Builders of United Italy, Rupert Sargent Holland

 

 

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BUILDERS OF
UNITED ITALY

BY
RUPERT SARGENT HOLLAND

WITH EIGHT PORTRAITS

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1908

Copyright, 1908,
BY
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

Published, August, 1908

THE QUINN & BODEN CO. PRESS
RAHWAY, N. J.

To
That Spirit of Italy
Which Calls to Men in All Lands
Like the Charmed Voice of
Their Own History

There is no history more alternately desperate and hopeful than that of the scattered Italian states in their efforts to form a united nation. Many forces fuse in the progress of such a popular movement, and each force has its own particular spokesman or leader. The prophet and the soldier, the poet and the statesman, each gives his share of genius. Those men who seemed to represent the most potent forces in this history are included here.

CONTENTS

[1]

ALFIERI, THE POET

Alfieri was more than a great poet, he was the discoverer of a new national life in the scattered states of Italy. Putting aside consideration of his tragedies as literature, no student of the eighteenth century can fail to appreciate his influence over Italian thought. It was as though a people who had forgotten their nationality suddenly heard anew the stories of their common folk-lore. The race of Dante, of Petrarch, and of Tasso spoke again in the words of Alfieri.

It was high time that disunited Italy should find a poet’s voice. There was no vigor, no resolution, no originality from Turin to Naples, people of all classes were sunk in apathy. No wonder that foreign lovers of mediæval Italy turned their eyes away from the seats of so much former glory; there seemed little hope in a people given over to trivial personal enjoyment. There was no liberty of speech or action—sentiment, reason, passion were all measured by the grand-ducal yard-stick.

At about the middle of this artificial eighteenth century, in 1749, Vittorio Alfieri was born at Asti,[2] in Piedmont. His parents were of the upper rank in the close social order of the small kingdom, his father Antonio Alfieri, a man of independent means, who, as one biographer has it, “had never soiled his mind with ambition or his hands with labor.” His mother was the widow of the Marquis of Cacherano, and had two daughters and a son before she married Antonio Alfieri. After the latter’s death, which occurred when Vittorio was scarcely a year old, she married again, and it was this stepfather, the Chevalier Giacinto Alfieri di Magliano, who stood in place of father to Vittorio and his sister, as well as to their older half-brother and sisters. Although these other children were near his own age the boy Vittorio seems to have passed a lonely childhood, driven into unusual solitude by the waywardness of his nature.

While still a child, Alfieri was sent away to the Academy of Turin, the first of those journeys in which he was later to take such delight. He cared little for books or study of any sort, he was over-critical, and yet without the ambition to perfect himself. He spent his time, as he says, in his famous memoirs, in acquiring a profound ignorance of whatever he was meant to learn; and he left the Academy not only with no knowledge of what were termed the humanities, but with no[3] interest in any language, speaking a mixed jargon of French and Piedmontese, and reading practically nothing. Knowledge was held in small esteem by all classes at that particular time, and the priests, who formed the teaching class, were at small pains to spread a zeal for learning which they did not share. Alfieri says, “We translated the Lives of Cornelius Nepos; but none of us, perhaps not even the masters, knew who these men were whose lives we translated, nor where was their country, nor in what times they lived, nor under what government, nor what any government was!”

In spite of the extraordinary incapacity of his teachers, Alfieri did succeed in learning something, although he was always at great pains to decry his early education. He learned sufficient Latin to translate the Georgics of Virgil into his Italian dialect, and he was fond of reading Goldoni and Metastasio. A little later he passed into a more advanced grade, where he met many foreign youths who had been sent to Turin to study, and where he was allowed some liberty in choosing his own course. He found as much fault with these new conditions as with the old. “The reading of many French romances,” he says, “the constant association with foreigners, and the want of all occasion to speak Italian, or to hear it spoken, drove from my head that small amount of wretched[4] Tuscan which I had contrived to put there in those two or three years of burlesque study of the humanities and asinine rhetoric.” In place of it he learned and read much French, then the language of polite society.

In such aimless desultory fashion Alfieri passed his boyhood. He hated all restraint, and was continually getting into difficulties with the officers of the Academy. He had more money than was good for him, and spent it in the wildest extravagances whenever the opportunity offered. He bade fair to become a more or less typical member of the Piedmont nobility, perhaps a little more of a free-thinker than most, and considerably more restive. He chafed at the lack of freedom allowed him at the Academy, and on the marriage of his sister to the Count Giacinto Cumiana besought her and the Count to use their influence to have his scholar’s bonds loosened. They succeeded, and Alfieri promptly took advantage of his liberty to join in all the dissipations of the capital, and to gratify his passion for riding. In about a year he became the owner of a stable of eight horses. When his older friends cautioned the boy against his extravagance he answered that he was his own master and intended to do as he chose.

While still at the Academy the youth had[5] sought a position in the army, but very short service as ensign in a militia regiment proved to him that he was as little fond of military restraint as of scholastic. He traveled to Genoa with two boy friends and fell in love with their sister-in-law, a vivacious brunette. He worshiped her from a distance, becoming, as he writes in his ardent Italian, “a victim to all the feelings which Petrarch has so inimitably depicted ... feelings which few can comprehend, and which fewer still ever experienced.” On his return from Genoa he considered himself a great traveler, and spoke as such, only to be laughed at by the English, French, and German boys who had been his classmates. Immediately he was seized with a passion for travel. He was only seventeen years old, and knew that he would not be permitted to travel alone. Fortunately an English teacher was about to set out with two scholars on a journey through Italy, and was willing to have Alfieri join his party. So strict was the court of that day that the King’s consent had to be obtained before the youth could leave the country. Through his brother-in-law’s influence Alfieri obtained the royal permission to go abroad.

The travels had been looked forward to with the greatest excitement. When they were begun Alfieri professed himself utterly bored by almost[6] everything he saw. As one of his biographers says, “He was driven from place to place by a demon of unrest, and was mainly concerned, after reaching a city, in getting away from it as soon as he could. He gives anecdotes enough in proof of this, and he forgets nothing that can enhance the surprise of his future literary greatness.” Whether this desire to surprise his readers is really the keynote of the first years in his memoirs or not, it would appear that the youth was about as restless and turbulent-minded a creature as could be met with. The further he traveled in Italy the less he liked it; he would not speak the language or read the literature, he looked at an autograph manuscript of Petrarch with supreme indifference, and wished to be mistaken for a Frenchman. Yet this boy was to become, in time, the real reviver of Italian letters.

After a fortnight in Milan the party traveled to Florence by way of Parma, Modena, and Bologna. Neither people, buildings, views, pictures, nor sculpture interested Vittorio; he no sooner reached a city than he was eager to be posting on. Even Florence, later to be his home, did not attract him; the only object he found to admire in the city was Michael Angelo’s tomb at Santa Croce. He must have been the worst traveling companion possible; he hurried his friends[7] from Florence to Rome, and finding nothing there to interest him except St. Peter’s, went on to Naples. Naples was in the midst of a carnival, and Alfieri plunged into its extravagances as though to distract his thoughts from some brooding melancholy. He was presented to the King, went to all the balls and operas, rode, gamed, made one of the fastest set, and yet in the midst of it all was discontented. He wanted to be alone, and finally applied to the King of Piedmont through his minister at Naples for permission to travel by himself. His request was granted, and at nineteen he set out to make what was then the fashionable grand tour. He traveled in state, with plenty of money, and a body servant, and with letters of introduction to the various courts.

It so happened that Alfieri had met certain French actors during a summer holiday, and from talking with them he felt a desire to see something of the French stage. He had no wish to try his own skill at dramatic compositions—indeed his only thought of an occupation at this time was that he should some day enter the diplomatic service—but he was anxious to see something different from the absurdly conventional Italian plays produced by the school which took its name from Metastasio. He went first to Marseilles, where he spent his time between the theater and[8] solitary musing on the seashore. Thence, after a short stay, he journeyed to Paris, full of the keenest anticipations of finding pleasure in that famous city. His memoirs tell us his feelings there. He writes: “The mean and wretched buildings, the contemptible ostentation displayed in a few houses dignified with the pompous appellation of hotels and palaces, the filthiness of the Gothic churches, the truly vandal-like construction of the public theaters at that time, besides innumerable other disagreeable objects, of which not the least disgusting to me was the painted countenances of many very ugly women, far outweighed in my mind the beauty and elegance of the public walks and gardens, the infinite variety of the carriages, the lofty façade of the Louvre, as well as the number of spectacles and entertainments of every kind.” Verily the young Alfieri was either the hardest of all travelers to suit, or the older man, looking back, wished to emphasize the perverseness of his youth.

The Piedmontese Minister presented the young traveler to Louis XV., concerning whom Alfieri wrote, “He received with a cold and supercilious air those who were presented to him, surveying them from head to foot. It seemed as if on presenting a dwarf to a giant he should view him smiling, or perhaps say, ‘Ah! the little animal!’[9] or if he remained silent his air and manner would express the same derision.” He was not at all attracted by the French court, which he considered very pompous, and was anxious to be out on the highroads again, driving his post-horses. In January, 1768, he crossed the channel and landed at Dover.

England delighted him, he found London far more to his taste than Paris, he was charmed with the country, the large estates, the inns, the roads, the horses, the people, all pleased him. He was particularly struck with the absence of poverty. For a time he even thought of settling there permanently, and years afterwards when he had seen much of all the European countries he said that Italy and England were the two he infinitely preferred as residences.

But of the pleasures of London’s fashionable life the young wanderer soon tired, and for variety turned coachman, and drove a friend with whom he was staying through all the city streets, leaving him wherever he wished, and waiting patiently on the box for his return. “My amusements through the course of the winter,” he wrote, “consisted in being on horseback during five or six hours every morning, and in being seated on the coach-box for two or three hours every evening, whatever might be the state of the weather.” His[10] tastes at this time were closely akin to those of many of his English friends.

Finally he left London and went to Holland. There he met Don Joseph d’Acunha, the Portuguese Ambassador, a man of considerable literary taste, who induced him to read Machiavelli, and first led him to think of trying his literary skill. At The Hague he also fell deeply in love, and, quite according to the fashionable custom of the time, with a young married woman. For the moment his fits of morbidness and continual unrest left him, he contrived constantly to be with the woman he loved, and even followed her and her husband to Spa. A short time afterwards the husband started for Switzerland, and the young wife returned to The Hague. For ten days Alfieri was constantly in her society, then came a message from her husband bidding her follow him. She wrote Alfieri a note saying farewell and sent it to him through D’Acunha after she had left the city. The youth was prostrated and with the violence of his nature planned to kill himself. He complained of illness and had himself bled. When he was alone he tore off the bandages with the idea of bleeding to death. His faithful valet, however, knew the peculiar nature of his master, and entered Alfieri’s room. The bandages were replaced, and the incident ended, although it was[11] long before the young man could recover from the parting with his fair lady. He passed through Belgium to Switzerland, and so on back to Piedmont, still wrapped in recollections, and unable to awaken any lasting interest.

Living with his sister, first in the country, and later in Turin, a short term of peace succeeded in Alfieri’s life. He set himself to reading, and studied with considerable care the popular French authors, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire. Plutarch, however, became his chief companion. In one of the most characteristic pages of his memoirs we find him writing, “The book of all others which gave me most delight and beguiled many of the tedious hours of winter, was Plutarch. I perused five or six times the lives of Timoleon, Cæsar, Brutus, Pelopidas, and some others. I wept, raved, and fell into such a transport of fury, that if any one had been in the adjoining chamber they must have pronounced me out of my senses. Every time I came to any of the great actions of those celebrated individuals, my agitation was so extreme that I could not remain seated. I was like one beside himself, and shed tears of mingled grief and rage at having been born in Piedmont and at a period and under a government where it was impossible to conceive or execute any great design.” Plutarch first set before[12] him vividly the contrast between the Italy of the past and of his own day. As a result he became dissatisfied with his own inability to win any high distinction.

The winter of his twentieth year found Alfieri still without any definite plans, now studying astronomy, now considering a diplomatic career. With spring he determined again to travel, and in May set off for Vienna. The spirit of unrest had given place to a brooding melancholy. In this sense of the times being out of joint and himself without work to do was born the gradual desire to write something different from and in a more heroic strain than the rigorously conservative dramas of the day. He traveled with Montaigne’s Essays in his pockets, and Montaigne, he says, first taught him to think. He still found difficulty in reading Italian and much preferred foreign authors to those of his own land.

In Vienna Alfieri had a chance to meet the most eminent of then living Italian authors, a man much admired in his generation. The opportunity he declined. “I had seen Metastasio,” he says, “in the gardens of Schönbrunn, perform the customary genuflection to Maria Theresa in such a servile and adulatory manner, that I, who had my head stuffed with Plutarch, and who embellished every[13] theory, could not think of binding myself, either by the ties of familiarity or friendship, with a poet who had sold himself to a despotism which I so cordially detested.” In Berlin he was presented to Frederick the Great, and as he writes “mentally thanked Heaven I was not born his slave. Towards the middle of November I departed from this Prussian encampment, which I regarded with detestation and horror.”

From Berlin the young man went to Denmark, thence to Sweden, thence to Russia. He says, “I approached Petersburg with a mind wound up to an extraordinary pitch of anxiety and expectation. But alas! no sooner had I reached this Asiatic assemblage of wooden huts, than Rome, Genoa, Venice, and Florence rose to my recollections, and I could not refrain from laughing. What I afterwards saw of this country tended still more strongly to confirm my first impression that it merited not to be seen. Everything but their beards and their horses disgusted me so much, that during the six weeks I remained among these savages I wished not to become acquainted with any one, nor even to see the two or three youths with whom I had associated at Turin, and who were descended from the first families of the country. I took no measure to be presented to the celebrated Autocratrix Catherine II., nor[14] did I even behold the countenance of a sovereign who in our days has out-stripped fame.”

A little later he was back in England, and now again he fell in love, this time also with a married woman of rank. With a truly Byronic audacity he defied all the conventions, accompanied the woman everywhere, and became a subject of town scandal. Finally confronted by the husband, he fought a duel with swords in a field near St. James’s Park, his left arm being in a sling at the time as the result of a bit of too daring horsemanship. Alfieri was slightly wounded, and the husband declared himself satisfied. Shortly after the latter sued for divorce, bringing the Italian’s name into the case. The newspapers took up the scandal, and the matter became a cause celèbre. Alfieri was on the point of proposing marriage, when the woman, by her own confessions, told him that such a result was impossible. With his ardor completely cooled and his mind given to the bitterest thoughts he left London, and after short stays in The Hague and Paris journeyed into Spain.

In Paris he had bought the best known Italian authors and at this time commenced to read them, although it was not until much later that he began to appreciate them at their real worth. He did, however, carry them with him on his travels,[15] and gradually learned something at first hand of that great galaxy, Dante, Tasso, Petrarch, Ariosto, Boccaccio, and Machiavelli. His mind was not yet ripe for any study, even as he traveled in Spain he was still subject to those wild outbreaks of despondency and passion which alternately seemed to seize upon him. He became a creature of chance whims, now he was ready to yield to the quiet contentment of a suitable marriage, now burning with rage against all the customs of society. Morbid ideas continually pressed his footsteps. The atmosphere of a malevolent passion seems almost always surrounding the great tragedies he later penned, and that atmosphere was generated by a nature which from earliest youth had been extraordinarily violent. His temper was wholly ungovernable. One evening in Madrid, as Alfieri’s faithful valet, the companion of all his travels, was curling his hair, he accidentally pulled it so sharply with the tongs that Alfieri winced. Instantly he sprang from his chair, and seizing a heavy candlestick, hurled it at the servant. It struck the man on the temple, and instantly his face was covered with blood. He rushed at his master, but fortunately a young Spaniard who was present came to the rescue, and separated them. Immediately Alfieri was covered with shame. “Had you killed me,” he said to the man,[16] “you would have acted rightly. If you wish, kill me while I sleep to-night, for I deserve it.” The valet took no such reprisal, he had been with his young master long enough to understand the sudden outbursts of his temper, and was content to keep the two blood-stained handkerchiefs that had bandaged his head and show them occasionally to Alfieri as a reminder.

In Lisbon the traveler formed a close friendship with the Abbot of Caluso, whom he called a “true, living Montaigne.” The Abbot tried to interest the young man in literature, induced him to write some verses, and gave him the benefit of his criticism. For a short time the interest in poetry lasted, then it flagged, and again Alfieri felt himself without any purpose. He decided to return home, and in May, 1772, arrived at Turin.

Now he took a house for himself, furnished it elaborately, and made it the headquarters of a youthful society that sought amusement in various forms. Some of them wrote, and Alfieri tried his pen for their amusement, but soon tired of writing as a sport, and gave himself up to other occupations. Continually searching for something to still his restlessness he again fell in love, this time with a woman of rank, some ten years his senior, and of a most unenviable reputation. He became absolutely her slave, worked himself[17] into frenzies on her account, would consider nothing but the happiness of being with her. He fell very ill, but when he recovered found himself as much in love as ever. For two years he lived in this state of obsession, tormented by self-reproach, but unable to rid himself of his own yoke.

Finally he decided to quit Turin and break his fetters. When he was only a short distance on the road to Rome his resolution failed and he returned. Again he resolved to leave the city for a year. The year lasted eight days. He was thoroughly ashamed, disliked being seen in Turin, but could not keep away. He felt finally that he must take one last stand or lose all self-respect and control forever. He had his hair cut so short that he dared not appear in society, and shut himself into his house to read. He could not keep his thoughts on the books, and tried composition. He wrote a sonnet, and sent it to a friend, and received a reply highly praising it. Then he remembered that a year before as he sat watching by the sick bed of the woman who had so charmed him he had lightly outlined a tragedy on the life of Cleopatra, taking his subject from tapestries that hung in the room. He threw himself into the work of writing that tragedy now, and found that interest in it drove all other thoughts away. He wrote rapidly, continually, only stopping when he was[18] completely tired. When those times came, still frightened with the possibility of leaving the house, he had himself tied into a chair. He only allowed himself freedom when he knew he had won self-control. By that time he had finished his tragedy in blank verse called “Cleopatra,” and a short farce called “The Poets,” the latter ridiculing the former. He sent them to a theater in Turin, where they were produced on June 16, 1775, and met with success. The author did not value either play highly himself, and sought to have them withdrawn. He wrote later, comparing these works with those of his contemporaries, “The sole difference which existed between their pieces and mine was that the former were productions of learned incapacity, whereas mine was the premature offspring of ignorance, which promised one day to become something.”

His battle against what he considered a highly unworthy infatuation had restored Alfieri’s self-respect and health, and out of this curious struggle sprang his first real and lasting ambition. “A devouring fire took possession of my soul,” he says, “I thirsted one day to become a deserving candidate for theatrical fame.” The date of that first performance marked a turning point, not only for Alfieri, but for his country’s literature. It was, said the Italian critic, Paravia, “a day and a year[19] of eternal memory not only for the Turinese, but for all Italians; because it was, so to speak, the dawn of the magnificent day which, thanks to Alfieri, was to rise upon Italian tragedy.”

The restless energy which had driven Alfieri across the various European countries now concentrated in an all-pervading determination to become a tragic poet. He launched into that effort with the same unbounded ardor with which he had so frequently before launched into love. He was twenty-seven years of age when he seriously set himself to work to acquire command of Italian so that he might think in the language of his native land rather than in that of France. He described his resources as “a resolute, obstinate, and ungovernable character, susceptible of the warmest affections, among which, by an odd kind of a combination, predominated the most ardent love, and hatred approaching to madness against every species of tyranny; an imperfect and vague recollection of several French tragedies which I had seen represented several years before, but which I had then neither read nor studied; a total ignorance of dramatic rules, and an incapability of expressing myself with elegance and precision in my own language.”

To accomplish his purpose Alfieri now began at the very beginning and took up the study of[20] Italian grammar, and thence made a first-hand acquaintance with all the best of the early Italian writers. He would not allow himself any longer to read French, and tried to break himself of the habit of thinking in that tongue. He moved from town into a small country village in order that nothing might distract him. There he re-wrote for the third time his tragedy of “Cleopatra,” and practised turning into Italian verses the outlines of two tragedies which he had recently written in French. He pored over Tasso, Ariosto, Petrarch, and Dante until he felt that he at last really caught the full spirit of each author’s style, then he tried writing poetry of his own.

His ignorance of Latin continually vexed him, and now he employed a teacher to begin over those lessons he had so thoroughly disliked at school. It was very hard work at first, but he would learn what he now considered essential to his purpose, and after three months’ study of Horace he found that he could read Latin. He took up the other classics and translated some of them into modern Italian for practice in their varied styles.

Turin was too near France to satisfy his new passion for only the purest Italian and so he went to Pisa, and thence to Florence. In the latter city he found that his ideas were at last shaping themselves in the rich and clear Italian he was[21] seeking, he wrote verses which critical friends pronounced at last worthy of the name of poetry, and planned several poetic tragedies. He had worked hard and felt that he needed a little rest. For this purpose he returned to Turin and had the pleasure of entertaining his old friend the Abbot of Caluso there. He, as well as other friends, urged Alfieri to make literature his field. He decided that it was best for him to live in Tuscany, and as he hated to have to ask royal permission each year to allow him to remain away from Piedmont—as was the custom with the nobility—he gave his estates at Asti to his sister, and contented himself with half his former income. Then he moved to Florence, which, except for intervals spent at Rome and Naples, was for a considerable time to be his home.

On his way to Florence Alfieri was obliged to stop at Sarzana, where he chanced upon a copy of Livy, and was so impressed with the story of Virginia and Icilius that he immediately planned a tragedy on the subject. Soon after he reached Pisa, but there he did not dare stay, fearful that he might be involved in a marriage with a young girl whom he had met there before and with whom he says that he had almost fallen in love. He himself contrasts his feelings at that time with those he had entertained when he had first thought[22] of marriage. “Eight years afterwards, my travels through Europe, the love of glory, a passion for study, the necessity for preserving my freedom, in order to speak and write the truth without restraint—all these reasons powerfully warned me that under a despotic government it is sufficiently difficult even to live single, and that no one who reflects deeply will either become a husband or a father; thus I crossed the Arno and arrived at Siena.”

In Siena he met a company of strongly intellectual people, and from one of these, a friend who became a close confidant, he gained the idea of writing a tragedy founded upon the conspiracy of the Pazzi. Here he also wrote the first two books of an essay upon Tyranny, which was printed several years later. Thoroughly absorbed in his literary work Alfieri moved to Florence at the beginning of the winter, and took up his residence there.

At that time there were living in Florence, under the titles of Count and Countess of Albany, Charles Edward, “the Young Pretender” to the English throne, and his wife. The latter, who had been Louisa, Princess of Stolbergh, had been married when nineteen to the Stuart prince, who was considerably her elder. Charles Edward had an unsavory reputation and knew more drunk than[23] sober moments. As a result the young Countess, who was very beautiful and extremely fond of the fine arts and of society, was the object of much romantic pity. When Alfieri came to Florence he found the entire city at the feet of the Countess. Every one condemned the Count’s quarrelsome, tyrannical, libertine nature, every one praised the Countess’s sweet and sunny disposition. Friends offered to introduce Alfieri to the star of Florence, but he declined on the ground that he always shunned women who were the most beautiful and most admired. He could not avoid, however, seeing her in the park and at the theater, and the first sight of her was destined never to be effaced. Thus he writes of her: “The first impression she made on me was infinitely agreeable. Large black eyes full of fire and gentleness, joined to a fair complexion and flaxen hair, gave to her beauty a brilliancy difficult to withstand. Twenty-five years of age, possessing a taste for letters and the fine arts, an amiable character, an immense fortune, and placed in domestic circumstances of a very painful nature, how was it possible to escape where so many reasons existed for loving?”

De Stendhal gives an account of their first meeting, which if inaccurate (it does not appear in Alfieri’s memoirs) is at least characteristic of the[24] man. According to this story Alfieri was presented to the Countess in one of the galleries of Florence, and noticed at the time that the lady was much interested in a portrait on the walls of Charles XII. She told the poet that she admired the costume exceedingly. Two days later Alfieri appeared in Florence dressed exactly like the portrait of the Swedish King, and so presented himself before the Countess. The act was quite in keeping with the poet’s nature.

Alfieri made a determined effort to fight against the passion he had cause to fear, and made a hurried journey to Rome. He could not stay there, and returned to Florence, stopping at Siena to see his friend Gandellini, to whom he spoke of the Countess, and who did not counsel him against giving way to the fascination.

On his return to Florence he acknowledged that he was deeply in love. This love, however, he felt ennobled him, and instead of causing him to give up his work, continually inspired him to new literary heights. He wrote, “I soon perceived that the object of my present attachment, far from impeding my progress in the pursuit of useful knowledge, or deranging my studies, like the frivolous woman with whom I was formerly enamoured, urged me on by her example to everything dignified and praiseworthy. Having once learned to[25] know and appreciate so rare and valuable a friend, I yielded myself up entirely to her influence.” From the commencement of this new affection, the best and most lasting of his life, date the finest works of his genius.

There had been long delays in settling Alfieri’s estate in Piedmont, and arranging that he might live in Tuscany, but the presence of the Countess urged him imperatively to remain in Florence. When the business arrangements were finally at an end he found it would be necessary for him to curtail his former expensive style of living. This he did, giving up his horses, all his servants, except a valet and cook, and most of his personal luxuries. Books were the only expense he indulged in, he acquired gradually a very large and choice library. He took a small house, and devoted himself to his dramas, seeing as much as he could in leisure moments of the beautiful Countess. During these three quiet years he wrote his tragedies “Virginia,” “Agemennone,” “Don Garzia,” “Maria Stuarda,” and “Oreste,” a poem on the death of Duke Alexander, killed by Lorenzino de’ Medici, had rewritten his drama of “Filippo,” and partly prepared the tragedies “Timoleone,” “Ottavia,” and “Rosmunda.” All of these works are built on the classic Grecian model, and flame with hatred of tyranny, and burn with civic vir[26]tue. In that they show their kinship to the author’s times. De Sanctis, always a brilliant critic, says: “The situations that Alfieri has chosen in his tragedies have a visible relation to the social state, to the fears, and to the hopes of his own time. It is always resistance to oppression, of man against man, of people against tyrant.... In the classicism of Alfieri there is no positive side. It is an ideal Rome and Greece, outside of time and space, floating in the vague ... which his contemporaries filled up with their own life.”

At about the end of the dramatist’s third year of residence in Florence, the ill-treatment of the Countess of Albany by her husband caused her friends, and chief among them Alfieri, to plan for her release from such servitude. To this end they secured her entrance first into a convent at Florence, and then, with the consent of the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Count’s own brother the Cardinal of York, her removal to Rome. So afraid were her friends lest the Count should effect a rescue that they surrounded her carriage with a body of horsemen as she left Florence, and Alfieri rode on the coach box until she was well on her road.

While the Countess had been in Florence, Alfieri had worked assiduously there; now that she was gone he found composition impossible, and after[27] a very short interval went to Naples, planning to wait there until he should learn what the Countess would do. It was not long before it became apparent that the courts of Europe had taken up the wife’s cause against her husband. The Pope gave her a pension and approved of her taking apartments in the house of her brother-in-law. The court of France gave her the pension which the Count had previously indignantly declined as being insufficient for his position. Alfieri learned at last that the Countess was living in entire independence of her husband, and after a further stay of a month in Naples in order to avoid possible scandal he moved to Rome, and took up his residence there.

With this new settled existence he began to write again, and produced at this time “Saul,” his fourteenth tragedy, and one of his finest works. He took infinite pains with all his dramas, planned them again and again, wrote version after version, and then selected the forms he preferred after careful judgment, polished them line by line and word by word until he was satisfied. He wished to try the effect of his characters upon an audience, and had himself acted, together with some of his friends, his play of “Antigone.” He found he had not mistaken his ability as a dramatist. At about the same time he published part of his works,[28] sending four dramas to the printer. Their publication excited immediate and flattering attention. His life in Rome was the most delightful he had yet known. His house was a pleasant villa near the Baths of Diocletian. Here he wrote and studied in the morning. Later in the day he went for long rides through the neighboring country, and the evenings he spent with the woman who had become his chief inspiration.

In time, however, the poet’s visits to the Countess became the subject of unfavorable comment, and the Cardinal, her brother-in-law, brought the matter to the attention of the Papal Court. Realizing the delicacy of the situation, Alfieri reluctantly decided that he must quit Rome, and in May, 1783, he set out again as a wanderer, his ambition lost, his life offering him no further interests.

As in early youth he now took to rapid traveling for solace, carrying on at the same time a continual correspondence with the Countess. He wrote a few sonnets, but found that his mind was too unsettled to allow him to engage in any more lengthy labors. He went to France, and then to England, and in each country visited scenes which the impetuosity of his youth had neglected. Horses again made their appeal to him in London, and he bought fourteen, “as many horses as he[29] had written tragedies,” he states. With these horses he soon returned to Turin, and made a short visit to his mother, whom he had not seen for a long time. When he left her he went to Piacenza, and here he heard that the Countess had at last been released from the restraint under which she had lived at Rome, and that as her health was delicate she had gone to Baden. He was in two minds as to his course, the thought of possible calumny to her bade him refrain from going to Baden at once, and he tried to content himself in Siena with his old friend Gandellini. The continual interchange of letters gradually wore away his resolution, and at last the time came when he could keep from her no longer. August 4, 1784, he set out to join her and within a fortnight felt his old joy return. Immediately his thoughts grew fertile, he began to write again as he had not done since he had quitted her in Rome. There was no question but that her presence acted as a continual inspiration to his genius.

To this period of new happiness belonged the dramas of “Agide,” “Sofonisba,” and “Mirra.” The plot of the latter came to him as he was reading the speech of Mirra to her nurse in the “Metamorphoses” of Ovid, and was written in the first heat of his emotion at the woman’s words. He was somewhat in doubt as to the success of a play[30] written on such a subject, but it was hailed as a triumph at its first presentation some years later, and made a remarkable impression on Byron and on Madame de Staël, and was considered by most critics as Ristori’s finest impersonation.

After two months the Countess had to return to Italy, and Alfieri’s gloom at the separation was further increased by the news of the death of his friend Gandellini. He went to Siena, but found that city lonely without his friend, and passed the winter in Pisa. He did a great amount of reading, repolished his later dramas, and prepared new volumes of them for the press. When winter ended he spent another two months of summer with the Countess at Colmar, and then again they separated. This time he resolved to work unremittingly, and did so until his health failed and he had to rest. At about the same time the Countess decided to leave Italy permanently, and at length Alfieri, towards the close of 1786, joined her and went with her to Paris. He writes in his memoirs of this journey into France, “This country which had always proved extremely disagreeable to me, as much on account of my own character, as the manners of the people, now appeared a perfect elysium.” There are many glimpses to be had of this new life in the French capital. Montanari recounts how the Marquis Pindemonte, himself a[31] dramatist, used each evening to take an omelette soufflé in the Countess’s room, while Alfieri sat in the chimney corner sipping his chocolate. Under such peaceful auspices the poet spent many months in a critical preparation of all his works for new publication.

In February, 1788, word reached the Countess that her husband had died in Rome, and it would appear that she was soon afterwards married to Alfieri, although in the will of the latter she is referred to as the Countess of Albany and not as his wife. His memoirs do not once speak of her as his wife, but from the date of her husband’s death their life together was uninterrupted. It is now generally assumed that they were privately married about this time.

For three years the two lived quietly in Paris, spending their summers and autumns at a new home Alfieri had acquired in Alsace. During these years he printed two editions of his works, supervised their sales, and wrote his remarkably entertaining memoirs, which were finished up to May, 1790. The end of the three years found Paris on the brink of the great Revolution.

Alfieri saw the black clouds gathering on the French horizon, but stayed on in the desire to complete the printing of his works. He was in turn amazed, alarmed, and disgusted at the succeeding[32] events in the establishment of a republic. The principles proclaimed by these so-called destroyers of tyrants were not the principles of his own freedom-loving heart, nor those of any of his heroic characters. He writes, “My heart was torn asunder on beholding the holy and sublime cause of liberty betrayed by self-called philosophers,—so much did I revolt at witnessing their ignorance, their folly, and their crimes; at beholding the military power, and the insolence and licentiousness of the civilians stupidly made the basis of what they termed political liberty, that I henceforth desired nothing more ardently than to leave a country which, like a lunatic hospital, contained only fools or incurables.”

Circumstances, however, conspired to keep them in Paris, the Countess was dependent upon France for two-thirds of her income, Alfieri was finishing the printing of his dramas. The hour came when Alfieri determined that further delay would be more than foolhardy, and so, on August 18, 1792, having obtained passports with great difficulty, he drove with the Countess to the city barrier. A dramatic scene followed. The National Guards found the passports correct, and would have let the travelers pass, but at the same moment a crowd of drunken revelers broke from a neighboring cabaret, and attracted by the well-laden carriage, pro[33]ceeded to stop its passage, while they debated whether they should stone it or set it on fire. The Guards remonstrated, but the revelers complained bitterly that people of wealth should leave the city. Alfieri lost all prudence, and jumping from his carriage, seized the passports from the man who held them and, as he himself tells the incident, “Full of disgust and rage, and not knowing at the moment, or in my passion despising the immense peril that attended us, I thrice shook my passport in my hand and shouted at the top of my voice, ‘Look! Listen! Alfieri is my name; Italian and not French; tall, lean, pale, red hair; I am he; look at me; I have my passport, and I have had it legitimately from those who could give it; we wish to pass, and by Heaven, we will pass!’”

The crowd was surprised, and before they had recovered Alfieri and the Countess had driven past the barriers and were safely on their way. They had left Paris none too soon. Two days later the same authorities that had granted the passports confiscated the horses, furniture, and books that Alfieri had left behind in Paris and declared both the Countess and Alfieri refugee aristocrats. The fact that they were both foreigners appeared to be of no importance. It was well that they had gone. The Countess was too illustrious a personage to have escaped for long the fury of the fast-gather[34]ing mob, and had she been lost Alfieri would have shared her fate.

Florence thenceforth became the home of the Countess and of Alfieri. He wrote desultorily, commenting upon what he had seen in France, but for the most part devoted himself to a study of the classics. In 1795, when he was forty-six years of age, he started to learn Greek, and was so fired with the desire that in a short time he had added an intimate knowledge of Homer, Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides to that he already had of the Latin authors. He was so much interested in the “Alcestis” of Euripides that he wrote an original drama based on the same theme. He was described at this time as of a tall and commanding figure, with a face of intelligence, and the look of one born to command, rather than obey. His forehead was broad and lofty; his red hair fell in thick masses around it.

The restless youth had changed to a methodical, studious man, he arranged his day by rule, and followed that rule exactly. Only one event disturbed him, and that was the occupation of Florence by French troops. He had distrusted the French while he lived among them, now when they came to hold Florence in subjection his hatred of tyranny bade him despise them. He refused to receive the call of the French general who, having[35] read his works, was anxious to meet him. On the correspondence which passed between them in reference to this matter Alfieri wrote, “Dialogue between a lion in a cage, and his crocodile guardian.”

When he had fled from France he had been compelled to leave some of his printed works behind him, and he was now in fear lest their appearance and eager appeal for liberty should seem to ally him with the Revolutionary cause. Above all things he condemned the French Revolution. To avoid this possibility he now advertised in the Italian papers a disclaimer, warning the public against any edition of his writings except such as he himself issued. With this formal announcement he had to be content.

Alfieri had determined to write no more tragedies, and turned to composition of comedies, of which he had six nearly completed when his health failed. He rested for a time and then resumed his methodical life of study and work. He was advised to give himself more recreation, but was too obstinate to adopt any plan but his own. His health gave way again, and neglecting the physician’s advice, he tried to minister to his own illness. Gradually he grew weaker, and on October 3, 1803, he died. He was buried in the Florentine church of Santa Croce, and his monument, carved by Canova, rises between the tombs of Michael[36] Angelo and Machiavelli. An inscription states by whom the memorial was erected. “Louisa, Princess of Stolbergh, Countess of Albany, to Vittorio Alfieri of Asti, 1810.” In 1824 she was buried in Santa Croce.

In his will Alfieri left everything to the Countess. Their love had grown deeper with time. She wrote to a friend, “You know, by experience, what it is to lose a person with whom we have lived for twenty-six years, who has never given us a moment of displeasure, whom we have always adored, respected, and venerated.” Each, tormented alone, had found happiness finally in their united life.

What was Alfieri’s part in the growth of that spirit which was preparing to set Italy free? Why did Mazzini later point him out as one of the great sources of inspiration for his “Young Italy”? We must remember that literature and the drama are more closely related to Italian public opinion than they are with us, that the appearance of a new book or play is often a vital subject to a ministry. What the people read they felt, and it was Alfieri who first showed them the immorality of national servitude. One of his best critics has said that when Alfieri first turned his glance toward the Italian stage, it presented anything but a hopeful aspect. “The degradation of a people enslaved under a foreign yoke, and without political life,[37] could not fail to make itself felt in the theater as in the more extended arena of public affairs. No high effort of mind could be born amid such circumstances. A stage without authors soon ceases to have actors. When actors and authors both are wanting an audience will not easily be found. Thus it was, thus it had been in Italy through many troubled years. The opera,—the seductive, but enervating opera,—carried to great perfection by Metastasio, was almost alone in possession of the popular taste.... Alfieri’s first thought was to improve the taste of his countrymen, by blending the amusement they were accustomed to with something better.... Instead of attempting reform by easy stages, he determined to attempt everything at once.... It was something more than an improvement of the stage that he attempted; it was the improvement of his countrymen; the regeneration of his country!... Throughout nearly all his tragedies and his prose works, the leading idea by which he was animated stood plainly out. Several pieces he specially calls tragedies of liberty. They well deserve the name. He never tired in his denunciations of tyranny, in his invectives against oppression. These were themes upon which the more he spoke, the more eloquent he became.”

The dramas themselves, built in strict accord[38]ance with the three unities of classic taste, may seem strangely stiff and unemotional to us, but they carried an immense appeal to the Italian of the last century. They spoke a new voice and stirred a new spirit in their hearers. The voice once heard, the spirit once born, the new idea grew rapidly. Within a few years after Alfieri’s death eighteen editions of his works had passed through the press. Two great theaters, one at Milan and one at Bologna, were built by men eager to present his tragedies. The influence of his writings was tremendous; the minds of Italians from Piedmont to Sicily were stirred to a higher pitch than they had been for many centuries.

Alfieri’s character had many defects, at best his life was unmoral, but having regard to the society into which he was born and the early training he received, more was scarcely to be looked for. He was passionate, reckless, and untutored in all self-control, yet he harnessed himself to a work which possessed his fancy and in its service became the devotee of study and control. Like his life his writings lack peace and broad philosophy, but on the other hand they gain from his peculiar nature a certain domineering force. Giuseppe Arnaud in his criticism on the patriotic poets of Italy says, “Whoever should say that Alfieri’s tragedies, in spite of many eminent merits, were constructed on[39] a theory opposed to grand scenic effects and to one of the two bases of tragedy, namely, compassion, would certainly not say what was far from the truth. And yet, with all this, Alfieri will still remain the dry, harsh blast which swept away the noxious miasmas with which the Italian air was infected. He will still remain that poet who aroused his country from its dishonorable slumber, and inspired its heart with intolerance of servile conditions and with regard for its dignity. Up to this time we had bleated and he roared.”

Let me only add the striking words of his fellow countryman, the gifted poet-statesman Massimo d’Azeglio. “In fact,” he wrote, “one of the merits of that proud heart was to have found Italy Metastasian and left it Alfierian; and his first and greatest merit was, to my thinking, that he discovered Italy, so to speak, as Columbus discovered America, and initiated the idea of Italy as a nation. I place this merit far beyond that of his verses and his tragedies.”

Alfieri reminded Italians that they had a native voice.

[40]

MANZONI, THE MAN OF LETTERS

The position of Manzoni in modern Italian life and literature is doubly interesting, both because his work in poetry and the drama marks the vital turning point in the historic battle of Classicism with Romanticism, and because his romance “I Promessi Sposi” is the greatest achievement in all Italian letters in the field of the novel. Walter Scott gave the country north of Tweed a history in the “Waverley Novels,” and Alessandro Manzoni’s writing a little later, at a time when Scott’s work was a great factor in European literature, gave Italy a history in the same sense. The inestimable service that the Waverley Novels did Scotland “I Promessi Sposi” did the disrupted states of Italy.

The spirit of the French Revolution was all-engrossing, as subversive of the old religions, philosophies, and literatures, as it was of the old politics. It represented the actual thoughts of the men of that era, but it developed so rapidly and fell into such excesses that its downfall was sudden and complete. Then the reaction set in, which, as De Sanctis in his history of the movement says,[41] was “as rapid and violent as the revolution.... The white terror succeeded to the red.”

The same critic goes on to show that there were at this period two great philosophic principles, materialism and skepticism, and that in opposition to them there rose a spirituality which was carried to the heights of idealism. This spirituality approached the mysticism of mediæval days. “To the right of nature,” he says, “was opposed the divine right, to popular sovereignty legitimacy, to individual rights the State, to liberty authority and order. The middle ages returned in triumph.... Christianity, hitherto the target of all offense, became the center of every philosophical investigation, the banner of all social and religious progress.... The criterions of art were changed. There was a pagan art and a Christian art, where highest expression was sought in the Gothic, in the glooms, the mysteries, the vague, the indefinite, in a beyond which was called the ideal, in an inspiration towards the infinite, incapable of fruition and therefore melancholy.... To Voltaire and Rousseau succeeded Chateaubriand, De Staël, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Lamennais. And in 1815 appeared the Sacred Hymns of the young Manzoni.”

This spirit of idealism became the incentive for the new school of Romance in literature and the[42] drama, in contrast to the drab materialism of the Revolutionary age. This school of Romance is not, however, to be considered as diametrically opposed to the Classical School, for they had much in common, and the contrast between them lay not so much in the spirit which animated them as in the strict regard of Classicism for the time-hallowed unities of time, place, and action, and the willingness of the Romantic School to sacrifice all these for freedom of movement and effect. The new school wished to find its poems in the experiences of men of that day, to write its dramas about any comedy or tragedy without regard to their classic form, it wished freedom to grow as its own spirit might dictate. In Germany and England great Romanticists were ripening into power, Goethe and Burger, Scott and Byron were being widely read in Italy, and the dramas of both Schiller and Shakespeare were continually translated and reproduced in Italian verse. The restoration of the Austrians and Bourbons after the Napoleonic downfall made any chance to speak political truths impossible, even in the half-veiled militant form used earlier by Alfieri. The Romantic School therefore, confined in its modern scope, turned backward, became retrospective, and sought its outlet in the glories of that mediæval world which had been so nearly akin in spirit to the modern[43] sentiment. It turned from recent atheistic tendencies to a mood of great devotion, from lax morality to a high degree of upright conduct, from the regard of liberty as the greatest good to that of responsibility to mankind as the goal. Only distantly and secondarily political, this Romantic movement was first of all moral, and taught Italians that in order to be good citizens they must be good men first. As in all literary history the movement had a deep philosophic meaning, and this sense of moral responsibility was at the base of all Manzoni’s great creative efforts.

First of all, then, the literary movement which succeeded the Revolutionary era in Italy was idealistic as compared with the materialism of the days of the Napoleonic occupation, and secondly, it was Romantic in contradistinction to the Classicism of the earlier times. Greek and Roman themes for artistic expression were abandoned for the stories of national mediævalism, the Papacy became the center of its poetic aspiration, and its spirit, though highly ardent, was far more truly modern than that of Classicism had been. Our former critic, De Sanctis, says that in this new movement religion “is no longer a creed, it is an artistic motive.... It is not enough that there are saints, they must be beautiful: the Christian idea returns as art.... Providence comes back to[44] the world, the miracle reappears in story, hope and prayer revive, the heart softens, it opens itself to gentle influences.... Manzoni reconstructs the ideal of the Christian Paradise and reconciles it with the modern spirit. Mythology goes, the classic remains; the eighteenth century is denied, its ideas prevail.”

