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C A V O U E
THE COUNTESS
\IARTINEN"GO CI
EVELYX MARTINEXGO CESAHESGO
A ^
Italia ab extcris lihcranda.
Motto of Pope Jl'lil's II.
"il n tl 11
MAC.M I I.I.W AM) CO., KiMiiKn
NEW YOKK: THK MACMlI.lvAN Oj.MI-ANV
1 '.) t
/* II right t itttrvtil
First Edition 1898. Reprinted 1904
PilEFACE
" Jc suis italien avaiit tout, et c'est pour faire jouir a mon pays
du self goveiiinicnt a linterieur, conuue a rexterieui', que j'ai
entrepris la rude tache de chasser I'Autriclie de I'ltalie sans y
substituer la domination d'aucuue autre Puissance." — Cavour to
the Marquis Uminamiel d'Azeglio {May 8, 1860).
The day is passed when the warmest aduiirer of the
emiueut man whose character is sketchctl in the follow-
ing pages would think it needful to affirm that he alone
regenerated his country. Many forces were at work :
the energising impulse of moral enthusiasm, the spell of
heroism, the ancient and still unextinguished potency of
kingly headship. But Cavour's hand controlled the
working of these forces, and compelled them to coalesce.
The first point in his plan was to make Piedmont a
lever by which Italy could be raised. An Englishman,
Lord William Bentinck, conceived an identical plan in
which Sicily stood for Piedmont. He failed ; Cavuur
succeeded. The second point was to cause the Austrian
power in Italy to receive such a shock that, whether it
succumbed at once or not, it would never recover. In
this too, with tiie help of Napoleon HI., ho succeeded.
The third point was to prevent the Continental Powers
from forcibly impeding Italian Unity when it liccame
jilain that the population desired to be united, 'i'liis
Cavour succeeded in doing with the liclp of JMiLiland.
vi CAVOUR
Time, wliioli beautifies unlovely things, begins to
cast its glamour over the old Italian regimes. It is for-
gotten how low the Italian race had fallen under puny
autocrats whose influence was soporific when not vicious.
The vigorous if turbulent life of the Middle Ages was
extinct ; proof abounded that the rule of small states was
played o\it. Goldsmith's description, severe as it is,
was not unmerited —
Here may be seen, in bloodless pomp array'd,
The pasteboard triumph and the cavalcade ;
Processions formed for piety and love,
A mistress or a saint in every grove.
By sports like these are all their cares beguil'd,
The sports of children .satisfy the child ;
Each nobler aim, represt by long control.
Now sinks at last, or feebly mans the soub
Onl}- those who do not know the past can tuin awaj-
from the present with scorn or despair. In this century
a nation has arisen which, in spite of all its troubles, is
alive with ambition, industry, movement ; which has ten
thousand miles of railway, which has conquered the
malaria at Rome, which has doubled its population and
halved its death-rate, which sends out great battle-ships
from Venice and Spezia, Castellamare and Taranto.
This nation is Cavour's niemcn-ial : si monumenlum requiris
circumspice.
Sal5, Lago di G akda.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
HKREniTY ANU E.NVI IKINMKXT . . 1
CHAPTER n
Tuavkl-Yeaus . . . , . .21
CHAPTER HI
The JoiuxAi.i.sT . .37
CIIAPTKK IV
In Paki.ia.mknt ...... 5.^)
cii.\p'i'i:i: \'
Till'. flKKAl .MlSISIKV . .73
(■|i.\i''ii:i: VT
TllK Cisi-MiAN Wai; Si ui C.I. I, I, wim ini ( jii i;rii . imj
CAVOUlv
CHAPTKi; \II
PAQE
TlIK CoNCUKSS OF Pauis ..... 108
CHAPTKPv VIII
TiiK P.vcT OK I'LOMi'.ikur..-^ . . . . , 126
CHAPTEK IX
TllK \V.\ll OK 18r>9 — Vll.LAFltANCA . . 144
CHAPTEPt X
Savoy and Nice . . 160
chaptp:r XI
The Sicilian Expedition . 174
CHAPTER XIT
Till KiNcDoM (IF Italy IBS
CHAPTER XIII
Rome voted the Capital — Conch-sion . 203
Chief Aithokities . 221
CHAPTER I
HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT
Nothing is permanent but change ; only it ought to be
remembered that change itself is of the nature of an
evolution, not of a catastrophe. Commonly this is not
remembered, and we seem to go forward by bounds and
leaps, or it may be to go backward ; in either case the
thread of continuity is lost. We appear to have moved
far away from the men of forty years ago, except in the
instances in which these men have survived to remind
us of themselves. It is rather startling to recollect that
Cavour might have been among the survivors. He was
born on August 10, 1810. The present Pope, Leo the
Thirteenth, was born in the same year.
It was a moment of lull, after the erection and before
the collapse of the Napoleonic edifice in Italy. If no
thinking mind believed that edifice to be eternal, if
every day did not add to its solidity but took something
silently from it, nevertheless it had the outwardly im-
posing appearance which obtains for a political rd(jime
the acceptance of the apathetic and lukewarm to supple-
ment the support of partisans. Above all, it was a
5 B
2 CAVOUR CHAP.
phase in national existence wliicli m.ulc any real return
to the phase that preceded it impossible. Tlie air
teemed with new germs ; they entered even into the
mysterious composition of the brain of the generation
born in the first decade of the nineteenth century.
Environment and heredity do not explain all the
puzzle of any single man's mind and character, but they
form co-efficients in the making of him which can be no
longer disregarded. The chief point to be noticed in
reference to Cavour is that he was the outcome of a
mingling of race which was not only transmitted
through the blood, but also was a living presence during
his childhood and youth. His father's stock, the Bensos
of Cavour, belonged to the old Piedmontese nobility. A
legend declares that a Saxon pilgrim, a follower of
Frederick Barbarossa, stopped, when returning from the
Holy Land, in the little republic of Chieri, where he met
and married the heiress to all the Bensos, whose name he
assumed. Cavour used to laugh at the story, but the
cockle shells in the arms of the Bensos and their German
motto, "Gott will recht," seem to connect the family
with those transalpine crusading adventurers who brought
the rising sap of a new nation to reinvigorate the peoples
they tarried amongst. Chieri formed a diminutive free
community known as " the republic of the seven B's,"
from the houses of Benso, Balbo, Balbiani, Biscaretti,
Buschetti, Bertone, ami Broglie, which took their origin
from it, six of which became notable in their own
country and one in France. The Bensos acquired
possession of the fief of Santena and of the old fastness
of Cavour in the province of Pignerolo. This castle has
remained a ruin since it was destroyed by Catinat, but
I HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 3
in the last century Charles Emmanuel III. conferred the
title of Marquis of Cavour on a Benso who had rendered
distinguished military services. At the time of Cavour's
birth the palace of the Bensos at Turin contained a
complete and varied societj' composed of all sorts of
nationalities and temperaments. Such different elements
could hardly have dwelt together in harmony if the
head of the household, Cavour's grandmother, had not
been a superior woman in every sense, and one endowed
wnth the worldly tact and elastic spirits without which
even superior gifts are of little worth in the delicate,
intimate relations of life. Nurtured in a romantic
cMfeau on the lake of Annecy, Philippine, daughter of
the Marquis de Sales, was affianced by her father at an
early age to the eldest son of the Marquis Benso di
Cavour, knight of the Annunziata, whom she never saw
till the day of their marriage. At once she took her
place in her new family not only as the ideal grande
dame, but as the person to whom every one went in
trouble and perplexity. That was a moment which
developed strong characters and effaced weak ones. The
revolutionary ocean was fatally rolling towards the Alps.
It found what had been so long the " buffer state " asleep.
There was a king who, unlike the princes of his race, was
more amiable than vigorous. Arthur Young, the traveller,
reports that Victor Emmanuel I. went about with his
pocket full of bank notes, and was discontented at night
if he had not given them all away. "Yet this," adds
the observant Englishman, " with an empty treasury and
an incomplete, ill-paid army." It was a bad preparation
for the (li;luge, but whf-n that arrived, inevitable though
unforeseen, desperate if futile efforts were made to stem
4 OAVOUE CHAP.
it. Some of the Piedmontese nobility were very rich,
but it was a wealth of increment, not of capital. The
burdens imposed when too late by the Sardinian Govern-
ment, and afterwards the cost of the French occupation,
severely strained the resources even of the ■wealthiest.
The Marquise Philippine sold the family plate and the
splendid hangings of silk brocade which adorned the
walls of the Palazzo Cavour at Turin. Napoleon from
the first looked upon Italy as the bank of the French
array. This idea had been impressed upon him before
he started for the campaign which was to prove the
corner-stone of his career. " He was instructed," writes
the secret agent Landrieux, " as to what might well be
drawn from this war for the French treasury."
After the pillage and the war contributions came the
blood-tax. The Marquise Philippine's son, sixteen years
old, was ordered to join General Berthier's corps, and to
provide him with £10 pocket money she sold what till
then she had religiously kept, a silver holy water stoup,
which belonged to her saintly ancestor, Francois de Sales.
The last sacrifices, imposed not in the name of the
country, but to the advantage of an insatiable invader,
were not likely to inspire the old nobility of Piedmont
with much love for the new order of things, nor was
love the feeling Avith which the Marquise regarded it,
but she had the insight to see what few of her class
perceived, that the hour of day cannot be turned back ;
the future could not be as the past had been. When
Prince Camillo Borghese was appointed governor of
Piedmont (on account of his being the husband of
Napoleon's sister, the beautiful Pauline Bonaparte, who
was the original of Canova's Venus), the iNIarquise
I HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 5
Philippine was commanded to accept the post of dame
d'honneur to the Princess. A refusal would have meant
the ruin of both tlie Cavours and her own kin, the De
Sales, whose estates in Savoy were already confiscated.
She bowed to necessity, and in a position which could
not have been one of the easiest, she knew how to
preserve her own dignity, and to win the friendship of
the far from demure Pauline, whom she accompanied to
Paris for the celebration of the marriage of Napoleon
with Marie Louise. It is characteristic of the epoch
that in the French capital the IMarquise took lessons in
the art of teaching from a French pedagogue then in
repute, to qualify her to begin the education of her little
grandchildren, Gustave and Camille.
These two boys were the sons of the Marquis JMichele
Benso, who had married a daughter of the Count de
Sellon of Geneva. While on a tour in Switzerland to
recover his health from a wound received in the French
service, the Marquis met the Count and his three
daughters, of whom he wished to make the eldest,
Victoire, his wife ; but on his suit not prospering Avith
her, he proposed to and was accepted by the second
daughter, Adele. After an unfortunate first marriage,
Victoire became the Duchess de Clermont Tonnerre, and
the youngest sister, Ilenriette, married a Count d'Auzers
of Auvergne. All these relatives ended by taking up
their abode in the Palazzo Cavour at Turin. Victoire
was the cleverest, l)Ut her sisters as well as herself were
what even in these days would be con.sidercd highly
e<lucated. She became a Roman Catholic, a step followed
by Adele after the birth of her second child, Camille,
but ilenriette remained true to the ri^iid Prntestjintism
6 CAVOUR CHAP.
of Geneva. At tlie christening of Caniille de Cavour
the Prince and Princess Borghcse otticiated as sponsors,
the Marqnis Benso liolding at that time a post in the
Prince's household wliidi he owed to the good graces
enjoyed by his mother.
It is plain that of all his kindred, the charming and
valiant Marquise Philippine was the one whom Camille
de Cavonr most fondly loved. She was the member of
his family who understood him best not only in child-
hood, but in manhood, and when all the others reproached
him with embracing ideas contrary to his traditions and
his order, he turned for comfort to his " dearest
Marina," as he called her ("Marina" being the pet-
name b}^ which children in Piedmont called their grand-
mothers), and begged her to defend him against the
charge of undutiful conduct. It might be true, he said,
with the irony which was one day to become so familiar,
that he was that dreadful thing, a liberal, but devoid of
natural feeling he was not. On the great day when the
Statute was granted, he said to the light-hearted old
lady, " Marina, we get on capitally, you and I ; you
were always a little bit of a Jacobin." That was not
long before her strength, though not her courage, gave
way under the deep sorrow of the loss of her great-
grandson Auguste on the field of Goito. She died in
the midst of the political transformation she had so long
waited for.
As a child Cavour was normally sweet-tempered, but
subject to violent fits of passion ; while he hated his
lessons, he showed an early development of intelligence
and judgment. Like most precocious children he had
one or two infantile love affairs. A letter exists written
I HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 7
when he was six, in which he upbraids a little girl
named Fauchonette for basely abandoning him. He
says that he loves her still, but he has now made the
acquaintance of a young lady of extraordinary charms,
who has twice taken him out in the most beautiful gilt
carriage. It is amusing to note the worldly wisdom of
the suitor of six who reckons on jealousy to bring back
the allegiance of the fair but faithless Fanchonette.
The magnificent lival was Silvio Pellico's friend, the
^larchioness de Barolo, who, like every one else, was
attracted by the clever child with his blue eyes and
little round face. Another story belonging to the same
date is even more characteristic. The Cavours went
every year to Switzerland to stay with their connections,
the De Sellons and the De la Rives. On this occasion,
when the travellers reached M. de la Kive's villa at
Presinge, Camille, looking terribly in earnest, and with
an air of importance, made the more comical by the
little red costume he was wearing, went straight to his
host with the announcement that the postmaster had
treated them abominably by giving them the worst
horses, and that he ought to be dismissed. " But," said
M. de la Rive, " I cannot dismiss him ; that depends on
the syndic." "Very well," said the child, "I wish for
an audience with the syndic." "You shall have one
to-morrow," replied M. de la Rive, who wrote to the
syndic, a friend of his, that he was going to send him
a highly entertaining little man. Camille was therefore
received next day with all possible ceremony, which by
no means abashed him. After making three bows, he
quietly and lucidly explained his grievance, and ajjpar-
ently got a promise of satisfaction, as when he went
8 CAVOUR CHAP.
back he exclaimed in triumph to M. dc la Rive, "lie
will be dismissed ! "
The Swiss relations were most enlightened people.
Cavour's uncle, the Count de Sellon, was a sort of Swiss
Wilberforce, an ardent philanthropist whose faith in
human perfectibility used sometimes to make his nephew
smile, but early intercourse with a man of such large
and generous views could not have been without effect.
De Sellon was one of the first persons to dream of
arbitration, and though a Protestant he sent a memorial
on this subject to the Pope. M. de la Rive was a man
of great scientific acquirements, and his son "William
became Cavour's congenial and life-long friend. This
cosmopolitan society was entirely unlike the narrow
coteries of the ancient Piedmontese aristocracy which
are so graphically described by Massimo d'Azeglio, and
the absence of constraint in which Cavour grew up
makes a striking contrast to the iron paternal I'ule under
Avhich the young d'Azeglios trembled. It should be
observed, however, that in spite of his mixed blood and
scattered ties, Cavour was in feeling from the first
the member of one race and the citizen of one state.
The stronger influence, that of the father's strain, pre-
dominated to the exclusion of all others. Though all
classes in Piedmont till within the last fifty years spoke
French when they did not speak dialect, the intellectual
sway of France was probably nowhere in Italy felt so
little as in Piedmont. The proximity of the two
countries tended not for it, but against it. They had
been often at war ; all the memories of the Piedmontese
people, the heroic exploit of Pietro Micca, the royal
legend of the Superga, turned on resistance to the
1 HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 9
poweiiul neighbour. A long line of territorial nobles
like the Bensos transmits, if nothing else, at least a
strong sentiment for the birthland. In Cavour this
sentiment was, indeed, to widen even in boyhood, but
it widened into Italian i)atriotism, not into sterile
cosmopolitanism.
In one respect Cavour was brought up according to
the strictest of old Piedmontese conventions. No one
forgot that he was a younger son. Gustave, the elder
brother, received a classical education, and acquired a
strong taste for metaphysics. He became a thinker
rather than a man of action, and Mas one of the first
and staunchest friends of the philosopher-theologian
Rosmini, whose attempts to reconcile religion and
philosophy led him into a bitter struggle with Rome.
For Camille another sort of life was planned. It was
decided that he must "do something," and at the age of
ten he was sent to the Military Academy at Turin. He
did not like it, but it was better for him than if he had
been kept at home. Mathematics were well taught at
the Academy, and in this branch he soon outstripped
all his schoolfellows. He himself always spoke of his
mathematical studies as having been of great service in
forming the habit of precise thought ; from the study of
triangles, he said, he went on to the study of men and
things. On the other hand the boys were taught little
Latin and less Greek, and nothing was done to fuinish
them with the basis of a literary style, a fact always
deplored by Cavoui', who insisted that the art of writing
ought to be acquired when young ; otherwise it could
not be practised without labour, and never witli entire
succesH. He onc<; sai<l that he found it easier to make
10 CAVOUR CHAP.
Italy tlian a sonnet. In his own case he regretted never
having liecome a ready writer, because he knew tliat
the pen is a force ; he held that a man should cultivate
every means at his disposal to increase his power.
In 1824, when Charles Albert returned to Piedmont
after three years' exile in consequence of the part he
was suspected of having taken in the abortive revolution
of 1821, one of his first acts \vas to obtain a nomination
for young Cavour as page in the royal household. The
pages were all inmates of the Military Academy, where
the expense of their education was borne by the king
after they received the appointment. The Count
d'Auzers, a strong Legitimist, was one of the oldest
friends of the Prince of Carignano, who was regarded
at the Palazzo Cavour as the victim of false accusations
of liberalism. Charles Albert always seemed to reflect
the opinions of the person to whom he was writing or
speaking. Thus it is certain that in his letters to the
Count he appeared as a convinced upholder of white
flags. Cavour must have heard him often defended
from the charge of patriotism. Perhaps this created
in his mind a first aversion, which was strengthened by
personal contact in the course of his duties at Court.
At any rate it is clear that he never liked or trusted
him.
When Cavour left the Military Academy in 1826 he
came out first in the final examinations. He entered
the army with the rank of lieutenant in the Corps of
Engineers. He began to learn English. In a letter
written at this time he speaks of the utilit}- of modern
languages and a real knowledge of history, but adds
that a man who wishes to make a name should concen-
I HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 11
trate his faculties rather than disperse them among too
many subjects and pursuits. Even then he had an
almost definite project of preparing himself to play a
part in life. There is not much to show what were his
political ideas, except a memorandum written when he
was eighteen on the Piedmontese revolution of 1821, in
which he adopted the views of Santorre di Santa Rosa,
once Charles Albert's friend and later his severest critic,
to combat whose indictment the Count d'Auzers had
written folios in the French and German newspapers.
At the end of the memorandum Cavour transcribed an
extract from Santa Rosa's work, in which he invoked
the advent of an Italian Washington. \Yas that the
part which Cavour dreamed of playing 1 A few years
after, he wrote in a fit of despondency, " There was a
time when I should have thought it the most natural
thing in the world that I should wake up one morning
prime minister of a kingdom of Italy." The words
written in 1832 throw a flood of light on the subjects
of his boyish dreams and the goal of his prophetic
ambition.
The story repeated by most of Cavour's biographers,
that in putting off the page's uniform he uttered some
scornful words which, reported to Charles Albert,
changed the goodwill of that prince into hostility, rests
on doubtful authority; but it seems to be true that
Charles Albert, who began liy being very avcU disposed
to the son and nepliew of his friends, calling him in one
letter " the interesting youth who justifies such great
hopes," and in another, " ce charmant CaniiHc," came to
consider his quondam pr(jf('{/4 a restles.s spirit, incon-
venient in the jnesent and po.ssil)]y dangerous in the
12 CAVOUR CHAP.
future. Though the schoolboy essay above mentioned
was kept a secret, the liberal heresies of tlie young
lieutenant were well enough known. He was told that
he would bring father and mother in sorrow to the
grave, and he was even threatened with banishment to
America. The police watched his movements. He
wrote to his Swiss uncle that he had no right to com-
plain as he was liberal and very liberal and desired a
complete change in the whole system. On Charles
Albert's accession to the throne he was sent to the
solitary Alpine fortress of Bard ; but it appears that not
the king (as he suj)posed) but his own father suggested
the step. Cavour saw in the idleness and apathy of
garrison life in this lonely place a type of the disease
from which the whole State was suffering. He wrote
to the Count de Sellon, the apostle of universal peace,
that much as he abhoiTcd bloodshed, he could think of
no cure hxit war. " The Italians need regeneration ;
their moral, which was completely corrupted under the
ignoble dominion of Spaniards and Austrians, regained a
little energy under the French regime, and the ardent
youth of the country sighs for a nationality ; but to
break entirely w^ith 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 Avould 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."
These lines, written l)y a 3^oung officer of twenty-one,
show how far Cavour had already outstripped the
Piedmontese provincialism which had the upper hand
I HEREDITY AXD ENVIRONMEXT 13
in the early years of Charles Albert's reign. He de-
scribed himself as vegetating, but he was not idle ;
sustained mental activity was, in fact, a necessity to him
whatever were his outward circumstances. He read
Bentham and Adam Smith, and was excited by the
events going on in England, then in the throes of the
first Reform Bill. It was in the fortress of Bard that
he gained a grasp of English politics which he never
lost, and which hardly another foreigner ever possessed
in a like degree. By chance he became acquainted
with an English artist who was engaged in making
drawings of the Alpine passes. This gaA'e him not only
the opportunity of speaking and writing English, but
also of expressing his private thoughts without reserve,
which was impossible with his fellow-countrymen.
Throughout his life he found the same mental relaxation
in his intercourse with Englishmen ; he felt safe with
them.
Cavour was not meant to be a soldier ; his tastes did
not agree with the routine of military life, and his clear
judgment told him that the army is not the natural or
correct sphere for a politician — which he knew himself
to be even then, in a country where politics may be said
not to have existed. Acting on these reflections, he
resigned his commission, and his father, perhaps to keep
him quiet, bought him a small independent property
near the ancestral estate at Leri. The ^larquis warned
his son that the income would not allow him to keep a
valet or a horse ; his mother opposed the purchase, as
she thought that the young landlord would bo tempted
to spend more than he had, l)ut to this his father replied
that if a ni.in was not a man at twenty-five he would bo
14 CAVOUR CHAr.
one never. The Marquis Michele Bonso had recently
assumed the post of Vicario of Turin, which his family
thought below his dignity, but he apparently took it to
oblige the king, with whom the Vicario, who was a sort
of Prefect of Police, was in daily contact. As a result,
the estate of Leri, which had been neglected before, was
now going actually to ruin. Cavour, with the approval
of his brother, proposed to undertake the whole manage-
ment of the property, an offer gladly accepted, as the
Marquis was well convinced that his younger son had
rather too many than too few abilities. Cavour saw in
agriculture the only field at present open to him. When
he left the army he scarcely knew a cabbage from a
turnip, for he had not been brought up in the country,
but in a few years he familiarised himself with every-
thing connected with the subject, from the most homely
detail to wide scientific generalisations. With knowledge
came interest, which, absent at first, grew strong, and
lasted all his life. Little, he said, does the outsider
know the charm of planting a field of potatoes or rearing
a young heifer ! The practical experience which Cavour
gained was precious. How many cabinet ministers in
different parts of the world would lead to bankruptcy a
farm, a factory, a warehouse, even a penny tart shop !
As a matter of fact, one Italian minister of finance was
legally interdicted, on the application of his family, from
managing his o\yn estates.
Leri, which Cavour looked upon henceforth as his
true home, lies in one of the ugliest parts of the plains
of Piedmont, cold in winter, scorched by a burning sun
in summer, and unhealthy from the exhalations of the
rice-fields which contribute to its wealth. Except that
I HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 15
game was tolerably plentiful, it had none of the attrac-
tions of an English country-seat — the smiling hillside,
the ancestral elms, the park, the garden. Cavour led
the simplest life ; the old housekeeper who cooked the
dinner also placed it on the table. But the fare, if
plain, was abundant, and Cavour was delighted to
entertain his friends and neighbours, who found him the
most affable of hosts, inexhaustibly good-tempered, a
patient listener, a talker abounding in wit and wisdom.
He had the art of adapting himself perfectly to the
society in which he moved, but in one thing he was
always the same : wherever he went he carried his
intense vitality — that quality of entrain which persuades
more than eloquence or earnestness. He induced others
to join him in experiments which were then innovations :
steam-mills, factories for artificial manures and the like,
while the machinery and new methods introduced at
Leri revolutionised farming in Piedmont. One great
scheme planned by him, an irrigatory canal between the
Ticino and the Po, was only finished after his death, as
the most worthy tribute to his memory. He rose at
four, went to see his cattle, stood in the broiling harvest
fields to overlook the reapers, acted, in short, as his own
bailiff, and to these habits he returned in later years,
whenever he had time to visit Leri. Cavour's mind was
not poetic ; we hear of his admiring only one poet,
Shakespeare, but in Shakespeare it was probably the
deep knowledge of man that attracted him, the appre-
hension of how men with given passions must act under
given condition.s. He did not, therefore, see country
pursuits from a poet's standpoint, but he appreciated
their power of calming men's minds, of dissipating the
16 CAVOUR CHAP.
fog of unrealities, of tending towards what Kant called,
in a phrase he quoted with aj)})roval, "practical reason."
