive severity. Austria, indeed, permitted herself the luxury of * Arehivio TriennaUf I. 72, 73. * Martini, op. eiL, III. 255. ' Moore, Byron, 441, 468 ; Carte ugrete^ I. 205, 208. 303, 407 ; Del Cerro, Politia, 134-140. He thought the conspirators *' wanting in principle." 38 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY a persecution, infamous even among her own state-trials, and sent Confalonieri (his life saved by his wife's heroic importimacy)/ and many another of his comrades to the Moravian fortress-prison of the Spielberg, where the Emperor Francis played with his victims like a cat with maimed birds, and whose horrors Pellico's pen has made the symbol of Austrian cruelty. Mettemich allowed Francis of Modena to wreck a revenge as savage.* But elsewhere he thought it pnident that a veil should be drawn over the past. He insisted that Ferdinand should make a small concession to Liberalism by increasing the power of the Provincial Councils, and giving Sicily an independent civil service, with a separate though subordinate Coimcil imder the Viceroy. But the Bourbon was thirsting for revenge, and no counsels of expediency were likely to deter him. Massacre, indeed, was now more than the times would swallow ; but he was successful in removing the veto that the Allies had put on persecution. The civil service, the army, the beneficed clergy were purged of all who had JLiberal sympathies. Men were arrested quicker than the courts could try them; public whippings made Naples iighast; and though the Austrians interfered to save the revolutionary officers (except Salvati and Morelli) from death, thirty were sent to an island penal settlement to sleep on the bare ground and starve.^ Ferdinand recalled Canosa and the Jesuits to complete the work. Holocausts were made of suspected books, and a catechism, founded ' For Teresa Confalonieri, see Mrs. Browning's lines : — " Spielberg's grate. At which the Lombard woman hnng the rose Of ber sweet soul by its own dewy weight, To feel the dungeon round her sunshine close. And pining so, died early, yet too late For what she suffered." For Mettemich*s attempt to induce Confalonieri to inculpate Charles Albert (which I see no reason to doubt), see Gualterio, RivolgcmierUi, I. 63, 66, 67 ; Tabbarrini, Capponi, 168 ; Andryane, Mim^ Naples.* The censorship was perhaps, the lightest in Italy. It is true that the law of 1815, which explicitly allowed political criticism, was a dead letter ; that no poUtical journals could be published without permission of the chief censor at Vienna; that after 1 821 all foreign books had to pass the same ordeal. Romances that " had no scientific merit," writings that " offended against the rules of style and purity of language " were proscribed ; Balzac and Bentham, Victor Hugo and Macchiavdlli, Hallam and Rabelais were alike consigned to the list of forbidden literature.^ But in quiet times the prohibited voliunes were almost openly sold; much of the censorship was a well-meant attempt to ^ Sacchi, Ittmzione, 1 1 ; Lorenzoni, op, eii,, II. 59. In the province of Ber- gamo 90 per cent of both sexes attended. ' For edacation generally see Sacchi, op, cU, ; Lorenzoni, op. eit, IL 49 et uq. ; Cantii, op, eit, I. 228-241 ; Mittermeier, op. ciL, 192-198. ' Dante too in Venetia, according to Riv. ttor. dd rUorg,, I. 489. r 56 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY suppress unclean books; scientific and non-political and sometimes theological literature was left tolerably free, and< there was an openness and activity of thought at Milan that at one time, at all events, was unequalled in Italy .^ One- third of the journals of the peninsula, and in 1842 nearly one-half of its literary pubUcations, appeared in the two provinces.^ In lofi^l government they were (he only states of Italy T^ch enjoyed an effective system. . All proprietors, includ- ' landed property made thjus often nearly equivalent to house- IhoH suffir^e. In the smaUer communes (with less than 300 proprietors) the whole body of electors met twice a year, and the initiative of important business lay with them, an executive committee of three administering the com- mimal business in the intervals. In the larger communes the meeting disappeared,^ and the administration vested entirely in a Council of thirty to sixty members. In the chief cities the executive was given to the Podest^ and his Assessors, but the consent of the Coimcil was requisite for any new departure. The communes supported the schools, the local police, the by-roads, and occasionally the priest; they controlled the local sanitation, the poUce, the parochial charities, and had powers, subject to the consent of the central authority, to carry out public works ; the meetings or coun- cils elected the school-teacher and the public doctor and midwife, who, here as elsewhere in Italy, were paid by every commune to attend the poor gratuitously. On the whole, the. central authority made little use of its powers of con- trol, and the spirit of local government was strong and self- assertive. But in proportion as self-government approximated to 1 D'Azeglio, Bicordi, 450, 453 ; G. Torelli, Rioordi, 14 ; Chiala, Dinoy I. 17. ' Many details of the censorship in Riv, star, d^ riaorg,, I. 4S9-521. The cast of a play might not include a bad King, unless there was a g«s«i King too. Hume's History was allowed to circulate at Venice, but not at Milan. * There was a tendency for councils to take the place of meetings. Out of S09 communes in Venetia, 450 had councils in 1819, and 583 in 1853 ; 117 had vffizio propria, which made them more independent of central officials. Morpurgo, Sagg% 12a LOMBARD Y-VENETI A $ 7 national representation, the fears of the autocracy emascu- lated it. In each of the seventeen provinces sat a !^ovincial Ccmgregation, on which the noble and untitled proprietors ''and the nineteen royal cities each had their representatives. Their powers were limited; they managed the provincial finances, supervised those of the communes, and had a cer- tain control over roads, rivers, and charities ; but they played small part in the public life of the country. The Central Congregations of Lombardy and Yenetia failed still more to realize the hopes that. they would .become active political powers. "A constitution," said the Emperor Francis, "would break down the confidence, which should exist between a. prince and his people^" But it was necessary in 1 8 1 4 to pacify his Italian provinces with a show of representative govern- ment, and the Congregations were empowered to present the prayers of the Lombards and Venetians. But they were expressly debarred from legislative functions; candidates for election had to show a high property qualification, and were subject to the government's veto. Their functions were only those of local bodies ; their one substantial power, the right of petition, was little used by men who represented only a section of the people, and, except by accident, in- cluded none but such as were acceptable to the government. They made one effort in 1825' to procure legal and fiscal reform and the exclusion of foreigners from the civil service. But no answer was made to their prayer, and their next petition, in 1838, to increase the number of the Emperor's Italian body-guard, only made them ridiculous. The people, who regarded them as " Well-paid to get Engrossed in hospital administration," ^ lost interest in them and their work. Wherever the political fears of thjB government came into play, there was the same sharp, contrast with the real and Lhir value of the ordinary ^ministration. In frank moments the government confessed that it had no moral force behind it, and the sense that there was no safety-valve Giosti. r S8 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY for discontent kept it in perpetual terror of conspiracy. The law, comparatively mild and wise in all else, was in matters of state-concern systematically, cynically iniquitous. The bastinado, starvation, belladonna were used to extort con- fessions.^ And when the defendant in a state-trial at last came into court, he found himself without coimsel, without seeing the depositions against him, without the protection of publicity, confronted by a packed bench of Austrian or Tyrolese judges. Mere expression of poUtical discontent sufficed for conviction and a lingering death in the Spiel- berg. In times of popular commotion or epidemic crime the givdizio statario enabled the authorities to dispense with formalities, and sentence without appeal. The political poUce* were probably no better and no worse than in Piedmont or at Rome; there was less in- terference with personal liberty, but more espionage, more fiissy surveillance of private life. They delighted to collect each petty detail of the Uves of suspects — a mass of in- formation, which has probably proved more valuable to the historian than it ever did to the government. The [Emperor Francis, a hard, unteachable official, scared to monomania by Eotzebue*s assassination, embodied his ideal of government in the poUce spy. Men of every station were in the pay of the sbirri, from the cardinal and noble or the dilettante who wrote odes to its chief, down to the common spy, the outcast of society, who earned his two francs a day by garnering more or less untruthful gossip from the caf^ or the street. The letters of the general public were opened "with interesting results." A normal state of fussy suspicion agitated the bureaus of the police ; endless scares of Bonaparte plots or of English and Russian intrigues filled their verbose reports; English travellers and harmless artists like Rossini and Yemet were shadowed. A worse fate befell the native suspect; he might not emigrate or travel abroad without their leave; secret influences could prevent him from obtaining office. A ^ Misley, op ct<., 23 ; Casati, ConfcUonieri^ I. 52-65. ' It most always be remembered that the tbirri were more for political purposes than to preserre law and order ; hence the hatred of them. A/ LOMBARDY-VENETI A s 9 professor was dismissed for referring to Pope Julius' cry of "Out with the foreigner"; it was necessary even to obtain their leave to hold a private balL All through the government ran the same intenningling of good administration and political tyranny. ' But on the whole the Lombards, shrewd,, genial, tenacious, were buty\ too ready to acq^uiesce in a rule that secured their material int^ests and their amusements, hoT^ever fatal it might be .' to the finer sides of civil life. Milan, though fallen from her high estate, was still busy, brilliant, sceptical, dissolute. iJAt Venice, save for brief intervals of higher feeling, all , sense of dignity had gon^ and nobles and plebeians ."neither thought nor felt." Her aristocracy fawned on -'Austria, her middle classes had neither enterprise nor influence, two-fifths of her population received charitable rolief. The Austrians knew well how to play on this .demoralization They gave heavy subsidies to the opera, and a greater glut of carmval splendour was their ready panacea for poUtical excitement. The time-honoured feuds, which divided Milan from Brescia or Venice, were quietly fomented ; and the noble, who showed interest in public affairs, found himself under the government's frown« It was only by slow degrees that any class rose above these temptations. Each city haii its group of noble families, for the most part engrossed in money-making or frivolity. But at Brescia and Milan there was a better spirit. The powerful and wealthy Milanese nobles came in time to recognize that they could not regain their privileges, and their exclusiveness made way for a friendli-''^ ness towards the middle classes, that contrasted well with the class-spirit of their peers at Turin. Confalonieri had won many of them to his cause, and they never forgot or forgave the insult thrown at their order by his cruel doom. The heavy land-tax helped more generous instincts to keep alive a certain flame of patriotism; and their sons and daughters were brought up to regard the Austrians as hardly tolerated aliens, to be flouted and boycotted at theatre or ball. But the nobles were of comparatively small importan< 6o A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY rLombardy was preeminently a country of the middle classes; they oW the greater part of the landTftey were enterprising and successful in trade. The shrewdness and artistic faculty of the Lombard made industry flourish jthrough all discouragements, and their land was, with the ex^ception of Belgium, the most densely populated state of IjE.urope. The silk trade advanced by leaps and bounds, and gave employment to large numbers of spinners through- out the hill coimtry. The cheesft^ industry of Lodi and ' Crema was famous; the cotton manufacture was growing, and sugar refineries had been built. The first insurance society was founded m 1827; Milan was lighted with gas in 1843. Bu^ however much the long peace might help trade, the Lombard manufacturers had to pay the price of belonging to the Austrian Empire. A heavy and com- pUcated tariff crippled trade and encouraged contraband;^ and down to 1822 a customs-line along the Mincio was a never-failing irritant. The trade of Venice, at all events till she was made a free port in the '30s, was sacri- ficed to the interests of her rival Trieste. Verona was ruined by German competition; Brescia was compelled to close her armouries, because the War Office sent its orders to Grermany. The mass of the people, as everywhere in Italy, was ^a^cultural. One in eight of the population was a pro- ^etor; and theuF number was increasmg.^ In the mountain districts every peasant was an owner, and though his tmy farm was heavily mortgaged, his common rights curtailed by an Enclosure Act, his home and food of wretched quality, he preferred his independence to comfort. In the hills and non-irrigated plains property was nearly as much divided, but was cultivated, as a rule, in Venetia at a rack-rent, in Lombardy by tenants under various forms of mezzedria, or on perpetual leases at fixed rents, sometimes centuries old. The population was very thick, rents were high, and the ^ English stuffs, charged 60 per cent, ad valorem dntj, were sold at 15 per cent, advance on the untaxed value : Witt, SoeUUi teerites, ' So Cantii, op, ciL v. Raumer, op. eit,, I. 155-156, says one in eleven ; in the province of Bergamo there was one property to every five inhabitants : Rosa, Bergamo, 44. LOMBARDY-VENETIA 6i fauuly income was almost invariably supplemented by silk- spinning at home. Here (at all events in Lombardy, for Venetia was always behind her more prosperous sister) the peasant was at his best; he was poor, but less so than in France, his food was very plain, but his house and clothing were comparatively good. These conditions were reversed in the irrigated plain, which lay between the Ticino and the Adda. Here the staples of agriculture changed from vines and mulberries to rice 'and maize and rich pastures of temporary grasses, famous for their cheese.^ Large farms of from 200 to 7cx> acres were held on short leases of the iSoglish type by wealthy and educated farmers. The peasant had^no hold on the soil except in the precarious tenure of an allotment. His food was probably no worse than that of the peasants of the hills, the pellagra was not as yet the scourge it has been since; but in character the labourer of the plains was immeasurably inferior. Badly educated, nomadic, housed in huts of canes and mud, hating his employer and landlord, sometimes poverty-stricken to despair,^ he was a dangerous element in the state. Even in the low country east of the Adda, where the farms were smaller and the labourer better oif, he had little of the independence, which characterized the peasant of the hills. And alike in plain and hill the peasant often found in the Austrian government a protector against his more present enemy, the rack-renting landlord. If it were not for the cruel eight-years' military service, he would have had little material cause of complaint against the alien rule.^ But even the apathetic Lombard and Venetian could not be fed by peace and prosperous trade alone. To the fii^ spirits among them the Austrian bureaucracy, because it was Austrian, was more odious than the crying tyrannies of ' The irrigation works cost on the average £2S per acre; rents ran from £2 to jf*! I per acre ; the best meadows yielded twenty-five to thirty tons of grass per acre, or fed sixty cows on fifty acres : Beanclerk, op. cU,^ 183-188. ' His wages in 1845 were is. per day, Canth, op, cU,j I. 166, in 1882 they appear to have fallen to 6^ a day : Beanclerk, op, eU., 191. ' Jacini, Proprietd, patnm; Bo wring, Report, 94-99 ; Cantti, op, eit., I. 184- 185; II. 150-160; Beanclerk, op. ctt, 169-233; Carte tegrete, I. 256-257; Horpnrgo, Saggi; Visconti-Venosta, VaUeUina, 6z/ A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Kom< !ome and Naples. Civil servants and soldiers, and a few nch Conservatives might denationalize themselves ; ^ rack- rented tenants and their labourers might care more for agrarian than nationalist politics ; material prosperity might sometimes smother the patriotism of manufacturer and artisan; Venice might be sunk in lethargy. But even Venice, brooding over the lost glories of the Republic, woul(J at times chafe at thet sullen domineering stranger; and at Milan and in every Lombard city and through the Alpine valleys a fierce hatred of the Austrian gradually took possession of the best in every class. To noble, and shop- keeper, and artisan, as Mazzini's teaching filtered into every rank, the white uniform of the Austrian soldier meant a tyranny to be endured only so long as force compelled. ^ A catechism, used in the elementary schools, taoght that *' God punishes with eternal damnation soldiers who desert their sovereign." ^ X CHAPTER IV SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITAL Y— {continued) MoDBNA. Pabma. Lucca. Tuscan : Fossombroni ; Leopold II. ; Tuscan government ; the Tuscans ; the Gteorgofila ; clergy ; education ; peasants ; Tuscan life. Papal States : the theocracy ; the Curia; administration ; trade ; local government ; law ; justice ; police ; the Inquisition ; the Jews ; education ; religion and morality ; condition of the people ; Romagna and the Marches ; separatist movement in Romagna ; Umbria ; Agro Romano; Home. MODENA South of the Po, between Lombardy and Tuscany, lay the little Duchies of Modena and Parma. Modena, which reached from the lower Po across the Apennines to a piece of coast at Massa and Carrara, with a population of half a million, had been modelled to conformity with Duke Francis' ideal of sovereignty.^ In theory the state teemed with benevolent provisions for the people; but the facts of a personal despotism inevitably clashed with the ideal. The / taxes were heavy, the law, both civil and criminal, was bad, arbitrary, secret. Royal decrees could override the law; political suspects, against whom there was no proof, could be detained in prison, "till the truth came out/' Under the French rule there had been activity and enterprise, and Modena had been famous for her school of administrators. Now all was crushed under the dead weight of Francis' suspicions. The free communal government was first weakened, then destroyed. Elementary education did not oxist save in a very few towns; secondary schools were almost a monopoly of the Jesuits; the University was ruined by the new discipline which the Duke introduced after 182 1. The censorship was in the hands of Sanfedist ^ See aboye» p. 18. 63 64 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY fanatics, who made Dante a forbidden book,^ and allowed no literature to enter the state except such as received their sanction. There was little trade; while the government protected its subjects' eyes by prohibiting the use of matches,* its high tariffs made commerce impossible. Such merchants as there were, were mainly Jews and Swiss, and the former suffered under every disability that Francis' suspicions could invent. The oiJy industry of importance was the marble trade of Carrara. The bulk of the popula- k^tion were peasants, almost all proprietors, careful tillers of the niggard soil of the mountains ; often harassed by officials, often living a hand's-breath from starvation, but devoted to the government, and furnishing Francis at need with Sanfedist volimteers. • Parma The bordering Duchy of Parma presented every contrast to Francis' dark rule. The state, with its thickly-planted ' population of 450,000^ "had in the *2os the most en- lightened government in Italy. Napoleon's widow, idle and dissolute as she was, was a generous and well-meaning ruler, and her ministers seconded her Ukings for indulgent and comparatively liberal government. The French law had been retained, had been even improved on, as in the equality it made between male and female heirs. There were no privileges before the law, trials were public, the judges independent. A council of state was consulted on i all legislative projects. The police were comparatively I innocuous, and the maintenance of the French Concordat \ kept the clergy in check Parma was the only state in I Itfdy where Jews were admitted to the civil service. The ' law carefully protected the mezzaiuolo tenant.' The country | was ahead of all Italy in its education. Most of the com- } munes had schools for boys, and 20 per cent, of the popula- / tion attended them or the private girls' schools. I ^ Valery, Voyages, 211. ^ GiuBti, Epittolarioy 134. s y. Ranmer, Italy, L 307-308. LUCCA 65 Lucca Least among the little states, its destinies closely linked to those of Tuscany, was the tiny Duchy of Lucca, placed among the Apennines, and along the coast between Carrara ' and Pisa. Its area was but 320 square miles, its dense .'population 150,000. The Congress of Vienna had pro- •' mised that its constitution. of 1805, which was to a certain extent representative, should be preserved, but the pledge was forgotten, and even the ecclesiastical independence of the state was gradually surrendered. But the government was not intolerant or cruel; the Duchess, though bigoted, was generous, and won sufficient favour from the Liberals of Italy to make them in 183 1 think of her son, Charles Louis, as a possible leader of the Revolution. But Charles Louis was soon the laughing-stock of Italy; he became a Protestant, apparently from a whim, then returned to the Catholic Church; he made a Yorkshire groom, Thomas Ward, his prime minister; his extravagance and dissolute- ness won for him from Giusti the title of " the Protestant Don Juan." The country was comparatively prosperous, yielding much wealth from its famous oliveyards, though insufficient for its thick population, which emigrated in large numbers. There was a certain measure of free-trade, and a considerable industry in silk and wool and cotton. . There were many schools, and, though less than half were gratuitous, the attendance was high. The secondary schools were good, and the University boasted 25 professors and 1 80 scholars. Tuscany The Tuscan government was the only one outside Piedmont and Parma, which was willingly accepted by its subjects. But in principles and methods the governments of Florence and Turin stood in sharpest contrast. There was a certain truth in Mazzini's criticism that the velvet glove only hid the gauntlet ; but compared with the other VOL. I. E .• I ■ c 66 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY govemments of Italy, the Tuscan was mild, tolerant, en- lightened. Reform of a kind was a tradition with the descendants of Leopold I., the first Austrian Grand Duke, one of those Liberal sports, which appear from time to time in the Hapsburg family-treernPossombroni, the premier, was a quiet-loving, unenthusiastic man, who ciurfied into the government his motto, "The world goes of itsel£" Stagnation, he thought, was a cheap price to pay for the absence of crisea Careless of principle, capable of energy but self-indulgent, both inclination and statecraft prompted him to drug the people into dull contentment. The men of mediocrity, with whom he filled the civU service, were told not to be over-zealous but content themselves with drawing their pay. But he had served under Napoleon, and liked a name for tolerance and progress; again and again he gave shelter to the refugees from Romagna and Naples; he allowed the Florentines to send help to the Greek insurgents; he favoured Charles Albert's claims to the Piedmontese throne. There is some evidence that in later life he favoured representative institutions, and won his master to ineffective acquiescence.^ LeopoldJlM^the prince in whose name he governed after 1824, was a worthy, pains- taking "bourgeois, whose chief interest it was to superintend drainage works, and visit his experimental farms in straw-hat and gaiters. Giusti satirized him as the " Tuscan Morpheus," whom — " Itch of glory pricks to drain Pockets and fens" ; but like his premier, he loved a repute for tolerance, and he was too good-natured, and in a dim kind of way too patriotic, to be an oppressive ruler. Unfortunately, he was a Hapsburg prince; and though he resented unsought dictation from Vienna, and Fossombroni's masterly states- manship prevented Tuscany from becoming a mere Austrian fief, Leopold could hardly fail to be i^ected by subtle family influences. Outside high politics, however, his Tuscan softness held ^ Zobi, Staria, IV. IheumenU, 208 ; Gnalterio, lUvolgimefUi, L 246. >i TUSCANY 67 its own. The ordinary law was mild as the people who lived under it. Leopold I.'s criminal code had been in its day \ a model to Europe, and it i f^ impr oved, when many _ I Trialswere public, bail was allowed, the death penalty \ was rarely inflicted.^ Even the police were infected with the imiversal slackness, and provoked Mettemich's indig- nant remonstrances. But though seldom cruel, they were minutely vexatious. Many minor offences came before them imder a procedure secret both to defendant and public; espionage was active; nowhere was there more violation of the secrecy of the post, and such adepts were the Tuscan police in the art, that the Milanese government applied for their reagents to decipher the invisible ink of treasonable correspondence. They irritated or amused the public with the usual vagaries of a fussy officialism; and when Giotto's portrait of Dante was discovered in the Bar- gello, the colours were altered in the repainting, lest they should suggest the revolutionary tricolor.^ The censorship suffered little criticism of the government ; but prohibited books were often sold openly on the bookstalls, foreign literature was admitted freely except by fits, and Vieusseux's library at Florence was the only place in Italy, where men could freely meet to discuss political questions, or read the leading European journals. Florence was the one city, where Alfieri's and Niccolini's plays could be presented on the stage. Taxation was light and equable. There were no mono- polies or guilds to strangle trade : the import duties were A^ the lowest in Europe, and Tuscany was the Mecca of free- traders;* so unrelenting was the devotion to industrial freedom, that in its name no tariff of cab fares was allowed at Florence.* There was indeed no lack of governmental ^ After a capital sentence in 1829, the crowd nearly lynched the ezecu^ tioner, and apparently there were no more executions after this. Mittermeier, Condiiioni, 1 14. ' Homer, Oiutti, 90 ; see Guerrazzi, Memorie, So. ' See the Bine Book, drawn up by Sir John Bo wring in 1837 ; its analysis, ^ however, of the Tuscan fiscal system is incomplete. For the effect of Free Trade in mitigating commercial crises, see Foggi, StoriUf I. 482. * Till 1859. r 68 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY enterprise in certain directions. Much of the Maremna was drained, a cadastral survey completed, the port of Leg- horn revived. The railway between Leghorn and Pisa, opened in 1844, was one of the earliest in Italy. But these reforms owed themselves to Fossombroni's and his Grand Duke's passion for engineering schemes. Where they were not equally interested, the administration was paralysed by its own lethargy. The army was neglected and despised ; kept up partly from treaty obligations, partly for the sake of the military bands. The officers, with few exceptions, were the most worthless scions of the richer classes ; recruits were drawn from the scum of the people, and convicts were relegated to the so-called penal regiments. The judges shared in the general corruption, and the decay went on, till in the '30s the Tuscan Bench was notoriously tainted and imcertain. The civil service had learnt that . the government hated earnestness and connived at pecula- tion ; the ministers had little control over their departments, and Fossombroni's system sank to inevitable rottenness. ! Though the local franchise was popular, the municipaliti had lost real power, and were mere instruments for collect- ing taxes. Tuscany was historically " an aggregate of • communes more democratic than the United States," but "^ they were not even allowed to levy their own local rates. Their officials were nominated by the central government, . and cringed to their real masters, the police. ^. The government reflected the character of the people, its easy-going materialism, its dislike of hardness, its " poisonous gift " of a tolerance that came less of conviction than want of earnestness. Manners were more gentle than / moral ; there seemed to be no stuff for great deeds. Critics ^ complained of the gallantry without passion, the wit without deconun, the tolerance without dignity of Florentine society. Among the richer classes a sinecure in the civil service was the very path to beatitude. The feuds of opera-dancers, the rivalries of Donizetti and Verdi, the excitement of religious ceremonies absorbed their feeble energies. F.nar- vation, the fatal heritage of the Medici, was fostered by the elegant scepticism of the aristocracy^ and the prevalenoe of TUSCANY 69 a somewhat sordid comfort. Tuscany was perhaps the most prosperoiS 8taJe"m~Ttary; but as Gino Capponi lamented, it / was " a Garden of Paradise without the tree of knowledge • and without the tree of life." It was in Giusti's words " good-humour at top and good-humour at bottom," a mild, mediocre life, with little of bad in it and less of goodie There was nothing of the patrician in the Florentine nobles. Descended from the bankers and merchant-princes of • • medieval Florence, they were still traders and farmers. The > best were zealous social reformers, and the society of the ^(Jeorgofils, like the writers in the Conciliatore, promoted economic studies, schools, savings-banks, which slowly but certainly made their mark. Raffaello Lambruschini and Enrico Mayer became the apostles of elementary and secondary education ; Liberal landed proprietors like Ridolfi and Capponi and Bettino Bicasoli devoted themselves to agricultural improvements and the education of the peasantry, . founding agricultural shows, experimental farms, village even- ing schools, doing their best to supply the gap that the . indifference of the government had left.^ They were worthy , . philanthropic, country gentlemen, but too attached ^ their mansions and vineyards to risk them in a hazardous revolu- tion. Most of them thought with Vieusseux, that " politics meant nothing and social customs everything," and it is largely due to them that there was so much that was doc- trinaire and flaccid and unpractical in the later reform movement. The^ church in Tuscany was as much in subjection as in Lombardy. The government refused to admit the Jesuits or relax the laws of mortmain. The church was part of the ^ -machine for keeping things quiet ; in Fossombroni's scheme there was no place for a zealous clergy. /"The 6000 monks and friars were a corrupting influence in the coimtry districts;) % • the Qooosefiular clergy, often ordained without proper train- ^mg^vrere conspicuous neither for morality nor learning.* But the government never, down to 1846, forgot the erastian traditions of the last century, and saved Tuscany from the ^ Ricasoli, LetUre, I. 39. ' Zobi, op. eiL, IV. 308 ; Del Ccrro, PoLizia, 153. 70 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY ecclesiastical tyranny which enslaved Piedmont and desolated Romagna. With a debased civil service and an ignorant priesthood education was under bad auspices. The government patron- ized the imiversities of Pisa and Siena: but little was taught beyond law and medicine, and even in these the • instruction was second-rate, and the work spoilt by the absence of a sound elementary foundation. There were few secondary schools, and at Pistoia alone they were under ^ "^public control. There were elementary schools for boys, generally gratuitous, in almost every commune ; but though in the towns some were fairly good, the rural schools were • very indifferent, and the attendance reached only to one-, tenth of those of school age.^ There was practically no teaching for girls. The Georgofils tried to supply the deficiences and overcome the difficulties caused by the isolation of the mezzaitioli farmers and the absence of village life. But the government showed an intermittent opposi- tion to the pupil-teacher system, and it was introd^^ced almost by stealth, and to a very limited extent. And when in later years the progressive section of the ministry pro- jected a national system of elementary schools, they were not sufficiently in earnest to prevent the intrigues of Rome from wrecking the scheme. The non-interference of the government, which was Ij fatal to the schools, should have helped industry. -But there was not sufficient energy in the country to give it the prosperity of Lombardy. Though there were a few flourish- ing manufactures of sUk, wool, and straw hats, and a good many little iron mines near the coast, the total number of \ industries was small, and Florence and Leghorn were the^ only cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants. The mass of the people was agricultural. Nearly one half weren proprietors,* a third were farmers, most of them cultivating under the mezzedria system, which, however much it may ^ Bowring, Beportj 57, 60; Ricasoli, op.eit., I. 131 ; Serristori, Statittiea, 149, 150; contra Sacchi, Ittrmione, 45. ' Bo wring, Report, 11. Cini, Ddla (omo, 28, says that in 1835 th^re were 132,000 landowners, which would give rather more than one-third of heads of families. TUSCANY 7 1 have checked progress, at all events secured to the tenant a modicum of comfort.^ More than half the country was mountain or marenma, but competent judges pronounced the agriculture of the Yaldamo superior to that of the • Lothians.' The economic standard of the peasants was indeed not high ; but their houses were comparatively good, and their position was secure. Among the increasing class of farm labourers there was at times acute distress, and * though begging was forbidden in Florence, there was much • of it elsewhere. Taken however as a whole, the rural population, clever and shrewd, but ill-educated and easy- going was wrapped in a sordid but not uncomfortable security. The general distribution of property, combined with the absence of education and political Ufe, made t^e masses conservative and averse to change. Class ai^mo sity_ seemed almost absent. The traveller, seeing the prosperity ~ajid contentment of the country, looked on Tuscany as one of the favoured spots of earth. But the fair structure was ' built on an unsure foundation. 4jike in th e better and] worse sides of Tuscan life there showed the same fatal want of moral energy, the same lack of the finer virtues. Under- ^ / neath the polish" oF Florence and the contentment of the peasantry lay an absence of the more virile elements of^ national being.. Monotony and uneventfulness in private y life, a want of statesmanship and administrative chaos in '"^'t-. public life; an almost entire absence of local government and education; a standard of comfort too much and too little to stimulate ; all were a worse school of progress than was the discipline of Piedmont or the unendurable misrule of Rome or Naples. It was only in turbulent Leghorn, with its rough, seafaring population, or among the students of Pisa and Siena, that there were any germs of real and \ fruitful life. ' Under the mezzedria sjstem the landlord advanced all or part of the capital, and took in return for rent and interest a certain proportion of the produce, generally from one-third to one-half. The mezmiuUi tenants often had a sort of cnstomarj fixity of tenure. See Capponi, Serittif I. 389, et teq. (translated in Bowring, Report, 40-46) ; Id., LeUere, III. 1 51 -161. ' Laing, Noie$f 460 ; Cobbett, Tour. r 72 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Papal States The States of the Pope stretched from the Latin coast across the Campagna and the Tiber yalley, oyer the high- lands of Umbria and the Central Apennines to the Marches of Fermo and Ancona ; thence turning northwards along a narrow strip of country between the Tuscan Apennines and the sea. they spread into the fertUe plains of Romagna. and were bounded by the Po. In 1827 the census gave a population of two millions and a half. The dominant note of the country, marking it off among European states, was its govsmment^ of priests. The Catholic world held it essential to the Pope's honour and prestige that he should possess the prerogatives of a prince. Diplomacy believed that as such he was less likely to be a puppet of one of the great Powers. "God has entrusted the state," wrote Cardinal Bemetti, " to His Vicar on earth for the freer exercise of the Pontifical primacy throughout the world." The theory demanded an inde- pendent territory, owning the Pope as sovereign. But the Roman court was not content with a rule, whose only differentiating mark was its ecclesiastical prince. Long after the creation of the Papal dominion, the Popes had trans- formed their temporal sovereignty into a theocratic govern- ment, and the state became an appanage of the Roman priesthood. It was the theory of the Church that only ecclesiastics might administer a government of divine appointment ; they made its laws and ruled its provinces, sat in its law courts, directed its education and its police. # The Sacred College of Cardinals, which elected the Pope, was torn by factions and eaten through by French and Austrian intrigues. "Cajolery, promises, plots, betrayed without trace of shame," so wrote a Piedmontese ambas- sador, " are the chronic sjrmptoms, which reappear in the history of every conclave." ^ Each of the four great Catholic Powers possessed a veto, and the election often resulted in ' Biaachi, Diflomazia, III. 34. See Salvagni, CorU Romana, III. 122 et itq,, 178 et aeq. PAPAL STATES 73 the choice of a weak, colourless man, who mounted the throne stricken in "years' and undeYp^^ to the party wjiich elected him. "The ..radical vice of the Roman goyemment/' said Chateaubriand, " is that old men appoint an old man like themselves, and he in turn makes none but old men cardinals."^ The party-leader -became Secretary of State, whose first work was to reverse the traditions of his predecessor. " Every Pope's rule," ran the Roman pro- verb, " is the last one's enemy ; " and the new officials, who came in with each new Pontiff, made haste to feather theu- nests before they in turn were displaced.* The great oflScers . and heads of departments were the more fortunate or power- ful of the Roman hierarchy, and governed by its grace. The^ prelates, or monstgnari, not necessarily priests, who held most of the chief posts in the government, were often obscure adventurers, who found the prelature an easy road to wealth or a cardinal's hat. Bigoted, timid, luxurious, sometimes vicious, they formed an exclusive and tyrannical oligarchy,^ which differed &om a feudal aristocracy only in that many of its members were self-made men. A few scholars, a few ecclesiastical statesmen of ability, a few old men of simple, . pious worth only set in blacker relief the general worldliness imd frivolity of the Roman court.* Outside Rome the government was still in the hands of .