Manzoni stood first for that new movement which opposed morality to license in national development, secondly for the temper which derided the classic limits of the three unities and held that a purely national event was as suitable for the purpose of artistic representation as the stories of classic history. In addition to this he first adopted that form of the Romantic spirit which was rising so rapidly into use in England in the novels of Walter Scott, in France in the writings of Victor Hugo and Lamennais, and in Germany in those of Goethe and Schiller, and gave Italy the result in his great novel of Italian life and history. For each of these reasons Manzoni represents a force potent in upbuilding Italian character and strengthening it at the time of its great crisis. Though he drew suggestions from abroad, he made his work Italian, and thoroughly Italian. “If,” says De Sanctis, “the Romantic School, by its name, its ties, its studies, its impressions, was allied to German traditions and French fashions, it[45] was at bottom Italian in accent, aspiration, form, and motive.... Every one felt our hopes palpitating under the mediæval robe; the least allusion, the remotest meanings, were caught by the public, which was in the closest accord with the writers. The middle ages were no longer treated with historical and positive intention; they became the garments of our ideals, the transparent expression of our hopes.”

Alessandro Manzoni was born in Milan, March 7, 1785, at about the time when Alfieri was accomplishing his greatest work. His father, Pietro Manzoni, belonged to the nobility, and bore the title of Count, a title which Alessandro, when he inherited it at an early age, refused to adopt, and continued to refuse to use during his whole life. His mother was the daughter of Beccaria, a man well known throughout Europe for his studies of political economy and criminology, and whose treatise entitled “Crimes and Punishments” was greatly admired in the Voltairean circles of France. Alessandro’s mother was a remarkably intelligent woman, with a fineness of nature which was inherited by her son, and which kept him unspoiled and simple through a life unusually acclaimed and applauded.

His earliest youth was spent among the hills of Galbiate, according to the custom of wealthy Lom[46]bard families, to send their children to the mountains in order to give them rugged health. The boy was in care of a woman who was successively his nurse and governess, and who taught him to read and stirred his interest in the legends and history of the neighboring countryside. When still a small boy he was sent to the church college of the Frati Lomaschi, education being then entirely in charge of ecclesiastics. He seems to have been in no wise an apt student, the close confinement, the strict discipline, and the dry manner of teaching subjects which were all of an eminently classical nature combining to dull his spirits and interest. Stories are current in Milan of Manzoni’s inability to learn, almost bordering on stupidity, but such stories are popular of men who have later shown great ability, and deserve little credence. Suffice it that he showed no great aptitude for learning at the school of the Frati Lomaschi, nor even later at the Collegio dei Nobili. At the latter he did, however, meet the poet Vincenzo Monti, a man well known throughout Italy, who had had for patrons the Cardinals Borghese and Braschi, a poet and dramatist whose pen was too apt to serve the political party in power, but who had achieved wide popularity, and whose poems were praised by critics as diverse-minded as Byron and Napoleon Bonaparte. Monti met the young Manzoni when[47] he was on a visit to the college, and took an interest in him. Alessandro admired the poet, and it was perhaps this acquaintance which first actively interested him in literature as a pursuit. The meeting of the boy Walter Scott with Robert Burns is a parallel in Scottish literary annals.

In 1805, when he was twenty, Alessandro’s father died and the youth left the Collegio dei Nobili, and returned for a time to his mother. After a period of home life he was sent to the University of Pavia, the best-known of Lombard universities. His stay here was short. His mother, now a widow for several years, was advised to go to France for her health, and the close bonds which united mother and son would not allow of such a distant separation. Alessandro left the University and went with his mother to Auteuil, which was then a fashionable watering place where the beau monde of French art and letters gathered. Here and at Paris he met the leading thinkers of the time, Volney, Cabanis, De Tracy, Fauriel, and Condorcet, all of whom were interested in the young man as the grandson of Beccaria and because of his own originality of thought. These men called themselves idealogues, and claimed to have shaken off all the conventions of the previous centuries. As a student Manzoni had been an extremely liberal Catholic, and was usually considered by strict[48] critics a follower of Voltaire. At Paris and Auteuil, however, he met so many men of the then prevalent atheistic mode of thought that his own interest in his family religion was quickened and he emerged from his friendship with such men as Cabanis and Condorcet a more pronounced churchman than he had been before. It was characteristic of him to cling tenaciously to those precedents and standards which had so long survived in his own country. His religion, however, was soon to become more to him than a field for philosophic speculation, for in 1810 he married Louise Henriette Blondel, daughter of a banker of Geneva, who, herself a convert from Protestantism to the Church of Rome, became most ardent in the church of her adoption. She soon brought Alessandro to her own enthusiastic view, and from the date of his marriage his philosophy never varied. Henriette Manzoni possessed rare beauty, and was long remembered in Milan “for her fresh blond head, and her blue eyes, her lovely eyes,” and the young husband was ideally happy with his bride. He had by now determined to try his skill at composition, and set himself as models the three men whose fame was then at its height in Italy, Alfieri, Vincenzo Monti, and Ugo Foscolo.

His bride had brought Manzoni a country seat as well as considerable property, and so he settled[49] in the country and studied to perfect his style in writing. His first works were a series of Sacred Hymns, written directly under the influence of the renewed religious faith attendant on his marriage. These were published in 1815, and were at once noticed as poems alike remarkable for deep religious feeling and great beauty of expression. Appearing as they did at a time when religion was being bitterly assailed, churchmen looked upon the young poet as a distinct acquisition to their forces. Manzoni was not, however, even then a believer in the temporal power of the Pope. He said to Madame Colet, the author of “L’Italie des Italiens,” “I bow humbly to the Pope, and the Church has no more respectful son; but why confound the interests of earth and those of heaven? The Roman people are right in asking their freedom—there are hours for nations, as for governments, in which they must occupy themselves, not with what is convenient, but with what is just. Let us lay hands boldly upon the temporal power, but let us not touch the doctrine of the Church. The one is as distinct from the other as the immortal soul from the frail and mortal body. To believe that the Church is attacked in taking away its earthly possessions is a real heresy to every true Christian.”

This was the same view which Manzoni held[50] throughout his life, and which, stated in his quoted words, gives the position taken by the most enlightened men of the Nationalist party in those later days when the question of the temporal power of the Pope became vital for Italy. What the Sacred Hymns showed was that Manzoni looked to the Church as the center of all true aspiration and religion rather than to philosophic theories as the safeguard of morals.

His next production carried him a step further in advance of his contemporaries, and marked him as the leader of the Romantic School. In 1819 he wrote his first tragedy, published the following year under the title “Il Conte di Carmagnola.” The subject-matter was the career of Carmagnola, a celebrated condottiere of the Middle Ages, and the dramatic form was entirely distinct from that classic construction which had so long tyrannized over the drama. In an introduction he explains his departure from the classic unities of time, place, and action, and gives his reasons for believing that the dramatist should be free to choose his own subject and to treat it in such fashion as shall seem to him best to express his idea. The Elizabethan dramatists had long before discarded the law of the unities in England, and had carried their plots over such courses of time and place as they pleased, and so had Schiller in Germany, but[51] in Italy the law had been absolute from the time of Tasso to that of Alfieri. Eight years after Manzoni’s “Carmagnola” appeared, Victor Hugo brought on the great dramatic war in France with his “Cromwell,” and from the date of his ultimate triumph in Paris dates the downfall of the Classicists and the full glory of the Romanticists.

In Italy Manzoni’s step was violently attacked and defended. Conservatives opposed him, but the younger element immediately acclaimed him as their leader. The following year, 1821, he wrote his great ode on the death of Napoleon, which had occurred on May 5th, at St. Helena, and the news of which had greatly affected all Europe. The ode, entitled “Il Cinque Maggio,” was remarkable for great dignity, a deep and profound estimate of Napoleon’s genius, and a tribute to his colossal fame which even the French recognized as the fittest expression of poetic power. The ode was at once translated into German by Goethe, and into English by Gladstone and the Earl of Derby. It immediately placed him at the head of the new school of continental poets.

Very soon afterwards, in 1822, Manzoni wrote his second tragedy, “Adelchi,” a drama of the war between the Lombards and Charlemagne. It followed the lines of the Carmagnola, repeating the break from classical precedents, and establishing[52] the value of the Romantic School. Both dramas were acted, but without success. The Carmagnola, when it was given at Florence in 1828, had the open support of the court to offset the attacks of the old school, and yet did not win even a mildly enthusiastic hearing. The Adelchi was tried with a similar result at Turin.

In spite of their ill reception on the stage, both of Manzoni’s dramas were immensely popular with readers, and, although based on incidents remote in point of time, both thrilled with a patriotism that stirred the hearts of all Italians. Mr. Howells says of the tragedies in his “Modern Italian Poets,” “The time of the Carmagnola is the fifteenth century; that of the Adelchi the eighth century; and however strongly marked are the characters,—and they are very strongly marked, and differ widely from most persons of Italian classic tragedy in this respect,—one still feels that they are subordinate to the great contests of elements and principles for which the tragedy furnishes a scene. In the Carmagnola the pathos is chiefly in the feeling embodied by the magnificent chorus lamenting the slaughter of Italians by Italians at the battle of Maclodio; in the Adelchi we are conscious of no emotion so strong as that we experience when we hear the wail of the Italian people, to whom the overthrow of their Longobard[53] oppressors by the Franks is but the signal of a new enslavement. This chorus is almost as fine as the more famous one in the Carmagnola, both are incomparably finer than anything else in the tragedies and are much more dramatic than the dialogue. It is in the emotion of a spectator belonging to our own time rather than in that of an actor of those past times that the poet shows his dramatic strength, and whenever he speaks abstractly for country and humanity he moves us in a way that permits no doubt of his greatness.”

Manzoni’s greatest work, however, was yet to appear, for admirable as were his poems and inspiring as were his heroic dramas it was as a novelist that he was to reach his pinnacle of fame. It was also as a novelist that he was to become one of the men who directly created that national spirit which made modern Italy. Italy had had many poets, but no great novelist since Boccaccio. Fortunately Manzoni had not been confined to the literature of his own land, but had studied Goethe, Shakespeare, Voltaire, and Scott, and drew his inspiration largely from them. He owed much to the English novel, and especially to the author of “Waverley,” a man whom he much admired, and who fully returned his admiration.

“I Promessi Sposi” appeared in 1825 and cre[54]ated a tremendous impression. Scott said that it was the greatest historical novel ever written, and Goethe said, “It satisfies us like perfectly ripe fruit.” It was the first and greatest Italian romance, and it awakened an interest throughout Europe in Italian history. The scene is laid in Milan under the harsh Spanish rule of the Seventeenth Century, and the reader is carried through the story of war and famine, and the great plague. Its merits are hard to exaggerate, the beauty of its descriptions and the accuracy of its history, the intense interest of its characters, a galaxy that embraces every walk of life, the truth of its philosophy are equally remarkable. The universal feelings of humanity pulse through its pages; as Dr. Garnett says of it, “as a picture of human nature the book is above criticism; it is just the fact, neither more nor less.”

Victor Hugo in “Les Miserables” wrote a book which appealed to the innate democracy of man, but Manzoni in “I Promessi Sposi” made the same appeal without having recourse to the Frenchman’s use of the grotesque and gigantic. Through the whole of the latter novel runs the note of a profound sympathy with the poor and the unfortunate, a note which is perhaps stronger in this book than in any romance ever written. It is the work of a great mind, fully alive to every sensibil[55]ity and sympathy, accurate in its judgments, and to which, in the ancient words, nothing human is foreign.

Cardinal and priest, brigand and simple hero, grande dame and the lovely girl whose hand promised in marriage gives part title to the book, are each perfect in their way, and bring the characteristics of a past century vividly before the present. Goethe pointed out the too great prominence of the historical element, but the very careful attention paid by Manzoni to the accuracy of his setting must add to the sense of reality which he so completely gains. The novel was rapidly translated into all modern languages, and at once created a school of historical novelists in Italy.

To us who have seen the romantic movement give place in turn to that of realism, it is difficult to understand what Scott and Hugo, Goethe and Manzoni did for the men of the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century. They made people feel as they had not felt before the wide scope of existence and the importance of the individual. Literature had been a matter of form and convention, of classic model, of purely aristocratic vision. The new movement was part of that same impulse which was demanding constitutions of kings and bringing the middle classes into political prominence. It was an awakening of public spirit which had slept[56] soundly through several centuries. Voltaire and Rousseau, Alfieri and Foscolo had sounded the first notes of a new intellectual renaissance, and now Hugo and Manzoni went further and stepped boldly out from all classic restraints.

Although “I Promessi Sposi” is more widely known and more highly regarded than any Italian book, except the Divine Comedy of Dante, Manzoni’s personality impressed itself but little upon his age. He had not the fighting nature of Victor Hugo, nor the mental unrest of Byron, two of his great contemporaries. He preferred the retirement of his farm to the excitements of Milan, and although he was always an ardent advocate of Italian unity and freedom he took but small part in the great events that soon delivered Lombardy from Austria. After the appearance of “I Promessi Sposi” he wrote little more. “Formerly,” he said, “the muse came after me, now I should have to go after her.” His quiet life laid him open to the charge of an indifferent patriotism, but those who knew him best understood that such an accusation was bitterly untrue.

When the Austrian government returned to Milan the members of the Lombard nobility were required to write their names in an official register or forfeit their titles. Manzoni preferred to lose his claim as a patrician, and later refused a[57] decoration, saying that he had made a vow never to wear any order of knighthood. He afterwards offered the same excuse to Victor Emmanuel when the latter wished to decorate him. He was elected a Senator in 1860, when the first National Assembly met, and went to Turin to take his seat, but soon after retired to the privacy of his own home on Lake Maggiore. Here he entertained many great guests, among them Cavour and D’Azeglio, to whom he was warmly attached. His life flowed on an even current, the existence of a philosophic spirit interested as an observer rather than as an actor.

Henriette Manzoni died in 1833, and in 1837 he married Teresa Borri, widow of Count Stampa. He saw his children grow up about him and go to take their places in the world. Gradually he saw the cause of national freedom win its way, and the King to whom he was so devoted unite the scattered states under one crown. He saw the fall of the temporal power of the Pope, and with it the consummation of his hopes. In 1873, at the age of eighty-eight, he died, universally mourned and revered. A Milanese journal said: “After the confessor left the room Manzoni called his friends and said to them, ‘When I am dead, do what I did every day; pray for Italy—pray for the king and his family—so good to me!’ His country was the[58] last thought of this great man dying, as in his whole long life it had been his most vivid and constant affection.”

It was nearly fifty years since his last important work had appeared, but during that long half century of inactivity Manzoni’s fame had grown steadily. His romance had passed through one hundred and eighteen editions in Italian alone. Milan decreed him a state funeral, and representatives of all European countries appeared at the old Lombard capital with addresses from their sovereigns. It has been said that Manzoni’s death evoked a greater unanimity of sentiment than has been called forth by that of any other great author of modern times, except possibly by that of Sir Walter Scott. Even those who had criticised Manzoni had always spoken their opinions in a spirit of reverence. He was regarded as the great guiding figure in the course of the new national literature.

A singularly uneventful life for one of the great builders of a nation, uneventful even for that of a scholar or poet. Moreover the roll of his works is small numerically, comprising his Sacred Hymns, the two dramas, the Ode on Napoleon, the single novel, and in addition only a few essays, the “Innominata” or Column of Infamy, an historical note to “I Promessi Sposi,” an essay on the Ro[59]mantic School, called “Letters on Romanticism,” and one entitled “Letters on the Unity of Time and Place,” the purpose of which was to show that the unity of action is the only unity of importance to the dramatist. The bulk of his work was not great, but each expression of it was masterful in its way, the Hymns true poetry as well as deep religious sentiment, the Ode considered the finest ode in all Italian poetry, the dramas pulsing with life and feeling, the novel unsurpassed. These were the literary values of his work, but these in themselves would not account for Manzoni’s influence on his times. He was a moral and political force, showing the men of his day that nations can only hope for liberty and peace when the citizens respect the law and virtue. A generation that had lived through the French Revolution and the Napoleonic era needed some one to lead them back to moral sanity, and this was the greatest of Manzoni’s works.

Like Gioberti, like D’Azeglio, like Victor Emmanuel, Manzoni was a staunch Catholic as well as a true Italian. A close friend, Signor Bonghi, said of him: “He had two faiths, one in the future of Catholicism, another in the future of Italy, and the one, whatever was said, whatever happened, never disturbed the other. In anxious moments, when the harmony between the two was least visible, he[60] expected it the most, and never allowed his faith in one or the other to be shaken. Rome he wished to be the abode of the King; Rome he wished also to be the abode of the Pope. Obedient to the Divine Authority of the Pontificate, no one passed a more correct judgment upon its civil character, or defended with more firmness, when speaking upon the subject, the right of the State.”

That he was the poet of resignation, as Monnier declared, is disproved by his dramas and his novel. The martial lyrics of the plays burn with a spirit only too evidently fired by the contemporary subjection of Italy to Austria and France. Take for example the first and last verses of one of the lyrics in the Adelchi, as rendered into English by Miss Ellen Clarke:

---

Could Manzoni have meant such words to speak other than of the Austrians and Bourbons who were grinding Italians into servitude? Could his marvelous meter, which has been said in its “plunging” to suggest a charge of horses, have been meant other than to drive his countrymen to self assertion? Manzoni was patriot as well as artist, and read his times with no unskilful eye. When Victor Emmanuel visited Milan in 1859 he said that he should like to meet the poet, and, when told that the latter was ill, declared that he would go to him. Manzoni, however, would not hear of this, and as soon as he was able called upon the King. The sovereign’s marks of regard and respect overwhelmed the poet. Later he said of the meeting, “I see in the character of the King the intervention of Providence. He is exactly the sovereign that[62] circumstances require to accomplish the resurrection of Italy. He has rectitude, courage, incorruptible honesty, and disinterestedness; he seeks not glory or fortune for himself, but for his country. He is so simple, never caring to appear great, that he does not meet the admiration of those who seek to find in princes and heroes theatrical actions and grandiloquent words. He is natural because he is true, and this makes his enemies say that he is wanting in regal majesty. To found Italian unity he has risked his throne, and his life.”

Manzoni’s prophecies came true and he himself had no small part in accomplishing that great end towards which so many men of diverse forces worked. As well as king and statesman, warrior and prophet, the man of letters taught his people how to find their independence.

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GIOBERTI, THE PHILOSOPHER

Gioberti’s signal gift to his countrymen was his great book, “II Primato d’Italia,” a statement of the causes of Italy’s early primacy among European nations, and a philosophic theory for her regeneration. Like Savonarola he flayed the vices of his time and preached redemption through Christian living, but, unlike the great Fra, he undertook to teach that the Church was no less fitted to be the seat of statecraft than of religion. It was this that gained him the ear of Rome as well as that of Piedmont, and made it seem for a moment as though he had found the solution of Italy’s troubles.

The effect of the “Primato” was felt from Turin to Naples. “The book,” said Minghetti, the statesman of a later decade, “seemed to some an extravagance, to others a revelation. The truth is, that while many of its ideas were peculiar to the author, and partook of his character, his studies, and his profession, the substance of it responded to a sentiment still undefined, but which had been slowly developing in the minds of Italians. The idea of nationality had, in the previous years,[64] spread far and wide through many channels, open and secret, and the desire of a great and free country had taken possession of the majority of the younger men; but the methods hitherto employed had proved so inefficient that weariness and disgust had followed. Experience had proved that conspiracies, secret societies, and partial insurrections were of no utility—that they made the governments more severe, retarded civil progress, arrested the increase of public prosperity, plunged many families into misery, and did not even win the approbation of civilized nations.

“The rumors of wars and of European insurrections which were circulated every spring time, the mystic declamations of Mazzini in the name of God and the people, ... all these things showed that the time had come to try another method, more serious, more practical, and surer.... Gioberti, a Piedmontese exile for the sake of liberty, had taken part in the earliest phases of the “Giovine Italia” or had been in relation with its chiefs, but had wearied of that pompous and impotent society. His intellect had anticipated that change which had been imperceptibly operating and now began to appear widely ... but obscurely in the consciousness of many men. This opportuneness and coincidence of the ideas of the author with the spirit of the day gave his book[65] a special importance.... The purpose of the book was to prove that Italy, although it had lost all political value for the outside world, contained all the conditions of moral and political revival, and that to effect this change there was no need of revolutions, invasions, or imitations of the foreigner, since political revival is limited to three heads—unity, independence, and liberty—the first two of which might be obtained by a confederation of the various states under the presidency of the Pope, and the last by means of internal reforms in each state, effected by their respective Princes without danger or diminution of their real power.”

Vincenzo Gioberti was born in Turin April 5, 1801, and was the only child of parents of very moderate means. At an early age it was decided that he should prepare for the priesthood, and his education was entrusted to the fathers of the Oratory in Turin. His nature was more conformable to the teaching of churchmen than was that of Alfieri or Manzoni, and whereas both the latter had chafed under the discipline and mental training of the Church schools the young Gioberti became a thoughtful student. He differed from Mazzini, a contemporary studying at Genoa, in that although he early learned that the condition of his country was wretched, his mind could only con[66]ceive of improvement by orderly and temperate steps. He was a brilliant scholar, and during the years of his training for the priesthood he delved deep into the history of philosophy, and studied closely the writings of the fathers and doctors of the Roman Church. In 1825 he was ordained a priest.

The young priest, a man of a serious and reflective mind, turned his attention to the affairs of his country, and gradually entered upon a careful study of the literature of the day, and the political theories that were then agitating men’s minds. He took part in scholastic discussions of religious and political subjects, and in time widened his acquaintance in Turin so that he came in contact with the leaders of thought in the Sardinian capital. As he met men and spoke his thoughts more freely it came to be seen that he was occupied above everything else with the problem of freeing Italy from the foreign overlords, and this gradually marked him as a free-thinking priest. At first, however, he did not incur the enmity of the clerical party, for, although his conception of Italian freedom consisted in emancipation not alone from the arms of foreign masters, but from all modes of thought which were alien to the nation’s genius, and detrimental to its national authority, this authority was always associated in[67] his mind with the idea of Papal supremacy, but a supremacy intellectual rather than political.

The reign of Charles Albert of Piedmont was a continual battle between the conservative party and the enlightened liberals. The leaders of the conservatives were clerics, in large measure Jesuits, who kept in close touch with the Court of Vienna, realizing to the full that their aims and those of Austria were to all intents identical, the maintenance of the status quo in Italy. The young priest Gioberti was not long in incurring the hostility of the Jesuits, because, although he sought the ultimate supremacy of the Papal See, he desired it as a moral rather than as a physical supremacy, and he most ardently hoped for the expulsion of the Austrians from Lombardy and the absolute independence of Piedmont from Viennese influence. His was, however, too brilliant a mind to be denied, and, despite the efforts of the Court party, Charles Albert, who was always cognizant of the abilities of other men, soon after his accession to the throne in 1831 nominated the young priest to be one of the royal chaplains.

As chaplain of the court Gioberti quickly assumed prominence. His nature was open and frank, he made friends easily, he wrote on ecclesiastical and political subjects, and his patriotism was known to be unbounded. He soon had gathered a[68] party about him, and his influence over the King grew rapidly. Charles Albert’s own views on Italian policy were at that time almost identical with Gioberti’s, he would have been glad to acknowledge a confederation of Italian states under the presidency of the Pope, provided the foreign princelings could be disposed of without bloodshed. This, however, the clerical party did not approve of, any change being to their view revolutionary, and the realization that the chaplain was gaining the private ear of the King finally compelled them to mark him for exile.

Aware of this disaffection in the Church party at Turin, Gioberti in 1833 asked permission of Charles Albert to resign his chaplaincy, but, before his request was granted he was suddenly arrested one day while walking with a friend in the public gardens of the city, and placed in prison. The influence of the clerical party was so all-powerful in the Piedmont of that day that no attempt to secure Gioberti’s release was effective, and no popular demonstration at such an outrage could take place. He was given no trial, and his case was the subject of no apparent judicial process. After four months’ imprisonment he was informed that his banishment had been decreed, and he was at once conducted to the frontier in charge of a carabineer. At the same time his name was stricken[69] off the roll of the theological doctors of the College of Turin.

Driven into exile because of his political opinions, even as Mazzini was exiled as a suspect rather than because of any proof against him, Gioberti reached Paris in October, 1833. Like so many other great Italians of that day he was destined to spend many years away from his beloved country. Without friends, family, or money, his career apparently ruined, his hopes shattered, Gioberti was to sound the depths of a courageous man’s despair. Mazzini took himself to London to eke out a meager living as a teacher of Italian, and with the same thought Gioberti went to Brussels. Here he undertook to teach philosophy, and finally obtained employment in assisting his friend Gaggia in the management of a small college. All his leisure time he devoted to studying and writing on philosophy, rising early, and working the better part of the night, and producing work after work of great value in philosophic inquiry, all of which bore especially upon the needs of his own countrymen.

His stay in Brussels, which lasted from 1834 to 1845, saw the production of his greatest books, all deeply earnest, and each one causing in turn the greatest interest and emotion in Italy. The volume of his work was most remarkable, treatises[70] appearing at short intervals, each one of which would have sufficed to represent a lifetime’s study. His first work was the result of a friendship formed in Brussels with a young fellow-exile, Paolo Pallia, who on one occasion expressed to Gioberti certain doubts as to the reality of revelations and a future life. Gioberti at once commenced work upon his “La Teorica del Sovran-naturale,” which was finished and published in 1838. This was followed in 1839 and 1840 by his three volumes called “Introduzione allo Studio della Filosofia.” In all these writings he stands apart from his contemporary European philosophers. Method of speculation is with him subjective and psychological. He adopts much from Plato. Throughout all his writings religion is synonomous with civilization, and he repeatedly states that religion is the true and only expression of the idea in this life, and is one with the real civilization of history. Civilization is the means to perfection, of which religion is the essence.

These strictly philosophic works were followed by the essays “Del Bello” and “Del Buono,” and after a short interval by a magnificent exposure of the Jesuit Order, “Il Gesuita Moderno,” and his “Del Primato Morale e Civile degli Italiani,” and “Prolegomeni.”

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It was the “Primato” which gave the exiled Gioberti his place as a great factor in the struggle for Italian independence. His ideas seem strangely archaic now, but they were compelling in 1846. He himself says: “I intend to show ... that Italy alone has the qualities required to become the chief of nations, and that although to-day she has almost completely lost that chiefship, it is in her power to recover it, and I will state the most important conditions of that renovation.... As infant civilization was born between two rivers, so renewed and adult civilization arose between two seas; the former in fertile Mesopotamia, whence it easily spread over Asia, Africa and the west; the latter in Italy, which divides the Tyrrhene and Adriatic seas, thus forming the central promontory of Europe and placed in a position to dominate the rest of the hemisphere.... In the Church there is neither Greek nor Barbarian, and all nations form a cosmopolitan society, as all the tribes of Israel a single nation. But as, in the Jewish nation, genealogy determined the tenure of the hierarchy, and the sons of Levi received the custody of the Law and the service of the Temple, so in the Christian commonwealth the division of the nations is in a manner involved in the order of the Catholic Church. And, the Church having a supreme head, we must recognize[72] a moral pre-eminence where Heaven has established its seat, and where nearer, quicker, more immediate and more uninterrupted are the in-breathings of its voice. This preeminence certainly does not transgress the natural order of divine intentions, real and efficient in their working and in the obligations they impose. So that the Italians, humanly speaking, are the Levites of Christianity, having been chosen by Providence to keep the Christian Pontificate, and to protect with love, with veneration, and if necessary by arms, the ark of the new covenant.... Let the nations, then, turn their eyes to Italy, their ancient and loving mother, who holds the seeds of their regeneration. Italy is the organ of the supreme reason and the royal and ideal word; the fountain, rule and guardian of every other reason and eloquence; for there resides the Head that rules, the Arm that moves, the Tongue that commands and the Heart that animates Christianity at large.... As Rome is the seat of Christian wisdom, Piedmont is to-day the principal home of Italian military strength. Seated on the slopes of the Alps, as a wedge between Austria and France, and as a guard to the peninsula, of which it is the vestibule and peristyle, it is destined to watch from its mountains, and crush in its ravines, every foreign aggressor, compelling[73] its powerful neighbors to respect the common independence of Italy.”

Such expression will suffice to show that Gioberti was in no sense a reliable prophet, but a philosopher of deeply religious strain who was seeking to reconcile the political freedom of Italy with the suzerainty of the Pope. He discountenanced all plotting and conspiracy, both of which were being advocated by Mazzini’s appeals to “Young Italy,” and built his country out of a confederation of states. Mazzini, impractical as he was in many respects, did at least realize that no such loosely joined federation could stand six months, and insisted above all in actual political hegemony of the states.

Gioberti’s “Primato,” deeply suggestive in itself to intellectual Italy, was given a remarkable impetus by the election at about the same time as its appearance of a new Pope. Pius IX., elected to the papal chair in June, 1846, seemed the very man to bring about the realization of Gioberti’s hopes. As Cardinal Mastai Ferreti he had been immensely popular, and he was known as a man of great amiability, keenly interested in new ideas, and ardent in the cause of Italian unity of action. His first act was to proclaim a general amnesty for political offenses, by which thousands of prisoners who had spent years in Roman prisons,[74] or abroad in exile, many ignorant of the charges brought against them, were allowed to return to family and friends. He visited the poor and superintended the relief of the sick, even working among the Jewish quarters of Rome. He favored the construction of railroads, modified the restrictions of the press, and organized an advisory council of leading citizens. Small wonder that a world which had been used to the infinitely narrow-minded reactionaries Leo XII. and Gregory XVI. hailed Pius IX. as the regenerator of both church and state.

To a large degree Pius and Gioberti had both felt the same enthusiasms, and believed in the same principles, the cardinal one being that society was to be reformed by the Roman Church, and the government of society vested in the Church as a court of highest appeal. Different desires led the two men to this conclusion, Gioberti hoping that reform would come by means of concessions by arbitrary powers to the rights of the people, and the Pope believing that humanizing the form of church government would strengthen its actual power and increase the devotion of all nations to the Holy See. History proved that neither Gioberti nor Pius IX. was correct, but the seeming coincidence of their views increased the power of each. Gioberti gained the support of the liberal[75] element in the Church, and the Pope gained the adhesion of intellectual men throughout Italy.

The new Pope had read Gioberti’s political writings, and had been deeply influenced by them. The “Primato,” issued at Brussels in 1842, had been prohibited in all the Italian states except Piedmont, and this fact added immensely to its weight with patriots. Charles Albert read it and admired it greatly; with the advent of Pius, he as well as men so diverse as Mazzini, Garibaldi, and D’Azeglio, looked for regeneration. Under the influence of this new spirit Charles Albert declared an amnesty for all exiles in 1846, and the philosopher-priest, after thirteen years of exile, was free to return home.

Long exile had somewhat crushed the ardent nature of the churchman, and he waited in Brussels until he was assured by friends that his return to Turin would be popular. Learning that his works, especially the “Primato” and the “Gesuita Moderno,” had made him a hero in the eyes of patriots, he finally returned to Turin in 1848. His entrance into the capital on April 29 of that year was the occasion for the greatest outburst of enthusiasm, a welcome intensified by the thought that this man had been banished for no other cause than the resentment of the hated Jesuits. The city was decorated and illuminated[76] in his honor, deputations waited upon him, the King appointed him a Senator, but, as he had been elected as deputy by both Turin and Genoa to the Assembly of Representatives now to meet for the first time under the new constitution, he chose to sit in the lower house for Turin.

Invitations now poured in upon him from other cities, and before the Assembly met he made a tour of the states, commencing with Milan, and finally reaching Rome. He had three interviews with the Pope, and these meetings led him still further to believe that Pius was the man who should put his political philosophy into practice. He found the Romans, who of all Italians had most cause to hate the Jesuits, overjoyed with his work describing the modern abuses of that order, and anxious at all hazards that their new Pontiff should follow the new spirit of liberality.

While he was traveling and speaking publicly to all the peoples the Assembly met in Turin, and elected him its president. Count Balbo was Prime Minister, and in the same Parliament sat many of the younger element, including Cavour, and a large liberal section headed by D’Azeglio.

Meanwhile there had occurred the memorable battle-days of 1848, when the February revolution in Paris set fire to the tinder that had been preparing throughout Europe. The Milanese arose[77] and drove out the Austrian garrison, Venice proclaimed the republic under Daniel Manin, and the cry of “a free Italy” rang from the Alps to Sicily. Pius IX., who had already made serious protest to Austria when in the preceding year that Power had garrisoned Ferrara, prepared to place himself actively at the head of the national movement, and in Piedmont Charles Albert took the field and went to the aid of Lombardy. At the close of 1848 Count Balbo resigned, and a new ministry was formed, in which Gioberti held a seat.

Unfortunately Pius IX. lacked the courage of his convictions, and when he heard that the Austrians were winning back their lost fields in Lombardy, his desire to send his troops to the aid of Piedmont cooled. The conservative elements about him gained his ear, and he replaced Mamiani, his Prime Minister, a man who wished him to give Rome a constitution, with Count Rossi, the French Ambassador, a man of great ability, but ultra conservative. In November, 1848, Rossi was assassinated, and shortly afterward the violence of the demands of the people convinced Pius that his best course was temporary flight. Acting upon this impulse on November 24, 1848, he escaped from Rome to Gaeta. Italy was beginning to see to what manner of man it had looked for deliverance.

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From Gaeta the self-exiled Pontiff issued a formal protest against the violence to which he stated his people had subjected him, and by which means alone his latest enactments had been extorted from him, and declared all measures passed in Rome during his absence null and void.

In Rome the brief Republic of Mazzini held sway, and at Gaeta France and Austria sought to cheer the Pope. Charles Albert, his hope of Papal aid fading rapidly, attempted for a few months to stem the tide of French and Austrian influence over Pius. He tried to effect a reconciliation between the Holy Father and the Romans, and Gioberti wrote to the Pope, saying: “I hope the Court of Gaeta is about to return to sentiments more evangelical, more worthy of Pius IX. I am sorry to have to say that the Court of Gaeta, repudiating the doctrine of conciliation, and adopting that of vengeance and blood, does not seem to know that it is repudiating the maxims of Christ, and putting in their stead those of Mahomet.” In addition Gioberti did his best to gain the Pope’s concurrence in a plan for the formation of an Italian federation of princes, but without success. The bolt was shot, Pius had had his day as popular idol, and having proven that Italy had nothing to hope politically from the Pope, quickly retroceded to the plane of the Bourbon Princes and[79] Grand Dukes. To Gioberti, who had hoped so much from the spiritual and temporal power of Rome, the disillusionment was terrific.

That he was a theorist rather than a practical statesman he now showed conclusively by advocating as minister at Turin that Piedmont should anticipate the inevitable restoration of the rulers of central Italy by the governments of Austria and France by restoring them itself. Had this plan been adopted the House of Savoy would have been irretrievably ruined in the eyes of patriotic Italy, and the country left without any champion of freedom. Fortunately his proposal met with small favor.

The battle of Novara ended the struggles of Charles Albert, and Victor Emmanuel, a man of sterner make, came into control. A new ministry was formed for the new King by General Delaunay, who included Gioberti again in the cabinet, although he held no portfolio. He was not in touch, however, with the new elements of government, he could not appreciate a statecraft that was in essence radical, and after several disagreements he was appointed on a nominal mission to Paris, which in reality removed him from any part in the government at Turin. His best work had been done in the service of Charles Albert, he was not in touch with the coming policies of the adroit Cavour.

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The stirring years of 1848 and 1849 passed, the dream of the Pope’s leadership vanished, and the yoke of the foreigner seemed to have settled as heavily as ever upon the states of Italy. Again exiles gathered in London and Paris, Mazzini returned to his English fogs, and we find Gioberti the confidant in Paris of many banished fellow-countrymen. The Marquis Pallavicino, friend of Manin and many other patriots, became his bosom friend. He was offered a pension by his government, but declined it, and devoted himself to writing. In 1851 he published his great work, the “Rinnovamento Civile d’Italia,” in which he pointed out the mistakes made by Italians in 1848 and 1849, acknowledged his own blunders in political sagacity, and designated Piedmont as the leader of a great national movement, which should ultimately end in a regenerated Italy, with its capital in a lay and constitutional Rome. He had met and talked with Cavour in Paris during the preparation of this book, and he had had the perspicacity to predict that Cavour was the man who should unite his land. The statesman was half amused, half impressed by Gioberti’s words, he had always considered him a man who just failed of being a great statesman because he was a visionary, but he was profoundly impressed by the grasp and depth of his new work.

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The “Rinnovamento” was indeed true prophecy, the philosopher had at last seen the futility of a political confederation of peoples under a religious head, he realized that Princes supported by foreign Powers would never unite for any common end. “Except the young sovereign who rules Piedmont,” he says in the “Rinnovamento,” “I see no one in Italy who could undertake our emancipation. Instead of imitating Pius, Ferdinand, and Leopold, who violated their sworn compacts, he maintains his with religious observance—vulgar praise in other times, but to-day not small, being contrary to example.” Victor Emmanuel, reading the book, was as much impressed by it as Cavour had been, and time and again repeated, “I will do what Gioberti says.”

Pius IX., still amiable, still suave, was kept in Rome by French arms, and was solely occupied in proving his own insufficiency as a temporal ruler of any sort whatever. He had retracted all his liberal acts, made friends with all his old foes, and placed entire charge of state affairs in the hands of that most unsavory of men, Cardinal Antonelli. Under him the Jesuits resumed their former activity, and soon had closed completely about the Pope. Then it was that the works of Gioberti, the “Primato” and the “Prolegomeni,” which had once so greatly delighted the Pope, were[82] placed upon the Index Expurgatorius and publicly condemned by the Church. The action had no other effect than to amuse the world; Italy and all friends of Italy had read and pondered the great treatises, and drawn their own conclusions from them irrespective of the wishes of the Roman See.

Gioberti died in Paris October 16, 1852, just as the new era in Italian affairs which he had predicted in his last book was actually commencing with the advent of Cavour as Prime Minister of Piedmont.

When we review Gioberti’s work we find that it was chiefly important as a stimulus to Italian patriotic thought, as a threshing out of theories and principles in preparation for a true realization of national needs and hopes. That the philosophy, in so far as it was political, of his “Primato” failed to prove true when attempted in practice, and must inevitably so have failed as we see now, did not affect his influence over his own generation. That influence was one which contrasted sharply with Mazzini’s, Gioberti always preaching orderly organization, Mazzini daring attempts of many sorts, both alike in the ardor of their enthusiasm.

While Mazzini appealed to the mass, Gioberti appealed to the scholars, the clergy, the think[83]ing classes, and his appeal was patriotic as well as intellectual. In his “Primato” he stirs his countrymen to consider their country’s place among the nations. “While to the north,” he says, “there is a people numbering only twenty-four millions who rule the sea, make Europe tremble, own India, vanquish China and occupy the best parts of Asia, Africa, America and Oceania, what great things have we Italians done? What are our manual and intellectual exploits? Where are our fleets and our colonies? What rank do our legates hold; what force do they wield; what wise or authoritative influence do they exert in foreign courts? What weight attaches to the Italian name in the balance of European power? Foreigners, indeed, know and still visit our country, but only for the purpose of enjoying the changeless beauty of our skies and of looking upon the ruins of our past. But what profits it to speak of glory, riches, and power? Can Italy say she has a place in the world? Can she boast of a life of her own and of a political autonomy, when she is awed by the first insolent and ambitious upstart who tramples her under foot and galls her with his yoke? Who is there who shudders not when he reflects that, disunited as we are, we must be the prey of any assailant whatever, and that we owe even that wretched fraction of independ[84]ence which charters and protocols still allow us to the compassion of our neighbors?” Then he concludes, “Although all this has come upon us through our own fault; nevertheless, by the exercise of a little strength of will and determination, without upheavals or revolutions and without perpetrating injustice, we can still be one of the first races in the world.”

With consummate skill he arranged a national program in which the Pope, the Princes, the people, even Austria, should have a part, and it was scarcely to be wondered that inasmuch as each interest was flattered each thought well of the program. The clergy were no less delighted with the eloquence of one of their own number than with his teaching that religion and patriotism should go hand in hand, those high in power felt that their power would be left them under his theory, and the people were stirred by his eloquence and dreams of what Italy should become. As a result there arose what was known as the “Neo-Guelph” party, which, harking back to the Middle Ages, sought to place the Pope at the head of the national movement. And, by a beautiful coincidence of history, just at that moment a new Pontiff, one of that clergy which had so greatly admired Gioberti’s writings, ascended St. Peter’s throne. In these facts you have the cause of Gio[85]berti’s commanding position in the early years of the great struggle.

Unfortunately Gioberti’s theories were dreams, not even so practical as the aspirations of Mazzini’s “Young Italy.” He had failed utterly to grasp the need of absolute administrative concentration and did not accurately estimate the jealousies and prides of the petty Princes and the churchmen. He believed that those forces which had so long destroyed Italian unity could be made to unite to restore it, he believed that the Roman Church could exercise a wise temporal authority. He looked back to the Middle Ages, and spoke with some of Savonarola’s words. He appealed to his people’s ancient love of art and letters, to the glories of the mediæval cities, to the world-wide authority of Rome and St. Peter’s. The appeal stirred the imagination of the intellectual classes, and drew the attention of other countries to the fallen estate of Italy. Beyond that it could not be effective; the needs of State and Church, of Princes and people, had grown too unalterably opposed. Mazzini was far nearer right, a truer teacher, a surer guide.

The time came when Gioberti recognized that Italy’s salvation lay in the strong hand, and this he acknowledged in his last book. It is the truest of all his political philosophies because he had then[86] understood that the future belonged to men of such abilities as were possessed by Cavour and Victor Emmanuel, and to a well-knit nation rather than to a confraternity of ill-assorted states.

Yet for all its fallacies Gioberti’s “Primato” woke intellectual Italy from a sleep which had lasted centuries, and made it consider the problem of its regeneration.

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MANIN, THE “FATHER OF VENICE”

The story of Venetian glory seemed closed with the last years of the Eighteenth Century. The proud Queen of the Adriatic had seen her jewels stolen one by one, and had finally become the toy of wanton powers. Venice was no longer self-reliant, no longer coldly virtuous, her grandeur had sunk into a memory, her civic honor been bedimmed by gross corruption. “Venice was,” said the world, and France, parceling out the conquests of the young Napoleon, handed Venetia and the City of the Doges to Austria. There was no opportunity for self-defense, Napoleon had removed all military stores and confiscated the Venetian fleet, the citizens buried the lion-banners of Saint Mark beneath their churches, and silently watched the Austrians enter. The last Doge, aged and bent with years, fell senseless as he opened his lips to swear allegiance to the House of Hapsburg. Europe considered the fate of Venice sealed.

Napoleon came and went, and men as well as maps experienced gigantic changes, but still Venice slept. She had become a part of the Austrian Em[88]pire, a new generation grew up who had never known Venice free, who only learned their city’s history by stealth. Among this new generation was Daniel Manin, son of a Jew who had embraced Christianity and who had adopted the surname of his noble patron the last Doge, according to Venetian custom. So it happened that the last free ruler of Venice and the man who was to raise her from sleep bore the same name. There was also transmitted to the boy the ancient hate of Austria.

