Read Ebook: The Liberation of Italy 1815-1870 by Martinengo Cesaresco Evelyn Lilian Hazeldine Carrington Contessa

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Ebook has 979 lines and 128258 words, and 20 pages

RESURGAM

Italy from the Battle of Lodi to the Congress of Vienna

THE WORK OF THE CARBONARI

Revolutions in the Kingdom of Naples and in Piedmont--The Conspiracy against Charles Albert

PRISON AND SCAFFOLD

Political Trials in Venetia and Lombardy--Risings in the South and Centre--Ciro Menotti

YOUNG ITALY

Accession of Charles Albert--Mazzini's Unitarian Propaganda--The Brothers Bandiera

THE POPE LIBERATOR

THE YEAR OF REVOLUTION

Insurrection in Sicily--The Austrians expelled from Milan and Venice--Charles Albert takes the Field--Withdrawal of the Pope and King of Naples--Piedmont defeated--The Retreat

THE DOWNFALL OF THRONES

Garibaldi arrives--Venice under Manin--The Dissolution of the Temporal Power--Republics at Rome and Florence

AT BAY

Novara--Abdication of Charles Albert--Brescia crushed--French Intervention--The Fall of Rome--The Fall of Venice

'J'ATTENDS MON ASTRE'

The House of Savoy--A King who Keeps his Word--Sufferings of the Lombards--Charles Albert's death

THE REVIVAL OF PIEDMONT

Restoration of the Pope and Grand-Duke of Tuscany--Misrule at Naples-- The Struggle with the Church in Piedmont--The Crimean War

PREMONITIONS OF THE STORM

Pisacane's Landing--Orsini's Attempt--The Compact of Plombi?res--Cavour's Triumph

THE WAR FOR LOMBARDY

WHAT UNITY COST

THE MARCH OF THE THOUSAND

Origin of the Expedition--Garibaldi at Marsala--Calatafimi--The Taking of Palermo--Milazzo--The Bourbons evacuate Sicily

THE MEETING OF THE WATERS

Garibaldi's March on Naples--The Piedmontese in Umbria and the Marches--The Volturno. Victor Emmanuel enters Naples

BEGINNINGS OF THE ITALIAN KINGDOM

The Fall of Gaeta--Political Brigandage--The Proclamation of the Italian Kingdom--Cavour's Death

'ROME OR DEATH!'

Cavour's Successors--Aspromonte--The September Convention--Garibaldi's Visit to England

THE WAR FOR VENICE

The Prussian Alliance--Custoza--Lissa--The Volunteers--Acquisition of Venetia

THE LAST CRUSADE

The French leave Rome--Garibaldi's Arrest and Escape--The Second French Intervention--Monte Rotondo--Mentana

ROME THE CAPITAL

M. Rouher's 'Never!'--Papal Infallibility--S?dan--The Breach in Porta Pia--The King of Italy in Rome

GIUSEPPE GARIBALDI

GIUSEPPE MAZZINI

KING VICTOR EMMANUEL

COUNT CAVOUR

RESURGAM

Italy from the Battle of Lodi to the Congress of Vienna.

Another man of genius, an Italian whom a fortuitous circumstance made the citizen and the master of a country not his own, grasped both the vital necessity of unity from an Italian point of view, and the certainty of its ultimate achievement. Napoleon's notes on the subject, written at St Helena, sum up the whole question without rhetoric but with unanswerable logic:--'Italy is surrounded by the Alps and the sea. Her natural limits are defined with as much exactitude as if she were an island. Italy is only united to the Continent by 150 leagues of frontier, and these 150 leagues are fortified by the highest barrier that can be opposed to man. Italy, isolated between her natural limits, is destined to form a great and powerful nation. Italy is one nation; unity of customs, language and literature must, within a period more or less distant, unite her inhabitants under one sole government. And Rome will, without the slightest doubt, be chosen by the Italians as their capital.'

Unlike Dante and Machiavelli, who could only sow the seed, not gather the fruit, the man who wrote these lines might have made them a reality. Had Napoleon wished to unite Italy--had he had the greatness of mind to proclaim Rome the capital of a free and independent state instead of turning it into the chief town of a French department--there was a time when he could plainly have done it. Whether redemption too easily won would have proved a gain or a loss in the long run to the populations welded together, not after their own long and laborious efforts, but by the sudden exercise of the will of a conqueror, is, of course, a different matter. The experiment was not tried. Napoleon, whom the simple splendour of such a scheme ought to have fascinated, did a very poor thing instead of a very great one: he divided Italy among his relations, keeping the lion's share for himself.

'Under all circumstances,' Napoleon wrote to the Venetian Municipality, 'I shall do what lies in my power to prove to you my desire to see your liberty consolidated, and miserable Italy assume, at last, a glorious place, free and independent of strangers.' On the 10th of the following October he made over Venice to Austria, sending as a parting word the cynical message to the Venetians 'that they were little fitted for liberty: if they were capable of appreciating it, and had the virtue necessary for acquiring it well and good; existing circumstances gave them an excellent opportunity of proving it.' At the time, the act of betrayal was generally regarded as part of a well-considered plot laid by the French Directory, but it seems certain that it was not made known to that body before it was carried out, and that with Napoleon himself it was a sort of after-thought, sprung from the desire to patch up an immediate peace with Austria on account of the appointment of Hoche to the chief command of the army in Germany. The god to which he immolated Venice was the selfish fear lest another general should reap his German laurels.

Venice remained for eight years under the Austrians, who thereby obtained what, in flagrant perversion of the principles on which the Congress of Vienna professed to act, was accepted in 1815 as their title-deeds to its possession. Meanwhile, after the battle of Austerlitz, the city of the sea was tossed back to Napoleon, who incorporated it in the newly-created kingdom of Italy, which no more corresponded to its name than did the Gothic kingdom of which he arrogated to himself the heirship, when, placing the Iron Crown of Theodolinda upon his brow, he uttered the celebrated phrase: 'Dieu me l'a donn?e, gare ? qui la touche.'