^great ecclesiastics. Cardinals ruled the four Legations of Romagna— Bologna^ FerrM;a, Ravenna, Forli ; ^_ prelates the less important delegations of the other provinces ._ O nly between 1831 and 1836, and to a very limited extent after /1 849, were laymen allowed to hold these offices. Though 1 Chateaubriand, Mimoirea^ IV. 451, 465. He adds that the ambassadors! could not now dictate the choice of a Pope unless they used heavy bribery : , Ih. 47a — ' Oaleotti, Sovronied, 144, 253 ; D'Azeglio, LetUre inediU, II. 194-195. * D'Azeglio, Seritti pottumi, 159 ; Bianchi, op, ctt., III. 167-168, 397 ; Carte iegrete^l, 303, 344-345, 377 ; D'Ideville, Journal^ II. 124. In 1848 the average pay of ecclesiastics in the civil service was 782 scodi ; of laymen, 234 scadi. See below. Vol. II., p. 9. * Liverani, II papato, 81-86 ; Galeotti, op, eit,, 143 ; Carte segrete, I. 375 ; Fkrini, Roman State, I. 142 ; Bianchi, op, eit. III. 403, 405 ; D'Azeglio, L*Italie, 141 ; Pantaleoni, Idea italiana, 58-59, 108 ; Mamiani, Seritti, 492 ; Gaiani, Boma/n Exile, 59 ; Perfetti, Bieordi, 14. * In 1832 Urbino-Pesaro and Velletri were made Legations. 74 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY nominally responsible to the Secretary of State, aJegate or / ' \delegate was, in spite of Consalvi*s efforts to bridle them, an Wmost independent prince. "A cardinal," said Pellegrino Rossi, " is a prince at Rome, a pacha in the provinces." They claimed to impose taxes at discretion; they misread or neglected orders from Rome. One cardinal made his police tear down Consalyi's edicts, another created new capital offences unknown to the law. Sometimes tyrants, some- times sinecurists, their rule with few exceptions was one long misgovemment. " Vanity, money, fear," said a prelate, " have ruled this country for several centuries." ^ In con- trast with the painstaking bureaucracies of Piedmont and liombardy and the tolerance of Tuscany, Papal administra- tion was characterized by ferocious bigotry and effrontery of corruption. To its ecclesiastical rulers, aJl that savoured of the nineteenth century — railways, telegraphs, free trade, vac- cination, modem literature — were the work of a spirit fatal to the Church. The finances, especially at a later date, were in the utmost confusion. Consalvi and Leo XII., indeed, kept income and expenditure fairly balanced; but under Gregory XVI. all pretence of order vanished. The treasurer was irresponsible; from 1835 to 1844 no statement of accounts was published till in after years; from 1837 onwards there was no proper book-keeping or audit. The public debt kept leaping up in time of peace, and so reckless was the borrowing, that a loan from the Rothchilds was taken up at a discount of 3 5 per cent.^ Taxation, indeed, was not heavy ; » but trade was injured */ by customs-barriers, by want of railways and good roads, by the jobbery and oflScialism of the government. The hemp of Romagna, the wool of the Agro Romano might have developed a flourishing commerce. But there was little ^ Oouvemement tempnrdf 102'. ' Spada, RivoluzionCy I. 1 60. Spada, who was a piooB banker's clerk, observes that the Rothcbilda ** as Hebrews were not bound to believe in the divine promises made bj Jesus Christ as to the stability of the Catholic Church." See Gennarelli, Oovemo pontiJieiOf II. 581. ' According to Pujos, Ligidation, 104, Rossi pat the taxes per head in 1S48 at one-third of those in France or England ; but the comparatiye poverty was probably in equal proportion. See Bianchi, op. cit.^ III. 394. PAPAL STATES 75 intercourse across the Apennines; travellers crawled along the wretched roads; brigands, though Consalyi and Leo did something to put them down, infested parts of the country, especially near the Neapolitan frontier, and it was Tound necessary to cut down trees near the roads, as in . EjQgland of the thirteenth century.^ Every province had its different standard of weights and measures ; the use of gas was iUegal ; charters were rarely and grudgingly granted to chambers of commerce.^ There were few manufactures beyond a struggling wool and silk industry ; there was no . marine, no foreign trade except from Ancona. Bounties and protection only crippled production the ^oj|0? and the woollen industry languished, though clergy l^lftcials were at one time practically forbidden to wear stifflKf foreign wool.' High duties gave birth to an organized Contraband with all the mercantile machinery of clerks and inHlrances.* Economic knowledge was indeed medieval or non-existent. A prelate high in control of the Exchequer refused to study poUtical economy, because its books were " pernicious an4 on the Lidex." When prices of food were high, the com- munes were compelled, public opinion assenting, to purchase supplies and sell at an artificial cheapness. And to keep prices low at Rome, com might be moved across a parish boundary, only when it went in the direction of the capital. Nor were there any local liberties, at least in the '20s, to temper the misrule. The old vigorous muni- 1 cipal life had been crushed by the French, and Consalvi| swept away the little that was left. There was, indeed, a framework of communal government, but the powers were nominal. The governor, who ruled each district, controlled the police, administered summary justice, tjnrannized over the communes, imchecked so long as he displayed a due obsequiousness to his ecclesiastical superior. And though ^ T. Ranmer, op. eitt II. 52 ; Oavazzi, Four Latt Popett 68. The brigands once carried off a whole semiDarj, masters and pnpils. On another occasion 9000 soldiers guarded the roads to protect the King of Prussia from capture. * In one charter it took five articles to define the position of the Porter. ' Miteellaneoui EdietSt No. 27 ; see Gkdli, Cenni, 258, and Bowring, Report^ 82-84, for opposite views respecting bounties. f Farini, op. eiL, L 147. r 76 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY his despotism might be somewhat tempered in the towns, the villages were at his mercy. To conciliate the Powers, Bemetti framed at a later date an elaborate scheme of provincial councils. On the surface it was perhaps the most liberal law of the kind in Italy. Each council was to be elected indirectly by the communes of the province ; fcut none but landed proprietors were eligible, the councils met once only in the year, and debated with closed doors. "Opinions differed as to their work ; at all events, whether through their fault or not, they wore the muzzle of the .government and after the first few years it was rare for men of position to sit upon them. The general law was of a piece with the rest of the government. Before 1831 there was no serious attempt to codify it, and it was still a monstrous compound of enact- ments of every age, obsolete and uncorrelated.* To men who had tasted of the simplicity and equity of Napoleon's code. Papal law seemed a plunge back into medievalism. Consalvi, indeed, had retained the French commercial law, had swept away most of the baronial courts, and abolished suitors' fees. But his promises of codes came to little, and under Leo the modest reforms he had made nearly disappeared^ again. Even the Civil Code, which Bemetti introduced in 1 83 1, though based on the Code Napoleon, retained manyj of the abuses of the older law. It gave special sanction U entails; it forbade divorce under any circumstances; it allowed no property to pass to women in c&ses of intestac]^; it invalidated wills which omitted legacies to the Church. The whole judicial system was complicated beyond expres- sion. Up to 1 83 1 there were at Rome fifteen separate jurisdictions, besides the private courts of barons and *" religious corporations ; and the Pope's " most holy auditor "*^ could quash proceedings or verdict in any court. Bemetti's r reforms swept away much of this; the Pope's auditor dis- appeared, and a better system was inaugurated in the provinces. But at Rome much of the old machinery remained, and the greatest abuse of all, the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts, was left untouched. Canon law ^ Saozet, Rome, 19S-202 ; Pianciani, Rome des Papet, III. 243, et teq. PAPAL STATES 77 ruled the principles of government, and by the canon law the priest had a sacred character. It followed that cases/ to which he was a party, must be tried by men of his own order, that his punishments must be on a lower scale than ^ those of laymen.^ Under various pretexts the ecclesiastical courts were constantly encroaching on the ordinary la'JfV * • Widows, orphans, the servants of prelates, were swept withiiiv'/ . their jmrisdiction ; they decided on cases of church property and charities, of sexual immorality and blasphemy. Anff. ' while ecclesiastics could be judged only by ecclesiastics, prelates monopolized the bench in the high courts, that tried laymen and cleric alike. They sat in the Segnaturay the B4)tay the Sagra Consulta ; they were a majority in the Exchequer C!ourt and in the criminal court of the Auditor CamercR, The young prelates, who were placed on the bencK as a stepping-stone to better posts, were venal and incapable.' The real work was done by the lay assessors, the " auditors,'* who, being without responsibility or pay, were the tools of the government or of the richest suitor. The provincial judges, though laymen, bore no better repute; all were removable, most were miserably paid. They were often young and untried men, foisted into office by powerful patronage, ignorant, corrupt, too closely connected with the administration to be impartial. Only in particularly scan- dalous instances would the government interfere; and a judge, convicted of forgery, was known to have received pension instead of punishment.* The procedure of the courts was often equally discredited. Pleadings before the Rota and . Segnatura were in Latin, and before 1831 the same rule appUed in many of the lower courts. On the pretext of , . preventing intimidation of witnesses, the public were excluded * ' from all the more important criminal cases. Every encour- agement was given to informers; no bail was allowed; before Bemetti's reforms no criminal defendant might cross-examine; and though after 1831 he was nominally permitted to select his own counsel, the advocate, who made a genuine defence, was liable to be punished. Even more ^ See Minghetti, LHai^ 5. ' Farlni, op. oit., I. 158. ^^^ 78 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY iniquitous was the procedure, that obtained in cases of treason and sedition. Here even after 1831 no cross- examination was allowed; men were sentenced without knowing who their accusers were; their counsel was ap- pointed by the court, and often worked for conviction.^ It was treason, punishable with death and confiscation, to be present at a meeting of a secret society ; the galleys for life were the penalty for being privy to the escape of an aflSliate (unless he were a relative), or to an attempt to proselytize. Sacrilege, however innocent of political complexion, was con- structed into treason and punishable with death. Political , convicts were deported to " unhealthy localities," or confined with criminals " contrary to the law of nations," or chained for life to the walls of their cells.^ The police were more than ordinarily vexatious. " They can," complained a pamphleteer in 1 846, " imprison a man, banish him, exercise surveillance over him, refuse his pass- port, confine him to a district, deprive him of civil rights, rob him of office, forbid him to carry arms or leave his house at night. They open his letters in the post, and make no attempt to conceal it. They can invade his house and seize his papers, they can close shops and caf^ and inns, and fine us at their pleasure." Espionage was general ; they had domestic servants in their pay ; men were arrested at the bare hint of the parish priest. There were at one time 3000 political suspects at Rome, confined to their houses between sundown and simrise, and driven to con- fession once a month. There was special surveiUance of what a police document termed " the class called thinkers." Too busy to spare time for the protection of person and property, it sometimes seemed as if they were in league with criminals against the propertied classes.^ ^Whiteside, Italy, II. 292; Pianciani, op, eit., IIL 244, 266, 286-28S; Galetti, Memoria, 7. ' Orsini, Memoirt, 31 ; Pianciani, op. cU., III. 343 ; D'Azeglio, UUimi Can, 99. For the administration of law generally, see HacooUa ddle Uggi, VII. ; Pajos, op, eit, ; Onizot, Mimoiret, II. 439-442 ; Vesi, ItivoluzUme, 78-86 ; Farini, op. eit, I. 158-161 ; Pantaleoni, op, cit., 13-14. * Un Galantnomo, Indiriao, 41-42 ; Gaiani, op, cU,, 207, 259-260 ; Carte aegrete, IL 32-33 ; About, (lue$tion romaine, 170 ; Orsini, op, eit,, 248 ; BaoooUa ddle leggi, V. 68a PAPAL STATES 79 They found efficient allies in the Holy Office of the quisition. While the police harried the people in their daily_ liv es, the Inquisition collected the secrets of the conf^ional,^ and launched its spiritual thunders on the unconforming. An edict is extant, issued by the Inquisitor- Greneral of Pesaro in 1841, commanding all people to in- form agauist heretics, Jews, and sorcerers, those who have impeded the Holy Office, or made satires against the Pope and clergy. A brother-Inquisitor threatened excommunica- tion against any who were privy to and did not denounce those " who worship the devil in their hearts." ^ Unsavoury stories were told in later years of skeletons and instruments of torture found in their dungeons at Rome.^ Their most hapless victims were the Jews, Though Jewish capital sup- ported the trade of Romagna and Ancona, and their co- religionists financed the Holy See, they were compelled to wearajbadge^ and prohibited from acquiring land. Leo ibrbade them to travel without leave, and confined them to the urEettos after nightfall. Under the Lambruschini mis- rule their lot was even worse; the Jews of Ancona and Sinigaglia were forbidden to "have friendly relations ^vith Christians," or bury their dead with funeral ceremonies; and an attempt was made to drive them from the province by an order, doubtless evaded, to sell their property, real or personal. While the Inquisition coerced the people into outward conformity, the government tried to kill out heterodoxy and sedition by crippling education. Its critics said that its maxim was " to tolerate vice and proscribe thought." " Ignorant people," said a Monsignor to D*Azeglio, " are easier to govern." There was indeed no lack of educational insti- tutions ; traditions of days, when the church had protected learning and Italy had planted thick her Universities, * Niccolini, PorUifieate, 106-107; CarU segreUt I. 136, 369; Orsini, op. cU,, 232. ' Gennarelli, Lutti, 155-159 ; MUeellaneou8 D9cumerUSj No. 14. * I state this with considerable reserve. There is no doubt that the skeletons and instruments of torture were found, but there is some suspicion that they were placed there after the Inquisition had been expelled. See Vol. IL, Appendix E. # 8o A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY had not been entirely effaced. But education was mono- polized by the clerics, and enervated by a rigid and absurd cumculum. No person might teach without the sanc- tion of the bishop; in spite of Dominicans and parish clergy and local authorities the Jesuits got secondary edu- cation into their own hands ; the Ignorantelli Brothers, unpopular for their questionable pedagogy and moraUty, supplied the staff for many of the elementary schools ; even in the Universities the majority of professors were ecclesi- astics. The church managed education no better than law or finance. Elementary teaching, even such as it was, failed .. to reach large sections of the people. Boys* schools were ' maintained by the commime in the great majority of towns and villages, but the teaching was of a poor order, and the peasants used them little. There was practically no ele- ^ mentary education for girb, for mixed schools wei strictly prohibited, and public opinion was prudish and opposed to female learning. It was estimated that only two per cent, of the population attended school, and even in Rome the proportion was only one in ten.^ In the secondary schools the scholars stagnated under a dreary course of Latin gram- mar and scholastic metaphysics. Of machinery for higher teaching there was a superfluity. There were two great Universities, at Rome and Bologna ; smaller ones at Perugia, F^rrara, Camerino, Macerata, Fermo. Bologna still retained some of her old prestige, and the Roman University bore a fair repute. But the professors were appointed by com- petition, and were Uable to suninary dismissal; modem literature and political economy were excluded; down to 1835 at Bologna, and probably later elsewhere, Latin was the compulsory medium for lectures in theology, law, and metaphysics, even to a certain extent in medicine.^ The government was always tormented by the fear that the Universities might become centres of Liberalism. In order to matriculate it was necessary to produce the governor's ^ Bo wring, op, dL, 85, 89 ; Tonmon, Audet, 87 ; Serristori, op, cU., 229 ; Mittermeier, op, cU., 210-21 1 ; Sacchi, op, eit,, 63. ' "Ove la maggior decenza esige :" sea 83 of Leo's Ball. See About, op, eU,,7i, It was said that a teacher of yeterinarj medicine was obliged to lecture in Latin : Pianciani, op. eiL, III. 145. PAPAL STATES 8i and bishop's certificates of " good religious, moral, and poli- tical conduct " ; ^ and nobody was admitted, " who had given any cause for suspicion of rebellious tendencies." And alike to students and adults the lawful literary diet was of the meagrest. The Jesuits forbade the study of Dante in their schools ; private circles to read economic books were forbidden; in the '30s a censor struck out some verses referring to the motion of the earth.^ It was of course impossible that any native literature of worth could flourish ; and except where they were surreptitiously obtained or con- nivance was paid for,^ the great bulk of Italian and foreign publications were excluded. Most modem books of high repute, most newspapers were placed upon the Index.* By means like these the rulers hoped to keep orthodoxy im- maculate; perhaps all the more because of them, free- thought spread fast among the cultured classes, and sapped the authority of the Papal See. . It was impossible that it should be otherwise. The strictest moral laws were in monstrous contrast to the moral laxity of those who administered them. While attendance at church and communion at Easter were obligatory, the daily traffic in sacred offices, the jugglery in eternal salva- tion was shameless as in Luther s day. While men were denied the physician's aid if they refused the sacraments,^ covert freethought was rife in the Roman hierarchy. The censorship kept the theatres pure, but left the churches centres of intrigue. Children, who at school were com- pelled to strictest religious observance, heard from the pulpit eulogies of devout highwaymen, whom the saints protected from the gallows. Fiscal necessities kept the lottery open on Sundays, while shops and caf^s had to close. There was no doubt a purer section of the hierarchy which cherished an ideal of a godly state, but the vexatious jurisdiction of the ^ RaecoUa ddU leggi, II. 8. ' Campanella and Niccolini, op, cit., 149 ; Gaiani, op, cit., 105 ; Ming- hetti, JUeordif I. 47, 223. ' Carci, Vatieano regio, 168. « Of English papers, the Times was '* suspected" ; the Standard, Morning Chronide, and Examiner, and " in general all the Protestant and Tory papers," were "adyerse tojeligion"; the (Kobe and Observer were " indifferent." — Orsini, Memoirs, 257. ^ Farini, op^dt,, L 137. VOL. I. P 82 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY stricter ecclesiastics only prejudiced the cause of morality. Illegitimate children were excluded from the imiversities ; confession was refused to those who did not denounce blas- phemy and fornication ; an archbishop of Sinigaglia ordered betrothals to be broken off if the parish priest refused his sanction, and forbade young men and women to pay more than three visits to each other's houses. The good men, who prompted the compulsion of virtue, were more in fault in their methods than their aims ; but viewed in con- nection with the lives of some of their colleagues, it seemed the very organization of hypocrisy.^ Such was the misrule that held high court in the Tem- poraTK^mions of the Pope, with stagnation and discontent, oflen anarchy and sheer misery for its fruits. A travelled Irish judge pronoimced that the Pope's subjects were the only people in Europe more wretched than his own country- men ; and though the popular conception of their backward- ness and unhappiness took inadequate account of Romagnuol vigour, it was not much exaggerated. The very disgust produced by the hypocrisy of the government proved per- haps the moral safeguard of the people ; but no industry or abUity could make a state prosperous in the face of a corrupt administration and an economic system that strangled trade. And the nearer to Rome, the more miserable was the decay of the country and its inhabitants. In the eastern por- tions of the state the misrule had not had time to wreck all traces of prosperity. Romagna and the Marches had down to the days of the French rule enjoyed a large measure of independence, and in consequence ihej were comparatively prosperous and advanced. There was a vigorous middle class in many of the cities, and the Romag- nuol artisan was perhaps the finest specimen of Italian manhood. Bologna was the most important manufacturing centre in the state ; Ancona was the only port that boasted a trade. Even the peasants here, farming on mezzedria tenures, were comparatively prosperous. The hemp industry of the Romagnuol plain was thriving ; and along the coast 1 Bianchi, op, eU,, III. 41 1-414 ; Raceclta ddU Uggi^ II. 3, 8, 1 1 ; OaHt tegreU^ I. 3^; Gennarelli, LuUi^ 160- 161 ; /d, Qwemo pomUfieiOt I. 324; Miacel- laneoos Edicts, No. 18. PAPAL STATES 83 provinces as far as Fermo the culture of the soil was fairly good. But the exactions of brigands and Centurions ^ at times brought misery on the thrifty farmers, and the Sanfedists ^ found zealous defenders of the faith among the unemployed* Their comparative prosperity and intelligence were prob- ably the chief cause of the perpetual imrest, with which the trans- Apennine provinces seethed. The hereditary feuds of the Middle Ages transmuted themselves into bitter and * i>loody struggles between Liberals and Sanfedists. Romagna was the unfailing seed-bed of conspiracy ; and through the L^ations ran a vast network of secret correspondence, which had never been betrayed. The bulk of the Liberals were separa- tists. There was no homogeneity between the eastern and western portions of the state ; the barrier of the Apennines parted off the Legations and the Marches from Rome, and their 'affinities lay with the provinces that had formed the Kingdom oF Italy. The cities of Romagna could never forget their lost Uberties, granted them by old treaties, which Napoleon had swept away, and Consalvi had refused to restore. JTheyJooked on the Papal (jovemment as a pledge-breaker, and most of all Bologna, proud of its history, its university, its trade, ill-dis- guised its hatred of rival Rome, the home of the venal bureau- cracy that plundered the state. " Better the Turks than the Pope," ran the Romagnuol proverb ; and many would have even taken Austrian rule, if it would free them from his tyranny.^ Even in the '30s statesmen like Rossi and Bernetti saw that Home Rule was the only means of preserving the Adriatic provinces to Rome ; ^ and the separatist feeling came to the fore at every crisis in the history of the state. T he in land provinces on the western slope of the Apennines showed a progressive deterioration. The hill di^icts of TJmbria were not far behind Romagna in pro- sperity. But there was less viriUty and self-reliance, more sentimental attachment to Rome, and the Liberals were strong only in a few towns. South and west of Umbria, ^ See below, pp. 116, 141. > OarUugreU, 1. 354, 360-361, 454 ; Cantti, Cronittoria, II. 282, III. 127 n. ; Oualterio, op. ci«., I. 143 ; D*Azeglio, UUimi Cati, 52. » Gnixot, Memoirei, II. 451-452 ; Chateaubriand, Mimtnrti, IV, 379 ; Poggi, Storuj^l. 151. i 84 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY in the Comarca, all traces of prosperity rapidly disappeared, except in the small hill-district of Frosinone. The great entailed and mortmain properties began, and as the traveller neared Rome, he found the population more and more sunk in ignorance and brutish squalor. The climax was reached in the desolate solitudes of the malaria-smitten Agro Romano, which stretched along the coast-line south- wards from Ciyita Yecchia. Here the great Roman families, whose estates stretched to portentous magnitude in Italian eyes, had their patrimonies.^ The land, naturally fertile, but almost valueless through neglect, was let at very low rents, in huge farms averaging 1500 acres and reaching in one instance to over thirty square miles. What had once been the centre of Roman civilization was now the home of a few ragged and fever-stricken herdsmen. Migrant labourers came in gangs from the hiUs in harvest- time, the high wages overcoming the terror of the malaria, which decimated their ranks, and made the work a fearful lottery. In spite of its native richness, the average produce was one-third of that of Romagna, and the population of the province of Civita Yecchia was thirty-five to the square mile.* Rome naturally occupied a position by herself. In a sense, the city was only the suburb of the Papal court. The reverence which surrounded the centre of Catholic Christen- dom, the pomp of cardinals and nobles, the daily procession of mystic ceremony tied the Romans to the Pope by strong bands that were absent in the rest of the state. The native aristocracy was parasitic and exclusive in a sense little known in Italy, jealous of the ecclesiastical power, but bound by tradition to the Papacy. The professional and mercantile classes were Liberals, but they were few in number, and without a municipal authority to give expres- sion to their wishes. The Roman populace was brave, alert, comparatively educated ; but the pn&e of a supposed ^ Prince Bozvhese owned 100,000 acres. ' Toamon, Mudea, I. 310; Galli, Cenniy 182, 207 et aeq, ; according to lb, 205, the produce was 2) bushels per acre. A special tax was imposed in 1832 for killing wolves : BaeeoUa deUe Uggi, VL 21. See also About, op, eit., 274- 276 et alibi; Chateauyieuz, TraveU; Didier, Ccmpoffne; and for its condition in 1882, Beatiderk, Sural ludy^ 72-^1, 86^ 87, 104. PAPAL STATES 85 «. 7_ classical descent and the demoralization of lavish charities ^ ' made it idle and quarrelsome, and the lower strata led a life of infinite degradation. Rome, in fact, as Mettemich said, was like a magnificent theatre with bad actors.^ Its churches were " full of monuments, but empty of people." On the surface the most moral of European cities, in reality it was corrupt as any.^ There was little industry; the streets swarmed with beggars; large numbers of the poor were hangers-on in the households of prelates and nobles, and had learnt to wear the badge at least of servility. In Sismondi's ■ words, all Romans wore either the tonsure, or livery, or rags. For the Pope the populace had an unbounded reverence; they were interested in the pomp of the Prelacy, and even in the ecclesiastical small-talk; but they profoimdly disbelieved in its virtues, and relished the pasquinades which lashed the abuses of the government and the vices of the great. Still ^ they had little sympathy with Liberalism ; the spoilt children of the state, they despised the progressive middle classes. It was not till Gregory's reign that a change came over them. His life and character were little calculated to stir their loyalty. Young Italy made many converts, and Lamennais' 'PTords of a Believer are said to have made a deep impression on the more thoughtful. Though much of the old sentimental loyalty survived, the men whom the Trasteverines followed in the '40s were earnest democrats, with little love for a Pope, unless he threw his lot in with them. Still, even in later times, except in the early years of Pio None and under Mazzini's republic, Rome was perhaps the least Italian of Italian cities. The Papal influence was always strong; the foreign residents and visitors distracted their clients from politics. And though the majority were probably always passively nationalist after 1 846, though they hated and despised the Pope's government, they gave a poor backing to the efforts outside to free them, and gave some colour to the argument that Rome was not Italian, but cosmopolitan. 1 On New Tear's Daj 1848 the Senate diBtributed 120,000 lbs. of bread and 30,000 lbs. of meat. ' Mettemich, Mimoirtif III. 201. He adds, '* I cannot understand how a Protestant can tnm Catholic at Rome." ■ liiTerani, op. ciL, 124-125, 251; Gregorovias, IHari ramani, 129; Dicey, Home, 35 ; About, op, cit, 48-5a ► | > I CHAPTER V SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITAL Y— {continued) Naples : the new land system ; theory and practice ; justice ; local government ; education ; corruption of government ; nobles ; clergy ; educated classes ; trade ; city of Naples ; peasants ; political indiffer- ence. Sicily : character ; Home Rule ; land system ; the peasants ; TMjdendrinaggio ; want of education. The Elements of the Itauan Nation : church ; nobles ; middle classes ; universities ; artisans and town labourers ; peasants. The oppression ; absence of political life ; dawn of patriotism. Naples In the south of the peninsula, covering three-eighths of its surface, lay the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily, the "Two Sicihes" of diplomatic language. Character, geo- graphical position, the bitter feud between Neapolitan and Sicilian, made it the most distinctive and isolated of Italian states. The two countries, which were held together merely Vby the common pressure of the government, had their liifferent traditions and aspirations, their character and social life most dissimilar. Naples shared in the reform- pig movement of the eighteenth century. Charles III. reduced the privileges of the nobles ; Acton in the earlier years of his ministry designed the gradual abolition of feudalism. But the French Revolution frightened the government back into extremes of reaction. The Bourbon court, driven into Sicily by the French, returned in 1799 to wreak its revenge, and under Nelson's willing patronage ^ Fra Diavolo and his crew outran their royal master's orders and made Naples red with civil blood. Seven years later the French advance again made the court tfi^e refuge behind the English arms in Sicily, and Naples for nine ^ For his atrocioas conduct see HerTey-Salnt-Denys, ffittoire, 236-253. 86 NAPLES 87 years came under the French rule, first of Joseph Bonaparte, then of Murat. Feudalism was abolished; the great majority |iof monasteries were dissolved, and their immense properties [were sold or let|X)n perpetual leases. Entails became ^illegal, and many of the large feudal estates passed into the hands of creditors ; communal lands were divided into small holdings and let to the poorer inhabitants. The land- system was revolutionized at a blow, and great slices of the country were bought up by small proprietors. There were now a million landowners, or one in five of the population. It is true that many of the properties were too small to yield an independence; that others were bought up by speculators ; that to some extent the change only increased the number of little tyrants of the middle class, who owned both land and capital^ Yet the French I^islation went far towards democratizing the social struc- ture. [Murat left Naples free from feudalism, with a reformed law, an ordered finance, a more stable land-system. 1 Civil institutions had advanced four centuries in the nine years of French rule. And though the Restoration undid much, it left the law, the church, the land, in theory at least, in harmony with modem conditions. No other state in Italy f could boast institutions so advanced ; no government, save the Pope's, was so utterly degraded in practice as that which {dieted Naples and Sicily under the Bourbon rule. ' / It was the same story of corruption in every branch of ^e administration. Naples had the most enlightened code /of justice in Italy. The courts were generally open to the /public; there was a modified system of bail; a defendant Lgh. select hi. „™ counsel ^ crc»^»une. In pr.c \tice too often caprice was the only law. Secret orders in council overrode the codes; the crown interfered to pro- tect Bourbonists or persecute Liberals; the police were empowered to try suspects by their own secret and illegal procedure,' to liberate convicted men, or detain those acquitted by the courts. (Prisoners were flogged, torture ^ Biaachini, NapUi, 551-552 ; M. L. R., Saggio, 54, 298 ; Franohetti, Pro- wincie fiapoliianet 125-126; Ohateaavienz, Zcttrei, I. 28. I cannot believe the figoiee in Bodio, Movmento eeonomieOf 48. i 88 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY was connived at or encouraged;^ the prisons, though the oflScial regulations were good, were "gulfe of helL ) An almost universal corruption completed the wreck of justice. Assassinations in full day went impunished if the criminal ^had friends in office; and everywhere there were informal societies with common bribery funds to get enemies con- denmed and friends acquitted. So too in local government, > the law was good, the facts were vicious. Each of the fifteen provinces of the mainland had its council appointed by the govemmeiit, with powers to assess taxes, to execute public works, to control main-roads and public societies, with liberty to criticise officials, to propose reforms of administration, to discuss matters of general import to the state. The communal coimcils controlled by-roads, elemen- tary schools, vaccination, the maintenance of foundlings. But the fabric, so liberal in principle, was spoilt by the corruption of the government and the t3rranny of the local magnates. The public vote, which elected the communal council, often only voiced the orders of the ex-feudal lord, whose nominees plundered in his interest the estates of the commune and wasted its forests, while the officials leagued themselves to the conspiracy.^ In education the gulf between theory and practice was as great. By a law of 1 8 10 every commune, except the smallest, was bound to have its primary school, every province its secondary school. But nothing was done to bring the children to them. Even in Naples itself there were but four gratuitous public schools, and only one in three of school age attended. For girls there was practically no provision. In the provinces it was worse. The bishops did their best to frustrate the efforts of the Education Ministry to open schools. There were whole communes without a literate peasant ; and how general was the igno- rance, is shown by the law that required that one-third of the members of a town council should read and write. ^ Nisco, Franceteo /., 37 ; Carlo PoeriOf etc,, 38-39 ; Settembrini, ProUata^ 28 ; see also Correspoodence— Naples (1848), 95. * Franchetti, op, ciL, pauim ; Bianco di Saiot-Jorioi, Brigantaggio, 48*49 ; Gaalterio, Xivolgimenti, II. 246. f / NAPLES 89 The secondary schools, with a few notable exceptions at Naples, suffered from the same ''grecism" that afflicted the intermediate education of all Italy. The University bore a high name, its classes were crowded, and its pro- fessors kept to some extent their independence; but the idle life and enervating atmosphere of the capital too often demoralized the young provincials. Everything — law, local government, education, — was tainted by the corruption that had eaten through the public service. The government was "a pyramid with priests and police for its base, and the king for its apex," and from top to base reigned the same callousness to the commonwealth. The Bourbon court treasured all the vices of the family. Under Francis, courtesans ruled it ; under Ferdinand II., priests. One of Ferdinand's brothers worried a creditor to death with his mastiffs; another's bravoes carried to his harem his neighbours' wives and daughters. Corruption found good soil at such a court. In Francis' reign ''justice, titles, high offices were brought to the hammer." " The man who pays for a post," said the King, "wants to keep it, and is loyal." ^ Ferdinands Jesuit confessor kept an open sale of office ; the Ministry of the Interior was a market of jobbery ; at Palermo places in the civil service were publicly sold. High officers of state manipulated the corn duties to help their own speculations, and the Home Minister took for his private collection the finest discoveries of Pompeii. His subordinates copied him ; no official could be sued without royal sanction, and they made good use of the immunity. "Every civil ser- vant," said an official report, "makes what he can out of his office." In collusion with contractors, they squandered the public monies ; the police levied blackmail, and carried on a contraband trade ; they warned the Calabrian brigands when danger threatened, and sheltered them when osten- sibly in pursuit. The corruption had free play, because there were no strong elements of opposition. Many of the nobles were well contented with a system, which gave them a rich share ^ Nisco, Franeeico /., 6, 22. r 1 90 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY of the plunder. Others had been drawn to Naples and ruined by its luxury and vice. The great landlords of Calabria were less often absentees than in the rest of Italy, and their influence proportionately greater ; but they loved the misrule, and their custom of allowing only one son of a family to marry demoralized the country-side. The church was silent as the nobles. It had always been subservient to the government ; and when it tried after the Restoration to assert its independence, it found that the hand of the crown was not shortened. And though the Concordat of 1818 gave it some privileges, and marked a surrender to Rome unknown before at Naples, it only tied the clergy more com- pletely to the interests of the absolutism. The 26,000 roriests and 20,000 monks andnims^ were one in thirteen m the population. But the ill-fame of bishops and priests alike, their petty tyranny and injustice, the knowledge that many of them were spies of the government robbed them of moral weight. Nor was there any virile intellectual ele- ment. Some of the traditional culture was left, at all events at Naples and in Calabria ; but there was little that was worthy of the country that had produced Pythagoras and Thomas Aquinas, Bruno and Campanella and Yico. Much of it was a rude, forgotten land, with little oases of civiliza- tion in a great waste of ignorance or superstition. An almost prohibitive duty kept out foreign books ; and though there was latitude for economic discussion, and keen contro- versies were waged over free-trade and the land-tax, no purely political writings were allowed, llie educated class was small — a crowd of lawyers, a few literary men of high attain- ments, — and they lacked the stamina and patriotism of their fellows in North and Central Italy. Such writing and thought as there was, had little in common with the rest of the peninsula. It was not till the study of Dante grew and spread, and the revival that followed Ferdinand II.'s accession stimulated literature, that any serious effort was made to assimilate speech and thought to that of Upper Italy.^ ^ So Serristori, Due Sieilie. At a later date Orispi {Scriui, 186) puts the total namber at 70,000. ' Settembrini, JHcordanxe^ I. 56, 57. NAPLES 91 The trading class, too, was small and unimportant. While the Continental System lasted, there had been a cer- Itain fictitious prosperity in 'the production of cotton and brandy, but both industries collapsed with the Peace, and the influence of the Physiocrat economists kept prejudice strong against manufactures. After the crisis of 1824 the government tried to encourage industry by lavishing boimties and protective duties and abolishing the guilds. But protection did little to stimulate, and it was not until the short-lived confidence in the government that obtained from 183 1 to 1834, that there was any serious progress. Even then the imports remained small ; the staple export was olive-oil ; the manufactured exports were insignificant, mainly spirits, silk of a high quality, and gloves. The^ meddle and muddle of the government still hampered en-: terprise ; and the King restricted banks and dissolved insur- ance societies, because they expected interest on their capital.