Born in 1804 Daniel Manin early showed a strong love of learning, which was eagerly tended by his father, a lawyer of some note. The father taught his son the history of his city, he brought him up to see the unjust practices of Napoleon and of Austria, he kindled in him the passion for liberty. The boy studied jurisprudence and the growth of Venetian dialects, at fifteen he translated the apocryphal book of Enoch from the Hebrew, at seventeen he became a Doctor of Laws, and had translated Pothier’s great French work on Roman law before he was twenty-one. The year he came of age he married, and a little later settled in the small town of Maestra, which lies at the entrance to the Lagoons, and started to practise his profession of advocate, which under Austrian rule allowed him only to act in civil cases,[89] and then merely in a consulting capacity and never as a pleader in the courts.

Even in early youth his health was poor; although his mind was unusually active and well-balanced he was subject to frequent visitations of great physical weariness which at times made it impossible for him to accomplish anything. Later in life he wrote, “The act of living, in a healthy person, considered in itself, ought to be a pleasure; but to me from my very childhood, it has always been a painful effort. I always feel weary.” He was frequently morbid just at the time when his growing family required all his energy for support.

In person the young lawyer was rather striking, not tall, but spare, with unusually animated blue eyes, thick chestnut hair, and features full of changing expression, quick to show the temper of his mind. For all his underlying weariness and continued depression he often appeared gay and cheerful on the surface; it was his nature to be unselfish, and to turn a brave face towards the world.

Working as an advocate Manin gave up his spare hours to studying Venetian patois and to planning how in time his city might loosen the bonds of Austrian tyranny. As early as 1830, when he was only twenty-six, he joined with three[90] close friends in a plot to seize the Venetian arsenal, and drew up a proclamation intended to excite the citizens. The movement throughout northern Italy on which the friends relied failed to materialize, and the plan fell through. Fortunately the authors of the proclamation were not discovered, and Manin was permitted to continue his profession. He did not believe in secret societies, and would not join them; he devoted himself to studying Austria’s colonial weaknesses.

The first step which brought him seriously to the notice of the government was his work on behalf of the Italian bankers who were associated with some Germans in building a railway between Venice and Milan. There had been a disagreement as to the route of the railway, and the Austrian viceroy had sided with the Germans. Manin was engaged to represent the Italian bankers, and conducted his side of the case with great skill. The Austrian government finally concluded the matter by arbitrarily dissolving the Italian Railways Association. The case had however shown Manin a possible mode of attacking the foreign despotism, finding flaws in its laws and concentrating on such weaknesses until eventually its whole fabric was loosened. He did not believe that any sudden local revolution could succeed, he saw only the loss of valuable lives thereby, but he did believe that[91] the way for some later far-sweeping rising might be paved by consecutive breaches in the enemy’s legal walls. This opinion was the result of his evenly-balanced, deliberate judgment; he could at times, as he was to show later, throw himself passionately into a cause, without regard to consequences, but his nature was not that of the ardent revolutionary; he relied on cool, sober judgments, and was not readily led from them by illusions. In his notes we find him writing, “Against disorder I feel a repulsion not only of reason but of instinct, the same as I feel against everything contrary to the laws of harmony, a deformed face, a discordant sound.”

His advocacy of the Italian bankers brought Manin before the Venetian public, he was recognized as an able speaker with a deep knowledge of law. He spoke before the Venetian Athenæum on the obligation of thinkers to inspire and stimulate men of action. The subject gave him a chance to draw attention to the present lethargy of Venice and to urge consideration of new ideas affecting trade and commerce. He hoped to unite northern Italians through the new principle of free trade. Fortunately Cobden, the great English advocate of free trade, was traveling in Italy; he visited Venice and met Manin and some of the other Venetian leaders of opinion just as[92] he had met Cavour at Turin and Massimo d’Azeglio at Genoa.

Various small events gave the lawyer a chance to speak publicly to his fellow-citizens. At the Scientific Congress which met in September, 1847, he was appointed a commissioner to investigate the charitable institutions of Venice, and in doing this work he came upon the case of a poor infirm workman who had placed a placard upon a public wall complaining that the government had left him to starve, and for which action had been placed in a lunatic asylum. Manin reported the case and wrote, “The physicians acknowledge the man is sane; but they dare not set him at liberty, fearing it would be contrary to the views of the police and government. For my part, I have a better opinion of the government and the police. I do not admit that they create madmen by decrees. If Padovini is culpable there are the laws.” Count Palffy, the Governor, was very much vexed. “We must release Padovini from the madhouse,” he said, “and put Manin in his place.”

About the same time Count Jablonski, a relation of the Venetian Governor, wrote a paper urging the Italians to become resigned. In reply Manin set down his thoughts in a page which seems to sum up his whole purpose, a wonderful expression of his philosophy. It was not published at[93] that time, but was later found among his papers. It read:

“It is the fashion to preach resignation.

“I distinguish two kinds of resignation; the one virtuous and manly; the other cowardly, and worthy only of fools.

“The strong man, when overcome by misfortune, seeks the means of remedying it. Does he find any? In spite of difficulties, he applies himself to the task, excited, cheerful, and vigorous, full of energy and pertinacity. It is only when he is certain that no remedy exists, that he becomes resigned. This is manly resignation.

“The coward, when misfortune overtakes him, allows himself to be cast down, and seeks no means of remedying it. However spontaneous and easy relief may present itself to his mind, he attempts nothing, he wishes neither to trouble nor expose himself—he is resigned: this is the resignation of the fool.

“Therefore, resignation is virtuous and manly under evils manifestly without remedy; it is cowardly and stupid when we can in any way free ourselves from these evils.

“In the individual, resignation may often be virtuous; in a nation it is perhaps never so, for the misfortunes of a nation are seldom irremediable.

“To overcome the misfortunes of a nation, we[94] can employ the whole intellectual, moral, and physical power of all its citizens; and if the generation which commences the generous task does not succeed in accomplishing it, other generations follow, who will attain success; for nations never die.

“This is the reason why those who advise resignation to nations, advise cowardice, and the nations which become resigned are cowards.”

Therein lies the whole wisdom of Manin’s political philosophy, and also that of many of the earlier Italian patriots. How could Austria hope to keep such men forever in subjection?

Manin’s avowed purpose was to show again and again that the Austrians were not obeying the laws which they had themselves given to the subject provinces. One of the methods of Austrian administrative rule was the use of supposedly representative councils called the Central and Provincial Congregations, which were designed to communicate the wishes of the people of Venice and Lombardy in the form of petitions to the Imperial council, and which had failed lamentably to use even that meager power. On December 9, 1847, Nazari, a deputy to the Lombard Congregation, moved that the grievances of the country be represented to the Imperial government. Not a single Venetian deputy followed his lead, but Manin, as a private individual, signed a petition to the[95] Venetian Congregation calling upon them to speak for the people. His comments were brief but vigorous. “The Congregations,” he said, “have never been the interpreters of our wants or wishes—their silence has arisen from a fear of displeasing the government; but this fear is unjust, and injurious: for it is unjust and injurious to suppose that the government has granted to this kingdom a derisory national representation, that it deceived, and still deceives, this country and Europe, in making laws which it does not wish to be observed, and in prosecuting and punishing those who intend observing them.” The Venetians were delighted with the petition, they were beginning to feel the first thrills of a new civic life. On December 30, Manin and Tommaseo, a brilliant poet and public-spirited citizen, drew up another address which in bold terms denounced the Austrian censorship of the press contrary to a specific clause in the law of 1815. All the members of the Ateneo, the literary club of Venice, signed the petition that went with the address.

The Austrians failed to see in the unrest that appeared throughout Italy at the close of 1847 more than a series of local and widely-separated disturbances, and made small effort to appease any of the leaders. For their part in preparing the Venetian petition Manin and Tommaseo were ar[96]rested and thrown into prison on January 18, 1848, charged with high treason. The temper of the newly-aroused people was uncertain, on the morning after the arrest the streets of Venice were seen blossoming with signs ominous to peace and Austrian supremacy, “Viva l’Italia!” “Viva Manin e Tommaseo!” and “Morte ai Tedeschi!”

From the date of his imprisonment Manin underwent many sufferings, one of the chief being his inability longer to help in nursing a daughter to whom he was passionately devoted and who was suffering from a tedious and most painful nervous disease. At almost the same time his younger sister, who was ill in Trevisa, died from the shock of hearing of his imprisonment. He had been able to save very little for dark days, now that they were come he could do nothing to tide his little household through them. Outwardly he was calm and strong of will, inwardly he was tormented by a hundred fears. Yet he could write from prison to his brave wife, saying, “If you continue to be strong and courageous, these will be the happiest days of my life.... You will find a few pieces of gold in one drawer, a little silver in another.... If this affair lasts long, we must think of providing for you in some way. Love one another, my angels: be resigned, that is sufficient.”

A valiant attempt was made by Teresa Manin to[97] secure her husband’s release on bail, the authorities put her off continually, and finally the Director-General replied that he did not believe himself authorized to accede to her request. This final reply caused an outburst of popular indignation. The Venetians dressed themselves in mourning, and with heads bared filed slowly before the windows of the prison on the Riva dei Schiavoni, where Manin and Tommaseo were confined. As long as he remained in prison the other advocates united in caring for Manin’s legal practice, and high-spirited friends among all classes insisted on providing his family with all necessities. He himself hoped to be able to support them by reprinting a small treatise on Venetian jurisprudence, but permission to advertise its sale was denied him by the government. A little later, however, Austrian permissions became no longer necessary, and Manin’s family lived on the proceeds of the sale of this work and on the small legacy left to him by his sister. He had little time to think of self-support when he became dictator.

The ancient spirit of Venice was slowly rising as day after day news came that men throughout Italy were turning on their despots. The Nicoletti and the Castellani, the two historic factions of the people, the blacks and the reds, renounced their ancient feud and took a common secret oath to[98] war only with Austria until Venice was free. The young nobles resigned their Austrian offices and ranks, they had heard what the nobility of Milan were accomplishing. The examination into the charges against Manin and Tommaseo continued, although nothing illegal could be proved against them there was a prospect of their arbitrary removal out of Venice and to that prison of Spielberg where the careers of so many gifted Italian patriots had ended. Manin heard that the French had driven their King from his throne, he wondered what effect the growing tumult of that revolution year would have on Venice. He did not have to wait long to learn. The flames of revolt had spread across Europe even to Vienna, Metternich had fled from the city in peril of his life, the Austrian throne was tottering. Manin saw what was coming, and made his plans even while he was in prison to secure Venice against anarchy.

On the morning of March 17, 1848, the Venetians hastened to the dock to learn the latest news of Vienna from the Trieste packet. A French merchant on board called to the gondoliers the news, “A Constitution at Vienna! The Recognition of Italian Independence! A Free Press! A National Guard!” The words were sufficient, the people rushed to the Governor’s palace and demanded the immediate release of Manin and Tommaseo. The[99] Governor wavered, declaimed, finally yielded, saying, “I do what I ought not to do.” The people swept to the prison, and beating down the doors, discovered the two captives. “You are free!” the leaders shouted. Manin still chose to follow the usage of law, and asked to see the warrant for his release. It was produced, and then he and his fellow captive were led forth from the dreary cells with loud acclaims of joy. Manin was raised in a chair, and so carried to the great Square of St. Mark’s, the scene of so many triumphs in Venetian history. The yellow and black flag of Austria had in some mysterious fashion fluttered down from the ancient flag-staves that guard the square and in its place floated the red, white, and green emblem. “Speak!” cried the people, and Manin, pale, infirm, and gaunt from prison life, rose and spoke with his remarkably persuasive voice. He said he did not know to what great events he owed his freedom, but could see clearly that nationality and patriotic fire had grown wonderfully during the past few months. “But forget not, I beg,” he implored, “that true and lasting liberty can only rest on order, and that you must make yourselves the emulous guardians of order if you would show that you are worthy to be free.” He paused a moment, then added, “Yet there are times pointed out to us by Providence[100] when insurrection becomes not only a right, but a duty.”

Manin returned home, already intent on plans to regulate the new order of things. Towards night the great bell in the Ducal Chapel sounded the warning note, the people rushed to the Piazza to find a battalion of Croats tearing down the Italian tricolor, the people resisted, the soldiers cleared the square with a bayonet charge, but the Venetians had tasted triumph too fully to be dismayed. Some of them went to Manin and asked him to lead them against the Croats. “This is not the way,” he answered, “we must have a civic guard.” He sent a messenger to the Governor. “Tell him that to-day his life was in my hands, and that I preached order, not vengeance; and now, in the interest of his own life as well as of order, he must at once organize a civic guard.”

Again Count Palffy hesitated and put off the demand from day to day. He sent messengers to the Viceroy at Verona, and the latter telegraphed him permission to enroll two hundred citizens. Three thousand at once took arms and called on Manin to give them his commands. “Let all who will not absolutely obey me depart,” he said, but no one left. At last Venice again had an army of her own.

There was no immediate bloodshed. The leading[101] citizens conferred as to what course Venice should take if the revolution in Vienna succeeded. Some were for joining the kingdom of Charles Albert, some for uniting with Lombardy, some for an Austrian ruler under a constitution. Manin scattered their diverse views, he told them that their immediate need was freedom, that their city must actually be in their own charge before considering her destiny. Rumors came that the city was about to be bombarded, there was danger both from the arsenal and from the sea, and on the night of March 21 Manin laid his plans before the chief patriots and told them that they must seize the arsenal. “The people of Venice,” he said, “can only understand one cry, ‘Let the Republic live!’” Still the others hesitated; one said, “The people are incapable of sacrifices!” “You do not know them,” cried Manin. “I know them; that is my sole merit, you will see!”

Newcomers arrived, and still Manin, worn with argument, pressed his opinion. He finished, saying, “We must have the Republic, and join with it Saint Mark. The Republic and Saint Mark will echo in Dalmatia.”

“Viva San Marco!” came an answering cry. “It is the only one, the rallying cry of Venice!”

The conference agreed; Manin sent for the commander-in-chief of the civic guard. “The city[102] is threatened with bombardment,” he said. “I wish to take the arsenal at all hazards. You must make me commander-in-chief for a day. Form the six battalions into two brigades, and give me their captains for eight hours.” The general, astounded at the advocate’s demand, left without making a reply. Manin sent to the other commanders making the same demand. One by one they refused, claiming that the project was too wild.

Meanwhile the soldiers at the arsenal were in mutiny and had killed the second officer in command; there was danger of the spirit of anarchy spreading. At the same time the last of the commanders, Major Olivieri, placed his single battalion at Manin’s command. The advocate seized his sword, called his son, a boy of sixteen, to follow him, and put himself at the head of the two hundred guards. The little band marched on the arsenal and forced the commander to surrender; almost before the Austrian officers knew what had happened the Venetians were distributing the military stores among the people. At the moment of taking the arsenal Manin had sent word to call the whole people into St. Mark’s Square. He found the ancient banner, the wingéd lion, and raising it from the dust where it had lain for fifty years he unfurled it before his company and led them back across the Piazzetta into the great[103] square. He had told the people he would meet them there at noon; now he stood before them, bearing the emblem that proclaimed that Venice had risen from her lengthy slumbers. He spoke to the assembled city. “Venetians, we are free! And we are so without the shedding of blood, either our own, or our brothers’, for to me all men are brothers. But when the old government is overturned, the new must take its place; the best now seems to me to be the Republic which speaks of our past glory and adds the liberty of modern times. But by this we shall not separate from our Italian brothers, but rather form one of those centers destined to aid in fusing our Italy into one people. Live the Republic! Live liberty! Live Saint Mark!”

The civic guards swore to defend with their lives the new Republic and its founder, the aged wept, the young embraced, all raised their hands in gratitude to heaven. The people reveled in noble delirium of joy. Venice looked upon Manin as its deliverer; the citizens did not know the physical anguish he had undergone. Pathetic are the words of his little daughter Emilia as she heard her father proclaimed. “I ought,” she wrote, “to be filled with ineffable gladness, but a weight continually presses my heart.”

Manin had scarcely closed his eyes for five days[104] and nights. As soon as the people would release him now he went home utterly exhausted: he said to his friends, “Leave me at least this night to rest, or I shall die.”

The Austrian authorities saw that resistance would be of little avail, their own forces were too small and too much in sympathy with the people’s cause to give them a sense of any real power on which to rely, and accordingly the Governor acceded to the terms imposed upon him. All foreign troops were to be removed, the forts and all military stores surrendered, the government transferred to the charge of a Committee of Venetian citizens. The demands were sweeping, the Austrian government later regarded the Venetian capitulation as the most humiliating they suffered in the revolutionary year of 1848.

That same night the provisional government announced to the people the terms of the Austrian capitulation, and the citizens were amazed to find that neither the name of Manin nor of Tommaseo was included in the new government. They made their dissatisfaction so apparent that friends went to see Manin to beg him to send some message to the people. He dictated the following lines from his bed: “Venetians! I know that you love me, and, in the name of that love, I ask you to conduct yourselves, during the legitimate manifestation of[105] your joy, with that dignity which belongs to men worthy of being free. Your friend, Manin.”

The people heard the message and quietly dispersed. Next day the provisional government found that the new Republic would only have the one man at its head, and so they asked Manin to form a government. He did so immediately, taking for himself the Presidency of the Council and Foreign Affairs. He composed his government of men of different classes and different religions, all Venetians were assured of perfect equality in their new state. The patriarch blessed the standard of the Republic, and the commander of the fleet read the list of the ministry to the people. The reading was broken by constant cries of “Viva Manin! President of the Republic!”

Thus Venice became free after fifty years of bondage. It was now Manin’s concern to see that she was kept free. He recognized how slight were her resources, and he became at once an eager adherent of French intervention in northern Italy. Charles Albert of Piedmont and Mazzini were both acclaiming an Italy won by the Italians, but Manin foresaw, what Cavour was later to recognize, that foreign allies were absolutely essential.

France, however, was in a most unsettled condition, her ministers did not wish to see a strong state of upper Italy on their southern borders;[106] they were already longing to annex Savoy, and yet as good republicans they felt themselves bound to aid the revolted states against Austrian tyranny. Manin made overtures for an alliance, at first merely feeling his way, but as the summer progressed, and the need grew more and more apparent, by definite overtures. The French Consul at Venice was most hopeful. He said to Manin, “It is well known that the sympathy of France, when she possesses liberty of action, is never without results.” In reply Manin said that he hoped “that the united efforts of the different Italian states, the ardor which animates the people of the Peninsula, will suffice to expel the enemy; if not, we shall have recourse to the generosity of France. Meanwhile, we should be glad to see at once some French vessels in the Adriatic, and I beg that you will lose no time in communicating our wishes to the foreign ministry.”

Manin wished to convene a popular assembly as soon after he assumed office as possible, and on June 3 such a deliberative body met, its members having been elected by universal suffrage from Venice and the free districts of the Dogado. Their first important task was to decide whether they would join with Lombardy in union under Piedmont’s King. Manin believed that the decision as to such a step ought to be deferred until the war[107] was ended, but a strong party opposed his opinion. His partisans entered into a bitter fight with the opposition, for a time it looked as though the split in the Assembly would lead to civil war. Manin rose and implored those who were his friends to place no further obstacles in the path of fusion. Moved by his passionate appeal for harmony the Assembly passed the act of fusion with few negative votes, and at the same time resolved that “Daniel Manin had deserved well of his country.” He spoke again, saying, “While the foreigner is still in Italy, for God’s sake let there be no more talk of parties. When we are rid of him we will discuss these matters among ourselves as brothers. This is the only recompense I ask of you.”

The Assembly elected Manin head of the new ministry, but he declined on the ground that he had always been a republican and would feel out of place as a royal minister. In addition his health demanded that he seek some rest.

The new Venetian ministry lasted until August 7, when the Royal Commissioners assumed office. Unfortunately Charles Albert was already being beaten back in Lombardy, and on August 9 signed the armistice of Salasco, by which all claims to Venice were renounced. When word came to the city the Venetians were dumbfounded, then mad with indignation. Finally they rushed to Manin’s[108] house, calling for him and denouncing the Royal Commissioners. Manin told the excited people that he would stake his head upon the Commissioners’ patriotism. He went to see them and then addressed the citizens again. “The day after tomorrow,” he said, “the Assembly will meet to appoint a new government. For these forty-eight hours I govern.” The people dispersed, satisfied now that their idol was at their head again. The Assembly when it met wished to make Manin dictator, but he pleaded his ignorance of military matters, and a triumvirate was formed, made up of Admiral Graziani, Colonel Cavedalis, and himself.

Just when it seemed as though France was finally deciding to come to the aid of northern Italy, England intervened and proposed a plan of joint mediation. To add to this obstacle Charles Albert declared that Italy would act for herself, and the chances of Venice winning a foreign ally were reduced to practically nothing. Italians from Naples to Piedmont were showing themselves to be individual heroes, but their efforts were ineffectual without a general leader. The Romans were hampered by the inaction of the Pope. Pius IX. had promised great things in the cause of national independence, but when the German Cardinals told him that in case he declared war against Austria he would forfeit their allegiance his enthusiasm[109] waned. The Austrian general, Radetzky, was slowly winning back the fields lost in Lombardy, Vicenza fell, then Milan, and Austria felt herself strong enough to declare a blockade of Venice. As the summer of 1848 ended it became clear that Venice would be left to herself, that the tide of revolution in the other states was already ebbing, and that Piedmont had shot her bolt. Manin still hoped that some ally would succor the small city in her war against the great empire, but whether an ally should come or not he was determined that Venice should set an example of resistance that would show Europe how well freedom was deserved.

The city, in its state of siege, stood in the greatest need of money. Manin had only to ask, and all classes brought forth their savings, their heirlooms, whatever they had of value, to give to the cause. The old aristocracy, the boys in the street, every one who loved Venice, made their sacrifices gladly, reverently. Private citizens clothed many of the soldiers, palaces were given for public uses, Manin gave all his family plate and would accept no salary; General Pepe, the aged commander-in-chief, gave a picture by Leonardo da Vinci that was his dearest possession. No one thought of his own need, all thought solely of keeping Venice free. If she returned to bondage they cared little what became of them.

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Ugo Bassi, the heroic priest who was later to fight with Mazzini on the walls of Rome, and still later to die at the hands of Austrian executioners, preached daily to the Venetians. There was no lack of noble spirits who recalled to them the great glories of the past. But above and beyond all the others the people loved Manin, they had come to link his name indissolubly with that of their city, he was their father, they his devoted children. If ever a man merited such devotion it was Manin. With the cares of his city weighing perpetually on his mind, planning, advising, encouraging, he fought the ravages of disease that crippled his resources, and spent the nights watching by the bedside of his sick child. At one time, in November, there was fear for his life, and Venice shook with apprehension. He recovered and took up the burden of government with his marvelous stoic calm.

In spite of the fact that the city was besieged and money scarce, Venice was characteristically buoyant. The theater, the Fenice, was crowded; fêtes and carnivals, always patriotically fervent, were of daily occurrence; processions, music, all that appealed to the eye and the ear and the imagination fed the Venetian love of glory. Their city was free, and the people awakened the echoes of that great life which had been theirs before[111] captivity, they forgot so far as they could that they had ever slumbered. On the morning of November 17 Mass was celebrated in memory of all the martyrs to Italian liberty, and that same night the entire city was thrilled by a wonderful display of the Aurora Borealis which set the snow-caps of the Alps vividly before their eyes. They lived on faith, and hope, and trust in Daniel Manin, and found propitious omens with sea-dwellers’ skill.

In December some Roman volunteers left Venice to join their fellow citizens, and with them went Ugo Bassi. He bade Manin a touching farewell, foreseeing what lay before both his own city and Venice. He had venerated the Pope who had held out such noble hopes to all Italians, but he could do so no more, and in his place put the hero of Venice. As he left the city he kissed the stone plate on Manin’s door, saying, “Next to God and Italy, before the Pope—Manin.”

The Assembly which had voted for fusion with Piedmont was dissolved, and a new one elected. Manin was determined that his government should have the fullest power over the city. He deemed this essential to any hopes of ultimate success. Some members of the Assembly disagreed with him, and advocated restriction. “It is not a question of power,” replied Manin, “but of saving[112] the country. If we are to be hampered on every turn by forms and limitations, we cannot act with the promptitude and vigor needful for the preservation of public order (I beg pardon of whoever the expression may offend), and our defense depends more upon that than upon the force of arms.”

The people got wind of the fact that certain of the Assembly were jealous of Manin’s power, and they marched to the Ducal Palace. Manin spoke and dispersed them, but again and again they gathered, making various demonstrations of their trust in him. At length he heard that they had devised a plan to march into the Council Hall and coerce the Deputies who wanted to fetter their “caro Manin.” Fearful of civic strife Manin called his son, and standing alone with him, sword in hand, at the door of the Palace, told the people that they could only enter after killing father and son. He bade them go quietly home, and they obeyed. That night he issued a proclamation. “Brothers, you have caused me great pain to-day. To show your affection for me you have risen in tumult, yet you know how I hate tumult ... as you say you love me, I entreat you to show it by your actions.... To-morrow let there be no shouting, no meetings. Remain at home. Trust in the government and the Assembly, who[113] regard your welfare as dearer to them than life.” He was always the father speaking to his children.

The Assembly listened to the advice of its wisest members, and abandoning all dissension, chose Manin as President of the Republic, giving him complete power both as to internal administration and as to relations with foreign states. Manin spoke in reply: “In accepting the charge which this Assembly has entrusted to me, I am conscious of committing an act of insensate boldness. I accept it. But in order that my good name, and, what is of more importance, your good name and that of Venice, may not be tarnished through this transaction, it behooves that I should be seconded and sustained in my arduous undertaking by your co-operation, confidence, and affection. We have been strong, respected, eulogized, up till now, because we have been united. I ask of you virtues which, if they are not romantic, are at all events of great practical utility. I ask of you patience, prudence, perseverance. With these, and with concord, love, and faith, all things are overcome.”

Charles Albert again took the field and for a brief interval the Austrians were repulsed. Brescia made a heroic stand, and the Venetians heard the news of the little city’s courage with shouts of acclamation and an added determination to fight Austria to the uttermost. The Venetian fleet was[114] kept in constant readiness, the troops slept with their arms, there was only the one thought, to keep the lion-flag of St. Mark flying from the pili.

Then on March 28, 1849, came letters from Turin telling of the utter defeat of Novara and of Charles Albert’s abdication in favor of his son.

The first effect of the news on Venice was absolute stupefaction, then a wild rush to the Square of St. Mark’s. A tremendous crowd called, as usual in its troubles, for its “father, Manin!” Said a foreigner who was a witness of the scene, “The faith of Venice in this man was inconceivable, complete, and absolute. He had never deceived, never abused it. The people seemed to attribute to him omnipotence and omniscience, and believed him capable of guarding Venice from every peril, and of rescuing her from every calamity.”

The President appeared on the Palace balcony. He said that he had not yet received official confirmation of the news from Turin, but his sad expression and his few words showed his belief that the news might prove only too true. Venice passed a night of bitterest gloom, more hopeless even than in the later days when Austrian bombs exploded in the streets. Three similar days followed, and then came official confirmation of the news. Lombardy was Austrian once more.

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The city withstood the shock, and took up its life of outward cheer and hope. On April 25, St. Mark’s Day, there was a grand festa, and Manin spoke. “Who holds out wins,” he declared. “We have held out, and we shall win. Long live St. Mark! This cry, that the seas rang with in old days, we must raise again. Europe looks on, and will praise. We must, we ought to win. To the Sea! To the Sea! To the Sea!” There was tremendous thrill in his magnetic voice, in his deep blue eyes, in the glow of his pallid face; Venice cried aloud with eager hope.

With this spring of 1849 came the great days. When the Assembly had voted to resist Austria at all costs, the people adopted a red ribbon as their emblem. A historian of that time says: “From the top of the Campanile of St. Mark, far above the domes, the roofs, and the spires of the palace and the basilica, beside the golden angel that seemed to watch over the city, they planted a huge red banner, which stood out like a spot of blood against the azure sky, which was seen by the enemy’s fleet afar off in the Adriatic, and by their army on the distant mainland. It defied them both, and announced to them that Venice would fight to the last drop of blood.”

Placards were fixed to every wall, at the corner of every street. They read: “Venice resists![116] Church plate, women’s golden ornaments, bronze bells, copper cooking utensils, the iron of the enemy’s cannon balls—all will be useful. Anything rather than the Croats!”

Night and day workmen had been building ships, now the little fleet fought through the lagunes as had the great fleets of the olden days. The land forces held the shore batteries, and these forces were composed of all the city. One artillery company, famous as the Bandiera-Moro, was made up of the patrician youth of Venice, who, with their ancient love of splendor, wore velvet tunics, gray scarves, and caps with plumes. When the bitter fight came at Fort Malghera they held their guns heroically, fresh men leaping to replace the dead, cheering for Venice as the bombs fell among them, firing and eating and carrying off the wounded under a devastating fusillade. Venice thirsted for glory, and she won it; there are no more stirring tales in history than that of the brief defense of the new-born Republic.

In July came continual bombardment, and with it cholera, and the seeds of sedition spread by Austrian spies. Manin feared civil dissension, he heard grumblers in the streets. No one dared accuse the man, whom the Assembly had chosen absolute dictator, of any wavering or treasonable thought, but some raised cries beneath his win[117]dows in the Piazzetta. The Dictator appeared suddenly before them. “Venetians,” he cried, “is this worthy of you? You are not the people, you are only an insignificant faction. Never will I accede to the caprices of a mob! My acts shall be guided solely by the representatives of the people, assembled in their Congress. I will always speak the truth to you, even should muskets be leveled at my breast, and daggers be pointed at my heart. And now go home, all of you—go home!”

His words swayed even that rebellious crowd, and they cheered him. For the time sedition was silent, but the people were losing hope. They were a mere handful battling with the forces of an empire. Manin saw that all he could do was to insure that his people died as heroes.

The city was the prey of famine, pestilence, and fire when on August 13 she held her last festa. The Dictator spoke to the troops in the Square of St. Mark’s. His words rang like a clarion call. “A people that have done and suffered as our people have done and suffered cannot die. The day shall come when a splendid destiny will be your guerdon. What time will bring that day? This rests with God. We have sown the good seed: it will take root in good soil.... If it be not ours to ward off these calamities, it is ours[118] to maintain inviolate the honor of the city.... One single day that sees Venice not worthy of herself, and all that she has done will be lost and forgotten.” He asked them if they had still their confidence in him, if not he would resign the leadership to another. The Square shook with the thunder of the soldiers’ “Yes!” He went on: “Your indomitable love saddens me, and makes me feel yet more how this people suffer! On my mental and bodily faculties you must not count, but count always on my great, tender, undying affection. And come what may, say, ‘This man was misled:’ but do not ever say, ‘This man misled us.’ I have deceived no one. I have never spread illusions which were not my own. I have never said I hoped when I had no hope.”

As he finished speaking he staggered, and was barely able to get to the Council Chamber. There his physical weakness overmastered him. “Such a people,” he cried brokenly, “for such a people to be obliged to surrender!”

Nevertheless each hour now brought home the conviction that the strength of Venice was ebbing rapidly. Flames and the plague and the unremitting Austrian attack were bringing the proud city to her knees. Manin could only hope that he might at the last make honorable terms of surrender, he would not sacrifice all their heroic ef[119]forts to the desire for instant peace. On August 18 the people gathered in St. Mark’s Square, begging for some word of their President’s plans. He came out before them. “Venetians,” he said, “I have already told you frankly that our situation is a grave one, but if it be grave it is not desperate to the degree of reducing us to cowardice ... it is an infamy to suppose that Venice would ask of me to do what was infamous; and if she should ask it this one sacrifice I would not make—even for Venice.”

Some one in the throng cried, “We are hungry!”

“Let him who is hungry stand forth!” answered Manin.

“None of us,” cried the devoted people. “We are Italians! Long live Manin!”

Five days later the city was torn by conflicting rumors of mutiny and surrender. Manin had not yet succeeded in winning the terms he wanted from the Austrians. When the people called for him he came out on the balcony as he had so often done before. He spoke a few words, and then a sudden pain seized him and he fell fainting into a chair. A little later he reappeared and cried to the cheering people, “Let those who are true Venetians patrol the city to-night with me.” Then he took his sword, and at the head of a great concourse, marched to the section of the city where[120] the mutineers had gathered. Shots were fired. Manin stepped forward. “If you wish my life, take it!” he said. The mutineers were silenced.

The following day, August 24, 1849, the city capitulated, the stock of provisions having been absolutely exhausted that same day. The terms were honorable, such Venetian soldiers as had been in the Austrian service were to leave Venice. Forty civilians, headed by Manin, were to leave. The powers of government were temporarily lodged in the municipality.

That same day Manin left the Doge’s Palace for his own small house. All day the people passed before the door, saying, “Here lives our poor father! How much he has suffered for us!” He was too absolutely worn out to see any one. At midnight he with his wife and son and invalid small daughter went on board the French steamer Pluton. All but one of them were taking their last farewell of Venice.

The municipality, knowing that their great leader was penniless, had gathered a small sum of money and forced him to accept it before he left. He felt that the other exiles were in as great need of it as he, and so quietly distributed it among them through friends on the various ships that were bearing the exiles away. He had thought of the people as his children for so long[121] a time that he had still to take the care of them upon himself.

The little family of four felt that it was farewell as they watched the palaces and churches, towers and pillars of the City of the Lagunes drop beneath the horizon. The view of Venice from the sea, incomparably beautiful, must have been unspeakably sad to Manin’s eyes.

When they arrived at Marseilles the devoted wife fell ill of cholera, and, worn out with the long siege, was powerless to resist. She had written on leaving Venice, “All is over, all is lost save honor! I am going to a foreign land, where I shall hear a language not my own. My beautiful language, I shall never hear it again; never more!” She died soon after reaching Marseilles.

Manin took his two children with him to Paris, and gave himself up to nursing the little girl, who was the victim of a continual nervous disorder. The daughter and father were united by a bond of love that was wonderfully strong and spiritual, they seemed to understand each other always without words. He kept a little note-book record of her illness as an aid to the physicians, and after his death the book was found with the touching inscription on the cover, “Alla mia Santa Martire.” Her desire to comfort her father sustained her for some years, she knew that she had[122] become to him in a spiritual manner the living image of his unhappy country. She struggled with all the heroism of a remarkable character to hide her sufferings from him even as he sought to hide from her the anguish her illness caused him. Daniel and Emilia Manin were worthy to be father and daughter, both were heroic souls. In 1854 Emilia died, her last words, “My darling Venice, I shall never see you again!”

Manin and his son stayed on in the French capital, the father giving lessons in Italian for support. He had harbored no resentment against France for her failure to come to the aid of Venice, he felt that the French people were near kin to his own. He welcomed all Italians or sympathizers with Italy, he predicted that eventually the entire peninsula would be one in freedom. He met Cavour in Paris and talked long about Venice with him, he was gradually becoming convinced that Piedmont could and would lead the other states to victory. His study was hung with portraits of the most dissimilar characters, all one in interest for his country, Charles Albert opposite to Mazzini, Garibaldi opposite Gioberti, Montanelli near D’Azeglio. He wrote articles on Italy for the papers and traveled in England to arouse British interest in his cause. It was a great day when he saw the Italian tri-color flying beside the French[123] and English flags to show that Piedmont had joined the allies in the Crimean war. “In serving under the tri-colored flag of Italian redemption,” he wrote, “the soldiers who fight in the Crimea are not the soldiers of the Piedmontese province, but the soldiers of Italy.” He understood the boldness of Cavour’s great diplomatic stroke and gave Piedmont the credit she deserved in becoming the first envoy of a great nation.

While his strength lasted Manin worked in the cause, but finally he was overcome by physical sufferings. He wrote in June, 1857, to his friend the Marquis Pallavicino, “A month’s rest in the country has not calmed the fever of my poor brain. All work, all meditation, is utterly impossible to me. Not only cannot I think about serious things, but I am not able to give my mind to the most unimportant matters. This will explain my silence. I lose patience and hope. My painful and useless life becomes intolerable. I ardently desire the end. Farewell.” The physical weariness with which he had battled all his life was at last overpowering him. He still believed that his principles would ultimately conquer, but knew that he should not see Venice freed. September 22, 1857, he died, at the age of fifty-three years.

August 30, 1849, Radetzky and the Austrians had entered Venice, replaced the Lion banner of[124] St. Mark with the yellow and black flag of Austria, and had expected to see the pleasure-loving city sink back into its former quiescent indolence. What they expected did not come to pass. Instead for seventeen years Venice mourned its lost liberty and lived only in the thought of that day when it should rise again and finally. There was no shame in this subjection, no happy compromise. This was Manin’s achievement, he had made his people worthy to be free. That was the purpose of his heroic struggle, the lesson of his life.

July 5, 1866, the yellow and black flag of Austria fell from the pili, and October 18 of that same year the red, white, and green flag of united Italy greeted a free Venice. There was one wish in the people’s heart, that only their “dear father Manin” might have lived to see that glorious day.

The remains of Manin, his wife and daughter, lie now close to the Church of St. Mark, his statue looks down upon the people in the square before his house even as he so often stood on the Palace balcony to speak to them in the days of 1849. All through Venice there are reminders of him, and he has taken his place among the great heroes of that historic city—himself her greatest hero, her sincerest patriot. The simple advocate, the great President, the “dear father” of the Venetian people.

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MAZZINI, THE PROPHET

Some men become legendary during their own lives. Their personalities have a certain detachment from the rest of the world so that common standards have no value as applied to them. They are poets or seers or philosophers, and often their mystic quality is of little use to the great mass of men, and is only to be appreciated by the few. Sometimes the whole world understands them. Mazzini had become a legend to the people of Europe long before his death, but a legend that carried the strongest personal appeal to every republican heart. You have only to dip into letters of the time to realize how close he came to millions of thinkers throughout Europe.

It would be interesting to consider the force of popular legend in a national movement, to weigh sentiment against statesmanship and military prowess. The land of Dante and of Savonarola would be an especially fertile field for such inquiry, among no people has the prophet been held of higher value than with the Italians. To-day we find them turning to their dramatists and novelists for help in the solution of new social prob[126]lems just as Mazzini and the youth of his day looked to Alfieri for political guidance. There is no doubt that Mazzini believed it was his destiny to be a poet, and that throughout his whole life he looked forward to the day when Italy should be united and free, and he could turn to the work of writing her dramas.

Literary feuds play so little part in Anglo-Saxon history that we find it difficult to understand the importance of their place in Latin countries. Italy a century ago was the battle-ground of the Romanticists and Classicists. The Classicists believed in a certain smug cloistered virtue, a policy of non-resistance, and the contemplation of past glories. It was the ambition of the Romanticists “to give Italians an original national literature, not one that is as a sound of passing music to tickle the ear and die, but one that will interpret to them their aspirations, their ideas, their needs, their social movement.” Alfieri had been preaching resistance to Austrian tyranny through his dramas, the boy Mazzini first looked to him as a political saviour of Italy. He wrote, “these literary disputes are bound up with all that is important in social and civil life,” and again “the legislation and literature of a people always advance on parallel lines.” “Young Italy” first hoped to win freedom through its literature.

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The ill-fated Carbonari rebellion of 1821 sent many Piedmontese patriots flying through Genoa to Spain. Giuseppe Mazzini, then sixteen years of age, walking from church one Sunday morning in Genoa in company with his mother, was stopped by a tall, gaunt-featured, black-eyed man who held out his hat asking alms for “the refugees of Italy.” The scene made a tremendous impression on the youth’s mind, for the first time he felt that the cause of freedom was not a scholastic subject, but one demanding the height of sacrifice. He set himself to study the causes of the failure of past uprisings, and at the same time dedicated himself to the work of teaching his countrymen how they might succeed.

The French Revolution had failed because it had taught men only a knowledge of their rights, without any conception of their duties. Men had not learned the law of self-restraint, and their ideal was the greatest personal liberty rather than the greatest personal obligation to their fellow-men. The revolutionists of Europe had a philosophy, but no religion. The first great discovery that Mazzini made was that if Italy were ever to be united, his countrymen must be fired with faith in their own God-given destinies. They must make of their cause a religion, they must learn, in his words, that Italy “had a strength within her, that was[128] arbiter of facts, mightier than destiny itself.” At the start he offered his countrymen two arguments for action, the one that this land of theirs had twice ruled the world, that she who had given Christianity and the Renaissance to Europe had yet to send forth “the gospel of humanity.” He wrote: “Italy has been called a graveyard; but a graveyard peopled by our mighty dead is nearer life than a land that teems with living weaklings and braggarts;” he showed Italians “the vision of their country, radiant, purified by suffering, moving as an angel of light among the nations that thought her dead.” Such words rang like an inspiration, but Mazzini, studying the men with whom he had to work, knew that such inspiration was not enough. They struck the note of glory, but all revolutionists had heard that note; what was needed was the call to self-sacrifice.

With this fundamental need firmly fixed in his mind Mazzini gave what spare hours fell to the lot of a young Italian lawyer to the work of writing to the independent journals. At first he leaned to the side of caution, realizing how strict was the censorship of the Italian press, but gradually he contrived to slip bolder and more inflammatory messages into circulation under the censor’s nose. He spoke of a new party that should arise in a short time, and called it “Young Italy,” he ex[129]pressed deep sympathy with political exiles, he turned his literary criticisms into studies of national development. Ultimately one of the papers for which he wrote, the “Indicatore Livornese,” became too daring, and was ended by the authorities. Mazzini then aimed higher, and gained credit with the “Antologia,” the Edinburgh Review of Italy, by a series of articles on the historical drama.

Meanwhile he was still studying the problem of giving a new religion to the youth of Italy. He had joined the Society of the Carbonari, and was learning that the plots and counter-plots of an unwieldy secret society would accomplish no good end. There was too much ritual, too little effort. The Carbonari had no definite plan, they were entirely at the mercy of any chance leader of disaffection, each member only knew one or two other members. Of a sudden the Revolution of July in France fired liberals throughout Europe, Mazzini and his young friends in Genoa immediately began active preparations for a military uprising. Lead was being cast into bullets when the police of Genoa intervened and Mazzini was placed under arrest. He had been suspected of revolutionary sentiments for some time. The Governor of Genoa told Giuseppe’s father that he considered the son “was gifted with some talent, and too fond of[130] walking by himself at night absorbed in thought. What on earth has he at his age to think about? We don’t like young people thinking without our knowing the subject of their thoughts.”

Mazzini was taken to the fortress of Savona, and there imprisoned to await his trial. The commander of the fortress allowed the young prisoner to keep his Bible, Tacitus, and Byron. From these hours of solitary confinement sprang the youth’s passionate regard for the English poet, a man whose writings he later vehemently held were only to be classed with Dante as an inspiration to Italians.

The government could prove nothing definite against him, but he was thought too dangerous a man to be at large, and so was finally given his choice between nominal imprisonment in a small town and exile. France was throbbing with a new democracy, Paris was the center of revolutionary propaganda, and so Mazzini chose exile there. Early in 1831 he parted from his family at Savona and started north. He felt that he had come to the parting of the ways, and that henceforth his life was to be absolutely given to the cause. For the first time he saw the Alps, and his nature, always strongly susceptible to heroic scenery, was deeply stirred. He watched the sunrise from Mont Cenis and wrote, “The first ray of light trem[131]bling on the horizon, vague and pale, like a timid, uncertain hope, then the long line of fire cutting the blue heaven, firm and decided as a promise;” here was the poet soul free at last to speak its message.

With the date of this first exile begins Mazzini’s call to “Young Italy.” He had recognized that his countrymen must waken to a new religion, that their souls must be touched rather than their ambitions. The youth of Italy would feel the call more strongly than the middle-aged. “Place,” he said, “the young at the head of the insurgent masses; you do not know what strength is latent in those young bands, what magic influence the voice of the young has on the crowd; you will find in them a host of apostles for the new religion. But youth lives on movement, grows great in enthusiasm and faith. Consecrate them with a lofty mission, inflame them with emulation and praise; spread through their ranks the word of fire, the word of inspiration; speak to them of country, of glory, of power, of great memories.” “All great national movements,” he wrote later, “begin with the unknown men of the people, without influence except for the faith and will that counts not time or difficulties.” Mazzini was not diffident with regard to his own youthful powers, nor was Cavour, five years Mazzini’s junior, who[132] wrote to a friend at this time prophesying that he would one morning wake up Prime Minister of Italy.