He considered, also, that nothing can so assure the
stability of a nation as an intelligent interest shared by
a large portion of its citizens in the cultivation of the
soil. The English country gentleman who divided his
time between his duties in Parliament and those not
less obligatory on his estates was in Cavour's eyes an
almost ideal personage. It should be added that Cavour
could not understand a country life which did not
embrace solicitude for the worker. The true agriculturist
gained the confidence of the poor around him ; it was,
he said, so easy to gain it. He was kindly, thoughtful,
and just in his treatment of his dependents, and he
always retained his hold on their affections ; when Italy
was asking what she should do without her great states-
man, the sorrowing peasants of Leri asked in tears what
they should do without their master ?
One passage in Cavour's early life was revealed a few
years ago, and, whether or not it was right to reveal it,
the portrait would be now incomplete which did not
touch upon it. The episode belongs to the critical
psychological moment in his development : the time
immediately after he left the army, and before he found
an outlet for his activity, and, what was more essential
to him, a purpose and an object not in the distance but
straight before him, in the care of his father's acres.
His position at home was not happy ; his brother's small
children were of more importance in the household than
himself, and when Cavour once administered a well-
merited correction to the much-spoilt eldest born, the
Marquis Gustave threw a chair at his head. Between
I HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 17
the brothers in after life there prevailed remarkable and
unbroken harmony, but it is easy to see that when first
grown to manhood Gustave presumed rather selfishly on
his role of heir, while Camille took too seriously the
supposed discovery that he was " necessary to no one !"
Beyond all this, there was the undeclared clash of the
new with the old, the feeling of having moved apart,
which produces a moral vacuum until, by and by, it is
realised that the value of the first affections and ties
depends precisely on their resting on no basis of opinion.
Cavour was overwhelmed by a sense of isolation ; if he
decided "like Hamlet" (so he writes in his diary) to
abstain from suicide, he believed that he wished himself
heartily out of the world. To his family he seemed an
abnormal and unnatural young man. A conversation is
on record which took place between the two childless
aunts who lived with the Cavours. The date was just
before Cavour's departure on a first visit to Paris.
" Did you remark," said Mme. Victoire, " how indifferent
Camille seemed when I spoke to him of the Paris
theatres 1 I really do not know what will interest him
on his travels ; the poor boy is entirely absorbed in
revolutions," " It is quite true," replied Mme. Henriette ;
"Camille has no curiosity about things, he cares for
nothing but politics." And the two ladies went on to
draw melancholy prognostics from their ne])hew's study
of political economy, " an erroneous and absolutely
useless science."
A charming countess who had made a favourite of
Cavour in his boyhood tried to extract a promise from
him that he would never again mix himself up in
p(jlitics ; he rcftised to give it; soonei- or later, he writes
c
18 CAVOUR CHAP.
ill his (li;iry, slie woiild have blushed foi- him hael he
consented. But, he adds bitterly, what was the good of
demanding such a promise from one for whom politically
everything was ended 1 " Ah ! if I were an Englishman,
by this time I should be something and my name would
not be wholly unknown ! " Here, again, was a source
of depression. At the Military Academy he had formed
one almost romantic comradeship with a delicate and
reserved youth, some years older than himself. Baron
Severino Cassio, to whom he first confided his determina-
tion to Italianise himself : to study the language, history,
laws, ciistoms of the whole country with a view to pre-
paring for the future. Cassio presciently marked out
for his friend the part of architect, not of destroyer, in
that future ; architects, he said, were what was most
wanted in public affairs, and Italy had always lacked
them. There is no reason to think that Cassio's sym-
pathy had chilled, but Cavour, in his morbid state,
thought that it was so ; he imagined that what had
drawn Cassio to him " was not I, but my powerful in-
tellectual organisation " ; and with undeserved mistrust
he did not turn to him for comfort.
He was at the nadir of his dejection when he received
a letter in a well-known handwriting, that of a woman
who had strongly attracted him four years before by
her beauty, grace, and elevation of mind. Separation
cut short the incipient love-aflPiiir, and Cavour never
thought of renewing it. With the woman it was other-
wise ; from her first meeting with the youth of twenty
to the day of her death, absent or present, he was the
object of an idolatry in which all her faculties united :
her being was penetrated by a self-sustaining passion
I HEREDITY AND ENVIRONMENT 19
wliich could not cease till it had consumed her. De
Stendhal is the only novelist who could have drawn
such a character. She was of noble birth, and from an
early age had been eminently unhappy. Cavour, in his
private papers, called her "Llnconnue," and so she will
be remembered. Her own life-story, and whether she
was free to give her heart where she would, the world
does not and need not know ; on the last point it is
enough to say that Cavour's father and mother were
aware of his relations with her and saw in them nothing
reprehensible.
On a page meant for no eyes ])ut his own, Cavour
describes the excitement into which he was thrown by
the brief letter which announced that the Unknown
had arrived at Turin and that she wished to see him.
He hastened back to town and sought her at her hotel,
and then at the opera where she had gone. After look-
ing all round the house, he recognised her in a box —
the sixth to the left on the first row — dressed in deep
mourning and showing on her face such evident marks
of suffering that he was at once filled with remorse " and
intoxicated by a love so pure, so constant, and so disin-
terested." Never would he forsake this divine woman
again !
For a moment he thought of flight to distant shores,
but he .soon decided that " imperative duties rc<|uired
that she should Temain where she was." Their iritci-
coursc chiefly consisted of letters ; his do not seem to
exist, hers were found after his death carefully preserved
and numliered. In these letters she laid bare her inner-
most soul ; she was ardently patriotic, steeped in the
ideas rjf Muzzini, and far more Italian than PiednKjntcse,
20 CAVOUR CHAP. I
though she wrote in French. She knew English, and
Cavour advised her to read Shakespeare. Kemarkably
gifted, she had the deep humihty of many of the best
Italian women ; " What have I done, Camille," she
asks, " to meet a soul like yours ! ... To have known
you for an instant fills a long existence ; how can you
love me, weak as I am 1 " She had an astonishing
instinct of his future greatness : " Full of force, life,
talent, called, perhaps to make a brilliant career, to
contribute to the general good," such expressions as these
occur frequently in her letters. The romance ended as
it could not help ending. The "eternal vows" were
kept for a year and a few months ; then on Cavour's
side a love which, though he did not guess it, had only
been a reflection, faded into compassionate interest.
The Inconnue uttered no reproaches ; after a few unhappy
years she died, leaving a last letter to her inconstant
lover. "The woman who loved you is dead ... no
one ever loved you as she did, no one ! For, Camille,
you never fathomed the extent of her love." With a
broken-hearted pride she declared that " in the domain
of death she surpassed all rivals." It remained true ; if
Cavour was not, strictly speaking, more faithful to the
Inconnue's memory than he had been to her while she
lived, yet this was the only real love-passage in his life.
Fatal to her, it was fortunate to him. It found him in
despair and it left him self-reliant and matured. The
love of such a woman was a liberal education.
CHAPTER II
TRAVEL-YEARS
During the fifteen years which he devoted to agriculture,
Cavour made several long and important visits to France
and England. In this way he enlarged his experience,
while keeping aloof from the governing class in his own
country, connection with which could, in his opinion,
only bring loss of reputation and efFacement in the
better days that were to come. Cavour knew himself
to be ambitious, but he had the self-control never even
to contemplate the purchase of what then passed for
power by the sacrifice of his principles. " My principles,"
he once wrote, "are a part of myself." The best way
" to prepare for the honourable offices of the future " was
to keep his independence intact, and to study abroad the
working of the institutions which he wished to see intro-
duced at home. Through his French relations, he took his
place immediately in the best society of the capital of the
citizen king, under whose reign, sordid as it was in some
respects, Paris attained an intellectual brilliancy the like
of which was never equalled in the spectacular glare of the
second empire. It was the moment of a short-lived
renais-sance ; literature, art, science, seemed to be start-
22 CAVOUR CHAP.
ing on new voyages of discovery. New worlds were
opened up for conquest ; oriental studies for the first
time became i)opular, the great field of umvritten tradi-
tions surrendered its virgin soil. Above all, it was a
time of fermentation in moral ideas ; every one expected
the millennium, though there was a lack of agreement
as to what it would consist in. Every one, like Lamennais
in Bcranger's poem, was going "to save the world."
The Good, the True, the Beautiful, were about to dislodge
the Bad, the False, the Ugly. If all these high hopes
had some fruition in the region of thought, they had
none in the region of facts, but meanwhile they lent a
rare charm to Paris in the Thirties. Cavour speaks of
elasticity as the ruling quality of French society ; he
praises the admirable union of science and wit, depth
and amiability, substance and form, to be found in
certain Parisian salons and nowhere else. He was think-
ing especially of the salon of Mme. de Circourt, who be-
came his friend through life. For no one else had he
quite the same unchanging regard. Attracted as he
always was by the conquest of difficulties, he admired
the force of mind and will by which this Iliissian lady,
whom a terrible accident had made a hopeless invalid,
overcame disabilities that would have reduced most
people to a state of living death. In her, spirit an-
nihilated matter. She joined French vivacity to the
penetrating sensibility of the Sclavonic races, and she
was a keen reader of character. Cavour interested her
at once. Even in his exterior, the young Italian, with
blond hair and blue eyes, was then more attractive than
those who only knew^ the Cavour of later years could
easily believe ; while his gay and winning manners,
11 TRAVEL-YEARS , 23
combined with u fund of iuformation ou subjects not
usually popular with the young, could not but strike so
discerning a judge as the Countess de Circourt as indi-
cating not a common personality. She feared lest so
much talent and promise would be suffocated for ever
in the stifling air of a small despotism. Cavour himself
drew a miserable picture of his country : science and
intelligence were reputed " infernal things by those
who are obliging enough to govern us " ; a triumphant
bigotry trembled alike at railwa3's and Rosmini ; Cavour's
aunt, the Duchess de Clermont Tonnerre, only got per-
mission to receive the Journal des Debats after long
negotiations between the French minister at Turin and
the Sardinian government. No wonder if Mme. de
Circourt impulsively entreated the young man to shake
the dust of Piedmont off his feet and to seek a career in
France. In his answer to this proposition, he asks first
of all, what have his parents done that he should plunge
a knife into their hearts ? Sacred duties bound him to
them, and he would never quit them till they were
separated by the grave. This filial piety stands the
more to Cavour's credit, as his home life had not been
very happy. He went on to inquire, what real induce-
ment was there for him to abandon his native land 1
A literary reputation? Was he to run after a little
celebrity, a little glory, without ever reaching the real
goal of his ambition 1 What influence covdd he exercise
in favour of his unhappy brothers in a country where
egotism monopolised tlie high places 1 What was the
mass of foreigners doing which had Ijcen thrown into
Paris by choice or misfortune'? AVho among tliein was
useful to his fellow-men'! The political troubles which
24 , CAVOUR CHAP.
desolated Italy had obliged her noblest sons to fly far
from her, but in their exile their eminent faculties be-
came forceless and sterile. Only one Italian had made
a name in Paris, Pellegrino Rossi ; but this man, whose
capacities Cavour rated as extraordinary, reached the
summit of success open to him in France Avhen ho
obtained a professorship at the Sorbonne and a chair
in the Academy, whereas, in the country which he
repudiated, he might have one day guided his com-
patriots in the paths of the new civilisation — words
which read like an imperfect prophecy, since the un-
fortunate Rossi was to lose his life later in the attempt
to reform the papal government. Cavour repeats that
literature would be the only promising opening, and for
literature he feels no vocation ; he has a reasoning, not
an inventive head ; he does not possess a grain of
imagination ; in his whole life he had never been able
to construct even the smallest story to amuse a child ; at
best he would be a third-class literary man, and he says
in the matter of art he can only conceive one position :
the highest. Certainly he might turn to science ; to
become a great mathematician, chemist, physicist, was a
way of seeking glory as good as another ; only he con-
fessed that it had few attractions " for the Italian with
the rosy complexion and the smile of a child." Ethical
science interested him more, but this was to be pursued
in retirement, not in great cities. "No, no," he writes,
" it is not in flying from one's fatherland because it is
unhappy that one can attain a glorious end." But if
he were mistaken, if a splendid future awaited him on
foreign soil, still his resolution would be the same.
Evil be to him who denies his fellow-countrvmen as
II TRAVEL-YEARS 25
unworthy of him. "Happy or unhappy, my country
shall have all my life ; I will never be unfaithful to
her even were I sure of finding elsewhere a brilliant
destiny."
While Cavour was in Paris, Tocqueville's Democracy
in America was published, and immediately gave its
author European fame. It did not probably exercise
much influence over Cavour in the formation of opinions,
but he found his own confirmed in it both as to the
tendency of modern societies towards democracy for
better or worse, and also as to the independence of the
Church from State control, in which, from the time that
he began to think at all on such matters, he had thought
to see the solution of all difficulties of a politico-religious
sort. Cavour changed his practice, but rarely his mind ;
most of the conclusions of the statesman had been
reached at twenty-five. It was not easy for him to take
those who fundamentally differed from him entirely
seriously. Once, when he was the guest of the Princess
Belgiojoso, Musset's irresponsive idol and Heine's good
angel, the fair hostess bestowed on him such a republican
lecture that he wrote, " They will not catch me there
again " ; but he went. At the Duchess d'Abrant^s'
receptions he met " the relics of all the governments."
He only spoke on one occasion to Guizot. The minister
seems to have received him coldly. He remarked that
with these great people you must ])e a person of import-
ance to make any way ; an obscure citizen of Piedmont,
unknown beyond the commune c)f which he was syndic,
could have no chance. Witli Thiers he got on much
better; priini])les apart, their temperaments were not
inliai'iminious. Of tin; litciuiy men C'avoui' j)ix-fci'red
26 CAVOUR CHAP.
Siiinto Beuve; in Cousin he cared less for the philo-
sopher than for the friend of Santorre di Santa Rosa,
the exiled patriot of 1821. Cousin introduced him to
several fervid Italian liberals, among others Berchet, the
poet. He was invited by Alessandro Bixio to meet the
author of Monte Crisfo. Bixio was one day to be
intimately mixed up in Franco-Italian politics, in which
he acted as intermediary between Cavour and Prince
Napoleon. Royer Collai'd, Jules Simon, Michelet,
Ozanum, Quinet, and the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz
were then giving lectures, which Cavour found time to
attend. The great Rachel filled the stage. Cavour,
who in his later years never went to a theatre except
when he wanted to go to sleep, was a warm admirer of
the incomparable actress, who satisfied his requirement
of the absolutely first class in art. He was drawn to
the highest genius as much as he was rei)ellcd by
mediocrity. He blamed Rachel, however, for the choice
of one particularly repulsive rdle, and suspected that she
chose it because the dress suited her to perfection.
It was always known that Cavour staked considerable
sums at cards, but that he had at one time a real
passion for gambling was hardly supposed till the self-
accusations of his journal were laid bare. Though there
was little in him of the Calvinism of his maternal
ancestors, he judged himself on this point with the
severity of an austere moralist. In the world of pleasure
in which he moved such ofi'ences were considered venial,
but he looked upon them with the disgust of a man who
reckons personal freedom beyond all earthly goods, and
who sees himself in danger of becoming a slave. " Tlie
humiliating and degrading emotions of play " threaten,
n TRAVEL-YEARS 27
he says, to undermine his intellectual and moral faculties;
his " miserable weakness " degrades him in his own
eyes ; conscience, reason, self-respect, interest, call upon
him to fight against it and destroy it. From high play
at cards to gambling on the Bourse there is but a step.
Cavour embarked in a speculation the success of which
depended on the outbreak of war in the East, which he
believed to be imminent. No war occurred, and the
loss of a few hundred pounds obliged him to apply to
his father for supplies. The Marquis sent the monej^
and wrote good-naturedl)'^ that the mishap might teach
Camille to moderate his belief in his own infallibility.
He thought himself the only young man in the world in
whom there was a ready-made minister, banker, manu-
facturer, and speculator ; and if he did not take care the
idea that he could never be wrong might prevent him
from turning to account the superior gifts with which
he was undoubtedly endowed. But the kindliness of
the reproof did not lessen his own sense of shame and
mortification. The lesson was useful ; he forsook the
Bourse, and at cards he conquered the passion without
giving up the game. Eightly or wrongly it was said
that many years after he played high stakes at whist
with political men to gain an insight into their charac-
ters. In any case there is nothing to show that his
fondness for play ever again led him into excesses
which his judgment condemned. He had recovered his
freedom.
Cavour invariably ended his visits to Paris by
crossing the Channel, and, if in the French capital he
gained greater knowledge of men, it was in England
that he lii.st grew funiiliar with the public life which lio
28 CAVOUR CHAP.
considered a pattern for the world. He did not find
the delightful social intercourse to be enjoyed in Paris ;
in fact, not one of the persons to whom he brought
letters of introduction took the least notice of him.
English society is quicker to run after celebrities than
to discern them in embryo. But the two or three
Englishmen whom he already knew were active in his
behalf. William Brokedon, his old friend the painter,
conducted him to the dinner of the Royal Geographical
Society, where a curious thing happened. Cavour's first
essay in public speaking was before an English assembly.
After several toasts had been duly honoured, the Secretary
of the Society, to his unbounded astonishment, proposed
his health. Taken unawares, he expressed his thanks
in a few words, which were well received, and on sitting
down he said to his neighbour, the Earl of Eipon, "C'est
mon maiden speech ! " Lord Ripon remarked, " with a
significant smile," that he hoped it would be the opening
of a long career. He dined with John Murray, and
went to see Faraday, who in his working clothes made
him think of a philosopher of the sixteenth century.
At a party given by Babbage, the mathematician, he
met Hallam, Tocqueville, Ada B\rou, and the three
beautiful daughters of Sheridan. With Nassau Senior
he began a long friendship, and Edward Romilly, the
librarian of Trinity College, Cambridge, whom he had
met at Geneva, introduced him to a rich landed proprietor
of tlie name of Davenport, who was to prove the most
useful of all his English acquaintances, as he liberally
placed his house in Cheshire at Cavour's disposal to
give him an opportimity of studying English agriculture.
The chance was not thrown away. Cavour learnt every-
n TRAVEL-YEARS 29
thing about the management of a well-ordered English
estate down to the minutest particulars. He admired
much, especially the system of subsoil drainage, then a
novelty to foreigners, but he was not carried away by
the beautiful appearance of the English country so far
as to think that the English farmer was in all respects
ahead of the North Italian. He compared the up-and-
down English meadow left to itself with the highly-
manured pasture lands of Piedmont, level as billiard-
boards, which yield their three crops of hay a year. One
point Cavour was never tired of impressing on students
of agriculture ; it was this, and it exactly shows his
habit of mind : never consider results without knowing
what they cost. Correct the selling price by the cost
of production. He had no patience with model farms ;
they might be magnificent, but they were not agriculture.
In one of his earliest writings he held them up to
ridicule.
In England he studied the then new Poor Laws ;
even before he started on his first travels, he decided to
inquire into the position of the poorest classes in the
countries he visited. He recognised that the acknow-
ledgment of the prescriptive right of every member of
the community to food and shelter was the first step to
vast changes in social legislation. Cavour's natural
inclinations were more those of a social and economic
reformer than of the political innovator. Gaswork.f,
factories, [lospitals, and prisons were in turn inspected.
Cavour went thoroughly into the questions of prison
labour and diet. He did not object to the treadmill in
itself, but thought unfi'uitful labour demoralising. Use-
ful Wijik with a small gain rcfoiTiiciJ \\io convict. 'I'Ik;
30 CAVOTJR CHAP.
prison fare seemed to him ratlicr too good. He was
impressed by the bread " as good as the ))est that is
consumed in the clubs." Probaljly, next to the police-
man, what impresses the thinking foreigner mo.st in the
British Isles is the Englishman's loaf of white ]»read. It
might appear that in his close study of utilitarian Eng-
land, Cavour missed the greater England of imagination
and adventure, of genius and energy. It is true that he
did homage at the shrine of Shakespeare by a visit to
Stratford-on-Avon, and that he declared that there was no
sight in the world equal to the Life Guards on their
superb black horses. But his real appreciation of the
greatness of England is not to be looked for in the
jottings of the tourist ; it stands forth conspicuously in
his few but singularly weighty early political writings.
The English politician whom he most admired was Pitt.
The preference was striking in a young man who was
considered a dangerous liberal in his own country. It
showed amongst other things an adoption of an English
standpoint in appraising English policy which is rare in
a foreigner. " In attacking France," Cavour wrote,
" Pitt preserved social order in England, and kept civilisa-
tion in the paths of that regular and gradual progress
which it has followed ever since." He said of him :
" He loved power not as an end but as a means " —
words which long after he applied to himself : " You
know that I care nothing for power as power ; I care
for it only as a means to compass the good of my
country."
Cavour had the cast of mind which admires in others
its own qualities. As he revered Pitt's "vast and
puissant intelligence," so he sympathised with Peel's
11 TRAVEL-YEARS 31
logic and courage. Peel was his favourite among his
contemporaries ; he called him " the statesman who
more than any other had the instinct of the necessity of
the moment." He foretold Peel's abolition of the Corn
Laws at a time when no one else anticipated it. AMien
he himself was charged by his old friends in the Turin
Chamber with desertion and treason, he reminded them
that the same charges had been made against Peel, but
that he was largely compensated by the knowledge that
he had saved England from socialist commotions, which
in that country were in reality even more threatening
in their scope and extent than in the rest of agitated
Europe. He used to say that if Pitt had lived in times
of peace he would have been a reformer after the fashion
of Peel and Canning, adding his own venturesomeness
to the largeness of views of the one and the capable
sound sense of the other.
These scattered judgments are drawn from the essays
written by Cavour in the years 1843-46. They appeared
in Swiss or French reviews at a period when it was
easier to make a reputation by a magazine article than
it is now. Cavour's monographs attracted attention by
the writer's display of independent thought and first-
hand information. The most interesting now is that
on "the condition and future of Ireland," which has
been often referred to in the British Parliament, Most
of the suggestions made in it have been long since
carried into effect, but it is not these that make the
essay still worth reading : it is Cavour's mode of
approaching the question. He writes as what has been
lately called an " Imiierialist," though it was fonuerly
thought enough to say " Kngli.shman." It is doubtful if
32 CAVOUR CHAP.
.any foreign publicist ever wrote in the same spirit on the
relations of England and Ireland either before or since.
It is only necessary to be familiar with the continental
press, from Legitimist to Socialist, to know, what he
knew himself, thatCavour was almost in a minority of one.
He was not acquainted with a single English politician ;
no one influenced him ; he judged the Irish question
from the study of history past and present, and having
formed an unpopular opinion, he was prepared to stand
by it. He never held that politics are a game of chance ;
he believed that they are subject to fixed laws of cause
and effect, and he worked out political problems by
seeking and applying these laws to the case in point
without passion or prejudice. Having satisfied himself
that the union of Ireland and England was for the good
of both, he was not disposed to quarrel with the means
by which it was accomplished. When Pitt failed to
carry the Bill for the Union through the Irish House of
Commons, he resorted to the expedient, " which had
never failed in the Dublin Parliament," of corruption on
a large scale. He bought rotten boroughs ; he was pro-
digal of places, honours, pensions, and at the end of a
year he obtained a majority of 168 votes against 73.
Was he wrong 1 Cavour thought not, though he found
no words strong enough to condemn the men who sold
their conscience for place or gold. Public opinion, he
said, has always sanctioned in governments the use of a
different morality from that binding on individuals. In
all ages an extreme indulgence has been shown towards
immoral acts which brought about great political results.
He conceded, for the sake of argument, that such in-
dulgence might be a fatal error ; but he insisted that if
n TRA\TEL-YEARS 33
Pitt's character was to be blackened because he used
parliamentary corruption, the same censure ought in
justice to be extended to the greatest monarchs of past
times, Louis XIV., Joseph II., Frederic the Great, who,
to serve their own ends, outraged the immovable prin-
ciples of humanity and morality in a far graver manner
than could be laid to the charge of the illustrious states-
man who consolidated the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland.
On Cavour's own grounds, those of expediency, it
might be objected that a bargain which on one side
you allow to be discreditable leaves the legacy of an
indestructible desire on that side to wipe out the dis-
credit by tearing it up. Though Cavour became great
by his connection with a movement which, before all
things, was swayed by sentiment, he never entirely
recognised the part that sentiment plays in politics. He
blamed O'Connell for demanding repeal, which, even if
possible to obtain, would do as much harm to Ireland as
to England, instead of supporting measures that would
remove all cause for Irish discontent. Had he lived
long enough he would have seen all those measures
passed, but he would not have .seen the end to Irish
discontent. This might have surprised him, but ncft so
much as to see a great English party advocating dis-
union, which, he declared, could be logically supported
only "by those who thought it desirable that there
should be a revolution."
Cavour noticed and deplored the unpopularity of
England on the Continent. Extreme parties, opposed
in everything else, were agreed in a violent hatred of
that country. The moderate party liked it in theory,
D
34 CAVOUR CHAP.
but in reality they had no natural sympathy with it.