^ In contrast with the half-barbarous condition of much of the country stood Naple s with its veneer of civilized luxury, and its imfathomed depths of degraded life, with all the vices and few of the virtues of a metropolis. At this I time it was by far the largest city in Italy, with a popula- /tion of over 300,000. The capital was the spoilt child of the government; while peasants were dying of hunger, great simis were lavished on its theatre of San Carlo; it had enormous charities, and after 1830 the government made large grants for its poor. There was a traditional imderstanding that the Bourbons should leave the paupers of the slums to their idleness and crime, if they supported it at need, to cow the respectable and progressive classes. The lazzarani numbered at least 40,000;^ a demoralized, idle mob, hardened by suflTering, brutalized by superstition, with the anarchical instincts of licensed pariahs, ready at a call to massacre artisans and tradesmen, and loot in the interests of church and throne. Already the camorra ex- isted, with its dreaded secret organization, to shelter crime » Gualterio, op, ciL, II. 273 ; La Farina, Storia, II. 168. ' Lady Morgan, Italy, II. 393. 92 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY and levy blackmail.^ A want of enterprise and manliness weighed on the whole city. The cultured classes, acute and inquiring though they were, made no sustained effort for their principles ; the mimicipal government was corrupt as all else ; the civic guard was an armed feu^tion under the orders of the police ; the draconic laws against beggars were a dead letter ; and in the Foundling Hospital nine infants out of ten died of starvation. But the gay, thoughtless, gesticulating Neapolitan was no type of the bulk of the population. Five-sixths of the workers were employed on the land. From the mountains of the Abruzzi in the north the country sloped down to the fertile Terra di Lavoro, to Naples and Sorrento on the west ; on the east to the flat pastoral district of the Capitinata on the Adriatic, to the Basilicata round the Gulf of Taranto, and Puglia with its rich vineyards and oliveyards in the heel of Italy ; while the Apennines formed a continuous back-bone down the centre, through the Principati to Calabria in the toe. By nature a great portion of the land was exceedingly fertile, but neglect and bad government had made large tracts well-nigh useless. Immense stretches of land, which only needed the drainage of the rich alluvial soils, were given over to malaria. Lake Fucino, which had been drained under Claudius, had been allowed to make pestilent the great valley round it ; the mountain district of La Sila in Calabria was deserted save by banditti and wandering herdsmen; the vast Tavoliere di Puglia, stretching for seventy miles along the Adriatic, was, despite the protests of the economists, kept in the state of natural pasturage to which it had been devoted since the fifteenth century. All through the southern portion of the country the want of thoroughfares crippled the agriculturist. Carriage-roads, along which the mails crept at the rate of fifty miles a day, were very few; in some districts of the interior it was almost impossible to travel on horseback in winter; even fifty years later, in the province of Aquila, one-third of the communes had not even a proper cart-road. It is small wonder that agriculture showed few signs of progress, that ^ Monnier, La Camorre; and below, YoL, II. p. 184. NAPLES 93 the bulk of the grain and wine and oil were of poor quality. It was only in the Terra di Lavoro, and round Bari, and in the ohveyards of Gallipoli, that there was any better culture. Despite the French legislation, a large proportion of the cultivators rented their farms, often on onerous terms, and payinfi: exorbitant interest to the usurious landlord or private Konger. Sometoes, » in the B»iHcU, much'of .ha land was let on short improvement leases, the landlord finding everything, and at the end of the tenancy taking land and crops with little or no compensation. In the western provinces the system of tenure varied, mezzedria farms alternating with yearly tenancies or large holdings on long leases. But almost everywhere the peasants were practically the serfs of their lords, tied hand-and-foot by their indebtedness, driven by poverty and the keen com- petition for land to accept the cruel contracts imposed on them.^ The tax-gatherer took what the landlord left. The very heavy land-tax was rigorously exacted from the famine- stricken peasants, and to pay the hated grist-tax implements and houses were often seized'. Salt, which was a government monopoly, was so dear that the people were sometimes unable to buy it. And though there were districts where the squalor of the peasants had disappeared, their general condition was one of more or less degraded and savage poverty. The small proprietors, who had sufficient land of their own, were hardly better off. The labourers, though wages were sometimes comparatively high, had a precarious lot. And the land-system, though it showed so admirable in statistics, proves on examination rotten as the rest of the social fabric. In some parts, as in Calabria, there was a severance between rich and poor rare in Italy. The gentUtuymini kept the peasants and laboiu*ers in a state of serfdom, grinding their faces in abject poverty, corrupting ^ Franchetti, op. cU.f pauim; De Augnstinis, Condizione, 156; C. D. V., Cenni, 34, 38 ; Delia Valle, Connderazioni ; Bianco di Saint- Jorioz, op. cU.^ 18, 124-125; Villari, LeUert mtriivmali, 55~59 ; Laing, NoU^t 396; Beanclerk, Rwnd Italy, 43-46. Already, in 1835, the farmers were feeling the effects of foreign competition "even from America." The conmianes tried sometimes to piroTide a remedy for usury : y. Raumer, ludy, II. 251. The recent rapid extension of land-banks is, it is to be hoped, killing out the nsorer. 94 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY their family honour. Their miserable condition, their {superstition more pagan than Christian, their brutish ignor- ance seemed sometimes to have killed all moral sense. " Theft," wrote one who knew them, " is thSr" second nature, almost their necessity"; and sometimes a whole village, seized with a common passion for crime, would leave their ploughs to plunder and murder. Brigandage had for genera- tions been endemic in some of the mountain districts ; .under the French rule it had taken a political colour; when its Bourbon patrons returned, it became frankly criminal At times sentries had to guard the whole length of road from Capua to the Papal frontier. The Calabrians went about armed to the teeth ; and the roving banditti were recruited from the murderers, who " went into the country," while the scent was fresh on their wild deeds of violence. From such a people no steady political activity could be expected. There was of course a considerable class above the level of actual poverty — the middling proprietors, the merchants of the towns, the tradesmen who had retired to their small estates. It was from these, doubtless, that the Carbonari of 1820 drew their strength. But they were a minority, too often a corrupt and fibreless minority. The mass of the people were simk in an ignorance and misery, which left no room for hope or progress. Arrears of civilization and sunderance of interests were likely for generations yet to prevent Naples irom marching in line with the rest of Italy. Sicily Sicily and Naples were members of one state, but they were parted by a bitterness as intense as that which divided Ireland from England. ( Differences of race and history and character made it impossible to fiise the mainland and island. ^ The large admixture of Norman and Saracen and Berber blood in Sicily, the semi-tropical climate, the long parUamentary tradition had produced a character that had nothing in common with that of the mainland. In con- trast to the lazy, vivacious, shallow Neapolitan, the Paler- SICILY 95 J mitan was silent, laconic, brave. Though the Sicilian was wanting in resource and perseverance, and though his southern blood and the absence of intellectual outlet made him subject to wild bursts of sexual passion and savage vengeance, yet he was generous and chivalrous, he had virility and a rough kind of loyalty. A Sicilian rarely betrayed another'^ while the Neapolitan was a courtier b y nature; he was rugged and independent, and Ferdinand I. had found him imsusceptible to court favours. Thanks to his seven centuries of parliamentary history he had more interest in public affairs, a patriotism which was all the intenser for its narrowness. And despite the lawlessness of Palermo and its neighbourhood, despite the m urde rs four times more numerous than in Piedmont and the universal / prevalence of theft, there was not the same depth of corrup- j tion that previSIed on the mainland.^ History combined with difference of character to sever . the two peoples. From the Sicilian Vespers to 1735 Sicily i had been independent of Naples. Even when joined under one crown, it had kept its own flag, its parliament, and separate administration. The struggle between crown and barons in 1 8 1 2 had only confirmed the Sicilians in their rights ; and when, four years later, the Bourbons stole their liberties, the free past beckoned to them with ever more alluring fascination. Feudalists and Liberals might endanger the common cause with their quarrels, but the same intense love of independence ruled them all. The very clergy and monks redeemed their ignorance and wealth by their fervid patriotism. On all classes weighed the oppression of the Bourbon government. " The Sicilians are barbarians ; we have come to civilize them," boasted the Neapolitan officials, and they treated the island " beyond the Faro " as a conquered province. The Sicilians repaid them with a hate that embraced both court and people of the ruling race. There was little sympathy between the Liberals of Palermo and Naples, still less respect or loyalty to the crown. It followed that Sicily had no share in the common life of 1 F&lmieri de' Miccich^, Pensie$, I. 258, 263 ; Famin, JUvoliUion, 4 ; Nisco, Ftrdinando IL, 34 ; Pasqoalino, LeUen, 8, 9 ; La Bfasa, DooumerUi, I. 41. e 96 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY I Italy, that in its bitter hostility to Naples it turned rather to England, to Russia, to France, to any Power that would secure its independence of the mainland. It was only at a later date that the Italian spirit reached them, that they learnt to appeal to Italy against Naples, and seek for freedom by merging themselves in the bigger fatherland, of which Sicily and Naples would be equal and independent provinces. The nature of the Neapolitan rule was sufficient of it- self to create the repulsion. It is true that Sicilians and Neapolitans were fellow-suflferers, that the government was little, if at all, more corrupt and tyrannical than it was on the mainland. But its bitterness lay in its being an alien rule. In some respects, indeed, the laws of Naples were in advance of their own, and the Neapolitan Liberals might regard their imposition as a gain to the cause of progress. But while they provoked the imresting hostility of the nobles, they were too much opposed to the national tradition to be acceptable even to the down-trodden masses. This was especially apparent in the attempts to reform the native land-laws. Feudalism had been nominally abolished in 1 8 1 2, but in a half-hearted way, that contrasted with the root-and- branch reforms which the French had carried out at Naples. Nmnberless questions of detail were left to be decided by the courts (there were many still pending in 1838), and for some time the presiunption of the coiu"ts went in favour of the lords. In spite of legislation to facilitate the sale of encumbered estates, there was none of the wide distribution of property which had taken place at Naples. A league of latifondisti protected the interests of the big proprietors, and the few commercial men, who purchased land, ranged themselves on their side. Here and there the commons were divided into small holdings, but the great majority of the people were landless, and it was only in the rich Conca d'Oro round Palermo, and in the neighbourhood of Messina and Marsala, that small properties could be found. Nine-tenths of the soil belonged to the barons and prelates, and one noble's princely estate stretched for thirty miles. The insecurity and unhealthiness of the fields drove the people to live almost entirely in towns; in three large \ SICILY 97 provinces only two per cent, lived in the country ; and the great reaches of natural pasturage, without villages or trees, much of it smitten with malaria, with little produce save the food of scattered herds, stretched over what had been the granary of Italy. The farms were leased for short terms at rack-rents ; and the middleman-farmers, with insufficient capital for their enormous holdings (many ranged from 2000 to 5000 acres), sublet the corn land in small parcels to peasants paying rent in kind, advancing the seed and sup- plying oxen for the plough, and taking sometimes three- quarters of the produce in return. So much was the peasant at their mercy, that his plot, when rent and interest were paid, barely allowed him a subsistence. But he could legally claim enough food to save him from starvation, and such was the uncertainty of employment, that he preferred to have a rack- rented holding rather than work for wages.^ Under such a system the culture was necessarily primi- tive.* The implements were of antique shape, and as late as i860 threshing was done by treading. It was only in the neighbourhood of large towns, where the land was held by small proprietors, that there was any effort to improve. * The vineyards of Marsala, and the orange and lemon gardens of the Conca d'Oro alone showed of what the land was capable. Even where there was disposition to improve, the government did what it could to discourage it. Down to 1 8 1 9 all com for export had to be deposited in bonded warehouses (caricatoi), where the export duty was collected. When these were abolished, the want of roads still practically stopped the trade in grain. Means of com- munication were lacking even more than on the mainland ; it was not till 1828 that carriages could travel from Messina to Palermo, and for long years after the interior was inac- cessible to them. Robbers infested the rough tracks, that were the only means of communication in the greater part of the island. * Franchetti, SicUiaf passim; Balsamo, Memorie ; Palmeri, Saggio ; Giegorio, Discorsi, I. 168-172; Afan di Rivera, Sieiliaf 34; Cordova, Discorsi, L 31 ; IL 289-306 ; Villari, op. eit., 31-36. • Acoording to Senior, Journals, II. 36, the produce per acre was the ae as in Verres' time. VOL. I. G / 98 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY The backwardness of its agriculture was the more f serious, because Sicily had little commerce. The only industries were the wine trade of Marsala and the sulphur mines round Caltamsetta and Girgenti, and these 'If^re worked by foreign enterprise and capital Down to 1824 there was no free trade even with Naples, and protection crushed all attempts to create a commerce.^ Wretched, indeed, was the condition of the people. The sulphur- workers lived in a degradation hardly reached by the white slaves of early factory days in England. The agricultural labourers, going long distances to their work from their squalid homes in the towns, earned but from five to seven shillings a week. The peasants, sober and hard- working as they were, were weighed to the ground with usury, robbed bare by the exactions of grist-tax and land- tax, to escape from which they would sometimes forsake their holdings, and turn to the more profitable call of brigandage. All were slaves to the corruption and tyranny of the Intendants and their underlings; slaves too to the barons, whose armed retainers terrorized them, and whose feudal dues and jurisdiction, though abolished at law, remained as customs, against which they dared not rebel. From high to low there was no respect for the law. The government never scrupled to break it; the officials pro- strated it to their own greed; the nobles employed their retainers to assassinate their enemies. It is small wonder that crime was organized to an extent hardly credible in Western Europe. The vast households of the nobles, the criminal gangs of Palermo, the orange-growers of the Conca d'Oro (descendants of the old bravoes of the barons), the middlemen of the centre of the island formed a vast unseen conspiracy, before which justice was powerless and govern- ment paralyzed.^ It was this mcdendrimiggio or mafia, which has made part of Sicily the despair of constitutional, as it was then of despotic government. But while, because of it, severe, almost cruel, repression ^ y. Raumer, op. eiL, II. 308, 309 ; Perez, Centralliztazione, 142 ; Mortillaro, JUminiseenze, 164 ; cofUrOj Bracci, Memorie, 48. • Villari, op, eU,, 34, 35 ; Ciotti, Palermo, 6, 7. SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITALY 99 has been a necessity, the unhappy island has needed and not had the patient work of a generation to heal its igno- rance and poverty and superstition. Of education there was I then, as long after, almost none ; even the children of the nobles were often hardly literate. And though there was a limited amount of culture and a few men of real ability, Palermo spent ten times as much on its foundlings as on its schools, and professors at Messina University had less than a gendarme 's pay. The religion of the people was a pagan s uperstiti on^ f The Church was, indeed, very powerful; monks swarmed, and their property, untouched by the Revolution, exceeded in value that of all the: other monasteries of Italy, but « their ignorance was on a par with their dirt and_^dr^ , ^ wealth." Santa Rosalia ranked above the Redeemer tothe_j!Ll^ Palermitans ; and the sulphur-workers of Girgenti, after an explosion, broke their image of the Madonna, and sub- scribed for a new and more tutelary one. Despite the polished luxury of Palermo, it was a lawless, semi-barbarous people, bred in a school of violence and force ; a nation of nobles and proletarians, with no middle-class, with few local institutions, with nothing to hold them together save the feudal tradition and the intense common pride of race. But while Sicily has been and remains one of Italy's greatest problems, while normal settled government there seems still a dream, its people has a strength and an independence, a half-Oriental dignity, a latent fire, which has always made them the hope of the advanced patriots of Italy. The unbelievers in Italian nationality would point to the wide diversity of character, which parted the inhabitants of the different states. There seemed little in common between I the heavy, painstaking Piedmontese and the light-hearted, j idle, dissolute proletarian of Venice or Naples ; between the [^ gentle, intelligent Tuscan and the passionate, sullen Sicilian ; between the activity and enterprise of Genoa or Lombardy and the dead stagnation of the Comarca. There was no common Italian stock ; Teuton blood predominated in the north, Greek blood in the Basilicata and Puglia ; Arabs and Normans and Spaniards had left their traces in Sicily, while lOO A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY the old Italic and Etruscan stocks remained, perhaps with little mixture, in Tuscany and Umbria and the Abruzzi. Diflferent governments had trained them to varying social habits and widely dissimilar land systems, to activity or stagnation of industry, to high or low standards of edu- cation. Feudal customs were still strong in Piedmont and Naples and Sicily, while in Lombardy and Tuscany they were half-forgotten memories. But the existing states had not even the merit of recognizing the minor affinities of the populations. Romagna gravitated to the states of the Fo basin ; the Abruzzi and the Principati had more in common with the Roman border-country than with Calabria. Sicily was divided less from any Italian state than from Naples ; and the worst municipal rivalries were between cities of the same state. And beneath the differences ran a common likeness. The remoteness of Piedmontese and Neapolitan was no greater than that which divided Norman and Pro- vencal, Prussian and Bavarian, English and Irish; and the rich mixture of blood promised a resultant stock of virility and many-sidedness. Despite the dialects, Italy had a common tongue, a common name, a common memory of the days when she had ruled the world; and history was very real, where every district had its traditions of the great men and deeds of Rome. She had a common literature, a common possession of Dante and Ariosto and Macchiavelli. ^/Ihe great barrier of the Alps meant more than a geo- graphical expression, and necessities of trade preached every day against the partition of the peninsula. Despite the jealousies of Piedmont and Genoa, of Naples and Sicily, of Romagnia and Rome ; despite the interests that pleaded the independence of each petty metropolis ; despite the greater differences that parted North and South, it was clear to thinkers like Napoleon and Alfieri and Mazzini that senti- ment and expediency alike would teach the different fractions to merge themselves in a great united Italy. To the hasty traveller belongs the monopoly of generalizing on the Italian character; a historian must go delicately even when he deals with particular sections and districts. Of the various classes that made up the Italian SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITALY loi people, first in power without doubt came the 150,000 ecclesiastics. The nearer, indeed, to Rome, the more the abuses of the Church stank in the nostrils ; but none the less the presence of Rome gave an unique power to its hold on Italian minds ; and its subtle net of influence reaching to every commune and hamlet in the land, its pomp of power, the support, however grudging, of the civil arm, its control of the schools, its authority over the marriage rite, its claim to open and shut the gates of heaven, gave it an unmeasured influence over a religious and imaginative, often superstitious, people. For the Italians were essentially not only religious, but Catholic. A little rationalism had filtered in in the last century ; there was a certain fashion- able scepticism at Florence and Milan ; hypocrisy often held high state in church and court. But the masses of tho^ people, high and low, even when they did not accept the whole Catholic doctrine, even when they abominated the Roman court or satirized the clergy, gave willing adhesion to the Catholic faith and ritual, and felt a sentimental pride *^ in the possession of the Papacy. The attacks of the govern- ments on the Church in the last century had already faded into a not very cordial alliance between it and the state. The attempts of after years to reform the discipline of the Church always aimed at reforming it within the pale of Catholicism;^ the abolition of ecclesiastical abuses, that followed the rise of constitutional government, was careful to disclaim hostility.^ And at this moment it seemed not impossible that the Chiu"ch might range itself with the nation. Though it had thrown in its lot with the Restora- tion, many a parish priest, many a monk, was a patriot and in a way a Liberal. Each revolution contributed its batch of martyr-priests. Especially in Lombardy and Sicily, the fire of patriotism burnt bright in sacristy and monastery. Sprung largely from the people, they shared the people's poverty^ and hopes; and the earlier years of Pio Nono proved how easily the clergy might have been won to the * See below, Vol. II., p. 125-6. ' See below, p. 393 ; Vol. IL, pp. 3, 126 * In 1867 the average stipend of a parish priest was 795 lire (under £22) : Frigyesi, Vltalia, 355. M I02 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY national cause, if Rome had led the way. But the collapse of Pius' brief Liberalism showed that the Roman Curia could never become national, that, without far-reaching changes in its constitution, it, the most worldly and unteachable of courts, can never accept reform, that the Temporal Power stands, and must always stand, between Papal claims and Italian rights. y It was often said that Italy possessed no landed aristoc- racy. This was true in the sense that there were few terri- torial magnates, and that even such as there were, were, except perhaps in Sicily and Calabria and in later years in Piedmont, absentees and dwellers in towns, and therefore had little of the influence of the English landed peer. The unnumbered counts of the north and centre, the dukes and princes of the south cheapened the prestige of a title. In Naples and Venice and Rome the nobles were corrupted and degenerate. In all the political vicissitudes of the century the creation of a hereditary second chamber never seriously entered the head of an Italian politician. None the less their power was great, and often deserved. In Sicily they were omni- potent, both because of their wealth and because they shared the great political passion of the people. The brilliant aristocracy of Milan made its wealth and capacity felt through Lombardy. The best of the nobles of Florence, ^sprung from the great mercantile families of the republic and the Medici rule, had identified themselves with all that was most progressive and improving in Tuscany. The military nobility of Piedmont, crass and out-of-date as it was, kept much of its feudal prestige and tradition of simple, solid patriotism. There was an impretentiousness of life in their vast uncomfortable palaces, where they would rather see a masterpiece of the great painters than an easy chair or a warm fireside. And on the whole the Italian nobility, except in Piedmont and at Rome, was not exclusive. In Tuscany, and partially in Lombardy, it had sprung from the bourgeoisie, and everywhere constant fresh creations fed it with new blood. The Universities, the free social life of the cities, the comparative absence of great wealth fused it more or less with the class beneath it. Its courtesy to all SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITALY 103 classes awoke the marvel of Gterman observers. And though much of it was worthless and discredited, there was a sec- tion of high note in every state, which identified itself with the best hopes of the nation. Every Liberal, even every Revolutionary movement could find its noble leaders; and if the middle classes can claim Mazzini and Manin, Gioberti and Farini and Eattazzi, the nobles can boast that Santa Eosa and Pallavicino, D*Azeglio and Cavour and EicasoU, the Bandieras and Pisacane sprang from their ranks. But the best life of the nation was in the middle classes. ^ They had felt their power under the French rule ; Modena had had its famous school of civil servants ; as engineers, as^ scientists, as writers, men of abiUty had had their chance. No class, therefore, suffered more from the repression, to which they were condemned at the Restoration. The civil service offered few attractions, for it meant selling help to the oppressors, and there was little hope of promotion, while in Lombardy the Austrians, in Piedmont the nobles, in the Papal States the monsignori monopolized the higher posts. Literature was a thorny path, with censors watching at every comer to crush out originality or check the smallest incur- sion into politics. Italy indeed was fairly rich in writers; she had her pliilosophers in Galluppi and Eosmini and Eomagnosi, her poets in Leopardi and Niccolini, her scholars in Mai and Mezzofanti, her novelist in Manzoni. But Rossetti and Berchet had been driven into exile; and not only was political and social, even economic, Uterature almost killed out, but the expense and delay and uncertainty of obtaining the censor's imprimatur checked authorship of every kind. Literature often passed with difficulty from state to state ; the total number of new books and editions published in Italy in 1835 was 281 1, and the majority of these were probably reprints ; in 1833 there were less than 100 periodicals, mainly scientific or commercial.^ The official gazettes, it was said, gave more space to the affairs of India and Japan than to those of Europe, and had no intelligence of contemporary politics. The Antologia was the only periodical, that took a place among the great Euro- 1 Caoth, MUano, I. 73 ; Id., Oroniiiana, II. 387. ^ I04 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY pean reviews. Of journalism proper there was none. There was hardly more outlet in trade. Protective duties and customs -barriers, the absence of a common coinage or common weights and measures, the official discouragement of banks were fatal to a vigorous manufacturing or com- mercial life. Except in some of the Lombard cities, and at ^Genoa and Leghorn, mercantile enterprise was hardly known. There was no at all important manufacture, except a silk- spinning mdustry in Lombardy and Piedmont ; no great staple exports, except the raw silk of the north,^ the oUve- oil of the Genovesate and Lucca and Naples, the sulphur of Sicily. The whole export trade of the country was probably imder ;^ 18,000,000. Thus, with little opening in the civil service or hterature or trade, the young men who left the Universities crowded into law or medicine, to swell the ranks of the educated imemployed, bitterly feeling the social oppression, which snuffed out their ambitions and doomed them to an idle and profitless existence. The bright spot in middle-class life was the Universities. The country boasted twenty-four with some 1 4,600 students. Those of Bologna and Naples bore a high repute; Turin, Rome, Pavia, Padua, were justly proud of their position. It is not easy for an Englishman to realize what a part Italian Universities played in the life of the country ; always to the *n:ont in every national movement, destroying social barriers by their free democratic life, exercising through the great number of their scholars a preeminent influence on the action of the educated classes. It was not without reason that the governments suspected and harassed them. It was the Universities that supplied the spiritual fuel for the nationalist movement, that gave it its thinkers, its writers, sometimes its fighters. It was the professors at Bologna who led the revolution of 1831, professors and students from Pisa and Pavia and Genoa, who were the soul of the volunteers in 1848, and who made up the largest section of Garibaldi's Thousand. The students might be often de- sultory, sentimental, excitable ; but there was a purity of ^ Valoed in 1835 at ;f 12,000,000 ; the oliye-oil trade perhaps reached ;£2,ooo,ooo to ;f 3,000,00a SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITALY 105 life and motive, a devotion to ideals, a readiness to pulse with the nation's life, to act rather than criticize, to follow their heroes even to the battlefield or dungeon, that made them the very salt of Italian society. The same causes, that cribbed the life of the middle classes, depressed the a rtisans. Their material condition, indeed, was comparatively a tolerable one ; though often far below a level of comfort in food and housing, the cheap living^ of a warm climate and the steadmess of an inelastic trade kept them from want. Of class ambition there seems to have been little. TtAlian Tpi^u^]fft.p.t.nrA waa ^till. mostly in .ths-^omestis. stage3^a;Qd there ia little evidence of friction between. master s and ,mfin. Besides, in Piedmont at all events, to strike was a crime, unless the courts decided that it was with just cause.^ SocialisticJ eeling wao almost entirely ahflftnt, even in^rjjlS^ I^ * country, too, where they pro- bably did not exceed 15 per cent, of the population, the artisans were too humble a factor to play any large part in the national life. But they were alert, intelUgent, often fairly educated, highly skilled in some minor industries. There were gondoliers and master-workmen at Venice of no Uttle culture ; Guerrazzi's father, an artisan of Leghorn, was well read in the classics and Dante. And though the artisans, as a body, took little or no part in the earlier i/' revolutions, Yoimg Italy brought poUtics home to them, and they were the backbone of the Liberals in the later nationalist movement. The Five Days of Milan, the defence of Venice and Bologna proved their sturdiness and patriot- ism. The stratum below them varied much in the different cities. In Genoa and Leghorn and Palermo there was a i ;nass of r o ugti ^d iji^ jftflnnft-tf^ d jinskilled labourers, of tough and manly fibre, but with., wild passions, that drew them injtp^every revolution and seldom left it imstained by crima Rome had its populace of proud Trasteverines, idle, de- moralized by charities, but generous and brave ; at first the Pope's loyalist supporters, afterwards his bitterest foes. Naples had its 40,000 lazzaroniy Venice its crowd of unem- ployed poor, both in their squalor and superstition a danger ^ Bconomie Joumul, December 1893. ^ io6 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY to the state, though in time the Venetian nature hardened to a robuster patriotism, while that of the Neapolitan seemed incurable. But Jtdy was essentiallj a non-industrial coimtry. Only JPX ^lilJft^ l*Japles, Rome, Milan, Venice, TPalermo, Turin, had OYfir I5r^,i7/^^ inhflihitiautg ^ The capitals of the eight states had an united population of less than a million. Probably, /atjeast- ^n per cent f>f the p^^^ple jifipfinded_^irfictJy_iui agriculture,^ though, as in Sicily, this did not necessarily mean a village life. AnH ipig^^^l^lft '^dfifid wnn \h% plight of Italiaa.lUlag6. Great tracts of the richest soil in Europe were given over to the malaria. With the continuous de- struction of forests, that went on in the earlier decades of the century, the rivers made ever wider waste with their uncontrollable floods. And apart from the rich pastures and ricefields of parts of Lombardy and Piedmont, or the minute culture of the Valdarno, or improved olive and vine- yards and orange groves in a few favoured or progressive districts, the land gave a miserable return. The jdeld of wheat was twelve bushels per acre ; * the vines were, for the most part, carelessly cultivated, and the wine made in primitive fashion. The agricultural societies and improv- ing landlords had hardly come into existence, and even a quarter of a century later their attempts to improve methods and breeds and machinery made little impression on the crass obstinacy of the peasants. The condition of the agricultural classes corresponded. The statistics of wide division of property are somewhat deceptive ; many of the small freeholds belonged to tradesmen, others were too small to yield a living.^ In the districts, indeed, where peasant ^ In 1830 Naples exceeded 300,000 ; the others ranged between 100,000 and 200,000. Genoa and Florence had over 90,000 ; Bologna and Leghorn about 70,000. ' In 1882 there were 32 per cent actaallj engaged in agpricultnre, of whom two-thirds were males. Serristori, D%u Sieilie, gives for Naples and Sicily 1,824,000 males engaged in aj^riculture out of a popolation of about 6,000,000 ; Calindri, SaggiOt gives for the Papal States an agricultural popu- lation of 1,176,000 out of a total of 2,592,000. * This was the yield in 1882, Beauolerk, op, eit. It could not bare been perceptibly higher in the early part of the century. ^ In 1866 the number of proprietors (excluding Venetia and the Comarca) SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITALY 107 ownership or mezzedria tenancy was general, the farmers, though Uving hard and miserably housed, had a fixity of tenure and a certain security against privation, which made life tolerable to an abstemious people. The peasants had a bright-hearted childlike enjoyment of the present ; in sexual morality and sobriety they perhaps stood unequalled in Europe.^ But below them, little noticed by governments or revolutions, but laying up its store of trouble for the/ future, lay the sore and aching mass of Italian rural poverty. Their misery unrelieved save by the princely charities,^ the famous hospitals and orphanages (and in the south even these failed), the agricultural labourers of Sicily and the Lombard plains, the rackrented peasants of parts of the Comarca and Campania, the migrant harvestmen, whom poverty drove from the Abruzzi to sow the Maremna with their bones, had a lot of hopeless misery, beside which that of the English factory slave or' Irish peasant was bright. But fhf^rps^ijs^ ^j.«£iX^^ thft^nirflJ ma,s.se.s had compara- tively Uttle attention from the Liberals. It was inevitable that a movement, whose fitcength lay in- the- middle Hasiiesj, and whose dontrinfts^ jyjere jJiose of the old Liberal school, should give more tj iou gh t to the abuses of the goyernmeni/' than to jjift sofiial^contlitinn ^f th^ djpirh^ri't^H .Through all. Italy the despoti sm, against which they reBelled, varied only in degree. The Austrian rule indeed had its redeem- ing features in its fair and dignified judicial system and its admirable schools; that of Tuscany in its enlightened criminal law and free trade ; that of Piedmont in its strict and honourable civil service. Taxation, though high in re- lation to the poverty of the land, was only crushing in the South.* But outside Lombardy-Venetia and Parma there was no serious system of national education. In Piedmont 2,871,439, or 13.13 of the population, with an average-sized holding of 7} hectares. The size of holding was smallest in Lombardv, Naples, and Pied- mont ; highest in Tuscany, Komagna, the Marches, and Umbria : Galeotti, Prima Ugidattiraf 142. 1 Mittermeier, Omdixionif 127-145 ; see below, Vol. II., p. 305. ' lb., 150-154; Gori, Rivduzione, 278. ' In 1834, II lire per head in the Papal and Neapolitan states, 13 in Tuscany. 