The most important feature of “Young Italy” was its religion, the Carbonari had had none. Men were now told that they had a mission given them by God, and that what had been before a mere personal right had become a sacred duty. The second feature was the liberation of the poor, a need which all former revolutionists had seemed to overlook. The French Revolution had had no such substructure, the poets and dramatists had idealized national rather than social liberty, but Mazzini saw that the time had come for a further step, that Austria was not the only enemy his people had to fear. He wrote, “I see the people pass before my eyes in the livery of wretchedness and political subjection, ragged and hungry, painfully gathering the crumbs that wealth tosses insultingly to it, or lost and wandering in riot and the intoxication of a brutish, angry, savage joy; and I remember that these brutalized faces bear the finger-print of God, the mark of the same mission as my own. I lift myself to the vision of the future and behold the people rising in its majesty, brothers in one faith, one bond of equality and love, one ideal of citizen virtue that ever grows in beauty and might; the people of the future, un[133]spoilt by luxury, ungoaded by wretchedness, awed by the consciousness of its rights and duties, and in the presence of that vision my heart beats with anguish for the present and glorying for the future.” Mazzini gave “Young Italy” as its watchword “God and the People.”

There can be no question but that “Young Italy” was strong where the Carbonari had been weak, but both movements had of necessity many of the same defects. Government espionage forced the new movement like its predecessors to choose the devious courses of a secret society. The restlessness of the age caused the new movement to take each fitful start as a momentous signal. The strength of Austria was not underestimated, but the weakness of the disunited Italian states was. Diplomacy was disregarded; it was only many years later that Mazzini the prophet learned the value of Cavour the statesman. “Young Italy” was launched in a troublous sea, destined to encounter many storms, but fated ultimately to spread abroad the seeds of the hope that was to awaken republicans throughout all European countries.

Mazzini no sooner arrived in Lyons than he found himself in the center of plots. The French government, still fresh from the days of July, was in two minds; first they aided a band of Italian[134] refugees who were planning a raid into Savoy, then they faced about and scattered the conspirators. Another plan was for a trip to Corsica, there to gather arms to aid the insurgents in Romagna, but the funds for this attempt were lacking. Mazzini gave up immediate action for the moment, and locating at Marseilles started with a few youthful friends to organize his great concerted movement. They had nothing but youth and audacity. A contemporary (probably Enrico Mayer) described Mazzini at this time as “about 5 feet 8 inches high, and slightly made; he was dressed in black Genoa velvet, with a large ‘republican’ hat; his long, curling black hair, which fell upon his shoulders, the extreme freshness of his clear olive complexion, the chiseled delicacy of his regular and beautiful features, aided by his very youthful look and sweetness and openness of expression, would have made his appearance almost too feminine, if it had not been for his noble forehead, the power of firmness and decision that was mingled with their gaiety and sweetness in the bright flashes of his dark eyes and in the varying expression of his mouth, together with his small and beautiful mustachios and beard. Altogether he was at that time the most beautiful being, male or female, that I had ever seen, and I have not since seen his equal.”

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Mazzini was proud of these early days when he looked back upon them later. He wrote, “We had no office, no helpers. All day, and a great part of the night, we were buried in our work, writing articles and letters, getting information from travelers, enlisting seamen, folding papers, fastening envelopes, dividing our time between literary and manual work. La Cecilia was compositor; Lamberti corrected the proofs; another of us made himself literally porter, to save the expense of distributing papers. We lived as equals and brothers; we had but one thought, one hope, one ideal to reverence. The foreign republicans loved and admired us for our tenacity and unflagging industry; we were often in real want, but we were light-hearted in a way, and smiling because we believed in the future.” It was Mazzini’s period of boundless hope.

Much of this hope throbbed through the literature that the small Marseilles press scattered throughout Europe, men were in such a state of unrest that the burning words became to them a prophetic writing on the wall. In a hundred ways the contraband pamphlets were smuggled across frontiers, all classes sent assurances of support and aid to the young men in Marseilles, everywhere lodges of “Young Italy” were started, and local editors scattered Mazzini’s doctrines[136] through their immediate territories. Priests, attracted by the strong religious tenor, professional and business men, many of the nobility even joined the new movement. Garibaldi, a young officer in the Genoese merchant service, Gioberti, then a teacher at Vercelli, Ruffini, and his fellow-conspirators working under the very shadow of destruction at Genoa, enrolled under the new standard of “God and the People.” The old members of the Carbonari, the followers of Buonarotti and his “veri Italiani” joined the ranks, within two years “Young Italy” counted its members by the tens of thousands. Not since the era of the great Crusades had there been any simultaneous rising to compare with it.

All men who hoped for the coming of a united Italy looked towards Piedmont as the state by which the first step must be taken. Piedmont had great military traditions. It supported an efficient army, it was so situated that it held the key of entrance into Lombardy, and had the Alps and the Apennines as a base of retreat. In Piedmont there was moreover an intense national feeling, the House of Savoy was deeply rooted in the affections of the people, and almost alone among the Italian sovereignties that House was practically indigenous to the soil. In Charles Albert Piedmont had just received a king who was an in[137]tense nationalist, to whom the name of “Italia” was sacred, and who, at certain times, seems to have felt that he was destined to drive the foreigner beyond the Alps. He was no liberal, both his nature and his priestly advisers counseled him against revolutionary measures, he had not the sanguine temper of the leader, he was more the theorist than the actor. Yet with all his temperamental defects the men of the new generation looked on him as a possible saviour, he had given countenance to the Carbonari in his youth, and had led the conspirators of 1821 to believe that he would side with them in any war for Lombard independence. He had not given such aid as they expected, but he was still the one sovereign to whom “Young Italy” could look with any measure of hope. Mazzini was never an ardent believer in monarchies, but now, when his new party was growing with tremendous leaps and bounds, he felt that even the leadership of a king was better than no leadership at all. He was ready at this time to sacrifice republicanism for nationalism; how far he would then have followed a monarchy, if successful, is a difficult question to decide. He was so much in earnest that he could not always critically balance the means and the end.

Early in 1831 Mazzini published his famous letter to Charles Albert. It was the cry of a[138] prophet to a later generation. He pointed out that the King of Piedmont needed no aid from Austria or France. “There is a crown more brilliant and sublime than that of Piedmont, a crown that waits the man who dares to think of it, who dedicates his life to winning it, and scorns to dull the splendor with thoughts of petty tyranny. Sire, have you ever cast an eagle glance upon this Italy, so fair with nature’s smile, crowned by twenty centuries of noble memory, the land of genius, strong in the infinite resources that only want a common purpose, girt round with barriers so impregnable, that it needs but a firm will and a few brave breasts to shelter it from foreign insult? Place yourself at the head of the nation, write on your flag, ‘Union, Liberty, Independence.’ Free Italy from the barbarian, build up the future, be the Napoleon of Italian freedom. Do this and we will gather round you, we will give our lives for you, we will bring the little states of Italy under your flag. Your safety lies on the sword’s point, draw it and throw away the scabbard. But remember, if you do it not, others will do it without you and against you.”

Charles Albert had moments of heroism, but they were only too often followed by moments of overwhelming caution. If he ever read Mazzini’s letter he must have thrilled at the call to save a[139] country he loved with the whole ardor of his nature. After that first thrill had passed he must have realized that the time to take such a supreme step had not come, or that he had not the will to lead it. Once harboring such a doubt the King became a battle-ground for advisers, and when the short fight for control of the King’s mind was won, the reactionaries proved themselves the victors. The unfortunate King allowed others to act against his better judgment; when the fire of revolt next blazed up in Piedmont the government turned a savage face towards the conspirators. The little band of revolutionists was hounded without mercy, terror reigned in Genoa, and the only choice offered the rebels was between betrayal of their friends and execution. Jacopo Ruffini, one of Mazzini’s dearest boyhood friends, killed himself in prison when offered such an alternative. The pendulum swung back, gaining momentum thereby for its coming flight. “Ideas,” wrote Mazzini, “ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs.”

At twenty-eight Mazzini found himself an outcast, hunted at last from France as he had been before from Italy, living in the closest concealment in Switzerland, all his hopes tumbling about him. He tried to organize a band of raiders who should enter Savoy from the Swiss frontier; they[140] were disrupted by treachery and distrust before the first shot was fired. Mazzini’s health broke under the endless strain, there were nights when he never went to bed, days when he had to lie concealed in a goatherd’s hut. At times he seemed to find his only consolation in the white-capped mountains, them he passionately worshiped, the Alps were always nearest to him after Italy. He had very few friends, almost no books; there were no presses now to speak his words to the young hearts of Europe, only occasionally word came to him that his great idea was growing in the outer world.

In those dark days in Switzerland Mazzini suffered most from the thought that he had entailed all his family and friends in his vain sacrifice. His boyhood confidants were dead or in exile, families he loved were scattered over many countries, the few women he knew well were left solitary in their homes. The woman he loved he felt he could not ask to marry him, he had no home to give her, and scarcely knew whether his next day’s food would be forthcoming. He wrote to a friend, “I wanted to do good, but I have always done harm to everybody, and the thought grows and grows until I think I shall go mad. Sometimes I fancy I am hated by those I love most.” In all his letters of this period we catch the note of a spirit[141] torn between pity for sufferings he thinks himself to have caused, and the stern sense of a duty given him by God. They are wonderful letters, the thoughts of a man who could put no limits to his own self-sacrifice nor value too highly the sacrifices of others. In one letter he wrote: “I think over it from morning to night, and ask pardon of my God for having been a conspirator; not that I in the least repent the reasons for it, or recant a single one of my beliefs, which were and are and will be a religion to me, but because I ought to have seen that there are times when a believer should only sacrifice himself to his belief. I have sacrificed everybody.”

A great heroic spirit was trying to justify, not its own aims, but the sorrows it had brought upon others. Mazzini could never have seemed hard and cold, but in those dark days in Switzerland, and in those later to come in London, the gentle, humble spirit of him was pre-eminent. He loved friendship, home life, the arts; he had met his ideal woman; and yet each and every joy life had to offer him he gave up on the altar of his duty. “Duty,” he said, “an arid, bare religion, which does not save my heart a single atom of unhappiness, but still the only one that can save me from suicide;” and again he wrote, “When a man has once said to himself in all seriousness of thought[142] and feeling, I believe in liberty and country and humanity, he is bound to fight for liberty and country and humanity—fight while life lasts, fight always, fight with every weapon, face all from death to ridicule, face hatred and contempt, work on because it is his duty, and for no other reason.”

In 1837 Mazzini gave up the heights of Switzerland for the fogs of London, moved largely to this change by the fact that in England he need no longer live in hiding. He did not look forward with any eagerness to life in England; if the English cared little what political beliefs refugees brought with them, they were not the people to flame with interest in a cause. Byron, Mazzini considered more Italian than English; he could not conceive of poetry as stirring the British blood. He took cheap lodgings, and set himself to writing for support, finding time to keep up his correspondence with members of “Young Italy” scattered over Europe, and also time to look after such Italians in London as were in greater straits than he. The Ruffini family were with him for a time, then misunderstandings separated them, and the last tie that bound him to Genoa was gone. He lived the pathetic life of a literary hack, spending his days working in the British Museum, and his nights writing in his own small[143] room. The one charm he found about London was its fog. “The whole city,” he wrote, “seems under a kind of spell, and reminds me of the witches’ scene in Macbeth or the Brocksberg or the Witch of Endor. The passers-by look like ghosts—one feels almost a ghost oneself.”

The lack of money oppressed him sorely; he would give to every Italian who begged of him on the score of universal brotherhood, gradually his few possessions went their way to the pawnshop. He said that he needed only a place to write and a few pennies to buy cigars. Then by one of those curious chances of fate he met the Carlyles, and his life became a little less cramped and lonely, although perhaps more tempestuous. There are a score of accounts of evenings Mazzini spent with these new friends, the one of whom he admired as a great thinker, the other as a truly noble woman. In time Carlyle tried the gentle Italian sorely; the story goes that the philosopher would rage at all human institutions with the violence of a hurricane and then turn to his guest with the words, “You have not succeeded yet because you have talked too much.” We can picture the boisterous, stormy Englishman thundering at those ideals which the sensitive, passionate Italian was trying to defend. It speaks well for Mazzini that he said of Carlyle, “He is good, good, good; and[144] still, I think in spite of his great reputation, unhappy.” Carlyle’s estimate of Mazzini was that he was “by nature a little lyrical poet.” This opposition of ideas did not, however, keep him from defending his Italian friend when others attacked him. The London Times saw fit to speak slightingly of Mazzini, and Carlyle wrote the editors in noble indignation. “Whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs,” he said, “I can with great freedom testify to all men that he, if I have ever seen such, is a man of genius and virtue, a man of sterling veracity, humanity, and nobleness of mind, one of those rare men, numerable, unfortunately, but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that.” These were glowing words, and thrilled Mazzini as he read them. They were a tribute to Carlyle’s justice, but it is doubtful if he ever really understood the Italian. He would have found it difficult to discover a prophet living in lodgings so near to his own house.

Gradually Mazzini made other English friends, and he worked his way into the pages of the best reviews. In time also his political efforts were revived; he never let any temporary interest dim his goal. He started a society of Italian workmen in[145] London, and edited a paper for them, and opened an evening school where poor Italian boys were taught to read and write and learn something of Italian history. This school was very near his heart, he was always devoted to children.

During Mazzini’s exiled years in London, “Young Italy” had spread over Europe, and through countless secret channels was gradually making its strength felt. Outside circumstances were needed to bring its forces to a head, but there was no doubt that Mazzini’s words had called a power into being that must in time inevitably come to a life and death struggle with the Austrians. It is difficult to point out the exact minor causes of each fluctuation in Italian opinion, it is certain that the new popular literature called readers to take account of the words of Dante, and that the more they read the great poet the more they longed for liberty from the foreigner. Charles Albert, it was felt, was again dreaming of heroic measures, and something of the old, almost legendary faith in the house of Savoy as a national deliverer, re-awakened. Manzoni and Gioberti were prophesying a great Catholic revival, and the election of Pius the Ninth seemed for the moment to justify the hope. The half-pitiful words of Pius, “They want to make a Napoleon of me who am only a poor country parson,”[146] was a more correct estimate of the Pontiff than the glowing words of his contemporaries; he was no more in accord with the spirit of his time than was Metternich. Still his election marked the swing of the pendulum in the liberal direction, and “Young Italy” was quick to take notice of such a fact.

The year 1848 was remarkable for concerted social movements throughout Europe. In France the Second Republic overthrew the monarchy, and throughout the Italian states an electric current shocked the people into revolution. Leghorn revolted and made Guerrazzi its chief, Milan fell easy victim to the Tobacco rioters, Sicily sent its Bourbon king flying, and Naples wrested a popular constitution from the greedy hand of Ferdinand. Piedmont and Tuscany followed soon, demanded and obtained constitutions, and the Pope, alarmed at the sudden spread of liberalism, granted a constitution to Rome. The moment seemed ripe to throw off the Austrian overlords.

There are few more tangled histories than the record of the next few months in Italy. It is a drama filled with heroic figures, but one through which runs the current of continual misunderstandings. Was Italy to be a kingdom or a republic? Was the Pope a menace or a help? Was French aid to be courted or rejected? These[147] were only a few of the questions on which men split. The one glorious fact was the burning patriotic ardor of Italians in each state from Sicily to Savoy, their actual belief in the religion of duty Mazzini had been preaching to them.

Word came to Milan that there was revolution in Vienna, and the Five Days drove the Austrian garrison from their stronghold. Como, Brescia, Venice, all the northern cities that had so long loathed the white-coated overlords, won freedom; Metternich’s puppet-princes of Modena and Parma fled. Piedmont declared war, Tuscany declared war, volunteers of all ranks and ages poured from Umbria to help the northern armies. Mazzini, hearing the news in London, sped to Milan, and was received as the prophet of the new day. Italy had its prophet, but the statesman and the soldier were not yet recognized.

The new provisional government in Milan had no fixed policy, Charles Albert’s advisers still clogged his steps, the volunteers were ready, but they had neither the arms nor the training to compete with the war-worn Austrians. While there was discussion and dissension in Lombardy, the enemy recuperated and returned to besiege the cities they had lost. By July the Italian army was driven into Milan, there the spirit of the[148] earlier Five Days revived, but victory appeared hopeless, and finally Charles Albert, torn and distracted, surrendered the city. Mazzini passed to Lugano, thence to Leghorn, thence to Florence; in each city the situation was practically the same, the people were aflame with devotion to Italy, the leaders had as many plans as there were men.

Rome had driven out the Pope and proclaimed the Republic. The call of Rome was the call direct to Mazzini’s soul, he turned there to find a solution of all difficulties. Simultaneously the newly formed Roman Assembly turned to him, and bade him welcome as a citizen of Rome. He believed that Dante’s vision and his own were coming true, and hurried to the Eternal City. His first work there was to raise ten thousand troops and send them north. They had scarcely started when the crushing news of the defeat at Novara stunned all patriots. Rome had to look to herself, and made Mazzini Triumvir and practically dictator of the city.

The little Roman Republic of 1849 had an inspiring history. Mazzini had written and spoken, now it became his turn to act. He was set at the head of a city from which its spiritual as well as its temporal head had fled. Priests and protesting laymen were all about him, it would have been[149] easy for him to scorn the power that scoffed at him. He did not, he himself doubted the strength of the Catholic Church to survive, he dreamed of a new church which should speak to the world from the seven hills of Rome, but he would not take a single step to destroy one man’s religion. More than that he made it his special duty to see that the priests were not disturbed in their work. He wanted the Republic to be based on the love of God. He hoped that the Church would aid the Italian cause for the love of man. He would allow the Pope to reign as spiritual Prince, if he would only be content with his own noble sphere.

Rome won back something of its historic ardor under Mazzini’s call. The Republic was planned on lines of great proportions, steps were actually taken to make it a republic wherein each man had a worthy share. The foundations were laid with the greatest patience and zeal, the Triumvir gave the last ounce of his strength to building truly, he lived as he had always lived, for others, and took nothing for himself. Margaret Fuller said that at this time his face, haggard and worn, seemed to her “more divine than ever.” The poorest citizen could find him as readily as the richest, he was the same to all, he gave away his small salary of office as entirely as in his London[150] days he had dispersed his earnings. If ever man’s rule was noble, if ever it was spiritual, that of Rome’s Triumvir was, in the weeks when he faced treachery both from without and within.

It is scarcely possible that Mazzini could have expected his city to stand against the armies that were marching towards it. At most he could only hope to show the Romans of what great self-sacrifice they were capable. He probably hoped that the Republic would convince Italians that the spirit of “Young Italy” was not a mere prophet’s dream. That he did; he could not fight Austria and France single-handed.

Louis Napoleon had evolved one of his great ideas, he would win both the French army and the French clergy by a strategic move. He sent Oudinot into Italy, blinding the Romans with various subtleties, waiting until the propitious hour to strike. The Romans understood, the Assembly voted to resist to the end, and Garibaldi led the troops to their first victory. De Lesseps was appointed peace negotiator for the French, and he and Mazzini met, and for a time it seemed as though there might be a reconciliation. Mazzini strove with the greatest tact and patience to win the French, but De Lesseps was nothing more than Napoleon’s dupe, and as soon as Garibaldi had advanced to meet the Neapolitan[151] king’s army, Napoleon removed his envoy and showed his hand.

The truce had been virtually agreed on when Oudinot suddenly attacked and placed Rome in a state of siege. For almost a month the citizens fought with unfailing courage. Mazzini, Garibaldi, Mameli, the martyr war-poet, Bassi, the great preacher, republicans and royalists, princes and peasants, all within Rome’s walls fought for freedom from the foreigner. There could be but one end, and it came when starvation and losses had weakened the defenders so that they could no longer hold their posts. Mazzini would have fought hand-to-hand in the streets, the army was with him, but the Assembly voted to surrender. The besiegers entered, Garibaldi led his Three Thousand in their great retreat, Mazzini stayed on in Rome uttering such protest as he could, unharmed by the French troops who dared not touch him, through knowledge of the people’s love for him.

The downfall of the Republic must have been a terrible blow to Mazzini, probable as it is that he foresaw the city could not long last by itself. Physical force and treachery had overwhelmed the noblest concepts of government. Temporary disappointment, however, could not dull his spirit, the prophet of United Italy proved himself a true[152] prophet. He went on with his work, at first in Switzerland, then again driven away by foreign influence, in London.

He took up his life there, much older, much more worn and scarred, but with the same indomitable spirit. “His face in repose,” wrote a contemporary of this time, “was grave, even sad, but it lit up with a smile of wonderful sweetness as he greeted a friend with a pressure rather than a shake of the thin hand,” and again his piercing black eyes were described as “of luminous depth, full of sadness, tenderness and courage, of purity and fire, readily flashing into indignation or humor, always with the latent expression of exhaustless resolution.” His pictures are familiar, the high straight forehead, the strong nose, the curving lips, the scant gray, then almost white, mustache and beard, the high-buttoned frock coat and the silk handkerchief wound like a stock about his throat.

London had grown kinder to him than at first, he had many good friends, and he could understand better the English point of view. He lodged as humbly as before, and again took up his writing, his correspondence, and his ceaseless care for his poor countrymen. One of his best biographers gives us this sketch of him, a picture that portrays the man, “in his small room,[153] every piece of furniture littered with books and papers, the air thick with smoke of cheap Swiss cigars (except when friends sent Havanas), brightened only by his tame canaries and carefully-tended plants, he was generally writing at his desk until evening, always with more work in hand than he could cope with, carrying on the usual mass of correspondence, writing articles for his Italian papers, raising public funds with infinite labor, stirring his English friends to help the cause, finding money and work for the poor refugees, or organizing concerts in their interest.” With what infinite reverence must the men he helped have looked on him!

The prophet is not a statesman; he can show the road, but rarely follow it. Mazzini’s life had reached its climax when as Triumvir he had started to practise his own precepts, his work had been to scatter seed for the crop which other men should reap at harvest. He could not understand the dissimulations of diplomacy, he could not tolerate compromise, he could not now sacrifice his dreams of a republic for liberty and union. These qualities were not in his character; if they had been he could not have led men’s minds by his words and actions; he could not be both a prophet and an opportunist; the need of the former was passing, and that of the latter at hand.

[154]

Few men understood the twists and turns of Cavour’s policy as Prime Minister of Piedmont, and Mazzini not at all. After the battle of Novara Charles Albert had abdicated in favor of his son Victor Emmanuel, and a new order had come to pass in Piedmont. Cavour had a definite goal, the unity of Italy under the leadership of his king; and he never forgot that goal. To win it, he realized that he needed more than the raw volunteer forces of 1848, more than mere enthusiasm, no matter how heroic; he needed efficient troops, he needed a foreign ally, he needed a moment when Austria should be at a disadvantage, above all he needed one leader instead of a dozen to determine on any action. To accomplish these ends he gave republicans little sympathy, and centered the national movement about his king, he treated with Louis Napoleon, and did his utmost to win his favor, he discountenanced secret half-prepared revolts against the Austrians, he drilled and multiplied the troops, and harbored the finances. At all these measures Mazzini instinctively revolted; he wanted a republic, he loathed Napoleon as the betrayer of Rome, he was ever eager for any sincere demonstration against Austria. He only learned half-truths in London, but those half-truths did not inspire him to trust Cavour. Neither of these men understood the other; to[155] Cavour Mazzini was the fanatic who would destroy any cause by lack of temperance, to Mazzini Cavour was the aristocrat who would inflict upon the poor of Italy simply a new yoke in place of the old. They could not work together, and so Mazzini publicly denounced Cavour, and the latter declared Mazzini an exile from his home.

Meantime, while Piedmont was playing a wary game, and all the Italian states were making ready for the next great attempt, Mazzini took part in two small insurrections, one near Como, and the other at Genoa, both of which failed disastrously. The latter was the more serious, the government was tired of these perennial conspiracies, and denounced the revolt as anarchistic. Mazzini and five other leaders were sentenced to death, and many to long terms of imprisonment. Mazzini hid in the house of the Marquis Pareto, and was undiscovered, although the police made a prolonged search for him. It is said that Mazzini himself, dressed as a footman, opened the door to the officer, who recognized him as an old schoolmate, and had mercy. Some days later he escaped from the house, undisguised, walking arm-in-arm with a lady of Genoa, and reaching a carriage, was driven to Quarto, and thence went to England. There were many curious turns and twists in this conspiracy in which both conspira[156]tors and government were working for the same great end, but with widely different means, and with avowed enmity between them.

It was not long until Cavour and Napoleon met at Plombières and made their famous compact, after that events hastened forward. By the spring of 1859 Cavour had prepared both royalists and republicans for war. With his ally he felt that the Italian cause must now triumph, and at a given signal the conflict began. The Princes were driven from Tuscany, Romagna, Parma, and Modena, and all those states declared for Victor Emmanuel. Much as Mazzini hated Cavour’s French ally, he could no longer stay his enthusiasm. He saw unity at last almost come, after Solferino he declared that the Austrian domination was at an end. Without warning Napoleon met the Emperor Francis Joseph at Villafranca and betrayed the cause. He abandoned Venetia to Austria, and central Italy to the Bourbon Princes. Cavour, wild with indignation, spoke his feelings and resigned, the Italians were again left to their own divided efforts.

Mazzini, his fears of Napoleon now justified, went to Florence and declared that the people of central Italy must stake all for their briefly-won freedom, he gave up his republican protests, and advocated annexation with Piedmont so they might[157] have unity. He wrote to friends in Sicily and Rome, he begged Garibaldi to lead his troops into Umbria. All this time he had to live virtually in hiding, the ban against him had not been raised, and the thought that he, whose every emotion was for Italy, should not be trusted at all among his countrymen galled him to the quick. He wrote: “To be a prisoner among our own people is too much to bear.”

Gradually the troubled situation cleared, Cavour returned to power, and by temporizing held both the French support and the enthusiasm of the native troops. Mazzini still advocated immediate warfare, Cavour waited, and in the end the latter’s policy was proved correct. In the interval the disheartened Mazzini had gone back to England, and again, on hearing that Garibaldi and his famous legion had started for Sicily, returned in haste to Genoa. There followed Garibaldi’s victories, then the Piedmontese declaration of war against the Pope, then only Rome and Venice were lacking to the cause. Mazzini went to Naples to be nearer the heart of the struggle; he urged the Neapolitans to demand a constitution, and they, filled with the one thought of unity, berated him as a republican. His friends urged him to leave the city. “Even against your wish,” said one of them, “you divide us.” He could not[158] leave Italy at that hour of her fate, but he felt that he was cruelly misunderstood. He wrote, “I am worn out morally and physically; for myself the only really good thing would be to have unity achieved quickly through Garibaldi, and one year, before dying, of Walham Green or Eastbourne, long silences, a few affectionate words to smooth the ways, plenty of sea-gulls, and sad dozing.”

Some of those things he was to know, for during the next few years he lived again in England, writing and reading, and continually engaged in plans for the final capture of Venetia and Rome. Victor Emmanuel, Garibaldi, and Mazzini were each devising means to gain this long-hoped-for end, but the position and peculiar characteristics of each made co-operation almost impossible. The wise Cavour had been succeeded by vacillating ministers who were a continual drag upon the King, Garibaldi would not consent to adopting any of Mazzini’s suggestions (the latter once said that “if Garibaldi has to choose between two proposals, he is sure to accept the one that isn’t mine”), and Mazzini found it ever difficult to sacrifice his republican ideals to the needs of the moment. Ultimately, however, the Italian troops, this time with the aid of Prussia, recommenced war with Austria to win Venetia, Istria, and the Tyrol. The spirit of 1866 was not the spirit of 1860, the myth[159]ical valor of the Garibaldian army seemed to have evaporated in the passes of the Tyrol. Prussia won, but Italy met defeat at Custozza. Again Napoleon took a hand in the country’s destiny. To the surprise of Europe, he intervened and stated that Austria had offered to cede Venetia to him, and that he would give it to Italy if the latter would come to an immediate agreement for peace. There seemed little else to be done, and Mazzini saw the campaign, that had begun in the highest hopes of complete national independence, end in the acceptance of the gift of a single province from the foreigner.

Thenceforth Mazzini’s work lost all accord with that of the monarchy. He had not lost his faith in the great destiny of Italy, but he despaired of seeing that destiny fulfilled as he might wish within his lifetime. Forty thousand persons signed the petition for his amnesty, he was elected again and again by Messina as its deputy, but the party of the Moderates would not have him in the Chamber. Continued opposition made his fame only the greater among the people, he assumed the proportions of a national myth, to many he had become an actual demi-god. Secretly he traveled about Italy, working, with an energy altogether disproportionate to his strength, in the cause of a republic. He had many followers in Genoa, and[160] one of them has left a picture of Mazzini’s entrance to a meeting. “A low knock was heard at the door, and there he was in body and soul, the great magician, who struck the fancy of the people like a mythical hero. Our hearts leaped, and we went reverently to meet that great soul. He advanced with a child’s frank courtesy and a divine smile, shaking hands like an Englishman, and addressing each of us by name, as if our names were written on our foreheads. He was not disguised; he wore cloth shoes, and a capote, and with his middle, upright stature, he looked like a philosopher straight from his study, who never dreamed of troubling any police in the world.”

He found time to write his remarkable treatise on religion, “From the Council to God,” while he prepared plans for a new revolution. This time he intended to land in Sicily. The attempt was foolhardy, he was arrested at Palermo, and confined at Gaeta, where the Bourbons had not long before made their last stand. Almost forty years before, at the outset of his career, he had watched the Mediterranean from his prison at Savona, now he watched the same deep blue sea from Gaeta. He wrote here, “The nights are very beautiful; the stars shine with a luster one sees only in Italy. I love them like sisters, and link them to the future in a thousand ways. If I could choose I should[161] like to live in almost absolute solitude, working at my historical book or at some other, just from a feeling of duty, and only wishing to see for a moment, now and then, some one I did not know, some poor woman that I could help, some workingmen I could advise, the doves of Zurich, and nothing else.”

Rome fell, and Mazzini’s captivity came to an end. He passed through the city where twenty-one years before he had been Triumvir, and, seeking to avoid all popular demonstrations, went to Genoa. There he fell ill, and his failing strength made successive attacks more and more frequent. He traveled a little more, and then in March, 1872, died at a friend’s house in Pisa. He had lived to see Italy united, but in a very different manner from that of which he had dreamed.

To the republicans of Europe, Mazzini’s voice was that of a great prophet for half the Nineteenth Century, to the Italians he was the voice of Italy itself. He was the precursor of unity, of independence, of courageous self-denial, without him Cavour might have planned in vain, and Garibaldi been no more than an inconspicuous lieutenant. He had the two greatest of gifts, an ideal and the faith that knows no defeat, yet he was not simply the idealist nor the devotee, for he could stir other men to action through his own belief.[162] A friend, comparing him with Kossuth, said: “Now I write of him who seems to my judgment to be, like Saul, above all his fellows ... the one man needed excitement to stir his spirit ... the soul of the other was as an inner lamp shining through him always. The strength of Mazzini’s personal influence lay here. You could not doubt his glance.”

There was a certain kinship between Mazzini and Lincoln, simplicity and a boundless love of the weak and the oppressed was the keynote of both lives. Both were emancipators, but both were infinitely more, men whose whole lives bore eloquent testimony of their noble spirits. Lincoln loved men as Mazzini loved them, Mazzini and Lincoln both knew the suffering that comes from being continually misunderstood. When Lincoln was assassinated, the great Italian envied the man who had died knowing that his life’s cause had been accomplished.

Throughout one of the most tangled and turbulent epochs of history, Mazzini’s ideals never changed; the principles of “Young Italy” were the principles of his Triumvirate and of his prison life at Gaeta. He was for a United Italy and a republic. At times he could postpone the latter aim for the former, but never disregard it. And what he was for Italy, he was for the whole[163] world. He insisted on the brotherhood of nations, on the paramount duty of all nations toward humanity. Whosoever, he believed, separates families from families, and nations from nations, divides what God meant to be indissoluble. He looked to Italy to show the other nations how to live in freedom and equality, and to Rome to pronounce a new and greater religion of majestic tolerance. Had Italy been freed early in his career, he must have become a great religious teacher; even as it was, his power was that of an apostle, and his appeal to the soul as well as to the mind. Men who knew him loved him as something finer than themselves, a man closer to God, one of His disciples.

His personal life was one long record of self-sacrifice, his home, his family, his love, his comfort, even the most meager necessities of life were given to the cause, nothing was too much for him to do, nothing too trivial for him to undertake, could he help his country or one of his countrymen an iota thereby. He could appreciate other men’s happiness and in a way share it with them; he knew little or nothing of envy, vanity, or malice; he would let any leader have the glory of helping Italy, so long as the result was gained. More than that, he could bear the continual undervaluation of the English among whom he lived, he could[164] read what Carlyle wrote, “Of Italian democracies and Young Italy’s sorrows, of extraneous Austrian emperors in Milan, or poor old chimerical Popes in Bologna, I know nothing and desire to know nothing,” and yet continue Carlyle’s friend; he could bear the sting of having his name coupled with every attempt at assassination, when there were few things he abhorred more than secret violence. His idea of duty was so high, and had so absorbed all the petty spirits of his nature, that he could endure anything for that cause, and indeed embraced eagerly whatever came to him under that banner.

The great authority on heroes says of the hero as prophet: “The great man was always as lightning out of Heaven; the rest of men waited for him like fuel, and then they too would flame.” So the world had waited for Giuseppe Mazzini. Other men bore much and labored much for the sake of a united fatherland, but none other gave such lightning to their world. The prophet may not actually lay the stones of history, but he breathes the spirit of life into the builders. He is mankind’s greatest friend and hope, who points out the road human souls would take. Mazzini stands with Dante and Savonarola as the third great prophet of Italian history who spoke with a world voice.

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CAVOUR, THE STATESMAN

Cavour planned united Italy; his career is a shining example of what may be done by a man with one definite purpose to which he adheres without digression. Just as Disraeli seems from his early manhood to have aimed at becoming Prime Minister of England so Cavour appears to have aimed at the union of Italy under the leadership of Piedmont. There were a thousand and one points at which he could have turned aside, a dozen times when a brilliant temporary success was held before him, but he preferred to sacrifice no atom of energy or influence which might in time help in his fundamental purpose. He preferred obscurity to the danger of being too well known, and the coldness of contemporaries to the burden of relations with them which might tend to shackle his own independence. He read his time and countrymen with extraordinary accuracy, and foresaw that what was left of the old régime was tottering and that to attempt to bolster it up was absurd. He preferred to let the old conventions of a departed feudalism go their way in peace while he prepared himself for the day when the new statecraft should be recognized.

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The Piedmont of 1810, the year of Cavour’s birth, was singularly mediæval. The militant strength and daring of the small states of the Middle Ages had departed, but the point of view remained. The aristocracy was narrow, bigoted, and overbearing, they were intolerant of the new discoveries of science and the useful arts, they devoted themselves exclusively to the trivial entertainments of the Eighteenth Century. Napoleon spread above them like a storm cloud; they wrapped themselves as well as they could in their ancestral cloaks and waited, confident that the gale could not last long. The majority of them could not believe that the French Revolution was more than an accident, but there were a few, and those almost entirely men and women who had lived abroad, who saw further. One of these latter was Cavour’s grandmother, the Marquise Philippine di Cavour, from whom he seems to have inherited his breadth of view.

The family of Benso belonged to the old nobility of Piedmont, and in time came into possession of the fief of Santena and the fastness of Cavour in the province of Pignerolo. A member of the family who became distinguished for military services was made Marquis of Cavour by Charles Emmanuel III., and the eldest son of Marquis Benso di Cavour married Philippine,[167] daughter of the Marquis de Sales, a girl brought up in a château on the Lake of Annecy. The Marquise Philippine immediately became the controlling factor in the Cavour household; she strove to lighten the heavy somberness of her husband’s family in Turin, and at the trying time of the French occupation sold much of the family plate and furnishings, and finally certain priceless religious relics, in order to provide for her son, a boy of sixteen, when he was ordered to join General Berthier’s corps of the French army. Later she was commanded to become one of the household of the Princess Camillo Borghese, sister of Napoleon, and wife of his governor of Piedmont, who, better known as Pauline Bonaparte, figures as one of the most beautiful as well as one of the liveliest women of that age. The Marquise Philippine acquitted herself so well and so graciously that the Princess became one of her staunchest friends, and with the Prince acted as sponsor at the christening of the Marquise’s second grandchild, Camille di Cavour. The Marquise’s son, Michele Benso, had married Adèle, daughter of the Count de Sellon of Geneva, and had two sons, Gustave and Camille. Michele Benso had profited greatly by his mother’s tact, but he was still the unbending reactionary in nature. So was his eldest son Gustave. It was the younger boy who received the adaptable genius[168] of the Marquise Philippine, and who seems to have been best able to appreciate her. On one occasion he said to her, “Marina” (a Piedmontese term for grandmother), “we get on capitally, you and I; you were always a little bit of a Jacobin.” When, as the boy grew older, his family and friends reproached him with being a fanatical liberal, he turned to the Marquise, confident that she understood him. Cavour had few confidants during his whole life, few friends from whom he drew inspiration, but his grandmother had so trained him in the light of her own self-reliant spirit that he rarely seems to have felt the need of any outside aid.

The feudal system had scant respect for younger sons. Gustave was carefully educated for his proud position, Camille was largely left to grow up by chance. He was sent to the Military Academy at Turin, and became a page at the court of Charles Albert. With both the social and military life about him he found himself out of temper, his views were too liberal for the narrowness he met on every hand, he was hoping for events which most of his companions could only have regarded at that time as tragedies. His restlessness was noted, and he was sent to the lonely Alpine fortress of Bard. There the soul-wearying inertia of the military life of a small state[169] grew to typify to him the condition of his land. At the age of twenty-one, he wrote to the Count de Sellon, “The Italians need regeneration; their morale, which was completely corrupted under the ignoble dominion of Spaniards and Austrians, regained a little energy under the French régime, and the ardent youth of the country sighs for a nationality, but to break entirely with the past, to be born anew to a better state, great efforts are necessary and sacrifices of all kinds must remould the Italian character. An Italian war would be a sure pledge that we were going to become again a nation, that we were rising from the mud in which we have been trampled for so many centuries.”

Such ideas found no sympathy at the court of Piedmont, and Cavour, confident that the army could offer him no opportunity to use his talents, resigned his commission, and induced his father to buy him a small estate at Leri. There, in the middle of the rice-fields of Piedmont, Cavour settled down to the life of a farmer, experimenting with new steam machinery, canal irrigation, artificial fertilizers, studying books on government and agriculture, seeing something of his country neighbors, waiting for the gradual breakdown of the old régime. His family were quite content to let him vegetate on his far-off estate, he had no[170] position in the family household in Turin, his father and brother were busy with details of court life, and after the death of his grandmother his combined family regarded him as lacking in normal balance. Without becoming actually melancholy the youth was continually dejected, he saw no place waiting to be filled by him, he wished that he had been born into another nation, and sighed, “Ah! if I were an Englishman, by this time I should be something, and my name would not be wholly unknown!” Yet, indifferent as he seemed to comradeship, he had at this time one strong friend, a woman of high birth, “L’Inconnue,” as he called her in his journal. She summoned him to her at Turin, and he obeyed her call; she was unhappy and ardently patriotic, with the visions of Mazzini, he admired her and was filled with remorse at the thought of a love so constant and disinterested. They corresponded for over a year, and then Cavour’s ardor faded. He had never been in love with her, but she had loved him devotedly. A few years later she died, and left him a last letter ending, “the woman who loved you is dead.... No one ever loved you as she did, no one! For, O Camille, you never fathomed the extent of her love.” She had at least succeeded in drawing him out of his lonely despair; platonic as his regard for her seems to have been,[171] it was the nearest approach to love that entered his life.

For fifteen years Cavour lived as a farmer at Leri, breaking the monotony of that existence by occasional visits to England and France. The former country always exerted great influence over him; he considered the life of the English country gentleman the ideal existence; he was a great admirer of Pitt and Sir Robert Peel (and said of Peel that he was “the statesman who more than any other had the instinct of the necessity of the moment,” words prophetic of his own career!), and was always a reader of Shakespeare, who among all writers he held had the deepest insight into the human heart. In Paris Cavour saw much of society through the influence of his French relations, and made the most of his opportunity to study the young rising men. He was frequently blamed by the men and women he met for leading such an aimless life, and was urged to enter the fields of literature or diplomacy. For the former he said he had no taste, for the latter he was too much out of sympathy with the government of his own country, and he could not enter the service of any other. He had the reputation of being a man of great wit and intelligence, gifted with gay and winning manners, interested to a certain extent in all concerns of the day, but unwilling to sacrifice[172] himself to a constant devotion to any one pursuit. The women of the leading salons found his light hair, blue eyes, and happy temper charming, the men of the time valued his keen insight into contemporary questions. He played cards frequently for high stakes, but never allowed himself to become an habitual gambler. Later in life it is said that he indulged in playing for high stakes with politicians in order to gain an insight into their characters. His visits to Paris undoubtedly taught him much concerning the men with whom he was later to have so much to do, and his stays in England showed him the strength of Parliamentary government. He took vivid impressions back with him to Leri, and used his mental energy in adapting English ideas on agriculture to the needs of his farm.

With the governing world of Piedmont Cavour was undeniably unpopular. The antiquated leaders of public life considered him perilously liberal, and no party or clique found him really in accord with its views. He had written some articles for foreign newspapers, and had openly advocated the need of railways in Italy, but such of his countrymen as undertook to learn his views held him a dangerous fanatic. Singularly enough, without having made any attempt to place himself before the public, he was an object of popular distrust.[173] He counted this rather an item in his favor, he was in no wise indebted to any man or any cause. He preferred to wait until the day of petty reactionaries should give place to serious popular movements, and by 1847 he saw that such a crisis was not far distant. Charles Albert, by nature always an enigma, was moving forward faster than his government, and was suspected of strong independent tendencies.

Charles Albert would have loomed larger in history if he had been born into either an earlier or a later age. He was not the man to direct a political crisis, he would have done well as the magnanimous sovereign of an Eighteenth Century state or as the intellectual head of a constitutional nation, but it was his misfortune to lack those vigorous robust qualities which Italians later found in his son. He was an ardent patriot, he earnestly desired to free the Italian states from foreign rule, he was zealous that Piedmont should lead in such a cause, but he was continually afraid that independence would lead directly to popular liberty under a constitution. “I desire as much as you do,” he said to Roberto d’Azeglio, “the enfranchisement of Italy, and it is for that reason, remember well, that I will never give a constitution to my people.” His advisers, who were largely clericals, and almost always reactionaries, lost no[174] chance to impress upon his mind the impossibility of the consummation he desired. Start the new order, they said, and no man knows how far it will go. He was in fear of loosing a spirit which he could never cage. Yet his honest desire for national independence made him hearken at times to more liberal voices. In one of these moments he revoked the censorship of the press.

Cavour, primed with the history of England, saw what a free press meant, and instantly left his retirement at Leri to seize the golden opportunity. He founded a newspaper and gave it a name destined to stand for the whole movement towards nationalism, “Il Risorgimento.” The prospectus of the paper stated its aims as independence, union between the Princes and the people, and reforms. Cavour was now prepared to speak his mind.