Only a few individuals who rose superior to the passions
of the multitude felt the esteem due to a nation which
had powerfully contributed to develop the moral and
material resources of the world, and whose mission was
far from ended. The masses were almost everywhere
hostile to it. It was a mistake to suppose that this was
the feeling of France alone ; it might be expressed more
loudly there, but it was, in fact, universal. The enemies
of progress and the partisans of political subversion
looked on England as their worst adversary : the former
charged her with being the hotbed of revolutionary
propagandism ; the latter, perhaps with more reason,
considered the English aristocracy as the corner-stone of
the social edifice of Europe. England ought to be
popular with the friends of gradual reform and regular
progress, but a host of prejudices, recollections, passions,
produced the contrary effect. With but little alteration
the lines here condensed might have been written
to-day.
A book on railways by Count Petitti had been pro-
hibited in Piedmont. That railways were connected
with the Powers of Darkness was then a general opinion,
shared in particular by Pope Gregory. Cavour reviewed
the book in the Bevue noxiveMe, which was also prohibited,
but sundry copies of it were smuggled into Italy, and
one even reached the king. While Petitti had avoided
all political allusions, Cavour's article abounds in them :
railways would promote the moral union of Italy, which
must precede the conquest of national independence.
Municipal jealousies, intellectual backwardness, would
disappear, and, when that happened, nothing could
n TRAVEL-YEARS 35
prevent the accomplishment of the object which was the
passionate desire of all — emancipation. A very small
number of ideas forms the intellectual hinge of man in
the aggregate ; of these patriotism is only second in
importance to religion. Any conception of national
dignity in the masses was impossible without the pride
of nationality. Every private interest, every political
dissension, should be laid aside that Italian independence
might become a fact. Cavour always spoke of Italy —
not of Piedmont, not of Lombardy and Venetia, Eome,
still of all cities the richest in precious memories and
splendid hopes, would be the centre of an iron network
uniting the whole peninsula. Some well-intentioned
patriots objected to the increase of railway communica-
tion with Austria from the fear that it would strengthen
her military and political hold over her Italian provinces.
Cavour answered that the great events at hand could
not be delayed by the shortening of the number of hours
between Vienna and Milan. On the other hand, when
the relations arising out of conquest were replaced by
those of friendship and equity, rapid communication
would promote the moral and intellectual intercourse,
" which, more than any one, we desire," between grave
and profound Germany and intelligent Italy. In these
pages Cavour foreshadowed the boring of the Alps and
the German alliance, two facts which then seemed
equally improl>able.
The man was made ; he waited for his opportunity.
What if it never camel Can we conceive Cavour's
immense energy limited to a rice-field 1 Are there really
men whom their lot ftjrbids—
36 CAVOUR CHAP. II
Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land.
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes ?
The prophet may cry aloud in the desert, the scientific
discoverer may guess at truths which his age rejects, but
the total waste of such a force as the mind of Cavour
seems less easy to imagine than that his appearance was
a sign that the times were ripe for him.
CHAPTER III
THE JOURNALIST
In 1846, Cavour was only known at home as the most
unpopular man in Piedmont. Most people can scarcely
be said to be unpopular before they have occupied any
public position, but this, strangely enough, was the case
with Cavour. He was simply a private person, but he
was hated by all parties. His writings, which had made
their mark abroad, were little known in Italy ; the
reviews in which they api)eared could only be obtained
by stealth. No one rightly knew what his views were,
but every one disliked him. Solaro de la Margherita,
the retrograde prime minister, was detested by the
liberals, but he had a strong following among the old
Savoyard nobility ; Lorenzo Valerio, the radical manu-
facturer, was harassed hy those in power, but he was
adored by the people ; Cavour was in worse odour with
both parties than these two men were with either.
Under th<! porticoes of Turin petty private talk took
the place of anything like public discussion. " By good
fortune," as the prime minister put it, "the press was
not free in Piedmont ; " quite the reverse. Gossip,
especially spiteful gossip, reigned supreme. Gossip in
38 CAVOUR CHAP.
both spheres of society was all against Cavoiir. What
might be called the Court party (though Avhcther the
king belonged to it or it to the king was not clear),
Avith the tenacious memory of small coteries, still recol-
lected Cavour as the self-Avilled student of the Military
Academy. Charles Albert himself made an occasional
polite inquiry of the Marquis as to his son's travels and
his visits to prisons and hospitals, but, unless report
erred, he was speaking of him to others as the most
dangerous man in his kingdom. The degree to which
Cavour was hated by the conservatives is shown by one
small fact : he was treasurer of an Infant Asylum, but it
was thought necessary privately to ask him to retire for
the good of the charity, his connection with which set
all the higher society against it. The case with the
radicals was no better. He belonged to an agricultural
association in which Valerio was a leading spirit ; one
day he asked leave to speak, iipon which almost all the
members present left the building. On this side, no
doubt part of the antipathy arose from the popular
feeling against Cavour's father, who still occupied the
invidious and ill-defined office of Vicario. No particular
ferocity was laid at his door, but he was sujiposed to
serve up all the private affairs of the good Turinese to
the king, and if any one got into trouble he was thought
to be the cause. When the liberals triumphed, the first
thing they did was to oblige him to resign. Then
Cavour's elder brother, though not retrograde on econo-
mic subjects, was a conservative of the old school in
politics. In later days Gustavo always voted against
Camillo. In politics the brothers were in admirable
agreement to differ; in fact, after the first trilling jars,
in THE JOURNALIST 39
they dwelt to the end in unruffled harmony in the
family palace, Via dell' Arcivescovado. At the time
when Gustavo was much better knoAvn at Turin than
Camillo the suspicious radical could not persuade him-
self that one brother was not as much of an aristocrat as
the other. When ]\Ir. Cobden was cordially received
by both Marquis and Count, a would-be wit exclaimed,
"There goes Free-trade in the charge of Monopoly, "which
was understood to refer to the false accusation that the
Cavours had stored up a quantity of grain in that year
of scarcity, 1847, in order to sell it dear, the truth being
simply that the improved cultivation introduced at
Leri had secured fair crops in a bad season.
The festivities in honour of the English Free-trader
were promoted all over Italy by Italians who were
soon to become famous. The fact that Cobden was an
Englishman, even more than the outwardly harmless
object of his campaign, deterred the different governments
from interfering with him. Cavour proposed the health
of the guest of the evening at the Cobden banquet at
Turin, but almost immediately after, he retired to Leri, as
he did not wish it to appear that he meant to embark on
public life while the existing political dead-lock lasted.
There was only room for conspirators or for those who
extended toleration to the rigime in force. It is doubt-
ful if anything would have driven Cavour to conspiracy
against his own king, and he would have considered it a
personal disgrace to be mixed up witli the men then in
power. He thought, therefore, that he could best serve
his country by keeping himself in reserve. He realised
the futility of small concessions, and the childishness of
agitating to obtain them. He was the only strong
40 CAVOUR CHAr.
royalist who UTidcistood how far reform must go when
it once began — farther towards democrac}'^ than his own
sj'mpathies would have carried him. If you want to
use a mill-stream you must let it flow.
The situation in Piedmont was briefly this : Charles
Albert's heart Avas with the groAving cry for independ-
ence, but he wished for independence without liberty.
This was the " secret of the king " which has been
sought for in all kinds of recondite suppositions : this
was the key to his apparently vacillating and inconsistent
character. Yet he revealed it himself in some words
spoken to Roberto d' Azeglio, the elder brother of
Massimo. " Marquis d' Azeglio," he said, " I desire as
much as you do the enfranchisement of Italy, and it is
for that reason, remember well, that I Avill never give a
constitution to my people." While his government was
a priestly despotism, he employed his leisure in trans-
lating the sublime appeals to national sentiment in the
history of the JMaccabees, of which, by a curious coin-
cidence, Mazzini once said that it seemed written for
Italians. Charles Albert made the mistake of forgetting
the age in which he lived. His ancestors fought the
stranger without troubling themselves about representa-
tive government — why should not he ? But his ancestors
represented in their own persons the nerve and sinew of the
State, its most adventurous spirit, its strongest manhood,
whereas Charles Albert represented only the jjarty of
reaction which was with him in his absolutism but not
in his patriotism. He was accused of having changed
sides, but, even allowing his complicity in the movement
of 1821 to have been greater than he admitted, it is
plain that the one thing which drew him into that move-
in THE JOURNALIST 41
ment was its championship of Italian independence.
Unlike the Neapolitan revolutionists who disclaimed
adventures for the freeing of Italy, at least till they had
made sure of their own freedom, the liberals of Piedmont
rose with the avowed purpose of rushing into an im-
mediate war with Austria. A madder scheme was
never devised, but the madness of one day is often
the wisdom of the next. In politics really disinterested
acts bear fruit, whatever be their consequences to
individuals.
The question which agitated all minds in 1847 was
whether or not Charles Albert could be gained to the
liberal cause. Many despaired, for by many even his
Italian ambition was denied. Cavour had no favourable
opinion of the king, but it was one of his theories that
erroneous ideas always yield in the end to facts. He
believed that Charles Albert's support could be secured
if he were fully persuaded that the interests of his
dynasty were not imperilled. He was not afraid, as
others were, that even after the first surrender the
wavering mind of the king would make retrogression
probable ; he understood that, if reforms were more
difficult to obtain in Piedmont than elsewhere, they
would be more durable when obtained. At last a
concession of real value was wrung from the king : the
censure was revoked. Cavour saw that the press, which
till then had been a cipher, would instantly become
of vast importance. He left his retirement to found a
newspaper, to which he gave the name by which the
Italian movement will be known in history — II liisnr-
gimento. He was not a born journalist, })Mt he sot him-
self with his usual determination to Icani tho art. In
42 CAVOUR CHAP.
after times he said that the experience gained in a news-
paper office was almost as profitable to him as the know-
ledge of mathematics. Count Cesare Balbo was asked
by Cavour to write the prospectus of the new journal,
in which its aims were described as Independence, union
between the princes and people, and reforms. Cavour's
name appeared as acting and responsible editor.
Balbo's work, Le Speranze d' Italia, had lately created
an impression, only second to that made by the Prima to
of Gioberti. Practical men like Cavour preferred the
simple programme which Balbo put forward — the libera-
tion of Italy from foreign yoke before all things — to
Gioberti's mj^stical outpourings, much as they pleased
the general. Gioberti, once a follower of Mazzini, and
afterwards a priest, imagined a United Italy, with the
Pope at its head, which, to unthinking souls, seemed to
be on the road to miraculous realisation when the amiable
and popular Cardinal Mastai Feretti was invested with
the tiara. Cavour never had any hope in the Papacy
as a political institution.
The Genoese, impatient of the extreme slowness with
which reforms were meted out, proposed to send a
deputation with a petition for a civic guard, and the
expulsion of the Jesuits, to whom the delay was attri-
buted, and who were regarded as the worst enemies
of the liberal Pope. The principal editors, with other
influential citizens of Turin, met at the Hotel d'Europe
to consider how the deputation should be received, and
if their demands were to be supported. The list of the
journalists present comprises the best names in the
country ; it would be difficult to find more distinguished
or disinterested pressmen than those who were then
Ill THE JOURNALIST 43
writing for the Piedmontese newspapers. Valerio was
there to represent his new joixrnal, Concordia, in which he
carried on war to the knife with Cavour. His high
personal character, as well as his talents, made him no
inconsiderable opponent. It was at this meeting that
Cavour first entirely revealed himself. He showed that
faith in the prudence of daring which was tlie keynote to
his great strokes of policy. The demands of the Genoese,
he said, were not too large, but too small. They hit
\vide of the mark, and the second of them was idle, be-
cause the king, while he remained an absolute prince, was
certain not to consent to it. The government was now
neither one thing nor the other ; it had lost the authority
of an autocracy, and had not gained that of a rbgime
based on the popular will. The situation was intolerable
and dangerous ; what was wanted was not this or that
reform, but a constitution.
Constitutions seem tame to us now, but to sjjcak of a
constitution at Turin on January 18, 1848, was almost as
audacious as it would be to speak of it at St. Peters-
burg at the present time. Europe stood at the brink
of a precipice, but knew it not. The news had only
just spread of the first symptom of revolution — the rising
in Sicily. Cavour's speech was a moral bomb-shell.
Most politicians begin by asking for more or less than
the measure which finally contents them ; those who cried
for a republic have been known to put up with a limited
monarchy ; those who preached the most moderate re-
forms, at a later stage have danced round trees of lilierty.
Cavour asked at once for what he wanted and all that
he wanted as far as the internal organisation of the State
wa-s concerned. From fir.st to la.st he believed that a
44 CAVOUR CHAP.
constitutional monarchy was the only form of govern-
ment which, in a country like Italy, could combine freedom
with order. Under no narrower system would he accept
office, and when in office nothing could make him untrue
to his constitutional faith ; " no state of siege " was the
axiom of his political life.
How his proposal was received shows the difficulties
with which he had to contend from the outset. The more
moderate members of the meeting thought that he had
taken leave of his senses. This was natural. Less
natural was the tooth and nail opposition of Valerio,
who declared that a constitution much exceeded the
desires of the people, and that a petition for it woidd
only frighten the king. He carried all the radicals with
him except Brofferio, an honest patriot and the writer
of charming poems in the Piedmontese dialect, which
gave him a great popularity. Brofferio was an ultra-
democrat, but he was no party man, and he had the
courage to walk over to the unpopular editor of the
Pdsorgimento with the remark, " I shall always be with
those who ask the most." Valerio made no secret among
his private friends of the real reasons of his conduct.
What was the good of wasting efforts on some sort of
English constitution, perhaps with a House of Lords
and other such abominations '? Was it likely that any-
thing worth having would be excogitated by Milord
Camillo, the greatest reactionary in the kingdom, the
sworn foe of revolution, " un Anglomane pur sang?"
A constitution could only check the revolution and
stifle the legitimate aspirations of the people. The
nickname of "Milord Camillo" or "Milord Bisorgi-
mento " was in every one's mouth when speaking of Cavour.
Ill THE JOURNALIST 46
A short time sufficed to show not only the expediency
but the necessity of granting a constitution, and that at
once. Events never moved so fast as in the first two
months of 1848. The throne of Louis Philippe was
tottering, and, with the exception of the Duke of Modena,
the princelings of Italy snatched the plank of safety of
a statute with the alacrity of drowning men. In this
crisis Charles Albert thought of abdication. Besides
the known causes of his hesitancy, there was one then
unknown : the formal engagement, invented by Metter-
nich and forced upon him by his uncle Charles Felix, to
govern the country as he found it governed. He called
the members of the royal family together and informed
them that if there must be a constitution there must,
but the decree which bestowed it would be signed by
his son. The queen and the Duchess of Savoy, who
were both extremely afraid of him, sat in silence ; the
handsome Duke of Genoa tried to prove that constitu-
tions were not such dreadful things ; Victor Emmanuel
opposed his intention of abdicating in resolute terms.
Then he summoned a high ecclesiastic, who succeeded in
convincing him that it would be a greater sin to abandon
his people in their need than to break a promise he
could no longer maintain. After mortifying the flesh
with fasts and vigils, he yielded, and the famous decree
bore the signature " C. Alberto " after all, — not written
indeed in the king's usually beautiful character, but
betraying rather a trembling hand, which never-
theless registered a great because a permanent fact.
This was not the prelude to pcijury and expulsion.
Around the Sardinian statute were united the
scattered limbs of Italy, and after fifty years Charles
46 CAVOUR CHAP.
Albert's grandson commemorated its promulgation at
the Capitol.
Not a man in the crowd at Turin dared to anticipate
such a result : yet their joy was frantic. Fifty thousand
people, arranged in guilds, defiled before the king, who
sat like a statue on his bay horse, upright and impassible.
Cavour walked in the company of journalists, and all
those Avho had opposed him a few weeks before were there
too, with Valerio at their head. They sang their strophe
of Mameli's hymn, "Fratelli d' Italia," very badly. Cavour
whispered to his neighbour, "We are so many dogs ! "
That neighbour, a Milanese named Giuseppe Torelli,
has left an interesting description of Cavour's appear-
ance as it was then. He was fresh-coloured, and his
blue eyes had not yet lost their brightness, but they
were so changeful in expression that it was difficult to
fix their distinctive quality. Though rather stout he
was not ungainly, as he tended to become later. He
stooped a little, and two narrow lines were visible on
either side of a mouth, cold and uneffusive ; but these
lines, by their trembling or contraction, showed the
l)lay of inward emotion which the rest of the face con-
cealed. In after days people used to watch them in
order to guess his state of mind. It was his large and
solid forehead that chiefly gave the idea of power which
every one who saw him carried away, despite of the
want of dignity in his person and of strongly-marked
features in his face. His manners were simple, but
distinguished by an unmistakably aristocratic ease and
courtesy. He spoke generally low and without emphasis,
and always appeared to pay great attention to what was
said to him, even by the least important person.
in THE JOURNALIST 47
Nothing, on the face of it, could seem more extraordi-
nary than the exchision of Cavour from office in the
momentous year of 1848. But he had no popular party
at his back whose cry could overrule the disinclination
which the king certainly felt towards making him his
Minister. Moreover, his abilities, though now generally
recognised, contributed to keeping him in the back-
ground : it was felt instinctively that if he got the reins
there would be only one driver. He was known to be
indifterent to criticism, and while he listened patiently
to advice, he rarely took it. He had mortally offended
the conservatives by the liberalism of his means, and
the liberals by the conservatism of his ends. Count
Balbo, on assuming the office of the first Prime Minister
under the Statute, not only retired from the directing
council of the Risorgimento, but went out of his way to
disavow the policy supported in it by Cavour. " The
little rascal," he was heard to say, " will end by ruining
the splendid edifice raised by the wisdom and modera-
tion of so many estimable men ! " The splendid
edifice was on the verge of being nearly ruined, but
by timidity — which has lost a score of thrones, —
not by audacity. The new Cabinet entered upon their
duties on March 16. Two days later occurred an event
utterly unforeseen — the rising of Milan against the
Austrians. It took them unprepared. They had talked
so much about war that perhaps they thought it would
happen in the next century. When the "now or never "
.sounded, which does sound sooner or later in all huniun
affairs, they hesitated or suffered the king to hesitate,
which came to the same thing. That Charles Albert
stood for one instant in dout^t wlnii the hour was coiiio
48 CAVOUR CHAP.
desired by him all his life, as he had often stated, and
there is no reason to think untruly, is possibly the most
serious stain on his memory. There are moments when
to reflect is criminal : a man has no right to reflect when
his mother is in a burning house. The reflections which
held Charles Albert back were two. He was afraid that
the Milan revolution would breed a republic, and he
was afraid of England and of Russia. England, which
during the previous autumn had sent Lord Minto to
urge upon the Italian princes a line of policy rightly
described by Prince Metternich as inevitably leading to
an attack on Austria, now applied the whole force of her
diplomacy to stop the ball she had herself set running.
The spectacle of Lord Palmerston trying to save or serve
Austria, which he detested, in obedience to the atavistic
tendencies of the Foreign Office, is a lesson in history.
For English politicians of whatever party or private
sentiments, Austria was still what Lord Castlereagh
called her : " The great hinge on which the fate of
Europe must ultimately depend. " Sir Ealph Abercromby
assured the king that " the least act of aggression "
would place his throne in jeopardy. His throne was
already in jeopardy, but from the contrary reason.
Each minute that passed while the Milanese were
fighting their death struggle and he stood inactive
threatened to deprive him and his house of that power of
progress on which not only their fortune but their
existence depended.
The news from Milan reached Turin on March 1 9 ;
on the 23rd, the last of the Milan days, king and
ministry were still hesitating. On that day Cavour
printed in the Rhorg'imento the most impassioned piece
ra THE JOUKNALIST 49
of writing that ever came from his pen. The con-
servative, the reactionary, once more cried aloud that
audacity was prudence, temerity wisdom. The supreme
hour of the Savoy dynasty had struck, the hour of
strong resolves, on which nangs the fate of empires, the
destinies of peoples. Hesitation, doubt, delay, were no
more possible : they could only prove fatal. " 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 ! " It was said, he continued, that Eussia and
England were on the point of uniting against Italy. In
common times such an argument would be conclusive,
not now. When Milan was struggling for life, was
perhaps getting worsted, at all costs they were bound
to fly to the rescue. Duty, brotherhood, policy, com-
manded it Woe unto them if they crossed the frontier
to find that Milan had fallen.
Itussia, through her ambassador, intimated that she
would regard the crossing of the Ticino as a casus heUi.
The threat made less impression at Turin than the
warnings of Sir Ralph Abercromby ; it was the possi-
bility of English intervention, therefore, that Cavour
went on to examine. The Anglomane "Milord Pdsorgi-
mento" was le.s.s surprised at the current of English
official thought than were his radical critics, but Avould
any Engli.sh minister, he a.sked, enter on a European
war to prevent the liberation of Italy, which was an
object sacred in the eyes of the mass of tlu; Kn;4lish
people? He beh'eved it to be imp08sil)]e, but were it so,
K
50 CAVOUR CHAP.
so be it ! England would have against her a mighty-
coalition, not of princes, as in former days, but of peoples,
in the old world and in the new. Victory in such a
matricidal strife would be as fatal to the first-born of
liberty as defeat.
Thus Cavour was prepared to fight Ai;stria, Russia,
and England. The division of parties at that time was
in its essence the division of those who were willing to
accept a republican solution and those who were not.
It does not follow that all the liberals wished for a
republic, but they would all have taken office under it.
Of this there is little doubt. Cavour never would have
become a republican any more than an absolutist
minister. But he saw what the other conservatives
failed to see, that the dynasty of Savoy could only live
if it led.
On March 22, Charles Albert was still assuring the
Austrian Ambassador that his intentions were pacific.
Next day Cavour's article appeared, and in the evening
the king decided for instant war. Only two of the
ministers assented at once ; the others gave in after a
long discussion. War was declared on the 25th. Time
lost cannot be recalled ; the happy moment had been
let go by ; Piedmont went not to Lombardy engaged
in a dangerous struggle, but to Lombardy victorious.
Cavillers said that the king had come to eat the fruits
others had gathered. Confidence in the ultimate result
reached the point of madness, but with revolution
stalking through the streets of Vienna the Austrian
eagle seemed to have lost its talons. In May 1848, in
Austria itself, Lombardy was looked upon as completely
lost, and with it the Southern Tyrol as far as Meran, for
ra THE JOURNALIST 51
no one at that period thought of separating this Italian
district from Italy ; the most sanguine Austrians only
hoped to save Venetia. Eadetsky alone expected to
save all, because he knew what he could do, and he had
judged Sardinian generalship correctly. Charles Albert's
staff seemed to have but one idea — to reverse the tactics
which liad led the first Napoleon to victory on the same
ground.
The brightest gleam of success which shone on the
king of Sardinia's arms was at Goito, in the battle of
May 30. It was on that occasion that Cavour's nephew,
Augusto di Cavour, was killed. The enfant terrible grew
up to be a young man of singular promise, on whom
Cavour had fixed all his hopes for the future of his
name and house. His uncle's last letter of encourage-
ment to do his duty was found on Augusto's body. The
blow unnerved Cavour ; he was found lying prostrate in
an agony of speechless grief. Through his life he kept
the blood-stained uniform in which the young officer
received his death-wound in a glass case in his bedroom,
a piece of enduring sentiment which shows how unlike
Cavour was the coldly calculating egotist whose portrait
has passed for his.
The story of the years of revolution in Italy is a
story of great things and small, like most human records ;
but, when all is said, the great predominate, for no
blunders could efface the readiness for self-sacrifice dis-
played by the whole people. The experience of these
years was bitter, but possibly necessary. It destroyed
illu.sion.s. It showed, for instance, th.it in the nineteenth
century a free and independent Italy und(M- the hegemony
of the Pope belonged to political mythology. Heie was
52 OAVOUR OHAP.
a Pope who was, at heart, patriotic, but who drew back
at the crucial moment, precisely as Mazzini (almost
alone) had predicted. The first threat of a schism was
enough to make him wear dust and ashes for his
patriotism. The Bourbons of Naples were ascertained
to have learnt nothing and unlearnt nothing; perfidy
alone could be expected from them. It was proved that
the princes of the other states, Piedmont excepted, must
gravitate towards Austria even if they did not wish it.
All this was useful, if dearly bought, knowledge.
At the first general elections in Piedmont, Cavour
failed to obtain a seat. He told the electors in his
address that he had always desired Italia unita e libera,
and if "united" did not yet imply "under one king,"
the phrase was still significant. Two months later he
was elected in four divisions ; probably the death of his
nephew in the interim on the field of battle modified, for
the time, his unpopularity. He took his seat for the
first college of Turin. He did not make an immediate
impression ; his short stature, and still more the im-
perfect accent with which he spoke Italian, were not
in his favour. French was allowed in the Sardinian
Chamber, but Cavour never opened his lips in it in
Parliament. By degrees his speeches became marvels
of close reasoning, and they even soared, sometimes,
when he was deeply moved, into a kind of eloquence
superior to that of rhetoric, but the accent was never
such as w^ould satisfy a fastidious ear. The day came,
however, when people hung with too much anxiety on
the least of his utterances for any one to notice this
defect. Cavour sat on the Right, and from the first he
horrified his colleagues on the same benches by the
Ill THE JOURNALIST 53
enunciation of views which to them were rank heresies.