19 in Piedmont ; at the same time, 45 in France : M. L. R, 261. f io8 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY and the Papal States and Modena the law was cumbrous, antiquated, severe to a degree that discredited justice; it was only in the northern states that the Bench bore a creditable name. Exceptional courts protected the clergy in Piedmont and the Pope's dominions ; there was no trial by jury, no bail except in Naples and Tuscany; the criminal courts were open to the public only in Tuscany and Parma, and to a limited extent in Rome and Naples. The wholo-- bias of judicial procedure was against the defeixdaz^eren in ordinary crime, still more where the government, Kaa, concerned : and in ti mes of civil commotion every infamous Srt^ wfto empl oyed to secure xsonviotioii. Every state had its secret tribunals to follow in the wake of each political plot, with moral, sometimes physical, torture to assist them. And behind the secret tribunal stood, responsible to itself alone, v. sometimes half-independent of the government, the terrible ;. ^ power of the sbirri. Their spies were in the caf^s, in thelvVv'^ theatres, in men's households ;Vthe con fession^ fthe school, iQji^ the post yielded to them their iU3Ur^ls, and Lne man who came under their suspicion was doomed for life. They could ruin his career at the University, in the civil service, in trade ; they could prevent him from travelling, or sending his children to be educated away from home. And though the higher officials no doubt seldom acted from other than political motives, the common sbirro often used his power to crush his private enemies. It was this petty persecution of individuals, the cjmical denial of justice, the intolerable interference in the privacy of home, that maddened Itahans, and drove them to desperate protest and conspiracy. It was a minor grievance in comparison, that the poli- tical life of the nation was driven underground. But Italians could not be content, while there was no right of public meeting or association, while even agricultural and scientific societies were only tolerated and often frowned on, while there was Uttle liberty of speech or writing, and it was only on purely economic questions that criticism of the government was tolerated. France, Spain, Portugal had their parliaments; but Italians had no control over taxation, no responsible executive, not even a consultative ^ SOCIAL CONDITION OF ITALY 109 voice in legislation. Even local government had little chance of vitality, for Napoleon had done much to destroy the vigorous municipal life of Italy, and the Restoration had no desire to revive it. The rural communes indeed had everywhere far greater powers than an English village pos- sesses at the present day; but, judged by the continental standard, their Uberties were not very wide, and they were subject to the petty and capricious interference of the central government. The municipalities of the great towns were under practically the same conditions. Provincial councils existed in Lombardy-Venetia, Piedmont, Naples, and after 1832 in the Papal States, but nowhere except in the Austrian provinces had they any vigorous life or independence. The Central Congregations of the Austrian provinces were in theory the germ of representative institu- tions ; but the fears of the government kept them tightly in hand, and it needed the great national impulse of 1847 to give them voice. It was small blame to the Italians, if they lacked the commonplace virtues of citizenship, if they put their faith ' in theories and programmes, and wanted in patience and prac- tical capacity. These were the inevitable results of a system, that allowed no political training or responsibility. But the taunts of Lamartine and Niebuhr, that Italy was the land of the dead, were only the expression of foreign spleen or ignorance. The ferment that produced three revolutions in ten years, and the ever-recurring crop of small conspiracies ; the patriotism that rose up imdiscouraged after each defeat, that sent ItaUan men to the scaffold and Italian women to widowhood, that for thirty years toiled and suffered in im- quenchable faith, bore testimony to the life that was within. ( CHAPTER VI THE LATER CARBONARI 1823-1832 Romanticism : in Italy ; Manzoni ; the Antologia; Mazzini. The Later Carbonari. Position of Austria. The Concistorio. The Papal States, 1823-30: Leo XIL ; the Zelantt Cardinals; the Liberals in Romagna. Revolution op Central Italy : Francis IV/s plots ; revolution at Bologna ; the Temporal Power ; Non-intervention ; collapse of the first revolution ; the " new era '' ; the Memorandum of the Powers; second revolution of Romagna; the French at Ancona ; character of the revolution. Meanwhile the revolutionary movement was only quiescent. Though it seemed crushed by the failure of the NeapoUtan and Piedmontese revolutions and the fate of the Lombard conspirators, it had really entered on a new phase. The Conciliatore began the transition from the mere blind revolt against despotism to the thoughtful constructive movement, which cared more for intellectual and moral progress than for political change in itself. The movements of 1820-21 were in Italy the finale of the drama, which began with the French Kevolution ; the last struggles of the half-democratic half-military idea, which had governed the Napoleonic age. New forces, partly a development from it, partly a reaction against it, were coming into play. The Romanticist movement was much more than a >■ phase of literary development. The Classicist school, against which it was a protest, was as much a phenomenon of poUtics and society as of Uterature ; and as such Napo- leon had appropriated it and turned it to his ends. Its style harmonized well with a system, that was based on positive and commonplace views of life, and dreaded the progressive and spiritual elements of national existence. no THE LATER CARBONARI iii Its framework, modelled on the myths and history of Imperial Rome, was an instrument to the hands of one who took the Csesars for his model Its paganism appealed to a generation bred in the scepticism of the Revolution. It was inevitable therefore that the reaction against the Napoleonic order should seek a new form of literary expres- sion. The Germans went back to their national traditions, and discovered that the peoples of modem Europe had a history and legends and popular Ufe, worthy of epic and lyric. But while the new Sool supplied the fire for the War of Liberation, inspired its songs, filled Germans with the belief in a great Fatherland, the spirit, that followed it from its medieval sources, made it the tool of the reaction, and its ultimate results in Germany were conservative and clerical. Even before the Restoration the movement had passed to France. Men, who were weary of a system which lived entirely in the obvious and matter-of-fact, took refuge in the kingdom of dreams, and turned to the fantastic and marvellous. The logic of the Revolution had started from so many false premisses, that common-sense itself was dis- credited. The Revolution had apparently failed, and men turned to the past, with which it had violently broken, the past of monarchy and CathoUcism. The great religious re- action, which De Maistre and Chateaubriand led, foimd in Romanticist Uterature matter and style exactly fitted to its purpose. They made it a revolt of art against science, of the spiritual against the material, of conventional morality against sensualism, of artificial society against the equality of man. In France, therefore, as in Germany, Romanticism, at all events in its earlier stages, helped the reaction. But even here by correcting the one-sidedness of the Revolution, and by being in its essence a protest against the present, it inevit- ably became in the long run a revolutionary influence. When it passed to Italy, more from Germany and Eng- land than from France (it had as its teachers Byron and Macpherson,^ Schiller and Goethe), it took from the first a Liberal imprint. In Italy Catholicism had been practically unchallenged by the Revolution, and there was no room for ^ Oftion was immensely popular. 112 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY a religious reaction. Eomanticist literature sent the Italians, like the Germans, back to their past ; but their traditions, which Sismondi had lately popularized, were of repubhcs and vigorous civic life and democratic victories over German feudaUsm. A few who, like Monti, clung to the classicist tradition, attacked the new school as a foreign importation, but its writings were accepted as the literature of progress by the great mass of earnest men, " Romanticist," said PeUico, " is synonymous with Liberal." The keen literary life of Milan, full of humanitarian sympathies, protested against the sterile classicist literature, whose " ideas," in Manzoni's indictment, " were impotent for good or evil, whose teaching was neither of duty nor hope, of glory nor wisdom." Roman- ticism inspired Berchet to sing of the " inexhaustible woe " of Italy. Foscolo had been to some extent under its influ- ence, and his Jacofpo Ortis was full of the despondency of the German school, inevitable where tyranny shut up every outlet for endeavour; and its purity of passion and self- renimciation, its worship of Petrarch and Dante, its de- spairing but fervid patriotism, made it a power among the younger generation. But the prophet of Italian Romanticism was Alessandro Manzoni He was a grandson of Beccaria, a genial, sensible Milanese, large-hearted and tolerant, a GaUio among enthusiasts ; 'at heart, however, an ardent CathoUc, whose " Sacred Hymns " were fiill of the religious note. His Tragedies teemed with veiled political teaching, and their choruses became in after years the marching songs of the Volunteers. In 1827 he published I Promessi Sposi, and the famous novel easily lent itself to the allegory intended by its author,^ of Italy simdered from her peace by foreign rule and social tyranny. Manzoni went to the people for his studies of character ; he discarded the romance of chivalry as much as the mythological poem, and his work had a true demo- cratic ring. But whatever were the poUtical lessons that he meant to teach, Manzoni was convinced that the times were not ripe for revolution. His country must be morally healed before she could be poUtically regenerated.) 'Practical Chris- * Cantil, Manzoniy 183-190; see Settembrini, lAtUratwrOy III. 320-324; Bersezio, Regno, III. 167. THE LATER CARBONARI 113 tianity, justice, self-sacrifice, were the only road to liberty, and so he preached a patient, dignified quietism, that had more to do with morals than politics. In close connection with Manzoni and his school, Yieus- seux, the Florentine librarian^ and the Liberal noble, Capponi, founded (1820) the Antologia in imitation of the Ediriburgh JReview, Though its circulation was small,^ its influence was great : the leading Italian writers of the time. Carlo Troya, Tommaseo, Leopardi, Colletta, Mazzini, wrote in its pages. Its object was " to represent Italian society and its moral and literary needs, to make Italy know itself, to bring before Italians a national and not a municipal ideal." It was more definitely political than Manzoni's work ; it was more closely in touch with the social reform movement, and in many respects was the direct precursor of the Moderate Nation- alists. And round the ArUologia grew up an eager group of Dante students in the footsteps of Foscolo and Gabriel Rossetti, and a school of history, which Romanticism had directed to the past glories .of Italy. Carlo Troya at Naples, Cesare Balbo, the son of Prospero, at Turin, Capponi at Florence, made the middle ages known to their coimtrymen; and Rossetti and Berchet in their exile were writing patriotic songs and fierce philippics against Pope and princes.^ But history and romance only irritated men, who were wearing out their souls in rage against a brutal tyranny. Sensible and masculine as was much of Manzoni's teaching, its reverence for the priest, its acceptance of the whole Catholic dogma could not content those who hated the one and doubted the other. " Manzoni grumbled, where Alfieri gnashed his teeth;" and a gospel, which taught non-re- sistance and universal forgiveness, rang false to men who fretted under present political wrong. The first note of opposition came from a yoimg Leghorn lawyer, Guexrazsd (1827). Like the Romanticists, he drew his scenes from ^ In its eighth year it had 530 subscribers, the majoritj in Tuscany. ' Before 1800 there were sixty-eight editions of Dante in Italy, between iSoo and 1864 there were two hundred and thirty-eight : Vannucci, Niccottni, I. 44. For the political effects of the study of Dante, see Mazzini, Opere, TV. 299. Marc Monnier remarks that *' the Italians regard the Divina Corn- media as a kind of Pentateuch." VOL. I. H 114 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY the great medieval.days of Italy. His writings, bitter; misan- thropic, hopeless, were the protest of a generous soul against oppression, and had a trumpet-note that told of revolt and battle. But his cynicism went far to spoil his work, and a sounder protest against the defects of Italian Romanticism came from Mazzini. He had learnt discontent from Byron and Foscolo, but had got a manUer fibre from the Bible and Dante and Roman history. Romanticism, he objected in brilliant but not quite fair criticism (1828), belonged to the individualist school ; it had no sense of personal or national mission, and therefore could not found a literature. It must become practical and political and didactic, and concern itself with the revival of national life. To a certain extent Mazzini was himself a Romanticist, but with him the school became intensely patriotic and radical. With Manzoni poli- tical reform was to come through the personal ; with Mazzini personal reform was to come through the poUticaL^ He made Romanticism a battle for liberty and independence. "It aims," he said, "at giving Italy an original national literature, to voice eloquently the ideas and needs of the social movement." ^ ^/ Romanticism is the starting-point of modem poUtical schools in Italy. In the sphere of ideas it marked the close of the Carbonaro period ; it was the direct precursor alike of Young Italy and the Moderates. But as yet its influence was only imperfectly felt in poUtical action. Manzoni's system of moral reform required time ; Mazzini was not yet known as a poUtician. Politics were still in a transitional stage, retaining much of the old purely negative Liberal school, but with a new view of patience and earnestness, and something more social and constructive. The main direction of the reform movement still lay with the Car- bonari. After the collapse of the Neapolitan Revolution, they had moved their Supreme Lodge to Paris, still the Mecca of European democracy. The society ceased to be purely ItaUan ; its chiefs, Lafayette, Pepe, and Louis PhiUppe, ^ Pesenti, Romantieitfno. ' Mazzini, OperCf II. 60, 138. THE LATER CARBONARI 115 were projecting a league of the Latin nations to balance the Holy AlUance.^ But as it became cosmopolitan, it lost its earlier enthusiasms. Its religious and moral features dis- appeared, and it became the unthinking instrument of men, whose ideas, Liberal though they were, had Uttle democratic fibre. Its lack of constructive doctrine, its remoteness from the masses of the people, promised ill for any revolution bom under its auspices. However little else they had in common, the Carbonari and the Romanticists shared equally in the hatred of Austria. Many a yoimg Italian longed to be at her throat, regardless of consequences.. The revolutions of 1820-21 had given her the excuse to revive her pretensions to control the domestic concerns of the peninsula. She feared, or professed to fear, the triumph of republican imity, and after the Con- gresses of Laybach and Verona she openly posed as the mandatory of the Powers to guard the thrones of Italy from revolution.* Alexander had come over to the reactionary camp ; France was unfriendly but unwilling to act against her; the new spirit which Canning had given to English influence was hardly felt as yet in Europe. Secure from interference from without, she set herself to consolidate her position. She had her armies of occupation at Naples and Ancona; she intended to annex Tuscany, if the line of Lorraine became extinct ; she had still, perhaps, her designs on Romagna. Her agents and spies— cardmals, officers, lawyers — were at work in every state.^ As Giusti put it, the ItaUans " ate Austria in their bread." But the very evidence of her strength imdermined her influence. However readily i< the princes might fly to her for help in time of revolution, their pride revolted at her arrogant claims to patronage. Piedmont and Rome had again frustrated her attempts to form a postal league ; Charles Felix and Francis I. of Naples successfully manoeuvred to get the armies of occupation withdrawn ; Leo XII. had been elected Pope in her teeth, ^ Frost, Secret Societies, II. 1-9 ; Gantii, Cronistoriaf II. 129. ' Bianchi, Diptomazia^ IV. 243. ' Poggi, Storia, I. 510 ; Gaalterio, RivolgimefUif I. 463; Manno, Informa- fumt, 18-20. ii6 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY and there was a great and growing suspicion between the Papal See and the great erastian Empire. >h. «,mmon dSrust d»ped i«?r into «,mething »f .0 active alhance. Of the details of the Concistorio little is certainly known; of its existence there can be no doubt. The restless Duke of Modena had turned to new schemes to enlarge his dominions, this time at the expense of Austria, and he found a party in the Church. Ever since the reaction of 1799 there had been a more or less defined society of " Sanfedists " ^ (followers of the Holy Faith), the "Don Quixotes of militant Catholicism," in touch with, if not fused into, the Calderari of Naples and the Catholic Society of Pied- mont. Reactionary and ultramontane and intolerant as they were, they had a strain of nationalist sentiment, which made them regard Austria with imfriendly eyes as heiress of the Ghibelline attack upon the Papacy. How far the Sanfedists merged themselves in the more organised Concistorio, how far the latter expanded into a general plot, we can only guess. At all events Francis had some sort of understanding with the Zelanti^ of the Papal Court, possibly with the Kings of Piedmont and Naples, to partition Italy afresh at the expense of Austria and the House of Lorraine. For this he was willing to approach the Carbonari, or at least that section which, imder the name of Guelfs, looked kindly on the Papacy, and hoped to make it the rallying point of the national movement. There was much obscure intriguing for a compromise on a common nationalist poHcy.^ All the time, underneath the workings of Carbonari and Concistorio, the popular discontent was making an explosion sooner or later inevitable. Romagna was now the focus round which every conspiracy centred. Hitherto the com- ^ Compare the " Congregation " in France and the ** Apostolicals " in Spain. ' See below, p. 117. ' An estimate of the Condttorio must depend largely on the credit to be given to Didier's Rome Souterraine, especially 1. 146-153, first published in 1833. See also Witt, SocUUb SeeriUit 26-33 ; Saint-Edme, Carbonari, 207-212 ; Canth, Cronistoria, II. 137-138 ; III. 411-412; CarU iegrcte, II. $6, 67, 83, 90, 334; III. 50-60, 96-99; Biancbi, Ducatit I. 31S-319; Gualterio, op, eit., I. 42-43; Foggi, Storia, I. 546-549, 558 ; Casati, ConfaUonieri, I. 94. THE LATER CARBONARI 117 parative mildness of Consalvi's rule, and the absence of an army possessed by Carbonaro ideas had saved the Papal States from revolt. But every year the misgovemment grew more intolerable. Consalvi had only been able to postpone the reaction. He lived to see it triumphant, and his enemy, Delia Genga, Pope (August 1823). In spite of age and sickness, Leo XII. was an alert and busy ruler. His settled aim was to establish the theocracy in its strictest form, to restore the pre-Revolution order, to exterminate all shapes of Liberalism. His " Congregation of State " made the Cardinals once more supreme over the government. He gave the nobles back many of their privileges, placed education and charities in the exclusive grip of the clergy, disqualified the Jews from holding property and drove them to hear sermons. It was part of his scheme that the hierarchic state must be free from foreign intrusion, and for this Leo was prepared to throw down the gauntlet to Austria, which little relished the prospect of aggressive ultramontanism. His nationalism, such as it was, was not the only weU-meant chapter in his policy. However obscur- antist and impossible it may have been, he had, no doubt, a dream of a state preeminent in piety and orthodoxy, where, though Liberals might be fiercely persecuted, the plain moral virtues would flourish, and government provide for the comfort of a conforming people. There were efforts to reform Roman morals, so drastic as to induce an exodus of high-placed sinners to more tolerant Tuscany. Leo's edicts show some care for the Roman poor, and his educational Bull was a weU-meant effort to put down scholastic abusea But while he tried to dragoon his people into virtue, his reforms left undisturbed the vices of the Roman court. Men might be driven to church, and Lenten abstinence enforced, but, while Cardinals plundered the treasury, and the police harried the poor, the obtrusive religiosity of the government could only move contempt.^ On Leo's death in 1829 the struggle was revived in the conclave between the partisans of Austria and the Zelanti Cardinals, who desired an independent and ultramontane ^ Carte tegrete, I. 341 ; SalvagDi, CorU Romana^ III. 67. I ii8 A HISTOKY OF ITALIAN UNITY Pope. The Papal Court was a traditional battleground of Austrian and French diplomacy, and the Zelanti naturally looked to France for patronage. In spite of it, Albani, the leader of the pro- Austrian cardinals, manoeuvred the elec- tion of his candidate. Cardinal Castiglioni became Pope Pius VIII., and Albani, a rich irreligious man, with hands soiled in commercial speculations, was his Secretary of State. Pius* short reign of twenty months was uneventful, and his death in November 1830 saw a repetition of the intrigues. The Zelanti avenged their defeat, Mauro Cappellari was elected Pope as Gregory XVI., and Leo*s secretary, Bemetti, returned to office. Gregory had lighted on troublous times. It was the year of revolution, and the Papal question had passed beyond the diplomatic duel of France and Austria. The trans- Apennine provinces were honeycombed with Carbonarism, and the secret societies recruited even from the officials and police. Five years before, Leo had sent Cardinal Rivarola to crush them (1825), but all his hideous severity failed, and a succession of attempts on his life frightened him back to Rome. There was almost open revolt in some of the cities, and so dangerous looked the future that, even before Leo's death, Bemetti had predicted that the days of the Temporal Power were numbered. The July Revolution brought the ferment to a head. The Parisian Carbonari had been industriously connecting the threads of insurrec- tion in North and Central Italy. Before the Revolution, and in the early dajrs of the Orleanist monarchy, the plotting went on briskly under Louis Philippe's patronage. Duke Francis was ready to lead a crusade against Austria, or partition the Pope's dominions, provided that France would secure him by promising her support. Protesting himself "a true Italian," he opened negotiations with Menotti and Misley, the leaders of the Modenese Liberals, and the credulous patriots of North Italy were ready to look to him as a possible royal leader. In close touch with Menotti, the Carbonaro lodges at Bologna and Rome were preparing for insurrection, and had fixed the outbreak for an early day of February. But Francis found he had embarked on too THE LATER CARBONARI 119^ hazardous a venture. He had clearer proof than the other conspirators that that "abyss of roguery," Louis Philippe, was plotting treachery, perhaps that he had already betrayed him to Austria. Much mystery hangs on the Duke's rela- tions with Menotti and Misley,^ but whatever may have been his promises to them, he was preparing to repudiate them and buy himself back into Austrian favour by a daring stroke. A premature rising at Rome, while the Conclave that elected Gregory was sitting, had been easily put down. The news of its failure decided Francis to act. On the night of February 3 (183 1) his troops surrounded Menotti's house, and capturing the conspirators assembled there, he sent an express to fetch the executioner. But it was too late. Bologna rose next morning, and many who had small sympathy with the Carbonari threw themselves into a movement that promised an escape from Papal rule. The soldiers fraternized or retired; the frightened Pro- legate nominated a Provisional Government and withdrew. As soon as the news reached Modena, Francis fled, taking his prisoners with him. The Duchess of Parma followed, and from Bologna to Piacenza the country was in the hands of the Liberals. The Revolution spread rapidly through Romagna; within three days of the Bologna revolt, Forll, Rimini, Ravenna, Ferrara had risen; by the 9th it had reached Pesaro, Ancona, and Perugia. The rest of Umbria and the Southern Marches sent in their adhesion a fortnight later, as the Liberal army under Sercognani passed through. Jn less than three weeks all Romagna, the Marches, and Umbria down to Temi and Narni had thrown off Papal rule. There was no opposition; the troops, the municipal officers, the civil servants quietly adhered. Even most of the priests, and here and there a bishop submitted with apparent willingness.* Never had revolution been made with more perfect quiet and unanimity. The Provisional Grovemment declared the Temporal Power abolished in the province of Bologna, and ordered ^ The evidence is collected in Tivaroni, Dominio Auttriaco, I. 625-627 ; •ee Poggi, op. cit, I. 557-561 ; H- 56. ' Zanolini, Rivoltuione, 10, 13, 25. \ # I20 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY elections for a National Assembly. Delegates came from all the cities of the Legations and Marches, and from Umbria as far as Perugia and Spoleto, and as soon as they met, they stamped the national intention of the movement by naming themselves the " Assembly of deputies of the Free Provinces of Italy," and the revolted districts "The United Italian Provinces."^ On February 19, Sercognani with their army was at Otricoli, fifteen leagues from Rome. Here the Bologna government halted him, doubting what reception he might find at Rome, but young Lpuis Bonaparte, who had been thought of as a figurehead for the revolution, after writ- ing with boyish impudence to advise the Pope to surrender the Temporal Power, was preparing on his own account a quixotic attack on the city.^ The Roman government was in consternation. There was no real power of resistance. Bemetti had appealed to the loyalty of the peasants and the Romans, but there had been two attempted risings in the capital, and few except the poor of the Trasteverine quarter had responded to his call. The Pope was probably intending flight, and Bemetti was ready to compromise on any terms.^ But Austria was already on the way to save the Papal power from its imminent ruin. The revolutionary govern- ment had assumed from the first that France would protect it from a foreign attack. One of the formulas of the July Revolution had been that no state should be allowed to interfere in the domestic concerns of another. The French ministers had protested that they would never permit the principle of non-intervention to be violated ; they had helped the Italian exiles to reach Romagna, and promised that if Austria intervened, France would . fight.* But they sent Mettemich private messages that their brave words meant nothing,^ and the old statesman, reassured, contemptuously disregarded French bravado. When Casimir-P^rier, whose ^ Miscdlaneous DocumerUi, No. 4 ; Bivitia Europea, XIX. 461-462. ' Vicini, EivUtunonet 172 ; Cktrte ttgrtUt II. 408 ; Revne UorteMt^ 56 ; Nisco, Francesco /., 53. ' Vesi, Rivoluzione, 31. * Bianchi, op. ct't., III. 45 ; Gnalterio, op. cit,, I. 28-31, 80 n. ; Palmieri de' Miccichd, Le due d'OrUans, 30 ; Louis Blanc, Dtx ant, II. 204 ; Gouvemement de Juillet, 1 1-34 ; Pepe, Memoirs, III. 290-301 ; Vimercati, Histoire^ I. 60. * Bianchi, op, cit,. III. 58, 345 ; Fjffe, Modem Europe, II. 40X-402. THE LATER CARBONARI 121 appointment to the ministry marked the King's final severance from the Revolution, declared that " the blood of Frenchmen belonged to France alone/' he knew that he could act. The Austrians easily overran Parma and Mddena (February 25 to March 6), and the Duke, returning with his Austrian escort, sent Menotti to the scaffold. Zucchi, an ex-general of Napoleon's army, who commanded the Modenese in- surgents, retired with his troops to the Romagnuol frontier, but the Bolognese government, in pedantic observance of the non-intervention formula, and still hoping against light that France would insist on its observance, treated Zucchi's men as belligerents entering a neutral territory and disarmed them. " None of our people," they said, " shall take part in our neighbours' quarrels." Their action gave the lie to their high-sounding phrases of unity and nationality. They had no heart for danger. They had, it is true, only 7000 ill- disciplined though enthusiastic men, and most of these were with Sercognani in Umbria. But a spirited defence would have roused the country, and the events of seventeen years later showed what possibilities of resistance lay in the Bolognese. Had they kept the Austrians at bay for a few weeks, the excitement in France might have forced the Paris government to act. But they tamely withdrew to Ancona, and the Austrians entered Bologna without a shot (March 21). Pressing on along the Emilian Way, they encountered Zucchi's small force at Rimini, and were beaten back with loss. But Zucchi retired to a better position at Ancona, and arrived there to find that the Provisional Government had capitulated to the Pope's agent on the bare promise that an amnesty should be granted (March 27). One member, Mamiani, refused to sign, and the bolder spirits had advocated a rush on Rome with Sercognani's troops. But their colleagues still feared the temper of the Romans and the probabiUty that France would intervene to defend the Papacy.^ The more timid counsel prevailed, and with the disbanding of Zucchi's and Sercognani's. men the three-weeks-old Revolution ignominiously collapsed. It seemed to have died as easily as it was bom. The ^ Zanolini, op, eit., 30; VaDDucci, Martiri, 347-348. ^^P 122 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Austrians laid the conquered provinces at the Pope's feet. Bemetti announced a " new era " of beneficent government,^ and initiated it by repudiating the armistice and allowing his troops to shoot down the citizens of Rimini in cold blood. But it was by no means an unchequered victory. The failure of the Revolution only transferred the Roman ques- tion to the hands of the diplomatists. Even Casimir-P^rier was irritated at Mettemich's prompt action, and public opinion in France would not allow him to leave Austria sole champion of the Papacy. His policy was to get the Austrians out of Romagna, and extort from the Pope sufficient reforms to allow the country to settle down. Mettemich, for his part, was anxious to assist him against the Liberal opposi- tion, and was willing, at least partiaUy, to withdraw the army of occupation. But the other Powers could not allow the question to become a struggle for precedence between Austria and France. Papal misrule was too crying a scandal, too perennial a source of disturbance to the peace of Europe. The representatives of the Great Powers met at Rome to arrange for the withdrawal of the Austrian troops, and discuss remedies for the misgovemment. England, France, Prussia urged large measures of reform; Austria and Russia opposed. But nominally the latter gave wa^, and a Memorandum was presented to the Pope (May lo), demanding the admission of the laity to the whole civil ser- vice and Bench, and general remedies beginning with mimi- cipal reform. England, however, was alone in earnest, and Bemetti knew that he need not take too seriously the ad- monitions of the Conference. He threatened to stir the Catholics and Legitimists in France; and Casimir-P^rier was content to see the Austrians removed from Romagna, and win some nominal concessions that would satisfy French opinion. Austria and Russia secretly worked against the Memorandum, and Bemetti knew that it was enough to promise Provincial Councils and the admission of more lay- men into the government. The Conference broke up in July, the English representative protesting that not one of ^ Roman landlords were forbidden to raise rents on sitting tenants for a year : Miscellaneous Edieis, No. 72. THE LATER CARBONARI 123 its recommendations had been fully adopted. A few days after, the Austrians withdrew from Papal territory. Their dep^ture left U,e govenlent » ^weries, » before. The vague promises of reform contented nobody, and as soon as the Austrians had gone, revolt broke out again through ahnost all Bomagna. The tricolor was worn, no taxes were remitted to Rome, and a practically indepen- dent government ruled the Legations of Bologna, Ravenna, and Forli. But the Romagnuols were ready now to give up separation and even Home Rule, provided that Rome would guarantee their very modest programme of reform, withdraw its troops, and allow them to arm a citizen guard. Bemetti temporized ; but the Romagnuols were ready to meet him half-way, when the hopes of a settlement were suddenly dashed by edicts from Rome, which closed the Universities for a year and increased the land-tax (October). A meeting of delegates siimmoned to Bologna ordered the citizen guard to discard the Papal uniform. It was meant as a threat of rebellion, and the publication of Bemetti's Code,^ despite its concessions, only roused opposition to its defects. An agitation, led by the Bolognese bar, compelled the authorities to suspend its introduction ; and on Christ- mas Day the delegates summoned a parliament from the three Legations. It was an act of overt rebellion, and Ber- netti refused to wait longer. The four Powers (for England dissented) encouraged him to demand unconditional sub- . mission. France, anxious above all things to avoid another Austrian occupation, urged that the revolt should be sup- pressed by Papal or Piedmontese troops ; and Bemetti, eager as they not to call in the Austrians, sent Albani with a strong native force. Two thousand volunteers fought bravely but ineffectually at Cesena (January 20, 1832); and the Papal troops sacked the city even to its churches,* and plim- dered imresisting Forli. Bologna might still have made a defence, but the advance of an Austrian force crushed hope, and the city was glad to save itself from Papal outrage by admitting an Austrian garrison. ^ See above, p. 76. * Qennarelli, Oovemo P but bigoted, uncom- promising, ruthless. Under his rule all pretence of decent government disappeared. The whole fabric of the state was worm-eaten with corruption and incapacity ; ^ the Sanfedists sold their support for license of unlimited rapme, and under the all-powerfiil influence of the Jesuits misrule and anarchy held high state. For a time the sense of helplessness, which followed the succession of Liberal reverses, silenced protest. Europe had deserted the Pope's unhappy subjects, and Austria and France both evacuated Papal territory in 1838. But under the surface the secret societies thrived amid persecution.^ " If you ask a youth in Bomagna, if he ^ Gnalterio, op. ct<.. III. 105 ; IV. 455 ; Vesi, Rivoluzione, 214-215 ; Bianohi, Dtpfomosio, III. 150-151, 40S-410; /i., MaiUwsei, 37-38; Orsini, Memoir% 1 1 ; Campanella and Niccolini, (Tavom, 244 ; Farini, op. cit,, I. 73, 78. ' See the reports of the Piedmontese ambaasadors in Bianchi, DipUfmaeia, lIL,pa$nm; O'Reilly, Leo XIIL, 104-105; Gnalterio, op. ciL, I. 190; contra Perfetti, Hieordi, 65. ' It is cnrions that in spite of the general belief that there were many assassinations on both sides, an apologist of the government ooold only point to three by Liberals : pamphlet in British Mosenm Catalogue No. r^-— , 2 p. 8 f». See Carte iegreU, II. 423. YOUNG ITALY 143 has been in prison/' wrote D'Azeglio, " he replies, ' I am hardly a man or I should/" Even the Romans, though still halting in their Liberalism, were growing weary of the misrule. " Compromise is impossible with priests/' became the popular watchword. But for the Swiss troops, the government could not have survived a month ;^ and when the Pope flaunted his sympathy with the Sonderbimd, even they (for many were Protestants) wavered in their loyalty. It was increasingly clear that there was no hope for the Boman State, whUe the government remained in clerical hands. '' There is no remedy/' said the Piedmontese am- bassador in 1837, "but in reducing Rome to a merely ecclesiastical supremacy, with only the shadow of the Temporal Power." Even Capponi, conservative though he was, and Galeotti, staunch defender of the Temporal Power, saw no solution save in a Pope who might reign but did not govern.* For the moment, however, whether in Rome or NaplesA or Piedmont, the country was passing through a period of \ depression, too heavy to allow of revolution. Liberalism was crushed in Italy, in France, in Germany, in Poland. Mazzini had found refuge first in Switzerland, then in England;' petTilant, unhappy, intolerant, but translucently noble in his ideals and his devotion to them. Democratic oflScers, the generals of the future wars, the Durandos and Cialdini, Medici and Fanti, were fighting for the Liberals in Spain and Portugal; others, like Garibaldi, sailed to the Italian settlements in South America, or flocked to Paris and Brussels and London, wasting in a foreign land the abilities, which imder a happier star would have enriched their country. For several years Italian politics showed few 1 Gaizot, M6moiru, II. 451 ; Gennarelli, Govemo Pontificio, I. 41-42, 66, 70; Bianchi, op. cU.^ III. 403. * l^ianchi, op. ett, III. 157 ; Capponi, Moti di Rimini; Galeotti, SovramMd^ 190, 209. See above, p. 83, 1 18. * For his life in England, his ** second home/' see his Opert V. For his friendship with the Carlyles, Carlyle's Remini9cence%, II. 182 ; J. W. Howe, Margaret Fuller, 144, 145 ; according to Mario, Mazzini^ 304 n, Carlyle in later life said, '* And yet this idealist has conquered ; he has transformed his ntopia into a patent and potent reality." I 144 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY signs of life. The Carbonari, though the name still lingered here and there, had practically disappeared for ever.^ Mazzini retired for a time &om the direction of Toung 1 1taly,^ and its organisation was almost broken up. In Naples, at all events, many an ex-revolutionist was ready enough to serve the cause of despotism; in Lombardy society was resigned and contented on the surface, gUding its material enjoyment with vague aspirations for a h^er and freer life. Cautious men, like Dal Pozzo, pleaded that it would be better to accept Austrian rule and make the best of it. Something of the spirit of Leop^dis misanthropy and pessimism seemed to have settled on the country. And just as the Irish Famine arrested the national movement there, so the cholera, which scourged Italy in 1835-37, depressed the physique and industry of the nation, and everjrwhere, except in the South, turned men's minds from public to private griefs. Italy might well seem to the superficial observer " the land of the dead " ; it needed the faith of a Lamennais to realise that it was "the peace of the cradle and not of the grave." But the revival soon came, heralded in literature. Silvio Pellico's Lt mie Friffioni, though intended to be a manual of quietism, burnt into its readers' hearts with its description of the martyrdom of the Spielberg. Berchet had written his famous chorus : " Arise, Italia, arise in arms, thy day has come." » Guerrazzi's novels spoke of an Italian greatness which might return aga^n, and his Assedio di Firenze (1835) was " written, because he could not fight." * D'Azeglio's Ettore Fieramosca struck a manly note, that helped to wean Italian youth from ballet-dancers to patriotic thought. Colletta and Botta published their histories of recent Italian struggles. Gustavo Modena's comedies taught Italian and anti-Papal ideas as boldly as the censorship allowed. Rossini's and ^ There were a few lodges at Rome and in Umbria as late as 1867 : Mazzini, Opere XV. lix. ^ Mazzini, Dueeento Utteref I4-I5- ' Guerrazzi, Memorie, 95. YOUNG ITABSr 145 Verdi's operas had tales of national effort for their themes. Niccolini's tragedies drew from medieval history memories that roused the people to recollections of their old democracy ; and his Amaido da Brescia (1843) was a hymn to liberty, fiercely satirizing German and Papalist, and teaching how Emperor and Pope were leagued to oppress the land. Guisti's satires circulated in hundreds of manuscript copies (183s), labelling the princes, the police, the courtiers with stinging epigrams, that stuck in the public memory. He wrote " in his blouse " in nervous, vernacular Tuscan, with the sharp, rattling rhythm of popular songs, or sometimes with an epic dignity, that recalled the greater ages of Italian literature. He lashed the princes, who ''shaved at second-hand," the " conscience-jaundiced Piedmontese," "the feeble Lazzaroni-Paladin " of Naples, the "Tuscan Morpheus, with lettuce and with poppy crowned"; he lashed the police, " those locusts of the state," the priests who preached resignation and a marrowless humanitarianism, the weather-cock politicians, the official " adepts in the art of not-doing." The Pope he told to " tear the mask, first from his own face, then from the tyrant's." But he was as merciless to the cant of the demagogue as to the cant of the official ; he sneered at the " devotees of Bang Log," at the " thin and shadowy virtue " of Florence, at the exil^B whose "clock always stood at '31." His was a deep and serious patriotism; he laughed at the men who thought that " a cosmopolitan idea makes the brain grow larger " ; and he turned fiercely on the sentimental foreigners, who spoke of Italy as the land of the dead : " Oh, such a noble graveyard might make the living envy ! " Meanwhile Mazzini's passionate pamphlets, smuggled from hand to hand, were slowly leavening with a new ear- nestness the best among the educated classes, and Modena s popular versions of them must have made their mark on the masses. Here and there the branches of Yoimg Italy lived on, and gradually, in spite of the depression, the net- work of conspiracy was rewoven from Palermo and Naples to Bologna and Florence and Milan. From England and VOL. I K 146 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY France, from Spain and Corsica, from the Ticino and Malta and the Ionian Islands the exiles were in close correspon- \dence with their friends at home. Sicily was now the focus lof insurrection. The stamina of the population, the hatred {of the government which showed itself in almost yearly putbreaks, the distance from the Austrian garrison — all pointed to the island as a fitting starting-point for revolu- tion ; even the Piedmontese government was bidding for a foothold of influence there. ^ The long struggle between the advocates of complete centralization and the party which tried to make the Lieutenancy the means to a modified home rule had ended in the final discomfiture of the latter, when Fer- dinand's jealousy recalled the Count of Syracuse (1835).