He did not have long to wait. The people of Genoa announced that they were preparing to send a committee to the capital to ask for the expulsion of the Jesuits and the organization of a national guard. The principal editors of Turin met to consider what stand they should take in reference to these demands. The suggestion to support the Genoese petitions was meeting with general approval when Cavour rose to speak. His words fell like a bomb, he said that the demands[175] were far too small, that the only prudence lay in asking for much more. The statement was the keynote to all his later statecraft. “Of what use,” he asked, “are reforms which have nothing definite, and lead to nothing? Where is the good of asking for that which, whether granted or not, equally disturbs the State, and weakens the moral authority of the government? Since the government can no longer be maintained on its former basis, let us ask for a constitution, and substitute for that basis another more conformable to the spirit of the times, and to the progress of civilization. Let us do this before it is too late, and before the authority which keeps society together is dissolved by popular clamor.”

Cavour’s proposal precipitated a violent contest. Both moderates and liberals thought that he was asking far too much; Valerio, the leader of the better element, declared that in asking for a constitution the meeting went far beyond the wishes of the people. The meeting broke up without reaching a decision, but the reports of it scattered with lightning-like rapidity. Valerio ridiculed the proposal to his friends and called Cavour an aper of English customs. He said, “Don’t you know my Lord Camille?—the greatest reactionist of the kingdom; the greatest enemy of the revolution, an Anglomane of the purest breed.” Cavour[176] was nicknamed “Milord Camillo” and “Milord Risorgimento,” he was continually asked if he desired to erect an English House of Lords.

The ridicule passed, but the suggestion remained. Charles Albert heard of Cavour’s speech to the editors, and he had already lived through the first two months of that electrifying year of 1848. Constitution-making was in the air, Louis Philippe was falling, the little Italian Princes were throwing promises to their waking people. He hesitated, he was under a secret pledge to continue the government of his country in the same form in which it had come to him, he thought seriously of abdicating, but his son, Victor Emmanuel, opposed the idea vigorously. Finally, after much anxious thought and many family consultations, he decided to grant a constitution, and the famous Statute was given to the Sardinian kingdom. It is interesting to note that fifty years later the King’s grandson celebrated the date of the promulgation of what was to become the charter of Italian independence.

Raised temporarily to a pinnacle of popular applause, the fickle gusts of an excitable public opinion soon blew Cavour down to his former standing. No one really agreed with his opinions, to the moderates he was still alarmingly audacious, to the liberals too deeply imbued with the[177] spirit of English aristocracy. He stood for election under the new constitution at Turin, and was defeated; shortly afterwards, however, he was elected to fill an unexpected vacancy. Count Balbo, the first Prime Minister under the constitution, and Cavour’s co-editor of the Risorgimento, did not ask him to join the cabinet, and openly expressed his disapproval of his fellow-journalist’s ideas. The truth of the matter was that men were afraid of Cavour, they distrusted him partly because they did not understand him, and partly because it was only too evident that if he were given the chance he would drive the car of state to suit himself.

The new cabinet had no sooner assumed office than Milan revolted against the Austrians. Charles Albert hesitated, he was heart and soul with the Milanese, but England and Russia both warned him against war with Austria. His cabinet was divided, half feared to stake too much, half were for wagering all. Cavour printed hot words in the Risorgimento: “We, men of calm minds, accustomed to listen more to the dictates of reason than to the impulses of the heart, after deliberately weighing each word we utter, are bound in conscience to declare that only one path is open to the nation, the government, the King: war, immediate war!” The evening of the day of publi[178]cation the King decided on war, and Piedmont rushed to the aid of newly-arisen Lombardy.

The story of that campaign is briefly told, great confidence, heroic sacrifices, a few victorious battles, and then the re-enforcement of Radetsky’s army and the retreat to Milan. Sardinia had brave soldiers, but no great generals, the victories were not followed up as Napoleon had done on the same fields. At the battle of Goito Cavour’s nephew, Augusto di Cavour, a boy of twenty, was killed. On his body was found a last letter from his uncle encouraging him to do his duty; the blow was a terrible one for Cavour; he had predicted the noblest future for Augusto. It is said that he ever afterward kept the shot-riddled uniform of the boy in a glass case in his bedroom, a relic and reminder of heroism.

The war soon came to the tragic climax of Novara, the ministers were perpetually undecided, men were thinking more of the possible results of independence than of the fact itself. There were a thousand theorists, a thousand phrase-makers, and in the midst of them all the King, alternately hopeful and despairing, heroic in his devotion, but confident that he should never weld Italy together. Cavour had not been re-elected to the Parliament of this crucial time, he was outside the battle proper, striving to direct public sentiment through[179] his paper, and watching and studying the strength and weakness of the cause. The battle of Novara ended the war, Charles Albert abdicated, and Victor Emmanuel came to the Sardinian throne. The natures of father and son were almost diametrically opposed, the new King was the born leader, his people could not doubt the temper of his resolution, and it was upon that implicit trust that Cavour, determined on one and only one adviser, was to build a state that should be firm and enduring. In a sense failure had cleared the field for greater achievement as success could never have done.

The new King, having sworn allegiance to the constitution, cast about him for a prime minister who could bring order out of seeming chaos, and chose Massimo d’Azeglio, then and for long afterwards the best beloved man in Piedmont. D’Azeglio was a painter, a poet, a warrior, and an accomplished man of the world, devoted to his country, liberal without being radical. He was the one man to restore popular confidence in the Sardinian kingdom, Cavour was glad that the King’s favor had fallen on such a man, and, knowing that his own assistance at that time would only serve to embarrass the new Premier, he retired to the leisure he enjoyed so thoroughly on his farm at Leri. Here he rested and recovered some of the confidence which had been shaken by the unfor[180]tunate trend of events. He was by nature optimistic, and knew the value of gradual development, the hours he spent in farming he considered most valuably employed. A friend described him about this time as having a very fresh-colored complexion, and blue eyes, which although still exceedingly bright, had a changeful expression. He was stout, but not ungainly as he became later. He stooped slightly, but when he stopped to speak to any one held himself erect in an attentive attitude. His forehead, large and solid, gave strength to a face which was not distinguished by striking features; on either side of his mouth, which was rather cold and contained, were two lines which, by trembling or contracting, gave the only sign of any emotion to an observer. His voice was low, and not remarkably inspiring, he never had the orator’s fluent tongue with which to sway his auditors. He was always courteous and at his ease, easily approachable and interested in whatever might be said to him. He belonged to the class of statesmen who tell very little of their thoughts. When he visited Manzoni on Lake Maggiore, and the latter poured out to him his dreams of a united Italy, which as he said he usually kept to himself for secret fear of being thought a madman, Cavour answered simply by rubbing his hands, and with a slow smile saying,[181] “We shall do something.” The act and the words bespoke his character.

Cavour’s holiday in the country was not to last long, the King dissolved his first Parliament, and in the second Cavour was re-elected to his former seat. Now for the first time he made his real power felt in the Chamber, on the question of the abolition of those special courts which had formerly existed for the trial of ecclesiastic offenders against the common law. The struggle between the clericals and liberals was bitter. Cavour spoke on March 7, 1850, and advocated strong measures. He was not anxious to force the Church into a position hostile to the State, but he feared peace purchased at a heavy sacrifice. He knew that reforms must be full and sweeping if they were to stem the rising tide of European discontent. The wisest statesmen were those who, like Lord Grey and Sir Robert Peel in England, had granted fully when they recognized the temper of the time. Revolutions were only to be stayed by real reforms. If real reforms were granted, the government of Piedmont, he concluded, would not only be strong among its own people, but “gathering to itself all the living forces in Italy, it would be in a position to lead our mother-country to those high destinies whereunto she is called.”

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It was the first speech which had thrilled with hope since the lamentable downfall of Novara. The audience in the galleries caught the prophetic note and cheered it to the echo. The ministers were eager to shake hands with the speaker. The people were stirred, although not yet convinced that Cavour was what he seemed to be, but public men throughout Italy recognized that here was a strong man with potent forces soon to be considered.

Soon after the passage of the bill Cavour had advocated, one of D’Azeglio’s ministers, Count Pietro di Santa Rosa, died. Immediate pressure was brought to bear to make Cavour his successor, but for a long time D’Azeglio, although friendly to Cavour, hesitated to take such an extremist into his cabinet. Finally he offered Cavour the post of Minister of Agriculture and Commerce. Cavour accepted, but only after making certain terms, one of which was that a certain minister whom he considered over-timorous should be asked to resign. D’Azeglio agreed, though with ill grace, and in consequence was shortly after told by the King, “Don’t you see that this man will turn you all out?”

On taking office Cavour gave up his connection with the Risorgimento, a paper which he considered had helped the liberal projects immeasurably. As[183] Minister of Commerce he negotiated trade treaties with England, France, and Belgium. He took to work so readily that very shortly he was made Minister of Marine in addition to his original post. Gradually he won his way to the leadership in Parliament, speaking for himself rather than for the cabinet, and having small regard for the professed opinions of his own or any other party. When a deputy would ask him for information in the Chamber he would state his own opinion, and where that differed from opinions already expressed by his colleagues he would make his favorite reply, that he spoke “less as a minister than as a politician.”

Cavour’s many-sided nature rapidly showed itself in his stand on religious and educational measures, on trade and commerce, on theories of government and practical applications. There seemed to be no field with which he was not conversant, and which he could not straighten of tangles less thoughtful ministers had made. In April, 1851, he became Minister of Finance, having insisted that Nigra, his predecessor, should resign if he were to remain. The Minister of Public Instruction had a disagreement with Cavour, and was replaced by one of the latter’s friends, Farini, the Romagnol exile, a strong nationalist writer. These changes greatly strength[184]ened Cavour’s position and were all in line with his policy of making Piedmont a strong constitutional state, its people imbued with the thought of leadership in any struggle for Italian unity. Abroad he was endeavoring in every way to excite interest in Italian conditions, he was an enthusiastic admirer of Mr. Gladstone, he studied Louis Napoleon’s giant strides to power, not for their effect upon liberty, but in search of indications that the new French régime would listen to the voice of Victor Emmanuel. He had come to realize that foreign aid was essential to ultimate victory, and looked to France as the most probable ally. That this ally was likely to appear in the garb of a political adventurer did not disturb him; as he said, “Franklin sought the help of the most despotic monarch in Europe.”

To insure that when Piedmont should succeed in enlisting foreign aid the country might be consolidated and ready, Cavour planned a great stroke, to combine his own party in Parliament with that of the Moderate Liberals, or Left Center, as it was called. None of the four parties was sufficiently strong in itself to insure any permanent success, but a combination of the two Center parties would allow for plans of certain durability. Rattazzi, probably the most brilliant speaker in the House, and a man of much popularity, was leader[185] of the Left Center, and to him Cavour broached his plans. The alliance was concluded in January, 1852, and kept a secret for some time. Finally, in a debate on a bill aimed to moderate newspaper attacks on foreign sovereigns, the ministry was violently attacked, and Rattazzi announced his compact with Cavour by stating that he intended generally to support the ministry in the present session unless there should be some decided change in its policy. Cavour, speaking in reply, acknowledged the alliance between the two parties.

D’Azeglio and the other ministers had been kept in the dark, and were as much surprised as was the general public. Cavour had feared that a discussion of the wisdom of such an alliance might have ended in disagreement, and he was determined that the plan should be put through. That seems to have been the only excuse for keeping the plan secret from his colleagues. The Prime Minister was highly indignant, but would not disown Cavour’s act; he merely intimated to him that he would never sit in the same cabinet with Rattazzi. Shortly afterward Cavour lent his support to electing Rattazzi President of the Chamber. D’Azeglio was again indignant, and Cavour felt that it was best that he should leave the ministry. He resigned, and was followed by all the other[186] ministers. Their act, however, was purely a matter of sentiment, and the King commanded them to remain at their posts. Cavour endorsed this command, he saw no reason why D’Azeglio’s ministry should not continue for a time without him. He parted on the best of terms with the Premier, and in order that his presence might cause no embarrassment to the reconstructed ministry started on a journey to France and England.

This trip abroad came at a most opportune time. It gave Cavour a chance to meet French and English statesmen and learn their views of his policy of allying Rattazzi’s party with his own in order to obtain a working majority. He knew that Rattazzi was generally regarded as a reckless revolutionary, but he found that the necessity of using his aid was generally acknowledged. Cavour talked with the leaders of each party in England; he found Lord Palmerston then as always his ardent friend and admirer. Palmerston saw that the overthrow of the Italian tyrannies must depend upon the home strength of the Sardinian government, and that if that government were once firmly established on a constitutional basis it could not be long before Austria would be driven out of Italy. Palmerston promised Cavour the moral support of England, and the Italian left London delighted at what he had learned there.

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In Paris Cavour met Thiers, who bade him be of good courage, and the Prince President. To the latter he devoted much time, and succeeded in making a deep impression upon the astute Napoleon. “Whether we like it or not,” the Italian wrote from Paris, “our destinies depend on France; we must be her partner in the great game which will be played sooner or later in Europe.” In the French capital Cavour found several leaders of Italian life who were living in exile; he visited Daniel Manin, the great Venetian, the idol of his city, and learned from him something of Venetian hopes. He also saw the many-sided Gioberti, “the same child of genius, who would have been a great man had he had common-sense,” said Cavour, the man who had once dreamt of a free Italy under the leadership of a great liberal Pope, and who was now in a book about to be published to show his gift of prescience by fixing on Cavour as the one man who understood the essentials of the new Italian civilization.

D’Azeglio was facing a ministerial crisis when Cavour returned to his home, and, ill with the wound he had received in the last war, besought the King to let him retire from office. He suggested that Victor Emmanuel summon Cavour, “who,” he wrote at this time, “you know is diabolically active, and fit in body and soul, and then,[188] he enjoys it so much!” The King asked Cavour to form a ministry, naming certain restrictions, the chief one being to come to a friendly agreement with the Pope on the matter of civil marriage, but Cavour felt that to do this would be to start his work under a handicap. He suggested Count Balbo as Premier, but the latter had too small a following, and the King, judging that his country needed the strong hand of Cavour at the helm more than the friendship of Rome, asked him to form his cabinet without imposing any conditions whatever.

So came into existence what was to be known in Italian history as the “Gran Ministero,” the first in which Cavour was openly to proclaim his plans. It is curious to note that even now, when he had become the most considerable figure in Piedmont, he was not generally popular. The King did not altogether like him, the public men could not even now understand him, the people scarcely knew the real man at all. What King, public men, and people did know was that Cavour was a man of tremendous force, and a man destined to lead other men. At this time there commenced to grow up in Piedmont that blind faith in Cavour which later assumed such great proportions that the people felt that he must have his own way no matter what they might think of it, because Cavour’s way[189] meant victory, no matter how little they might anticipate it.

Cavour chose to be President of the Council and Minister of Finance, and at once set to work to increase the resources of the country. The history of his work at this time is that of an administrator preparing with scrupulous care each detail against a coming need. He strengthened fortifications, he allowed La Marmora a free hand in the development of the army, he completed the railway system, he used all possible means to stimulate industry and increase agricultural output. He instituted new taxes, cut down the salt tax, and introduced certain free-trade measures. He followed a definite plan of preparation, regardless of popular opinion, which at one time turned so fiercely against him on the ground that he was a monopolist who was robbing the poor of bread, that his life was in danger at the hands of a mob.

Cavour had one concern, to strengthen the central government of his country, and he labored for that with little regard for other things. He was accused, particularly after Rattazzi had joined his cabinet, of seeking to win certain constituencies by promises of local aid if they would return his candidate. He understood too well the uncertain temper of the people to take any unnecessary[190] risks, he knew that the work he was doing was essential for Italian independence, and he was willing to obtain his support as best he could. What concerned him was the fact of support, not the reason. His ultimate purpose required that the country be kept at peace until it should have reached full strength, and for this end Cavour tried to make friends with Austria, dissembling his real feelings as cleverly as he could, and sought confidence and friendly offices. To this end he discountenanced Mazzini’s attempt at revolution in Milan in February, 1853; he knew that conditions were not ready for success; he regarded Mazzini’s faith in blind outbreaks of the people as a deterrent factor in his preparation for ultimate success.

Western Europe was making ready for war in the Crimea, England and France were aligning themselves against Russia. Cavour felt what was coming, and conceived a step of marvelous daring. With his old belief in the prudence of audacity he determined to join Sardinia to France and England, to stake the future of his little kingdom on an alliance with the two great western Powers. He felt that Sardinia must now step forward as a nation or retire to the great group of little principalities. He could not tell what position Austria would take, but he resolved no matter how that[191] country might side, to cast his lot with the west. When one recalls the size of Victor Emmanuel’s kingdom and its resources Cavour’s audacity becomes well-nigh inconceivable. When his intention was made known to the people they gaped in amazement, after these years of preparation why should they hazard all on a purely foreign war, why leave their borders unguarded to the Austrians? Cavour stood firm and unshaken, Victor Emmanuel, trusting to his minister’s star of destiny, stood by him, the people stormed, protested, besought, but all without avail. Cavour had decided that it was time to act, and so it must be time, the people had learned that there was no use in arguing with him, what he must do he must, they became fatalists under his colossal will. A demand of a guarantee of certain restrictions against Austria was sought by Cavour’s ministry, but the western Powers would not give it. England and France would both be glad to have Sardinia as an ally, but would make no promises of future help. The Sardinian Foreign Minister resigned when the attempt to obtain a guarantee failed. Cavour offered the position to D’Azeglio, but he declined it, and so, on January 10, 1855, Cavour assumed the portfolio of Foreign Affairs himself, and on the same day signed the agreement binding Sardinia to an offensive and defensive alli[192]ance with France and England. It was the first step towards making Italy again a world power.

Cavour had decided to show Europe that an Italian government could live under a liberal constitution, and that an Italian army could fight. He believed that both Lord Palmerston and the French Emperor were convinced of the former fact; he was now anxious to convince them of the latter. As matters fell out Austria remained neutral, and the allies opposed Russia alone. Napoleon, thirsting for glory for French arms, was little disposed to give the Sardinian forces a chance, and wished to keep them as a reserve at Constantinople. It required the greatest diplomacy on Cavour’s part to obtain opportunities for his troops, but when he did they more than justified him. Their spirit and powers of endurance were admirable, they seemed consciously to feel that they were being made ready for a greater and more sacred combat. In August the Piedmontese troops won a victory on the Tchernaia, Turin was delighted, and Cavour felt that his great step was being justified. The King wrote to General La Marmora, “Next year we shall have war where we had it before.”

It was at this time that Victor Emmanuel visited England and France. Cavour accompanied him, and, as always, made a close study of opinions in[193] both those countries. He found Queen Victoria and Prince Albert deeply interested in Italian affairs, and strongly favorable to Piedmont’s hopes. Napoleon, he found, was determined to end the war in the Crimea.

In February, 1856, peace was declared. Austria, which had remained neutral, was apparently the greatest gainer by the war. At home the Sardinian government had been seriously disturbed over the question of suppression of the religious houses, a measure which Cavour and a majority of the people favored, but which the King was very loath to accept. After the Chamber of Deputies had passed the measure by an overwhelming majority, and it was being considered by the Senate, two ecclesiastics wrote to the King, promising to pay into the national treasury the sum the government expected to realize from the suppressions. Victor Emmanuel, who was an ardent Churchman, conceived that this would be a most satisfactory settlement of the whole matter, and suggested to Cavour that he agree. Cavour saw the impossibility of compromise at that hour, and declined, offering at the same time his resignation. The King, who was never quite at his ease with Cavour, and who thought he was now in a position to dispense with his services, accepted the resignation.

[194]

When the people heard of the proposed compromise they were brought to an angry crisis, and for a moment it looked as though all the past careful efforts to establish a stable government might go for nothing. Then D’Azeglio, with rare courage, wrote to the King, and pointed out the dangers that lay in his new course. He entreated him not to align himself with the reactionaries, he pointed out how such a step had caused the downfall of both Stuart and Bourbon thrones. The people desired the measure, it was too late now to withdraw it from the Senate. Victor Emmanuel heeded the words of his old counselor, recalled Cavour to office, and allowed the bill, practically as at first presented, to become law. This was the next great step in the progress towards a united Italy.

At the time of his last visit to Paris Cavour had been asked by Napoleon to submit a note of what France could do for Italy. This Cavour now prepared, asking little at this time, the main object being the Austrian evacuation of Bologna. Cavour found himself in a very difficult position, the war had closed before Austria had been drawn into it, and Sardinia was not in a sufficiently strong position to make many requests. Both the King and Cavour had confidently hoped that Austria would be forced to side with Russia. Now it was ex[195]tremely doubtful what decisions the coming Congress of Paris would make, and Cavour had been privately given to understand that the Sardinian envoy to the Congress would only be allowed to attend those sessions which concerned Sardinia, and not to take his place with the envoys of the great Powers. He was exceedingly anxious that D’Azeglio should attend, but the latter refused point-blank when he learned of the subservient position he would in all probability have to take. Under these circumstances Cavour saw no alternative but to go himself, and so with considerable misgiving he set out for Paris, intent on observing and planning rather than on asking favors that might be unceremoniously refused.

The Congress of Paris of 1856 produced results far different from those the various plenipotentiaries intended. Austria came to Paris in the enviable position of the great European peace-maker, she left as tyrannical upholder of the old régime. Cavour came as the representative of a small state with interests far inferior to those of the other nations, he left as the moral champion of the much abused peninsula of Italy. Austria actually conceded no territory and Sardinia gained none, but Austria was discredited in the eyes of England and France, and Sardinia more than justified. Cavour achieved a great moral[196] victory, perhaps the greatest result any statesman can gain from a treaty of peace. He did not take a very prominent part in the actual meetings, he was very reserved, a good listener, a courteous and always affable companion. He was loyal to both his English and his French allies, he won over the Russian Count Orloff, and contrived to keep on good terms with the Austrian Count Buol, whom he had formerly known at Turin. He waited with indomitable patience until the major matters of the Congress had been discussed and disposed of, then he addressed a note to the English and French envoys inquiring into the rights of Austria to remain in occupation of the Roman Legations. The question was most important, it struck at the discussion of the temporal power of the Pope, inasmuch as that power in Romagna was dependent upon Austrian support. Moreover it gave notice that Sardinia was concerning itself with the affairs of the other Italian states.

Cavour had other projects, he was anxious to reunite Parma and Modena with Piedmont, he was eager to have their Lombard estates returned to those Italians concerned in the last revolt against Austria. He planned and plotted to accomplish both these ends, and waited. The treaty of peace was signed on March 30, and then the French President of the Congress, Count Walewski, called[197] another session by order of the Emperor. This session was to deal with the Austrian and French occupation of Naples. The difficulty with regard to Cavour’s original note was that in questioning Austria’s right to uphold the Pope in Romagna it also questioned France’s right to occupy Rome for the same purpose. Cavour spoke on the Austrian occupation, but passed over the French. It seems, however, that Napoleon, who had originally taken Rome to please the clerical party, was now willing to withdraw from Rome if he could do so without offending that party, and at the same time cause Austria to withdraw. Lord Clarendon, the British plenipotentiary, urged the withdrawal of both Powers, which he claimed stood on the same footing. He objected to both occupations as disturbing to the balance of power, he denounced the government of the King of Naples, he found occasion to say what the most ardent Italian would have liked to say, and his unreserved ardor gained added force from the caution of Cavour. The effect of the Englishman’s speech was striking, he put into words all Cavour’s contentions, and left the Italian in the enviable position of having demanded nothing, but of having all the claims of justice on his side. The Austrian envoy was indignant, and the session adjourned without tangible result. The impression left upon every one’s[198] mind, however, was that Sardinia had championed Italy against Austria, and that it intended to prepare to make its championship more definite than by diplomatic notes.

Cavour returned to Turin with the satisfaction of having placed Italy’s wrongs openly before the world. The redress of these wrongs was now matter for European consideration, no longer the mere object of secret society plots. Patriots in all the Italian states were quick to realize this, they saw that at last their national rights had been forced into attention, Cavour’s note had cemented all their local causes. There were still many in Piedmont who did not understand his policy, and many who would have preferred his winning of a single duchy to Sardinia rather than urging the withdrawal of Austria from the Papal States, but in spite of these doubters the great majority acclaimed his cause, and felt that, whether they understood him or not, he was the one man who could lead them to deliverance. On his return his policy became more clear, he was aiming at an Italian nation under one king, he was looking far ahead, and the other great nationalists who had been puzzled by his conflicting declarations in the past saw that his goal was theirs. The goal had unquestionably been in his thoughts throughout all his political career, now he came[199] out frankly, no longer simply Prime Minister of Sardinia, but spokesman for Italy.

War must come as the next step. Cavour now for the first time took account of the practical use to be made of those great waves of popular feeling that were continually recurring, those heroic forces Mazzini had been calling into being. He met Garibaldi, and found that he was a great practical man, likely to be of infinite value to the country. He went among the people and studied how their enthusiasms could be turned to best account, he planned with leaders of earlier revolts and convinced them that he was simply patient until the time came to strike, no more a reactionary than they.

In addition to the Foreign Office Cavour assumed the Ministry of Finance. He was unwilling to trust too much to other men, he was anxious to know exactly how all the affairs of the nation stood. The army he knew was rapidly improving, he studied how he might increase the finances without imposing too heavy taxes. He moved the arsenal from Genoa to Spezia, he insisted on completing the tunneling of Mont Cenis, and all these steps showed that he was concerned now with the affairs of the whole peninsula rather than with the guidance of one small state. As one of his political opponents said of him in detraction at this[200] time, “the Prime Minister had all Italy in view, and was preparing for the future kingdom.” He had made himself practically the entire government, from King to peasant all classes followed him with a blind faith in his triumphant destiny as a leader. Still he waited, preparing for the hour to strike.

On the evening of January 14, 1858, Felice Orsini, a Romagnol revolutionist, attempted to assassinate the French Emperor with a bomb as he was driving to the opera. It was expected that this act would cause a bitter estrangement between France and Italy, but, although for a short time there was a considerable diplomatic interchange of notes, the ultimate result was quite the reverse. We must remember that the wrongs under which Italy labored were in reality always on Napoleon’s mind, that he sincerely desired to free and reunite the Italian nation, although at times his ideas of expediency made him appear more of an enemy than a friend. As a young man he had himself been a revolutionary, probably at one time a member of the Carbonari, he had thrilled long ago at Mazzini’s call, and he was an ardent nationalist. When he heard Orsini’s last words to him, “Free my country, and the blessings of twenty-five million Italians will go with you!” he knew that it was not hatred of himself, but the desire in some[201] way to bring about Italian independence that had inspired the assassin. The words and acts of Napoleon wind in and out of this story of Italian liberation in a manner only too often difficult to reconcile, but it would seem that his interest was in reality sincere, and that he wished to help Italy as much as he could without jeopardizing the interests of France.

Events began to march, certain ideas were exchanged between influential persons at Paris and Turin; in June Dr. Conneau, an intimate of the Emperor, happened to visit Turin, and saw Victor Emmanuel and Cavour. It was stated that Napoleon intended to make a private visit to Plombières. Shortly after Cavour announced that his health required a change of scene and that he should go away into the mountains. By a strange coincidence he also went to Plombières. Napoleon saw him, they spent two days closeted together; when Cavour left the two men understood each other. The details of what was known as the Pact of Plombières are not positive, the understanding appears to have been that a rising in Massa and Carrara should give a pretext for a war to expel the Austrians. After such expulsion the country in the valley of the Po, the Roman Legations, and the Ancona Marches were to be united in a kingdom of Upper Italy. Savoy was to be given[202] to France, possession of Nice was left unsettled, Victor Emmanuel’s daughter, the Princess Clotilde, was to be given in marriage to Prince Napoleon.

Napoleon had shown his interest in Italy, but Cavour left Plombières fully alive to the fact that actual help was still far distant. Austria would be hard to defeat, and Cavour did not wish France to provide all the forces for war. He already foresaw that it might be difficult to insure France’s withdrawal after victory. Furthermore he realized that England, to which he was always looking, was well content with the present peaceful situation of affairs, and would regard any offensive step by France or Sardinia as unwarrantable. He saw that Prussia and Russia held the same view. No country wanted war except his own, and possibly France, provided it could be made to appear that Austria and not France was the attacking party. It seemed very certain that Austria would stand much before putting herself in the false position of wantonly opening war. Again Cavour had to be patient and plan how Austria might be made to take that step.

While he waited Cavour organized a volunteer Italian army under the name of the Hunters of the Alps, he laid campaign plans with Garibaldi, he knit all the patriots of Italy into one common[203] cause. Even the old conservative leaders came over to him, D’Azeglio wrote him, “To-day it is no longer a question of discussing your policy, but of making it succeed.” The King supported him magnificently, Cavour found that his hardest work now was to hold King and people back. Still he would not open war, he knew too well that he must have the support of other countries than his own.

At the New Year’s Day reception in Paris, 1859, Napoleon made his famous comment to the Austrian Ambassador, “I regret that relations between us are so strained; tell your sovereign, however, that my sentiments for him are still the same.” The words created a sensation, no one was certain what lay back of them in the French Emperor’s mind. Cavour heard them and they gave him hope. When the time came for Victor Emmanuel to open Parliament Cavour prepared the speech from the Throne with the greatest care and had a copy submitted in advance to Napoleon. Napoleon strengthened it, and Victor Emmanuel changed it still further for the better. When the King read it the effect upon his hearers was that of a call to arms in an heroic cause. “If Piedmont, small in territory, yet counts for something in the councils of Europe, it is because it is great by reason of the ideas it represents and the sympathies it inspires. This position doubtless creates[204] for us many dangers; nevertheless, while respecting treaties, we cannot remain insensible to the cry of grief that reaches us from so many parts of Italy.” The European Powers saw that the old treaties of 1815 were in imminent danger. None of them realized who had in reality penned these words.

Cavour was now at one of the great crises of his life work, and bending every effort to secure Napoleon’s consent to a definite treaty. He succeeded in that the Emperor, delighted at the marriage of Prince Napoleon to a princess of one of the oldest houses in Europe, directed the bridegroom to sign an agreement obligating France to come to Piedmont’s aid should the latter nation be subjected to any overt act of aggression on the part of Austria. This agreement was intended to be kept altogether secret, but rumors that a treaty had been signed crept abroad. Cavour now waited for Austria’s aggressive act, and sought to gain national loans at home, and to arouse interest on Piedmont’s behalf abroad. The English government would not enthuse over Italian wrongs, they were zealous to maintain the present footing, but Cavour maintained his diplomatic suavity and kept the English friendship against the day when he might need it against France.

The spring of 1859 saw the natural crisis rap[205]idly approaching, Mazzini’s world forces again ready to break loose. Into Piedmont swarmed the youth of all northern Italy, girt with sword and gun, palpitant for strife. The government could not hold the rising tide much longer. Cavour exclaimed, “They may throw me into the Po, but I will not stop it!” And yet he had to wait. Austria must first act on the offensive. The last week of Lent came and Cavour stood face to face with the climax that was to make or mar his plans.

The story of those two weeks is tremendously dramatic. The Russian government proposed a Congress of the Powers at Paris to adjust the disordered state of Italy. England and Prussia agreed, Austria accepted subject to the two conditions that Piedmont should disarm and that she should be excluded from the Congress. The French Minister, Count Walewski, said for Napoleon that France could not plunge into war on Piedmont’s account, and that Piedmont was not entitled to a voice in the Congress. Napoleon seemed to have listened to the counsels of the Empress and his ministers, who were opposed to war, and Cavour found himself without a spokesman. It was a black hour when he wrote to the Emperor that Italy was desperate; in reply he was called to Paris. He saw Napoleon, but obtained no promise of help. He threatened that Victor Emmanuel[206] would abdicate, he himself go to America and publish all the correspondence between Napoleon and himself. He used every entreaty, but to no effect. He returned to Turin, where he was met with the wildest demonstrations of regard.

Now England made a suggestion, the government proposed that all the Italian states should be admitted to the proposed Congress, and that Austria as well as Piedmont should disarm. The French government considered this a happy proposal, and wrote to Cavour strongly recommending consent. The Minister understood what the disbanding of all his volunteers, the reduction of his army, would mean to Italy, but he saw no choice but to submit. All the Powers were against him, either course seemed to presage absolute defeat. On April 17 he sent a note agreeing to the disarming, and gave himself up to despair. History says that he was on the point of committing suicide, and was only saved by a devoted friend who pleaded with him. At the end of a long stormy scene Cavour controlled himself. “Be tranquil; we will face it together,” he said.

Fortune changed; the very day on which Cavour submitted, the Austrian government replied slightingly to the English proposal and stated that Austria would itself call upon Piedmont to disarm. It was an error of the first magnitude,[207] the act of aggression for which Cavour had so long waited. At the time Austria was probably ignorant of Napoleon’s secret agreement with Piedmont, and also that Cavour had consented to disarm. The fact of Piedmont’s submission to the wishes of France and England, and Austria’s arbitrary note, revolutionized the situation. Piedmont was saved by a marvelous turn of fortune.

April 25, while the Piedmont Chamber was conferring absolute powers on the King, Cavour was handed a note, on which was written: “They are here. I have seen them.” “They” meant the Austrian envoys. Cavour left the Chamber, saying, “It is the last Piedmontese parliament which has just ended; next year we will open the first Italian parliament.” He met the envoys and read their message, the Sardinian army to be put on a peace footing, the Italian volunteers to be disbanded; an answer, yes or no, to be given within three days. If that answer is unsatisfactory to Austria a resort to arms.

Cavour accepted the three days allowed him in order to push his preparations, then he replied to the Austrian note, saying that Piedmont had agreed to the English proposals with the assent of Prussia, Russia, and France, and that he had nothing further to add. He took leave of the Austrian envoys courteously, and then, radiantly[208] happy, joined his colleagues, saying, “The die is cast.” Fortune had stood by him and had placed Piedmont in the most enviable position he could have wished. He had staked everything on his acquiescing, with scarcely one chance of success, but that chance had come and he had won.

The war opened with the victory of the allies at Magenta, Milan was free, and at Solferino the Italians and French gained Lombardy. The Sardinian army won its spurs gloriously. Cavour, who had sent La Marmora to lead the troops, and had himself become Minister of War, showed the greatest skill in attending to his army’s commissariat. At the same time he was watching the rest of Italy, Parma and Modena returned to the old alliance of 1848, and Cavour sent special commissioners to control them. He was anxious that all the states should unite. He was constantly afraid that one of the Powers would step in and seize Tuscany. He kept his eye on Florence and supported the efficient dictatorship of Ricasoli.

Mazzini had prophesied to Cavour some months earlier: “You will be in the camp in some corner of Lombardy when the peace which betrays Venice will be signed without your knowledge.” That was exactly what happened. On July 6 Napoleon opened negotiations at Villafranca with Austria for peace. Perhaps he had learned that the French[209] people were no longer enthusiastic over the war and wished to devote himself to his own defense, perhaps he saw that victories were building up a stronger Italy than he cared to have, perhaps he feared a possible intervention by Prussia. His whole conduct towards Italy was one of most perplexing changes, certain it is that he now deliberately threw away all the advantages of victory and made every loyal Italian his enemy. Had he been more of a statesman he would have foreseen the consequences of his acts. The terms of the peace were that Venice should be left to Austria, Modena, Tuscany, and Romagna given back to their petty Princes, the Pope made president of a league in which Austria was to be a party. It was the basest betrayal of Italian hopes. Cavour was absolutely prostrated, he saw all his wonderful plans shattered beyond redemption, he saw himself totally dishonored in the sight of the people he had led into war. He rushed to the camp of Victor Emmanuel and advised him either to abdicate or fight on alone. In that moment the King rose superior to his great Minister, he decided to sign the treaty and to wait. Victor Emmanuel, more bitterly disappointed than on the battlefield of Novara, showed that he was as great a statesman as he was a leader of his people.

Cavour thought of plunging into battle in the[210] hope of being killed, he thought of joining Mazzini in extreme revolutionary measures, but meanwhile until a new ministry could be formed he was compelled to continue his government at Turin. It became his duty to notify the commissioners he had appointed for Florence, Parma, and Modena to abandon those charges, and he did so, but wrote them privately to stay where they were. Farini wrote him from Modena that he should treat the returning Duke as an enemy of Italy, and Cavour replied, “The Minister is dead; the friend applauds your decision.” He had thrown off his old mask of diplomacy and become for the moment one with the revolutionaries.

Succeeded by Rattazzi as Prime Minister, Cavour went to stay for a short period of rest with his relatives in Switzerland. He expected to see Napoleon seize Savoy and Nice, although he had not performed his part in the Pact of Plombières. Again Napoleon surprised him, he returned to Paris without pressing any claim to new territory. Meanwhile the people of central Italy were asking for union with Piedmont, and all the Powers were much concerned with their disposition, particularly England, which under the ministry of Lord Palmerston, an old and warm friend of Cavour, was now commencing openly to champion Italian independence. Palmerston did not trust Napoleon and[211] regretted that the only Italian statesman whom he considered able to cope with the French was out of office. The British Premier wrote at this time, “They talk a great deal in Paris of Cavour’s intrigues. This seems to me unjust. If they mean that he has worked for the aggrandisement and for the emancipation of Italy from foreign yoke and Austrian domination, this is true, and he will be called a patriot in history. The means he has employed may be good or bad. I do not know what they have been, but the object in view is, I am sure, the good of Italy. The people of the Duchies have as much right to change their sovereigns as the English people, or the French, or the Belgian, or the Swedish.”

Napoleon still had five divisions of his army in Lombardy and his attitude toward the annexation of the central states was most important. No one knew exactly what that attitude was. He told the Piedmontese that he could not allow the union of Tuscany, but at the same time he told Austrian and Papal sympathizers that he was too deeply attached to the principle of Italian independence to allow him to make war on the nationalists. Rattazzi did not know which course to adopt, although the King was quite willing to risk everything in succoring Tuscany. Then Napoleon suddenly proposed another of his Paris Congresses[212] to settle the difficulty, and Piedmont turned to Cavour to speak its claims.

The Congress never met, but Cavour’s appointment as envoy and the zealous support of the English government caused the downfall of the ministry, and in January, 1860, Cavour again took command of the state. His policy now was plain, “Let the people of central Italy declare themselves what they want,” he said, “and we will stand by their decisions, come what may.” The people of central Italy wanted union and Cavour turned again to see what Napoleon would do. What he would do was gradually becoming plainer. He would only sell his assent to the annexation of the states in return for Savoy and Nice. They were the old stakes of the Pact of Plombières, and Cavour had to decide whether they should go.

His decision to sacrifice Savoy and Nice for the peaceful annexation of central Italy has been the most bitterly criticised act in Cavour’s life. It can never be determined whether the sacrifice was absolutely essential, or whether in time Italy might not have been united without that step. In that day the judgment of the best-informed was that Napoleon would have sent his army into Tuscany unless his desire was met. Cavour had only agreed to consider the sacrifice at Plombières because he was willing to go to any length to secure Italy[213] from foreign domination. He was willing to pay the same price now although he realized what the cost would be to his name. The King had given his daughter as the price of the French alliance. He sadly agreed to the further sacrifice. Both Victor Emmanuel and Cavour were looking towards their ultimate goal.

It was a tremendous responsibility. Napoleon insisted that the treaty should be secret and should not be submitted to the Piedmont Parliament. He knew that England would be indignant when the news became known. So Cavour was forced to keep the decision secret and to prepare to shoulder by himself all the wrath of his people. On March 24, 1860, after hours of consideration, Cavour signed. Then he prepared to summon a Parliament which might as he foresaw indict him on a charge of high treason for his unconstitutional act.

The Parliament which for the first time represented Piedmont, Lombardy, Parma, Modena, and Romagna, met on April 2. Guerrazzi made a most bitter attack on the ministry, in which he likened Cavour to the Earl of Clarendon under Charles the Second, “hard towards the King, truculent to Parliament, who thought in his pride that he could do anything.” Cavour replied with a stinging description of the men with whom he had had to[214] contend, and avowed his complete responsibility for the treaty. A large majority of the Parliament voted with him, but it was a severe test of his power and popularity. Garibaldi, born in Nice, never forgave him, many of his countrymen considered his act absolutely unwarrantable, a monstrous piece of base ingratitude; he himself knew the price he had paid only too well, but he believed that it was a price he was forced to pay if Italy were ever to be free.

The next step in the dramatic history followed almost immediately, and although it took place without the open approval of Cavour there is no question but that he was secretly hoping for its success. The King of Naples and Sicily was in hard straits, his people were now continually fomenting revolutions, Austria no longer came to his aid as she had formerly. The feeling throughout Europe was so general that Francis II. stood on the edge of the precipice that on April 15 Victor Emmanuel wrote him and told him that his only hope of safety lay in granting his subjects an immediate constitution. Francis, like a true Bourbon, postponed action until it was too late. Meantime northern revolutionists were waking to the idea of sending an expedition south to free Sicily, and Garibaldi’s name was on every tongue. Cavour did not wish Garibaldi to go, he knew the[215] tremendous odds against his succeeding, and he realized that in case of success serious difficulties must at once arise. He was tempted to keep Garibaldi at home by force, but the King would not listen to such action. On May 5 Garibaldi and his famous Legion sailed from Quarto, and with their sailing an accomplished fact Cavour gave them such help as he could.

Good fortune tended on Garibaldi and the Thousand, they made their landing on the Sicilian coast and swept the royal troops before them. The English fleet did not actually aid them, but were not sorry for their happy progress. The rest of the world looked on and wondered if this sudden attack on southern Italy was another of Cavour’s coups. Most observers considered that it was. The King of Naples said that Garibaldi was a blind; behind him was ranged Piedmont, intent on the fall of his dynasty.

Garibaldi was hailed at Palermo as dictator and his victory over Sicily was complete. He had always acted in Victor Emmanuel’s name, but Cavour feared that his followers were too deeply imbued with Mazzini’s republican ideas to be eager to join with Piedmont. He was mistaken, he did not then altogether understand Garibaldi, and he never did entire justice to Mazzini’s principles.

If the European Powers had protested, Gari[216]baldi could not have crossed to the mainland, but England would not accept Napoleon’s proposal to intervene, and Naples was left to itself. Cavour understood that the Kingdom of Francis must fall, and only hoped that it might be by diplomacy rather than at the hands of Garibaldi’s troops. His plans to this end failed, Garibaldi reached Calabria and began his triumphal march to Naples. He had become a name with which to conjure all classes of the people, victory over every evil must follow his footsteps, the Kingdom of Naples, wretchedly weak, fell before him. Garibaldi became a hero throughout Europe, it was now Cavour’s task to treat diplomatically with such a victorious force.

In order that Garibaldi might not attempt to sweep north through Papal territory Cavour determined to send the army of northern Italy down into Umbria and the Marches of Ancona. It was a direct defiance of the temporal power of the Pope, but all discerning men had seen that the step must soon come. Moreover it was the desire now of practically all Italy to be united, the flood had swept so far that they would be content with nothing but the whole peninsula. Again Europe made no effectual protest, Napoleon was as usual undetermined, Lord Palmerston eager for Italy’s success. Ancona fell, and Victor Emmanuel marched[217] on into Neapolitan territory, delivering the last central provinces from Austrian influence. The Austrian government did not declare war, perhaps they realized at last that the world was moving forward, not backward, and that they had had their day.

Garibaldi’s last victory occurred on the Volturno on October 1. The royal forces and the victorious Legion had practically met. Cavour was strongly tempted to declare Victor Emmanuel dictator, but his belief in constitutional methods triumphed. He would not bedim one ray of Garibaldi’s glory, but he wanted to cement the constitutional monarchy. Disputes arose between the royal generals and the revolutionists, Cavour insisted that the Garibaldian troops should be honorably treated. He knew that Garibaldi had not forgiven him for the sacrifice of Nice, but he could place higher his own admiration for the hero. “Garibaldi,” he wrote to the King, “has become my most violent enemy, but I desire for the good of Italy, and the honor of your Majesty, that he should retire entirely satisfied.”