They existed in a state of perpetual uneasiness as to
what he might say or do next.
Cavour was not re-elected when Parliament was dis-
solved in January 1849; he was therefore not in the
Chamber during the debates which preceded and followed
the last desperate throw of Novara. A letter written
by him six days after the battle shows what he thought
of those events. The Conservative party, he says, which
represented the great majority in the country, had been
badly supported by it (an assertion as true now as then).
The king threw himself into the arms of demagogues
who thought that freedom and independence were to be
won by phrases and proclamations. The army had been
disheartened, the best oflBcers kept inactive ; twelve
months' sacrifices of men and money placed them in a
worse condition than before the Milan revolution. Self-
love might, he concluded, warp his judgment, but he
had the intimate conviction that, if he had held the reins
of power, he could have saved the country without any
effort of genius, and planted the Italian flag on the
Styrian Alps. But his friends joined with his foes to
keep him out of power, and he had passed his time in
deploring faults which it would have been very easy to
avoid.
Remembering what Cavour afterwards accomplished,
these are words which should not be set lightly aside.
Yet it is possible that the complete disaster into which
Charles Albert rushed at Novara was the only thing to
save the country and to lay the foundations of Italian
unity. The king was more eager for war than tlie most
unthinking democrat. Reviled by all parties, he sought
^* CAVOUR CHAP. Ill
the great conciliator, death. "The Italians will never
trust me," he exclaimed. " My son, Victor, will be king
of Italy, not I." AVhen the death he would have chosen
was denied him, he went away, a crownless exile. He
could do no more.
It was necessary, as Charles Albert had seen, that
the king who was to carry out the destinies of Italy
should be trusted. Victor Emmanuel came to the throne
with few advantages ; he was unpopular, his private
friends were said to be reactionaries, his brusque manners
offended most people. He had practically no advisers
in these critical moments, but the moral courage with
which he refused the Austrian offers of lenient terms if
he would repudiate the Statute and his father's word,
won for him the nation's trust, which he never lost.
Cavour, with all his genius, could not have made the
kingdom of Italy if the Italians had doubted their king.
CHAPTER IV
IN PARLIAMENT
The condition of Italy, Cavour said, was worse at the
end of the year's struggle than at the beginning. Such
was the case, if the present only Avere looked at. When
Austria resumed her sway in Lombardy and Veuetia
she resumed it by the right of the conqueror, a more
intelligible, and in a sense a more legitimate, right than
that derived from bargains and treaties in which the
population had no voice. The House of Hapsburg was
saved in Italy by one loyal servant, Eadetsky, and in
Hungary by the Ban of Croatia and 200,000 Russians.
Besides the regained supremacy in the Lombardo-Veneto,
Austria was more predominant in the centre and south
than in the palmiest days of the Holy Alliance. A keen
observer might have held that she was too predominant
to be safe. Talleyrand always said that if Italy were
united under Austria she would escape from her, not
sooner or later, but in a few years. There was not
political unity, but there may almost bo said to have
been moral unity. Even in Rome, in spile of the French
garrison, Austiian influence counted for much more than
French. When Victor Emmanuel gave tlie premiership
56 CAVOUR cnAi'.
to Massimo d'Azeglio, Cavour remarked that he was
glad of the appointment, and equally so that D' Azeglio
had not asked him to be his colleague, because in the
actual circumstances it seemed to him difficult or im-
possible to do any good. D'Azeglio could not have
offered Cavour a portfolio without undoing the effect of
his own appointment, by which confidence in Victor
Emmanuel was confirmed. The king was not sufficiently
known for it to be wise to place beside him an unpopular
man, a suspected codino, the nickname ("pig-tail") given
to reactionaries. D'Azeglio, who was really prepared
to go far less far than Cavour, was almost loved
even by his political enemies, a wonderful phenomenon
in Italy. His patriotism had been lately sealed by
the severe wound he received at Vicenza. To rigid
principles he added attractive and chivalric manners,
which smoothed his relations with the young king,
who, if brusque himself, did not like brusqueness in
others.
Cavour retired, as became his wont, to enjoy the
sweetness of rural leisure at Leri : for him the sovereign
remedy to political disquietude. The well - cultivated
fields, the rich grass lands, in the contemplation of
which he took a peaceful but lively satisfaction, restored
as usual liis mental equilibrium, and brought back the
hopefulness of his naturally sanguine temperament.
Before long he was exhorting his friends to be of good
cheer; while liberty existed in a single corner of the
peninsula there was no need to despair; if Piedmont
kept her institutions free from despotism and anarchy,
these would be the means of working efficaciously for
the regeneration of the country. To those who went to
IV IN PARLIAMENT 67
see him he said, rubbing his hands (a sure sign that he
was regaining his spirits), " We shall begin again, and,
profiting by past mistakes, we shall do better next time."
Probably he foresa^v that " next time " he would have
the game in his own hands.
The king had done his part by proving his resolve to
uphold the constitution, but all danger for liberty in
Piedmont did not cease there. The members of the
party which had ruled during the earlier years of Charles
Albert's reign did not give themselves up for lost. They
cherished the hope of using the constitution to overturn
liberty. On the face of things, the moral to be drawn
from recent history was for and not against them. They
could say that the only patent consequence of the change
of system was that the country had been plunged in
disaster, that blood and money had been wasted with
no other effect than a bankrupt exchequer, a beaten
army, trade at a standstill, misery stalking through the
land. This party, which was by no means weak, could
reckon on the compact support of Savoy, where Italian
patriotism was as scarce as true and chivalric attachment
to the royal house was abundant. Above all, it had the
support of the whole power of the Church, which,
through its corporations and religious orders and its
army of priests, exercised an inHuence in Piedmont
unparalleled in Austria or in Spain. If the liberal in-
stitutions of the country were to be preserved, it was
necessary to strike a blow at this party by weakening
the arch on which it reposed. Religious toleration had
been proclaimed in Piedmont as one of the first reforms,
the concession having been obtained from Charles Albert
by the Marquis Robert d' Azeglio, a conservative and
68 CAVOUR niAi'.
a profoundly convinced Catholic, but a lover of justice
and mercy, Avho esteemed it the happiest day of his life
when, through his interposition, the faithful Vaudois
were granted the rights of free citizens. But legislation
had not yet touched the extraordinary privileges arro-
gated to itself by the Church. One of these, the Foro
ecdesiasticc, a special court for the judgment of ecclesi-
astical offenders against the common law, it was now
proposed to abolish. It was a test measure — like throw-
ing down the gauntlet. Cavour had been re -elected
when the king dissolved Parliament by what is known
as the Proclamation of Moncalieri, and in the debates
on the Foro ecclesiastico for the first time he made his
power felt in the Chamber. He spoke as one who had
long thought out the subject and had chosen his policy :
" Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and
to God the things which are God's."
At this first stage in the long struggle the Eoman curia
might have settled the matter in a friendly way, but it
would not. Cardinal Antonelli replied to a respectful
invitation, that "the Holy Father was ready to go to
the ante-chamber of the devil's house to please the king
of Sardinia, but he really could not go inside." Yet, at
the same date, the Archbishop of Paris (Sibour) admitted
to a Piedmontese visitor that the Sardinian Government
had no option under the new institutions but to establish
the equality of all citizens before the law, and ia Austria
they were laughing at the progressive monarchy in its
laborious efforts to obtain reforms carried out in the
despotic empire by Joseph H. The reason that Rome
refused to treat was that she thought herself strong and
Sardinia weak. Writers on this period have too readily
IT IN PARLIAMENT 59
assumed that the Church, by the law of its being, must
always cry " no compromise ! " Of course nothing can
be more erroneous. The Church has yielded as many
times as it thought itself obliged to yield. What other
inference can be deduced from the strange and romantic
story of the suppression of the Jesuits 1 and, to cite only
one more instance, from the deposition of bishops for
extra -canonical reasons conceded by Pius VII. to the
First Consid 1 The curia thought that Victor Emmanuel
would end at Canossa, but he ended instead in the
Pantheon. It should be remembered, however, that the
quarrel had nothing then to do wnth the dispute between
pope and king on the broader grounds of the possession
of Rome. That dispute was still in the darkness of the
future. Sardinia had not given even moral support to
the Roman Republic.
In Cavour's able speech of March 7, 1850, he observed
that his friends, the Liberal Conservatives, feared the
erection of the priesthood into a party hostile to the
State. Peace was precious, but too heavy sacrifices
might be made even to it. He himself trusted that in
the long run the priesthood woiUd recognise the necessity
to modern society of the union of the two great moral
forces, religion and liberty. Europe was threatened
with universal revolution ; only large and courageous
rt'forr/is could stem the tide. M. Guizot might have
saved the thnmc of Louis IMiilipi)c hail he yielded to
the ilemarid for electoral refortu. Why had there been
no revolution in England ? Because the Duke of Wel-
hngton in 1H29, Lonl (Jrcy in 1832, and Sir Robert Peel
in 181C, undcr.'it<»(*(l tiie exigencies of their epoch, proving
thcui8clvc8 thereby to be the firHt sliitchincn of tiie time.
60 CAVOUR CHAP.
Uninfluenced by the furious attacks on him as an Anglo-
mane, Cavour took the first opportunity of reaffirming
from his seat in Parliament the admiration for English
methods which he had constantly expressed! outside.
He closed his speech by appealing to Government to
persevere in its policy of large and fearless reforms,
which, far from weakening the constitutional throne,
would so strengthen its roots that not only would Pied-
mont be enabled to resist the revolutionary storm should
it break around its borders, but also " gathering to itself
all the living forces in Italy, it would be in a position to
lead our mother-country to those high destinies where-
unto she is called."
The effect of this peroration was inconceivable. Here
was the first word of hope publicly uttered since the
dSbdcle ! People in the galleries who had seen Cavour
usually silenced by clamour and howls heard the ap-
plause with astonishment, and then joined in it. All
the ministers rose to shake hands with the speaker.
Any other man would have become popular at once, but
against Cavour prejudice was too strong for a fleeting
success to remove it. From that day, however, he was
listened to. He was no longer a quaniiU nigligeable in
the politics of Italy or of Europe.
One of the ministers, Count Pietro di Santa Rosa,
died within a few months of the bill on the Foro becoming
law, and the last sacraments were denied to him because
he refused to sign a retractation of the political acts of
the cabinet of which he was a member. Cavour was an
old friend of Santa Rosa. He was present when he
died, and he heard from the Countess the particulars of
the distressing scene when the priest in the harshest
rv IN PARLIAMENT 61
manner withheld the consolations of religion from the
dying man, who was a pious Catholic, but who had the
strength of mind even in death not to dishonour himself
and his colleagues. Cavour wi'ote an indignant article
in the Risorgimento denouncing the party spite which
could cause such cruel anguish under a religious cloak,
and the people of Turin became so much excited that if
the further indignity of a refusal of Christian burial had
been resorted to, as at first seemed probable, the lives of
the priests in the city Avould hardly have been safe.
Everything seemed to point to Cavour as Santa Rosa's
successor, but Massimo d' Azeglio felt nervous at taking
the final step. He was encouraged to it by General La
Marmora, the friend of both, who declared that " Camillo
was a gran buon diavolo," who would grow more moderate
when "with us." Cavour accepted the offered post of
Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, but not without
making terms. He exacted the retirement of a minister
whom he considered incurably timorous, especially in
ecclesiastical legislation. The point was yielded, but
D' Azeglio said to La Marmora, " We are beginning badly
with your buon diavolo." The good Massimo got no
comfort from the king : " Don't you see that this man
will turn you all out 1 " Victor Emmanuel casually
remarked, or ratlier he made use of a stronger idiom in
his native dialect, which would not well bear translation.
The king refrained from opposing the appointment, but
he did not pretend that he liked it.
About that time Cavour paid a visit to the Piedmontese
shore of the Lago Maggiore, where he made the acquaint-
ance of the author of the Promessi Sposi Perhaps by
reason of his poetic instinct Manzoni expected great
62 CAVOUR CHAP.
things of him from the first. " That little man promises
very well." he told the poet Berchet. And he opened his
heart to Cavour, telling him that dream of Italian unity
which he had always cherished, but which, as he said in
his old age, he kept a secret for fear of being thought
a madman. They looked across the blue line of water ;
there, on the other side, was Austria. Had Cavour said
what he thought, he would have responded, "That is
the first stone to move." But he did not enter upon a
discussion; he merely murmured, rubbing his hands,
" We shall do something ! "
To the end Cavour evoked more ready sympathy
among men of the other provinces than among the Pied-
montese, although these last came to repose the blind
trust in him which the Duke of Wellington's soldiers
reposed in their leader — a trust born of the conviction
that he would lead to victory. Latterly this was Victor
Emmanuel's own way of feeling towards Cavour.
Sympathy was always lacking.
On taking office Cavour sold his shares in the agricul-
tural and industrial speculations which he had promoted,
with the exception of one company, then not in a
flourishing state, and likely to collapse if he Avithdrew
his name. He also severed his connection with the
Risorgimento, which had cost him much money and made
him many enemies, but he believed that the services
rendered by it to the cause of orderly liberty were in-
calculable. He never regretted his years of work in
the aritro, the wild beasts' den, as the advanced liberals
called the office of the journal, a name gaily adopted by
himself. As editor of the Risorgimento he fought his one
duel ; a scandalous attack on the personal honesty of
IT m PARLIAMENT 63
the writers Avas made by a Jewish financier in an obscure
Nizzard sheet; an encounter with pistols followed in
which no one was hurt, but both sides seemed to have
aimed in earnest. There is a tragic absurdity in the
possible extinction of such a life as Cavour's on so
paltry an occasion ; yet, in the surroundings in which he
moved, he could not have passed over the worthless
attack in the silent contempt it deserved without being
called a coward. At the conclusion of the duel he
walked away, turning his back on his adversary, but no
long time elapsed before, as minister, he was taking
trouble to obtain for this man some honorific bauble
which his vanity coveted.
On taking office, Cavour doubted for a moment his
own future, the doubt common to men who reach a
position they have waited for too long. In these times,
he wrote, politicians were soon used up ; probably it
would be so with him. But the work of his department
dispelled gloomy thoughts : as Minister of Commerce he
negotiated treaties with France, England, and Belgium
in which a step was made towards realising his favourite
theories on free trade. Before long he was also made
Minister of the Marine ; it was taken for granted that he
could do as much work as two or three other men. Though
both these offices were secondary, Cavour became in-
sensibly leader of the house. Questions on whatever
subject were answered by him, and he was not careful
to consult his chief as to the tenor of his replies.
Massimo d' Azeglio said with a rueful smile that he was
now like Louis Philippe : he ruled, but did not govern.
Cavour stated his own opinions, whether they were
popular or unpopuhii-, consonant with those of his party
64 CAVOUR CHAP.
or directly opposed to them. A deputy asked Govern-
ment to interfere with the mode and substance of the
teaching in the seminaries. Cavour immediately answered
that he would hold such interference to be a most fatal
act of absolutism ; the person to control the instruction
given in the seminaries was the bishop ; let bishops
play the part of theologians, not of deputies, and let the
Government govern, and not play the theologian. Some
one pointed out that this was quite at variance with
what had been said by the other ministers ; Cavour ex-
cused himself towards his colleagues, but repeated that
the principle was one of supreme importance. He had
spoken " less as a minister than as a politician." And
he never learnt to speak otherwise until there was a
ministry in which (to borrow a once often quoted witti-
cism) all the ministers were called Cavour.
The energy with which Cavour repudiated the idea
of interfering with the seminaries is interesting on other
grounds. Possibly he was the only continental states-
man who ever saw liberty in an Anglo-Saxon light.
This is further shown by the policy he advocated in
dealing with the Jesuits. He did not like the Society,
which he described as a worse scourge to humanity
than communism. You must not judge its real nature,
he said, by observing it where its position is contested
and precarious. Look at it, rather, where it has a loose
rein, where it can apply its rules in a logical and con-
sequent manner, where the whole education of youth is
in its hands. The result is une gindration abdtardie.
But the remedy he proposed was not repression. He
wished to grant the Jesuits three, four, ten times the
liberty they gave to others in the countries under their
IV IN" PARLIAMENT 65
power. In a free country they could do no harm ; they
would be always obliged to modify and transform them-
selves and would never gain a real empire either in the
world of politics or intellect. The great Pombal, who
may be called the Cavour of Portugal, took his conception
of a free state from England, like the Italian statesman,
but he did not understand that persecution is an un-
fortunate way of inaugurating liberty. This is what for
Cavour was "a principle of supreme importance."
In April 1851 Cavour took the office of Minister of
Finance ; he had exacted the resignation of his pre-
decessor, Nigra, as the jDrice of his remaining in the
Cabinet. The Minister of Public Instruction also resigned
owing to disagreements with the now all-powerful member
of the Government, and was replaced by a nominee of
Cavour's, L. C. Farini, the Eomagnol exile, author of
Lo Stato Romano, whose appointment was significant from
a national point of view, notwithstanding his ultra-con-
servative opinions. Cavour mentioned that Farini's
work had been praised by Mr. Gladstone, " one of the
most illustrious statesmen in Europe," at which the
Chamber applauded wildly, as Cavour intended it to do.
Ever watchful for any sign from abroad which could
profit Italy, he was glad of what seemed a chance oppor-
tunity to provoke a demonstration in honour of the
writer of the Letters to Lord Aberdeen on the Neapolitan
prisons, which were just then creating an immense
sensation. In Italy Mr. Gladstone was the most popular
man of the hour ; in France, still calling itself a republic,
all parties except the reduced ranks of the advanced
liberals were very angry — not with King Bomba, but
with his accuser. A harmless cousin of Mr. Gladstone
F
66 CAVOUR CHAP.
was blackballed in a club in Paris on account of the
name he bore. Nobody ever had such a good heart
as the king of Naples, Count Walewski went about
declaring, in support of which he told Mr. Monckton
Milnes that Ferdinand had recently granted his request
to pardon three hundred prisoners against whom
nothing was proved. " Hoav grateful they must have
been," replied the Englishman ; " did not they come and
thank you for having obtained their deliverance ? "
Taken off his guard and unconscious of the irony,
Walewski made the admission that the three hundred
were debarred from the pleasure of paying him a visit
because, though pardoned, they were not released !
This little story was related to Lord Palmerston, in
whom it fanned the fuel of the indignation roused by
Mr. Gladstone's Letters, of which he had written that
"they revealed a system of illegality, injustice, and cruelty
which one would not have imagined possible nowadays
in Europe." But he employed still stronger language
against the Austrians, whose method of reimposing their
rule in Lombardy had lost them all their friends in
England, for the time at least, and had worked their
foes up to the point of fury. Those were the days
when they sang at Vienna :
Hat der Teufel einen Sohn,
So ist er sicher Palmerston.
Lord Palmerston was coming to a conclusion about
Italian matters ; it was this : that, great as were the
objections to the deliverance of Italy from the Austrians
by French aid, yet it would be better for her to be
delivered so than not at all. The same conclusion had
IV IN PARLIAMENT 67
been reached by Cavonr, except that he would not have
admitted unending servitude to be the alternative : he
was too patriotic and too resourceful for that. He kept
in \iew other contingencies : European complications,
the organic disruption of Austria, even at that early date,
the foundation of a German empire. But in 1851, as
in 1S59, the aid of France was the one means of shaking
off the Austrian yoke, which was morally certain to
succeed. For him, however, the French alliance was
only a speck in the distance. He did not think, as Lord
Palmerston seems to have thought, that a French
liberating army might be " very soon " expected in the
Lombard plains. When Louis Napoleon swept away
the impediments between himself and the Imperial
throne, Cavonr was less moved by the violence of the
act than by the hope that its consequences might be
favourable to Italy. The Prince-President tranquilly
awaited the eight million votes which should transform
him from a political brigand into a legitimised
emperor, and Cavour left him to the judgment of his
own coimtrymen. He saw no need to be more severe
than they. It is easy to conceive a higher morality,
but as yet it has not been applied to politics. As
Cavour remarked, " Franklin sought the help of the
most despotic monarch in Europe," and the analogies
in recent history do not require to be recalled.
An inferior statesman who, like Cavour, contem-
plated foreign aid as an ultimate resource, would liave
lost his interest and slackened liis activity in home
politics. It was not so with him. Before all other
things ho placed the necessity of consolidating I'iodniont
as a constitutional State, and of piepaiing lici inoiidlj-
68 CAVOUR CHAP.
and materially to take her part in the struggle when it
came. If that were not done, a new Bonaparte might
indeed cross the Alps in the character of liberator, but a
free Italy would be no more the result of his interven-
tion than it had been of his uncle's. Cavour was
meditating the stroke of policy which gave him the
power to carry out this work of consolidation and pre-
paration. He ruled the ministry, but he did not rule
the House and, through it, the country. The Sardinian
Chamber of Deputies was composed of the Right Centre,
the Extreme Eight, the Left Centre, and the Extreme
Left. The Extreme Right was loyal to the House of
Savoy, but contrary to Italian aspirations ; the Extreme
Left was strongly Italian, but the degree of its loyalty
was hit off in Massimo d' Azeglio's mot, " Viva Vittorio,
il re provisorio " ("Long live Victor, the provisional
king "). There remained the two Centres representing
the liberal conservatives and the moderate liberals —
" moderate radicals " would be more correct, if the
verbal contradiction be permitted. But neither of these
single-handed could support a stable and independent
government. Every ministry must exist on the sufferance
of its opponents, and in terror of the vagaries of the
advanced section on its own side. At any critical
moment a passing breeze might overthrow it. The only
antidote to the recklessness or obstructiveness of extreme
parties lay in dissolution ; but to dissolve a parliament
just elected, as Victor Emmanuel had once been forced to
do already, would be a fatal expedient if repeated often.
Any student of representative government would
suggest the amalgamation of the two Centres as the
true remedy, but so great were the difficulties in the
IV IN PARLIAMENT 69
way of this, that not half a dozen persons in Piedmont
believed it to be possible. Cavour himself thought
about it for a year before making the final move.
The acerbities of Italian party politics are not
softened by the good social relations and the general
mutual confidence in purity of motive which prevail
in England. Hitherto Cavour and the brilliant and
plausible leader of the Left Centre had not entertained
flattering opinions of each other. Rattazzi thought
Cavour an ambitious and aggressive publicist rather
than a patriot statesman, and Cavour knew Rattazzi to
be the minister who led the country to Novara. But
he appreciated his value as a parliamentary ally ; he
had the qualities in which Cavour himself was most
deficient. Urbano Rattazzi (born at Alessandria in 1808)
was famous as one of the best speakers at the Pied-
montese bar before entering the Chamber. He was a
perfect master of Italian ; his manners were popular and
insinuating. He was richly endowed with all those
secondary gifts which often carry a man along faster,
though less far, than the highest endowments. If he
had not power, he had elasticity ; if not judgment,
cleverness. He always drifted, which made him always
appear the politician up to date. His name was then
associated with one catastrophe ; before he died it was
to be linked with two others, Aspromonte and Mentana ;
but such was his ability as a leader that he retained a
compact following to the last.
Cavour rarely made a man's antecedents a reason for
not turning him to account; but there was one point on
which he required to be reassured before seeking an
understanding with Rattazzi — this was whether his
70 CAVOUR cjiAP
fidelity to the monarchy could be entirely depended on.
Cavour's old friend and fellow worker of the Eisorgimento,
M. A. Castelli, who was acquainted with the leader of
the Left, opportunely bore witness to Rattazzi's genuine
loyalty, and Cavour hesitated no longer to come to an
agreement which every day proved to be more impera-
tive. After the Co2ip d'Mat, the Extreme Right, led by
the Count de Revel and General Menabrea, adopted the
tactics of professing to believe untenable the position of
a free State wedged in between the old despotism of
Austria and the new one of France. The argument was
ingenious and was likely to make converts. It Avas
urgently necessary to form a new political combination
which should reduce this party to impotence.
Cavour's compact with Rattazzi was concluded in the
first month of 1852, but at first it was kept a profound
secret. It was divulged, as it were, accidentally in the
course of a debate on a Bill which was intended to
moderate the attacks of the press on foreign sovereigns.
This was the only form of restriction which Cavour,
then and afterwards, was willing to countenance. He
held that the excuse for umbrage given to foreign rulers
by personal invective published in the newspapers was
a danger to the State Avhich no government ought to
tolerate. The Extreme Right and Left were immediately
up in arms, the first declaring that the Bill did not go far
enough, and the second that it went too far. Both affected
to consider it the first step to more stringent anti-
liberal measures — invoked by one side and abhorred by
the other. It was then that Rattazzi made the announce-
ment that although he did not mean to vote for this
particular Bill, he intended to support the Ministry
IV IN PARLIAMENT 71
througli the session which had just begun, if, as he
believed, this Bill was an isolated measure, and did not
indicate a change of policy. Cavour acknowledged the
promise in words which left no doubt that a prior agree-
ment existed between the two leaders. He repudiated
the reactionary tendencies of Menabrea and his Savoy-
ards, even, he said ironically, at the risk of so great a
misfortime as that of losing the weak support which
they had lately bestowed on Government. Count de
Revel retorted that the Ministry had divorced the Right
and made a marriage (connubio) with the party which
drove Charles Albert to his doom and to an exile's death
in a foreign land. The alliance between the Centres was
henceforth known by the nickname thus conferred on
it, which has been repeated since by hundreds who have
forgotten its origin.