* The intolerable misrule, which followed, extinguished the divisions among the Liberals; Palermo and Messina were ostentatiously reconciled; the old separatist party joined hands with the yoimger school, which sought to merge the island in an Italian republic. In 1837 deputies from all the secret societies of the island were meeting at Palermo to concert rebellion. A month or two later the popular fury, which accompanied the cholera, precipitated the rising. The terrible visitation, which struck the North with despair, in the South was the signal for blind outbreaks of panic and fren2y. The epidemic was decimating the population ; 22,000 died at Naples, over 40,000 at Palermo. The maddened people gave a ready ear to the old superstition, that the plague was bom of poison, and so utterly dis- ^ credited was the government, that even educated men were ready to believe that its agents had poisoned the bread and contaminated the wells. Formidable disturbances broke out in the Abruzzi and in Sicily. The Liberals took advantage of the panic. They deliberately encouraged the belief in the poisoning,^ and preached rebellion to the frenzied population. I Palermo itself was crushed by the awful plague, but Messina, Catania, and Syracuse rose; in the two latter cities the yellow flag of Sicilian independence flew ; at Syracuse the ^ Bianchi, IHplonuuia, III. 279. * Bracci, Afemorie, 55-58, 1 68- 1 7a ' Sansone, ^wentmentt, 103. YOUNG ITALY 147 crowd massacred poUce and suspected poisoners, and for three weeks the city waa under mob-rule. The victims of the populace owed their deaths to the cholera scare; at Catania, where the movement had been more political, there was no bloodshed; but the murders gave the government its excuse for vengeance. Delcarotto was sent to organize terrorism, and condemned to death over one hundred of his victims. When the savagfery came to an end, the last was fused with the Neapolitan ; the viceroyalty became a sine- cure ; gendarmes on the Neapolitan model took the place of the old local polica Alone of their ancient privileges the Sicilians preserved their exemption from conscription, for the government feared to train to arms a people of poten- tial rebels. The Sicilian rising was an isolated movement, but it helped to show that despair was passing into exasperation* As Young Italy raised its head again, the plans of insur-\ rection took a more organized and extensive form. In the \ summer of 1843 the revolutionary committees projected a general rising in Naples, Romagna, and Tuscany, but each province waited for the others to give the signal, and the rebellion was still-bom. The plot had leaked out, however, at Bologna and Ravenna, and a few conspirators, to escape the Legate's revenge, were led by the brothers Muratori to the Apennines, where they kept up a desultory guerilla fight. But the mountaineers gave no help; the tiny band grew weary of an outlawed life, and fled to Tuscany or hiding- places in the mountains, while below Cardinal Spinola sent their accomplices to the prison or the scajBfold. Critics jibed at the young Romagnuols, who thought that "if Forli or Faenza rose, all Europe would be in flames"; and Mazzini, in common with the wiser of the conspirators, had come to recognize the futility of these local movements. While the exiles at Paris were trying to fuse constitutionalists and republicans on a bare programme of Italian Unity, he would have preferred to wait for a time. It was just at this moment that occurred the most noted of the petty movements. Attilio and Emilio Bandiera were y y X 148 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY young Venetian nobles, oflScers in the Austrian navy. Satu- rated with the literature of Young Italy, they had convinced themselves that what their country needed was an example of brave and vigorous action. This example they would give by organizing a guerilla in the Southern Apennines. Mazzini and others did what they could to dissuade them ; but deaf to his reasoning, deaf to their father's threats and the prayers of Attilio's yoimg wife, they determined to make a descent on Calabria, where rumour had swelled a petty outbreak to an insurrection. Escaping from their ships, they took refuge at Corfil (May 1 844), and thence sailed to Italy with a handful of men. They had detailed their pre- parations in their correspondence with Mazzini, relying on the "well-known trustworthiness of the English post"; but the letters were opened in the English Home Office, and Lord Aberdeen put the Neapolitan government on its guard.^ When the little band landed (June 17) they were easily lured into an ambush, captured, and condemned to be shot. Faltering for a moment, they tried to save their lives by representing the movement as monarchical, and appealing to Ferdinand to lead it ; "a King of Naples," they told him, ' "is the only possible King of Italy."* It was the only unworthy action, that stained their perfect honour. They were shot, cheering for Italy. Their chivalry, their cruel death, their proclamations in the name of Italian Inde- pendence and Unity, made a deep sensation. Gioberti attacked their memory with his torrential invective for " destroying brave lives for a dream "; but they had gained their object. They "proved that Italians could die"; they startled the country from its torpor. But the expedition was a heavy blow to Young Italy. It was plausible, however false, to represent Mazzini from his safe hiding-place egging on the Bandieras to their forlorn enterprise, and the odium ^ that fell on him gave a great impetus to the new school, which was beginning to contest with him the guidance of the Revolution. ^ See Vol. II., Appendix C. ° Riociardi e Lattari, Bandiera, i6a CHAPTER VIII THE MODERATES 1 843-1 846 The reaction against Young Italy. The social refonners ; Scientific Con- gresses ; railways. The Moderates : (i.) The New Qublfs ; Gioberti's Primato; (iL) The Piedmontese School ; BaHx^s Sperame (f Italia; IVAzeglio ; his Ultimi Cad di Romagna; the Albertiste. Charles Albert's Rbion : his reforms ; railway schemes ; the King and Austria ; growth of Liberalism ; tariff-war with Austria ; the King and the Moderates. Since the discredit of the Carbonari, the democratic and more or less republican movement, which centred roimd Toung Italy, had inspired the active patriotism of the coimtry. However fitfully, the democrats had for the past twelve years been almost alone in upholding the flag of Italian. Independence. They had now to confront a great wave of nationalist conservatism that swept over the country. To a certain extent, no doubt, the Moderate School was descended from the earUer Liberalism of the Carbonaro period, retaining and developing its nationalist policy, and reverting from fear of Toung Italy's democratic programme to the more conservative and cautious thought, that had inspired and spoilt the movements of '21 and '31. There was an angry revulsion from the little plots, with their waste of life and the cruel retaliation they provoked. " It is hard," wrote Gioberti after the Savoy Expedition, "to be calm, when one reflects that a band of inexperienced young men, however good their intentions, presume to risk the future of Italy." And the Moderates bore the impress of the con- structive didactic school, which sprang from the ConcUicUore and the Antologia and ManzonL There was a wide con- viction that any forward political movement was out of I ISO A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY court at present, that the energies of the nation for the moment were best devoted to education and social reform.' Men, like the Greorgofils in Tuscany, or Cattaneo at Milan, or the agricultural reformers of Piedmont, believed that the spread of schools, agricultural improvements, the introduction of railways, the promotion of literary journals and scientific societies must take precedence for their generation over any political movement, though many of them looked to create an at mosp here where despotism could not live. They attacked the dialects, and brought classic Italian into more general use; they started model farms; they established infant schools and savings-banks. They founded, imder the lead of Carlo Bonaparte and Sir John Bowring, the Scientific Congresses, first held at Pisa and Turin in 1839 and 1840.^ The Congresses were at first colourless but very practical gatherings of naturalists and scientists, who met under government patronage; but it was impossible for Italians of different states to come together without giving something of a national complexion to their meetings. Economic questions suggested a customs' -league, social problems led up to politics, geography to free-spoken talk of Italy. The Scientific Congresses were among the forces that made the new nationalism ; and the Pope and Duke of Modena were wise in their generation, when they forbade their subjects to attend them. It was the same school that gave the first serious impulse to railwajrs. Military necessities and royal conveniences, if no higher considerations, compelled even the governments, except in the Papal States, to favour them. A short line from Naples to Portici was the first to be opened in 1839; another line, equally for the comfort of a court, ran between Milan and Monza a year later. These were the preludes to the great trunk lines. That from Milan to Venice was commenced in 1 840, and the first section from Padua to Mestre was opened in 1842. A line from Leghorn to Pisa, the first instalment of a railway to Florence, was working in 1844. The Piedmontese trunk 1 The other Congresses were at Florence, 1841 ; Padaa, 1842 ; Lucca, 1843 ; Milan, 1844 ; Naples, 1845 > Oenoa, 1846 ; Venice, 1847. THE MODERATES 151 system followed a little later,^ and Cesare Balbo as early as 1845 was advocating the tunnelling of the Alps. Even in the South there was talk of a line to BrindisL^ But though the government helped on the railway movement, it was the nationalists who saw its real import. It was not only that railways promised to develop trade ; the patriots recognized that they would be the most potent of material interests to bind the peninsula together. As D'Azeglio said, they would " stitch the boot." It was a favourite project that a great coast line should connect Genoa with Leghorn, Civita Vecchia, and Naples. The portentous bulk of literature, which appeared on railway questions, showed with what earnestness the country was watching their development. Thus gradually the social reformers, almost despite themselves, drifted into politics. Mazzini's leaven was at work, though with ultimate issues unintended by its maker, swelling his readers' hearts with love of coxmtry and thoughts of glory and independence. Giusti was undermining the thrones with his satire ; Guerrazzi was making men's hearts bum within them. There was progress and life in the air. < The deadness of the previous decade had lifted; and the great mass of educated Italians, who had too much common- sense or too little courage for Mazzini's gospel, were looking for a milder creed which would reconcile patriotism and prudence. Cautious men, who thought with Balbo that " xm- successful conspiracies fan the spirit of distrust rather than of patriotism " ; sensitive men, who flinched from preaching to the people a gospel of sacrifice and martyrdom ; all who shrank from sidlying their respectability by contact with a party of xmcompromising democracy ; the orthodox, who feared the rationalist elements in Mazzini's teaching; the conventional, who resented its lack of deference to the social traditions ; Italian humour, offended by the fantastic senti- mentalism that hung round Young Italy; the cowardice, that sought the shelter of throne and church ; the best of ^ S«e below, p. 165. ' Ferdinand II. would allow no tunnels, thinking them immoral, attached a chapel to every station, and allowed no trains to run at night or on holidays. — Memor, Pim di un reffno,'23^. § 152 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Italian common-sense, the worst of Italian mediocrity — all swelled the volume of the Moderate party. From the start it parted into two currents. The first was above all Catholic. The New Guelfs, as they called themselves, were the direct descendants of the Romanticists of Manzoni's school Sentimentalists, worshippers of the past, they gave their reverence to Catholicism and the Papacy as its central embodiment. Respect for the priest had to be reconcUed with their humanitarianism, their very real sjonpathy with the oppressed. And so they pictured the Church released from the bondage which Joseph II. and his imitators had laid on it, pictured the Pope independent and supreme as the arbiter of nations, the defender of the poor, the champion of Italy. The popular CathoUcism of the Promem Sposi was to be the great feat of modem Europe. And their deeply religious spirit, dainty and want- ing in masculine fibre though it was, made them moralists. Like Mazzini, they preached duty, perseverance, education, domestic virtue; unlike him, they preached passivity and resignation. Wanting in moral courage, fearful of the stony road of progress, tender to opponents, over-sensitive in their sympathies, they painted an Utopia of class recon- ciliation, where Pope and priests and princes, converted to justice and mercy, were to lie down with a grateful and contented people. The tradition (which had its French counterpart in Montalembert's and Lamennais' earlier writings) had been nursed by the Paviese school of Romagnosi and Cantii, by Raffaello Lambruschini's suggestions of church reform, by Capponi's and Carlo Troya's historical rehabilitation of the Papacy. In 1836 Niccold Tommaseo, a poet and critic, who had been exiled from Tuscany for his writings in the Antologia, published at Paris ^ an appeal to priests and princes to co-operate in the work of national regeneration, and pointed to a reforming Pope as the pivot of the movement. But Tommaseo's book was little known, and. the new school started into prominence with a work, per- haps in part based on his, which appeared seven years ^ DdU nuove tpero/me d* Italia. THE MODERATES 153 later (Jxine 1843). The Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians was the work of Gioberti, a Turin priest, who had been exiled in the early days of Charles Albert's reign. From sympathies with Young Italy his versatile interests had passed to an Italian school of metaphysics, to church reform and Jansenism/ and now fixed themselves on Italian Independence. His transcendental philosophy created an It^foi the nnagination,a.d some frIgmenLj history and a few ethnological conceits blinded him to the real Italy past and present. With reasoning more conspicuous for patriotism than logic, he argued that Italy, because it had been the fatherland of Dante and Vico and Napoleon, must for ever be the country of the " dynamic " men, the home of creative genius. Almost in Mazzini's words he declared that because the Romans had been the elect people to propagate the idea of justice, because Christian Rome had taught the peace and love which created modern civilization, therefore Italy must always be the redeeming nation, the eldest-bom among the peoples, the moral and spiritual centre of the world.^ Such dignity claimed as its corollary national inde- pendence, and independence alone was needed to make his country again the first of nations. But Gioberti did not believe in Italian Unity. Italy, he thought, had been too long divided to permit a peaceful miion, and union by force would be a crime. He wished to see a federation of Italian states, imder the supreme authority of the Pope, which would secure the country against foreign invasion, and make room for a national navy, national colonies, a customs'- league, a common sjrstem of administration.^ The federa- tive idea was a part of the conservatism, which pervaded all his political thought. Like Locke, he uses first prin- ciples to justify the system of his predilection; he often fails to get behind conventions, and makes philosophy the handmaid of the existing fact. The Italian genius, he annoimces, is essentially monarchical and aristocratic and ^ Berti, Oioberti, 15, 23. He told Mazzini in 1847 ^^^^ ^^ Catholicism was elastic enongh to include anybody. ' Oioberti, Primato, 14, 19, 27-32, 48. v • /6., 57-58 ; Prol^fommi, 59, 158. 154 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY federalist. The Pope is to keep his Temporal Power ; ^ the Church, as heir of the Jewish priesthood, must preserve her ancient independence; all good Italians must love and reverence then- princes. His conservatism, however, is of the best. Though there is to be no change in the social order, every class must subserve the great national idea. The times were propitious for reform, andthe princes were to initiate consultative assemblies and a modified liberty of the press. The nobles must justify their title to lead, must re- nounce the works of feudalism, must respect the lower orders. Priests must study, must free themselves from suspicion of worldliness, be tolerant to other creeds, use the same frank- ness to princes as to people. Even the Jesuits are called to help, and the whole country bidden rouse itself to move the dead weight of mediocrity that held the nation down. The results of Gioberti's book were great and manifold. In common with Mazzini, it had a manly strain of en- couragement and hope, a memory and a prophecy of high destinies, sorely needed by a weary and disillusioned genera- tion. He taught, as Mazzini had done, that it was craven to despair of twenty millions of men. Like him, he made their hopes pivot on national independence, and federalist though he was, he helped to swell the stream that set for Unity. But Gioberti parted from Mazzini, when he taught Italians to look for salvation to the Pope and the King of Piedmont. The fate of Italy, he said, depended on the alliance of Rome and Turin. He had all the pride of a Piedmontese, and held that the subalpine kingdom was now the chief seat of Italian arms and cultura Rendering lip- service to Charles Albert,* he told how the manly piety and tenacity of the House of Savoy had disciplined its state, and prophesied that it was reserved to the Carignano branch to turn its energy to larger purposes. But much as he caressed Charles Albert, he reserved his highest honours for ^ He was already wayering as to this when he wrote the Prolegomeni, q. V. 89. ' So again in ProUgomeni, 157. In his JUnnovameniOj L 507, he sajs he did not mean what he said about Charles Albert. So too he disclaimcKl his eulogies of Rome, «6. L 20, II. 144, and Berti, op. ett, 151, 187 ; bat the dis- daimer was probably introduced to square with his later policy. THE MODERATES iS5 the Pope. The old medieval idea of a reforming Pontiff was revived. Gregory (for even Gioberti could not idealize him) was told not to expect the joyful day himself, but he might rejoice in the high destiny reserved for his successor. The Pope, as heir of Guelf traditions, was to free Italy from the barbarian; as the true friend of princes and peoples, he would hold the balance between them. The mediating office of the Papacy would champion right and religion against "Most Christian" kings and Holy Alli- ances. And then again, almost in repetition of Mazzini's words, Gioberti foretold that from Italy, the seat and court of the spiritual monarchy, from Rome, the eternal city independent of change and time, would go forth the word that would regenerate the modem world. The book met with a splendid popularity. It was a safe book ; the timid, the devotees, the priests found in it palatable doctrine, that reconciled patriotism and prejudice. The clergy were won by its Catholic tone ; ^ the nationalist statesmen by its praise of the Savoy princes. It was in vain that the sceptics and anti-Papalists pointed to the scandals of Gregory's court and the hideous misrule of Romagna; it was in vain that Niccolini retorted that to r^enerate Italy the Pope must begin by xmpoping himself; it was in vain that on the other side the Jesuits refused to be won by Gioberti's caresses, and savagely attacked his " Liberal house with the Papal scutcheon." The Franciscans and Dominicans defended his orthodoxy, and he became the champion of the Liberal clergy. And when, stung by the Jesuit attack, and angered by the Sonderbund* and the execution of the Bandieras, he placed the Jesuits and Neapolitan Bourbons under ban in his Prolegomeni (1845), he only voiced the national indignation, and his fame rose higher stilL But though Gioberti carried everything before him in the popular imagination, there were cooler heads, who could "• Sonderband was the uDion of the Beren Catholic cantons of Switser- tand, fonned in 1843. When the Diet declared for the expnlsion of the Jewdts, it refused to obey (September 1847). The eighteen-dayi* civil war (November 1S47) ended in its complete defeat. r IS6 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY not accept his version of the Papacy, and he himself ahnost abandoned it in his ProUgomeni} The fashionable Voltaireans of Florence and Milan, students of Dante like Gabriel Bossetti, the earnest democrats of Mazzini's school, the Pope's own wretched subjects found it impossible to believe that any good thing could come out of Rome. Above all, the Liberal statesmen of Piedmont, however much they might welcome Gioberti's panegyric of their coimtry and the reaction against the democracy and conspiracies of Young Italy, had small hope that a Pope would lead the cause of nationality and reform. It was Gioberti's belief in the House of Savoy that appealed most strongly to them in his doctrine. This school of nationalist statesmen had already found a voice in a very able but little known pamphlet,^ published at Paris in 1841 by Mamiani, an exiled leader of the revolution of 1831. Mamiani believed that sooner or later Italy must win her independence by W fighting „.d» » lLi» prince .nd wiL„. for«gi help. But she must wait her opportimity in Austria's embarrassment, and years of patriotic education were needed before the masses could take their part. His policy was personal reform, the winning of the clergy and the rich, national education, church reform, and a thoughtful pro- gramme of mildly socialistic measures to raise the people to a confidence and sense of dignity, that would fit them to co-operate in the work. But Mamiani's book, statesmanlike as it was, failed to win notice, because it attached itself to no existing political fact.^ The statesmen foimd their real voice in the Pied- montese school, which represented to a certain extent the anti-Papal and Ghibelline tradition. The policy of the Turin bureaucracy had been to make the Church a branch of the civil government; it preferred a coumionplace and docile clergy, kept in order under concordats. While Manzoni's followers had linked patriotism to the cause of ^ Gioberti, PnUgwiieni^ 6a ' Nottro parere intomo aUe eou Ualiane, republished in bis SeriUi. See Gori, Rivolugume, 69. His social programme is interesting. See below, p. 274. * So too the Veri IkUiani, for whom see Maszini, Opert, VII. 143 ; Arehivio TriennaUf L 44-45. THE MODERATES 157 the Church, and attacked the Austrian government as Jansenist and irreligious, the Piedmontese statesmen put small reliance in the Pope, and centred their hopes on the erastian House of Savoy. They were mostly Piedmontese nobles, proud of Piedmont's past, believers in her destinies, inheritors of the traditional hatred of Austria. They had the bureaucrat's love of good government, the bureaucrat's horror of imtried paths, his contempt for theories and policies of faith. Some had a tincture of Liberalism ; a few wished to copy O'Connell and agitate within the bounds of the law for more popular institutions.^ But none were democrats. They wished to see the Neapolitan and Papal States better governed; they were willing to absorb Lombardy; they favoured an Italian Federation for common defence and customs' -union. But they were opposed to Unity; they shrank from the struggle, which an attempt to realize it might involve ; they feared that Turin might have to yield its metropolitan honours to Milan or Rome. Just as the New Guelfs took as their text-book Gioberti's Primacy, so the Piedmontese school had its manifesto in Cesare BaJbo's Hopes of Italy. * He was the son of Victor Emmanuel's reforming minister, with the record of a some- what weak and inconsistent career, but inheriting the ambi- tions of the subalpine school, and not imtouched by the wider national ideal. His book, a wearisome, sententious treatise, was published at Paris in 1843, a few months after the appearance of the Primacy, Balbo was a professed ad- mirer and follower of Gioberti, but he planted his hopes not on Rome, but on Turin. The whole book is a veiled appeal to Charles Albert, cringingly tender to his illiberal prejudices, incentive to both the baser and purer sides of his patriotism, promising at once the liberator's crown of glory and the ter- ritorial gain that would follow the expulsion of the Austrians.' Not that he dangled the bigger ambition of the Italian crown : the Kingdom of Italy was to him a dream of fanatics, and * Balbo, Speranu, 153. * For the history of the title, see Bianchi, Santa Jio$a, 30-31 ; Ricotti, Balbo, 156. * Bidbo, Speranie, 131, 143-15S. # iS8 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY the political future of the country lay in Federation. But Federation was neither possible nor desirable while the Austrian was in the land. " Without national independence other good things are as nought " ; and the possession of a single province by the foreigner was fatal to the dignity and prosperity of the others, fatal to ItaUan industry and litera- ture and art, degrading directly or indirectly the character of the whole nation. Independence, therefore, must be sought before all else — before unity, before constitutional liberty; but its attainment would come not by a war of princes, nor by a war of peoples, nor by the help of another nation, but — impotent conclusion, so it seemed to his contemporaries — from the approaching break-up of the Turkish Empire, which woidd entice Austria eastwards, and allow her "to make Italy a present of her independence." ^ But there was another side to Balbo. SaJvagnoli might satirize the statesman who looked for salvation to the Turks. Yet the preacher of quietism, the vacillating politician had a strenuous gospel. If Italy was to be independent, her character must earn it ; she must be no longer '' the land of the olive and the orange '' ; she must cast off her native vice of sloth ; and as Father Matthews had been O'Connell's best helper,' so in Italy character and independence must advance together. And all through his book there is a healthy optimism. He attacks the different schools of despair ; his theme is his. country's Hopes. " A nation of twenty millions is invincible if it has union and character." His conclusion, like Gioberti's, is, " Let every man do his duty at his post, and leave the rest to Providence." His teaching was carried on by his friend Massimo D'Azeglio, like him bom of a Piedmontese noble stock. Destined to the usual military career, he scandalized Turin society by preferring to gain his living by his brush. To an artist the air of Turin was mephitic ; and D'Azeglio had shared his life between Rome and Milan and Florence, ''the first Piedmontese who made himself practically an Italian." He had painted pictures, written novels, ^ Balbo, Sperantey 127-128. For the subseqaent history of the idea, see below, Vol. IL, pp. 16, 196, 232, 254, 285-6. ' lb,, 167. THE MODERATES 159 studied society, done nothing very well. He was a perfect gentleman, an elegant and accomplished man of the world, but indolent, wanting in strenuousness and seriousness, imwilling to do disagreeable work, the very dilettante of politicians. But though he was always an aristocrat at heart, and his democratic veneer came more of ostentation than conviction, his slender purse, his frank manners, his obtrusive if shallow profession of progressive sympathies won him the liking of the democrats, and his novels had made him a household word through Italy. But while Balbo shared Gioberti's tenderness to the Papacy, D'Azeglio hardened his face against Rome. In the autumn of 1845 he received a summons to preach the Piedmontese gospel in Romagna; whether the call came from Piedmontese agents, who were al- ready at work there, or from natives, who feared that Gregory's impending death might be followed by a rising of Young Italy and an Austrian occupation, there is nothing certain to show. D'AzegUo went and preached open agitation and trust in Charles Albert ; and in spite of the evil memories that hung roimd the King of Piedmont, and the inclination of the younger Liberals to rely on their own republican energies, he won the adhesion of a large and influential group. He was not equally successful in destroying the traditions of local revolt. He had hardly left Romagna when the terrorism, which followed the Muratori rising, drove some Liberals of Ravenna to take arms at Rimini, where they pub- lished a manifesto " to the Princes and Peoples of Europe," before they were driven across the Tuscan frontier. • The rising was in itself of little moment. But it was the first public manifestation of the new spirit. Though some of the men who took part in it belonged to Young Italy, it was a fragment of a bigger agitation prepared by men like Mamiani and Farim, who dissociated themselves from the revolutionary party, and the manifesto, drafted by Farini, bore their stamp. D'Azeglio could not prevent the movement, but his influence was seen in its language.^ The ^ Farini, Roman State, I. 115-128 ; D*Azeglio, UUimi Cati, 76-98 ; Arehivio Triennale, I. 48-52; Gaiani, Roman ExiU, 270; Onerrazzi, AppentUee, 88; Onalterio, RivolgimefUi^ I. 220-221. i6o A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY object of the rising was to force the Papacy to save itself by J reform. Terrible indictment as the manifesto was of Papal misrule, it professed reverence for the Pope and regard for the dignity of his See. Its specific demands were barely amplified from the Memorandum of the Powers in 1831. It excused the rebellion as the product of necessity, and made its appeal to public opinion. So threatening did the new spirit appear, that the Roman Court paid a tribute to its strength by publishing an elaborate reply. D'Azeglio seized the occasion for a declaration in favour of the Piedmontese forward policy. He published clandestinely at Florence a pamphlet On the Becent Events in BoTtiagna, in which he drew a modest, temperate analysis of the causes and character of the unfortunate revolt. It was a scathing commentary on the dream of a regenerating Papacy. D'Azeglio professed veneration for the head of the Catholic church, and shrank from any schism that would destroy the one bond of formal unity in Italy. But he freely attacked the utter variance between the practices of the Papal government and the divine principles which it pro- fessed. The Pope could not be ignorant of the obstinate obscurantism under which the country groaned ; the denial of justice, the economic and financial mismanagement, the monopoUes which strangled commerce, the Swiss mercenaries and the Sanfedist assassins, the opposition to everything that savoured of innovation, to education and railwa3rs, to banks and agricultural societies and scientific congresses. The responsibility, he insisted, must fall on the Papacy itself; it must cease to pilot a ship, which would not answer to the helm ; it must attack the iniquitous proconsulships of the Legations, and give at least the civil justice that Austria allowed her subjects. The Papal government could not rest on coercion ; at the present day there was no basis for authority but public opinion and the consent of the governed, and to this final court the Pope himself must bow.^ Then D'Azeglio turned to the Liberals. While recog- nizing the provocation and admiring the courage, these petty local revolts, he protested, were not the road to inde- ^ D'Azeglio, UUimi Can, 46, 99-100, I04-119. THE MODERATES i6i pendence. No minority had a right to play pitch-and-toss with the fortunes of the people, and plunge the country into a contest which risked so much. It tended to dwarf the great national struggle down to provincial efforts, and lost all sense of the bigger aim. When Italians fought, all must fight ; but the time was not ripe for war, when the Austrians 3tood ready to crush any appeal to arms. Italy must first school herself by masculine patience, by sacrifice, by refusing to bow her spirit. Patience was difficult to men who were smarting under tyranny ; but the true alternative to revolt was public protest, peaceful, but spirited and constant. It is D'Azi^Uo's merit that he recognized the power of pubUc opinion, and knew what it could extort ixom the most despotic of governments. He had the cool judgment of the statesman, the patience that laboriously lays foundations, but His theory made him the servant of events, and he had little of the faith that creates new forces and falsifies the accumulated evidences. The book at once made a party. Though Charles Albert for the moment made no sign, and his partisans were discredited in Romagna, when their boasts of Piedmontese help ended in nothing; though D'Azeglio himself con- spicuously failed to practice in Piedmont his own maxims of civil courage and agitation ; yet among the prudent men who had weighed the chances of a struggle with Austria, and the timid, who wanted Piedmont to do what they shrank from doing themselves, D'Azeglio became the fugleman of the " Albertists," who placed their hopes in the King of Piedmont. The republicans foimd it impossible to stand against the current. Toung men, who in 1833 had been republicans, were passing fast to the other camp.^ How irresistible was the tide was shown by the fact that Mazzini, however much against the grain, foimd it necessary to compromise, and offer to drop, at all events for a time, his republican propaganda, if on their part the Moderates would give up Federation and work for Unity .^ Thus the * Castelli, Rieordi, sub. in. ; G. Torelli, Rieordi, xvi. ; Mazzini, LeUres intifMMf X02, 117 ; Orsini, etc., Lettere, 37, 39 ; contra Ricciardi, Conforti. * Mazzini, Duecento latere, 155 (April 1846); see also Un Siciliano, SenH- w«ao, 22, 35 ; Archivxo TriennaUt II. xix. VOL. I. L 1 62 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY very numerous class, which cared greatly for Italian freedom, which was revolted by the misrule, but which, without leaders or settled plan of their own, rejected the programme of Young Italy, became Moderates and Albertists. At pre- sent they had little coherency. Some wished to associate the Pope in the movement; others, like Giacomo Durando in his Italian Nationality, and Luigi Torelli, the author of the anonymous Thmvghis on Italy, cared only to disarm him, and would have forced him to a practical surrender of the Temporal Power.^ Some, like Balbo, were indifferent to civil liberties ; others set constitutional freedom as high as or higher than independence. Some were jealous of Piedmontese expansion, or at the best opposed any annexa- tion beyond the Po valley ; others, like Gioberti, wished to see Charles Albert "moral lord of Italy," or would have partitioned the peninsula between Piedmont and Naples and perhaps Tuscany ; and there was a section, especially among the half-converted republicans, who hoped that Charles Albert would be pushed despite himself into a policy, which could not stop till the Kings of Piedmont were Kings of Italy. Meanwhile Charles Albert had been to some extent justifying the hopes of his partisans. In the first years of his reign he had seemed to have lost his earlier and nobler ideals. Impressionable, timid, in a way feminine, he had allowed himself to fall at times into the hands of the clerical party. The Savoy Expedition had scared him, and its cruel repression deepened the gulf between him and the Liberals. He protested that he would never compromise with them ; his government helped. Austria to coerce Switzerland into expelling the refugees; even as late as 1837 it risked the friendship of England and France by its violent espousal of Don Carlos' cause in Spain. The court, severe and hypo- critical, was given over to the cares of etiquette, and the ^ Compare Castelli, iSio^, 49, 85, with Dorando, Naziowdii^ 85-102, Gioberti, ProUgmnenU 31 St &nd Anonimo Lombardo, Pemieri, 59, 60. The germs of several of the main ideas of the next period are to be found in Darando*s very ingenious book. THE MODERATES 163 ministry was nearly wrecked, because the wife of an am- bassador wore a head-dress sacred to royal princesses. To yoimg Camillo Cavour, returning home from London and Paris, Piedmont seemed " a kind of intellectual hell." The King's health grew worse ; asceticism and a vegetable diet completed the wreck, which early excesses had begun ; he became the prey of quacks, who perpetuated his debility, and, incredible as the story seems, were paid, it is said, by Austria.^ The influence of religious charlatans, remorse for the atrocities of 1833, a knowledge of the plotting that went on steadily round him, increased his nervousness and want of fibre. But he never became the blind tool of the reactionaries. Old memories had their influence ; he had for better and for worse a strong theory of conscientious kingship, which made him jealous of encroachments &om Rome, and impelled him to any step, which might make him master of more nume- rous or more prosperous subjects. Not that any big patient scheme of constitutional reform, such as was read into his life in later years, existed in fact. No doubt he would have done more but for the fear of the Austrian army marching on Turin, and for the daily insinuating pressure of the Catholic party. But his ideal did not reach bejond an enlightened and progressive autocracy ; a strong personal government was necessary, he believed, for the protection of Piedmontese nationality. And yet underneath his cold, reticent, antique port there lay a certain power of enthusiasm and sympathy, and a conscientiousness, which, however twisted, was genuine, and made him capable of higher things when the occasion came. However much his difficulties were aggravated by his cowardice, his position almost compelled him to a middle and dubious course. He stood (so the phrase was put into his mouth) " between the dagger of the Carbonari and the poisoned chocolate of the Jesuits." And this persistent opposition, which met him at every turn, increased his in- decision. Never naturally frank, he became more and more * Benezio, JUgno, II. 18 ; Predari, Primi vagUi, 82-83. He lived largely OD potatoes and spinaoh. 1 64 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY the intriguer, plajdng off one minister against another, less for mischief than statecraft. Slowly, almost shamefacedly, he liberalized the government. For a time, indeed, the ministry was ruled by Delia Margherita, a narrow, tenacious man, tender of the national independence, but anxious to keep on good terms with Austria, and dreading any forward movement as dangerous to the narrow religious discipline, which made his political ideal. But as a counterpoise, the King appointed Yillamarina, a constitutional minister of 1 82 1, who, though no Liberal, hated the clericalists. The King, irritated at the persistency of the Jesuit party, whose powerful organisation was used to nullify his reforms in the execution, gave his confidence to Yillamarina. Slowly, man by man, the more reactionary elements were weeded out of the cabinet, till Delia Margherita stood alone. Charles Albert's record of administrative reform was a remarkable one. " I believe," he said at a rather later date, "that we best please God by utilizing every discovery in science and art to serve the greatest good of the people. Grovem- ment must set itself in the van of progress." His legal commissions published the Albertine Codes (1837-47), on which, in after d&js, the body of Italian law was based. Except that they left Catholic marriages subject to Canon Law, and hardly touched ecclesiastical privileges, they were among the most enlightened laws of Europe.^ Feudal customs were abolished in Sardinia, where alone in Italy they still had legal sanction. Yillamarina reorganized the army on a territorial and short service system. Protectionist duties were slightly relaxed (1835), and the prosperity of Gonoa revived by making it in part a free port (1842).