Tremendous popular influences were at work to have a dictator appointed to govern southern Italy for at least a year. Cavour might have consented to the popular acclaim for Garibaldi, or have compelled the appointment of one of his own[218] party. He did neither, instead he appealed to the Parliament. He introduced a bill authorizing the Government to accept the immediate annexation of such provinces of central and southern Italy as expressed by universal suffrage their desire to become a part of the constitutional Kingdom of Victor Emmanuel. Parliament passed this bill on October 11. It was still in doubt whether the Garibaldians would agree. On October 13 Garibaldi called his followers together, and declared that if the people voted for annexation they should have it. Then he issued the order that “the two Sicilies form an integral part of Italy, one and indivisible under the constitutional King, Victor Emmanuel, and his successors.” He had made the King a present of his conquests. It is probable that Cavour had truly estimated Garibaldi’s depths of patriotism.

Napoleon still kept his troops at Gaeta, but was finally brought to see that the conflict could only end in the one way. The French fleet withdrew, and the city surrendered February 13, 1861. Francis II. went into exile. Rome still held out, but Cavour was determined that the Pope’s temporal power must end and that city become the capital of the new kingdom. A general election to the new Parliament took place, and the returns showed a large majority pledged to Cavour’s[219] views. When the new Chamber met their first act was to vote Victor Emmanuel’s assumption of the title of King of Italy. It had been proposed by some that the title be King of the Italians, but Cavour insisted that only King of Italy spoke of the accomplished fact of the new nation.

On March 25, 1861, Cavour stated in Parliament that Italy must have Rome as its capital, but on the distinct understanding that this act should in no sense denote the servitude of the Church. He proclaimed a free church in a free state as the solution of the historic problem, events had shown that a power which could only be sustained by means of foreign support was not destined to last. Parliament voted for Rome as the capital, and Cavour opened negotiations with the Vatican. He found argument there vain, and turned to France in the hope of securing an ally who could conciliate the Pope. Meanwhile he was busied with the disposition of Garibaldi’s troops, which were persistently disregarded by the regular army. Garibaldi was indignant and stated in Parliament that Cavour was “driving the country into civil war.” Cavour, stung by the words, nevertheless held his peace and replied calmly. The breach between the two men was made up, they met as friends a little later at the King’s desire.

In May, 1861, it was seen that Cavour was[220] ailing, he had worked too hard and given himself no chance to rest. The last day he sat in Parliament he fell ill with fever, and from that he never recovered. Unto the very end he was deep in plans for the new nation; on June 6 he died.

The tale of the birth of the Italian nation reads like a romance, barrier after barrier, seemingly insurmountable, fell at the touch of a wand, and the wand was ever in Cavour’s hand. Mazzini had breathed a new hope into Italy, Victor Emmanuel had given a noble leader to the cause, Garibaldi had fought and conquered, but it was Cavour who had so fused their efforts that they led to the single goal. He was always the Italian first, the Minister of Piedmont afterwards. In history he will figure as a great patriot, in his lifetime he was recognized throughout Europe as the great statesman.

It is reported that Metternich in his old age said, “There is only one diplomatist in Europe, but he is against us; it is M. de Cavour.” Palmerston always recognized him as the one man who could unite his country and foil Napoleon, Bismarck studied him as a pattern for his own later efforts, and Napoleon, his lifelong ally and opponent, conceded that Cavour alone impressed him as a genius of the first rank in statecraft. His contemporaries could not always understand him,[221] he had so often to give up the immediate advantage for the future gain, he had to wear his mask so frequently even among his own people that men grew to believe he preferred the circuitous to the straight path. From the vantage point of a later day it is possible to see how frail was the skiff he navigated and how perilous the seas. It was so easy for the Powers of Europe, secure themselves, to prefer peace to any fresh disturbance. What did the welfare of a few small states matter to them? Italy was chronically misgoverned. Cavour had to take each forward step in fear that he might call down upon Piedmont the avalanche of Europe; his one ally, the French Emperor, was as stable as quicksilver, never two days the same. It almost passes belief that Cavour did manage to sail his skiff into port, he could only have done it by alternate patience and audacity.

Cavour did not live to see Rome or Venice become part of the Kingdom, but it was his work that made those later triumphs possible. He had foreseen their coming, he had a genius for foresight, even in the early days when he seemed speaking only for Piedmont he was planning for Italy. But in his planning for the great goal he never forgot to make certain of each step, his diplomacy was a logical sequence of accepted opportunities, he believed in taking the straight path if that[222] were possible, if not in circling the obstacle that blocked his way.

The story is told that when the wife of the Russian Minister at Turin was shopping in that city the clerk suddenly left her and ran to the door. When he returned he said, “I saw Count Cavour passing, and wishing to know how our affairs are going on, I wanted to see how he looked. He looks in good spirits, so everything is going right.” The story illustrates how, after Cavour had once taken the helm, the people of Piedmont trusted him, growing more and more confident that he would lead them aright although they could not always see the logic of his steps. Few statesmen have received more complete allegiance from a people than Cavour ultimately won, but no statesman ever deserved the gratitude of his countrymen more unreservedly.

[223]

GARIBALDI, THE CRUSADER

When Mazzini had stirred men’s minds to fever-heat in the great cause of Italian liberty, and Cavour had so manipulated events that political progress was possible, came Garibaldi, to lead with all the fire of a crusader the new race of Italian patriots. He was a hero of legends as soon as he took the field. He cannot be compared to any modern general, nor his army to any other army of recent centuries; he was the personal hero whose red shirt and slouch hat became symbols of liberty, and whose name was sufficient to work miracles of faith. Many a Calabrian peasant confidently expected the millennium to follow in Garibaldi’s footsteps, and this faith, spreading as all great popular emotions do, swept him and his ragged volunteers to victory after victory that a less legendary but vastly more experienced general never would have known. He was always the pure-hearted crusader with the single goal.

Giuseppe Garibaldi was born in Nice in the year 1807, two years the junior of Mazzini, three years the senior of Cavour. His parents, who were in very modest circumstances, wished him to enter the[224] priesthood, but his nature was too adventurous to suit him for the religious life. Even as a boy he craved action and wanted to share his father’s life on the sea. Father and grandfather had been sailors, and the boy Giuseppe could not be kept from boats. Realizing this inheritance, the father took him with him on his voyages. His second voyage was made to Rome, and the sight of that city stirred the boy to the foundations of his nature. Years later he wrote of this first boyhood impression, “Rome, which I had before admired and thought of frequently, I ever since have loved. It has been dear to me beyond all things. I not only admired her for her former power and the remains of antiquity, but even the smallest thing connected with her was precious to me.”

Very early, on a voyage to Russia, a young Ligurian mate told the youth something of the plans of the scattered Italian patriots, and, once conscious that there was a movement on foot to liberate his beloved country, Garibaldi sought all people and writings which could enlighten him on that score. Thus he came almost immediately under the influence of Mazzini’s work and joined his new movement of “Young Italy.” From the moment of this association his life held the single purpose, he was ready to make any sacrifice in this cause. In 1834 he joined in the ill-fated expedi[225]tion to Savoy, and as a consequence found himself on February 5, of that year, flying from Genoa as a proscript. A few days later he learned from a newspaper that he had been condemned to death by the government. Shortly afterwards he sailed from Marseilles for Brazil.

For the next fourteen years Garibaldi led the life of a guerilla leader, fighting the battles of Montevideo, and taking a chief part in the innumerable wars for independence which served to keep the South American states in constant upheaval during the first half of the Nineteenth Century. The various states were full of French, Spanish, and Italian adventurers, and Garibaldi contrived, with that intuitive insight into character which was one of the chief characteristics of his genius, to choose certain of the Italians who were as intense partisans of liberty as he, and form them into a legion, destined to be the nucleus of that famous Italian “Legion” which was later to win its victories on the other side of the world. The South American adventures of the young general read like a story from the romantic pages of a novelist, they are a perpetual record of battles, sieges, and alarms. Through their turbulent course Garibaldi learned experience of rough, irregular fighting, which was later to prove invaluable. To add to the romance of these years Gari[226]baldi met at a small town in the district of Laguna, in Brazil, the woman who so charmed him at first sight that he immediately wooed her and won her for his wife, the dearly beloved Anita who accompanied him afterwards on all his military expeditions, both by land and sea, and proved herself the equal of any of his men in devotion and the most intrepid courage in the face of extreme peril.

In 1847 Pius IX., the new Pontiff, stirred all Italian patriots with the brave words he uttered in behalf of a new and free Italy. To men who had waited long for a leader who should unite all the small states the Pope appeared as a real deliverer, and for a few short months he did indeed stand at the head of a movement closely allied to the Guelphic policies of the Middle Ages. The news of the Pope’s call to all Italians reached Garibaldi and his friends in Montevideo, and immediately the former and his friend, Colonel Anzani, wrote to Pius IX. tendering him their allegiance, and offering the assistance of their swords. Lines throughout the letter show the self-abnegating, single-hearted devotion of Garibaldi to Italy’s cause, the one sacred service of his life. “If then to-day our arms, which are not strangers to fighting, are acceptable to your Holiness, we need not say how willingly we shall offer them in[227] the service of one who has done so much for our country and our church. We shall count ourselves happy if we can but come to aid Pius IX. in his work of redemption.... We shall consider ourselves privileged if we are allowed to show our devotedness by offering our blood.” Unfortunately the Pope was not made of the same heroic fiber as the South American soldier. No answer was made to the letter, but Garibaldi was so eager to be on the scene of action and learn conditions for himself that he immediately sailed, although still under sentence of death, for Italy with fifty members of his Legion.

They landed at Nice on June 24, 1848. Already they had learned at Alicante the stirring events of that memorable spring, and were burning to take the field against the Austrians. The leader and his handful of men hastened to Lombardy to offer their services to the Sardinian King, Charles Albert. The King received the offer very coldly, but, his ardor undaunted, Garibaldi pushed on to Milan. The latter city had learned of his many battles in South America and hailed him with great enthusiasm. From the country volunteers came pouring to his standard, and in an incredibly short time at least 30,000 men had joined the remnant of the legion. They were most of them wild with the desire to drive the Austrians[228] from Lombardy. Charles Albert was defeated and signed an armistice by which Milan was given back to the Empire, but the Garibaldian army paid no heed to the formal terms of peace, and continued a guerilla warfare wherever white-coated Austrians were to be found.

An eye-witness, Giulio Dandolo, thus describes the appearance of Garibaldi’s troops: “Picture to yourself,” he says, “an incongruous assemblage of individuals of all descriptions, boys of twelve or fourteen, veteran soldiers attracted by the fame of the celebrated chieftain of Montevideo, some stimulated by ambition, others seeking for impunity and license in the confusion of war, yet so restrained by the inflexible severity of their leader that courage and daring alone could find a vent, whilst more lawless passions were curbed beneath his will. The general and his staff all rode on American saddles, wore scarlet blouses, with hats of every possible form, without distinction of any kind, or pretension to military ornament.... Garibaldi, if the encampment was far from the scene of danger, would stretch himself under his tent; if on the contrary the enemy were near at hand he remained constantly on horseback giving orders and visiting the outposts. Often disguised as a peasant, he risked his own safety in daring reconnaissances, but most frequently, seated on[229] some commanding elevation, he would pass whole hours examining the surrounding country with his telescope. When the general’s trumpet gave the signal to prepare for departure lassoes secured the horses which had been left to graze in the meadows. The order of march was always arranged on the preceding day, and the corps set out without so much as knowing where the evening would find them. Owing to this patriarchal simplicity, pushed sometimes too far, Garibaldi appeared more like the chief of a tribe of Indians than a general, but at the approach of danger and in the heat of combat, his presence of mind was admirable; and then by the astonishing rapidity of his movements he made up in a great measure for his deficiency in those qualities which are generally supposed to be absolutely essential to a military commander.”

Speed and audacity constituted the two main elements of the leader’s tactics. One day when on Lake Maggiore Garibaldi managed to take two Austrian steamers by surprise, and placing 1500 men upon them, suddenly appeared at Luino. From there he planned an attack on 10,000 Austrians encamped nearby, but news of his intentions reached the enemy, and he was obliged to scatter his small force in a skilfully contrived retreat. The actual result of such a campaign was[230] small, but the extreme skill of his sudden advances and retreats won him a European prestige as a master of light warfare, and continually brought soldiers to his standard. When the regular armies ceased fighting ardent patriots turned to Garibaldi as the last remaining hope.

While in Switzerland he was seized with marsh fever and became dangerously ill. When he recovered he joined his family at Nice and there spent the autumn. Charles Albert had by now repented his cold treatment of the young man’s offer of service and tendered him a high rank in the Sardinian army. Garibaldi, however, wished more immediate action than such a position offered, and had moreover been fired with hope at the reports of Daniel Manin’s heroic defense of Venice against the Austrians. He determined to go to Venice, and started with two hundred and fifty volunteer companions. At Ravenna he learned of the revolution at Rome, and then, as always in his life, could not resist the call of the Eternal City. He changed his course towards Rome, and as he traveled his followers increased to 1500 men. With this band he approached the city, which had been deserted by that Pope of noble impulses but timid resolution to whom Garibaldi had written offering his services the previous year.

[231]

Pius IX. executed a complete volte-face. Terrified at the assassination of his Prime Minister Rossi, and worked on by his clerical ministers of State and foreign diplomatists, he withdrew the liberal concessions he had just granted his Roman subjects, declared the notoriously vicious King Bomba of Naples a model monarch and fled to Gaeta, leaving Rome to the revolutionists. At the same time Mazzini the arch idealist appeared among them, and he and Garibaldi, both hailed as pre-eminent leaders in their respective fields, were elected members of the new Roman Assembly. Mazzini was in charge of the civil government, Garibaldi of the army now rapidly gathering from all parts of Italy. He took his position on the frontier menaced by the Neapolitan army, and fortified the stronghold of Rieti.

Meanwhile in northern Italy Charles Albert had again taken the field, had lost the battle of Novara, and had abdicated. The Roman Republic immediately found itself beset by great European Powers, Austria, Spain, and Naples, eager to restore the Pontiff and teach his audacious subjects a salutary lesson. As Manin in Venice, so Mazzini in Rome looked to France for succor, or at least to uphold the policy of non-intervention. Did not the constitution of the then existing French Republic specifically state that that nation[232] “would never employ her arms against the liberty of any people”? Acting on this assumption the Roman Assembly voted for the perpetual abolition of the temporal power of the Pope, and on April 18, 1849, addressed a manifesto to the governments of England and France, setting forth “that the Roman people had the right to give themselves the form of government which pleased them, that they had sanctioned the independence and free exercise of the spiritual authority of the Pope, and that they trusted that England and France would not assist in restoring a government irreconcilable by its nature with liberty and civilization, and morally destitute of all authority for many years past, and materially so during the previous five months.”

Nevertheless, Louis Napoleon, president of the French Republic, sent an army under General Oudinot to Civita Vecchia, declaring that his purpose was simply to maintain order. The Triumvirs, Mazzini, Armellini, and Saffi, thought it wisest to prepare Rome for possible defense, and called Garibaldi from the Neapolitan frontier. The Roman Republic hailed him as its defender. “This mysterious conqueror,” says Miraglia, “surrounded by a brilliant halo of glory, who entered Rome on the eve of the very day on which the Republic was about to be attacked, was in the[233] minds of the Roman people the only man capable of maintaining the ‘decree of resistance;’ therefore the multitudes on the very instant united themselves with the man who personified the wants of the moment and who was the hope of all.”

April 30 was the date of the first French attack, an assault so violently resisted that 7000 picked troops were disastrously routed by a much smaller number of Garibaldi’s volunteers. Oudinot was amazed, and sought an armistice, while Louis Napoleon, in order to hurry re-enforcements to Civita Vecchia, sent De Lesseps to open negotiations for peace. Garibaldi desired no armistice, he feared delay, but the Triumvirs still hoped to obtain France’s assistance ultimately and so checked his pursuing the first advantage. It was a contest between the principles of diplomacy and warfare.

The negotiations with the French envoy dragged, but meanwhile Garibaldi was not idle. On May 4, with 4000 light troops, he secretly left Rome. On the 8th they reached Palestrina, and on the following day met the Neapolitan army, some 7000 strong. Three hours of fighting put the latter troops to ignominious flight. Later their general attributed the overwhelming defeat to the superstitious terror inspired in his men by the very name of Garibaldi, and the remarkable[234] appearance of his red-shirted troops. They were convinced that Garibaldi was the devil, for they found that even holy silver bullets failed to strike him down.

Fearing lest the French might attack Rome in his absence Garibaldi now returned there, making a rapid retreat and passing within two miles of the enemy. De Lesseps and the Triumvirs were still conferring. Then for some unaccountable reason a Colonel Roselli was placed over Garibaldi’s head, and the famous commander, probably the victim of malicious envy, was only second in command. He did not complain. “Some of my friends,” he wrote characteristically, “urged me not to accept a secondary position, under a man who, only the day before, was my inferior, but I confess these questions of self-love never yet troubled me; whoever gives me a chance of fighting, if only as a common soldier, against the enemy of my country, him will I thank.”

The army of King Bomba now rallied, and took certain strongholds on the road to Rome. Garibaldi was sent out to dislodge them, and met and put to flight a large Neapolitan column near Velletri. The latter took refuge in that city, but when the Roman volunteers made a reconnaissance of the place in the morning they found the army had fled panic-stricken during the night. Again[235] the name of Garibaldi and the magic of his red shirt, or famous “camicia rossa,” had been too much for them. The only credit the Neapolitan general could contrive to take to himself was a statement in the official report of the extraordinary rapidity and safety of his retreat.

A few days later General Roselli ordered Garibaldi to carry the war into Neapolitan territory, and he had proceeded along the ancient Samnite road as far as the banks of the Volturno when messengers called him in all haste back to Rome to be present at the final negotiations with the French. He returned to Rome on May 24, to be hailed again as the invincible defender of the Republic.

The French Commissioner De Lesseps signed certain agreements with the Roman Assembly and then referred these agreements to General Oudinot for ratification. The General, however, had by this time received his long-desired re-enforcements, and, stating that De Lesseps had exceeded his authority, prepared for an immediate attack. He said, however, that he would postpone the actual assault until Monday, June 4, but did actually commence operations on Sunday the 3d, taking the Romans off their guard and capturing the outposts and the Ponte Molle.

So soon as the treacherous attack was known[236] the bells of the Capitol gave the alarm, and Garibaldi’s Legion, together with the Lombard volunteers, rushed to the defense. The fighting in the entire circuit of the city’s walls was desperate, but the soldiers of the Legion were no longer opposed to Austrians or superstitious Neapolitans, but to veteran French troops, so numerous that losses meant little to them. Nevertheless the city held out while De Lesseps pleaded for the terms of his agreement at Paris. Garibaldi tried every device to dislodge the French batteries which were shattering the Roman walls, but all to no avail. It was clear that the siege would be only a matter of days before news came that the French government disavowed any part in the agreement signed by De Lesseps. Mazzini still urged resistance to the end, but the disparity in forces was so overwhelming that Garibaldi could not agree with him. This difference of opinion tended to widen still further the gulf which already existed between the theorist and the soldier.

On June 21 the French succeeded in planting a battery within the city walls, and from that time the work of destruction progressed more rapidly. The defense was intensely dramatic, demagogues mixing with the purest natured patriots, the popular orator Ciceruacchio, with bloody shirt and sword, pouring forth his burning words on the[237] spirit of ancient Roman independence, Ugo Bassi, the monk, going about among the dying, holding the crucifix before their eyes, utterly regardless of the storm of bullets all around him. It was a noble defense, but it could have only one end, and so finally on June 30, at the advice of Garibaldi, who appeared before the Triumvirs, his clothing shot into ribbons, the Government issued the order that “The Roman Republic in the name of God and the people gives up a defense which has become impossible.”

On that same day the Triumvirs resigned, and the Assembly appointed Garibaldi dictator. For a few days negotiations looking to an armistice were conducted between the French and the Roman lines. Finally, on July 3, the negotiations came to an end. Garibaldi called the troops into the great square before St. Peter’s. “Soldiers!” he declared, “that which I have to offer you is this; hunger, thirst, cold, heat; no pay, no barracks, no rations, but frequent alarms, forced marches, charges at the point of the bayonet. Whoever loves our country and glory may follow me!” About four thousand men instantly volunteered, and at almost the same hour when the French entered the city the little Legion left, taking the road to Tivoli, with the purpose of gaining the broken Tuscan mountain country. The leader’s[238] devoted wife Anita went with him, as patiently his companion in adventures in Italy as in her native South America.

The Papal banner was flung from the Castle of St. Angelo, and the Roman Republic came to an end. Its story is almost as eventful, almost as heroic as Manin’s defense of the Venetian Republic during practically the same time. In both cases the cities fell, but as Manin at Venice so Mazzini and Garibaldi at Rome had taught their people that they were capable of the greatest sacrifices in the cause of that liberty of which all Italy was dreaming.

Long pages would be needed to tell of the excitements and dangers which befell Garibaldi and his army as they threaded their way northward, their ultimate destination Venice, which had not yet surrendered. The French and Austrians were always at their heels, and the troop must inevitably have been captured but for the masterly skill of the general in such guerilla warfare. Swift night marches, daytime lying in wait, sudden attacks and equally sudden retreats, served to carry them gradually away from Rome. They left Orvieto one hour before the French troops entered. Thence the route lay by Arezzo and Montepulciano to the little republic of San Marino, close to Rimini. By this time the army[239] was sadly reduced in size and strength, the Austrians were pressing close upon their heels, and Garibaldi saw that escape could only lie in scattering his men. He released all the volunteers, bidding them farewell, reminding them that it was better to die than to live as slaves to the foreigner.

The Austrians threatened an immediate attack on San Marino, and Garibaldi with a few companions fled secretly at night. Anita, although utterly worn out by illness, would not leave him. The little band reached the port of Cesenatico and embarked on the Adriatic in thirteen small boats. The Austrian fire forced nine of the boats to surrender, the remaining four, in one of which was the general, his wife, Ciceruacchio, the Roman orator, and the priest Ugo Bassi, succeeded in escaping and landing near the mouth of the Po.

The fugitives had barely landed when they were surrounded by Austrian scouts. Anita became desperately ill, and was forced to hide with her husband in a cornfield, an old comrade of Garibaldi’s in South America keeping watch over them. The general was beside himself with grief as he tended his rapidly failing wife. Ugo Bassi, afraid to stay with them lest his presence should lead to their discovery, was shortly captured by Austrians, and Ciceruacchio and the nine others[240] were soon after taken prisoners. All but the orator and the priest were immediately shot. Bassi and Ciceruacchio were taken to Bologna, and there ordered executed by Bedini, the Papal Legate, a man of infamous memory, who commanded that Bassi be tortured before execution. The heroic priest must always stand forth as one of the rarest martyr-spirits produced by the great struggle for Italian liberty.

Garibaldi succeeded in finding some kind-hearted peasants who carried Anita to a cottage. Not long after she reached its shelter she died. The general, broken-hearted, was forced by the approach of Austrian soldiers to go to Ravenna, thence in disguise he went to Florence and finally to Genoa. Here he visited his mother and his three children, who had been left by Anita with their grandmother. His presence in Genoa was an embarrassment to the Government at Turin, and they courteously asked him to leave Italy. Instead of doing so he went to Sardinia, much to the uneasiness of the French, who wished him farther away. In this mountain island he lived a life, half that of a hermit, and half of a bandit, continually hunted as an outlaw, and finding entire safety only on the small island rock of Caprera. This tiny island, destined to become famous as his home, abounded in natural beauty[241] of a wild and desolate type, and made a deep impression on the refugee, whose mind was always peculiarly open to the spell of majestic scenery.

Finally, to the great relief of both France and Piedmont, Garibaldi was induced to leave Sardinian territory. He went to Gibraltar, but was only allowed to stay twenty-four hours. No European country was anxious to harbor a man whose name had become a watchword for revolutionary zeal. Finding this to be the case the general sailed for New York, and spent about a year and a half engaged in making tallow candles in a small back street. He was not alone in his exile, the disturbing years of 1848 and 1849 had sent many a revolutionary exile across the seas, and at one time in New York Lamartine, Louis Blanc, Ledru Rollin, and three or four others almost equally prominent were supporting themselves there by manual labor.

When he left New York Garibaldi went again to South America, and became captain of a merchant vessel trading between Peru and Hong Kong. Again he returned to New York and commanded a trader flying the American flag but sailed by Italians, who like himself were awaiting a new tide in affairs before returning home. The many ups and downs of these roving years abounded with adventures, but even here Gari[242]baldi’s life was no more thrilling than when he was at the head of his irregular troops in Italy.

After four years of wandering he returned to Genoa, stopping for a short stay at Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he was enthusiastically greeted by English admirers, and given a presentation sword. When he reached Genoa he found that his mother had died, and that his three children were living with his cousins. A few short trips at sea succeeded in earning him sufficient money to buy part of the little island of Caprera, of which he was so fond. Here he established himself to await events. Europe had grown more peaceful, but Garibaldi, hot-headed as he was, could see that Piedmont was slowly but surely widening the breach between herself and Austria. He began to look to Piedmont as the hope of Italy, and little by little to understand, especially when the small kingdom allied itself with France and England against Russia, that Piedmont meant Cavour, and that the latter was the match of any diplomatic strategist in Europe.

Garibaldi purchased half of the island of Caprera in 1855, and immediately took possession. Working with his own hands he built first a log hut and then a more pretentious villa, to which in time he brought his cousins, the Deideris, and his children, Theresita, who was rapidly becom[243]ing a very beautiful girl, and the boys Menotti and Ricciotti. The general called himself the “recluse of Caprera,” and worked hard to cultivate a soil naturally barren and difficult. He was glad of the opportunity to rest after so many years of stirring action, and day by day grew more enamoured of the wild vegetation of his island home and the steep cliffs that bordered it against the sea. Often he had visitors from nearby Sardinia, simple enthusiastic folk who were delighted to look upon him as a national hero, and confidently expected that some day he would lead an Italian army to the greatest victories. In such patriarchal simplicity he spent the years until 1859, hearing from time to time news of Cavour’s policies at Turin, always eager in hope that his sword might soon be drawn in conjunction with that of a national army.

Ten years of patient waiting and subtle diplomacy mark the decade between the siege of Rome and 1859. In that time Cavour, by the successive steps of the Crimean War, the Congress of Paris, and the secret Pact of Plombières, had succeeded in isolating Austria from the other Powers, and in allying Louis Napoleon with Piedmont. His next step was to prepare actively for war, and with this purpose he called Garibaldi to see him at Turin. Garibaldi went to the Minister’s[244] house, dressed in his usual campaign clothes, wearing a loose red blouse and broad-brimmed hat, and refused to give his name to the servant. On Cavour’s hearing of the presence of such a disreputable appearing stranger, he said, “Let the poor devil in, he probably has some petition to ask of me.”

The meeting was most amicable, Cavour asked Garibaldi to command the new volunteer army known as the “Hunters of the Alps,” and Garibaldi was delighted to accept. Immediately he began recruiting his forces, and so spontaneous was the rising throughout northern and central Italy that by May of that year he was at the head of three regiments of infantry well-equipped for instant service. Austria was dismayed, and demanded that Cavour dismiss the men, but by what was probably the most fortunate coup in his whole career Cavour was able to appear willing to have peace, and yet force Austria to war. Napoleon stood by Piedmont, and in May, 1859, the campaign that was to redeem the inglorious field of Novara commenced.

Garibaldi’s great reputation caused friction between him and the officers of the regular army, and he who had been used to the greatest freedom of action found himself seriously hampered by directions from headquarters. He hailed with de[245]light King Victor Emmanuel’s permission to separate from the regular army and fight as he pleased, accompanied as it was with the King’s remark, “Go where you like, do what you like; I feel only one regret, that I am not able to follow you.”

The resulting campaign showed the great guerilla warrior at his best. As with the Neapolitans in 1849, so with the Croats in 1859, Garibaldi was credited with superhuman powers. At times the success attending his sheer effrontery seemed almost to justify such a conclusion. Time and again he placed himself in positions so desperate that it was only his quickness of wit in seizing at a possible chance that saved him. Had he failed he would have been rated as a bungler, but as he succeeded the desperation of each chance served only to magnify his strategy. He was a remarkable mathematician, able to estimate all possible combinations adroitly and quickly, he never despaired, and never hesitated when he had decided on a plan. As a result the “Hunters of the Alps,” or Garibaldini, as the volunteers were called, hung on the Austrian troops all through Lombardy and the Lake country, driving them from town after town by sudden assaults, continually tricking much larger forces by clever misrepresentations of their own strength. Garibaldi en[246]tered Lombard territory and took Varese. After defeating the Austrians near there in the battle of Malnate he swept up to Cavallesca, near Como, and, attacking a much larger force than his own, drove the enemy through Como towards Monza. Como received the Hunters with open arms, Garibaldi telegraphed to Milan, using the Austrian General’s name, and so gained information of the Allies. Soon afterwards he stationed his advance guard at the Villa Medici, looking down over lake after lake, and with a panoramic view of the Alps. Here the Austrians thought to surround him, but by means of sending false messages planned to fall into the enemy’s hands, and by taking advantage of a heavy storm at night, he succeeded in escaping them and regaining Como.

Meanwhile the regular army was winning victories, Montebello, Magenta, Solferino, and San Martino were falling to the glory of French and Italian arms. The Austrians were steadily being driven back, Garibaldi left Como and took Bergamo, then Brescia. As he advanced the men of the land he crossed joined his army, Brescia set to work to fortify its walls at his command. He was ordered to follow the Austrians, and pursued them to Tre Ponti, which he won, although at such a cost he was obliged to fall back on the main army.

Napoleon the Third had no intention of winning[247] too many victories for Italy, nor of allowing the Garibaldian troops to gain unseemly power. The plans of the general were therefore interfered with, his recruits diverted into other channels, and the Hunters sent into the passes of the Stelvio on the pretext of preventing an attack from Germany, but in reality to prevent Garibaldi from crossing Lake Garda and gaining the valley of the Adige and the Veronese mountains. The general obeyed, and conducted a markedly successful campaign near Sondrio and Bormio, finding himself in his true element among the Alps.

Then came the stupefying news that Napoleon had made the peace of Villafranca. The rage of the Garibaldini knew no bounds, their general hurried to Victor Emmanuel’s camp to tender his resignation. The King would not accept it. “Italy still requires the legions you command,” he said, “you must remain!” Garibaldi returned to his troops, his hatred for Louis Napoleon more intense than ever, but convinced that the peace only marked a short pause in the great forward movement.

Too much credit cannot be given Victor Emmanuel for his resolution at this time. Bitterly disappointed as he must have been at such an abrupt end to a campaign that had promised to open Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic, he yet[248] managed to hide his chagrin, and held Garibaldi, even as he a little later induced Cavour to resume the post which he had in a burst of rage resigned. Fortunately also the formal statement of the peace-makers that the Princes should be restored to their thrones in Florence, Modena, and Parma, and the Pope’s legates at Bologna, Ferrara, Forli, and Ravenna was simply a statement, the people of those cities had quite different views. They had tasted of liberty and of the victories of a national army, and one city after another announced that it would have no more of its foreign rulers, that its people wished to become citizens of Italy and subjects of Victor Emmanuel. Garibaldi heard this and was convinced that it no longer lay in the power of his arch enemy, Louis Napoleon, to keep Italians separated. “Whatever may be the march of existing circumstances,” he said to his men, “Italians must neither lay aside their arms, nor be discouraged. They ought on the contrary to increase in number in their ranks, to testify to Europe that, guided by their King, Victor Emmanuel, they are ready to face again the vicissitudes of war, whatever they may be. Perhaps at the moment we least expect it the signal of alarm may again be sounded!”

He was sent into central Italy, and at Florence, at Bologna, at Rimini, he had only to appear to[249] have volunteers crowd about him. Napoleon learned of this and remonstrated to the government at Turin, which attempted to check the ardor of its great general, and yet keep him for further use. It was a time when Cavour’s skill was taxed to the uttermost to avoid a break either with the French or with the Garibaldians.

The news of Cavour’s decision to cede Savoy and Nice to France, a decision only reached when it became evident that it was the price Napoleon demanded for allowing central Italy to unite with Piedmont, came like a thunder clap to Garibaldi. Born in Nice he declared that the act made him “a stranger in his own country.” He was immediately returned to Parliament for Nice and bitterly attacked Cavour’s policy in the Chamber. He spoke at length, claiming that the cession was both an infraction of the original charter by which Nice had become a part of the Sardinian kingdom, and a violation of the fundamental law of nationality. Cavour, however, carried the Parliament with him, and Garibaldi left for Nice to take farewell of it, for he refused to remain there and become a citizen of France. He was disgusted with the compromises of diplomacy. “I have nothing to do with men or political parties,” he declared, “my country, and nothing but my country, is my object.”

[250]

Two other incidents of the campaign of 1859 must be mentioned, the one Garibaldi’s visit to Anita’s grave near Ravenna, the scene of those bitter days immediately after the fall of Rome, to which he now returned as a conqueror. The other was his marriage at Como during his fighting in the Lakes to Giuseppina Raymondi, the adventurous daughter of the Marquis Raymondi, who persuaded the general that she was deeply in love with him, in order that marriage might shield her sadly tarnished name. Garibaldi would not hear of the marriage at first, and declared that since Anita’s death his heart was withered. The Marquis answered, “It is with freedom, and with Italian unity that my daughter is enamoured, and with you as the embodiment of it in Italy.” The general could not withstand that appeal, and consented to the marriage. The depths of the treachery were revealed to him immediately afterwards, and he left his new wife at once. It was years, however, before he was granted a divorce from her.

Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi each played an important part in the next act of the great drama of Italy, but Garibaldi unquestionably held the center of the stage. The act was the famous expedition of the Thousand to Sicily, a performance foolhardy and rash in the extreme, which was, however, destined to bring to a speedy fruition the[251] long-deferred hopes of all Italians patriots. Mazzini’s part was to prepare the field, he had early chosen Sicily as a most favorable scene for revolutionary action, and had sent agents to smuggle arms into the island, to hold meetings and generally to arouse the people. Cavour’s part was to play the double game of protesting against the expedition in the eyes of the Powers, and of aiding it as best he could secretly. He foresaw the risks that would beset it, and the even greater risk to his King of having such a dictator as Garibaldi win many victories, yet he could not absolutely prevent a scheme devised in all patriotic fervor. He gave public orders to the Sardinian admiral to capture Garibaldi and bring him back, but with a secret message which the admiral rightly understood as meaning that Cavour wished no such event to happen. In much the same manner the British ambassador at Turin, Sir James Hudson, and the British fleet in the Mediterranean, although ostensibly strictly neutral, contrived not to embarrass Garibaldi, and the fleet even went so far as to appear inadvertently between the Neapolitan ships and those that bore the Thousand, thereby preventing what might have been an untimely cannonade. Though few in official places therefore openly countenanced the expedition, many hoped that it would succeed. Under such[252] circumstances the general sailed from Genoa on May 5, 1860, with some 1067 picked men, many recruited from the “Hunters of the Alps,” henceforth to be known as the “Mille,” and destined to make one of the greatest expeditions in history, and eventually to give two crowns to the house of Savoy.

It was an historic day when the “great filibuster,” as Garibaldi was called, sailed from Genoa. Parents, wives, and children bade the Thousand a tearful farewell in the rocky bay of Quarto, where to-day a marble star upon the cliff commemorates the event. At Talamone they landed to seize some arms and to send a force of one hundred men into the Papal States to incite rebellion. Then they set sail fairly out to sea, and Garibaldi and his chiefs planned the Sicilian campaign. May 11 the two shiploads reached Marsala, hotly pursued by Neapolitan cruisers. The Thousand took possession of the town, the general issued glowing proclamations to the citizens, and quickly recruited a corps of over a thousand Sicilian scouts. From Marsala they went to Salemi, a march triumphantly acclaimed by monks, priests, women, and children who lined the roads, and with Sicilian impetuosity were carried away by the sudden appearance of an Italian army. At Salemi Garibaldi issued this pronun[253]ciamento: “Garibaldi, commander-in-chief of the national forces in Sicily, on the invitation of the principal citizens, and on the deliberation of the free communes of the island, considering that in time of war it is necessary that the civil and military power should be united in one person, assumes, in the name of Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, the Dictatorship in Sicily.”

The first battle was fought in the heart of the mountains, at Calatafimi, where numbers of ancient ruins gave Garibaldi opportunity to use his skill in irregular fighting. The battle lasted three hours, both Garibaldi’s son Menotti, and the son of Daniel Manin of Venice, were wounded; in the end the conflict was a victory for the Thousand. The Neapolitans fell back on Palermo, and Garibaldi planned to take the Sicilian capital.

Throughout the campaign the officers of the King of Naples showed the same sublime incompetence which characterized their sovereign. Palermo should have been easy to defend, and with this knowledge, and misled by Garibaldi’s tactics into believing him in retreat, the Neapolitan general gave a great dinner at the capital and proceeded to forget the war altogether. As a result, by a remarkably swift march, Garibaldi appeared at the gates of Palermo, carried them, swept through street after street of the city, and drove the enemy[254] into the castle and palace. For a few days the city was laid waste by bombs from the two latter positions, and from the fleet in the harbor, then the Neapolitan general asked for an armistice, which eventually ended in the evacuation of Sicily, except at Messina and a few forts, by the army of the King of Naples. As most of the soldiers were Austrians, they left without any deep regret, in fact with almost as much rejoicing as though they had been victors. Free from the foreigners, Palermo gave itself up to rejoicing, men and women donned red shirts and acclaimed Garibaldi as a second Cincinnatus and new Washington. All relics of the former rulers were destroyed, Sicily felt itself at last free to join the other states of Italy. Immediately Cavour sent agents to urge annexation to Piedmont, but Garibaldi was not yet ready for that step. He planned to win Naples and Rome before he gave over his independent dictatorship.

The scene now changes to Milazzo. Thither Garibaldi’s army, composed of the Thousand, of many Palermitans, of an English brigade, and of Hungarians, Frenchmen, Italians of all ranks, all drawn to the great general whose fame had now spread from end to end of Europe, proceeded. There was hard fighting at Milazzo, but in time the city fell, and Messina lay practically open to[255] the invaders. A few more days and Garibaldi was encamped there, resting and recuperating after the entire liberation of Sicily.

It is no exaggeration to say that fortune had showered her richest gifts on Garibaldi during this campaign. In a few short weeks he had driven all the Neapolitan forces out of the island with little loss of life to his own men, had come into possession of money, arms, boats, stores of all kinds, had increased his army to some 25,000 men, had become the idol of all Sicily, to whom the red shirt became the proudest badge of man or woman, had so thoroughly frightened King Francis II. that he was unwilling to join his own army of defense, and had so completely aroused Italy that from each town young and old poured forth to make their way to his invincible standard. Through it all, he, whom fortune was doing everything to spoil, remained as simple, as unmindful of personal comfort or aggrandizement, as in his early days. He was at his best when he won Sicily and planned his march on Naples, it was unfortunate that the warrior should ever have attempted to become the statesman.

Garibaldi’s army remained at Messina for twenty-three days. During part of that time the general was engaged in assuring the Sardinian government that he had no interest in a revolu[256]tionary expedition which was attempting to march into the Papal States. The rest of the time was given to perfecting his plans for a descent on Calabria.

August 19 the first detachment of the army sailed from Taormina in the Torino and the Franklin. The Neapolitan fleet was led into the belief that the embarkation would be at Messina, and by this ruse the ships succeeded in crossing to the mainland unmolested. They landed at Melito, and early the next morning Garibaldi prepared to march on Reggio. Again speed stood him in good stead. The new Army of the South, as the Thousand with its recruits was now called, took the Neapolitan general by surprise. At two in the morning Garibaldi’s army marched into the city to find the garrison asleep. The Neapolitan soldiers, thoroughly alarmed at the appearance of the devil, as they named Garibaldi, so suddenly among them, paid no heed to their officers and rushed to a nearby fortress. There severe fighting occurred during the afternoon and night, but finally the stronghold capitulated, and the Garibaldians had won an important base on the mainland. He sent to Messina for the remainder of his troops, and on August 22 began that celebrated “promenade militaire” from Reggio to Naples, which bore little resemblance to warfare, as the enemy fled[257] as fast as he approached, and the countrymen, as well as deserters from the army of Naples, flocked to join his march.

Matters had now come to such a pass that it was only necessary for Garibaldi to appear before a town for it to capitulate; at Villa San Giovanni, Garibaldi with a few hundred men back of him, ordered 12,000 Neapolitans to surrender, and they immediately did so. Again at Soveria he ordered 1500 of the enemy to surrender and was obeyed. It was enough for a red shirt to appear to cause the enemy to fly or surrender, at certain parts of the march the Neapolitan soldiers walked side by side with the Garibaldians. Town after town welcomed the great general as the Liberator, as a second John the Baptist. Both natives and Austrians looked upon him with religious awe. He had only to appear to be surrounded with ecstatic multitudes, his scouts had merely to say that Garibaldi was coming to send the enemy flying in all haste. In one case it was enough to telegraph he was near the town of Salerno, the defenders immediately decamped.

The road to Naples lay open, the citizens of that easily-excited capital were fairly beside themselves in eagerness to welcome the Liberator. The general left Salerno by train on September 7, but as far as speed was concerned he might almost as well[258] have walked. The people of all the towns on the route, Torre del Greco, Resina, Portici, turned out, covered the railroad tracks, boarded the train, climbed on the engine, shouting with joy, singing the Garibaldi hymn, frantic with enthusiasm as they hailed the man who they believed brought with him the millennium.

In Naples it was the same, there was no end to the uproar, to the enthusiasm, to the adulation. Every one wore red, every one cheered, even the troops of King Francis, who had retired to the castle and fortress, could not resist the enthusiasm, and flung up their caps and cheered for Garibaldi.

Naples had no government, Garibaldi appointed a temporary governor, and issued a proclamation glowing with patriotic fervor.

“People of Naples—

“It is with feelings of the profoundest respect and love that I present myself before you in this center of a noble and long-suffering people, whom four centuries of tyranny have not been able to humiliate, and whose spirit could never be broken by a ruthless despotism. The first necessity of Italy is harmony and social order, without which the unity of Italy is impossible. This day Providence has conferred that blessing upon you, and has made me its minister. The same Providence[259] has also given you Victor Emmanuel, whom from this moment I will designate the father of our country.

“The model of all sovereigns, he will impress upon his posterity the duty that they owe to a people, who have with so much enthusiasm chosen him for their king. You are supported by the clergy, who, conscious of their true mission, have with patriotic ardor and truly Christian conduct, braved the gravest dangers of battle at the head of our Italian soldiers. The good Monks of La Gancia, and the noble-hearted priests of the Neapolitan continent have one and all assisted us in the good fight.

“I repeat that harmony is the one essential thing for Italy, and let us freely forgive those who, having disagreed with us, are now repentant, and are willing to contribute their mite to build up the monument of our national glory.

“Lastly, we must make it apparent to all that, while we respect the houses of other people, we are determined to be masters in our own house, whether the powers of the earth like it or not.—G. Garibaldi.”