It is difficult to describe the sensation w^hich this
scene created, and no one was more astonished than
D' Azeglio, who, with the other ministers, had been kept
entirely in the dark. By all ordinary rules Cavour
ought to have communicated with his colleagues before
revolutionising the parliamentary chessboard. The more
sure he felt of their opposition the less easy is it to justify
him for taking so gi'ave a step without their knowledge.
On public grounds, however (and these were the only
grounds on which Cavour ever acted in his political life),
it was desirable that the Connubio should be an accom-
plished fact before it was exposed to discussion.
D' Azeglio was very angry, but he hated scandal, and he
refrained from disowning the act of his imperious
colleague. He was none the less determined never to
sit in the same Cabinet with Rattazzi. One reason he
72 CAVOUR ciiAi'. IV
gave for it was characteristic. The leader of the Left
had debts, and was not in a hurry to pay them. When
Rattazzi, tlirough Cavour's instrumentality, was elected
Pre.sident of tlie Chamber, D' Azcglio felt again aggrieved.
Cavour, who began by treating his chief's antipatliy to
his new ally as a prejudice to be made fun of, and in
the end dis})elled, came to understand that it was in-
superable. . To cut short an impossible situation, he
tendered his resignation, on which all the ministers
resigned ; but as the question was one of personal pique,
the king commanded them to remain at their posts.
Cavour applauded this decision. For the moment it
was better that he, not D' Azeglio, should be sacrificed.
They parted without ceasing to be private and political
friends. Massimo d' Azeglio's nature was too generous
to bear a grudge against the man who was to eclipse
him.
Cavour profited by his reconquered liberty to go to
France and England, a journey that relieved him of the
appearance of wishing to hamper the Cabinet, which
was quickly reconstructed without himself and Farini.
On the eve of starting he went, as etiquette required, to
take leave of the king, who made the not very flattering
remark that he thought it would be a long while before
he called him to j^ower. Cavour must have smiled
behind his spectacles, but he naturally left time to verify
or contradict the royal forecast.
CHAPTER V
THE GREAT MINISTRY
Cavour went abroad with the full intention of preparing
for the day when his voice would be that of Piedmont,
if not of Italy. He attached importance to personal
relations, which helped him to keep in touch with
European politics and politicians, and he was anxious to
find out how the Connubio was regarded by foreigners,
among whom, till lately, Rattazzi had been looked
upon as a revolutionary firebrand. But thinking men
abroad understood the reasons which had dictated the
coalition. In London Cavour met with a friendly re-
ception from Lord Malmesbury, who was then Foreign
Minister, and who assured him that the English Govern-
ment would be glad to see him back in office. With
characteristic presence of mind he framed his answer to
provoke a more definite pronouncement. He could not,
he said, return to office alone or abandon the party he
had been at so much pains to create. "Naturally,"
answered Lord Malmesbury," you cannot return to power
without your friends." Reassured as to the sentiments
of one great political party, Cavour approached the
other iu the pcrs(jn of Lord Palmcrston, than whom he
74 CAVOUR ciiAP.
never had a firmer political friend or more sincere
admirer. Lord Palmerston saw the larger meaning of
the experiment of freedom in Piedmont, and he was one
of the first to see it. If that experiment succeeded, the
Italian tyrannies were doomed ; how, he did not discern,
but the fact was apparent to him. He heard, therefore,
with much interest what Cavour had to tell him of the
gradual taking root of constitutional government in the
Sardinian kingdom, and he promised him the moral
support, not of one party or another, but of England,
"in pledge of which," he added, "we have sent you our
best diplomatist." This allusion was to Mr. (afterwards
Sir James) Hudson, whom Lord Palmerston had called
back from the Brazils in the spring of the year, because
by a singular intuition he guessed him to be the very
man to help the Italian cause. It was intended to send
him to Florence, but when he reached the Foreign Office,
which Lord Palmerston had just vacated, he received
instructions to go to Turin, a fortunate change of plan.
No two men were ever better fitted to work together
than Cavour and Sir James Hudson. Without ceasing
to be particularly English and strictly loyal to the
interests of his own country, the British Minister
at Turin served Italy as few of her sons have been
able to do. Beneath a rather cold exterior he con-
cealed the warmest of hearts, and he had the power
of attaching people to him, so that they never
forgot him. It is greatly to be regretted that he
left no record of the stirring years of his mission,
which coincided with the rise and ascendency of
Cavour.
Enchanted with the country, and " more Anglomane
y THE GREAT MINISTRY 75
than ever," Cavour left England for Paris, where he laid
himself out to conciliate political men of all shades, from
Morny to Thiers, who advised him to be patient and not
to lose heart : " If, after giving yon vipers for breakfast,
you have another dish served up for dinner, never mind "
— such was the diet of politicians. What Cavour once
called " his powerful intellectual organisation " made an
immediate impression on the Prince President, as he
was still styled. Louis Napoleon cultivated an im-
passible exterior, but at bottom his character was emo-
tional, and, like all emotional persons, he was susceptible
to the magnetism of a stronger brain and will Cavour
summoned Rattazzi to Paris to present him to the future
Caesar. "Whether we like it or not," he wrote at this
time, " our destinies depend on France ; we must be
her partner in the great game which will be played
sooner or later in Europe." A few weeks later Napoleon
declared at Bordeaux that " the empire was peace," but
like all intelligent onlookers Cavour received the state-
ment with incredulity. Possibly the only person who
believed in it was the speaker — for the moment ; he
may have thought that " bread and games " was a
formula by which he could rule France, or rather Paris,
but he was soon to find it insufiBcient.
Cavour sought out several of the Italian exiles
who were leading a life of privation and obscurity in
Paris, one of whom was Manin, the Dictator of Venice.
With him Cavour expressed himself " very much satisfied,
though his sentiments were rather too Venetian " : senti-
ments which Manin sacrificed — a last act of abnegation
— when he finally gave his support to Italian unity under
Victor Emmanuel, carrying with him two-thirds of the
76 CAVOUR CHAP,
republican party, who could brave the charge of changed
allegiance if so incorruptible a patriot led the way.
Cavour also saw Gioberti, "always the same child of
genius, who would have been a great man had he had
common sense." Gioberti, however, had made a great
stride towards common sense, for instead of dreaming
of liberating popes, he was now imagining a renovating
statesman, and he had inscribed Cavour's name under
his new portrait. In a book published in Paris, Gioberti
drew the Cavour of the future Avith a penetration and a
sureness of touch which would make a reader, who did
not know the date, suppose that the words were Avritten
ten years later. Men of great talent, he said, rarely
threw aside the chance of becoming famous ; rather did
they snatch it %vith avidity ; and what fame more splendid
could now be won than that of the minister of the Italian
prince who should re-make the country ? He fixed his
hopes on Cavour, because he alone understood that in
human society ciA^lisation is everything, all the rest,
without it, nothing. " He knows that statutes, parlia-
ments, newspapers, all the appurtenances of free govern-
ments, even if they are of use to individuals, are miserable
shams to the commonalty if they fail to help forward
social progress." He w^as willing to forgive him the
generous error of treating a province as if it were a
nation, when he compared it with the pettiness of those
who treated the nation as if it were a province. He
invoked some great and solemn act of Italianita on
his part, which should pledge him irrevocably to the
national cause. Cavour was too little influenced by
others for it to be safe to say that this was one of the
prophecies which tend to their own fulfilment; still
V THE GEEAT MINISTRY 77
it is wortli noticing that he read the passage and was
struck by it.
Cavour had scarcely returned to Piedmont when a
ministerial crisis occurred through the rejection by the
Senate of a far from stringent Bill for permitting civil
marriage, which had passed in the Chamber of Deputies.
The situation Avas further complicated by the state of
mind into which the king had been driven by the
remonstrances of his wife and mother, both near their
end, and by the answer which he received from Rome
in reply to a direct appeal to settle matters amicably,
the Pope having said, in efiFect, that he was not going
to help him to legalise concubinage in his dominions.
D'Azeglio, harassed on all sides and ill through the
reopening of his wound, resigned office, and advised the
king to send for Cavour. " The other one, whom you
know, is diabolically active, and fit in body and soul,
and then, he enjoys it so much ! " he wrote to a friend,
with the pathetic wonder of the artist, romancist, and
grand seigneur, who had never been able to make out
Avhat there was to enjoy in politics. Victor Emmanuel
followed his advice, but he allowed Cavour to see that
he hoped that the new ministry would make up the
quarrel with Rome. Cavour knew that only one path
could lead to peace — surrender. Though anxious for
office he declined to take it on these terms, and he re-
commended the king to call Count Balbo to his counsels ;
but Balbo, persuaded that a ministry only supported
by the Extreme Right could not stand even for a few
weeks, in his turn suggested the recall of D'Azeglio.
Here the saving good sense of the king interposed ; little
as he liked Cavour he recogni.scd that he was tlie only
78 CAVOUR CHAP.
man possible, and he charged him, without conditions,
with the formation of a ministry. D' Azcglio had fallen
on a point on which Cavour was for and not against
him ; his successor desired to show that there would be
no violent change of policy, and he therefore recon-
structed the Cabinet as it was before, except for the
change of head. He reserved for himself the Presidency
of the Council and the Ministry of Finance. Rattazzi,
who still occupied the Speaker's chair, was willing to
wait for the present for a seat in the Cabinet, especially
when he heard that the king, who was at first very
hostile to the Connubio, had quite expected him to take
office.
So the gran ministero, as it was called, entered upon its
functions : great by reason of its chief, who infused his
own life and vigour into what was before a weak admin-
istration. Cavour was a born man of business ; he hated
disorder in everything — except, indeed, dress, in which
his carelessness was proverbial. He had not the common
belief that, muddle them how you may, there will always
be a providence which looks after the affairs of the State
and prevents the collapse that would attend a private
commercial enterprise conducted on the same system.
He took in hand the financial renewal of Piedmont in
the same spirit in which, when he had only just reached
maturity, he volunteered to restore his father's dilapi-
dated fortune. It was for this that he chose the Ministry
of Finance : Piedmont, as he saw, could never sustain a
national and Italian policy abroad without having first set
its own house in order. He started with two principles :
taxation must be increased and the resources of the
country must be so developed as to enable it to pay its
V THE GREAT MINISTRY 79
way without sinking into hopeless stagnation. It was a
disappointment to some to see Cavour devoting himself
with more ardour to putting on new taxes than to pro-
ducing any of those decorative schemes for hastening
the millennium which are expected from a new and
ambitious minister. But, though ambitious, he cared for
the substance, power — not for the shadow, popularity.
If there had been no other reason for the compact
with the moderate liberals, the necessity for fresh taxa-
tion would have been a sufficing one. The Extreme
Right and Left proposed to meet the existing difficulties
by cutting down expenditure, but, if sound in theory, in
practice this policy would have reduced Piedmont to
complete impotence. "While a part of the Left Centre
voted with the- extremists, it was only by the greatest
efforts that a grant of £100,000 was obtained for the
fortifications of Casale, which had been declared by the
war minister. La Marmora, to be absolutely, necessary
for the defence of the State. The radical deputy
Brofl'erio said that States wanted no other defence than
the breasts of their citizens. From the Chamber, as then
constituted, there was little hope of obtaining the im-
position of new burdens, in part designed to meet
Sardinian liabilities, but in part also to render possible
the reorganisation of the army, which was urgently
required if the future was not to witness disasters worse
than those already experienced. Prince Metternich had
said that, even if Piedmont were so troublesome as to
persist in her liberal infatuation, she would have to keep
quiet, at a moderate computation, for twenty years — just
the time which it took her king to unite Italy. The
two campaigns of 1848-184'J and the war iiideninitv
80 CAVOUR CHAP.
had cost about 300,000,000 frs. The annual expenditure
was doubled. Added to this, the one source of wealth,
agriculture, was almost ruined by the oidium disease
which destroyed the vines, and by harvests so bad that
the like had not been seen since the celebrated scarcity
which followed the wars of Napoleon. As Cavour saved
his father's property not by burying the last talent in a
safe place but by laying it out in bold improvements, so
now he did not fear to spend largely and even lavishly,
not only on the army, but also on public works. He
completed the railway system and employed what
Brofferio called " a portentous activity " in extending
the roads, canals, and all the means of communication
which could stimulate industry. It must be remembered
that Piedmont was then lamentably backward ; a long
obscurantist regime, succeeded by war and havoc, had left
her destitute of all the accessories of modern life. This
was changed as if by the wand of the magician. In his
first budget, Cavour put on new taxes to the amount of
14,000,000 frs., one being the so-called tax on patents,
or on the exercise of trades and professions, which excited
much adverse criticism. At the same time he reduced
the salt tax and initiated several free-trade measures, to
be ultimately crowned by the abolition of the corn laws.
On the whole, however, his line of policy was not such
as would recommend itself to the crowd, and in October
1853 a furious mob attacked the Palazzo Cavour, repeat-
ing the old cry that the minister was a monopolist who
robbed the poor of their bread. Luckily the doors were
banned, but next day Cavour was threatened as he
walked along the streets. Just then the Ministry of
Justice fell vacant, and it was offered to Rattazzi, who,
V THE GREAT MINISTRY 81
to his credit be it said, did not hesitate to take office
at a time when the head of the Government was the
target of unscrupulous abuse, and it was even thought
that his life was in danger. Rattazzi was afterwards
transferred to the Home Ministry, which he held till the
Connuhio broke up, more on personal than on political
grounds, in 1858.
Though Cavour's alliance with Eattazzi was not
eternal, it lasted till it had served its jDurpose. By help
of it he imposed his will on king and country until he
was strong enough to impose it by force of his own com-
manding influence. He always considered the Connuhio
one of the wisest acts of his political life. It is not
uncommon to hear it still denounced in Italy as the
origin of the political demoralisation, the mixing up of
private and public interests, the lack of fixed principles ;
which later times have witnessed. If the fact were
admitted, it would not show that Cavour could have
governed in any other way. Had the country trusted
him from the first it would have been different, but the
country did not trust him. Even after the combination
of the two Centres, whenever there was a general election
it was doubtful if the Government would obtain a work-
ing majority. The accusation of corruption was fre-
quently made against the Ministry in general and
Rattazzi in particular, since it was he who presided over
the electoral campaigns. Of corruption in the literal
sense there was prol>ably little, but constituencies were
led to believe that it would be to their advantage to
return the ministerial candidate. On one occasion
liattazzi tried to prove that such hints did not constitute
" interference." Cavour got up in tiie course of the
G
82 CAVOUR CHAP.
same debate and not only acknowledged the "interfer-
ence," but said that without it constitutional govern-
ment in Piedmont would collapse. His biographers
have preferred to be silent on this subject, but he would
have despised a reserve which conceals historical facts.
The apathy of one section of the electors, the fads and
jealousies of another, the feverish longing to pull down
whomsoever was in power, inherited from a great
revolutionary crisis, the indefatigable propaganda of
clerical wire-pullers, all tended to the formation of parlia-
ments so composed as to bring government to a stand-
still. The result of a protracted interruption might be
the fall of the constitution itself, or it might be civil
war. Cavour took the means open to him to prevent
it, and, whether he was right or wrong, his career cannot
be judged if the difficulties with which he had to cope
are kept out of sight.
Piedmont needed some years, not of rest, but of active
and consecutive labour before it could enter the lists
again as armed champion of Italian independence. The
disastrous issue of the last conflicts had been attributed
to every cause except that which was most accountable
for it : a badly led and badly organised army. The " We
are betrayed " theory was caught up alike by republicans
and conservatives, who accused each other of ruining the
country rather than give the victory to the rival faction.
Whatever grain of truth there was in these taunts, the
military inefficiency of the forces which Charles Albert
led across the Ticino in March 1848 remained the
main reason why Radetsky was able to get back Lombardy
and Venetia for his master. This Cavour knew, and
he was anxious not to precipitate matters till La
r THE GREAT MINISTRY 83
Marmora, to whom he privately gave carte blanche, could
say that his work was done. He began treating Austria
with more consideration than she had received from
Massimo d' Azeglio, who was a bad hand at dissembling.
Count Buol was gratified, almost grateful. But these
relatively harmonious relations did not last long. In
February 1853 there was an abortive attempt at revolu-
tion in Milan, of which not one person in a thousand
knew anything till it was suppressed. It was the
premature and ill-advised explosion of a conspiracy by
which Mazzini hoped to repeat the miracle of 1848 : the
ejection of a strong military power by a blast of popular
fury. But miracles are not made to order, though
Mazzini never came to believe it. As a reprisal for this
disturbance, the Austrian Government, not content with
executions and bastinadoes, decreed the sequestration of
the lands of those Lombard emigrants who had become
naturalised in Piedmont. Cavour charged Austria with
a breach of international law and recalled the Sardinian
minister from Vienna. It was risking war, but he knew
that even for the weakest state there are some things
worse than war. It was reversing the policy of prudence
■with which he had set out, but when prudence meant
cowardice, Cavour always cast it to the winds. The
outcry in all Europe against the sequestration decree
deterred the Austrian Government from treating the
Sardinian protest as a casus belli. Liberal public
opinion everywhere approved of Cavour's course, and in
France and England increased confidence was felt in
him by those in authority. Governments like to deal
with a strong man wlio knows when not to fear.
Oiilv sucli a man would have conceived the idea
84 CAVOUR CHAP.
which was now taking concrete form in Cavour's mind.
This was the plan of an armed alliance with the Western
Powers on the outbreak of the war, which as early as
November 1853 well-informed persons looked upon as
henceforth inevitable. Cavour would never have been
a Chauvinist, but he was not by nature a believer in
neutrality. He was constitutionally inclined to think
that in all serious contingencies to act is safer than not
to act. The world is divided between men of this mould
and their opposites. La Marmora told him that the
army, which had made incredible progress considering
the state in which it was a short time before, could
place in the field a force for which no country would
have reason to blush. If not a great general, the Pied-
montese Minister of War might fairly be called a first-
class organiser. For the rest, Cavour l)elieved that the
ultimate school of any army is war. Above all, he
believed that this was the hour for a great resolve or a
gran rifitito. If the House of Savoy stood still with folded
arms it might retire into the ranks of small ruling families,
which leave the rearrangement of maps to their betters.
It was secretly reported to Cavour that Napoleon III.
was beginning to drop enigmatical remarks about Italian
affairs, and it was these reports that finally decided him
to strain every nerve to make his audacious design a
reality.
Russia had broken off diplomatic relations with
Sardinia in 1848, and when Victor Emmanuel communi-
cated the death of his father to the Powers, the only
one which returned no response was the empire of the
Czar. It would be absurd to adduce this lack of courtesy
as an excuse for war ; still it gave a slightly better com-
V THE GREAT MINISTRY 85
plexion to an attack which the Russian Government was
justified in calling " extraordinarily gratuitous." Cavour
had one person of great importance on his side, the king.
In January 1854 he broached the subject with the
tentative inquiry, " Does it not seem to your Majesty
that we might find some way of taking part in the war
of the Western Powers with Russia 1 " To Avhich Victor
Emmanuel answered simply, "If I cannot go myself I
will send my brother." But it is not too much to say
that the whole country was against him. The old
Savoyard party opposed the war tooth and nail, and
from the " Little Piedmont " point of view it was
perfectly right. The radicals, headed by Brofferio,
denounced it as " economically reckless, militarily a
folly, politically a crime." Most of the Lombard
emigration thought ill of it, and the heads of the army
were lukewarm or contrary ; this was not the war they
wanted. The Tuscan romancist Guerrazzi wrote, with
unpardonable levity, that republicans ought to rejoice
because this was the final disillusion given to Italians by
monarchy, limited or not. One republican, however,
Manin, saw in the Italian tricolor displayed with the
French and English flags in Paris the first ray of hope
that had gladdened his eyes since he left Venice, and
Poerio, when he heard of the alliance in his dungeon,
" felt his chain grow lighter." It seemed as if those
who had sufi"ered most for Italy had a clearness of vision
denied to the rest.
What, if persisted in, would have been the most
serious obstacle was the opposition of Rattazzi, but he
was won over to assent, if not to approval, by Giuseppe
Lanza, a new figure on the parliamentary scene, who
86 CAVOUR cnAP.
had lately been elected Vice-President of the Chamber.
Ijanza (who was destined to be Prime Minister when the
Italians went to Rome) was then only slightly acquainted
with Cavour ; from being independent, his favourable
opinion carried more weight. With Rattazzi's adhesion
the majority of the Centres was secured. It was not
an enthusiastic majority, but it quieted its forebodings
by the argument which was beginning to take hold of
people's minds : that Cavour must be let do as he
chose. Hardly anj^ one liked him, but to see him stand
there, absolutely unhesitating and sure, among the
politicians of Buts and Ifs, began to generate the belief
that he was a man of fate who must be allowed to go
his way.
It is easy to be wise after the event, and it may seem
strange now that the alliance with the Western Powers
found so few, so very few cordial supporters. But
Cavour himself called the risks which attended it
" enormous." The great question for Sardinia was what
Austria would do. If she did nothing, the pros and
cons were perhaps evenly balanced ; if she joined Russia,
the pros would be strengthened ; if she joined the allies,
the situation for Sardinia would be grave indeed. The
republicans were already calling the war an alliance
with Austria. Were the description verified, it was
hard to see how the utmost genius or skill could draw
aught but evil from so unnatural a union.
The first invitation to Sardinia to co-operate came
separately from England, which had vetoed a monstrous
proposal on the part of Austria to occupy Alessandria,
in order, in any case, to prevent Piedmont from attack-
ing her during the war. Lord Clarendon instructed Sir
V THE GREAT MINISTRY 87
James Hudson to represent to Cavour that Austria's
fears would be set at rest if a portion of the Sardinian
army were sent to the East. The chief English motive
was really the conviction that numbers were urgently
required if the war was to succeed, and also the desire
to lessen the large numerical superiority of the French.
In the first instance Cavour replied that although he had
been all along in favour of participating in the war, his
Cabinet was too much against the idea for him to take
any immediate action. But the subject was revived. An
alliance with Piedmont was popular in England, where the
Government was in an Italian mood, having been made
terribly angry by the King of Naples' prohibition of the
sale of mules for transport purposes in the East In
December 1854 Cavour was formally invited to send a
corps which would enter the English service and receive
its pay from the British Exchequer. He would rather
have sent it on these terms than not at all, but the
scheme met with such unqualified condemnation from
La Marmora and General Dadormida, the Foreign
Minister, that it was set aside as not becoming to the
dignity of an independent nation. Meanwhile some-
thing had occurred which reinforced the arguments of
those who were against sending troops at all. After
hedging for a year, Austria signed a treaty couched in
vague terms, but which appeared to debar her, at any
rate, from taking sides with liussia — Italy's most flatter-
ing prospect. Napoleon III. expected much more from
it than this ; he thought that Austria was too much
compromi.scd to avoid throwing in her cause with the
allies. It must be said of Napoleon that among the
men rcsponsil)lc for the Ciimcaii War he ahjnc aimed at
88 CAVOUR cnAi>.
an object which, from a politicil, let alone moral view,
could justify it. He did not think that it would be
enough to obtain a few restrictions, not Avorth the paper
on which they were written, and the prospect of a new
lease of life to Turkish despotism. He certainly had one
paltry object of his own ; he wished to gratify his subjects
by military glory. He began to suspect the hollowness
of the testimony of the plebiscite ; the French people did
not like him, and never would like him. A war would
please the populace and the army ; it would also make
him look much more like a real Napoleon. But when
he had decided to go to war, he hoped to do something
worth doing. He thought (to use his own words) " that
no peace would be satisfactory which did not resuscitate
Poland." There, and nowhere else, were the wings of
the Russian eagle to be clipped. Moreover, the entire
French nation, which cared so little for Italy, would
have applauded the deliverance of Poland. On the
Polish question the ultramontane would have embraced
the socialist. France was never so united as in the
sympathy which she then felt for Poland, except in that
which she now feels for Russia. But Napoleon did not
think that he could resuscitate Poland without Austrian
assistance. At the close of 1854 he made sure of
getting it.