* Abroad Delia Margherita concluded a series of fifteen com- mercial treaties. At home government made loans for the development of the silk industry, abolished guilds, reformed the Post Office. The King gave commissions to the best painters and sculptors of Italy ; new chairs were foimded in Turin University ; historians were encouraged, though only ^ Sclopis, Sardegna, $0 et teq,; Portalis, Code Civil ; Bianchi, Diplomazia, III. 193. ' Rabattino began to nm his packets in 1841. THE MODERATES 165 to study the annals of the royal house ; copyright treaties were completed with every Italian state but Naples. In 1840 the second Scientific Congress was invited to Turin. Even towards the Church, devout son as he was, the King showed a qualified independence. In spite of Delia Marg- herita he supported the Gallican privileges of the bishops against Roman attacks, and refused to recognize the Trentine decrees in Savoy. The Waldenses were more or less pro- tected, and the government connived at evasion of the cruel laws, which still weighed on them. When the clergy opposed lay infant schools and charitable societies, the King '* looked at these questions from a standpoint diametrically opposed to theirs." Though he supported the prelates against the Pope, he allowed no evasion of the law from them, and the Jesuits were forbidden to hold a service, in which Hildebrand was lauded for debasing the power of princes. Above all, perhaps, his thoughts were given to commercial development For this, the country needed railways first of all, and the King proposed to devote to them the surplus that his economic Treasury had accumu- lated.^ As early as 1833 a line was projected from Genoa to Arena on Lago Maggiore. The government hoped to secure much of the English-Mediterranean trade by an arrangement with Switzerland to continue the line under the Lukmanier to Chur, where it would connect with a through route to Ostend.^ The scheme aroused Austria's jealousy, for the command of the Northern trunk-line would give liedmont a preponderating commercial influence in Central and Southern Italy. The capitalists of Vienna and Trieste championed a rival route from Leghorn through Florence and Bologna to Trieste, thus isolating Genoa ; and their government patronized a projected line across the Brenner. The railway controversy was the first sign to the world of the growing tension with Austria. Charles Albert had ' Od the question of state versus priTate capital, see Cavour, Lettere, I. 78; V. 116, 122. ' Gualterio, ^^tiog in 185 1, says that the King wanted to enter into closer relations with England, foreseeing the Western alliance against Russia : Hivolgimentif II. 149. f 1 66 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY never forgiven Mettemich for his supposed efforts to exclude him from the throne ; he was very sensible of the historic jealousy between the two states ; he remembered that more than once public opinion had marked him for the future King of North Italy. He knew that Mettemich had in- trigued with his reactionary ministers, that perhaps he had prompted them to scheme for an Austrian occupation, that he had his spies on his correspondence, on every detail of his life.^ As early as 1835 Delia Margherita had seen the drift of the King's thoughts, and done his best to check it ; three years later, in some private reminiscences of 1821, Charles Albert wrote of "taking his musket on his shoulder for another war with Austria." And yet, either because he was dissimu- lating or because he was overborne by his premier, he allowed the professed sympathies of his government to be with her,« and married his son, the Duke of Savoy, to the daughter of the Archduke Rainerio. But even Delia Margherita was nettled by Austria's persistent claim to dictate, and in 1843, on the occasion of a frontier squabble of patrols, the King threatened " to ring every bell from the Ticino to Savoy and raise the cry of Lombard Independence." He distributed a medal with the device of the lion of Savoy standmg over a prostrate eagle and the suggestive legend, " I await my destiny." The cause of nationality, whose sacredness he based on scriptural authority,^ the traditional policy of his family, hatred of the rival power, a plaintive longing to atone for 1821 and 1833 and become once more the hope of Italy. impeUed him in his premature old age to strike one decisive blow. But that strange patience of his, which, though it flinched from facing obstacles, never lost sight of its end, foimd him still waiting for the great occasion. As his designs against Austria matured, he was inevitably impelled to lean upon his people. Thanks probably to his French education, he had never shared the exclusiveness of his aristocracy. He had from the early days of his reign set himself to break the bamers between the nobility ^ Gaalterio, op. eU„ I. 618, 625-629 ; IIL 176-179; Bianchi, op. eit,, IV, 88. ^ Bianchi, op. <»'<., IV. 363 ; Metternicb, M^moira, IV. 266-267. ' Dent. XVII. 15 : Cibrario, MxBsione^ 47. THE MODERATES 167 and the middle classes. He patronized the sincere philan- thropy which had enlisted the best of both, promoting savings banks, infant schools, refuges for the destitute. A certain amount of mild democratic opinion dared to show itself. Entails became rare in the face of public disapproval ; the Jesuits found their schoolrooms half empty; Brofferio, a conspirator in 183 1, founded the Messaggero Torinese of a Liberal colour new to Piedmontese journalism. The Eang permitted (1842) the foundation of a national Agricultural Society, whose meetings furnished occasions where Pied- montese and Lombards could meet for public discussion, and which, despite the royal bridle, felt that it had something more to do than "talk about the cultivation of cabbages." Gioberti's Primacy was allowed to circulate, and the poet Prati was paid to write a marching song of daring allusion : " All we are of one country, One blood runs in our veins." In the meantime the strain with Austria grew more threatening. Early in 1843 ^ dispute arose over the salt trade with the Canton of Ticino. By the terms of an old treaty Piedmont had renounced the trade, but when insuffi- cient quantities came from Lombardy, the Canton appealed to Piedmont to make good the deficiency. The salt, which was a state monopoly, was sent, and Austria denounced Piedmont for breaking faith. The quarrel became a question of prestige. Austria tried to exclude Piedmont from the signatories to the Treaty of Florence (October 1844). The treaty would in time have hemmed in Piedmont on its south-eastern frontier by Parmesan or Modenese territory,^ and Charles Albert re- taliated by sounding the Grand Duke touching a defensive alliance of Italian princes. Eighteen months later, when Austria placed a prohibitory tariff on Piedmontese wines (April 1846), the government, at Delia Margherita's advice, stigmatised it as an act of reprisals. The attempt to cow Piedmont had failed, and public opinion passionately ap- plauded. Charles Albert, well pleased with the novel taste of popularity, told his reactionary councillors that " if Pied- ^ See below, p. 189. r 1 68 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY mont lost Austria she would gain Italy, and then Italy would be able to act for herself." He showed no disapproval of D'Azeglio's mission in Romagna, and bade him tell his friends there that " when the opportimity came, his arms and his treasure would be spent for Italy." ^ But when a great popular ovation, a new phenomenon in torpid Turin, was prepared, the Eang would not be persuaded to show himself until the crowds were already dispersing. Delia Margherita formally protested against the new policy, and worked hard for a settlement of the commercial differences. The King shrank back from war, when its prospect became imminent, and proposed to refer the quarrel to the arbitration of the Czar. At home, too, he was still irresolute, querulous, though painfully struggling in the face of Jesuit influence and his own moral cowardice to act up to his position. It is impos- sible but that the Primacy had its influence on him ; and reform, so Gioberti taught, was consistent with the interests of throne and altar. The King reformed elementary educa- tion,^ and encouraged his Education Minister, Cesare Alfieri, to make Turin University less a hotbed of clericalism. He had a bitter quarrel with Fransoni, the Archbishop of Turin, over the introduction of training colleges for lay teachers, and he turned his anger on Delia Margherita. He even gave vague hints of leanings to a constitution.' He was more or less in communication with the Moderate Liberals, who wanted social freedom, but who were as much opposed as was the King to a democratic movement, and at this time were barely anxious for constitutional rights. Their leaders were D'Azeglio, Mamiani, Camillo Cavour ; Balbo at the moment stood aloof from active work. Kjiowing the King's defer- ence to foreign opinion, they inserted encouraging articles in the Debats and the French reviews. In May Cavour published an article in the Nouvdle R&vue on the railway question ; though on the face of it a manifesto against the ^ D'Azeglio, Rieordi, 529; Brofferio, PatiamerUOf I. clxi.-cbm. ; Arckivio TriennaU, I. 52 ; II. ziz. ; Minghetti, Ricordi, I. 206. ^ See above, p. 47. ' Brofferio, op, ciL, I. IxzziT., cliii. THE MODERATES 169 republicans, it 'angrily attacked Austria for her malign influence, and made a tolerably overt appeal to Charles Albert to take up the cause of Independence. The King was not displeased, though he resented the attempt to force his hand.^ On one point, however, he was proof agaiilst Liberal influence. The Jesuits had not lost their hold ; he gave his sympathy and help to the Sonderbund, and in the midst of the excitement over the wine duties he promised that they should never be disturbed while he sat on the throne.^ It was still doubtfiil perhaps whether patriotism or clericalism would have the mastery, when the face of Italian politics was changed by the election of a new Pope. ^ Predari, op. eU^ 94 ; Nigra, Oavour, 64. ' BreBoiani e Grossi, Doeummti . . del padre Breteiani, quoted in Tiyarooi, I>ominio auttriaeo, III. 626. CHAPTER IX PIO NONO JUNE 1846-DECEMBER 1847 Pius IX. ; the amnesty ; the cult of Pius. Charles Albert and Pius ; the Scientific Congress at Gtenoa. The Austro-Jesuit opposition. The Liberals in the Curia ; the Moderates in Romagna ; the Radicals. Tuscany : Pisa and the Jesuits ; the secret press ; the Florentine Liberals and the censorship. The Romans ; the Council of State ; the " Great Conspiracy." Mettemich ; Gggupation of Fbrrara ; Charles Albert promises to help the Pope. The Citizen Guabd at Lucca, and Florence ; the Feasts of Federation. The three progressive states ; the Commercial League ; Charles Albert in October. The Lunigiana question. Greoort had died in the summer of 1846 (June i), ne- glected and unregretted, his end, it was rumoured, hastened by want of care and nourishment. The Conclave met to choose his successor on June 14. Its members were aware of the critical state of affairs; Romagna was known to be on the point of revolt, and petitions for reform, signed by thousands, came to warn or encourage them. The majority of the Sacred College hated Lambruschini and his Austrian friends, and, to exclude him from the Papacy, were willing to side with the small section of Liberal and nationalist cardinals.^ Eager to anticipate the arrival of Gaysruck, the Archbishop of Milan, who was bearer of the Austrian veto,^ eager, too, to escape from the sultry Roman air, the coalition sank its personal differences, and elected Cardinal Mastai- ^ The facts given in Bianchi, ZHplomaxia, V. 9, support the view that Mastai owed his election more to the feeling against LambroBchini, than to any Liberalism in the Conclave. See also Chaillot, Souvenirt, 27. Cardinal Micara is said to have observed to Lambruschini, ** If God makes the election, Mastai will be chosen ; if the DevU gets his finger in, it will be 70a or I." * See above, p. 72. 170 PIO NONO 171 Ferretti (June 17). With utmost shrinking and reluctance he was proclaimed as Pius IX The new Pope came of an old and decayed family of Sinigaglia, long famous down to their cats, so the proverb went, for nationalist sentiment. In early life he had been destined for the army ; an impres- sionable, delicate, disingenuous youth,^ afterwards a fashion- able but pure man of the world. Epilepsy dashed his hopes of military life; he took orders, and acquired the melo- dramatic fame of an ItaUan revivalist preacher. As bishop at Spoleto and Imola, he had dealt mercifully with the Liberals ; though a patron of the Jesuits, and too much all things to all men, he won a name for graciousness and kind- ness and success in reconciling the opposing factions. He had read Gioberti and D'Azeglio; he had marked with indignation the political persecutions, the stifling of trade, the foolish obscurantism of the government; he believed, with such enthusiasm as he was capable of, in the future of Italy. Cultured and liberal, kindly, sensible, with consider- able acuteness and a clear, forcible oratory, he might have succeeded in quieter times. An epileptic of delicate health, with more sensitiveness than depth of feeling or affection, absolutely devoid of genius, superstitious, unserious, little- minded,^ he was no hero to steer a revolution. He was too intelligent to be altogether weak; in youth he had been known for his proud temper, and he still had an introspec- tive obstinacy, which, though he never met opponents man- fully, rarely let him jdeld. But he was a coward morally and intellectually; he pined for applause, he shrank from responsibilities ; there was always in him something of the supple, cringing ecclesiastic. He loved a half-genuine, half- humorous self-depreciation ; " My God," he said, " they want to make a Napoleon of me, who am only a poor coimtry parson." He never fronted the situation, so long as he could drift and throw the responsibility on Providence. Feebly optimistic, with no master-grasp or foresight or ^ Trollope, Piui, 8. He was eaid to be of Jewish descent : Chaillot, op, cU.t 29 ; as to wfiether he had been a Freemason, see Arthur, The Pope, I. I3n. * Liverani, II papcUo, 74-75 ; Salvagni, CorU romana. III. 245 ; Castelli, Rieordi, 240. f 172 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY caution, he refused to look below the surface, and provided for the moment. Such was the man, who was called to decide the future destinies of the Papacy. He recognized at once that it must ally itself with Liberal Europe. He could not fail to contrast Russian persecution of Catholic Poland and evangelical intolerance in autocratic Prussia with the free- dom of the Church in constitutional England and France and Belgium, or the fervid Catholicism of democratic Ireland. He inherited the traditional Roman jealousy of Austria, and the Galician massacres completed the aliena- tion. He had studied the Prirruicy, and though far from rising to the fulness of Gioberti's conception, he wished to see the Papacy leading in the path of moderate reform. But he did not in the least realize all that lay in the Liberal movement ; of the desire for political and intellectual freedom he had little comprehension; it seemed to him sufficient to abolish the crjdng grievances of the old order, and allow free play to trade.^ He was indeed anxious to prove himself no obscurantist; he promised to support Scientific Congresses, and appointed a commission on rail- ways; he marked his condemnation of Gregory's reign by granting an amnesty for political offences (July 17). But though he had decided on this from the first, he delayed its publication for a month, and clogged it with an oath, which seemed a pledge to abstain from political action. But in spite of its defects, the amnesty was hailed through Italy with wildest acclaim. There had been amnesties before, but never one that seemed so spontaneous or harbinger of so much besides. Public opinion, steeped in Gioberti's dreams of a reforming Pope, had carefully watched the election ; it grew keener when it saw Gaysruck outwitted, and a Pope elected of Liberal family and creditable ante- cedents. When the new reign opened with the amnesty, and 700 exiles and prisoners returning home spread the fame of their deliverer, it saw in Pius the long-expected reformer, the creator of the new Italy, the mediator between Catholicism and democracy. To the religious, impulsive, 1 Gualterio, RiwtiginvefUi, III. 48. PIO NONO 173 ill-educated average Italian a Pope's sympathy meant more than all the philosophy and idealism of Yoimg Italy. Pius' presence had a magnetism on the thousands that crowded to Rome. He had a fine person and magnificent voice ; in contrast with Gregory's coarse and sordid appearance, he was a gentleman in bearing and manners. His simple inform^ habits, his interest in every social and educational scheme, his lavish and theatrical charity, the hundred stories of his wit and kindness, strung to fever-pitch the adoration of the people. Applauding thousands followed him through the streets ; festive demonstrations commemorated each day connected with his life ; torchlight processions would march to the Quirinal in the warm simmier nights, and the Pope from his balcony would bless the kneeling multitude. Hynms were written to him; the men wore scarves, the women ribbons of his colours; Bossini wrote a cantata in his honour; tokens of esteem came from every nation of Europe and America; even the Sultan sent his presents. " Pius," wrote Gioberti in his Modem Jesuit, " has reconciled men to religion by proving himself a friend of civilization," his reign " begins a new era for Italy and the world." All men bowed before the conception of a reforming Pope ; and when the amnestied exiles crowded to receive the sacra- ments, it seemed a symbol of the dawning time, when liberty and social redemption would go hand in hand with religion and moral reform. There was a boyish enthusiasm that hoped and believed all things. The air was thick with schemes of charity and education, with projects of railways in which everybody should have shares,^ with imiversal fraternity and optimism. Bologna sent to Rome its symbols of reconciliation; old trade feuds disappeared; there were solemn peace-makings between police and people. The guilds of Romagna converted themselves into mutual benefit societies, and large subscriptions were collected to foimd schools. Even in slow Piedmont big schemes of social construction were in the air, and a ''grand Italian association" appeared on paper to reclaim the uncultivated lands of the peninsula. ^ Spada, RivolMzionet I. 83, and ProgeUo nazumaU . . Conti, 174 A HISTORY OF ITALUN UNITY To Charles Albert a reforming Pope was the strongest of encouragements. His conscience was at rest, now that he was progressing on the same road as the Head of the Church,^ and could set the Pope's example against the warnings of confessor and Jesuits. He defied Archbishop Fransoni to do his worst. " In spite of the tiny Austrian party," he wrote, " I am firmly determined not to stop on the road of progress." Austria was threatening to occupy Romagna, and religion and patriotism made him hail the chance of championing Pius against her attacks. " The moment that Austria or Naples interferes in the Papal States," he said in October, " I shall raise the cry of inde- pendence and religion." Promises of support poured in from the richer and middle classes of Piedmont. Vercelli, followed by other cities, congratulated him on his spirited foreign policy, and hinted that the time was ripe for consti- tutional liberty. The Agricultural Society, smarting imder the retaliatory Austrian tariff, and touched by the patriotic current, was absorbed by the topic at its annual meeting (September 7). A week later the Scientific Congress met at G^noa, and, encouraged by the King,^ speech was free and bold. As if in national parliament, the associates dis- cussed independence and liberty and the Italian revival. In December the government, giving itself head, allowed the Genoese to celebrate the centenary of their expulsion of the Austrians (December 5); and men's thoughts turned to the near future, when MUan and Venice m their turn might drive the foreigner out. The line of bonfires, which blazed along the Apennines into Tuscany and Romagna, was a new gage of defiance to Austria. But though for the moment the Jesuits and reactionaries had not attempted to stem the flood, though some of them had themselves barely escaped the contagion, they quickly rallied. In Naples and Modena and the Austrian provinces reform had not dared to show its head. In Piedmont and Tuscany and Rome they were still a powerful and dangerous party, filling the public offices, controlling a large section of ^ Delia Margherita, Memorandum^ 542. ^ Promis, Memoriej 75, quoted in Gori, Rivolunone, See ib., 159. PIO NONO 175 the aristocracy and clergy, strong in their world-wide organi- zation and influences, secret or overt, in every Italian Govern- ment. At Rome Pius found himself opposed by the Jesuits, the majority of the Cardinals, the great mass of at least the higher clergy, and practically the whole civil service. In his anxiety to offend no party he had decorated notorious Centurions and confirmed Gregory's most reactionary officials. It was a fatal error ; in vain Rossi, the French minister at Rome, urged that a purging of the civil service must precede all reform ; the Pope replied that nothing but the clearest evidence of guilt would induce him to dismiss an official. He paid the penalty of his ill-timed leniency. Orders from the Quirinal were disobeyed ; the Sanfedists talked of civil war, and libelled hun m their secret press.^ The more saga- cious of them knew that Pius was " straining his voice," and waited till they could persuade him that reform was a sin against the Church, and make him throw himself into their arms. Fortunately there were more wholesome influences at the QuirinaL The Pope's brother was an old rebel and a Liberal. Father Ventura, a brave, frank, puzzled man, who had scandalized Gregory's court by his friendship for Lamennais, held up his ideal of the Church's mission for liberty and social regeneration. Rossi, whose Italian blood and repute of philosophic Liberalism combined with Jesuit hatred to win him the respect of the reformers, was Pius' trusted adviser. CorboU-Bussi. the Pope's private secretary, had, like Ventura, vague socialist enthusiasms, and was fighting the worst corruptions of the government. In August the Pope had appointed Cardinal Gizzi to be Secretary of State. Gizzi was looked to as the leader of the Liberal churchmen, and had been the popular candidate for the Papacy. In fact there was more easy tolerance than principle in his Liberalism; his years (he was nearly 90), his mimicipal ignorance and timidity unfitted him for a statesman's work. The demonstrations frightened him; and in October he ^ Gnalterio, op. ciL^ IV. 74, 102-107 ; Saffi, Scritii, II. 36 n, ; Gioberti, Ouuita modemo, V. 102; Farini, Boman State, I, 184; II. 74; Gori, op. cU.t 142, 152. I 176 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY issued a secret circular against "the noisy rejoicings of the populace," which was soon in everybody's hands and finally undid his brief popularity. The puzzled Pope tried to " reform without offending anybody." He refused to allow Bologna to invite the next Scientific Congress. He gave a general authorization of railwajrs, and promised legal and municipal reforms (November), but at the same time he anathematized secret societies and doctrines subversive of the Temporal Power, attacking " modem progress " with all the artillery of pontifical abuse. With a nonagenarian Secretary, a vacillating Pope, a demoralized administration, the inevitable result was anarchy. The Centurions were still on their old footing, and as autumn drew on, the Romagnuol Liberals felt the assassin's knife in the unlit streets. For self-protection they demanded a citizen guard, and at Bologna and Ferrara they patrolled the streets without waiting for the government's reply. Gizzi obstin- ately refused his sanction, and made his tenure of office conditional on non-surrender. The government was growing daily weaker, Gizzi more irritated, the Pope more puzzled. " This winter," said Rossi, " the Roman government died of inertia." It had lost the authority of a setUed goyemment without gaining the vigour of a fiew one. It had brought none of the problems nearer solution. Had it frankly allied itself with the Moderate Liberals, it might have been irresistible.^ But this meant the purging of the civil service and the granting of a citizen guard ; and the reactionaries, working on the Pope's scruples, were able to stave both off. The Moderates for their part seemed struck with ineffectiveness. Over-con- fidence &om the seeming triumph of their programme, trust in the Pope and unwillingness to force his hands prevented them from driving their poUcy home. They had been frightened by the Radicals. They shrank from the rough vigour of the new democracy; Gavazzi the friar's attacks on capital and Ventura's denunciations of the wealthy alarmed them. Fearful of Jacobinism, they shrank from touching one stone of the social edifice. Their * Guizot, M^moires, VIII. 350 ; Fazini, op, eit., I. 217. PIO NONO 177 programme was ludicrously insufficient for the present need : a reorganization of the police, the formation of a bank at Bologna, University reform, a Council of State. They gave banquets to Cobden and D*Azeglio; foimded clubs and newspapers. But papers and clubs alike passed into the hands of the Radicals; and a projected movement on the lines of the Irish Repeal agitation died stiU-bom. While the governments gave no sign, and the Moderates played at prosramme-makinfif, the more strenuous Liberals, seeing their hopes as far as ev^r from accomplishment, gre^ restless. Mazzini, angry as he was at the enthusiasm for the Pope and Charles Albert, recognized that his best policy was to join in the new movement and turn it to his ends. He was still prepared to sacrifi^his republicanism if neces- sary, and accept any leader, be he Pope or King, who would declare for Unity. He instru^d his friends to give the demonstrations a more definite nationalist colour;^ and though his own personal following was small, there were many Liberals who joined in the Pius cult from a hope that the Pope and princes would come freely or perforce into a democratic movement, with constitutional government and a war with Austria as its eventual goal. They were half sincere or less in their adulation, their judgment was almost overborne by the enthusiasm; but they wera de- termined to force the pace, and use each concession to extort new ones. Perhaps they had never faced the possi- bility that they must soon choose between throwing over the princes or surrendering their own ideals. Tuscany was now the focus of discontent. But, in ** Giusti's phrase, though she had her feet out of bed, she still had her nightcap on. Had the government been true to its old and milder traditions, it would have needed much to rouse the country. But Corsini was dead (November 1845), and Cempini, the premier, alone preserved the policy of 1 Hazzini, Dueeento leUere, 168-169, 175-177, 235, 240; Mario, Mazzini, 309, 311. The instructions published in Spada, RivolusioMy I. 120-124, seem genuine, though their socialist colouring proves that they did not emanate from Mazzini himself. VOL. I. M r 178 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Fossombroni's school. Renzi, the leader of the Runini rismg, was extradited (January 1 846), and im warned by the signs of rising storm, the reactionary cabinet decided to admit the Jesuits. Nothing could have touched Tuscan susceptibilities nearer the quick, and the traditional abhor- rence of the Society had been intensified by their aggressive attitude in Switzerland. Defeated in an attempt to intro- duce them into Florence, the court tried to prepare the way for them at Pisa by inviting their inevitable forerunners, the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. But Montanelli, a professor at the University, roused the students, and the sisterhood retreated before their threats (February 21, 1846). Mon- tanelli organised the secret press into a powerful political force. Though often juvenile and exaggerated, its popular verve, its skilful appeals to all sections of Liberals, its bold and defiant circulation made it a vast and insidious influ- ence. The police tried in vain to track it down ; and its " bulletins " went through the post, were thrown into the Grand Duke's carriage, and showered in the theatres. Then caiue the news of Pius' accession and the Papal amnesty. Tuscany was traditionally suspicious of Rome, but the cult, sedulously preached, seized on it, leaving Niccolini to com- plain that his friends had been dipped in holy water. The demonstrations, that followed, foimd their food in the dis- content, as much economic as political, which was spreading through the country. Bread riots gave the reactionaries a pretext to intrigue for an Austrian occupation ; but Leo- pold, tender of his independence, set his face against inter- vention. The government tried to frighten the well-to-do classes by raising the cry of conununism; but the cooler heads scoffed, and the Liberal nobles of Florence, though not endorsing all the demands of the secret press, were as insistent as the Radicals for reform of local government and the civil service. But they failed to agree on a policy. On the one hand stood the more cautious section, led by Cap- poni and Ridolfi, the leaders of the Georgofils ; on the other, a small knot of men, who, though very far from being demo- crats, looked beyond administrative reform to completed social liberty and constitutional government. Their chief PIO NONO 179 was Bettino Ricasoli, an austere coiintry noble, who knew his end and went straight for it. They were a manly patri- otic group, but too exclusive for a time, when compromise and discipline were all-necessary to fuse the Liberals into a solid and practical party. Both sections joined hands in demanding a relaxation of the censorship ; both wished to see the secret press superseded by public journalism. But while Capponi asked for the license of a single privileged paper, which should be almost non-political, Ricasoli knew that this would satisfy nobody, and urged the necessity of allowing fiill freedom of the press. Cempini slowly brought the ministry to the more Liberal policy ; the secret press suspended its issues to give the government free play, and both Liberal parties seized the occasion of Cobden's visit to Florence (May 1847), as the pretext of a great demonstration. The Greorgofils naturally gathered to do honour to the great Free-trader, and even the ministry was forced to take a part. Four days later (May 6), the govern- ment published the new press-law, and in a few weeks it promised a Coimcil of State and reforms in law and local government. But the hampering provisions of the press-law only proved how imequal the ministry was to its task. Con- cessions, grudgingly and tardily made, though welcomed with noisy insincerity, failed to win real gratitude, and encouraged further agitation. The middle classes were calling for power to organize a national guard that would protect property against bread riots and possible anarchist outbreaks. Bal- dasseroni, the Minister of Justice, a sincere, hard-working official, was masking himself behind the projects of reform, and probably intended to stultify them in the execution.^ The people grew more and more suspicious, and when a law appeared early in Jime to regulate public demonstrations, their contemptuous disregard made it a dead letter. Meanwhile the Pope's subjects in their turn were grow- ing impatient. Dimly conscious of what was going on, they alternated between depression and fresh bursts of enthusiasm and hope. Their reverence for the Pope was indeed im- 1 MoDtanelli, Memorie, I. 282 ; Zobi, Sioria, V. 106. i8o A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY shaken. His reactionary Encyclicals passed hardly noticed ; the old loyalty and new radicalism of the Romans, and the calculated praise of their leaders had raised him to a pedestal, from which it was impossible for him at once to displace himself. His cosmopolitan fame threw a reflected lustre on the city. The Sultan's envoy, the English Queen's letter, the thai^ of the famine-stricken Irish stirred its pride. But expectations were high, and reforms, which would have satisfied a year ago, were scorned as imequal to the times. There was keen disappointment at the rejection of the prayer for a citizen guard, at the delays in legal re- form and railway construction. In Romagna the old threats of secession were heard again. The Romans fixed the responsibility of the delay with accuracy enough on the Cardinals and Jesuits, and in the spring ominous cheers were heard for " Pius, but not the others." The Jesuits, they believed, were plotting the Pope's death; and when he visited their college, the crowd shouted, " Holy Father, don't take their chocolate." The demonstrations were changing their character. Though still with more or less sincerity made in honour of the Pope, they were becoming clamorous- for reform and war. The leaders intended them to intimi- date the government. The prime mover was a self-confident, genial blacksmith, Angelo Brunetti, nicknamed Ciceruacchio, who posed as the Pope's personal Mend, and whose brawny, genuine personality marked him out for a popular leader. He preached imity and virtue in honest melodrama; and though the nobles flattered him, and Lord Minto compared him to Horatius, the pride of the Roman artisan saved him from being spoilt. There was need of such a man, for every day it was more difficult to prevent impatience from degen- erating into disorder. Pius was alarmed, and dearly as he loved his popularity, was disposed to draw back. He was irritated at the opposition of the court, but lacked courage to cow it down.^ The work of reform dragged slowly along ; and new promises, procrastinated in their turn, only quick- ened hopes that were not intended to be realized. Still some progress was made. In March (1847), a press law ^ Guizot, Mhnoires, VIII. 357-358 ; Cibrario, Notizie, 61. PIO NONO i8i abolished the preventive censorship, which had for some months past been practically in abeyance, but it limited criticism of contemporary politics, and, like its Tuscan coim- terpart, satisfied nobody and became a dead letter. In April the Pope promised a Coimcil of State, to be nominated by the Provincial Coimcils and have a considerable voice in legislation and finance. In June a ministerial cabinet was appointed in place of the old irregular system, and though it was composed exclusively of ecclesiastics, it seemed an advance towards popular institutions. But the government wrecked any chance of recovering groimd by coupling its reforms with irritating freaks of coercion. Gizzi protested officially against anti- Austrian theories, which forgot that the Pope was " father of aU Christians, to whatever part of the world they belonged." Ventura was assailed for his funeral oration on O'Connell (who had died at Genoa on his way to Rome), in which he condemned passive obedience, and held up for model the "amorous and legal agitation" of the great Irishman. Gavazzi, a Bamabite friar, who had been preaching somewhat incendiary sermons, was forbidden to mention the name of Italy. But the Moderates imder D*Azeglio's leadership were at last agitating with some vigour ; and the ministry, following too late Rossi's advice, hoped to win them by a decree to form a citizen guard (June 30),^ though the resolution en- tailed Gizzi's resignation. They probably thought that an armed middle class was their best bulwark against popular pressure on the one hand, and Austrian or Sanfedist plots on the other. For the moment the latter seemed more imminent. Sanfedist intrigues had long been busy both at Rome and in the Legations. There had been apparently concerted attacks on the Liberals at Parma and Lucca and Siena; and some of the bolder partisans talked of a cmip d!6t(U. Whether there was any substance in it may be doubted ; but r^al or pretended disclosures made even level- headed men believe in a " great conspiracy," ^ and Rome was 1 D'Azeglio, VlUdU, 11-16; Coppi, Anmdi^ IX. 104-107. ' Farini, op. cit,^ I. 229, 235-241 ; Spada, op. eit, I. 256 ; Guizot, op. cit, VIII. 359; Saffi, op. eit, II. 84-88; D'Ideyille, RoaH, 168; Gabussi, MemorU^ 1 82 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY frenzied with terror and suspicion. Austria, it was thought not without ground, was behind the Sanfedists, and visions of massacre scared the citizens. Ciceruacchio and his men were masters of the city and issued hysterical versions of the plot. The Pope, though sceptical, humed on the organization of the citizen guard, ordered the disbanding of the Centurions, and arrested such of the Sanfedist sus- pects as did not fly. Cardinals and priests, infected with the enthusiasm or bowing to the storm, collected subscrip- tions for the patriotic cause. The ranks of the citizen guard filled rapidly, and Rome was too serious or frightened to laugh at their odd semi-civil equipment. Cardinal Ferretti, who had succeeded Gizzi, sealed their enthusiasm by appealing to them to " show Europe that we can manage by ourselves." Ferretti, who was the Pope's cousin, had been an Austrian spy, and his sincerity may be doubted.^ But his brother Pietro had played an honourable part in the Revolution of 1831, and now moulded his policy to Liberalism. For the moment the Cardinal's popularity was unboimded, and the government's decree to form a camp of observation at Forli seemed to show that for the moment it and the people were reconciled. A week before there had been a possibility that in the constitutional struggle the national question might be for- gotten. Now Austrian impatience once more brought government and people into line in defence of Italian Independence. Mettemich had watched the course of events with disquietude. In his system ''a Liberal Pope was an impossibility"; now fronted by one, he declared it " the greatest misfortune of the age." Austrian influences had failed to stem the Italian movement, and Mettemich, at last realizing the strength of the ideal that faced him, I. 75 ; La Farina, Storia^ III. 43-44 ; De Boni, Congiura di Boma, 49 et cUibi ; Qori, RiwjIvaUmet 242 ; Correspondence— Italy, I. 60-61 ; Nicoolisd, PontificaU, 16 ; Gaiani, Roman BxiU, 355 ; Campanella, My Z^, 217 ; D'Azeglio, Vltaliey 19. Saffi in his Hutory of the Roman Republic {op. oiL, II. 58-59), asserts relations between Giszi and the Sanfedist conspirator Alpi, bat I know of no eyidence to support it. ^ Arehivio Triennale, I. 8 ; Saffi, op, ciL, II. 81-82. PIO NONO 183 confessed that it was "a sorry task to fight with un- substantial things."^ In vain he had tried to firighten the Pope with the phantasm of Protestantism, and the Grand Duke by predictions that the national movement must end in a republic. After endeavouring equally in vain to attach^ Charles Albert by a promise of support against his own subjects, he set his agents at work to libel the Eing.^ When the promise of a citizen guard at Rome was followed by a renewed agitation in Tuscany, he wrote an angry note, threatening^occupation if the guard were conceded, and sent a copy to the Turin court. At the time of the Conclave he had only been prevented by French threats from occupying Bomagna, and now again he hinted at intervention if the Liberal movement went further, pro- voking Palmerston into a threat to send the English fleet to Trieste, and even drawing from Guizot a warning that he would land French troops in the Papal States.^ But Mettemich threw prudence to the winds. Had he had his own way, he would have made a strong military demon- stration on the Po, as a threat to Rome ; ^ defeated in this by his colleagues, he was driven back on a smaller move. On the very day for which the Sanfedist conspiracy was supposed to have been planned, the Austrians, with much offensive parade, poured a large reinforcement into the citadel of Ferrara, which they garrisoned by Jbreaty rights. After a curt refusal from Rome to allow them to enter Romagna, the Ferrara garrison, acting on a forced interpre- tation of a treaty clause, patrolled the streets of the city itself (August 6), and a week later definitely occupied it. A thrill of indignation ran through Italy at the insult offered to the Pope, and the plain proof of Austria's in- tention to veto the hopes of the nation. The Liberals closed^up their ranks. Moderates like D'Azeglio and Balbo ^ He was still in August 1847 talking abont Italy being a geographical expression. ' Correspondence^Italy, L 34 ; Goalterio, op, oO., IV. 283 ; Bianchi, Diphmaxia, V. 58. • Correspondence— Italy. I. 89, 157-158, 178, 240; Bianchi, op, eU„ V. 61, 81 ; Mettemich, M^moiret, VII. 415-422. * Bianchi, op. ciL, V. 399 ; Httbner, Une annSe, 18. 