No sooner was the need for actual warfare at an end than countless difficulties arose in the liberated city. Garibaldi was no disciplinarian, he had al[260]ways entrusted all harsh measures to others, he refused to harbor suspicion or ill-will, his nature was patient and simple and confiding. His sole concern was to drive the foreigners out of Italy, beyond that he had few plans. But as soon as Naples was free scores of theorists in government arose. Mazzini appeared, and his followers tried to win Garibaldi over to their ideal republic, the clerical party had another plan, the secret societies still another, and the brigands who infested the country about Naples were already intriguing for the return of the Bourbons, who had allowed them free sway. Cavour sent his agents hurrying to Naples to keep the people quiet and to urge them to advocate immediate annexation with Piedmont. He had, however, a more difficult task on his hands at the same time. He feared that Garibaldi would immediately march on Rome, and Cavour knew that the Papal question could not be settled in any such summary fashion. Napoleon would immediately intervene, and the Army of the South would find itself fighting France. That was his great fear, and to prevent the event if possible he sent the Army of Piedmont, of Lombardy, of Tuscany south at the double quick. Victor Emmanuel must meet Garibaldi before the latter crossed the Volturno if trouble with France were to be avoided.

[261]

Garibaldi, however, cared very little for diplomacy, his object was to take Rome with all speed, and he refused to heed Cavour’s agents. Fortunately Francis II. of Naples finally decided to make a stand, and so detained Garibaldi until the northern army could arrive. Mazzini had said to Garibaldi, “If you are not on your way towards Rome or Venice before three weeks are over, your initiative will be at an end.” The prophecy, like so many of Mazzini’s, proved true. Garibaldi had to fight several battles on the Volturno and besiege Capua before he could turn towards Rome, and by that time Victor Emmanuel had reached the scene of action.

The last battles were the hardest fought of the campaign, but were ultimately won by the Army of the South. Capua held out a little longer, but finally fell, and Francis II. took himself safely to Gaeta.

On October 10 Garibaldi had called for a popular vote in the Two Sicilies for or against their annexation to Piedmont. The vote was overwhelmingly for annexation. Garibaldi issued a final proclamation, ending, “Italy one (as the metropolis has wisely determined she shall be), under the King, galantuomo, who is the symbol of our regeneration, and the prosperity of our country.” He met the King, and handed over to him[262] his dictatorship of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily. This moment, which was the climax of his great expedition, was the proudest of his career.

The general was still eager for an immediate march on Rome, but the King would not have it. It was arranged that the Army of the South should be incorporated with the royal army, and Garibaldi left Naples for Caprera. He borrowed $100 to pay certain debts, and in the same meager state in which he had set out he returned to his rock of Caprera to wait until he should be needed.

At Caprera the general, now become the most romantic figure in Europe, received countless deputations of admirers from all nations. For a short time he was content to resume his farm labors, but the thought of Rome loomed ever larger in his mind. He had not the gift of patience now, he was convinced that his army of volunteers could fight and overcome both France and Austria. The delays of Cavour’s policy irritated him, and finally he went in April, 1861, to the Parliament at Turin to speak his mind. He made a violent attack on Cavour, to which the latter would not reply in kind. A few days later the two men met at the King’s request and pretended a reconciliation. Garibaldi could not appreciate Cavour’s temperate statecraft, Cavour realized that Garibaldi was[263] becoming the most difficult problem Italy had to face. Unfortunately for Garibaldi, and doubly unfortunately for Italy, Cavour was failing in strength, and only a short time after the scene in Turin the great Minister died. If he had lived Italy would have been spared much that followed.

Garibaldi returned to Caprera and watched from afar the policies of the new premiers, first Ricasoli, then Rattazzi. The latter was always suspected of French leanings, and the extremists were bitterly opposed to him. He was a brilliant man, fated to meet disasters, as day after day passed he found that the Garibaldian problem called ever louder for solution. He saw that Genoa, Sicily, and Naples were hotbeds of turbulence, he knew that the people of the last-named city had made a god of Garibaldi, had built altars to him, and were imploring him to lead them against the Pope, he knew that even in the Eternal City hundreds were calling to him to deliver them. Yet Rattazzi also knew that the problem of the temporal power of the Pope was one of concern to all Europe, and that Italy was not ready to fight both France and Austria. His final solution was this, one which must not be judged too harshly when all the circumstances are considered, to encourage Garibaldi to start a popular campaign against the Pope, and then send the royal[264] army to arrest him as fomenting civil strife. The plan succeeded. In the spring of 1862 Garibaldi could restrain his eagerness no longer. He announced to his delighted followers that he would lead them to Rome. He was given to understand the government would not actively interfere. So, two years after his first expedition, we find him again arriving triumphantly in Sicily, again we find men of all classes flocking to him, again by strategy he crossed the straits to Calabria and took up his northward march. He had not gone far when he found that the royal army was marching against him. He became convinced of this when he bivouacked on the famous hill of Aspromonte and saw the royal general, Pallavicini, camped opposite him. The next day he tried to lead his soldiers past the other army, but they were stopped by the regular troops. Both generals affirmed that they gave no orders to fire, but nevertheless shots were exchanged, and both Garibaldi and his son Menotti were wounded. A truce was agreed upon, and the volunteers were placed under the charge of the royal army. Garibaldi became a state prisoner, perhaps the most difficult prisoner any government ever had to take upon its hands. All Italy was devoted to him, but found that it could not control him. The government had been placed in the most embarrassing[265] situation conceivable, it had been obliged to disarm the man who had just given the King two crowns. Aspromonte remains one of the most unfortunate events in the great battle for Italian unity, but it was in a large measure inevitable. Cavour might have contrived an escape from it, but Garibaldi was too big a problem for his successors to handle diplomatically.

The wounded general was taken by slow conveyances to Scylla, and thence to the fort of Varignano in the Gulf of Spezia. The wound was painful, it was difficult to locate the bullet, for a long time he was obliged to keep to his bed and postpone further political action. His illness, however, gave his friends a golden opportunity to show their devotion; women of all ranks fought for the chance to nurse the hero, delegations from England, from Germany, from all parts of Italy made pilgrimages to his prison, the hotels at Spezia, the nearest town to the fortress, were continually crowded by Garibaldi worshipers. It seemed that what he had suffered at Aspromonte had actually canonized him in the eyes of the world.

His imprisonment could not last long; October 5, 1862, the government declared an amnesty covering all participators in the late expedition against Rome except those soldiers who had left[266] the regular army to join the volunteers. Garibaldi was now moved to Spezia, thence after a time to Pisa. Each city he passed greeted him tumultuously; in Pisa, the night of his arrival, the Garibaldi hymn was cheered so loudly at the theater that the manager abandoned the play and had nothing but the hymn rendered all the evening, which pleased the audience greatly. At Pisa the bullet was extracted from Garibaldi’s foot, and his recovery became more rapid. On December 20 he started for Caprera, giving a chance for Leghorn to welcome him as he embarked for his island home. Once there he found the rest of which he was so much in need, although visitors continually besieged his little farm. The kindly instincts of his nature showed in full flower, he gave whatever his children or his friends asked of him, sacrificing his own comforts continually for their sake, and continually being imposed upon. He wrote to the patriots suffering in Poland and Denmark, and wished that he might go to aid them. Wherever men were in trouble he sympathized, he could even find it in his heart to contribute to the poor of Austria.

There were friends of the national cause who feared that the affair of Aspromonte had injured Garibaldi’s prestige, and to revive it in full glory they planned his triumphal visit to England in[267] the spring of 1863. Garibaldi had always admired the English, and there was no question but that the people of England had always zealously sided with Italy against France and Austria, no matter how strongly their government might feel that diplomacy required a middle course. The general went from Caprera to Southampton, and thence to London, acclaimed by thousands, who rivaled the warm-spirited Neapolitans in their heights of enthusiasm. The modest, benign-faced warrior was fêted as a national deliverer, the streets of London rang with his hymn, women adopted the famous red Garibaldi shirt as the latest fashion, aristocrats and working people fought for the opportunity of entertaining him. Before he could take up his northern tour, however, it was announced that he was overtired and would have to leave the country for rest. His physicians denied this, and it appears as most probable that Louis Napoleon was so much displeased and even alarmed at the popular acclaim given the general that he made his wish known to Lord Palmerston that the guest leave English shores. Again Garibaldi proved a serious burden to diplomacy, his very fame made him the more difficult to deal with. So rather than cause further international trouble the general bade England an affectionate farewell and returned to Caprera.

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The campaign of 1866, which won Venetia for the kingdom of Victor Emmanuel, is not a glorious page in Italian history. Venice was freed from Austria’s rule because the Prussians won the battles of Sadowa and Königgratz. What victories Italy won fell to the score of the volunteers fighting with Garibaldi in the Lakes rather than to the regular army of the new nation. From the date of the Liberator’s return from England up to the spring of 1866 he lived in comparative quiet, spending most of his time at Caprera, and only making occasional visits to the mainland. Meanwhile events were rapidly showing that Prussia and Austria must soon fight for the supremacy in Germany, and Victor Emmanuel concluded an alliance with Berlin. Then, in May, 1866, Garibaldi was asked by the Italian Minister of War to take command of the volunteer forces. He accepted gladly, and, as so often before, the news that he was about to take the field was sufficient to gather innumerable patriots about him. Unfortunately the generals of the regular army were again jealous of Garibaldi, and continual obstacles were placed in his way, even his own officers speedily formed cliques and wrought dissension in his command. He was ordered to attack Austria from Como, and so through the Lakes rather than from Hungary as he would have preferred.

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Yet, with all these obstacles the campaign started at Como with much of the old spirit. Again the veterans of 1859 and 1860, many of the famous Thousand, many who had fought at Messala and on the Volturno, gathered, clad in red shirts, on the banks of Lake Como, and raised the Garibaldi hymn. Scores of enthusiastic Englishmen could not keep away from the Lakes, an Englishwoman and her husband followed the general all through the campaign, carrying a cooking-stove and store of provisions for their idol. But notwithstanding all the enthusiasm the efforts to dislodge the enemy were not very successful. The Austrians were not as easily frightened or defeated as had been the soldiers of the King of Naples, and the people of the Tyrol did not rise and join Garibaldi’s ranks as had the Sicilians and Calabrians. The commissariat service was wretched, time and again the troops bivouacked without shelter or food, conflicting orders were given, and but for their remarkable light-heartedness and faith in their general the men would have been in very bad shape for any manner of combat. On the first day of real fighting, at Rocca d’Anfo, Garibaldi was wounded in the thigh, and after that had to direct operations from a carriage. Nevertheless, he lost nothing of his confidence, and planned his successive moves through the moun[270]tains and lakes with his old skill in this form of irregular warfare.

The actual military operations were of no permanent importance, the volunteers were sent down the beautiful Lake of Como to Lecco accompanied by a fleet of private boats filled with admiring friends. From Lecco they went to Bergamo and thence to Brescia, and then for a time their headquarters were at Salò, on the Lake of Garda. An eye-witness contrasts their informal style of marching with that of the regulars: “Some of them were lying at full length on bullock wagons, with their rifles decorated with roses at their sides, others were trudging sturdily along in the loosest manner, smoking, with their shirts open, and their rugs rolled across their bodies.”

When Garibaldi had completed his plans for marching north he received word from General La Marmora to take Lonato, and turned there from Salò. The Austrians withdrew before the Italian advance, and the latter army was free to enter the Trentino. Their first step in this direction was to take the rocky fort of Rocca d’Anfo, and after that they marched on Darzo, which was the scene of much fighting, and then on to the fort of Ampola. On July 16 the volunteers dragged their cannon into position on the mountains, and on the 17th the real attack began. Ampola capitulated,[271] and the march to Riva began through the Ledro valley. At a village near Bizecca they were attacked early in the morning. The Austrians opened fire from the village houses. Chiassi, one of Garibaldi’s veterans, was killed, and for a time the volunteers made little headway. Garibaldi’s two sons and his son-in-law Canzio did their utmost to encourage the men behind them, and gradually what had threatened to be a rout was turned into a victory. Bizecca was immediately captured, and the troops had started their march to Lardaro when news came that an armistice was being arranged, and orders were brought to Garibaldi bidding him leave the Trentino.

The Italian army had met with a reverse at the battle of Custozza, but fortunately their Prussian allies had already won the two great victories of Königgratz and Sadowa and were in a position to dictate terms to Austria. The oft-fought-over Venetian provinces became at last part of the kingdom of Italy. Venice was added to her sister cities, which now only lacked Rome. The Tyrol, however, was left with Austria, and so Garibaldi viewed the peace with disappointment. He was confident that his volunteers could have won it, and found this another instance of the mistakes of statesmanship.

As after the expedition of the Thousand, so[272] after the campaign in the Lakes, Garibaldi found that he could not rest quietly with Rome in Papal hands. Italy was bound by agreement with France to leave Pius IX. in temporary possession of the Eternal City, but Garibaldi cared little or nothing for his country’s obligations. He showed in a hundred ways that he was unwilling that the kingdom should have rest or a chance to recuperate until the city on the Tiber was won, and so again in 1867, as in 1862, he became a tremendously difficult problem to the government, the seat of which had been moved from Turin to Florence, and of which Rattazzi was again the head.

As soon as the French left Rome a number of revolutionary societies commenced operations in that city, and Garibaldi was asked to act in conjunction with them. He made an electioneering tour in the spring of 1867, and was received at Venice, at Verona, and at Legnano with a veneration that partook of religious awe. He was elected deputy in the new Parliament from four districts. He next appeared at the meeting of the Universal Peace Congress at Geneva, and spoke against the priesthood, denouncing the Papacy with his accustomed ardor. He then returned to Italy and in a fiery speech at the Villa Cairoli called on his countrymen to march on Rome. He started for the Papal frontier, and the volunteers collected[273] about him so rapidly that Rattazzi was again obliged to arrange for his arrest. At Sinalunga he was taken prisoner, and conveyed to Alessandria, and there arrangements were made to take him to his home at Caprera and keep him virtually imprisoned there. Unfortunately Garibaldi could not be kept quiet; even when his island was guarded by four steamers and a frigate he managed to send appeals to the mainland and keep the revolutionary party alert. Other leaders were attacking Rome by now, Nicotera was advancing from Naples, Menotti Garibaldi was waging guerilla warfare near Tivoli, the brothers Cairoli—name famous in Italian annals—made their daring attack at the Vigna Glori. Pius IX. and his Secretary of State, Cardinal Antonelli, were not having a pleasant time in Rome. Barracks were blown up, bombs were discovered, petitions were presented from his subjects urging him to call in the army of Victor Emmanuel.

Meanwhile Garibaldi planned and executed his daring escape from Caprera. He pretended to be ill, and then one dark night set off in a small boat for Sardinia. He lay hidden until he could get horses to take him to Porta Prudenza, and from there sailed with his son-in-law Canzio to the mainland. A day or two later he was brazenly haranguing the people from the Loggia dei Lanzi in[274] Florence. The government learned that they could not control him, and now concluded to repeat the tactics of Aspromonte, and allow him to bring about his own destruction.

At Terni Garibaldi began active campaigning. He met his troops, and planned an immediate attack on the town of Monte Rotondo, which crowns a hill overlooking the Tiber and the roads to Rome. The hill town was hotly defended, but the volunteers finally took it. From there, after a short stay, Garibaldi moved his army, now numbering 15,000 men, on towards the Ponte della Mentana, some four and a half miles from Rome. It is said that an agreement had been made by which the Papal governor of the castle of St. Angelo was to surrender his post for a sum of money, and that this sum was raised by Garibaldi’s English friends, but through treachery was not properly used. This occasioned some delay, and by that time French troops had been landed and were marching to the aid of their allies, the Papal guards.

The general was obliged to retreat temporarily to Monte Rotondo, and there he issued a public address. He relied on the fact that the Roman Republic of 1849 had made him a Roman general. After rehearsing the facts of the Italian government’s position he said, “Then will I let the world know that I alone, a Roman general, with full[275] power, elected by the universal suffrage of the only legal government in Rome, the Republic, have the right to maintain myself armed in this, the territory under my jurisdiction; and then if these my volunteers, champions of liberty and Italian unity, wish to have Rome as the capital of Italy, fulfilling the vote of Parliament and of the nation, they must not put down their arms until Italy shall have acquired liberty of conscience and worship, built upon the ruin of Jesuitism, and until the soldiers of tyrants shall be banished from our land.”

The French had now joined the Papal army, and the Italian troops were massing in Garibaldi’s rear. On November 3 he started towards Tivoli, but had to fall back on Mentana, and there occurred the battle which decided the fate of the expedition. The volunteers fought with the greatest courage and enthusiasm, but their arms were no match for the new chassepots of the French. Garibaldi had to fall back on Monte Rotondo, and there, on discovering that his men had scarcely a cartridge left, he was forced to order a further retreat. The expedition was at an end, the volunteers were disbanded, and Garibaldi took train to Florence. There he was arrested and conveyed a prisoner to the fort of Varignano.

The battle of Mentana had cost many Italian[276] lives. Victor Emmanuel was deeply grieved and had a message sent to the French Emperor: “The last events have suffocated every remembrance of gratitude in the heart of Italy. It is no longer in the power of the government to maintain an alliance with France, the chassepot gun at Mentana has given it a fatal blow.” The battle therefore had the result of severing the tacit alliance between Italy and France, and henceforth the problem of Roman occupation became simpler to the King’s government.

In 1870 the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war compelled Napoleon to defend his own borders, and no longer to support a Papal government in a foreign land. When the French and Germans were fighting the question of the temporal power of the Church was quietly settled, with almost no fighting and little outside attention, by the entrance of the King of Italy into Rome. At last Italy was united. Garibaldi had nothing to do with this final occupation, for which he had laid plans since his early South American days.

When Napoleon was eliminated from French politics Garibaldi could no longer restrain his ardor for the republican government. He took sword, and left Caprera to volunteer for service with France. He was given command of the army of the Vosges, and his campaign against the Prus[277]sians at Autun and Dijon was at least as successful as that of the regular French generals. The Prussians were too strong, the Army of the East gave way before them, and Garibaldi’s brief campaign was at an end. After the peace he was elected deputy from Paris, Dijon, and Nice, but was not allowed to sit in the Assembly on the ground that he was a foreigner. He received the official thanks of the French government and returned home.

There remained a somewhat turbulent old age for Garibaldi. Italy was united and rapidly growing stronger under the happy influence of continued peace. Garibaldi, however, could not remain quiet, and when he appeared in public he was publicly worshiped and privately feared. He became more and more ardently a republican as time went on, and his republicanism was only too apt to take the color of the last man with whom he had talked. He was not an able original thinker, and except in military manœuvers had always been too much inclined to lean on the advice of others.

In the elections of 1874 the general was chosen by several districts, among others the city of Rome, to sit in the Senate. He made a triumphal progress from Caprera to the capital, and when he was sworn in as a Senator the members forgot all[278] past and present difficulties and cheered to the echo the man who had led the Thousand from Genoa to Naples. He went to the Quirinal to see the King, a sovereign whom he had ardently admired since the time when he had first seen him in battle. A little later we find him a member of a committee with the King and Prince Torlonia to divert the course of the Tiber and improve the Campagna.

Meanwhile at Caprera Francesca, the devoted woman who had first gone there to nurse Garibaldi’s daughter, had taken Anita’s position, and become the mother of the general’s youngest children, Manlio and Clelia. In 1880 the Court of Appeal at Rome declared Garibaldi’s marriage to Giuseppina Raymondi, the adventuress who had taken advantage of him long before, null and void. Fortunately the marriage had been contracted under Austrian and not Italian jurisdiction. Had it been otherwise the annulment would not have been allowed. Immediately on receipt of the news Garibaldi and Francesca were married. At Caprera Garibaldi lived like an island prince, continually receiving visits and presents from admirers of all nations.

Yet, for all his domestic happiness, the old warrior would mix in public affairs, and almost always as an opponent of the existing government.[279] Even when his old friend and comrade-in-arms, Benedetto Cairoli, fourth of the famous brothers, became Prime Minister, he was not content with his policies. He embarrassed the government by continually writing ultra-radical letters to the newspapers. Two or three times more he appeared in public, became again an active figure when his son-in-law Canzio was arrested at a turbulent meeting in Genoa, and resigned his seat in the National Chambers. He was, however, too worn out physically to make further dangerous expeditions, and was persuaded to leave the more active part to younger men. In 1882 he died at Caprera.

Neither the character nor the achievements of Garibaldi are difficult to estimate. His character was simple, he was ingenuously frank and open-minded, absolutely sincere, warm-hearted, and forgiving to a fault. His whole career is filled with instances in which his generosity was traded on, notably the case of his second marriage. He was always frugal, unostentatious, unselfish, never did a breath of public scandal sully his name. Although he had many opportunities to gain wealth he was always poor. During the last days of his life he enjoyed a pension from the government, but the most of that was given to his children or dispensed in charity.

Given this true, straightforward nature, we[280] find that from his boyhood he had above everything desired a free united Italy, with Rome as its capital. The name Rome never failed to thrill him. So long as the master-hand of Cavour was ready to guide him Garibaldi proceeded gloriously forward, the crusader who could lead men into battle and fill them with a great enthusiasm. Cavour could fight against the Mazzinian theories of a republic, he had to fight hard to keep the soldier in the straight path, particularly in those early days in Naples, but he succeeded, and saw Garibaldi proudly deliver Naples and Sicily into the care of his King. How great was Cavour’s steering hand we find in later years; without that powerful mind to control him, Garibaldi fell under the influence of many different types of men, and his simple confiding nature found it easy to trust each seeming friend in turn. The very virtue of his nature acted against him then, he became a tool for men to use, his great name a flag for any new quixotic idea. It was only when he was fighting that he was his own commander, at other times he was ever ready to sink his own opinions in those of others. The latter part of his life was therefore continually stormy, he had not the art to weather varying changes in national sentiment.

Almost as easy to estimate as his character were his achievements. They were superlatively great[281] for Italy. Nobody can tell whether Cavour’s diplomacy alone would ever have won the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Garibaldi started from Genoa on an expedition that seemed doomed to disaster, but which, successfully begun, carried all opposition before it. It is true that the army of Francis II. was poor, and that the battles, with the exception of Calatafimi in Sicily, are not to be classed as great conflicts, but Garibaldi did much more than win battles, he roused the people to a pitch of fighting spirit they had never known before. The fame of the Thousand spread across Europe, and with it rose European admiration and interest in the Italian cause. Foreigners joined his army, and when the great general met Victor Emmanuel and gave over the two crowns he had won the eyes of the whole world were focused on the sovereign and the hero. The glory of that expedition could not fade, whatever Garibaldi did later could not efface the memory of those great days; even the governments that found him rebelling against the laws and treaties they had made could not but thrill at the recollection of the days of 1860 and 1861. The red shirt became an oriflamme to lovers of liberty in all lands, the Garibaldian hymn set hearts to dancing with pride and exultation, the simple soldier with his dramatic effects of life and bearing became an Italian national hero with all[282] the mythical charm of a Cid Campeador or a William Tell. He will take a place in Italian legendary history that was empty until his day.

This atmosphere of romance that surrounded him was of his nature. He wrote two books, one, “The Rule of the Monk,” which appeared after his imprisonment at Varignano, the other, “The Thousand,” after the Vosges campaign. They were both extravagant, artificial, as wildly eventful as any novels ever penned. Yet in a sense they catch the flavor of his own career. When he describes the monks he pictures them as they actually seemed to him, agents of the power which had so hounded him after the siege of Rome, and which had executed his friend Ugo Bassi. When he writes of “The Thousand” he shows his followers as men capable of any heroism, and the expedition becomes one series of marvellous adventures. He saw that intensely dramatic side of the struggle, and he became the symbol of that dramatic element in the eyes of the world. His country needed that symbol, the glory of a crusader was as essential to Italian redemption as the soul-stirring fanaticism of a Mazzini, the statecraft of a Cavour, or the kingship of a Victor Emmanuel. He was the living personification of the great fight for liberty; that was his contribution to the cause.

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VICTOR EMMANUEL, THE KING

Few royal families in Europe possess as proud a record as the House of Savoy. Legend carries their race as Princes back to 998, when an exiled noble of Saxon birth settled in Burgundy, and ultimately built a family stronghold at the pass of Moriana on the frontier of Savoy. This prince was known as Humbert of the White Hand. He was followed by a series of fighting, ambitious, able descendants, who gradually carved for themselves the Dukedom of Savoy, and married into the most powerful of contemporary royal families. Their small state was so centrally placed that it early became a storm-center, and for centuries the Dukes were famous as warrior-adventurers, fighting now under the banner of the Empire, now under that of Spain or of France. Happily the Dukes of Savoy shared little of the tyrannical natures of their neighbors, they were not altogether saintly, but they were surprisingly merciful and just in an age famous for cruel bigotry. Emmanuel Philibert, better known as “Testa di Ferro,” or “Head of Iron,” one of the most popular of Piedmont’s heroes, became a great favorite with the Emperor[284] Charles V., was a general of renown, and secured firm possession of his Savoy lands. From his time the position of the family became more assured.

In 1703, Victor Amadeus, fifteenth Duke of Savoy, assumed the title of King of Sicily, as a result of a treaty following his defense of Turin and overturning of the Bourbon power in Italy. Shortly thereafter Sicily was exchanged for Sardinia and certain territories adjoining his frontiers, and the title of the head of the house of Savoy became King of Sardinia.

Victor Emmanuel I. of Sardinia, who succeeded his brother Charles Emmanuel IV., was a brave, thoroughly good-hearted man, whose nature was, however, absolutely mediæval. He was much under the influence of Austria, to whose Emperor he had given a promise that he would never grant his people a free constitution. He finally abdicated in favor of his brother Charles Felix, a man of a much narrower nature, who did all in his power to check the free-thinking sentiments rapidly spreading through his people as a result of the Revolution in France. When he died in 1831 the elder branch of the House of Savoy came to an end, but fortunately there was a distantly related younger branch, known as the Princes of Carignano and Savoy. The seventh Prince of this line, Charles Albert, born in 1798, had married a daughter of[285] the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and had been a great favorite with Victor Emmanuel I. On the death of that King he had acted for a short time as regent for Charles Felix, and had then served in the war between France and Spain, winning a great reputation for bravery. When Charles Felix died he succeeded him as King of Sardinia in 1831.

Charles Albert was one of the most interesting characters of the early Nineteenth Century, a man of the noblest character, burning with the desire to free Italy from the foreigner, but always suspicious that he was not the man to do it. This suspicion was continually played upon by the clerical party at the court of Turin, and with the result that the King, as firm a Roman Catholic as his ancestors, and by nature devout almost to mysticism, was the continual battle-field of the warring sentiments of love of liberty and love of the Church. During the reign of Victor Emmanuel I. the liberal party in Piedmont looked upon Charles Albert as their natural leader. He often spoke of his desire to see Italy united, and made little concealment of his hostility to Austria and the Bourbon princes. Yet, when he was actually invited to lead the Piedmont “Federates” as they were called, whose object was simply the confederation of Italy, he could not make up his mind to accept. As Santa[286] Rosa, the leader of the party, said, “He both would, and would not.”

Victor Emmanuel I., bound by his promise to the house of Austria, had yet seen that his people were bent on reforms, and rather than break his word and grant a constitution he had abdicated in favor of Charles Felix. Immediately the liberals had besieged the regent, Charles Albert, with petitions and a show of force which could not be denied. He had then proclaimed the constitution, accompanying it with this declaration: “Our respect and submission to his majesty Charles Felix, to whom the throne belongs, would have hindered us making any fundamental change in the laws of the realm until the sovereign’s intentions were known; but as the force of circumstances is manifest, and we desire to render to the new King his people safe, uninjured, and happy, and not in a civil war, having maturely considered everything, and with the advice of our council, we have decided, in the hope that his majesty, moved by the same considerations, will give his approval, that the constitution of Spain shall be promulgated.”

But Charles Felix, when he came to Turin, would have none of this constitution, and Charles Albert left Piedmont under the shadow of his kinsman’s displeasure. When a few years later he[287] himself ascended the throne the popular idea of him as an advocate of liberalism was still current, and it was this idea which led Mazzini to write to the new sovereign that remarkable letter on behalf of “Young Italy,” commencing, “All Italy waits for one word—one only—to make herself yours.” But Charles Albert was at that crucial moment under priestly influence, and he paid no heed to the letter, as a result of which the growing Mazzinian party, which might have been attached to the interests of the House of Savoy, became strongly republican.

The Jesuits at Turin, secret agents of the Austrian government, did their utmost to frighten the King with gross misrepresentations as to the liberals. When new conspiracies broke out in 1833 Charles Albert was influenced to punish the rebels severely. Gradually the popular idea concerning the King changed, and those who had thought to find in him an emancipator became slowly convinced that he was as rigid a reactionary as any of his predecessors. So the poor King, really ardent in his country’s cause, played upon by his courtiers and the insidious clericals, watched his chances of leading Italy against Austria gradually dwindle.

Some men, however, still believed that Charles Albert was the only present hope for Italy, and[288] chief among these men was Massimo d’Azeglio. He was a man of keen insight and high character, and had traveled through all the states of Italy studying the forces making towards nationality. At the end of his travels he had an audience of Charles Albert at Turin, and reported what he had found. His estimate of the King was justified by the reply Charles Albert made to him. “Let those gentlemen know,” said the King, “that for the present they must remain quiet; but when the time comes, let them be certain that my life, the lives of my sons, my arms, my treasures—all shall be freely spent in the Italian cause.”

Then came the election of Pius IX. to the throne of Saint Peter, and a great wave of enthusiasm swept through the liberal party throughout Italy. Pius was a great advance on the narrow, mediæval-minded Leo XII. and Gregory XVI., who had preceded him. The Romans felt new hope, and with each month the great enthusiasm spread until it culminated in the sudden Lombard expulsion of the Austrians from Milan. Charles Albert must have seen the signs that preceded the eventful years of 1848 and 1849. He had decided to grant a constitution to his people, whether Austria liked it or not, and on February 7, 1848, proclaimed the famous Statuto. Events hurried, a short time and Lombardy and Venice were in arms and Piedmont[289] determined on supporting them. Charles Albert, and his eldest son, Victor Emmanuel, threw themselves utterly into the national cause.

On March 14, 1820, the Prince Victor Emmanuel was born in the Carignano Palace at Turin, his father being then simply the Prince of Savoy-Carignano. With the accession of Charles Felix the family moved to a villa near Florence, and there the young Prince spent his early boyhood. His younger brother, Ferdinand, Duke of Genoa, was born in 1822. After the reconciliation between Charles Felix and the Prince of Carignano the latter took up his residence in the castle of Racconigi, in Piedmont. When Prince Victor was eleven years old his father came to the throne, and thenceforth the young Prince lived in Turin. He and his brother were inseparable, although widely different in temperament, Victor enthusiastic, impulsive, overflowing with animal spirits, Ferdinand more prudent, calm, and thoughtful, strongly resembling his father.

Charles Albert devoted the greatest care to the education and military training of his sons, and both fully repaid his care. Victor Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, was not a great student, but he was keenly interested in everything that pertained to government, sympathetic, observant, deeply imbued with the desire to see Italy free and Piedmont[290] the leader in that cause. His manners were essentially frank and cordial, his whole bearing inspired confidence. At twenty-one he was of middle height, powerfully built, with features strong, rather than handsome, a curling mustache adding to the military aspect of his face. At twenty-two he sought the hand of his first cousin, Maria Adelaide, daughter of the Austrian Archduke Ranieri, Viceroy of Lombardy-Venice, and of Charles Albert’s only sister. The chief objection to the marriage was the fact that the Princess Adelaide was partly Austrian, but Victor overcame this objection, and the marriage took place in 1842. It was not long before the young Princess had become the idol of Piedmont through her many gifts of charm.

When the news of the rising of Milan on March 18, 1848, came to Turin the Duke of Savoy was filled with joy. The King and his ministers were deliberating with deep concern the position that Piedmont should adopt, but the young Prince was concerned only with taking the field against Austria. He had that pure love for the dangers of war which had been such a marked characteristic of his ancestors, and which had made the House of Savoy famous during the Middle Ages. The biographer Massari wrote of him later, “Without using a profusion of words, it is enough to say[291] that under the canvas or in the battle-field he showed himself worthy of his race. He who knows the story of the Savoy dynasty knows that there is no higher eulogium than this.”

He was given a command in the troops that were hurried to the aid of Lombardy, and fought his first battle at Santa Lucia on May 6th. He was conspicuous for courage, and in addition to his personal power of inspiring his soldiers with enthusiasm, proved himself a careful general. At Goito, where the Austrians took the troops of Piedmont by surprise, the Duke of Savoy converted a retreat into a desperate attack by throwing himself before the troops and calling on them to save the honor of Savoy. He was wounded in the thigh, but fought on, and at length had the satisfaction of reporting to his father that Piedmont had won the day. He was awarded a medal for valor on the field of action, but he valued more the wound which he had won in fighting for Italy.

The fortunes of war soon brought a change. The other states of Italy did not come to the aid of Lombardy as Charles Albert had been given assurances that they would. Pius IX. had placed an army in the field to prevent Austrian outrages on his frontiers, but had given them orders not to attack the enemy. The King of Naples had declared his intention of siding with the other Italian[292] states, but by deceit and treachery kept his army too far from the scene of action to be of any use. The Venetians were fully occupied with their revolution at home, the Lombards had already begun to determine what they would do when they were free, and Piedmont was left practically alone to fight the rapidly reviving army of Austria.

One more victory was won at Staffola, but the next day the Piedmontese were attacked again and defeated at Custozza. The King was advised to retreat across the Po to Piacenza, but instead felt that his duty called him to Milan. He entered that city, but his army, worn out, and attacked by a much superior force, could not defend the Lombard capital, and he was forced to capitulate. The Milanese were not grateful, they bitterly assailed the King for what they called his treachery, and he escaped from the city through the aid of a young officer, later the General La Marmora.

Still the unfortunate King would not abandon the war, although he saw the hopelessness of the situation, left as he was to fight single-handed. March 20, 1849, the fighting recommenced, and lasted for three days. At Martara the pick of the Piedmontese army were destroyed. When Charles Albert heard the news he realized that he was destined to utter defeat. Yet he took up the march to Novara, stoical as became his race. The battle[293] of Novara, fought March 23, 1849, marked the end. The Piedmontese fought heroically, the Duke of Savoy led his men time and again to the attack, his younger brother, the Duke of Genoa, had three horses killed under him, but bravery could not overcome the disparity in strength. An armistice was asked for, but the terms of Marshal Radetsky were too hard to accept. The King said to his generals, “Gentlemen, we cannot accept these conditions. Is it possible that we can resume hostilities?” The answer was a unanimous “no.” Then the unfortunate King laid down the burdens of his too heavy office in these touching words: “From eighteen years till now I have always made every effort possible for the benefit of the people. I am deeply afflicted to see that my hopes have failed, not so much for my own sake as for the country’s. I have not been able to find death on the field of battle, as I had desired; perhaps my existence is now the only obstacle to obtaining from the enemy reasonable terms, and since there remains no further means of continuing hostilities, I abdicate this moment, in favor of my son Vittorio, in the hope that, renewing negotiations with Radetsky, the new King may obtain better conditions, and procure for the country an advantageous peace. Behold your King!”

The entreaties of the son and the generals were[294] useless, Charles Albert was determined. He knew that his dream of liberating Italy was over, that he was not the man for the great work. That night he set out with one companion for Oporto in Portugal, there to live obscurely while his son took up the heavy burden of rebuilding Piedmont’s hopes.

Victor Emmanuel came to the throne at a distressing moment, but from the first he showed the true metal of his nature. His father had been a dreamer, a theorist, alternating between eagerness to press forward and the desire to retain what he already had. His character, although fine, was not robust. The young King, however, was essentially robust-natured, the very type of man above all others needed at this particular crisis. He faced Marshal Radetsky fearlessly, and, when the Austrian general insisted on the same terms demanded of his father, including the immediate expulsion of all Italian exiles from the state of Piedmont, replied, “Sooner than subscribe to such conditions I would lose a hundred crowns. What my father has sworn I will maintain. If you wish a war to the death, be it so! I will call my nation to arms once more, and you will see what Piedmont is capable of in a general rising. If I must fall, it shall be without shame. My house knows the road of exile, but not of dishonor.”

[295]

Finally an armistice was concluded. The King of Sardinia was to disband all the military corps composed of Lombards, Poles, Hungarians, and other foreign peoples, retaining only those who chose to remain his subjects permanently; a heavy war indemnity was to be paid to Austria, half the fortress of Alessandria was to be given up to Austria, and her troops were to be allowed to occupy Piedmontese territory between the rivers Po, Sesia, and Ticino. It was a hard bargain that Austria drove.

Victor Emmanuel returned to his capital to find many of its citizens disaffected by the appeals of the republican party. All Turin was in despair over the sad termination of a campaign that had promised so much. The King, the Queen, and their two sons, Humbert, aged five, and Amadeus, aged four, were received with the coldest regard as they appeared in public. The King issued this proclamation to his people: “Citizens,—Untoward events and the will of my most venerated parent have called me, long before my time, to the throne of my ancestors. The circumstances under which I hold the reins of government are such that nothing but the most perfect concord in all will enable me, and then with difficulty, to fulfil my only desire, the salvation of our common country. The destines of nations are matured in the de[296]signs of Providence, but man owes to his country all the service he is capable of, and in this debt we have not failed. Now all our efforts must be to maintain our honor untarnished, to heal the wounds of our country, to consolidate our constitutional institutions. To this undertaking I conjure all my people, to it I will pledge myself by a solemn oath, and I await from the nation the exchange of help, affection, and confidence.—Victor Emmanuel.”

On March 29 the new King took the oath to the constitution which had so recently been granted by his father. General Delaunay formed the new ministry, which almost immediately decided to dissolve Parliament and call a general election. Meanwhile Victor Emmanuel was wholly engaged with the peace negotiations, and tried to enlist the influence of England and France in Sardinia’s behalf. The Delaunay ministry divided on the terms of peace, and the King was in despair as to whom he should call upon as steersman in such troubled seas. He finally turned to Massimo d’Azeglio, who was suffering from a wound he had received at Vicenza, and who had little taste at any time for the burdens of premiership. He found it impossible, however, to refuse his young sovereign at this hour. He accepted the post, although reluctantly. Fortunately the views of the King and[297] those of D’Azeglio coincided on almost all matters. The King was charmed with D’Azeglio’s polish and talents in so many diverse lines; the Minister, much older than the King, was delighted with Victor Emmanuel’s frank enthusiasms. It was he who gave the King his proudest title. One day he remarked, “There have been so few honest kings in the world that it would be a splendid thing to begin the series.” “And am I to play the part of that honest king?” asked Victor Emmanuel. “Your majesty has sworn to the constitution,” was the answer, “and has taken thought not alone of Piedmont, but of all Italy. Let us continue in this path, and hold that a king as well as a private individual has only one word, and must stand by that.”

“That,” replied the King, “seems easy to me.”

“Behold then,” said D’Azeglio, “we have the Rè galantuomo!”

And “Rè galantuomo” was the name Victor Emmanuel wrote in the register of the Turin census, and the title his people were most glad to give him.

The first months were very troubled, the second Assembly was captious, and continually in opposition to the King and his ministers. There were too many hot-headed representatives of Mazzini’s “Young Italy,” which, as D’Azeglio said, “Being[298] young cannot be expected to have much sense, and certainly has little.” The King fell ill of a fever, and for a time it seemed possible he might not recover and that the country would have to endure a regency during his son’s minority. Most providentially for Italy he did recover, and shortly after the National Assembly was again dissolved, and a popular appeal made to the people. The King issued a royal proclamation which was heeded by the electors, and as a result of which more moderate men were sent to the succeeding Parliament.

The new government boldly took up the question of whether the clergy were entitled to special ecclesiastical tribunals under the constitution to which Victor Emmanuel had just sworn. The ministers proposed to do away with such courts as unconstitutional. Immediately the bishops were up in arms, and a conflict between State and Church began. The King was besought by his mother not to oppose the Church, to be a true son of the Church as his ancestors had been, but Victor Emmanuel, although always grieved at the need to oppose the clergy, stood by his ministers. The Church courts were abolished, and the people, long tired of ecclesiastical overlorddom, acclaimed King and ministry as true lovers of liberty.

This firm stand of the new government imme[299]diately caused the greatest ill-will on the part of the Catholic Church, an ill-will which was shown in a multitude of ways. A member of the ministry, the Cavalier Santa Rosa, a devout Roman Catholic, became very ill, and asked his confessor to administer the sacrament to him. The priest was forbidden to do this at the express command of the bishop, and although every effort was made by Santa Rosa’s friends to obtain for him what he wished, not only did the bishop remain obdurate, but the curate in attendance actually insulted the dying man until he was forced to leave the house. Santa Rosa died without having received the sacrament, and the history of the event inflamed the minds of Piedmont more than ever against the narrowness of the Church. The offending bishop was imprisoned, and an exchange of notes followed between Victor Emmanuel and the Pope. The latter complained of the freedom of speech allowed by the Sardinian King to his people, and in reply D’Azeglio issued a pamphlet setting forth his views of the unwarranted assumption of civil authority by the Church. The death of Santa Rosa left a vacancy in the ministry which D’Azeglio filled by inviting the Count Camille Cavour to take the portfolio of Agriculture and Commerce. It was known that the new man was bold and original, but not even D’Azeglio realized what a commanding[300] spirit he had invited into his official family. The King alone seems to have gauged Cavour correctly. “Take care,” he said to D’Azeglio, “this Cavour will rule you all, he will dispose of you; he must become Prime Minister.” Fortunate it was for Italy that the King’s prediction was to be fulfilled.

Meanwhile Victor Emmanuel, the only constitutional sovereign in Italy, was bitterly assailed by the Bourbon rulers. Ferdinand, King of Naples, once more secure upon his throne, lost no opportunity to express his disapproval of a king who was both a nationalist and a liberal. There was continual friction between Turin and Vienna, largely because of the outspoken views of the Piedmontese press with regard to the Austrian treatment of Lombardy. The European Powers, with the exception of England, looked upon Piedmont as an unruly child continually making trouble. England alone was sincerely friendly to the House of Savoy, and keenly interested in Victor Emmanuel’s hopes for a united country.

New troubles arose between the Papacy and Piedmont over the latter’s advocacy of a civil marriage law. D’Azeglio and Cavour disagreed, and the ministry resigned. The King asked D’Azeglio to form a new Cabinet, leaving out Cavour, whom, he said, “we will want later, but not yet.” The[301] new ministry was formed, but only a few months later D’Azeglio, harassed by the trouble with Rome, and still suffering from his old wound, resigned, and advised the King to summon Cavour. Victor Emmanuel hesitated, fearing that Cavour would push matters forward too fast. When finally approached, Cavour said that he could not take office in view of the Church’s exorbitant demands, but he at last consented. The King had relegated his personal desire not to antagonize the clergy farther, to his conviction that his country needed a strong hand at the helm, and, the decision once made, trusted his new minister completely.

There were many difficulties to be met. Austria accused Piedmont of fostering the small revolts which were continually breaking out in Lombardy, the war indemnity—eighty million francs—was heavy and had to be raised by new taxation which was of course universally unpopular. Both at home and abroad the time was trying, but Victor Emmanuel found that in Cavour he had a man who was not afraid of unpopularity, who knew the art of steering between the radicals and the conservatives, and who could make use of the politicians of all the different schools. In Parliament he could more than hold his own with any opponent, in his management of foreign affairs he already[302] showed that extraordinary diplomatic skill which at no late day was to win him the reputation of the first statesman in Europe. Both King and Minister were imperious by nature, but both also wise enough to sink their individual wills when they realized that the cause which they had so much at heart required it of them. So events led to the outbreak of the Crimean War.

The steps which led up to Sardinia’s alliance with England and France against Russia belong to the story of Cavour’s diplomacy. Sufficient it is to say here that Victor Emmanuel was heartily in favor of the alliance, and would, if he could, have proceeded to it by more direct means than Cavour deemed essential. The King was anxious to redeem the glory of Piedmont’s arms, but the Minister, with his cabinet opposed to him on the ground that the war was a purely foreign one, had to consider popular sentiment. Finally, however, Cavour gave the word that the treaty might be signed in safety, and the King, his mind made up long in advance, set his name to the important document that was to send his army to foreign battle-fields. The instance was one in which Victor Emmanuel’s firmness of purpose aided and abetted Cavour’s diplomacy. Dabormida resigned as Foreign Minister, and Cavour immediately took his post.