In 1814, Napoleon empowered Prince Eug?ne to adopt whatever attitude he thought best fitted to make head against Austria; for himself, he resigned the Iron Crown, and his Italian soldiers were freed from their oaths. It was not, therefore, Eugene's loyal scruples which prevented him from throwing down a grand stake when he led his 60,000 men to the attack. It was want of genius, or of what would have done instead, a flash of genuine enthusiasm for the Italian idea. In place of appealing to all Italians to unite in winning a country, he appealed to one sentiment only, fidelity to Napoleon, which no longer woke any echo in the hearts of a population that had grown more and more to associate the name of the Emperor with exactions which never came to an end, and with wars which had not now even the merit of being successful. It is estimated that although the Italian troops amply proved the truth of Alfieri's maxim, that 'the plant man is more vigorous in Italy than elsewhere,' by bearing the hardships and resisting the cold in Russia better than the soldiers of any other nationality, nevertheless 26,000 Italians were lost in the retreat from Moscow. That happened a year ago. Exhausted patience got the better of judgment; in April 1814, the Milanese committed the irremediable error of revolting against their Viceroy, who commanded the only army which could still save Italy: the pent-up passions of a long period broke loose, the peasants from the country, who had always hated the French, flooded the streets of Milan, and allying themselves unimpeded with the dregs of the townsfolk, they murdered with great brutality General Prina, the Minister of Finance, whose remarkable abilities had been devoted towards raising funds for the Imperial Exchequer. Personally incorruptible, Prina was looked upon as the general representative of French voracity; he met his death with the utmost calmness, only praying that he might be the last victim. No one else was, in fact, killed, and next day quiet was resumed, but the affair had another victim--Italy. You cannot change horses when you are crossing a stream. Prince Eug?ne was in Mantua with a fine army, practically intact, though it had suffered some slight reverses; the fortress was believed to be impregnable; by merely waiting, Eugene might, if nothing else, have exacted favourable terms. But the news of Prina's murder, and the blow dealt at his own authority in Milan, caused him to give over the fortress and the army to the Austrians without more ado; an act which looked like revenge, but it was most likely prompted by moral cowardice. The capitulation signed with Field-Marshal Bellegarde on the 23rd of April, so exasperated the army that the officers in command of the garrison decided to arrest Eugene, but it was found that he was already on his way to Germany, taking with him his treasure, in accordance with a secret agreement entered into with the Austrian Field-Marshal. Such was the end to the Italian career of Eug?ne Beauharnais.

But a few scattered invalids do not make a nation, and the Italian nation in 1815 had not the least wish to support any one who came in the name of Napoleon. So Murat failed without even raising a strong current of sympathy. Beaten by the Austrians at Tolentino on the 3rd of May, he retreated with his shattered army. In the last desperate moment, he issued the constitution which he ought to have granted years before. Nothing could be of any avail now; his admirable Queen, the best of all the House of Buonaparte, surrendered Naples to the English admiral; and Murat, harried by a crushing Austrian force, renounced his kingdom on the 30th of May. After Waterloo, when a price was set on his head in France, he meditated one more forlorn hope; but, deserted by the treachery of his few followers, and driven out of his course by the violence of the waves, he was thrown on the coast of Calabria with only twenty-six men, and was shot by order of Ferdinand of Naples, who especially directed that he should be only allowed half-an-hour for his religious duties after sentence had been delivered by the mock court-martial. His dauntless courage did not desert him: he died like a soldier. It was a better end for an Italian prince than escaping with money-bags to Germany. Great as were Murat's faults, an Italian should remember that it was he who first took up arms to the cry which was later to redeem Italy: independence from Alps to sea; and if he stand on the ill-omened shore of Pizzo, he need not refuse to uncover his head in silence.

When Mantua surrendered, the Milanese sent a deputation to Paris with a view of securing for Lombardy the position of an independent kingdom under an Austrian prince. They hoped to obtain the first by acquiescing in the second. They were aroused from their unheroic illusions with startling rapidity. Lord Castlereagh, to whom they went first , referred them 'to their master, the Austrian Emperor.' The Emperor Francis replied to their memorial that Lombardy was his by right of conquest; they would hear soon enough at Milan what orders he had to give them. Even after that, the distracted Lombards hoped that the English at Genoa would befriend them. All uncertainty ceased on the 23rd of May 1814, when Field-Marshal Bellegarde formally took possession of Lombardy on behalf of his Sovereign, dissolved the Electoral Colleges, and proclaimed himself Regent. There was no question of reviving the conditions under which Austria ruled Lombardy while there was still a German Empire: conditions which, though despotic in theory, were comparatively easy-going in practice, and did not exclude the native element from the administration. Henceforth the despotism was pure and simple; for Italians to even think of politics was an act of high treason.

This way of talking was not confined to private despatches, and it was no wonder if the Italians were disappointed when they found that England declined to plead their cause with the Allies in Paris, and afterwards at Vienna. When charged directly with breach of faith before the House of Commons, Lord Castlereagh said that Austria, being 'in truth the great hinge on which the fate of mankind must ultimately depend,' had to be paid by letting her do what she liked with Italy. There is a certain brutal straightforwardness in the line of argument. Lord Castlereagh did not say that independence was not a good thing. He had tried to obtain it for Poland and had failed; he had not tried to obtain it for Italy, because he was afraid of offending Austria. At least he had the courage to tell the truth, and did not prate about the felicity of being subjects of the Austrian Emperor, as many English partisans of Austria prated in days to come.

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