1 84 A fflSTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY called for resolute measures. Far away in Montevideo, Garibaldi, whose legion's heroism had rung through the world, wrote to the Pope, ofiFering its services in his defenca ^ Wrath, panic, the fear of invasion loosed the tide, and swept the princes more or less reluctantly with it.; The Pope, whose fixed idea (save, perhaps, in rare moments of LiM expansion >), was to preserve the integrity of his dominions was in^nant at the infringeme^o/ his in- dependence and hinted at excommunication. At the same time he sent a messenger to Charles^ Albert, to ask whether he could count on his protection. All through the spring and simimer Charles Albert had been gravitating to the Liberal camp. He had steadily de- veloped his economic j)oUcy, preparing the ground for the Lukmanier^ railway, and negotiating for the Anglo-Indian mail. Though inconsistent as ever, he was still subsidising the Sond^bimd, the railway^ convention with republican Switzerland was hailed as an earnest of his sTowimr Liberal- ism. Irritated by Austrian intrigues wii thTcantons. angry and indignant at her not€L-on the citizen guard, he drew nearer to the nationalists. Their books and papers were allowed to xirculate ; the Torinese were permitted to subscribe to the sword of honoiu*, which was to be presented to Garibaldi on his expected return ; the King himself had interviews -vrith the conspirators of .Milan.* When the news came of the occupation of Ferrara, even Delia Margherita bowed to the storm of indignation that swept in from the other states. The King could not be deaf to the national voice, which hailed him "sword of Italy"; he more than responded to the outburst, and when the Pope's message came, wrote back, that, come what might, he would never part his cause from that of Pius. When the Agricul- tural Society met at Casale on the anniversary of the Pope's amnesty, he sent an open^ letter, proclaiming himself the champion of the Guelf jcause, and declaring that " if (Jod permitted a war for the freedom of Italy, he would place himself at the head of his army." ' It was his first public ^ Rii8 Gaalterio, Rivcigimenti, I. 445-447 ; Bonfadini, Mczzoteeolo, 227 ; Senior, Journals, I. 297 ; Pinelli, Storia, III. 179. ' Before 1848 the line was finished from Milan to Treviglio and from Mestre to Vicensa. It was not open throughout till 1857. THE CONSTITUTIONS 195 It was now the summer of 1847. Lombardy and Venetia had been stirred to their depths. The fervour which Pius had called out, the outcry at the occupation of Ferrara, the call for Independence had their echoes in the down-trodden Austrian provinces. In the country the peasants were at last beginning to stir ; in the towns the nobles and Radicals were drawing together. The priests dragged forward their differences with the government, the communal councils stood up to the officials, the mountain peasantry defied the forest laws. The Austrians were boy- cotted in high society, and not even an Archduke could find an Italian partner at a ball. At the Scientific Congress, which met this year at Venice (September 1847), nationalist sentiment cropped up from each discussion on railways or industry or literature. But something bigger and more obvious was needed to take the public eye. Archbishop Gaysruck had died, and the government hoped to win popularity by appointing an Italian to the vacant see. Their nominee, Romilli, had little to recommend him either as patriot or prelate, but it sufficed that he was an Italian, and Milan gave him a reception worthy of the Ambrosian see (September 5). Its enthusiasm and unanimity mad- dened the authorities, and when, three days later, the festivities were repeated, the police drew their swords on the peaceful holiday crowd, and for days the troops patrolled the streets, hustling and provoking the citizens. The bloodshed, the insult to church and city finally won the masses of Milan to the cause; and even the magistrates, scandalized by the brutal effrontery, acquitted the men who .had been arrested at the demonstrations. The government realized that it was face to face with a serious movement, but it entirely miscalculated its strength ; and Mettemich, though he was intending to make considerable reforms, thought that the main grievance against the government was that it " had bored " the Milanese. He found himself fronted by another and more em- barrassing phase of opposition. However comatose the Congregations might seem, they were still the one exist- ing fragment of representative institutions, the one hope of 196 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY those who, while deprecating separation from the Empire, wanted administrative reform and some measure of Home Rule.^ Nazari, the delegate of Bergamo, presented to the Central Congregation of Lombardy a petition which, taking the general discontent for its text, asked for the appointment of a Commission to inquire into its causes and draft a memorial to the Emperor. The petitions which came in its wake from the Provincial Congregations were careful to disclaim disloyalty; nothing was said of constitutional changes ; they asked for only the most obvious and neces- sary reforms. Tommaseo at Venice claimed freedom of the press, in virtue of the unrepealed law of 1 8 1 5 ; and though Manin, outstripping the Lombards, petitioned the Venetian Congregation to claim Home Rule and '' a genuine national ^ representation," the whole movement kept within the bounds of strict legaUty. The government was puzzled how to act, and had the matter rested with the Congregations and the civil authori- ties, compromise might have been possible. But the control of events was fast slipping from both. The police and mili- tary, stung by the new spirit of defiance, were eager to bring the crisis to a head. Radetzky, the commander-in-chief, a hale veteran of eighty years, was a true type of the brutal pretorian spirit of the Austriaa army, '^hree days of blood," he is reported to have said, " will give us thirty years of peace." Rainerio, the Viceroy, and Spaur, the Governor of Milan, pleaded for gentler methods ; but the former was an amiable cypher, and neither was a match for the military party, which had won the Viennese cabinet to its views. If only the Milanese could be goaded into violence, Radetzky would have a case for demanding reinforcements, and hold the country down under an overpowering force. The Milanese gave him the excuse he wanted. The bloodshed in Septem- ber had only roused them, and all through the autunm they had carried on a half-jocular game of bluff with the police. ^ Bonfadini, op, eU,, 242 ; Indirizzo degli lialiani, 8 (according to Gori, written by Correnti) ; Gori, Rivoluzione, 1 16. Compare the sadden importance given to the French parUmenU before the Revolution, and to the Provincial Estates of Tiower Aastria in March 1848. THE CONSTITUTIONS 197 Actresses wore ribbons or bouquets of the colours of the tri- color; the street-boys chaffed the soldiers; the HjmMi to Pius was sung or whistled at every comer. By Christmas the leaders thought the time was ripe to pit the city openly against the government. They remembered the Boston tea- riots, and two similar incidents in the history of their own city. If they could stop the use of tobacco, they would deal a serious blow to Austrian finance, and prove to what sacri- fices the cigar-loving Italian was prepared to go. They appealed to the Milanese to cease smoking with the New Year, for "tobacco ill-mated the sweet odours of Italian flowers." * On the first two days of January the streets of Milan were almost innocent of smoke, and the few who appeared with cigars were hooted or hustled. The military saw their chance. Huge distributions of cigars were made, it is said, to the garrison, and officers and soldiers puffed their abundant smoke in the faces of passers-by. When the grim joke was resented, Radetzky showed his teeth. Cavalry charged at the unarmed crowd ; workmen returning to their homes were bayoneted; several citizens were killed, over fifty wounded. Milan replied with one voice to the outrage ; even the nobles and civil servants could keep silence no longer; high officials protested or resigned, and the Arch- bishop prayed in the Cathedral that their rulers might learn humanity. The Viceroy tried to throw oil on the troubled waters ; but the Emperor published a threatening edict, and Radetzky expanded it into an inflammatory appeal to his troops. The day for compromise had passed ; there was no more play in the movement ; army and people stood at bay. The Tobacco Riots sent an angry thrill through Italy ; but it was felt that the time for war was still not come, and the indignation failed to distract attention from the consti- tutional question. All through this period the nationalist and reform movements are inextricably bound together, incessantly reacting on one another, each sympathizing with the other's every advance or rebuff. Till lately, though Gioberti had spoken guardedly of representative institutions ' Correspondence — Italj, II. lo. 198 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN XJNITY in his Prolegommi, the reformers had asked only for admini- strative change. Nothing marks more the conservative character of the movement, or diflferentiates it more widely from the Carbonaro Revolutions, than the silence which had hitherto been kept as to parUamentary government. The Moderates had made it their first axiom to work with the princes; down to the occupation of Ferrara there seemed no hope of winning a constitution from Pius or Leopold or Charles Albert, and Uttle had been thought and less said about one. The Liberals had concentrated themselves on the three points of liberty of the press, a citizen guard, and a Council of State. They had now won these in Tuscany and the Papal States ; and though Piedmont still had no citi- zen guard, everybody knew that it could only be for a short time. Apparently the country was satisfied with these con- cessions. The Mazzinians were more intent for the moment on war with Austria than on popular government. The masses were inclined to demonstrate in honour of reforms gained rather than agitate for new ones. Despite the scarcity, ever fresh rejoicings made honour to the Pope. To men bred imder despotism it seemed that for a government will and accomplishment were one, and the easy ItaUan nature turned to play. But everjTthing was tending to bring the constitutional question to the front; and the half-heartedness of the government in their reforms might at any moment force it into prominence. The executives were paralyzed, or feebly trying to neutralize the new liberties in practice. And while the breach between government and Liberals was slowly widening, there had been ugly incidents that made the mass of law-abiding men doubt the ability of their rulers to cope with revolutionary outbreaks, and drove them to look for safety in a middle -class parliament. They had been scared by an angry and swelling note from men who cared little for politics, but felt the cruel pressure of the social system. There was little theoretic socialism; there was a good deal of practical economic discontent. The winter had been very severe, and had even killed many of the olives. The freeing of the English and Irish markets had diverted THE CONSTITUTIONS 199 com to them, and raised its price. At Grenoa there was sharp distress and acute feeling of the workmen against their masters; at Florence the artizans in the tenement- houses struck against the prepayment of rent. Bread-riots increased in frequency and intensity. At Como and Laveno there were scenes that recalled the Fromessi Sposi, in the rural districts of Tuscany the depression fell heavily on the small farmers and their labourers, and agitators of whateve ' camp were not slow to turn it to their uses. At Cortona, Fistoia, Prato, and across the Apennines into Romagna, bakers' shops were plundered, while the police looked on. The riots were universally believed to be the work of Aus- trian or Sanfedist agents,^ and the well-to-do feared, or professed to fear, a repetition of the Galician massacres.^ There was more serious business at Leghorn. The city had always kept its distinctness from Tuscany; and its vigorous, tenacious people, restless with fluctuations of trade, had learnt a passionate democracy from Guerrazzi and his ally, the pork-butcher, Bartelloni. The latter was the cun- ning and audacious " cat " of the popular admiration, the enthusiastic hatcher of a scheme for tumbling the Italian thrones.' Guerrazzi had scented the coming fray, and thrown himself again into the poUtical life, which he had left, with all his uncompromising vigour. The idol of the people, to the middle classes he was the sinister herald of revolution and communism, and he reciprocated their hatred with more dignity, but equal intensity. All through the autumn the excitement had grown at Leghorn, as the Lunigiana question raised the spectre of invasion, and the government delayed to arm the citizen guard. Two days after the Tobacco Riots the crowd seized the city. Guerrazzi was called in to still the storm he had helped to raise, and became dictator of what was to all intents 1 Gnalterio, op. cit.^ III. 302 ; Coppi, AnnaLi, IX 122 ; Saffi, Scritti, II. 40 ; Gori, op, eit,, 176. ' In 1S46 the peasants of Galicia massacred their landlords and the well-to-do. The landlords had threatened revolt, and it was generally believed that the government had instigated the peasants. * Montanelli, Memorie, I. 47, 251 ; Coppi, op, eU,t IX. 24. Was he or " B. G.'' of Dandolo's Italian VolunUera the original of Meredith's Barto Rizzo 7 I 200 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY an insurrectionary movement. But there was little sym- pathy for it in the rest of Tuscany. At Leghorn itself the separatists wore in a minority; and Ridolfi, knowing he had public opinion behind him, refused to compromise, and advanced with a force which frightened down oppos&ion. ^* The Leghorn revolt emphasized the instability of a rule, which courted disturbances and had little strength to resist them. The cry for parliamentary government rapidly gained force. In the Papal States, indeed, even men, who were afterwards democrats, saw all the difficulty of reconcil- ing representative institutions and the theocracy.^ In Tus- cany there was no such problem, and already at the time of the Florence demonstration there had been a certain feeling, though apparently not a strong one, in favour of a constitution. The demand came chiefly from thoughtful politicians like the yoimger Ck)rsini and Guerrazzi, who realized much sooner than the masses did the impossibility that reform should stop at any half-way house of adminis- trative change. The question had been overshadowed by the Lunigiana troubles, and during the winter the anxiety had been to arm the citizen guard and put the country in a state of defence. None the less there was a steadily grow- ing belief that only a constitution would loose the bonds that tied the executive to incapacity. The same development of thought was going on in Pied- mont, where Unes of cleavage between the conservative and advanced reformers had long been apparent. The Agricul- tural Society had for the past two years been rent by dis- putes between the Liberal nobles, led by Camillo Cavour, and the democratic section, which followed Valerie, the Society's secretary. The quarrel shifted its ground to the press. Balbo, pedantic and timid, deprecated any active agitation, while there was no O'CJonnell or Cobden to lead it. D'Azeglio, more opportunist, was willing to meet the democrats half- way ; and he and Farini, the author of the Rimini manifesto, set themselves to reconcile the two parties by exchange of > Saffi, op. eiL, I. 223. THE CONSTITUTIONS 201 flattery. It was becoming increasingly clear that nothing short of a constitution would satisfy the country, and even Balbo memorialized the King to consider it. But the real impulse came from the man who, of all the moderates, was most hated and suspected by the democrats. Camillo Cavour, the son of one of Charles Albert's most reactionary ministers, was now thirty-seven years old. In early youth he had been a Radical, but before 1833 he had sobered down to a worshipper of the juste milieu, a believer in the English land system and the mutual dependance of classes, an avowed opportunist in the wake of Peel and Casimir-Perier, with a conscience more robust than scru- pulous ; none the less a thoroughgoing patriot, angrily sen- sitive to Austrian and Papal dictation, fretting imder the misrule at home, which frowned on commerce and " snuflFed out every generous instmct as sacrilege or high -treason." He had travelled much in England and France, and brought back a hatred of clericalism, a vehement belief in free trade, in social liberty, in healthy political activity. An aristocrat by birth and surroimdings, and, despite himself, in many of his prejudices, the plebeian face and dress of "the little man " marked his scorn for the trappings of rank, his con- viction that aristocracy was destined to wither in modem society.^ Almost barren of literary or artistic tastes, he was a keen political and social student ; thorough and methodical, with a devouring love of work, he threw himself into business, speculating in wheat and rice, promoting steam-mills, sugar factories, chemical works, railway companies. His passion for agriculture « had made him one of the founders of the Agricultural Society. At home he was " the most amusing of men," with a satisfied smile ever on his big face, somewhat careless of the smaller moralities, still more so of his own repu- tation, with a boyish expansiveness and confident good-humour that carried him with a jest over the roughest roads of life. And though his geniality was the crust that hid a deep, even passionate nature, and there were moments when ' Cavoar, LeUere, I. 12 ; La Rive, Cavour ^ 124. ' "Agriculture/' however, he confessed, "is the art of disillusions and disappointments." f 202 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY enthusiasm or indignation swept away his self-control, in ordinary times he was a brave, level-headed, though im- pressionable country gentleman, whom Cobden had already marked as the ablest man he knew, with a strong common- sense that had no pettiness or egotism in it, as indifferent to tradition as he was to abstract speculation or the distant future, but resolute to secure what was possible in the present of justice and tolerance and sober liberty. Natiurally he at once made his mark in the moderate nationalist movement; he had no faith in a reforming Pope; but Balbo's doctrine of Piedmontese leadership found in him a ready believer, and his article in the Nouvdle JR&mu had done much to fix the thoughts of the nationalists on Charles Albert. He had fought the democrats in the Agri- cultural Society, but he was too big-minded for the narrow school of Moderates, and he had worked hard to form a wider party, which should open its borders to all who, while accepting the existing social system, would fight for national independence under the House of Savoy. But with his clear common-sense he saw that a constitution was necessary to guar- antee good government, and open the field to healthy ambitions Uke his own. His opportunity soon came. After the King's visit to Genoa the impatience there led to another and more threatening agitation against the Jesuits, and the Mimicipal Council prayed the government to sanction the formation of a citizen guard that would guarantee order. A monster peti- tion (men now dared to sign) backed their demands, and the editors of the leading Turin papers, Cavour, Valerio, Giacomo Durando, Brofferio, met to consider how best to support them (about January i6, 1848). Cavour, always suspicious of Charles Albert, and fearing that the new concessions would be whittled away in practice, boldly recommended the meeting to pronoimce for a constitution; and though Valerio, thinking that no good thing could come from Cavour the aristocrat, urged that a citizen guard should be the first demand, the other editors ranged themselves on the side of the bigger policy.^ The decision of the meeting ^ Saraceno, Saivta Rota, 159-162 ; Predari, Primi vagiti, 249 ; Tavallini, Lanza, I. 52 ; Cavour, N always a King," and it was obvious that only force could decide the issue. The government probably did not know how weak its position at Palermo was, but De Sauzet, the commander, was short of food or frightened, and when his attempt to negotiate an armistice failed, he suddenly retreated (January 27), and retiring along the coast embarked for Naples. * The other cities had risen, and by the end of January the Neapolitans had no footing left in all the island except the citadel of Messina and three other forts. The Sicilian rising was the overture to the revolutions, that ran through Europe in the spring of 1848. The temerity of the handful of men who attacked a powerful garrison, then- dramatic triumph, th6 sudden faU of the Bourbon rule made a deep sensation in Italy and Europe. And while even the Moderates were obliged to hail Fer- dinand's defeat, it was recognized on all hands that the bloodshed had quickened the pace, that there must be radical changes i^ the princes were to keep their thrones, that the struggle in the streets of Palermo was a prelude to barricades at Milan and Venice. Naples was the first to feel the effects. The NeapoUtans had failed to keep their promise to Palermo, for Carlo Poerio, the leader of the more active conspirators, was in prison, and in his absence the Liberals seemed more paralyzed than ever. The sober, poverty-stricken peasants of Cilento rose, true to their revolutionary traditions; but it was not till the rising spread through the province of Salerno, and a report that the insurgents were advancing spread panic through the city, that its feeble Liberals showed signs of moving (January 25). The court was frightened by the exaggerated news; and though Delcarotto failed in a plot to extort a constitution ^ and was banished, there were others who like him hastened 1 D'Ajala, Memorie, 9S-101 ; Nisco, op, eit., iii ; Leopardi, op. ciL, 69, 76, 86. 2o6 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY to make their peace with the revolution. Poerio was released, and his followers, at last bestirring themselves, organized a demonstration to alarm the King (January 27). Ferdinand found that his troops were wavering, and before nightfall took his generals' advice and granted a constitution. It is said he showed a malign delight at outbidding the reforming princes; "they have driven me to this, I will push them down." It is more probable that pure fear dictated his surrender. The old ministers and the Jesuit confessor left the palace ; Bozzelli was entrusted with a draft of a constitution ; and though it bore all the marks of his timid and pedant mind, the people recked little of the defects and dangers, with which his proposals bristled. When the King rode through the city, and swore fidelity to the statute, he seemed once more the darling of his people. The news of the Neapolitan constitution unlocked all the imsatisfied aspirations of adyanced Liberals throughout the peninsula. Everywhere it was hailed with the joy of men who had been holding themselves back and now felt free to march. A constitution suddenly became the uni- versal prayer. Piedmont was the first to feel the wave. The Radicals took up the cry, and D'Azeglio, on oppor- tunist grounds, urged the Moderates to accept it. So strong did the pressure suddenly become, that on the morrow of the news from Naples (February 2) the ministers recom- mended the King to give way. Charles Albert's preposses- sions were all against a constitution; he thought himself bound by his old oath,^ of which Mettornich had not failed to remind him; he distrusted parliamentary government, hated its publicity, its roughness, its party struggles, its possible corruption. Quite recently he had protested that he would never have it.' But he saw that it was dangerous to resist, that at all events it would win English sympathy and spell defiance to Austria. He allowed his ministers to privately draft a constitution, and thought of solving his ^ See above, p. 133. ' Bianchi, Diplomeuia, V. 63, 70 ; Id. Carlo Alberto, 20 ; Predari, Primi vagiii, 260 ; Ck>sta de Beauregard, Demiires ann^, 82 ; Cibrario, Notizie, 75 ; Manno, SpieeUgiOt 225 ; Cavour, UtUrt, I. cxx. 70 ; contra Saraceno, op. ei^, 167. THE CONSTmniONS 207 personal dilemma by abdicating, as hk pre^aceiflor had done in 1 8 2 1 . But while he delayed, the HJU^^oe grew. At the King's own prompting, resolutiong' addbo^^r a statute were voted in the Municipal Councils of Tuno^od Genoa (February 7). Even many of the reactioni(rieB/fil^4|teD6d by the storm and hoping to get the majoritji^in an Uroer House, swelled the cry. The Council advised ihe iring that there was no alternative but a violent civil struggle, which might end in revolution. His conscience wm set at ease by a patriot bishop, and he contented himself bj stipulating that the first article of the charter should oon* firm Catholicism as the religion of the state. On February 8 he promised that a constitution should be granted. The torch was passed on to Tuscany, where the govern- ment had lost all power to stand against popular pressure. The sbirri had been hunted into hiding (October 25, 1847), and the ministers had no force behind them except the citizen guard, themselves the foremost to demand reform. The cabinet itself was fiissy and irresolute, and the victory of the constitutionalists in Piedmont broke down its guard. On February 1 1 the Grand Duke proclaimed a constitution. Capponi and Ridolfi still hoped to stop short at a consulta- tive assembly ; the Radicals at the other extreme called for a single chamber. The majority of the cabinet decided for a middle course, and pronounced for the proposals of Ricasoli and the Florence municipality, who advocated a modification of the French statute of 1830. After the Liberal triumph in Piedmont and Tuscany it was no longer possible to refuse a constitution at Rome. The Pope had long since ceased to guide events. By fits he looked not unkindly on the Liberal movement. Bruited conspiracies of "Gregorians" still alarmed him; he could not forget the insult of Ferrara, and was irritated anew, when in January the Austrian government, eager to stamp out Liberalism at Naples, asked leave to send troops through Papal territory. With all the milder side of the new move- ment Pius was in full sympathy. He assisted education, patronized schemes for the reclamation of the Agro Romano, gave concessions, that proved almost still-born, to railway I 208 A HIST^y OF ITALIAN UNITY companies. He duclauned sympathy with obscurantism, hopeful that H* wforming fame would bring Protestants to the fold ; bqi ^® ^^ painfully sensitive to the charge that he WM ndmg^^ revolution, and was beginning to realize what oo^^^^'^^^^ materials he was handling.^ He resented keeDlr ^0 agitation against the Jesuits, the jubilations at the defeat of the Sonderbimd, the newspaper attacks on the B'slgian. Catholics. He was growing very uneasy lest he should be forced to do things contrary to his conscience ; he was apt to get violently excited about the fancied growth of scepticism, and suffered terribly from alternations of hope and disappointment. Mazzini had written him an open letter (September 1847), urging him in too transparent flattery " to be a believer and unite Italy." The letter was far from expressing Mazzini's permanent feelings, and its only effect on Pius was to thoroughly alarm him.* He regarded the Temporal Power in all its plenitude as a sacred trust, which it was sin to surrender ; and at the opening of the new Council of State, he had hinted that they would at their cost inter- fere with his prerogative. He began to see how irreconcilable were the claims of Italian prince and Catholic pontiff, and as " the father of foreign princes*" he would not hear of war. So after his wont he refused to face the situation. His fussy expectations of gratitude blinded him to me real temper of the peo^e. So far as appearances went indeed, he was at times their idol. The Liberal leaders set to his credit each imwilling concession ; his reactionary pronounce- ments were not reported in the papers, and the inconsis- tencies and procrastinations of the government were charged to the Cardinals. But he had lost his spell. The Pius cult had grown artificial, and his popularity hung on his readi- ness to satisfy the people's ever widening demands. In the autumn the Council of State had been opened, and Rome was given a municipal charter.^ Municipality and Council ^ Leopardi, op. et^, 84 ; Guizot, MimoireSf VIII. 5^2. ' Mazzini, Opere, VI. 156-163 ; Ventara, Pei morti, zxziv. For the inten- tion of the letter, see Mazzini, Opere, VIL 159, IX. 244 ; /(£., Dweento leUere, 250-252. ' One of the first acts of the new municipality was to vote a considerable sum for the erection of labourers' houses. THE CONSTITUTIONS 209 were hailed with the usual rejoioingB, but they were regarded as steps to fresh victories. Rossi hid iirgtd the Pope to secure the support of the Moderates and isolate the Radicals by conceding a lay ministry and some form of rapratenta- tive institutions. So far from this, however, the t^decates, who formed the majority of the Council, found tbemBelves thwarted by the government at every turn. Their thought- ful and laborious endeavours in educational and civil servioe and army reform were sterihzed, and after a bitter struggle >. with the Pope, they gave up the attempt in disgust, and left ^ the field to the Radicals. In parts of Romagna things were little removed from anarchy. The old bitter feuds, the fear of invasion, perhaps the work of Sanfedist agents, led to in- evitable excesses ; and at Imola and Forli, and to a slight extent elsewhere, political assassination was rife under plea of exterminating the Centurions. Rome was free from poli- tical crime, but seething with agitation. The Democrats had organised themselves into a " People's Club " ; there was a revolutionary committee, and Mazzini, despite his dis- ingenuous letter, was urging his Mends to discredit the Pope.^ But the Democrats were not alone in their dissatisfaction, and when the Council found itself paralyzed, all sections of Liberals were agreed that both reform at home and prepara- tion for war hinged on the appointment of a lay ministry. The Conservative nationalists were ready to join the Radicals in forcing the Pope's hands, and for the sake of the national defence they determined once for all to be rid of the in- competence of an executive of ecclesiastics. The pressure became too strong for the Pope, and after an attempted compromise, he appointed a new cabinet with a majority of laymen imder Cardinal Antonelli (March 1 1 ). But it was already too late to content the country with lay ministers ; from Romagna, from Umbria, from Rome, from Democrats and Moderates, petitions were coming in for representative institutions. Pius and the government parried the demand, till the news of the French Revolution made the excitement too intense to allow of more delay. Pius, perhaps for the * The letters in Bianchi, Miizzinianiamo, 137, and Correspondence^Italy, L 223, seem genuine. VOL. I. O / 2IO A HI8T0BY OF ITALIAN UNITY moment, had visioiis of democracy reconciled to Catholicism, and new ocmyerU won for the Church.^ The Cardinals re- jected a oonsdtution drafted by Rossi, but they adopted another of their own, and took the tricolor for the national flag(Ha|^ 15). Apart from that of Piedmont, the ''Statutes" of 1848 were too short-lived to test effectually their value and .capacity of development. They were all more or less y modelled on the French constitution of 1830, which, with evil omen for their success, was at this very moment tumbling into ruin. It was impossible in a country, where ^ there had been no free political life, that they should grow out of the practical experience of generations. They were necessarily mere bundles of constitutional maxims, based more or less on untested theories. And drafted as they were by men whose knowledge of constitutional working came from books, put out in the hurry of the moment to satisfy an imperious popular cry, it was perhaps un- avoidable that they should retain many of the defects of their French original, and of the American precedents from which it in turn was drawn; that they bore the impress of official and middle class timidity, that they attempted a divorce of executive and legislature, a balance of power, which threatened to clog the wheels of administration and make strong government difficult. They^ contained the elementary guarantees of Uberty :— security of person and property^^ity before the lal, mmisteJal responsibility, a free press, a citizen guard, the right of petition, parlia- mentary control of taxation. To these Tuscany added freedom of commerce and industry, and Piedmont a modi- fied right of pubUc meeting. But the power of the Church was shown in the provisions, which in every Statute sub- jected religious publications to a preventive censorship, which ^ Minghetti, Jiicordi, I. 329; Leopardi, op, cU,, 84; Gori, op, eit.^ 471, qaoting from Gavazzi, 11 papa e la cottituzione, 45. ' Texts with translations in Correspondence — Italy, II. 85, 125, 191 ; and Correspondence — Naples, 131. The electoral laws of Naples and Piedmont in Correspondence — Italy, II. 165, 237 ; those for Tuscany and the Papal States in La Farina, Storia^ V. 244 ; VI. 136, 268. THE CONSTITUiV N declared Catholicism to be the religion ov at Rome implicitly and at Naples explicitly\ tion of other creeds. Each parliament had an, ber, nominated by the sovereign, it being recogi^ hands that a hereditary house was out of the ^ There was no pa}rment of members, except in specN^ in Tuscany ; and in Naples and Rome there was a K high property qualification for deputies. The francos, everywhere excluded the bulk of wage-earners ; " we wantl\ said Cavour, " to bring the suffrage down to the shopkeeper, who has a little competency of his own and a good pot-au-feu every day." But it included the great mass of occupiers of land ; and this, in the wide division of farms provident in Italy, meant the majority of rural householders. Illiterates were excluded in Piedmont but not elsewhere. In every case there were fancy franchises for officials or men of educa- tional status. Voting in more than one constituency was illegal everywhere. Constitutions drawn on these lines were intended, as Cavour speaking for the Moderates avowed, to checkmate the Democrats. A large number of the working men in the towns, who had helped to fight the constitutional battle, foimd themselves, like their French and English brothers in 1830-31, left outside. Still in Piedmont and Tuscany and Naples the constitutions, assuming loyalty both in crown and people, might have quietly developed on to broader lines. The Papal Statute, on the other hand, had from the first fatal seeds of decay. Some of the Liberal churchmen, con- scious of its inherent difficulties, had" wished to have very wide local liberties as the subst^ute for a parliament.^ But their policy was impossible in the cry for parliamentary institutions, and an alternative was chosen, which, as Rossi was reported to have said, " legitimized war between sovereign and subject." It was, as events proved, impossible to graft representative government on a theocracy; it was not practicable to put a Foreign Office, whose business related ^ E.g. Cavour, LeUere^ V. 169 ; Rosmini, Cottituzione, 28. Cavour was at the time opposed to any Second Chamber. ' Saffi, op. eit,, II. 161-162. \ / t 2IO A HISTOP^ OF ITALIAN UNITY moment, had vM^ual relations of the Holy See with foreign and new ocmv^j^ands of a layman, or to make it responsible jected a oonCjssibly hostile Chamber. The Papal Statute another otMg^Q for the dilemma by laying vague disabiUties flag (Majj^ent ; and above the two Chambers sat the College als as a kind of third House. But a deadlock was or later inevitable, and it took only a few weeks to e that, while the Pope's Temporal Power lasted, a Constitution could never march at Rome. CHAPTER XI THE NATIONAL RISING FEBRUARY MARCH 1 848 The French Revolution of 1848. The Jesuits. Military rule in Lombardy. Preparations for war in Piedmont The Fivb Days op Milan. The National Rising at Venice ; in the Lombard cities ; in the Duchies, Tuscany, Papid States, Naples ; character of the rising. Piedmont and the rising ; Charles Albert declares war. The constitutional question was settled for a time, and the country could give all its thoughts to war. The French Revolution (February 24) had changed the face of European politics, and the prestige of success had passed to the side of progress. To Austria the Revolution was a direct blow, for the Republic was certain to give its sympathies to a war for free- dom in Italy, and might not improbably lend its arms. Palmer- ston hinted fr.liftt. Anatrift miglit. find Viftrft ^lf at war both with France and England, if she invaded the free Italiaji st ates.^ I^ft T^ilftn Tp|ytm>/>rAg \\^ sAnt. a tlirill nf rftgi^ through TtAly^ and there waa an earnest looking for the coming fight. Outs ide Sicily, absorbed in its own problems, eve^ ^Qgk yicLed tothe impatience for war. But it w aa rPi0.c\^Wt^ that the signal miist come from Lombardy or Piedmont . All that the eager patriots could do meanwhile was to secure their rear, and for this they turned on the Austrians' best friends, the Jesuits. It was an irony that the Society had been brought to range itself with the Power that had been so imtender to Ultramontanism. B ut the struggle now was between despotis m and democracy, and the -^^^^uitft 1^^^ al ly found themselves in tb <^ ^^ipt.riitn r^,ftTnp ^^jnhArflVin y his Prolegomeni and Modem Jesuit, had signaubA e ut "the ^ ^ Ashley, Palmertton, I. 64. "3 i 214 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Austro-Jesuit league as the great obstacle to reform, and had lashed the Society with his ponderous dialectics as "the great enemy of Italy." And however unfair it may have been to set the whole clerical opposition to their charge, they had frankly acknowledged their alliance with Austria,^ and were the strength of the reaction at Rome, if not else- where. Slowly and steadily they had been winning back the ground they had lost in the eighteenth century ; and in proportion as they won it, the jealousy and suspicion of the people had turned to hate. Tuscany had successfiilly re- sisted their introduction ; Gregory, not long before his death, had consented to their suppression in France ; the defeat of the Sonderbimd at the end of 1847 had been hailed with public rejoicings even at Rome. Now the popular rage could no longer be restrained, and the governments threw the Society as a prey to the public hue and cry. The hos- tiUty had been perhaps strongest in Genoa, and before the end of the past year, the agitation had grown so dangerous that the Fathers left the city for a time. The news of the constitution gave the signal for the final attack. The Sar- dinians drove them from their island ; they fled again from Genoa ; Turin, and Alessandria, and Spezia expelled them a few days later. In the capital feeling was so intense, and the threats against the Jesuitesses of the Sacred Heart so loud, that the government at last gave way over the citizen guard, and sanctioned its formation to save the trembling Sisters from outrage. Early next month the Fathers fled from Naples, to return in a few days in disguise. Three weeks later (March 21), when the news of the Viennese revolution reached Rome, the first impulse of the crowd was to demand their expulsion. It was in vain that they hoisted the tricolor, that Pius threw his shield over them ; the government had to bow to the storm, and consent to close their College. Even in Sicily, where the Society had shown enlightenment and patriotism, a mild law of semi- suppression was carried a few months later. Lombardy meanwhile was preparing for the greater ^ Gioberti, Oetuita modemo, IV. 515. THE NATIONAL RISING 215 struggle. There was no pause in the demonstrations ; the January massacres had only stirred the people's blood, though Lombard mildness showed itself still in a hundred good-humoured fancies to outwit the poUce. As the word was passed roimd, crowds appeared and vanished at fixed points; thousands packed the Cathedral to give silent thanks for the Neapolitan Constitution; at Venice the Carnival was abandoned, and the money saved for the wounded of the Tobacco Riots. E lsewhere the people were less in hand, and at Padua and Pavia the friction petween " UmVflWity and gfilffllj6ii lea to tatai ngntmg m tne streets. In the government tne party 01 no concession kept tlie u pper hand. Rainerio tried by double play to keep the lavour ot both army and people, but the " old women " of the civilian party had thrown up the game. At Venice Tommaseo and M anin were arrested an d chaiyed i^Eh high treason, a cquitted iitiMi a biilliauL detence, but kept in prison. At Milan the police paraded all the fussiness of a governmen t that felt itself ridiculous n r impnt^t. But though they proclaimed the giudizio statario^ ( Februar y 1 1) , no mere police measures would satisfy Radetzky. Me saw insurrec- tion and war with Piedmont looming in the near future, and though he had over 70,000 troops, more than half of them were Italians of doubtful loyalty. H e sent pressing messages for reinforcements to Vienna; troopilyere akeady be ^nning to collect at Goritz. and Rainerio and Spaur left Milan. The army had more than ever got the government into its hands. On their side the Milanese leaders suspended the demonstrations, knowing that they had done their work. Business was almost at a standstill ; foreigners began to leave the city. The French Revolution, though it scared a faint- hearted section, only made the mass of the people more impatient; "cross the Ticino," they sent word to Charles Albert, " or we proclaim the Republic." It was clear that the revolution might be precipitated at any moment, and the leaders decided to wait no longer for the King. Before March 16 it had been decided to rise in a few days.