Cavour clung to his project. Probably his peneti-at-
ing mind guessed that Austria could not fight Russia,
which had saved her from destruction in 1849. There
now arose a demand for some guarantee M'hich should
give Piedmont, if she took part in the war, at least the
certainty of a moral advantage. The king remarked to
the French Ambassador that all this wrangling about
V THE GREAT MINISTRY 89
conditions was folly : " If we ally ourselves promptly
and frankly, we shall gain a great deal more." Doubt-
less Cavour thought the same, but to satisfy the country
it was necessary to demand, if nothing else, a promise
from the Western Powers that they would put pressure
on Austria to raise the sequestrations on the property of
the Lombard exiles. But the Powers, which were court-
ing Austria, refused to make any such promise, on which
the Foreign Minister, General Dadormida, resigned,
notwithstanding that the Lombard emigrants generously
begged the Government not to think of them. Cavour
offered the Foreign Office and the Presidency of the
Council to D' Azeglio, under whom he would have con-
sented to serve, but D' Azeglio declined to enter the
Ministry, whilst engaging not to oppose its policy.
Cavoui' then took the Foreign Office himself, and at
eight o'clock on the evening of the same day, January 10,
18.55, the protocol of the offensive and defensive alliance
of Sardinia with France and England was, at last,
signed.
Writing of the Crimean War in after days, Louis
Kossuth observed that never did a statesman throw
down a more hazardous and daring stake than Cavour
when he insisted on clenching the alliance after he had
found out that it must be done without any conditions
or guarantees. Cicero's Partem fortuna sibi vindkat
applies to diplomacy as well as to war, " but the stroke
was very bold and very dangerous."
CHAPTEE VI
THE 0R1MP]AN WAR — STRUGGLE WITH THE CHURCH
The speeches made by Cavour in defence of the alliance
before the two Houses of Parliament contain the clearest
exposition of his political faith that he had yet given.
They form a striking refutation of the theory, still held
by many, especially in Italy, that he was lifted into the
sphere of high political aims by a whirlwind none of his
sowing. In these speeches he is less occupied with
Piedmont, the kingdom of which he was Prime Minister,
than an English statesman who required war supplies
would be with Lancashire. " I shall be asked," he said,
" how can this treaty be of use to Italy 1 " The treaty
would help Italy in the only way in which, in the actual
conditions of Europe, she could be helped. The experi-
ence of the last years and of the past centuries had
shown that plots and revolutions could not make Italy ;
"at least," he added, "in my opinion it has shown it."
What, then, could make her 1 The raising of her credit.
To raise Italy's credit two things were needed : the proof
that an Italian Government could combine order with
liberty, and the proof that Italians could fight. He was
certain that the laurels won by Sardinian soldiers in the
CHAP. VI THE CRIMEAN WAR 91
East would do more for Italy than all that had been
done by those who thought to effect her regeneration by
rhetoric.
When Cavour spoke of himself in public, it was
generally in a light tone, and half in jest. Thus in
the debate on the treaty, he said that BrofFerio and his
friends could not be surprised at his welcoming the
English alliance when they had once done nothing but
tax him with Anglomania, and had given him the nick-
name of Milord Risorgimento. He could easily have
aroused enthusiasm if, instead of this banter, he had
spoken the words of passionate earnestness in which he
alluded to his part in the transaction in a letter to Mme.
de Circourt. He felt, he said, the tremendous responsi-
bility which weighed on him, and the dangers which
might arise from the course adopted, but duty and
honour dictated it. Since it had pleased Providence
that Piedmont, alone in Italy, should be free and inde-
pendent, Piedmont was bound to make use of its freedom
and independence to plead before Europe the cause of
the imhappy peninsula. This perilous task the king
and the country were resolved to persevere in to the
end. Those French liberals and doctrinaires who were
now weeping over the loss of liberty in France, after
helping to stifle it in Italy, might consider his policy
absurd and romantic ; he exposed himself to their cen-
sures, sure that all generous hearts would sympathise
with the attempt to call back to life a nation which for
centuries had been shut up in a horrible tomb. If he
failed, he reckoned on his friend reserving him a place
among the "eminent vanquished " who gathered round
her; in any case she would take the vent he had given
92 CAVOUR CHAP.
to his feelings as the avowal that all his life was conse-
crated to one sole woi% the emancijpation of his country. This
was not a boast uttered to bring down the plaudits of
the Senate ; it was a confession which escaped from
Cavour in one of the rare moments when, even in
private, he allowed himself to say what he felt. But
it speaks to posterity with a voice which silences
calumny.
After the point had been gained and the war em-
barked upon, the anxieties of the minister who was
solely responsible for it did not decrease. The House
of Savoy had survived Novara ; one royal sacrifice
served the purpose of an ancient immolation ; it pro-
pitiated fate. But a Novara in the East would have
been serious indeed. What Cavour feared, however,
was not defeat — it was inaction, of which the moral efiect
would have been nearly as bad. What if the laurels
he had spoken of were never won at all 1 The position
of the Sardinian contingent on the first line was not
secured without endless diplomacy ; Napoleon wished
to keep it out of sight as a reserve corps at Con-
stantinople. When, with the aid of England, it Avas
shipped for Balaclava, there still seemed a disposition
to hold it back. Cavour wrote bitterly of the prospect
of the Sardinian troops being sent by the allies to
perish of disease in the trenches while they advanced
at the pace of a yard a month. He described himself
and his colleagues as waiting with cruel impatience for
tidings of the first engagement: "Still no news from
the army ; it is distracting ! " Meanwhile the " Eeds "
and the " Blacks " were happy. Cavour did not fear
the first, except, perhaps, at Genoa; but he did fear
VI THE CRIMEAN WAR 93
the deepl)''-rooted forces of reaction, which were only
too likely to regain the ascendant if things went wrong
with the war.
At last the long- desired, almost despaired-of news
arrived. On August 16 the Piedmontese fought an
engagement on the Tchernaia ; it was not a great battle,
but it was a success, and the men showed courage and
steadiness. It was hailed at Turin as a veritable god-
send. The king, jaded and worn out by the trials which
this year had brought him, rejoiced as sovereign and
soldier at the prowess of his young troops. The public
underwent a general conversion to the war policy ; every
one thought in secret he had always approved of it.
The little flash of glory called attention to the other
merits of the Piedmontese soldier besides those he
displayed in the field. These merits were truly great.
The troops bore with the utmost patience the terrible
scourge of the cholera, which cost them 1200 II /es.
Their English allies were never tired of admiring the
good organisation and neatness of their camp, Avhich
was laid out in huts that kept off the burning sun better
than tents, intersected with paths and gardens. The
little army was fortified by the feeling that after all it
was serving no alien cause but its own. " Never mind,"
said a soldier, as they were struggling in the slough of
the trenches, "of this mud Italy will be made." They
all shared the hope which the king expressed in a letter
to La Marmora, " Next year we shall have war where
we had it before."
\'ictor Emmanuel's visit to the courts of Paris and
London was not Avithout political signifiraiice. Cavour
first intended that only D' Azeglio should accompany
94 CAVOUR OHAP.
him ; he always put the Marqnis forward when he
wished the country to appear highly respectable and
anti-revolutionary ; at the last moment lie decided to go
himself as well. In Paris the king was dismayed at
observing that Napoleon, in presence of Austria's in-
action, was bent on making peace. Cavour had also
counted on the continuance of the war, but he found
encouragement in the fact that when he left, the Emperor
told him to write confidentially to Walewski what, in
his opinion, he could do for Piedmont and Italy. In
England the king was most cordially received, and, if he
was rather embarrassed when a portion of the English
religious world hailed him as a kind of new Luther, he
could not help being struck by the real friendliness
shown to him by all classes. Cavour made a strongly
favourable impression on Prince Albert, and the Queen
expressed so much sympathy with his aims that he called
her "the best friend of Piedmont in England." He
carried away a curious souvenir of his visit to Windsor.
When Victor Emmanuel was made Knight of the Garter,
the Queen wished that he should know the meaning of
the oath he took ; whereupon Lord Palmerston at once
wrote down a translation of the words into Italian, and
handed it to the king. When Cavour heard of this, he
asked the king to give him the paper to preserve in the
Sardinian archives.
The preliminaries of the peace were signed in Feb-
ruary 1856. It was a great blow to Victor Emmanuel,
who had felt confident that if the war lasted long enough
for Russia to be placed in real danger, Austria would be
obliged to go to her assistance. The heavy bill for war
expenditure, largely exceeding the estimate, damped
VI THE CRIMEAN WAR 95
people's spirits, buoyed up for an instant by victory,
and they asked once more, what was the good of it all ?
Time was to answer the question ; but before showing
how an issue, which even Cavour viewed with disap-
pointment, proved, nevertheless, fruitful of more good
than the most sanguine advocate of the war had ven-
tured to hope for, a short account must be given of the
home politics of Piedmont in the year 1855.
" Battles long ago " never wholly lose their interest.
The mere words, " There was once a battle fought here "
make the traveller stop and think, even if he does not
know by what men of what race it was fought. But
the parliamentary struggles of one generation seem
passing stale and unprofitable to the next. Yet the
history of nations depends as much on their civil as on
their warlike contests. In Piedmont the strife always
turned on the same point : whether the State or the
Church should predominate. Free institutions do not
settle the question ; it is most manifestly rife to-day in
a free country, Canada. In Italy itself a great clerical
party is working silently but ceaselessly, under the mask
of abstention from the elections, to recover its political
power. The Sardinian Government could not withdraw
from the duel at will ; the Church in Piedmont was a
political force constantly on the lookout for an opening
to retake the position it had lost. Besides the moral
power derived from the support of the peasants and of
the old aristocracy, it wielded the material power of
an organised body, which was numerous and wealthy
in proportion to the numbers and wealth of the
population. The annual income of the Church, in-
cluiling the religious houses, was nearly £700,000 a
96 CAVOUR CHAP.
year. There were 23,000 ecclesiastics, or 1 monk to
every 670 inhabitants, 1 nun to every 1G95, 1
priest to every 214. In spite of the vast resources of
the Church, the parish priest in 25 10 villages received
a stipend of less than £20 per year. Not only radicals
but many moderate politicians were of opinion that the
great number of convents of the contemplative orders
formed an actual evil from tlie fact of their encouraging
able-bodied idleness, and the withdrawal of so consider-
able a fraction of the population from the work and
duties of citizenship. In the autumn of 1854, before
the Crimean War was thought of, Rattazzi framed a bill
by which the corporations that took no part in public
instruction, preaching, or nursing the sick, were abolished.
Since the last crisis on the civil marriage bill, which
wrecked D' Azeglio's ministry, Cavour, who all his life was
not theoretically opposed to coming to an understanding
with Rome, had made several advances to the Vatican,
but with no effect : Rome refused any modification of
the Concordat or any reduction of the privileges pos-
sessed by the clergy in the kingdom of Sardinia. On
the failure of these negotiations, Victor Emmanuel
despatched three high ecclesiastics on a private mission
to the Pope to see if the quarrel could be made up
This mission, which might have seriously compromised
the king, was not counselled by Cavour, who put a
violent end to it when he authorised Rattazzi to bring
in the bill for the suppression of religious houses.
Victor Emmanuel was deeply mortified, and the Pope
protested against this new " horrible and incredible
assault of the subalpine Government." Just at the
time that the measure was discussed in Parliament, the
VT STRUGGLE WITH THE CHURCH 97
king lost his mother, his wife, his infant child, and his
brother, a series of misfortunes in which the Church
saw "the finger of God." As the two queens and the
Duke of Genoa were devoted Catholics, their last hours
were rendered miserable by the impending sacrilegious
act. It is not to be wondered if the king was almost
driven out of his mind.
After the lugubrious interruption of the royal
funerals, the debate on the religious corporations was
resumed -with new vigour. Much the most effective
speeches on either side were those delivered by the
combatants of the two extremes, BrofFerio and Count
Solaro de la Margherita. BroflFerio, who regarded all
convents as a specific evil, had proposed their indiscrimi-
nate abolition in 1848, directly after the promulgation
of the Statute. Cavour, he said, had then defended
them. Was he therefore, mindful of their old warfare,
to vote against this Bill in order to place difficulties in
the way of the ]\Iinistry 1 Far from it. If the Govern-
ment were willing to abolish all the convents, so much
the better; if 490, he would vote for that; if 245,
he was ready to approve ; if 100, yes ; if 10, he
would vote for 10; if one convent, he agreed; if one
monk, his vote would be given for the abolition of one
monk. He would not imitate those speakers who had
attempted to conjure up a canonical or theological
defence of the Bill. The Pope was probably a better
theologian than he ; but he denied that the Church had
any prescriptive rights at all : all lier privileges and
property being held on sufferance of the State, which
could withdraw its tolGrp,tion when it chose. Illustrious
Italians, from Dante <lownwards, denounced tlic love of
H
98 CAVOUR CHAP.
power and money of the Church as the bane of Italy.
Had not Machiavelli said, " If Italy has fallen a prey
not only to powerful barbarians but to whatsoever
attack, we Italians are indebted for it to the Church
and to nothing else " 1 Respect for the intentions of the
pious founder was a good thing in its way (Broflerio
had the sense to see that this was the strongest argument
of the opposite party), yet, logically pursued, it would
have obliged us to this day to preserve the temple of
Delphi with a full chapter of priests. Some one might
have got up and said, " A very interesting result " ; but
Neo-Hellenism did not grow in the Sardinian Chamber
of Deputies. Brofferio censured the exemption of the
teaching and preaching orders — according to him, the
most mischievous of all. He blamed the Ministry for
excu.sing the measure on financial grounds. Either it
was just or it was unjust. If just, it needed no excuse ;
if unjust, no excuse could justify it. There was, he said,
no use in trying to make the Bill appear moderate in
the hopes that it would be borne more patiently by the
body against which it was aimed. The Court of Rome
knew no more or less. War to the knife or refusal to
kiss the Pope's toe : it was all one.
As the stoutest champion of the Bill was the Berangcr
of Piedmont, with his rough and ready eloquence, so its
most formidable critic was the old apostle of thrones
and altars, who would have taken Philip II. as a model
king, and Torquemada as an ideal statesman. His
onslaught was far stronger than the strictures of less
out-and-out reactionaries. It was easy, for instance, to
accuse of weakness the amiable sentimentality of the
Marquis Gustavo Cavour, who evoked Padre Cristoforo
VI STRUGGLE WITH THE CHURCH 99
from Manzoni's Promessi Sposi to plead for his fellow
friars ; but there was no destroying the force, so far as
it went, of Count Solaro's question, Were they Catholics,
or were they not 1 To endorse a policy not approved by
the Church was to cease, ipso facto, to be a Catholic.
The reasoning might not be true, but it was clear.
Charles Albert's old minister drew a beautiful picture
of the country in the good old times before the Statute.
Then the people did not lack bread. Life and property
and the good name of citizens were safeguarded. The
finances were not exhausted ; the taxes were not exces-
sive ; the revenue was not diminishing ; treaties were
observed ; Piedmont possessed that consideration of
foreign courts which a wise government can always
command, even without the prestige of force : — a picture
drawn in a fine artistic free-hand, not slavishly subser-
vient to fact ; but as to the taxes, at least, its correctness
was not to be gainsaid. Seen from this point of view,
the progress of all modern States means retrogression,
a paradox which has passed now from the friends of the
old order, few of whom have still the courage to sus-
tain it, to the socialists, the sum of whose contentions
it exactly formulates. Count Solaro enlarged on the
dreadful evils that would result from the Bill were it to
become law, not to the religious corporations, which
a wiser generation and renewed endowments would
restore to more than their pristine prosperity, but to
the country which suffered the perpetration of a sin so
enormous that words were powerless to describe it.
After the war dances of BrolTerio and Solaro dc la
Margherita, Cavour made a tenipenitc speech, in which
he said that he agreed with l>roli'crio in placing moral
100 CAVOUR cuAP.
expediency above a question of finance, but that if this
were granted, the Government could not be indifferent,
in the present state of the finances, to a saving of nearly
a million francs a year (it being proposed to defray out of
the confiscated ecclesiastical property a grant to that
amount which the State paid to the poorer clergy). He
defended the expropriation of a convent called Santa
Croce to meet the need of a hospital for the military
cholera patients. Passing on to larger considerations,
he recognised the great services rendered by religious
orders in past times, when Europe was emerging from
barbarism, and was still a prey to the violence and
ignorance of feudal society. Had the religious com-
munities not met a want, they would not have taken
root. Civilisation, literature, agriculture, and above all
the poor, neglected and oppressed by the secular power,
owed them an immense debt. But coming down to the
present day, Cavour argued that the original part
played by monks and friars was now filled, and of
necessity more efficaciously filled, by laymen. Their
presence in superabundant numbers in the modern State
was an anachronism. It was only needful to compare
the countries where they abounded in number and in
influence, as in Spain and the kingdom of Naples, with
England, Prussia, or France, to see whether it was pos-
sible to allege that they tended to enlightenment and
prosperity.
The Bill was passed in the Chamber of Deputies on
March 2, 1855, by 170 ayes against 36 noes; the
majority, so much larger than the Government could
usually command, showed that it rested on undoubted
popular support. It was then sent up to the Senate, but
VI STRUGGLE WITH THE CHURCH 101
while it was being discussed there, an incident occurred
which nearly caused a political convulsion. The Arch-
bishop of Novara and the Bishop of Mondovi wrote to
the king promising that if the Bill were withdrawn,
the Church in Piedmont would make up the sum of
92,841,230 frs., which the Government expected to gain
by the suppressions. The king was delighted with the
proposal, not perceiving the hopelessness of getting it
approved by the Chamber of Deputies, which had
already passed the measure, and the impossibility of
settling the matter " out of court " without parliamentary
sanction. He invited Cavour to accede, and on his
refusal, he accepted the resignation of the Ministry.
Personally the king had always a certain sense of relief
in parting with Cavour. He thought now that he could
get on without him, but he was to be undeceived.
"While he was endeavouring to find some one to under-
take the formation of a new cabinet, the country became
agitated as it had not been since the stormy year of
revolution. Angry crowds gathered in Piazza Castello,
within a few yards of the royal palace. " One of these
days," Victor Emmanuel said impatiently to his trusted
valet, Cinzano," I'll make an end of these demonstrations,"
to which the descendant of Gil Bias is reported to have
replied as he looked out of window : " And if they made
an end of Us 1 " The whole population woke up to the
fact that surrender on this point involved surrender
along all. the line. The king, however, to whom the
compromise appeared in the light of peace with tlie dead
and with the living, with the Supci-ga and with the
Vatican, was very unwilling to yield. At the same
time no one could be found to form a niiiiistry. In this
102 CAVOUR CHAP.
dangerous crisis, Massimo d' Azeglio Avrote a letter to his
sovereign which is believed to have been what convinced
him. Recalling the Spanish royal personage whom
courtiers let burn to death sooner than deviate from the
motto, ne touchez pas la Heine, D' Azeglio protested that if
he was to risk his head, or totally to lose the king's
favour, he would think himself the vilest of mankind if
he did not write the words which he had not been per-
mitted to speak. As an old and faithful servant, who
had never thought bat of his king's welfare and the
good of the coimtry, he conjured him with tears in his
eyes, and kneeling at his feet, to go no further on the
path he was entering. A monkish intrigue had suc-
ceeded in breaking up the work of his reign, agitating
the country, shaking the constitution and obscuring the
royal name for good faith. There was not a moment to
lose ; similar intrigues had led the House of Bourbon
and the House of Stuart to their destruction. Let the
king take heed while there was time ! It was long
before Victor Emmanuel quite forgave his old friend,
but the warning voice v/as not raised in vain.
Cavour was recalled. The Bill was presented again
to the Senate with some slight modifications. One
religious order was spared by Rattazzi, rather against
the will of Cavour, who described it as "absolutely
useless," because the king particularly wished to save it,
the nuns having been favourites of his mother. To
Cavour, Victor Emmanuel's resistance had seemed simj)ly
a fit of superstitious folly ; he did not sufficiently realise
how distasteful the whole affair must be to a man like
the king, who said to General Durando when he was
starting for the Crimea, "You are fortunate, General, in
VI STRUGGLE WITH THE CHURCH 103
going to fight the Russians, while I stay here to fight
monks and nuns." In its amended form the Bill passed
on May 29. Cavour had triumphed completelj', but he
came out of the straggle physically and mentally ex-
hausted ; " a struggle," he wrote to his Geneva friends,
" carried on in Parliament, in the drawing-rooms, at the
court as in the street, and rendered more painful by a
crowd of distressing events." As usual he sought
refreshment in the fields of Leri, and when, after a brief
rest, he returned to Turin, the furious passions which
had surged round this domestic duel were beginning to
cool as the eyes of the nation became more and more
fixed on the conflict in the East and its significance to
Italy.
We can proceed now mth the story of Cavour's work
in the memorable year which opened so gloomily with a
truce that appeared to leave felix Austria mistress of the
situation. Without firing a shot, that Power could con-
sider herself the chief gainer by the war. Napoleon III.,
anxious for peace, welcomed her mediation, and in
England, though peace was unpopular, and Austrian
selfishness during the war had not been admired, Lord
Palmerston was handicapped by the idea which just then
occupied his mind, that Austria chiefly stood in the way
of what, as an Englishman, he most feared in European
politics, a Franco -Russian alliance. He divined the
probability, almost the inevitability, of such an alliance
at a date when most persons would have thought it an
absurd fiction. Thus, in January 1856, both the French
and English Governments were in a phase of opinion
which promised nothing to Italian aspirations. The
•juestion was, Would it be possil)le for one capable Ijraiii
104 CAVOUR ciiAr.
to bend them to its purposes? In the first instance,
Cavour believed that it would not. He did not mean to
represent his country at the Congress of Paris, nor did
he hope that any good would come out of it for Italy.
He wished, however, that Sardinia should figure, if not
to her advantage, at any rate with dignity and decorum,
and he turned, as he was wont to do when he wanted a
"perfect knight," to the rivale, Massimo d' Azeglio.
Both men had the little private joke of calling one
another by this name in their familiar letters, which
shows how free they were from anj?^ real jealousy.
D' Azeglio was ready to accept what had the prospect of
being a most thankless office, but on one condition —
that the Sardinian plenipotentiary should be received on
an equality with the representatives of the great Powers.
Cavour knew that this condition had been explicitly
refused ; to please Austria, France and England declared
that Sardinia Avould only be invited to share in those
sittings of the Congress which affected her interests,
Cavour did not let D' Azeglio know of the refusal ; it
was a case of the "tortuous ways of Count Cavour," of
which the Prince Consort complained some years later.
Cavour was scrupulous about the principles which he
considered vital, but in dealing with men, and especially
in dealing with his old colleague, he made more mental
reservations than a severe moralist would allow. In the
present instance the deception failed, for D' Azeglio,
seized at the last moments with suspicions, insisted on
seeing the diplomatic notes which had been exchanged
relative to the Congress. In reading these, he dis-
covered the true state of affairs, and in a violent fit of
anger he refused to go. This incident was the sole cause
?1 STRUGGLE WITH THE CHURCH 105
of the departure of Cavour himself in the place of his
indignant nominee. So are rough-hewn ends shaped.
In January, just before the armistice, Cavour had
sent the memorandum on what could be done by the
Emperor for Italy, which Napoleon authorised him to
write when he was in Paris. The first draft of the
document was Avritten by D' Azeglio, in whose literary
style Cavour felt more faith than in his own ; but this
was not used. It was " magnificent," Cavour said, but
" too diffuse and long." With the Emperor it was needful
to put everything in the most concrete form, and to take a
general view of all the hypotheses, except war with
Austria, which, "for the present," did not enter into
his ideas. D' Azeglio was offended at the rejection of
his work. He wrote complainingly, " I may be called a
fool about everything else. Amen ; but about Italy, no ! "
The memorandum actually sent was short and moderate
in tone, the chief point recommended being the evacua-
tion of Bologna by the Austrians. It has been some-
times quoted in order to convict Cavour, at this period,
of having held poor and narrow views of the future of
Italy. But a man who is mounting a stair does not put
his foot on the highest step first. At this stage in his
political life most of Cavour's biographers pause to
discuss the often-put question. Was he already aiming
at Italian unity ? Perhaps the best answer is, that
really it does not matter. To be very anxious to prove
the affirmative is to misunderstand the grounds on
which we may call Cavour one of the greatest of states-
men. Those grounds arc not what he hoped to do, but
what ho did. He was not a Prometheus chained to a
rock, who hopes till hope creates the thing it contem-
106 CAVOUK CHAP.
plates. Constitutionally he was easily discouraged. In
the abstract he rather exaggerated difficulties than
minimised them ; but in the face of any present obstacle
an invincible confidence came over him in his power to
surmount it. As he once wrote of himself — moderate
in opinion, he was favourable, rather than not, to extreme
and audacious means. However long it may have been
before the union of all parts of Italy seemed to Cavour
a goal within the range of practical politics (that he
always thought it a desirable goal there is not the
smallest doubt), there was one, the Tiresias of the old
order, who said boldly to the Prime Minister of Piedmont
at this very juncture : You are steering straight to
Italian unity. Solaro de la Margherita, who once
declared that " in speaking of kings all who had not
sold their consciences were seized with religious terror,"
saw what he would not see, more clearly than it was
seen by those who would have died to make it true.