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At the same time the King had heavy burdens to bear in his immediate family. His mother, to whom he was devoted, died, bidding him stand fast by the conservative traditions of his father. His wife, the beautiful Queen Adelaide, died shortly afterwards, and the King lost an adviser who had always counseled him wisely and helpfully, and whom he had worshiped as an ideal wife and mother of his sons. Less than a month later his brother Ferdinand, Duke of Genoa, died, a man intensely high-spirited and brave, the constant companion of Victor Emmanuel’s youth. No wonder that the King felt that he was left solitary. He had small time to give to his feelings, however. “They tell me,” he said, “that God has struck me with a judgment, and has torn from me my mother, my wife, and my brother, because I consented to those laws, and they threaten me with greater punishments. But do they not know that a sovereign who wishes to secure his own happiness in the other world ought to labor for the happiness of his people on this earth?”

There were more trials immediately in store. The Church owned more than a tenth part of the landed property of Piedmont, and the religious houses were extravagantly wealthy. The government, planning reforms, decided that some modification of this condition must be made, and so[304] Rattazzi, then Minister of Grace and Justice, introduced his bill for the suppression of certain of the religious houses and other similar reforms. Immediately the bishops and the conservatives were up in arms, and Victor Emmanuel had to bear the brunt of an attack which proclaimed him an infidel, an enemy of religion, and which predicted the direst punishments to him should he persist in his course. The ministry were firm, however, and the people were with them. Certain bishops offered to pay over the amount which would be derived from the suppression of the religious houses, and the offer was tempting to the King, who could not forget his mother’s wishes, and the close ties that bound his house to Rome. A breach with his ministers followed, and the King sought counsel of his own subjects and of the French and English envoys. All advised him to trust the decision to Cavour. Finally he did so, and the Rattazzi measure, somewhat modified, became law.

The Sardinian army meantime was winning victories in the Crimea, and La Marmora was proving himself a match for the great generals of the allied Powers. The thought of his troops was the King’s one solace at this time, which was so trying to him both personally and politically. He was passionately fond of military glory, and would[305] have preferred the opportunity to lead his soldiers to any gift fortune could have bestowed. The soldiers knew this, the people were growing more and more attached to their “Rè galantuomo,” and the King, always quickly touched by the affection of his people, grew stronger in his resolve never to dim their hopes of him. He said of his uncle, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who was ruling according to the accepted code of an Austrian Prince, “How could he, by his own act, sacrifice the affections of his people? If I reigned over not a little state like Piedmont, but over an empire vast as America, and had to do what he has done to preserve the little throne of Tuscany, I would not hesitate a moment, I would renounce the empire.”

In order that France and England might learn to know the true Victor Emmanuel from the false one created by the slanders of the clerical party, the King, accompanied by Cavour and D’Azeglio, in December, 1855, visited Paris and London. In both cities he was warmly greeted, and made much of, and as he was about to leave the French capital Napoleon asked the significant question, “What can I do for Italy?” England gave the King the welcome she has always in store for the hero who is fighting despotic claims, and the brief visit gave the statesmen and people the opportunity to show[306] openly the warmth of their regard for Italy. Victor Emmanuel and Cavour were both known to have great admiration for the English government, and a liking for English characteristics which was common to most leading Italians of the time. December 11 the King returned to Turin, to be welcomed by his people with the warmest expressions of affectionate regard.

The fall of Sebastopol brought the war in the Crimea to a close, and led to the Congress at Paris in 1856. The result of that Congress was one of the signal triumphs of Cavour. He succeeded in introducing a general discussion of Italian affairs, and in placing Victor Emmanuel in the position of champion of all the subject Italian states, a position which, once so publicly assumed, he never afterwards gave over. The King showed the deepest gratitude to his great Minister on the latter’s return from the Congress, and realized that through his diplomacy affairs were rapidly being shaped towards a new conclusion of strength with Austria. Soon afterwards the Sardinian army returned from the Crimea, and the King welcomed them home as heroes who had yet greater triumphs in store for them, and linked the general who had led them, Alfonzo La Marmora, with Cavour as the two chief agents in his rising hopes.

King and Minister had many obstacles to over[307]come during those years of waiting that were more difficult to surmount successfully than actual battles of armies or statesmen. Austria and the Church lost no opportunity to direct public sentiment against Sardinia, the revolutionary element, led by men whose fiery ardor never cooled, were continually urging the government at Turin to attack the Austrians in Lombardy, the other states were turbulent and continually in trouble with their Princes, and the people looked to Victor Emmanuel as their preserver and the Princes upon him as their arch enemy. Moreover at this time England, doubtful of French sincerity, entered into an alliance with Austria, and shortly after the Italian, Felice Orsini, made an attempt on the life of Louis Napoleon. Fortunately neither event had as disastrous results to Piedmont’s hopes as many predicted, the Anglo-Austrian alliance proved lukewarm, and Orsini’s appeal to Napoleon to succor Italy touched a responsive chord in the French Emperor’s heart.

As the ten years’ armistice with Austria drew to a close, Victor Emmanuel found reason to believe that the day was not far distant when he should have his chance to redeem Novara. Napoleon and Cavour had reached a tacit agreement in July, 1858, at Plombières. When Parliament opened in 1859 the King made his memorable[308] speech from the throne, including in it the words long and carefully considered by Cavour, “While we respect treaties, we are not insensible to the cry of anguish that comes up to us from many parts of Italy.” The words “grido di dolore,” cry of anguish, became famous forthwith. An eye-witness of the scene, the Neapolitan Massari, thus describes it: “At every period the speech was interrupted by clamorous applause, and cries of ‘Viva il Rè!’ But when he came to the words grido di dolore, there was an enthusiasm quite indescribable. Senators, deputies, spectators, all sprang to their feet with a bound, and broke into passionate acclamations. The ministers of France, Russia, Prussia, and England were utterly astonished and carried away by the marvelous spectacle. The face of the Ambassador of Naples was covered with a gloomy pallor. We poor exiles did not even attempt to wipe away the tears that flowed copiously, unrestrainedly from our eyes, as we frantically clapped our hands in applause of that King who had remembered our sorrows, who had promised us a country. Before the victories, the plebiscites, and the annexations conferred on him the crown of Italy, he reigned in our hearts; he was our King!”

The speech was like a war-cry to patriots throughout Italy, and no sooner were its tidings[309] known than men of all ranks flocked to Piedmont, weapons in hand, in order to be ready when the great hour should strike. Meantime Victor Emmanuel had to make two sacrifices as the price of French alliance in case of an Austrian war, he had to consent to the marriage of his daughter Clotilde, then about sixteen, with the French Emperor’s cousin, Prince Napoleon Jerome, a man more than twice her age. The King was very loath to agree to the marriage, it required the strongest of Cavour’s arguments to induce him to consent. Finally, however, he did. “You have convinced me of the political reasons which render this marriage useful and necessary to our cause. I yield to your arguments, but I make a sacrifice in so doing. My consent is subject to the condition that my daughter gives hers freely.” Having won over the father, Cavour succeeded in winning over the daughter, and the marriage was solemnized on January 29, 1859.

The second sacrifice to France, one which was considered at this time but not made until later, was the cession of Nice and Savoy. This was a hard concession for the King to make, for Savoy was the first home of his family, and linked by the closest ties to the traditions of his house. He was willing, however, to make even this sacrifice for the liberation of northern Italy, all he wanted now was[310] the chance to loose his soldiers and place himself at their head. Still his advisers counseled patience. “We must wait, sire,” said General Neil. “I have been waiting for ten years, general,” was the King’s reply.

Fortunately for the King’s spirits, he was not to be forced to wait much longer. A European Congress for the adjustment of Italian difficulties was planned, and the notes of the various governments in reference thereto gave Cavour the chance he wanted. He insisted that Sardinia should be admitted to the Congress on an equal footing with the Powers, but this Austria opposed. The Court of Vienna insisted that Sardinia should only be allowed to treat of the question of disarmament. Then Austria insisted that Sardinia be made to disarm immediately. This would have caused the gravest setback to Piedmont’s hopes, but when England came forward with the suggestion that Austria as well as Sardinia disarm, the King at Turin and his minister felt that they must consent. Fortune favored them, they had no sooner agreed to the English proposals than Austrian envoys arrived at Turin with an ultimatum, immediate disarmament or war, a decision to be given in three days. Thus Austria became the aggressor, and Napoleon’s promise to aid Piedmont in such case fell due.

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A refusal to accept the Austrian terms was given to the envoys, and on April 23 the Sardinian Parliament ordered that the troops start for Lombardy and confided the supreme command to Victor Emmanuel. He issued a royal proclamation, commencing, “Austria assails us with a powerful army, which, while simulating a desire for peace, she had collected for our injury in the unhappy provinces subject to her domination,” and concluding, “We confide in God and in our concord; we confide in the valor of the Italian soldiers, in the alliance of the noble French nation; we confide in the justice of public opinion. I have no other ambition than to be the first soldier of Italian Independence. Viva l’Italia!—Victor Emmanuel.”

“Italy shall be!” Victor Emmanuel had sworn on the field of Novara ten years before; now, with all the ardor restrained during those long years of waiting, he flamed to make his promise true. He was an heroic figure as he reviewed his troops at Alessandria, he was some king of the Middle Ages to whom horse and arms were incomparably dearer than pomp and ease at home. He said that he should lead his troops in battle, and he did, proving himself so absolutely reckless of safety that both generals and soldiers were constantly alarmed. Yet it was that same wild recklessness[312] of his which made his soldiers fight as they did; they saw that their King was never afraid to face what he commanded them to face.

The French Emperor landed at Genoa May 13, 1859, amid loud Italian plaudits, and the two sovereigns set out together for the field of war. Napoleon the Third had many shortcomings, and Italians scarcely knew whether to bless or curse him in those years when he played so large a part in their history, but he did have the art of inspiring warm and lasting friendships, and Victor Emmanuel, whose nature was always open to admiration for those about him, had known him but a short time before he gave him the deepest and sincerest personal trust.

The war opened auspiciously for Piedmont, the people of Lombardy were all in arms, Garibaldi was waging irregular warfare through the Lakes with his band of volunteers called the “Hunters of the Alps,” and the allied Italian and French armies carried off their first battles with the Austrians. May 20 was fought the battle of Montebello, and shortly afterwards the battle of Palestro, long drawn out, but ultimately victorious for the allies. On the last day of the battle it seemed that the Austrians must win; the Italian troops, fighting desperately and falling in numbers, were almost outflanked and surrounded when the French[313] Zouaves suddenly appeared, and with terrific fire drove the Austrians back and seized their cannon. Victor Emmanuel led the furious charge that followed, and was so impetuous that both Italians and Zouaves were continually alarmed lest he should be cut off from them. When the battle ended the Zouaves elected King Victor their captain, declaring that he was the first of all true Zouaves because he would not listen to reason.

On June 4 the great battle of Magenta was won by the allies, and the memory of Novara was obliterated in this overwhelming triumph which freed Lombardy from Austria. Immediately a Lombard delegation came to the King of Sardinia and offered him the fealty of their state and asked for its union with Piedmont. Thus came the first new state into united Italy.

On June 8 the allies entered Milan, the Lombard capital, and celebrated their victories with a splendid service at the cathedral. Meanwhile news arrived of a French victory at Melegnano, and of Garibaldi’s daring movements among the Alps. The Lombards were beside themselves with delight, the Austrians, so long their overlords, had at last withdrawn across the Mincio into Venetia. Victor Emmanuel issued a proclamation in Milan on June 9 in which occurred the stirring words of praise for his ally so often quoted, “The[314] Emperor of the French, our generous ally, worthy of the name and genius of Napoleon, putting himself at the head of the heroic army of that great nation, wishes to liberate Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic. In a rivalry of sacrifices you will second these magnanimous proposals on the field of battle, you will show yourselves worthy of the destinies to which Italy is now called after so many centuries of suffering.”

In Milan the King first met Garibaldi, whose reputation for striking audacity and no less remarkable simplicity had made a strong appeal to a sovereign who could appreciate those qualities. Here their friendship began, a mutual admiration which was to be the strongest link to bind the general, growing yearly more and more a republican, to the future Kingdom of Italy.

Austria was now ready for a new attack, and appeared suddenly in front of the allied armies. The latter met them, and fought on June 24 the great battle called Solferino by the French, and San Martino by the Italians. San Martino is the name of a hill which commands the roads to the Lake of Garda. The Piedmontese had held it at first, but were dislodged by the Austrians. Then re-enforcements arrived, and the height was retaken, but at great cost. The King sent an officer to the general in command, saying, “Our allies are[315] winning a great battle at Solferino; it is the King’s wish that his soldiers should win one at San Martino.” “Say to the King that his orders shall be executed,” replied General Mollard. The King succeeded in capturing Sonato, and then went to the defense of San Martino, which was finally won after most desperate fighting. The Italians had equaled the proud record of their allies on that day. Between them the two armies had driven the Austrians completely out of Lombardy. That night it did not seem unlikely that a few more weeks would indeed see Italy free from the Alps to the Adriatic, and Venice united to her sister cities of the north.

Napoleon, having met with the most unqualified success in Italy, suddenly stopped short, and proceeded, almost as though panic-stricken, to ask Austria for an armistice, as though he were the vanquished, not the victor. Both Italians and Frenchmen heard of this determination of the Emperor first with incredulity, then with amazement, then with indignation. Victor Emmanuel did his utmost to induce his ally to change his intention, but Napoleon was obdurate. Then the King, who realized to the full what a crushing blow this step would be to the soaring hopes of the Italian cities, resigned himself to the situation as best he could. “Poor Italy!” he said to the French Emperor.[316] “Whatever shall be your Majesty’s decision I shall always feel grateful for what you have done for Italian independence, and you may count on me as a friend.” It must have been hard for a king who saw his victorious army checked in mid-career to have spoken such dignified words.

Other men did not take Napoleon’s action with any such restraint. The men of the provinces who had seen themselves almost free of the yoke they so deeply hated were indescribably bitter at this outcome, Garibaldi and his volunteers felt themselves confirmed in that antipathy to Napoleon they had been at small pains to conceal, and the general was only calmed by the personal appeal of his King. But the effect was most disastrous upon Cavour, who had labored to bring about this war as no other man in Italy had done, and who now believed that the tremendous efforts of his life had gone for nothing. He had shouldered tremendous responsibility, now he felt the disaster overwhelmingly. He hurried to the King’s camp, and making small effort to conceal his anger, denounced the Emperor and counseled the King to refuse to accept Lombardy under the terms of peace. Positions were reversed, for the moment Victor Emmanuel was the calm statesman looking to the future, Cavour the man of fiery impulse who would accept no compromise. The meeting was long and[317] difficult, and when Cavour left, having placed his resignation in the King’s hands, there was a deep breach between the two men. Cavour returned to Turin, “in the space of three days grown older by many years.”

The Treaty of Villafranca was signed July 12, 1859, and by it Lombardy was joined to Piedmont. The Cavour ministry only held office until their successors could be appointed. Rattazzi at last agreed to accept the helm.

The high contracting parties to the treaty had thought that they could dispose of the small Italian states as they pleased, and return them to the dominion of their Grand Dukes and Princes by a stroke of the pen. It proved, however, quite otherwise. Modena, Parma, the provinces of Bologna, Ferrara, Umbria, Perugia, and the Marches, had been too near freedom to suffer the peaceful return of their old overlords. State after state had sent deputations to the Sardinian King during the war asking for annexation to Piedmont, and some of them had provisional governments with Piedmontese deputies at their head. The ministry at Turin gave orders in pursuance of the terms of peace withdrawing the royal commissioners, but the men in charge felt that they could not abandon their posts and leave the people in a state bordering on anarchy, and the people stated decisively that they[318] would not allow their fugitive Princes to return. So the Treaty of Villafranca was not as effective as its makers had intended it to be.

The central Italian states proceeded to take affairs into their own hands, and sent envoys to the different courts of Europe to represent the true conditions in their respective cities and their ardent desire for annexation to Piedmont. In Florence Ricasoli, in Modena Farini took positive stands, and led in the calling of an Assembly of all the smaller states, which resolved that they would become subjects of the Sardinian King. Deputation after deputation came to the King at Turin, composed of the best known men of the states, and besought him to accept their allegiance. It was a difficult position for the King. He could not refuse requests so ardently made, and which represented the dearest wish of people he had so often declared he would protect, yet he could not easily accept in view of the position of Austria and France. He welcomed the envoys warmly, entertained them at his capital, and spoke to them freely, assuring them of the warmth of his desires and asking them to be patient only a little time longer. In November, 1859, the Powers saw that a conference must meet to consider this problem of Italy. Piedmont looked about for the man to speak her voice, and only one man was thought of.[319] The King had felt Cavour’s anger deeply, and could hardly find it in him to call him out of his retirement. He saw, however, that any Congress would be useless without the great statesman, and so he finally consented, and nominated him as first Sardinian plenipotentiary.

Although the King could bring himself to appoint Cavour, the Rattazzi ministry were unwilling to have him act, and it seemed as though no compromise could be effected. Cavour was asked to put his conditions of acceptance in writing, and by chance happened to dictate them to Sir James Hudson, the British Minister at Turin, with whom he was staying. When the conditions were received by the cabinet the ministers did not favor them, and La Marmora, discovering them to be in Sir James Hudson’s handwriting, was offended at what he chose to consider foreign interference, and resigned. The cabinet, never very strong, could not stand, and the King at once pocketed his last dislike, and summoned Cavour to form a new ministry. This the Count consented to do.

The Pope was much alarmed at the condition of the Papal States and began publicly to denounce Victor Emmanuel for encouraging both those and the other states in their desire for annexation. The correspondence between Pope and King was most remarkable, always dignified, and[320] on the King’s part breathing the desire for reconciliation, but on the Pope’s indignant and alarming. The proposed European Congress did not meet, and as month after month passed events showed that the central states would have their way. At length these states took a formal vote in popular assemblies, and declared unanimously for annexation with Piedmont. The King could withstand them no longer, and the annexation was agreed to. Immediately Pius IX. issued a bull of excommunication against Victor Emmanuel, his ministers, soldiers, and subjects, and proclaimed him no better than a sacrilegious robber. This act, formerly so terrifying, had no effect, the people had made up their minds, and in the spring of 1860 the King received Farini, Dictator of Emilia, and Ricasoli, Dictator of Tuscany, and accepted from them the allegiance of central Italy.

That France might take no untoward step at sight of a kingdom growing so rapidly on her southern border Victor Emmanuel had to make the second concession to Napoleon, and cede Savoy and Nice. It was a bitter step for the head of the House of Savoy to take, but he felt that the need of Italy required it of him, and, as with every other sacrifice that need required of him, he met it resolutely. Not so Garibaldi, who saw his birthplace given to a foreign Power; he never forgave[321] Cavour that act, and it widened the gulf already separating them.

The new Parliament met on April 2, 1860, numbering among its members the greatest names of Piedmont, Lombardy, Tuscany, and Emilia. Ricasoli, Farini, Capponi, Manzoni, Mamiani, Poerio, all had seats. The King, in his speech from the throne, dwelt upon the accession of central Italy, and briefly but with infinite pathos stated that he had made a treaty for the reunion of Savoy and Nice to France. Then he called his hearers’ minds to the work that lay before them. “In turning our attention,” he concluded, “to the new ordering of affairs, not seeking in old parties other than the memory of the services rendered to the common cause, we invite all sincere opinions to a noble emulation that we may attain the grand end of the greatness of the country. It is no longer the Italy of the Romans, nor that of the Middle Ages; it must no longer be the battle-field of ambitious foreigners, but it must be rather the Italy of the Italians.”

How many patriots had voiced that cry “the Italy of the Italians” through the long centuries when Goth and Vandal, Guelph and Ghibelline, Pope and Emperor, France and Austria, had striven to gain the upper hand in the Peninsula!

Soon after Parliament opened the King made a[322] tour of his new possessions, and was hailed in each city as deliverer. The joy of the people in the thought that at last they had an Italian prince in place of the fickle, foreign-bred Bourbons, was wonderful to behold: “At last we are eleven million Italians!” was their proud cry. Florence received the King with decorations of every fashion, arches of triumph, houses draped with the tricolor and rich brocades, streets carpeted with laurels, a rain of roses as he rode from the railway station to the Palazzo Vecchio. The greatest men of Tuscany, poets, artists, musicians, scholars, came to greet him, and with one accord proclaimed him the hero who had brought to fruition the dreams of their lives. His visit to Florence was a memorable one.

We must now glance for a moment at the remarkable events which General Garibaldi was bringing to pass in Sicily and Calabria. The expedition of the Thousand had started from Genoa, openly disavowed by that astute diplomat Cavour, secretly encouraged by him. The hero of the magic Red Shirt had swept over Sicily and crossed thence to the mainland. Men of all classes were speeding from every part of Italy to fight under such a glorious leader, the triumphal march from Reggio to Naples had begun, and the troops of Francis II. of Naples were proving how very little[323] they had the interest of their sovereign’s cause at heart. But with Garibaldi in possession of Naples serious questions arose. The victorious general wished to march immediately on Rome, and to hold the dictatorship of southern Italy until he could unite it in one gift to Victor Emmanuel. It was an heroic desire, worthy of its great inventor, but Victor Emmanuel and Cavour both realized that a march on Rome at that time meant the active intervention of French troops, and that a prolonged dictatorship might give the republican element an opportunity to change Garibaldi’s plans and destroy the hope of national unity. There were numbers of Mazzinians in Naples and Cavour feared their influence over the great crusader. He appealed to Parliament, and it voted for the immediate annexation of Naples and Sicily. Then the royal army was sent at the double quick to meet Garibaldi before he should start for Rome. When the army was well on its march Cavour gave this note to the foreign ambassadors in explanation: “If we do not arrive on the Volturno before Garibaldi arrives at Cattolica, the monarchy is lost—Italy remains a prey to revolution.”

The King led the royal army south and the progress through the Papal States was one continual triumph; General Cialdini met the Papal army at Castelfidardo and defeated them, soon[324] after he took Ancona, and Victor Emmanuel was in possession of Umbria, the Marches, and Perugia, all taken as Cavour diplomatically explained, to save Italy from revolution.

Garibaldi generously acquiesced in the decision of the Parliament at Turin, and prepared to surrender his conquests to the King. As Victor Emmanuel started from Ancona on the last stage of his progress to Naples he issued an address to the people of southern Italy, which concluded, “My troops advance among you to maintain order; I do not come to impose my will upon you, but to see that yours is respected. You will be able to manifest it freely. That Providence which protects just causes will guide the vote which you will place upon the urn. Whatever be the gravity of the events which may arise, I await tranquilly the judgment of civilized Europe and of history, because I have the consciousness of having fulfilled my duty as King and as an Italian. In Europe my policy perhaps will not be without effect in helping to reconcile the progress of the people with the stability of the monarchy. In Italy I know that I close the era of revolutions.”

Outside of Naples the King at the head of his troops was met by Garibaldi, riding with some of his red-shirted officers. Garibaldi saluted Victor Emmanuel as “King of Italy,” and the King[325] thanked him with simple words. Then they clasped hands and rode side by side towards the capital, which the general was giving to the King. Each of the men was then and always, even in the dismal days of Aspromonte and Mentana, a warm admirer of the other. November 7, 1860, Victor Emmanuel entered Naples, which was given over to triumphal acclamations of King and general. They reigned side by side as popular idols for some days, and then Garibaldi, refusing all gifts and honors, returned to his island of Caprera, and Victor Emmanuel soon afterwards returned to his capital of Turin.

The last strongholds of the Bourbons in Italy fell early in the new year, and the nation lacked only Rome and Venetia for completion. A new Parliament was called at Turin to mark the transition from the Kingdom of Sardinia to the Kingdom of Italy. Representatives of all the new provinces appeared, and Parliament was opened on February 18, 1861. The King, in his speech from the throne, reviewed the great events of the past year, and declared that the valor of the great mediæval cities of Italy had been shown to survive in the sons of the modern kingdom. He was proclaimed the sovereign by the title of Victor Emmanuel II., by the Grace of God and by the will of the nation, King of Italy. He chose that his pred[326]ecessor of the same name should bear the title of the first Victor Emmanuel, but he was only King of Sardinia, and this sovereign was in fact Victor Emmanuel the First of Italy.

Cavour decided to resign and so allow the new King the opportunity to appoint a new Premier. The will of the King had occasionally clashed with the will of the statesman, and the former now hesitated in the matter of choosing his new Prime Minister. He conferred with the leaders of the various provinces, and found them all in one accord, Cavour must be the first minister of Italy. He was invited to form a new ministry, and agreed to do so. Attacked at home by Garibaldi and those who wished to take Rome by the sword, and vilified abroad by Papal emissaries, the great Minister heeded neither party, but proceeded quietly to lay his plans for the ultimate acquisition of Rome as the national capital. As always, he believed in alternating audacity with patience, and believed that this was the time for the exercise of the latter virtue.

Unfortunately for the course of Italian history, Cavour’s labors to induce the Catholic world to have faith in his belief that a free church in a free state was best for civilization were brought to a close that spring. He died June 6, 1861, having worked so hard in Parliament that he had brought[327] upon himself a violent fever. The King had visited him on June 5, and the sick man had roused sufficiently to speak to him. “Ah, Maestà!” murmured the man, to whom Victor Emmanuel represented the central figure of his career. At Cavour’s death Victor Emmanuel was prostrated. “Better for Italy if it were I who had died!” he exclaimed, with full consciousness that it had been Cavour who alone of all Italians had possessed the greatness of intellect to raise the throne of Piedmont to an equality among the Powers.

All Italians felt that their greatest guide was lost to them in Cavour’s death. Only at this time did they fully realize how monumental had been his force of character, how simple and endearing his nature. For years he had silently shouldered burdens of inestimable weight, and followed his course in the face of attack both at home and abroad. Massimo d’Azeglio wrote to Farini, “Poor Cavour. It is only now I know how much I loved him. I am no longer good for anything, but I have prayed to heaven for our country, and a gleam of comfort has come to me. If God will He can save Italy even without Cavour.” There were many men in Italy who felt that only by miracle now could their fragile ship be brought safely into port.

From the date of Cavour’s death Victor Em[328]manuel gave more personal concern to the foreign affairs of his country, he felt that his responsibilities had tremendously increased. Ricasoli, who had been dictator of Florence, became Prime Minister. England and France had acknowledged the new Kingdom of Italy, and now Prussia and Russia did likewise. A marriage was arranged between Victor Emmanuel’s youngest daughter Maria Pia and the King of Portugal, and the various countries of Europe all turned with a new interest to the romantic history of the fast-spreading House of Savoy.

The burdens that Cavour had borne so long soon proved too heavy for his successor Ricasoli, and after nine months’ service he resigned his office. Rattazzi, Cavour’s old ally in the early days of Victor Emmanuel’s reign, succeeded him as Prime Minister. He it was who now had to face the increasing complications of the Roman question brought about by the determination of Garibaldi and the ardent spirits of “Young Italy” to take the Papal capital by storm. Cavour had been able, in part at least, to prevent friction between the regular army and the Garibaldians, and to guide the impulsive general. Whether he could have prevented Garibaldi from embarking again from Sicily, this time headed for Rome, no one can say. Rattazzi found the task beyond him.

[329]

In midsummer of 1862 Garibaldi and his volunteers crossed from Sicily and took up their march through Calabria with the motto of their endeavor, “Rome or death.” The Italian government felt that the advance must be stopped at all costs, or they would be involved in foreign warfare. General Cialdini was sent to oppose Garibaldi, and did so at Aspromonte, where, after a very short resistance, the volunteers surrendered. Unfortunately Garibaldi was wounded in the foot, and the illness that followed was long and trying both to the general and to the Italian government. The wounded hero was lionized and acclaimed, and treated more like a martyr than an insurgent. The King was bitterly grieved at the tragedy of Aspromonte, and the necessity of taking prisoner a man who had labored so valiantly for Italian freedom.

The Rattazzi Ministry could not withstand the loss of popular support after Aspromonte, and resigned. Farini, who had been dictator of Emilia in the days following the last Austrian war, succeeded Rattazzi as Premier, but he in turn was soon forced by ill-health to surrender the control. Minghetti then became Prime Minister. Meantime the Roman question was as far from being settled as ever; Napoleon, protesting that he was the friend of Italian independence, yet in the same[330] breath insisting on the temporal dominion of the Pope, proving an insurmountable obstacle. Fortunately for Italy the time was to come when Napoleon’s attention would be wholly directed elsewhere. In these days of indecision and waiting Victor Emmanuel traveled extensively through all parts of the kingdom, and was everywhere greeted with the warmest evidence of gratitude and affection. Italians were not used to a sovereign who was glad to meet all classes of his people, and not afraid to hear their views of his government. His fearlessness, his devotion, his bonhomie all endeared him to the people, and the Rè Galantuomo became indeed a very honest king to all men who had only known Austrian and clerical governors.

Victor Emmanuel expected that Venice would be added to the Kingdom of Italy before Rome was, but the immediate annexation of neither seemed probable. The French government became gradually more conciliatory, but the changes were very gradual. Napoleon foresaw that Rome must inevitably become Italy’s capital, and the French minister, Druyn de Lhuys, said, “Of course in the end you will go to Rome. But it is important that between our evacuation and your going there, such an interval of time elapse as to prevent people establishing any connection between the two facts; France must not have any responsibility.” Napo[331]leon proposed that the Italian capital be moved from Turin to a southern and more central city, and the Minghetti Ministry accepted the suggestion and proposed to the King that the seat of government be transferred to Florence. The thought of leaving Turin, for so many centuries the home of his family, caused Victor Emmanuel the greatest distress. “You know I am a true Turinese,” he said, “and no one can understand what a wrench it is to my heart to think that I must abandon this city where I have so many affections, where there is such a feeling of fidelity to my family, where the bones of my fathers and all my dear ones repose.” It appeared, however, that the change must be made if the advantages of the new agreement with France, according to which the French troops were to evacuate Rome in two years, were to be obtained. “Since the cession of Savoy and Nice,” said the King, “no public event has cost me such bitter regret. If I were not persuaded that this sacrifice is necessary to the unity of Italy I would refuse.”

Turin, when it heard of the determination of the government, gave itself over to consternation of the wildest type. The Minghetti Ministry had to resign, and even the beloved King was not spared open demonstration of his people’s disapproval. He summoned General La Marmora to become[332] Premier, and the new minister carried the change through in spite of Turinese disapproval. The change was made early in 1865, and Florence welcomed the King with every tribute of honor. It was some time, however, before Victor Emmanuel could forget the injustice done him by the people of his own city, although they later proved their regret for their unkind treatment by asking forgiveness and celebrating his visits to them with unwonted joy.

Early in 1866 the King’s third son, Otto, Duke of Monferrat, who had long been an invalid, died, and at very nearly the same time died that remarkable man, Massimo d’Azeglio. From the days of his early youth the King had relied on the counsels and wise judgment of this man, who was alternately artist, poet, statesman, soldier, and who had the gift of making friends to a greater degree than any Italian in public life. He had sacrificed his own interests time and again at the request of his King or of Cavour, he had traveled throughout Italy studying conditions in the days of Charles Albert, and recording them in his books, he had been honored by almost all the sovereigns of Europe as a man of the noblest character and highest talents. His death was a great loss to Italy.

The clouds of war were gathering abroad in[333] that same year. Prussia and Austria were quarreling, and the Italian government concluded an alliance with Prussia on April 8, 1866. Austria, realizing that she would have sufficient difficulty in holding her own against Prussia without having to guard against her southern neighbor also, made overtures through Napoleon agreeing to cede Venetia to Italy if that country would dissolve its alliance with Prussia. The temptation was strong, but the King and his Prime Minister refused to break their engagements, and on June 20, 1866, declared war against Austria. Victor Emmanuel appointed his cousin Regent, and took command of his troops. The two young Princes, Humbert and Amadeus, went with him.

On that same field of Custozza, where the Italians had lost in 1849, the armies met, and after a long and bloody battle the army of Italy was again worsted. At the same time the Italian fleet was beaten at Lissa in the Adriatic. Even Garibaldi’s volunteers in the Lakes were not meeting with their former successes, and the campaign would have been disastrous to Italian hopes had not their ally, Prussia, forced Austria to immediate terms by the two great victories of Königgratz and Sadowa. An armistice followed, and Napoleon, to whom Austria ceded Venetia, gave that province to Italy with the approval of Prus[334]sia. The Italians were dejected by their losses, but at least Venice was finally free from the foreigner.

The beautiful city of the Adriatic was no sooner free than she sent her foremost citizens to Victor Emmanuel to ask for immediate annexation to the Italian kingdom. It was a glorious day when the red, white, and green flag was raised in Saint Mark’s Square, and the Venetian heroes, exiled with their great leader, Daniel Manin, almost two decades earlier, could return to breathe the air of their beloved home. Victor Emmanuel received the citizens of Venice at Turin, and answered their eager desire with stirring words. “Citizens of Venice,” so ran his answer, “this is the most beautiful day of my life. It is now nineteen years since my father proclaimed from this city the war of national independence. To-day, his birthday, you, gentlemen, bring me the evidence of the popular will of the Venetian provinces, which we now unite to the great Italian nation, declaring as an accomplished fact the desire of my august parent. You confirm by this solemn act that which Venetia did in 1848, and which she maintained with such admirable constancy and self-abnegation. Let me here pay a tribute to those brave men who with their blood, and with sacrifices of every sort, kept undiminished faith to their country and to her[335] destinies. With this day shall disappear from the Peninsula every vestige of foreign domination. Italy is made, if not completed; it now rests with the Italians to make her great and prosperous.

“Gentlemen, the Iron Crown is also restored in this solemn day to Italy. But above this crown I place that which to me is dearer—the crown of my people’s love.”

November 7, 1866, the King made his formal entry into that most beautiful of the rare group of Italy’s cities, and the one which had belonged most absolutely to the foreigner.

Rome alone now remained outside the nation, and it was plainly only a matter of time before Pius IX. would have to submit to his evident destiny. The French had kept their agreement, and were leaving Rome, the call of the Romans to Victor Emmanuel to come and free them grew ever louder, and the wish of the Italian people grew daily more pronounced. It was Victor Emmanuel himself who would not force the Church’s hand, he was content to wait, knowing how events were gradually shaping, and this patience of his in the end proved its wisdom.

There were others, however, who would not wait, and these were the Garibaldians. When the Romans found that the King would not draw[336] sword to free them, they turned to the crusader whose hand was always on his sword hilt at the call of Rome. He heard the call now, took the field again, and placed his King a second time in the same unenviable position.

One ministry resigned, no statesman seemed competent to cope with the situation which Garibaldi was bringing on his country, the King saw Italy on the brink of civil war, and was at the same time fearful lest the French troops return and destroy the volunteers. It was the most trying time in his career as King of Italy.

Garibaldi was arrested, imprisoned at Caprera, escaped, and joined the now rapidly increasing volunteers in the country about Rome. He met with success at the battle of Monte Rotondo, but a few days later found his army opposed at Mentana by French troops which Napoleon had hurriedly sent to protect the Papal temporal power. The French were armed with the new chassepot gun, and the Garibaldians were defeated with terrible loss. They could not renew the unequal struggle, and the brief campaign came to an untimely end.

Victor Emmanuel was heart-broken at the news of the frightful havoc at Mentana and the Garibaldian losses. “Ah, those chassepots!” he exclaimed. “They have mortally wounded my heart[337] as father and king. I feel as if the balls had torn my flesh. It is one of the greatest griefs that I have ever known in all my life.”

After the short campaign the reckless patriot Garibaldi was again imprisoned, but soon released. He had proved a tremendous problem to all the successors of Cavour. He returned to Caprera, and gradually the agitation of the Roman question subsided into its former slow and diplomatic course.

The Crown Prince Humbert, who was twenty-four years old, was now married to his first cousin the Princess Margherita, daughter of the Duke of Genoa, and the marriage proved immensely popular, for the Princess possessed unusual charm, and as soon as she was known, was beloved by the people. The King’s second son, Amadeus, soon to be offered the crown of Spain, had already married the daughter of the Prince della Cisterna, the head of an old and devotedly loyal Piedmont family. In the year 1869 Victor Emmanuel, who had been seized with a severe fever in his villa near Pisa, married the Countess Mirafiore, according to the rites of the Church.

The year 1870 saw Napoleon drawn into the war with Prussia which was to cost him his crown. The French troops could no longer remain abroad to support the Pope and were withdrawn from[338] Italy. Although Napoleon had sacrificed his alliance with Victor Emmanuel the latter would even now have gone to his aid, but his ministers would not permit him to take such a step. The rapid disasters that befell French arms and the surrender of the Emperor at Sedan caused the Romans to make another appeal to Victor Emmanuel to come to their aid before they should be altogether abandoned. The time was now ripe when the appeal could be answered. A message containing the King’s resolution was sent to the provisional government at Paris, which replied that it had no power now to oppose Italy. Yet, even now, before sending his troops to Rome, the King tried again to effect some pacific adjustment with the Pope, and it was only when the latter showed again his unaltered determination to insist on the temporal power of the Church that the Italian army crossed the Papal frontier.

September 20, 1870, is the date on which the temporal power of the Roman Church, after many centuries of vicissitudes, came to an end. The Pope, although eighty years old, determined on final resistance, and the invading army was met at the Leonine Gate with fire from the city bastions. The fight did not last long, the foreign ambassadors in Rome entreated the Pope to capitulate, but he would not do so until he heard[339] that the royal army was actually within the city. Then a white flag was raised on Saint Peter’s, and an hour later the last Papal Zouaves were surrendering their arms. All Rome rushed to the Capitol and burst into ecstatic acclaim as the Italian tri-color was flung out to the breezes from the palace. The fortress of Saint Angelo was opened and scores of political prisoners released. Meanwhile the Pope and the Cardinals withdrew into the Vatican, and proclaimed to the world that they were kept there as prisoners against their will. A popular vote of the Romans was taken and resulted overwhelmingly in favor of union with the Kingdom.

The long struggle which had begun for Victor Emmanuel on that far-off day of Novara, was ended. To Piedmont had been added Lombardy, Tuscany, Emilia, the Papal States, Sicily, Naples, Venetia, and now Rome. The vow of the King was accomplished, Italy was complete. The last Parliament in Florence met December 5, 1870, and the King in opening it said, “With Rome the capital of Italy I have fulfilled my promise, and crowned the undertaking which twenty-three years ago was initiated by my great father. As a king and as a son, I feel in my heart a solemn joy in saluting here assembled the representatives of our beloved country, and in pronouncing these[340] words—Italy is free and one. Now it depends on us to make her free and happy.”

Florence had rejoiced at being the capital of Italy, but now she surrendered that proud position to Rome, which all Italians felt must be the capital of the new nation. The King had no wish to offend the Pope, indeed he and his ministers were untiring in their efforts to effect a reconciliation with the head of the Church, and the public entry into Rome was delayed for almost nine months. Meanwhile the King had entered the city privately at a time when the Tiber had flooded its banks and caused much distress, and had done all that he could to relieve the needs of the poor and homeless. On June 2, 1871, Victor Emmanuel made his formal entry into his new capital, and took possession of the Quirinal. On November 27 of that same year the first Parliament representing united Italy met.

A little earlier Spain, rid of Isabella, and in the hands of a provisional government, sought a king from Italy, and found one in Victor Emmanuel’s son, Amadeus, who went to Madrid, and reigned there for a few troubled years, until another revolution released him from a position which he had never sought or desired.

For seven years Victor Emmanuel reigned in Rome, and they were years of great strides in[341] progress and in national unity. He visited foreign sovereigns, and they in turn visited him; in 1873 he went to Vienna as the guest of the Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph, and in 1876 the latter visited him at Venice. The King of Italy, always open-hearted and simple by nature, was glad to forget the days when Austria had ruled in Italy, and to form ties of friendship between the Houses of Savoy and of Hapsburg, ties which Francis Joseph was equally glad to make.

The Pope continued publicly to resent the presence of the King in Rome, but privately he stated his admiration for him. Pius IX. was two men in one, delightful as a private character, but narrow and bigoted in his public views. He still held to his claim to temporal power over the States of the Church, but gradually the claim ceased to be other than an echo of history.

In those seven years between 1871 and 1878 the King knit his people together, met Garibaldi, now the arch republican, and brought him to terms of reason, concerned himself with scores of plans for bettering the material welfare of his people, draining the Campagna, tunneling Mont Cenis and the St. Gothard, and building up commerce with the East. He was always the idol of his people, the Rè Galantuomo, in whatever part of the country he visited. On January 9, 1878, he[342] died, being fifty-eight years of age, and having reigned twenty-nine years.

Thousands of stories are told of Victor Emmanuel’s frankness and independence, of his love of mixing with his people, and doing little acts of kindness and charity. He was a great hunter, never happier than when in the Alps, free as the meanest goatherd, and forgetful of all his cares. He had a most magnetic personality, a certain ruggedness of character that led men to trust him implicitly and follow him without debate. He was the very man for his time, a leader who could accomplish what Charles Albert could never have done, because he was first and foremost a fighter and never the scholastic theorist. Grouped about him were men of the greatest ability and devotion, such patriots as D’Azeglio, Cavour, La Marmora, who could do for him what they could never have done for his father, because Victor Emmanuel knew when to give others a free rein, and having once given them that rein, did not immediately jerk them back. He understood the delicate position of a constitutional sovereign almost by instinct, time and again he might have forced his wish upon his country, but he understood that it was Parliament and not he that should be supreme. Yet, on the other hand, he did not shirk responsibility, he was ready to assume any burden which[343] would aid in delivering Italy from foreign domination.

Events in the lives of nations, such as the union of the disordered states of Italy, are greater than any man, but often such events seem to await the coming of a certain man who shall collect within himself the spirit of his time, and personify its impulse in his nature. Reading this history, one feels as though the men of the Peninsula had waited the coming of a King of Piedmont who should throw everything he had into the common cause, and, without counting any cost or pain, fight to the goal. When such a man came, then and then only, could the forces that were preparing reach their full growth and opportunity, then and then only could Mazzini, Garibaldi, and Cavour put into operation the energies for which they severally stood.

In Italy to-day the memory of Victor Emmanuel meets one on every hand, it was his fortunate fate to rise to every opportunity, and to grow in his people’s affection with each step he took.

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INDEX

A Great Italian Romance

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THE GADFLY

By E. L. VOYNICH. 12mo. $1.25

An intense romance of the Italian rising against the Austrians early in the nineteenth century. It has gone through over twenty impressions.

“She shows us the veritable conspirator of history, who plotted like a human being, and not like an operatic bandit, ... it is a thrilling book and absolutely sober.... ‘The Gadfly’ is an original and impressive being; ... a story to remember. It is nothing more or less than one of the most powerful novels of the decade.”—New York Tribune.

“One of the most interesting phases of the history of nineteenth-century Europe. The story of the Italian revolutionary movement ... is full of such incidents as the novelist most desires.... This novel is one of the strongest of the year, vivid in conception and dramatic in execution, filled with intense human feeling, and worked up to a tremendously impressive climax.”—Dial.

“Paradox worked up with intense dramatic effect is the salient feature of ‘The Gadfly’; shows a wonderfully strong hand, and descriptive powers which are rare; ... a very remarkable romance.”—New York Times.

“An historical novel permeated with a deep religious interest in which from first to last the story is dominant and absorbing.... ‘The Gadfly’ is a figure to live in the imagination.”—Critic.

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TAINE, H. A.

• Italy; Rome and Naples. Translated by John Durand. Large 12mo. $2.50
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