^ Piedmont for its part was watching with ever-increasing ^ See above, p. 58. * Archivio TriennaU, I. 510. ( k.^ 2i6 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY intensity of interest. The Tobacco Riots, the massacre of students at Pavia on its very frontier, the iniquities of the ffituiizio statario piled fuel for their indignation. D'Azeglio published a pamphlet on "The Sorrows of Lombardy," in which the Moderate rivalled the angriest of Radicals in his denunciation of Austria. A new ministry had come into power under Balbo and Pareto, the leader of the Grenoese Liberals, but though the Austrians thought that their taking oflSce meant " almost a declaration of war," the government showed the irresolution of a time of transition, when old timidity and the newer nationalism were still contending for mastery. Balbo meant to fight, if it proved absolutely necessary; but more than he feared Austria, he dreaded French designs on Savoy and an mrush of revolutionary propagandists across the Alps ; and instead of concentrating troops on the Lombard frontier, he had left them scattered through the kingdom.^ Attacks on Austria in the press were rigorously put down, but at the same time the papers were permitted to talk of the coming war, and three classes of army contingents were called out. It was probably to keep their hands free for an offensive movement, that the ministry blew cold on fresh proposals from Tuscany and Rome for a defensive political alliance. Charles Albert, despite the alarm he felt at the French Revolution and the attacks on the Jesuits, was interviewing agents from Milan, and assuring them, that if the city " rose in earnest, he and his people would rush arms in hand to its help." ^ V A^ ) Himgarian agitation ha d com e to a head, and iound its echo \ / inTBeTJ 1^ Qfoyl^^jin y Tiflw?^ reached Milan. The s- ly I - ^^^ec^x^iLx »,^xu«.aon had co me to a head, and iound its echo \ ( in the ijerman provmces ot tne Jalmpire. Vienna had risen \ itr insur rection — ^Vienna, which to Italians had been th e v ery seat and strength of Austrian tyranny ! Mettemich had been compelled to resign, and the Emperor had pro- mised to all his subjects liberty of the press, a national ^ Ricotti, Balbo, 263 ; Costa de Beauregard, DemUrts aniUet^ 114-115. * Arehivio Triennale, I. 483, 508, 510 ; Torelli, JZironft, 108 ; Casati, Milano, 153 ; Cavonr, LtUert, I. cxxxix.; Bonfadini, MezzoteeoLo^ 265 ; Costa de Beaure- gard, loe, cit,; eoiUra, Arehivio Triennale, I. 480. THE NATIONAL RISING 217 guard, an early convocation of the Estates of the Empire. On the following morning the Milanese found the Emperor's edict (omitting, however, mention of the national guard) posted on all the walls. But the news had leaked out on the previous evening, and the leaders had been busy through the night, giving orders for a demonstration and preparing proclamations. The people needed little urging; they recognized that their dSance liad come, and over tlie copies ot tne edict pasted the W6^dS " T60 late.'* A great crowd, with Casati, the reluctant and timorous Podest^,^ at their head, marched to the oflSce of the Vice-governor, O'DonnelL The sentinels were killed, the house invaded, and, in a wild scene of disorder O'Donnell, threatened of his life and unnerved, signed the decrees which Casati presented to him, disbanding the poUce and authorizing the municipality to enrol a citizen guard. So far the movement had worn an ostensibly l^al colour, and O'Donnell's decrees were only the corollary of the Imperial Edict. But t he soul of the movement was in the RadictJs ; and while Casati wished to come w I^TIM witn itadetzftv, or at least wait till Charles Albert moved, the popular leUers refused any compromise short of instant and absoluteWdependence. It seemed a desperate resolve to pit an uVarmed populace against a disciplined army of 13,000 men.\ But there was no hesita- tion. All over the city the soldiyra, ilH th6y m&rched through the streets^ were attacked with tiles or stones, with ^^kery'^and boiling water or oil: a battahon was drivei» b ack b y showers of empty wi ne bottles; the few guns that ha^ been coilected were Drought out, the armourers' shops were ransacked ; here and there barricades were thrown up. It took the troops six hours of desperate struggle to cut their way to the Municipal Palace of the Broletto and capture its scantily -armed defenders. All through the night the yoimg Radicals, who had directed the crowd in the day, were throwing up himdreds of barricades, and next morning (March 1 9) in the bright spring sunshine the fighting was renewed with double vigour. The intoxication ' Archivio TriennaUy I. 483, 485 ; II. 16, 183 ; Mario, Bertani, I. 74, 77 ; Casati, Rivdtmoni, II. 100 ; cotUra, lb. II. 124 ; Vimercati, Hittoire, 117. f 2i8 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY of the struggle had fastened on the city. There was a stratum of brag and cowardice, but the mass fought with reckless and triumphant bravery. All that came to hand was given to make the barricades; furniture, carriages, pulpits, school benches, pianofortes, scenery from the theatres were heaped pell-mell. Behind them the few hundred who had guns kept at bay the best troops of Austria ; at one barricade two youths held back a company for all a day, women and young boys fought and were killed. Abpyejiia- roar and rattle of cannon and mu sketry the bells clanged youl li'om ^V^ry steeple, heartening tne citizens, maademng tn e AustriaAS.* And all tlirouph the fi p rWt the Lombar d good-temper and mildness showed br jght. ^hft rich opened their palaces to the poor whose homes had been wrecked. There was no crime in the confusion beyond a few trifling thefts, and the poor brought in the gold found in the government's coffers. The unspeakable brutahties of the Austrians met no retaliation ; their prisoners were carefully tended; the hated police were put in safety; and when once the crowd surged dangerously round an unpopular official, a few tactful words from Cattaneo saved him. Meanwhile the Austrians were losing heart. Reinforce^ ments had raised Radetzky's force to nearly 20,000 men. They occupied the Castle, the whole circuit of the walls, and some fifty outposts in the city ; from the roof of the Cathedral his Tyrolese sharpshooters picked off all who showed themselves. But the weather had changed, and the half-starved soldiers shivered in the drenching rain. They could make no head against the barricades or the showers of missiles that rained from the house-tops. The din of the bells crushed their spirits ; an eclipse frightened the superstitious Croats. Demoralization set in; some of the Italian troops wavered ; others, especially the Moravians and Bohemians, savage with despair, took revenge in atroci- ties that recalled a medieval sack, and Radetzky was not ashamed to tell his men to massacre their prisoners.^ On 1 L. Torelli, 5 giomaU, i8i ; Meredith, ViUoria, 309^. of 1S89). ' Casati, op. cU,, II., 106 ; Baracchi, LuUi, 92 ; ArMvio TriennaU, II. 444, 456 ; Cantii, UUimi 5 giomi, 68 ; Correspondence — Italy, II. 214. THE NATIONAL RISING 219 the 20th he was obliged to evacuate the Cathedral, and post after post was stormed by the victorious citizens, till the whole centre of the city was free. He realized that his position was growing desperate. If the Pied- montese were to advance rapidly, his retreat would be cut off; even if they did not move, his troops would be starved. After an empty threat to bombard the city (he was not in a position to do it much damage), he proposed I an armistice. His letter came before a mixed body sitting at the Casa Tavema, which included among others the two imcaptured members of the Municipal Council, and the popular leaders, who, as a "Coimcil of War," had organised the fighting. Several would have accepted his proposals, but the majority, led by Cattaneo, urged that whatever decision they came to, the people's blood was up, and no authority could make them desist. They decided to reject Radetzky's terms, ^ and dared him to do his worst.^ But uglier questions remained behind to disturb the unity of the movement. Sho uld the Milanese appeal to Charles Alb ert, for )iel p ? inough the issue o t the iight was hour by hour less doubt- ^^pwriftr ^ftftriR RA^ ^hat it wfip only the beginning [ong struggle in the field. Others wit h less patriotic ^8S" looked to the Hedmont^gy Monai'chv to shelt er t Kem from the democratic legislation of a republic. But tfi'e majority ot the men, who had made the movement, were republicans, who looked beyond Independence to a rule of equality and large social reform; and they were loath to prejudice their cause by placing tJiemselves under obliga- tion to a prince of Charles Albert's antecedents. Cattaneo narrowed the conflict down to a struggle between the Milanese democracy and the Austrian army, and hated the Piedmontese with all the intensity of his factious and intractable spirit. But already in the first moments of the struggle a message had been sent to the King, and he had ^ The evidence as to what took place at the Casa Taverna is very conflict- ing ; I am inclined here, as elsewhere, to distrust Cattaneo. See his Intut^ rezUme, 52, 62 ; Torelli, 'op. eiL, 115 ; Casati, MUano^ 409 ; Casati, Rivdaxumi^ II. 158-160 ; Bonfadini, op. ei^., 322 ; HUbner, Unt annde, 99 ; AreMvio TriennaUt II. 342 ; Tivaroni, Daminio auitriaea, I. 434. / 6o 4^ f 220 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY replied promising his assistance, on condition that a formal request came from men of position at Milan, and that some pretext of violated territory could be found. It was im- possible now to refuse the offer, for outside the Casa Tavema political questions were hushed in the single passion to crush the Austrians. IL was now the eve of victory. Vo limteers, who had hurried up from Monza an d Oomo an dJBprgftmo>-^ere a t'tacfcmg the gates' outside, and by tJbie morning of t he 2nd the Austrians had nothing left b ut the Castle a nd The Milanese turned their attacks on the gates, towards evening, led by the heroic young Manara,^ they captured the Porta Tosa, and allowed the volunteers to pour in. During the night the cannon from the Castle furiously bombarded the city ; but it was the last effort of despairing revenge. For two days past Radetzky had decided to evacuate ; famine and demoralization had made his position untenable, and even had the Piedmontese not stirred, they would have driven him to retreat.^ The despised and m- ^ suited populace of Milan had accomplished a seemingly j^^ impossible thing. An undisciplined crowd, at first almost ^ J destitute of arms and always short of powder, had routed \ V * veteran army ; and though many things had helped them, the " Five Days of Milan " were won by hard fighting hand- to-hand. No such glory had come to Italian arms since the Moscow campaign. Meanwhile the whole coimtry was ringing with victory. Venice had freed herself almost without blood, and pro- claimed the Republic of St. Mark. On March 1 7 the news from Vienna reached the city. The crowd forced the prison, where Manin and Tommaseo were lying, and set them free. Manin's policy changed quick with changing circiunstances ; the time for legal methods had gone by, and Italy must fight. The one thing necessary at the moment was to get the Austrians out of the city without a bombardment, and ^ Easily recognizable as the Luciano Romara of Meredith's Viiioria, ^ Austrian evidence in AreMvio TriennaU^ II. 451, 456, 469 ; Correspond- ence—Italy, II. 333-334 ; contra, Schonhals, CampagneM, 85-87. THE NATIONAL RISING 221 preserve order till a government could be formed. The task seemed well-nigh hopeless. The Austrians had 7000 troops at call, and ships off the Molo, that could reduce half Vemce to ruins. But the appearances of their strength ""^r^leceptive ; half the troops and most of the sailors were Italians or Dalmatians, and the civil authorities were / bewildered by Mettemich's fall and the imknown at Vienna. Manin had no need to rouse the people, for their blood was up, when on the 17th and again next morning the troops on the Piazza fired into the crowd. The tocsin rang from St. Mark's ; the tricolor was run up one of the flagstaffs, and, its cords cut, hung mocking the Austrians. Manin knew that he could count on the Venetian populace, that the cynics, who distrusted them, were bad measurers of human forces. " You do not understand them," he answered ; " my one merit is that I do." The cty for reprisals was adroitly turned to a demand for a citizen guard (March 18), and when the Governor's tardy authorization arrived in the afternoon, 4000 had been already enrolled. But the leaders still paused before they broke with the government. The Municipal Council professed the strictest loyalty ; there was a party for accepting the new Austrian constitution. But Maoin and his friends, encouraged by the news from. Milan, were prepanng to proclaim the ite pdbhc ul bt. Ma r k. All tti^ ^ tendencies ot tne age, he thought, made tor a republic ; when ItaUan Unity came, Venice would bow to the will of t t^ nation, but m the meantime she was tree jj> lakgHher — own ime, and Manin knew thistt the title, that recalled her gays of p^atness. would rahy tn e populace, rne immeaiate need, liowever, was to seize tne Arsenal, and he was already making his plans to capture it, when the revolution was precipitated (March 22) by the murder of its hated Governor, \ Marinovich.^ Prompt action was needed to save Venice ^ from Austrian revenge, perhaps from anarchy ; and Manin, elated by excitement and illness above common prudence, told the astonished Council that he intended to drive the * Planat de la Faye, DoeumerU$, I. 127, 132-133, 149 ; La Forge, Manin, I. 251t «7y-aS3 i liTera e Finzi, Manin, czxix. 342 ; Tommaaeo, Seeondo etUio, I. 71. J 222 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Austrians out. With a few score of citizen guards he hurried to the Arsenal ; he knew that he had the sympathy of the workmen there, and of the bulk of the marines on guard. Their attitude and Manin's self-confidence frightened the officer in command into surrendering the keys, and the greatest naval store in Italy was in his hands. With timid men all round him the one strong man easily had his will. He forced the hesitating councillors to follow his policy ; he made the meek Austrians promise to evacuate the city. And when they slunk away, he proclaimed the Republic, and became in all but name Dictator. All through Venetia and Lombardy, as the news from Vienna passed from city to city, it was the signal of revolt. Here and there some of the official and middle classes were disposed to merge their lot in the freer destinies that seemed dawning for the Empire. But, with the one exception of Lodi, the masses hesitated nowhere. At Udine, Palmanuova, Treviso, Vicenza, tl\6 Italian troops went over, and except Verona and Legnago, all Venetia was free from the Isonzo to the Adige. In Lombardy, Como and Monza and Bergamo by hard street fighting forced the 'garrisons to capitulate or retire ; at Cremona and Brescia the native regiments frater- nized, and helped to drive out the aliens ; Pavia was evacu- ated ; the garrison of Pizzighittone went over with its guns. The scattered outposts in the valleys were helpless, and the mountaineers seized every pass from Camiola and Cadore to the Valtelline. Even the Southern Tyrol was on the point of revolt, and Trent was only saved to the Austrians by stem repression.^ The fortresses of the Quadrilateral themselves were all but lost. At Mantua, at Verona, most Austrian of Italian cities, the troops wavered, and only the timidity or treachery of the municipal authorities and the Mantuan bishop saved their garrisons from 9, doubtful or hopeless struggle.* Across the Po Comacchio surrendered to volunteers from Ravenna ; the Papal government refused ^ SchoDhals, op, eit.^ 127; Cattaneo, op. eitt 154; contra, Massarani, Oor- rentif 540. * Schonhals, op, eit., 100-103; Archivio TriennalCf IL 131, 213-217, 307- 309, 541-552 ; Polari, TatzoUy 19. luJ .QUI ^ THE NATIONAL RISING 223 ; to allow an attack on Ferrara; but outsido its citadel and the four fortresses of the Quadrilateral no single palm of ItaUan land remained in Austrian hands. The echoes of the Five Days went reverberating through ; Italy. Parma, as soon as the Austrian garrison withdrew, (fijIuM forced its Duke to grant a constitution, and join the Italian League with efiusion of patriotic sentiment ; but concession L^ o came too late, and a few weeks later, under pressure from It ^ the provisional government, he left the country. Piacenza drove the Jesuits into hiding, and installed a government of its own. At Modena the Duke, frightened by the advance of volunteers from Bologna, fled with the Austrian garrison, while Fivizzano seized the opportunity to secede. At Florence the crowd burnt the arms of the Austrian embassy, and 800 volunteers started for the field. The government, k^^^ unable or unwilling to resist, declared war, the Grand Duke M | ^ magniloquently proclaiming that " the hour of Ital/s resur- rection had struck," and excusing himself to the Austrians that he had done it to save his throne.^ The volunteers [^^XILA from Bologna, careless whether the government pennitted or no, crossed the Po into Venetia, where Zucchi harl escaped frY>m imprisonment, and was collecting a force of volunteers and Austrian deserters.. Three days after the news reached Borne, 2000 volunteers were starting, and the whole anuy was ready to march. From the cities of Bomagna, from the priest-ndden villages of Umbria, from the secluded valleys of the Apennines the volunteers poured in ; 12,000, it was said, went now or later from the Papal States.^ Naples sent its TohmL&ers, and the government, miable to resist the pressure, pieputid to send 16,000 regulars under the veteran Pepe. A month later even fMcily sent a smaU contingent. . jf^jifti^oni^l npHghy #>ajTi«i ^1 before it. Sidlj{^%^ deed was almost engrossed with its own struggle, and if^ml — ItajT, IL »5». 5:4- yifj. i 224 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY some because they could not resist the contagion, some with little intention to sacrifice their interests, some with purpose to betray, but the mass with the crusaders' enthu- siasm to free Lombardy and Yenetia from alien rule. There have been greater risings to defend hearth and home from an invader, or where a government has marshalled the national forces ; but few have been popular and spontaneous as this. And in face of its noble purpose, in face of the readiness of thousands to sacrifice life and home, the critic will pass lightly over the tearful fraternising, the careless optimism, the want of discipline, the easy discouragement and factiousness, that followed. Students and artisans went, leaving family and study, to suffer and fight in distant fields ; boys ran away from school to the war, novices drilled in the seminaries ; law, business, love yielded to the passion for arms, till Radetzky exclaimed that the Italiaiin ature had changed as If by magic. Voluntary gifts for the war-funds fSbW^d In ai7 ihe appeal ot patriot priests ; the rich brought cash and jewels, the poor their ornaments, a young girl at Bologna, touched by Bassi's preaching, cut off her wealth of hair. A hallowing breath swept over the nation, brief as such impulses must be, but leaving its residuum of lasting gain. Moralists appealed to the people to give up the lottery, to work instead of begging, to live lives worthy of their uprisen country. The priests blessed the flags, and with the crusader's cross upon their breasts the volunteers went out to fight in a holy cause. But the Italians h ad the common-sense to remember tha t enthiiSasm alone was a poor match f or hay^p ets. Radetzk y ""M ^PiP'^^^g ^^ tihft ftllft^^'^^^^^*^^ *^ °^*^^ftr ^" t still redoufc t- f ^le army, and on l y Piedmont could send a discipl ined^force {p cope with i t Turin resp onded quickly to the call trom aystne Mjjfln On t wgre alr eady crowded with people hi irryin^y t o the fight :^i n some''Towns the whole ab le-bod ied populatio n, it is said, j essed to be enrolled. Oi vilians and soldie rs demonstrated ex ^tedly ar T"^^ ; t^jAvnnr pixhU^^y q^^^ prixrorgi^ war, avour pi iJ>li^'y q^^ p^^Q^^^ eiymyea^T^The war, and no delay." It was a moment for prompt THE NATIONAL RISING 225 action* A few hours would have brought a considerable force in front of Milan; and though the strength of the citizen revolt was yet hardly known, honour demanded that Piedmont should at once range itself by the side of Lom- bardy. Now was the time, if ever, for Charles Albert to fulfil his old ambitions, to wreak his revenge on Austria, to wipe off the stains of his earlier years and show himself in truth the " sword of Italy," the " great captain " of his courtiers' praises. The French Revolution had given its warning, and the King feared, not without cause, that if he waited, he would find the Republic in Lombardy, and even his own throne shaken beyond recovery.^ He lent his ear to a Savoyard nun, who wrote of celestial visions and the glory that awaited if he chose the patriot's part. He saw the unanimity and enthusiasm of his people, and with big £uth in the popular voice held that " a whole people could not desire an evil thing." And yet he paused ; he shrank from the imknown of the democratic tempest that called him; he feared the rebuke of European diplomacy, the reproach that he had allied himself with revolution. The inconsistencies of his feeble past, his pledge to Austria, threats of Palmerston's supreme displeasure, stood up to hold him back. War, he realized, perhaps he hoped, must come ; but it must be war on the old precedents, conforming to diplomatic rules, no revolutionary struggle, that found its sanction in the people's rights, and recked not of custom and etiquette. By the 22nd the conditions of his promise to the Milanese were satisfied, and he had assured himself that their movement was not republican. But his ministers, weak, drifting men, were still irresolute. The two Genoese, Pareto and Ricci, alone voted with the King for immediate war, and it was with great difficulty that their colleagues were won over. On the morrow messengers from Milan brought the news of victory; and the King, wearing the tricolor scarf that the city had sent, gave token to the crowd that he had given himself to the nation's cause. Two days ^ Cotta de Beauregard, op, cit,, 131, 133 ; Bonfadini, op, cU,, 290 ; Cavoor, Lttfmrtt L ozlii ; Senior, JoumaUt I. 295 ; Correspondence — Italy, II. 184 ; ArMirio Triennale, III. 103. VOL. L P 226 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY later he issued his proclamation to the '' Peoples of Lombardy and Venetia," oflferim^ in the name of God and the Pope the help that " brother exj^ects from brother and friend from friend." AS!^ J^^ ynth mimeaning and useless duplicity Pareto protested to Austria and England that the King had only intervened to avoid a republican movement in Lombardy and Piedmont.^ If Charles Albert knew the diplomatic trick, it augured ill for the future that he went to the war with a lie upon his lips. ^ Biuichi, DiplomaztOf y. 172; Correspondenoe — Italy, II. 185, 292 Bastide, JUpublique fran^iief 38. ^ A S, 892, 408 i CHAPTER XII THE WAR ♦ MARCH MAY I 848 Badetzkj's retreat; the Milanese after the Five Days; Piedmontese advance ; the two armies ; the Volunteers ; Santa Lucia. Beginnings of division ; 'Albertism ; Piedmont and the League. The Pope and the war ; the Allocution of April 29. Naples : Ferdinand and Bozzelli ; Troya ministry ; the Counter-revolution. Charles Albert and the national movement. Lombardy : question of Fusion ; Lombards and Piedmontese; the Provisional Government; the plebiscite. While Charles Albert was making up his mind, Radetzky was dragging his slow retreat along the Lombard roads. He was following the recognized rules of strategy, which bade / him retreat to the Quadrilateral But with an alerter enemy the march would have been full of danger. His retreating column was fifteen miles long, his soldiers ex- hausted and demoralized ; between the Po and lower Adige stretched " the net " of irrigated country, with its intricacies of canals and rice-marshes and plantations. Had a few well-generalled guerilla-bands cut the roads and harassed the enemy's long trail with sharpshooters, Radetzky's march would have been sufficiently delayed for the Piedmontese to get between him and Verona and gain an easy victory over J his weary and dispirited troops. But the Milanese were / struc k with a strange paralysi s. Exhausted after the five days' strain, they and their leaders thought that the war was at an end, or that at least the responsibility might be safely shifted to the Piedmontese."^ The Provisional Govern- ment, which had been formed at the end of the Five Days, thought more of securing property, which was in no danger, and dreaded the Volunteers as a possibly republican force. { 228 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY (f Only a few hundreds started for the field, and the men, who had been heroes in the Five Days, now preferred to caricature Radetzky rather than pursue him. The Austrian rule waa bearing its fruit ; incapacity in the leaders, want of sacrifice in the masses were the inevitable results of a tyranny that sucked out the virility of the people. The Fiedmontese in their turn lost their chance. Charles Albert, with all his superb courage in the field, carrie d his i ndecision into the Councils of W ar, and was obsessed by the dread of a republican movement in his rear.^ Had the \ Fiedmontes e poss^sed a commander of geni us, he would have hurried a small force down the Fo and seized Mantua '. before reinforcements reached it (March 31).* The poases- - sioD of Mantua would have carried with it the Call of Legm^ and Ferrara, and Radetzky, driven back on Verona and Feschiera, with the Tyrol held by the Volunteers and perhaps in full revolt, would have been surrounded and starved into surrender. BuX th^ splflndid opp nrtmiity was missed, ^he m tan army, ■x^,nnn nt.rnng crossed tbt) ruilltO — al LFavia on the 2Sth, but it was nine days befo re it reac hed Cremona, fave more before it was on tn e Mmcio. Qo ito ' was easily taken (April 8), and most ot the I'orce had crossed the river by the 1 1 th. Radetzky, well-nigh despairii^ of success, and expecting to be recalled to defend the Emperor's person, withdrew within Verona, after inflicting severe checks on the Voltmteers both to east and west. As the scattered garrisons came in, he had nearly 60,000 men in Y\ the great Quadrilateral fortresses of Verona, Mantua, Fes- chiera, and Legnt^o. ^ His pnBJfjnn t>n-.TijTh far frnni imp^-fljrnfth^wftfi a Strong '' "pflt ypmrin nnH Mitnt.nft were fortresses oftEc'filBt order, and th e road to the Tyrol was still open. With a perversion of natl fiim^ eTjt^V[Hfij(mn^ a ll Austrian ] their J 1 tJffioiala Flamont«ae, Mtmorit, 451. * lb. 454 i Bava, JUazion^ 10 ; Fepe, Evtnit, I. 301. * Sordelto'a birthplace. JU THE WAR 229 The Austrian army, strange compound as it was of half-a- a dozen nationalities, had its strong cementing esprit'de-corps. Even most of the Italian troops that still remained with their colours proved their loyalty of the staimchest; and while the ill-pieced Empire seemed falling into ruin, the clash of nationalities was unknown here, where Czech and (jerman, Magyar and Slav and Italian, stood shoulder to^ shoulder, a mighty testimony to the power of discipline to weld discordant elements into one. The Piedmontese army had now 4 5,000 men encamped on both banks of the Mincio. On their extreme right, in front of Mantua, were 1 2,000 more, Tuscans and NeapoUtans and Modenese. Four thousand volunteers were in the Tyrol, and in Venetia, or about to enter it, were some 30,000, Romans, Venetians, and deserters from the Austrian army. The Piedmontese troops were of fine calibre, their artillery and cavalry superior to the Austrian, the men throughout more than a match for the enemy in courage, its inferior in train- ing and equipment; the officers as brave as their men, though often moved only by their loyalty to the King to fight for a cause they suspected or disliked. The generals, except perhaps Bava and the King's second son, the Duke of Gtenoa, had sm all experience or talent; le ast capable of all was the imhappy King, who, tortured by scruples, ill at ease even in fulfilling his ambitions, planned his campaign in the inspiration of prayer or the counsels of a visionary nun, and made his troops march late to battle rather than let them miss Mass. He had the weak man's fault of neither asserting nor suppressing himself, and confusion reigned in the Councils of War. The commissariat and ambulance services were unorganized, and food accumulated" in magazines while the troops were sometimes starving. While Charles Albert kept his army for a fortnight in gloomy inaction in front of Verona, the Volunteers were pushing vigorously forward. They were a strangely mixed collection of every age and rank and province ; young men of education and sometimes of high birth, students and artizans, veterans who had fought at the Borodino or at Waterloo, middle-aged gold-spectacled professors, peasants. f 230 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY Austrian deserters, smugglers, the flower and the dregs of society ; some moved by patriotism, some by love of excite- ment and action, a few by hope of license and plunder. They were brave, though liable to panics, the best with plenty of dash ; on the whole a rough, impatient crew, who would swim a river imder the enemy's guns to pick wild flowers for their captain, but would as readily mutiny, if crossed. Men of rough life were among them, and some- times lawless deeds disgraced them. Often the first en- thusiasm vanished in the face of hunger and exposure. But there were many who, at Curtatone and on the Stelvio, at Vicenza and Venice, showed, in despite of discourage- ment and disillusion, that enthusiasm could be a match for the discipline of veterans. The bulk of them were in Venetia. The 4000 who composed the "Army of the Alps," the volunteers from Milan and Grenoa and Parma, had they had a few regulars to support them, might have kept the insurrection alive in the Tyrol, and harassed or cut off Radetzky's communications. They had marched straight to the Lago di Garda, where Manara captured the Austrian steamers at Said (April 3) ; and severely punished at Castelnuovo, they converged on the Tyrol, pushing on as far as the Val di Non. But Welden, hastily collecting a small force in the German Tyrol, crushed an incipient revolt at Trent, and drove back their whole line to the Tonale Pass and the lower Chiese (April 20). A wise policy would have linked a few regulars to give them steadiness ; but Charles Albert, ostensibly afraid to weaken his main force, more really because he feared the diplomatic complications which might follow an invasion of the Tyrol, and not unwilling to see the Volimteers discredited, ordered them to retire to Brescia and Bergamo to be incorporated in the newly-formed Lombard regiments. A few only were left under Giacomo Durando to hold the Tonale. Meanwhile the army had been wasting its chances in use- less manoeuvres and empty demonstrations against Peschiera and Mantua. At the end of April its lines extended from the south-east bank of Garda to Villafranca, south of Verona, with the heights of Sommacampagna for their key, thus isolating Peschtera, siege-guns to attack which were coming up. To the south the Tuscans and Neapolitans were watch- Flan to Illvstrati Campaigns of 1S48, 18J9, i8€6. ^^^^^^^ Railways in tcorUng in /uiu 1859. Sak in Enilub Mile ing Mantua at Curtatone and Montanara. Radet^y'a only outlet was through the Tyrol, and after a victory at Pas- 232 A HISTORY OF ITALIAN UNITY trengo (April 30), the Piedmontese might have occupied the hiBtoric position of Rivoli, and ringed him in till want of supplies drove him to offer battle. But the political situa- tion made it almost imperative to gain a speedy and decisive victory. The Veronese sent word to the King that an assault on the suburbs would be followed by a rising in the city itself; and he attacked the low chain of hiUs, which lay between his lines and the city, covered by the gardens and mulberry plantations of Santa Lucia and other villages (May 6). In spite of the difficult ground, the plan might have succeeded but for the accustomed faults of tactics. The Piedmontese artillery was as usual well served; and though their left was badly checked, the splendid rush of the centre carried Santa Lucia, and cut the enemy's line in two. The object of the battle had been gained, when the King, with his fjEktal. timidity of judgSQiQiiU decided to evacuate the village and retire to his lines. It was an almost irreparable blunder. It lost the Italians their last chance of capturing Verona before Radetzky's reinforce- ments arrived ; worse than that, it destroyed the prestige of victory, which had hitherto been theirs. Splendid as had been the courage of the great majority of the troops, the patent incapacity of the generals, the cowardice of a few regiments, the sense of virtual defeat robbed the army of its confidence ; and though the Piedmontese soldier was made of stuff too tenacious to be soon demoralized, the diffi- culties of the situation, alike military and political, rapidly thickened. What Mazzini had aIwavr fprfifift<^]] wi|g ^mincr to pass. ,^ ^ttfl j^ pf>»«^^^'« ^^^ftr^ prince \^ bAAmriA ^h e leader^ of ft Tm^jmn^l pnnvft ment without excjt rjp ff ^b^ jealousy of th e ^ers.^ Every Italian throne had its petty territoriisd ambi- tiSns ; Rome had claims on Parma and Rovigo, Naples on An- cona ; ^ Tuscany and Piedmont had rival designs to annex the Limigiana and Massa-Carrara. Perhaps already both Charles Albert and Leopold were dreaming of bringing the Sicilian 1 Minghetti, Ricordiy II. 212; Qoalterio, i?ivo2^metai, II. 226 n. THE WAR 233 crown into their fiEunilios.^ Nor were these provincial jeal- ousies confined to the courts. Alike in Tuscany and Rome and Naples there were important sections who dreaded above all things annexation to Piedmont. Their fears were not un- — grounded ; there were Unitarians, who would have liked to see Charles Albert King of all Italy, just as there were a few who would have egged on Leopold or Ferdinand to bid for the Italian crown; in some of the cities there were Maz-- zinians, who still aspired to a repubUc of united Italy .^ And though the avowed friends of Unity of whatever shade were weak at present, a powerful constitutional kingdom in North Italy would form a magnet to which at all events Bologna "t^ and Florence would gravitate. The Albertists had been -j" aggressively imprudent, and there was a wide-spread sus- V picion tt ifvt T^ifKJT ^oQtese agents were at work tkroupnout ^ ; he peni nsula. No doubt since D'Azeglio's mission to ^/ ^magna there had been a group of men, who had preached vc- salvation through Charles Albert. Agents, authorized or un- authorized, had been fixing the ideas that Balbo and D'Azeglio had suggested,^ and since the war broke out they had been especially busy in the Lunigiana and at Modena and Parma. SalvagnoU and Berchet at Florence, Spaventa at Naples, to a certain extent Mamiani at Rome, favoured a strong Italian kingdom under the House of Savoy.^ How far the Albertists were aiming at annexation it is hard to say.^ No doubt n^ some, at all events in the Legations and at Leghorn, would have liked to force Charles Albert's hand by a plebiscite for union to Piedmont ; ^ but though the Statute spoke of the King's '' Italian crown," there is Uttle evidence to show how ^ Zobi, Memorie, I. 265, II. 543-546 ; D'Ancona, Amari, I. 255 ; see below, pp. 256, 314. ' Tivaropi, Dominio auttrtaco, IL 32, 40 ; Nisco, Ferdifuindo IL, S8 ; Farini, L^Uert, 75 ; Orsini etc., LetterCy 77, 82, 186, 191 ; Gori, Rivolmionet 92, 95. ' Arehivio TriennaU, I. 56-60, 109 ; Ricasoli, LetUre, I. 231-232, 235 ; Saffi, SeriUi, I. 125 ; Indiriuo degli lUdiani. * Ricaaoli, op, ciL, I. 344 ; Spaventa, Dal 1848, 25-28, 37; Gioberti, OperHUf I. 77. * Compare (i) Gioberti, At Romani; Id., Operette, I. 85-89; Ricasoli, op, ^'^ I* 359t 365 ; Gemelli, SicUia, 8 ; Bosio, VUlamarina, 80-81 ; with (ii) Gioberti, SuW unione; Id., ProUgomeni, 89 ; Ventura, Etiai, 60S (which I am inclined to disbelieve). See below, p. 255. * See below, p. 24a 234 A HISTORY OF ITALIA^ UNITY far he knew or approved their plans.^ There can be no doubt however that visions of expansion had floated before the eyes of his statesmen, and prompted their mysterious attitude towards the League. After the French Revolution they had again thrown every difficulty in its way, on the pretence that a league without Naples in it was valueless ; and when Naples announced its adhesion (March 15), Tuscany had in its turn grown suspicious of Piedmont. As soon as war was declared, the Pope, anxious for anything to which he coidd shift his responsibility, again picked up the threads of the n^otia- tions, and found Tuscany and Naples willing to fall in ; but Pareto brusquely replied that the war was all-important, and put in a counter-scheme of an offensive allianca To this Naples at all events was willing to adhere ; but the Pope's reluctance gave PM*eto his opportunity to break out of any arrangement which might tie his hands. He sent his final refusal to join the league on April 1 8, and the Pope's disap- pointment at missing a peaceful solution, his anger at the loss of Parma, his suspicions that Piedmont was aiming at Romagna and Naples at the Marches, fell in only too well with other tendencies to turn him from the caus^^ The war was supremely distasteful to him. In the moment of enthusiasm indeed ^e had attributed the events of March to Providence. He was patriot enough to wish to see Italy victorious, provided he escaped responsibiUty in the eyes of Germany. B ut he was less patriot than Po pe ; he cared perhaps less for' national independen ce thaiPfor wvYi7flfy nf t\ynf^ Jt^fllift ji temtones. to winch the Fapacy *easured shadowy titles. He feared that the war myht prove a crucible, from whi ch Italy would emerge in trans- ^iimiinl fttrifi jwij'h aps witn nt.tlft ir^m tnr f^y gn a reformj >al govemmeioub . And so he blessed the flags when the troops started for the war, but he ordered Giovanni Durando, tl^eir general, not to cross the frontier, except to ^ See Pasolini, Mefnoin, 73. * Corboli-Bassi in Riv. ttor. del rUorg,, I. 281-282 ; Bianchi, Diplomazia, V. 143, 177-180, 472-477; D'Azeglio e Gaalterio, CarUggio, 25; Farini, Roman 8taU, II. 96-98 ; Costa de Beauregard, Demiire* annia, 181 ; Oloberti, Rinno- vamefUo, I. 228; Massari, Cng animus Ferrari. THE WAR lyjjli