Standing on the brink of the past, the old statesman
warned back the future. In the debate on the loan for
thirty million francs required to meet the excess in war
expenditure (January 14), Count Solaro said: "The
object, Italian unity, is not hidden in the mysteries of
the Cabinet ; it glimmers out, clear as the light of day,
from the concatenation of so many circumstances that I
lift the veil of no arcanum in speaking of it ; and even
if I did, it would be my duty to lift it and warn all
concerned of the unwisdom and impropriety of those
aspirations." Deny it who would, he continued, unity
was what was aimed at — what was laboured for with
indefatigable activity. Italian unity ! How could it
sound to the other Italian princes t What was its real
VI STRUGGLE WITH THE CHURCH 107
meaning for the Pope 1 The unity of Italy could only
be achieved either by submitting the whole peninsula to
the Eoman Pontift" or by depriving him of the temporal
power. And the speaker ended by prophesying, his
only prophecy which failed, that this shocking event
would not happen in the present century, whatever God
might permit in the next.
An unwary minister would have taken up the ball
and thrown it back. Cavour's presence of mind prompted
him to leave it where it lay. He did not say, " No, we
are not working for Italian unity ; no, we do not wish to
overthrow the Pope." He answered that in speaking
of the future of Italy it was impossible for a Piedmontese
minister to entirely separate his desires, his sympathies,
from what he considered his political duty : hence there
was no more slippery ground than that on which, with
consummate art, the Deputy Solaro de la Margherita
had tried to draw him. But, he said, he would avail
himself of the privilege generally conceded to the
ministers of a constitutional government when questions
were still pending — to defer his reply till the case was
closed {a guerra finita).
CHAPTER VII
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS
With the foreboding that this would be the last act of
his political life, Cavour started on the mission which
he had almost no choice but to assume, in spite of his
extreme repugnance for the role of diplomatist. A few
days after his arrival in Paris he was informed that the
Emperor, in concert with England, conceded the point
as to placing the representative of Sardinia on the same
footing as the others. Though it does not seem to have
struck Cavour, the sudden change of intention was
evidently an involuntary tribute to himself : how could
such a man be treated as an inferior 1 Only the form
was won ; the substance remained in doubt. Lord
Clarendon hinted to the Piedmontese plenipotentiary
that he had " too much tact " to mix in discussions
which did not concern him. But Cavour was not dis-
couraged. With his usual quick rebound he was soon
thoroughly braced up to the work before him. As he
began to see his way, he was rather spurred on than
disconcerted by the chorus of dismal predictions which
the Congress and his own part in it evoked at home.
Almost every notable man in Piedmont contributed his
CHAP. VII- THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 109
quota of melancholy vaticination, in which the note, " I
told you so ! " was already audible. Who could plead
Italy's cause in a congress in which Austria had a voice 1
Was there ever such midsummer madness ? "But we
knew how it would be from the first."
Cavour had said that he hated playing at diplomacy ;
but some of his smaller, as well as larger gifts, marked
him out as a successful diplomatist. He was watchful
for little advantages. All who could help the cause
were enlisted in its service. Thus he made a convert of
a fair Countess, to whose charms Napoleon III. was sup-
posed not to be insensible. Paris was full of notabilities
whom he sought to turn into useful allies. In a letter
to the Marquis Emanuel d'Azeglio (the Sardinian
Minister in London) he tells how he even "made up"
to Lady Holland's dog with such success that he got it
to put its large paws on his new coat ! When the
Marchioness of Ely arrived to be present on the part of
the Queen at the birth of the Prince Imperial, Cavour,
knowing her to be the Queen's intimate correspondent,
lost no time in paying his court to her ; but in this
instance an acquaintance begun from political motives
ripened into real friendship on both sides. A point
which is worth observing is that, as minister, no one
ever made less use of what may be called the influence
of society than Cavour. He never tried to make him-
self agreeable at Turin, least of all to the king. For a
long time he was considered haughty by those who did
not know him, and arbitrary by those who did. But
abroad he underwent a change which probably came
about from his revealing not less but more of his natural
self. " He has that petulance," Massimo d' Azcglio
110 CAVOUR . CHAr.
said, "which is exactl}'^ what they like in Paris."
Abroad he could give this quality freer play than in
Italy, where vivacity offends in a serious man. He
charmed even those who did not share his opinions.
At a dinner given by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris
to all the members of the Congress, he sat next to the
Abb6 Darboy, one day to succeed to the see and meet a
martyr's death in the Commune. The Abbe never
forgot his neighbour of that evening, and in 1870, at
Rome during the CEcumenical Council, when some one
mentioned Oavour's name, he exclaimed, throwing
up his hands, " Ah, that was a man in a thousand !
He had not the slightest sentiment of hate in his
heart."
In the two months which Cavour spent in Paris he
perceived very clearly that Walewski and the other
French ministers would have to be reckoned more as
opponents than friends in the future development of
affairs. He found, however, two men who could be
trusted to continue his work by incessantly pushing
Napoleon III. in an Italian direction ; one was Prince
Napoleon, the other, Dr. Conneau, a person entirely
in the Imperial confidence. Henceforth Dr. Conneau
was the secret, and for a long time quite unsuspected,
intermediary between Cavour and the Emperor. The
idea of establishing this channel of communication first
occurred to Count Arese, whose own influence at the
Tuileries, though exercised with prudent reserve, was
of no slight importance. This Milanese nobleman per-
sonified, as it were, all the proud hatred of the Lombard
aristocracy for an alien yoke. The truest and most
disinterested friend of Queen Hortense, Arese remained
VII THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 111
faithhilly attached to her son in good and evil fortune.
He would never turn the friendship to account for him-
self. When Napoleon offered to ask as a personal favour
for the removal of the sequestration on his family
property, he answered that he preferred to take his
chance with the rest. He won the lasting regard of the
Empress, though she knew that he influenced Napoleon
in a sense contrary to her own political sympathies.
The visits of this high-minded gentleman and devoted
friend were as welcome at a court crowded with self-
seekers and charlatans as they were to be later in the
solitude of Chislehurst. Arese was in Paris during the
Congress, having been chosen by the king, at Cavour's
urgent request, to carry his congratulations to the
Emperor on the birth of the Prince Imperial.
At the earlier sittings of the Congress, Cavour kept
in the background ; his instinct as a man of the world,
and that mixture of astuteness and simplicity which he
shared with many of his countrymen (even those of no
education), guided him in filling a difficult and, in some
respects, an embarrassing position. He spoke, when he
did .speak, in as brief terms as could serve to express
his opinion. But this modest attitude only threw into
relief his inalienable superiority. He cast about the
shadow of future greatness. The representative of the
second-rate Power, who sat there only by favour, was to
make so much more history than any of his colleagues !
Curiously enough the only one of the })]enipotcntiaries
who had a prior acquaintance with Cavour was the
Austrian, Count Buol, who was formerly ambassador at
Turin. In old days, before 1848, he had played whist
with him. "I know M. de Cavour," he said; "I am
112 OAVOUR CHAP.
afraid he will give us defil h retordre." Cavour carefully
avoided, however, unnecessary friction. Loyal to both
the allies, he managed to steer between their not always
consonant aims while preserving his own independence,
by taking what seemed, on the whole, the most liberal
side in debated questions. With Count Buol he main-
tained courteous if formal relations, and he soon made
a thorough conquest of Count Orloff, who did not begin
by being prepossessed in favour of the minister who
alone had caused the Sardinian attack on Russia, but
who ended on far better terms with him than with his
Austrian colleague, of whom he said to Cavour in a voice
meant to be heard, " Count Buol talks exactly as if
Austria had taken Sebastopol ! "
With regard to Cavour's real business, the fate of
Italy, he was obliged to proceed with a restraint which
few men would have had the self-control to observe.
This was what had been predicted ; how, in fact, putting
aside Austria, could an Italian patriot speak freely of
nationality, of alien dominion, of the rights of peoples,
in an assembly of old diplomatists, conservative by the
nature of their profession and religiously in awe of
treaties by the responsibility of their office? It was
only just before the signature of peace that Cavour
cautiously launched his bolt in the shape of a note on
the situation of affairs in Italy, addressed to the English
and French plenipotentiaries. It was conceived on the
same lines as the letter to Walewski : the Austrian
occupation of the Roman Legations was again made a
sort of test question, to which particular weight Avas
attached. One reason why Cavour dwelt so much on
this point was that the occupation could be assailed on
VII THE COXGRESS OF PARIS 113
legal grounds, leaving nationality alone. As, moreover,
it was admitted that the Papal Government would fall
in Romagna were the Austrians withdrawn, the principle
of the destruction of the temporal power of the Pope
would be granted from the moment that their departure
was declared expedient. While D' Azeglio thought that
the separation of Romagna from the States of the Church
would be "positively mischievous," Cavour looked upon
it in the light of the first step to far greater changes.
Many other schemes were floating in his brain for which
he worked feverishly in private, though he did not
venture to support them officially. The object nearest
his heart was the union or rather reunion of Parma and
Modena with Piedmont, to which those duchies had
annexed themselves spontaneously in 1848. In order
to get rid of the Duke of Modena and Duchess of Parma
with the consent of Europe, Cavour was desperately
anxious to find them — other situations. Every throne
that was or could be made vacant was re\newed in turn ;
Greece, Wallachia, and Moldavia, anywhere out of Italy
would do; the Duchess, not a very youthful widow,
was to marry this or that prince to obligingly facilitate
matters : — abortive projects, which seem absurd now, but
Cavour was willing to try everything to gain anything.
In weaving these plans Cavour employed the energy of
which Prince Napoleon complained that he did not
show enough in the Congress, though to have shown
more would have led to a rebuff, or, perhaps, to enforced
retirement. Still there was one point which, in the
Congress, as out of it, he never treated with moderation :
this was the .sequestration of Lombard estates. When
Count Buol spoke of an aiimcsty including nearly all
I
114 CAVOUR CHAP.
cases, he replied that he would not renew diplomatic
relations with Vienna while one exception remained. In
an audience with the Emperor, after Walewski had
ingeniously tried to excuse Austria for exercising her
"I'ights" over her ex-subjects, Cavour burst out with
the declaration that if he had 150,000 men at his dis-
posal he would make it a casus belli with Austria that
very day.
Peace was signed on March 30. A supplementary
sitting Avas held on April 8, when the President, Count
Walewski, by express order of the Emperor, and to the
astonishment of all present, proposed for discussion the
French and Austrian occupations of the Roman States
and the conduct of the king of Naples (his own favourite
monarch) as likely to provoke grave complications and
to compromise the peace of Europe. This was a victory
for Cavour, as it was the direct result of his " note," but
he was afraid that the discussion of the Roman question
would be kept within the narrowest limits in consequence
of its affecting France as well as Austria. Walewski
wished so to limit it ; he was embarrassed by the analogy
of the French in Rome, and by the fear of saying some-
thing unflattering of the Pope. But Napoleon would
not have risked the discussion at all had he shared his
minister's sensitiveness. The truth was, that he was
always looking out for an excuse which would serve
with the clerical party in France for recalling his troops
from Rome. He was thinking then of withdrawing
them so .as to oblige Austria to Avithdraw her forces
from the Legations. It does not appear that Cavour
guessed this. In his own speech he glided over the
presence of the French in Rome as lightly as he could,
vil THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 115
merel}'^ saying that his Government " desired " the com-
plete evacuation of the Eoman States ; but his reserve
was not imitated by Lord Clarendon, nor could Napoleon
have expected that it would be. When some one asked
Lord Palmerston for a definition of the difference between
"occupation" and "business," he answered on the spur
of the moment — " There is a French occupation of Eome,
but they have no business there ; " and this witticism
correctly represented English opinion on the subject. It
was natural, therefore, that the British plenipotentiary
should make no distinction between the French in Rome
and the Austrians at Bologna : he denounced both occu-
pations as equally to be condemned and equally calculated
to disturb the balance of power, but at the root of the
matter was the abominable misgovernment, which made
it impossible to leave the Pope to his subjects without
fear of revolution. The papal administration was the
opprobrium of Europe. As to the king of Naples, if he
did not soon mend his ways and listen to the advice of
the Powers, it would become their duty to enforce it by
arguments of a kind which he could not refuse to obey.
An extraordinary sensation Avas created by the si)eech
of which this is a bald summary ; it might have been
spoken, Cavour said, "by an Italian radical," and the
vehemence Avith which it was delivered doubled its
effect. Lord Clarendon, who, at the beginning of the
Congress, was nervous as to what Cavour might do, had
been worked up to such a pitch of indignation by the
private conversations of his outwardly discreet colleague
that he himself threw diplomatic reserve to the winds.
Walewski, dreadfully uncomfortable about the Pope,
tried to bring the discussion back within politer bounds ;
116 CAVOUR CHAP.
Buol was stiffly indignant ; OrlofF, indifferent about the
Pope, was on tenter-hooks as to Russia's friend, the
king of Naples ; the Prussian plenipotentiary said that
he had no instructions ; the Grand Vizier was the only
person who remained quite calm. Cavour's concluding
speech was dignified and prudent ; his real comment on
the proceedings was the remark which he made to every
one after the sitting was over : "You see there is only
one solution — the cannon ! "
On April 11 he called on Lord Clarendon with the
intention of driving home this inference. Two things,
he said, resulted from what had passed : firstly, that
Austria was resolved to make no concession ; secondly,
that Italy had nothing to expect from diplomacy. This
being so, the position of Sardinia became extremely
difficult : either she must make it up with the Pope and
with Austria, or she must prepare, with prudence, for
war with Austria. In the first alternative he should
retire, to make place for the retrogrades ; in the second
he wished to be sure that his views were not in opposi-
tion to those of " our best ally," England. Lord
Clarendon "furiously caressed his chin," but he seemed
by no means surprised " You are perfectly right," he
said, " only it must not be talked about." Cavour then
said that war did not alarm him, and, when once begun,
they were determined that it should be to the knife
(using the English phrase) ; he added that, however
short a time it lasted, England would be obliged to help
them. Lord Clarendon, taking his hand from his chin,
replied, " Certainly, with all our hearts."
When, after Cavour's death, the text of this conversa-
tion was printed, Lord Clarendon denied in the House
VII THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 117
of Lords having ever encouraged Piedmont to go to war
with Austria. Nevertheless, it is impossible that Cavour,
who wrote his account of the interview directly after it
occurred, could hure been mistaken about the words
which may well have escaped from the memory of the
speaker in an interval of six years. With regard to the
sense, the sequel proved that Lord Clarendon did not
attach the official value to what he said which, for a
moment, Cavour hoped to find in it. Lord Clarendon's
speech before the Congress gives evidence of a state of
mind ^vrought to the utmost excitement by the tale of
Italy's sufferings, and it is not surprising if, speaking as
a private individual, he used still stronger expressions
of sympathy. Nor is it surprising that Cavour attributed
more weight to these expressions than they merited.
Up till now, he had never counted on more than moral
support from England ; he admitted to himself that the
English alliance, which he would have infinitely preferred
to any other, was a dream. But the thought now
flashed on him that it might become a reality. He
decided to pay a short visit to England, which Avas use-
ful, because it dispelled illusions, always dangerous in
politics. In the damp air of the Thames, Lord Claren-
don seemed no longer the same enthusiast, and Lord
Palmerston pleaded the excuse of a domestic affliction
for seeing very little of Cavour. The Queen was kind
as ever, but the momentary hope conceived in Paris
vanished. One after-consequence of this visit was Lord
Lyndhurst's motion, which nearly caused an estrangement
between the Briti.sh and Sar<linian Covernments. Cavour
had taken too literally the assurance that on the subject
of Italy there was no division of parties. The warmly
118 CAVOUR CHAP.
Italian speech of the veteran conservative statesman
which had been inspired by him was not meant to
embarrass the ministry, but that was its effect, and it
was natural that they should feel some resentment.
Fortunately the cloud soon passed away, and if Cavour
imagined to gain anything from flirtations with the Tory
party he was undeceived by the violently pro- Austrian
speech delivered by Mr. Disraeli in July. The sincere
goodwill of individuals such as Lord Lyndhurst and
Lord Stanhope (who invented the phrase " Italy for the
Italians," so often repeated later) did not represent the
then prevailing sentiment of the party as a whole.
Cavour returned to Turin without bringing, as
Massimo d'Azeglio expressed it, "even the smallest
duchy in his pocket" ; yet satisfied with his work, for he
rightly judged that, though there was no material gain,
the moral victory was complete. The recalcitration of
Austria, which had reached the point of threatening war
if Parma were joined to Piedmont, contained the germs
of her dissolution as an Italian power. The temporal
power of the Pope had been ealled in question for the
first time, not in the lodge of a secret society, but in the
council chamber of Europe. Beaten on the lower plane,
Cavour had won on the higher ; checked as a Piedmont-
ese, he was triumphant as an Italian. In spite of the
approval voted by both Houses of Parliament, some
shade of disappointment existed in Piedmont, but
throughout Italy there was exultation. The Tuscan
patriots sent the statesman a bust of himself, with the
happily chosen inscription : " Colui che la difese a viso
aperto." ^
' "He who defended her with open face " (Dante),
vn THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 119
The position of Piedmont after the Congress of Paris
was one to which it would be difficult to find a parallel.
States are commonly at peace or at war ; if at peace,
even where there are smouldering enmities, an appear-
ance is kept up of mutual toleration. But in Piedmont
the king, government, and people were already morally
at war with Austria. When Cavour said in the Chamber
that the two months during which he sat side by side
with the Austrian plenipotentiaries had left in his mind
no personal animus against them, as he was glad to
admit their generally courteous conduct, but the most
intimate conviction that any understanding between the
two countries was unattainable, he was certainly aware
of the grave significance of his words. Great solutions
were not the work of the pen, and diplomacy was power-
less to change the fate of peoples : these were the con-
clusions which he brought away from Congress. Every
one knew that they meant war. Except for the order
for marching, the truce imposed by Novara was broken.
Those who had been edified by Cavour's cautious language
in Paris stood aghast. It was well enough that Pied-
mont should protest in a calm, academic way, but protest
was now abandoned for defiance. The change was the
more unwelcome, because both in France and England
the pendulum of the clock was swinging toAvards Austria.
Napoleon disliked to commit himself to any policj^, and
after seeming to adopt one side he invariably swayed to
the other. There was not the same intentional incon-
sistency in England, but the fact that Austria was
undergoing a detJichment from Russia improved her
relations with England. Lord Pahncrston suspected
Cavour of being too frien<lly with Russia. In addition
120 CAVOUR CHAP.
to this, there was a real fear in England lest Piedmont
should pay dearly for what was considered its rashness.
The British Government put the question to Cavour,
whether it would not be better to disarm the opposition
of Austria by depriving her of every plausible reason
for combating the policy of Piedmont 1 He replied that
only Count Solaro de la Margherita and his friends
could live on amicable terms with the oppressors of
Italy ; England was at liberty to renew her old alliance
with Austria if she chose, but upon that ground he
could not follow her ; Lord Palmerston might end where
Lord Castlereagh began, but they would remain faithful
to their principles whatever happened.
Two causes tended to prolong a coldness that was
new in the intercourse between England and Piedmont.
One was the frontier question of Bolgrad, in which, how-
ever, Cavour finally acted as mediator, his suggestion being
accepted both by the English and the Russian Govern-
ments. The other was the Cagliari aflfair : the Cagliari,
a Sardinian merchant ship, which carried the ill-fated
expedition of Pisacane to Sapri, was captured by the
Neapolitan Government, and the crew, two of whom
were English, were taken in chains to Salerno. At first
the English Foreign Office seemed inclined to back up
an energetic demand for restitution, but afterwards it
deprecated strong measures, and left Sardinia somewhat
in the lurch. Circumstances combined, therefore, to
render Cavour isolated, but he understood that this was
a reason to advance, not to retreat. Had Sardinia
seemed to bend to the peaceable advice of her friends
abroad, her ascendenc}'^ in Italy would have been gone
for ever. Cavour drilled the army, and drew nearer to
VII THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 121
those great popular forces that were destined to make
Italy, which could be freed, but never regenerated, by
the sword. Piedmontese statesmen had always looked
askance at these forces; Cavour was becoming fully
alive to the vast motive power they would place in the
hands of the man who could command them, and whom
they could not command. He was free from the caste pre-
judices which caused many even good patriots of that
date to hold the masses in horror. If he had prejudices
they were against the men of his own order. Once, in
summing up the results of an unsatisfactory general
election, he wrote : " A dozen marquises, two dozen
counts, without reckoning barons and cavalieri — it was
enough to drive one mad ! " When he had to do with
men born of the people, he instinctively treated them on
a perfect equality, not a common trait, if the truth were
told. In August 1856 an event took place which had
far-reaching consequences : the first interview between
Cavour and Garibaldi. Cavour was one of Garibaldi's
earliest admirers ; he applauded his exploits at Monte-
video and at Rome, when the old Piedmontese party
tried to belittle him and obliged Charles Albert to
decline his services. In one way the hero was a man
after the minister's own heart : he was absolutely prac-
tical ; he might be obstinate or rash, but he was no
doctrinaire. Cavour never changed his opinion of people,
and even after the General became his enemy he still
admired and esteemed him. In 1856 he received him
with flattering courtesy, the first recognition he had met
with fiom any person in authority in his own state, from
which, after 1849, he had been, not exactly banished,
but invited to depart. During the same autumn Cavour
122 CAVOUR CHAV.
began to see much of Giuseppe La Farina, a Sicilian
exile, who was intimately connected with the new party,
which, despairing alike of the existing governments and
of the republic, took for its watchword, " Italy under
Victor Emmanuel." In the first instance. La Farina was
commissioned to ask Cavour to explain his views. His
answer was perfectly frank. He had faith, he said, in
the ultimate union of Italy in one state, with Eome for
its capital ; but he was not sufficiently acquainted with
the other provinces to know whether the country was
ripe for so great a transformation. He was minister of
the king of Sardinia, and he could not and ought not
to do anything which would compromise the dynasty.
If the Italians were really ready for unity, he had the
hope that the opportunity of getting it would not be
very long delayed ; meanwhile, as not one of his political
friends believed in its possibility, the cause would only
be injured were it known that he had direct dealings
with the men who were working for it. He was will-
ing to receive La Farina whenever he liked, but on the
understanding that he came in the morning before it
was light, and that, if Parliament or diplomacy got wind
of their relations, he should reply that he knew nothing
about him. The interviews took place almost daily for
four years, without any one knowing of them. Some
hours before dawn La Farina ascended the narrow secret
staircase which led directly to Cavour's bedroom, and
he was gone when the city awakened. In spite of the
almost melodramatic complexion of these secret meet-
ings, it must not be supposed, as some have supposed,
that Cavour pulled the wires of all the conspiracies in
Italy. His visitor kept him informed of the progress
VII THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 123
made, the propaganda carried on, but he rarely inter-
fered. He still thought that his own business was
to make Piedmont an object-lesson in constitutional
monarchy, and to get the Austrians out of Italy. That
done, the country, left to itself, must decide whether it
would unite or not.
After the Congress of Paris, Cavour took the Foreign
Office in addition to the Ministry of Finance. He could
not trust either of these departments to other hands ;
and the country approved, for the conviction gained
ground that, whether he was mad or not, only he could
extricate it from the situation into which he had drawn
it. "When one senator called him a " dictator," he
retorted that, if Parliament refused him its support, he
should go away, which was not the habit of dictators.
But the mere threat of resignation brought the most
recalcitrant to reason. Thus he continued to obtain
large sums to carry out the works he deemed necessary,
one of the greatest of which was the transfer of the
arsenal from Genoa to Spezia — a step which angered
the Genoese on one side, and on the other the old
conservatives, who asked what had little Piedmont to
do ^dth big fleets ? " But the fact was," Count Solaro
said with a sneer, " the Prime Minister had all Italy in
view, and was preparing for the future kingdom."
Cavour also forced Parliament to vote the supplies
required for undertaking the boring of Mont Cenis,
which most of the deputies expected would be a total
failure. In proposing this vote he declared that they
must advance or peri-sh. He was delighted with a
phra.se with which Lord Palmerston concluded a con-
gratulatory letter sent to the Sardinian legaliun in
124 CAVOUR CHAP.
London, and written in elegant Italian : " Henceforth
no one will talk of the works of the ancient Romans."
This little episode wiped out the last traces of misunder-
standing between the two statesmen, who became again
what fate had meant them to be, friends and fellow-
workers. Cavour's budgets had the inherent defect
that they continued to show increased expenditure and
a deficit, but no minister who had lacked the power
and the courage to brave criticism by a financial policy
which would have been certainly indefensible if Piedmont
alone was concerned, could have done what he did.
Meanwhile, on the whole, the economic state of the
country improved in spite of heavy taxation : the
exports and imports increased ; there were signs of
industrial activity ; agriculture revived. Cavour was
often bitterly blamed for favouring and sparing the
landowning class, though whether he did this because
he had estates at Leri, as his detractors alleged, or
because agriculture must always be the most vital of all
Italian interests, need not be discussed now. Improved
education stimulated enterprise. That there was room
for improvement may be supposed, when it is known
that in 1848 the number of persons who could not read
was three to one to the number of those who could.
The most severe phase in the financial difficulties
was past when, at the beginning of 1858, Cavour con-
signed the exchequer to Lanza, assuming himself the
Ministry of the Interior, which was vacant through the
resignation of Rattazzi. The breach between the two
men, who were never in entire intellectual harmony,
had been growing ine^dtable for some months. It was
final ; Cavour resolved never again to have Rattazzi for
VII THE CONGRESS OF PARIS 125
a colleague. The elections of the auLumn before, which
Cavour thought that Rattazzi had mismanaged, lessened
his confidence in him ; but the actual cause of their
rupture was briefly this. Cavour wished to put an end
to the king's relations with the Countess Mirafiori, whom
he married by the rite of the Church during his serious
illness near Pisa in 1868 — an interference in the private
affairs of the sovereign which, though inspired by regard
for the decorum of the Crown, must be admitted to have
been un^vise, as (amongst other reasons) it was certain
not to attain its object. In this matter Cavour thought
that Rattazzi ought to have stood by him, instead of
which he took the part of the deeply offended king, who
went so far as to say that only his position and his duty
to the country prevented him from challenging his prime
minister then and there.
CHAPTER VIII
THE PACT OF PLOMBIERES
Time seems long to those who wait. The thrill of
expectancy that passed through Italy after the Congress
of Paris was succeeded by the nervous tension that
seizes people whose ears are strained to catch some
sound which never comes. Especially in Lombardy
there was a feeling of great depression : no one trusted
now in revolution, which the watchfulness of the
Austrians made as impossible as their careless belief in
their own invulnerability had made it possible in 1848.
The years went by, and help from without appeared
farther off than ever. Meanwhile every interest suf-
fered, and life was rendered wellnigh intolerable by
the ceaseless antagonism between government and
governed. This was the state of things when the Arch-
duke Maximilian came to Milan full of genuine love for
the Emperor's Italian subjects and of determination to
right their wrongs. " I much admire M. de Cavour,"
he said to a Prussian diplomatist, " but when it is a
question of a policy of progress, I am not going to let
him outdo me." On his side Cavour remarked, " That
Archduke is persevering, and will not be discouraged,
CHAP. VIII THE PACT OF PLOMBIERES 127
but I am persevering too, and will not let myself be
discouraged." Nevertheless, if there was one thing that
Cavour had always feared, it was Austrian conciliation.
The gift of a milder rule would change the aspect of the
whole question before Europe, and only those ignorant
of human nature could suppose that it would entirely
fail in its effect with a population which was beginning
to be hopeless. Cavour viewed the experiment not
without anxiety, but he guessed that the good intentions
of Maximilian would be frustrated by the Viennese
Government. The forecast was verified, but meanwhile
the simple fact that an Austrian archduke had set his
heart on winning the affections of the Lombards and
Venetians was taken everywhere as a sign favourable to
peace.
Then happened the unforeseen event which marks
with almost unfailing regularity the turning points in
history. On January 14, 1858, Felice Orsini tried to
assassinate Napoleon III. and failed. His failure was
strange. The bomb thrown under the carriage which
conveyed the Emperor and Empress to the opera did
not explode. An accomplice was arrested with another
in his hand, which he had not time to throw. Many of
the passers-by received fatal or serious injuries. Of the
previous attempts on Napoleon's life none was prepared
with such seeming certainty of success. If others were
planned with equal deliberation, could the result be
doubted 1 Napoleon was probably putting this question
to himself when he appeared in his box, with an im-
passible face, while the conspirators on the stage sang
the chorus of the oaths in Guillaume Tell. Not a cheer
greeted the sovereigns, though wliat had occuired in
128 CAVOUR oiiAP.
the street was immediately known. When the first
report reached Turin, Cavour exclaimed, " If only this
is not the work of Italians ! " On receiving the parti-
culars with the name of Orsini, he remembered that this
Eomagnol revolutionist had written to him nine months
before, offering his services to whatever Italian Govern-
ment, " not the Papacy," would place its army at the
disposal of the national independence, and urging the
Sardinian ministers to take a daring course, in which
they would have all Italy with them. Cavour did not
answer the letter, " because it was noble and energetic,
and he thought it unbecoming in him to pay Orsini
compliments." If he had summoned Orsini to Piedmont,
the attempt in the Rue le Peletier would never have
taken place.
No one in Europe was more dismayed by the news
than Cavour, who expected a harvest of embarrassments
for Sardinia, and, worst of all, the permanent ill-Avill of
Napoleon. The first expectation was speedily realised :
floods of official and unofficial invective were poured
upon the two countries, which were held responsible for
nurturing the plot. In England the counter-blast upset
Lord Palmerston's Government, and in Piedmont the
dynasty itself might have been endangered had not
Victor Emmanuel's sense of personal dignity preserved
him from bending to the rod of imperial displeasure.
Cavour was ready even to forestall the cry for pre-
cautionary measures ; the air was full of wild rumours,
and he thought that Victor Emmanuel's days and his
own were threatened, a baseless suspicion, for the most
reckless conspirators in those times accounted regicide
madness in a free country. But he believed it, and for
A^iii THE PACT OF PLOMBlfeRES 129
this reason, as well as from his entirely sincere abhor-
rence of political crime, he was quite in earnest in his
resolve to go as far as the Statute would let him to keep
plotters out of Piedmont. Napoleon, however, affected
to consider the action of the Sardinian Government weak
and dilatory, an opinion which he expressed with vehe-
mence to General Delia Rocca, who was sent by the
king to congratulate him on his escape. He hinted that,
if his complaints were not attended to, he should seek
an alliance with Austria. All the pride of the Savoy
blood rose in the veins of Victor Emmanuel : " Tell the
Emperor," he wrote to Delia Rocca, " in the terms you
think best, that this is not the way to treat a faithful
ally ; that I have never tolerated violence from any one ;
that I follow the path of honour, for which I have to
answer to God and to my people; that we have carried
our head high for 850 years, and that no one will make
me bow it ; and that, notwithstanding, I desire to be
nothing but his friend." Cavour instructed Delia Rocca
to " commit the indiscretion " of reading the letter to
the Emperor word for word. At the same time he wrote
to the Sardinian Minister in Paris " that the king was
ready for the last extremity to save the honour and
independence of the country, and we with him." But
extremities were not needful. Napoleon was always
impressed by the true ring of that ancient royalty which
was the one thing which he could not purchase. He
wrote a conciliatory letter to Victor P^mmanuel : " It
was ojdy between good friends that (piestions could
be treated with frankness. Let the king do what he
could, and not bo uneasy." The French Foreign Office
went on scolding through the Legation at 'Piiriii, till
K
130 CAVOUR CHAP.
Cavour said, with a smile, to Prince de Latour
d'Auvergne, " But it is finished ; yesterday the king
had a letter from the Emperor which ends the whole
affair."
A little while after, Cavour received a private com-
munication from Paris containing Orsini's last letter,
and inviting him to publish it in the Official Gazette. It
was only then that it began to dawn on him what had
been the real effect of the attempt, and of Orsini's trial,
on the mind of the Emperor. Cavour had none of the
fellow-feeling with conspirators that lurked in Napoleon's
brain, and the idea seemed to him absurd that a man
should be strongly moved by the pleading of his would-be
assassin. Among the royal families of Europe, Orsini's
influence was at once understood, but it was thought to
have its source in fear. It was remarked how, when
the sentence of death was passed, the condemned man,
turning to his counsel, whispered the words of Tasso —
Risorgero, nemico ognor piii crudo,
Cenere anco sepolto e spirto ignudo.
" The Italian dagger," wrote the Prince Regent of
Prussia, "has become a fixed idea with Napoleon." Yet
it was not only, and perhaps not chiefly, the fear of being
assassinated that inclined Napoleon to listen to Orsini's
dying prayer, " Free my country, and the blessings of
twenty-five million Italians will go with you ! " His
own part in the revolutionary movement of 1831 has
been shown to have been no boyish freak but serious
work, into which he entered with the sole enthusiasm of
his life. " I feel for the first time that I live ! " he wrote
when on the march towards Rome. The Romagna was
VIII THE PACT OF PLOMBI^RES 131
the hotbed of the Carbonari ; all his friends belonged to
the Society, and it must always be held probal^le that he
belonged to it also. At any rate the memory of those
days lent dramatic force to the last appeal of the man
who was more willing to go to the scaffold than he was
to send him there.
If this view is correct, it follows that when Napoleon
talked about an Austrian alliance to enforce his demand
for restrictive measures in Piedmont, it was a groundless
threat, such as he was always in the habit of using. A
month after Orsini's execution, the project of an alliance
between France and Sardinia, and of the maiTiage of the
king's daughter with Prince Napoleon, reached Cavour
in a mysterious manner, and it is still unknown if it
was sent with the Emperor's knowledge, or by some
one who had secretly ascertained what he was thinking
about. Cavour showed the draft to the king, but he
did not place much credence in it. Nevertheless, to
keep Napoleon's attention fixed on Italy, he caused him
to be informally assured that if the worst came to the
worst, Sardinia would go to war with Austria by herself ;
the situation was already so strained that almost any-
thing would be preferable to its prolongation. Cavour
had just induced the Chamber to sanction a new loan for
forty million francs, which suggested that, if others were
apt to use empty threats, he Avas not. In June Dr.
Conneau, who was travelling " for his amusement,"
stopped at Turin, where he saw both the king and
Cavour. Under the seal of absolute secrecy it was
arranged that Napoleon and Cavour sliould meet "l)y
accident" at Plombiires. Next month tin; minister left
Turin to breathe the fresh air of tlie mouiituin.s. He was
132 CAVOUR CHAP.
not ill high spirits. To La Marmora, tlie only man
besides the king who knew the true motive of his
journey, he wrote, " Pray heaven that 1 do not commit
some stupidity ; in spite of my usual self-reliance, I am
not without grave uneasiness." He succeeded in travel-
ling so privately that he was nearly arrested on arriv-
ing at Plombi^res because he had not a passport : a
mysterious Italian coming from no one knew where — no
doubt a new Orsini ! But one of the Emperor's suite
recognised him, and made things straight. He passed
nearly the whole of two days closeted with Napoleon,
the decisive interview lasting from 11 A.M. to 3 P.M.,
after which the Emperor took him out alone, in a
carriage driven by himself. During this drive the sub-
ject of the Princess Clotilde's marriage was broached.
Towards the end of the visit, Napoleon said to him,
"Walewski has just telegraphed to me that you are
here ! " The French ministers were, as usual, kept in
the dark. It flattered Napoleon's amour propre to take
into secret partnership a man whose place in history he
divined. " There are only three men in Europe," he
remarked to his guest ; " we two, and then a third,
whom I will not name." Who was the third I Bismarck
was still occupied in sending home advice that was not
taken from the Prussian Embassy at St Petersburg.
The saying brings to mind another, attributed to the
aged Prince Metternich, "There is only one diplomatist
in Europe, but unfortunately he is against us ; it is M.
de Cavour."
In a long letter to the king, Cavour gave a detailed
but probably not a complete account of the interviews
at Plombi^res. It is said that among his papers, which
VIII THE PACT OF PLOMBIERES 133
Eicasoli, his successor in the premiership, gave to his
heirs, but which they ultimately restored to the State,
there is only one sealed packet — that which relates to
this visit. He went by no means certain that the
Emperor meant to do anything at all ; he came away
with great hopes, but still without certainty, for his
trust in his partner was limited. He never felt sure
whether Napoleon was not indulging on a large scale in
the sport of building castles in the air, to which all
semi-romantic temperaments are addicted. Still the
basis of Avhat bore every appearance of a definite under-
standing had been established. A rising in Massa and
Carrara was to serve as the pretext of war. The object
of the war was the expulsion of the Austrians from
Italy, to be followed by the formation of a kingdom of
Upper Ital}^, which should include the valley of the Po,
the Legations, and the Marches of Ancona. Savoy was
to be ceded to France. The fate of Nice was left un-
decided. To all of these propositions the king had
authorised Cavour to agree. The hand of the Princess
Clotilde was only to be conceded if it was made a con-
dition of the alliance, which was not the case. Cavour
believed, however, that everything depended on gratify-
ing the Emperor's Avish, and he strongly urged the king
to yield a point which seemed to him of no great
importance. Since most princesses made unhappy
marriages, what did it matter if Prince Napoleon was a
promising bridegroom or not ? Victor Emmanuel was
persuaded by the "reason of State"; but the sacrifice
of his daugliter cost him more than Cavour could ever
conceive.
Napoleon told his visitor that he felt sure of the
134 CAVOUR cHAr.
benevolent attitude of Russia, and of the neutrality of
England and Prussia, but he had no illusions as to the
difficulty of the task. The Austrians would be hard to
crush, and unless thoroughly crushed they would not
relax their hold on Italy. Peace must be imposed at
Vienna. To this end at least 200,000 Frenchmen and
100,000 Italians would be necessary. Cavour has been
criticised for acquiescing in the crippled programme of
a kingdom of Upper Italy. What was he to do ? Victor
Amadeus II., in his instructions to the Marquis del
Borgo, his minister at the Congress of Utrecht, laid
down the rule : " AUer au solide at au present et parler
ensuite des chimeres agreables." This was the only
rule which Victor Emmanuel's minister could observe
with any profit to his country at Plombieres. As he
wrote himself, "In politics one can only do one thing
at a time, and the only thing we have to think of is
how to get the Austrians out of Italy."
The period from the meeting with the Emperor of
the French to the outbreak of the war was, in the
opinion of the present writer, the greatest period in
Cavour's life. Patience, temper, forethought, resource,
resolution — every quality of a great statesman he ex-
hibited in turn, and above all the supreme gift of making
no mistakes. He did not trust in chance or in fate ; he
trusted entirely in himself. He showed extraordinary
ability in compelling the most various and opposing
elements to combine in the service of his ends. In spite
of Napoleon's promises and of the current of personal
sentiment which lay beneath them, he soon foresaw that
the unwillingness of France and the constitutional
vacillation of the Emperor would render them barren of
viii THE PACT OF rLOMBIKRES 135
results, unless Austria attacked — an eventualitj^ which
was considered impossible on all sides. Mazzini, who
was generally not only clear-sighted, but also furnished
with secret information, the origin of which is even now
a mystery, asserted positively that " even if provoked
Austria would not attack." The same belief prevailed
in the inner circle of diplomacy. When Mr. Odo
Eussell called on Cavour in December 1858, he remai-ked
that Austria had only to play a waiting game to wear
out the financial resources of Piedmont, while, on the
other hand, Piedmont would forfeit the sympathies of
Europe if it precipitated matters by a declaration of
war. The only solution would be if the declaration of
war came from Austria ; but she would never commit
so enormous a blunder. " But I shall force her to de-
clare war against us," Cavour tranquilly replied, and
when the incredulous Englishman inquired at what time
he expected to bring about this consummation, he
answered, " About the first week in May." Mr. Odo
Russell wrote down the date in his notebook, and
boundless was his surprise when Austria actually de-
clared war a few days in advance of the time proscribed.
This is statesmancraft !
Cavour had always said that an English alliance
would be the only one without drawback.?. Among
these drawbacks he doubtless placed the melancholy
necessity of ceding Piedmontese territoiy ; but that was
not all. There was a peril which would have appeared
to him yet more fatal than the loppini; off of a limb,
beciiuse it throutcned tlie vital organs of national life :
the risk of an all-powerful French influence extending
over Italy. To ward ofl" this danger it was of tlie
136 CAVOUR CHAP.
greatest moment that Italians should join in their own
liberation — that not only the Government and the army
but patriots of every condition should rally round the
country's flag. Though Cavour has been often said to
have lacked imagination, it needed the imaginative
faculty to discern what would be the true value of the
free corps which he decided to constitute under the
name of the Hunters of the Alps. With a promise of
200,000 Frenchmen in his pocket, he was yet ready to
confront difficulties which he afterwards called " im-
mense," in order to place in the field a few thousand
volunteers of whom the heads of the army declared that
they would only prove an embarrassment. Cavour
listened to no one. lie sent for Garibaldi, then at
Caprera, and having made sure of his enthusiastic co-
operation, he carried out his project without asking the
assent of Parliament and without flinching before the
most \aolent opposition, internal and external. Had
not Cavour felt so conscious of his strength he would
have been afraid of offending Napoleon by " arming the
revolution " ; but he knew that the best way to deal
with men of the Emperor's stamp is to show that you
do not fear them. Garibaldi, who never did anything
by halves, placed himself and his influence absolutely
at Cavour's disposal. " You can tell our friend that he
is omnipotent," he ^vrote to La Farina. He begged the
Government to assume despotic power till the issue was
decided. Garibaldi did not love the man of the coup
d'etat ; but he kneAV too much about war to miscalcu-
late either the value or the need of the French alliance.
Only a small section of the republicans still stood aloof.
Cavour. had Italy with him. All felt Avhat Massimo
VIII THE PACT OF PLOMBIERES 137
d'Azeglio expressed with generous expansion, "To-day
it is no longer a question of discussing your policy, but
of making it succeed." Cavour had torn open the letter
with impatience, recognising the handwriting. When he
finished reading it his eyes were full of tears. No
one was more whole-hearted in his support of the
minister who exacted of him two most bitter sacrifices
than the king. " The difficulty," Cavour said, " is to
hold him back, not to spur him on." The public, im-
perfectly informed of what was happening or going to
happen, remained calm, for, at last, its faith in the
helmsman was complete. An amusing story is told of
those times. The Countess von Stackelberg, wife of the
Kussian minister at Turin, was buying something at a
shop under the Porticoes, when the shopman suddenly
left her and rushed to the door. On coming back he
said with excuses, " I saw Count Cavour passing, and
wishing to know how our afifairs are going on, I wanted
to see how he looked. He looks in good spirits, so
everything is going right."
A misunderstanding arose between France and Austria
on a question connected with Servia ; it was in outward
allusion to this that Napoleon said to the Austrian
Ambassador at the reception of the Corps Diplomatique
on New Year's Day, 1859, " Je regrette que les relations
entre nous soient si mauvaises ; dites cependant k Votre
Souverain que mes sentiments pour lui ne sont pas
changes." Whether there was a deliberate intention to
convey another meaning is a matter of conjecture ; at
all events the whole of Europe gave the words an Italian
sense, and Cavour, though taken l>y surprise, was not
slow to turn them to account. In writing the speech
138 CAVOUR ciiAi-.
from the throne for the opening of Parliament, he intro-
duced a paragraph alluding to clouds in the horizon, and
eventualities " which they awaited in the firm resolve to
fulfil the mission assigned to them by Providence." The
other ministers would not share the responsibility of
language so charged with electricity. Cavour then did
one of those simple things which yet, by some mystery of
the human brain, require a man of genius to do them —
he sent a draft of the speech to Napoleon and asked
him what he thought of if? The Emperor answered
that, in fact, the disputed paragraph appeared too strong,
and he sent a proposed alteration which made it much
stronger ! The new version ran : " Our policy rests on
justice, the love of freedom, our country, humanity :
sentiments Avhich find an echo among all civilised
nations. 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 {)Osition doubtless creates
for us many dangers ; nevertheless, while respecting
treaties, we cannot remain insensible to the cries of grief
that reach us from so many parts of Italy." Cavour had
the French words turned into good Italian by a literary
friend (for he always misdoubted his own grammai');
one or two expressions were changed ; " humanity " was
left out. Did it savour too much of Mazzini 1 Victor
Emmanuel himself much improved the closing sentence
by substituting "cry" for "cries." This was the singu-
larly hybrid manner in Avhich the royal speech of
January 10, 1859, arrived at its final form. Much, at
this critical juncture, depended on its eflPect, and nothing
is so impossible to foretell as the effect of words spoken
viii THE PACT OF PLOMBIERES 139
before a public assembly. Cavour stood beside the
throne watching the impression which each phrase
created ; when he saw that success was complete, beyond
every expectation, he was deeply moved. The ministers
of the Italian princedoms could hardly keep their
virtuous indignation within bounds. Sir James Hudson
called the speech " a rocket falling on the treaties of
1815"; the Russian Minister, waxing poetic, compared
it with the shining dawn of a fine spring daJ^ The
"grido di dolore," rapturously applauded in the
Chamber, rang like a clarion through Italy. And no
one suspected whence this ingenious piece of rhetoric
emanated !
The French alliance still rested on nothing more
substantial than a secret unwritten engagement which
Napoleon could repudiate at will. Cavour, who would
have made an excellent lawyer, strove his utmost to
obtain some more solid bond, for which the marriage-
visit of Prince Napoleon offered a favourable opportunity.
The connection with one of the oldest royal houses in
Europe so flattered the Emperor's vanity that he
authorised the bridegroom and General Niel, who
accompanied him, to sign a treaty in black and white,
binding France to come to the assistance of Piedmont, if
that State were the object of an act of aggression on the
part of Austria. Possibly, like other people, he thought
that no such act of aggression would be made, and that
he remained free to escape from the contract if he chose.
A military convention was signed at the same time, one
of the clauses of which Cavour was fully determined to
have cancelled ; it stipulated that volunteer corps were
to be excluded. He signed the convention, but fought
140 CAVOUR CHAP.
out the point afterwards and gained it, in spite of
Napoleon's strenuous resistance. These transactions
were intended to be kept absohitely secret, and the
French ministers do not seem to have known of them,
but somehow the European Courts, and Mazzini, got
wind of a treaty having been signed. Different rumours
went about : the Prince Consort was informed that
Savoy was to go for Lombard y, and Nice for Venetia ;
others said that Nice was to be the price of the Duchies
and Legations. There was a persistent impression that
the island of Sardinia was mentioned, which would not
merit record but for the general correctness of the
other guesses. There is no reference, however, to
Sardinia, in the version of the treaty which has since
been published, and Cavour indignantly repudiated the
idea of ceding this Italian island to France, when the
charge of having entertained it was flung at him a year
later. Some doubt may linger in the mind as to whether
there was not a scheme for giving the Pope Sardinia in
return for part or all his territory.
Once again Cavour repeated his demand for yet more
money, and this time it was received not, as heretofore,
with reluctant submission, but Avith acclamation. At
last people saw what the minister was driving at ; only
the few Avho would have disowned the name of Italian
voted with the minority. The fifty million francs were
quickly subscribed, chiefly in small sums, in Piedmont
itself, a triumphant answer to the Paris house of Koth-
schild, which had declined to render its help. Cavour's
speeches on the neAV loan Avere, in reality, addressed to
Europe, and no one Avas more skilful in this kind of
oratory than he- Without apparent elaboration, each
VIII THE PACT OF PLOMBI^RES 141
phrase was studied to produce the effect desired. The
policy of Piedmont, he said, had never altered since the
king received his inheritance on the field of Novara.
It was never provocative or revolutionary, but it was
national and Italian. Austria was displayed as the
peace-breaker, and, as she was pouring troops into Italy
and massing them near the Piedmontese frontier, it was
easy to exhibit her in that light. After having made
Austria look very guilty, Cavour proceeded to lay him-
self out to conciliate England, whose policy was, at that
moment, everything that he wished it not to be ; but he
was determined not to quarrel. The Earl of Malmesbury
kept him informed of the "real state of Italy," of which
he was supposed to be profoundly ignorant. The
Lombards no longer desired to be united to Piedmont,
and a war of liberation would be the signal of the re-
awakening of all the old jealousies, while republicans,
dreamers, pretenders, seekers of revenge, power, riches,
would tear up Italy between them. In the House of
Lords, Lord Derby declared that the Austrian was the
best of good governments, and only sought to improve
its Italian provinces. Cavour concealed the irritation
which he strongly felt. Lord Derby's speech, he said,
did not sound so bad in the original as in the translation,
and, after all, England's apparent change of front came
from a great virtue, patriotism. She suppressed her
natural sympatliies, because she believed that patriotic
reasons required her to back up Austria. He repeated
to the Chamber what he had often said in private, that
the English alliance was the one which lie liad always
valued above all others. It was a remarkable thing to
Bay at a moment when lie hoped so much more from
142 CAVOUR CHAP.
France than from England. But precisely because he
hoped to obtain material assistance from France, he was
more than ever anxious to remain on good terms with
England. He finely resisted the temptation of saying,
" We can do without you." After having got the French
into Italy, the next thing to do would be to get them
out of it, and he foresaw that England would be useful
then. Moreover, angry as he was in his heart, he did
not doi;bt that the "suppressed sj^mpathies" would
break out again and prove irresistible. They were even
breaking out already, for the arrival of the Neapolitan
prisoners caused one of those powerful waves of feeling
which, in England, always end by influencing the
Government.
Meanwhile, Lord Derby's ministry made Herculean
eflforts to ward ofl" war, in which, by force of traditions
that govern all English parties, they had the opposition
entirely with them. They begged Austria to evacuate
the Papal Legations, and to leave off interfering with
the States of Central Ttaly. They even asked Cavour
to help them, by formulating his views on the best
means of peaceably improving the condition of Italy.
Cavour answered that at the root of the matter lay
the hatred of a foreign yoke. The Austrians in Italy
formed, not a government, but a military occupation.
They were not established but encamped. Every house,
from the humblest home to the most sumptuous palace,
was closed against them. In the theatres, public places,
streets, there was an absolute separation between them
and the people of the country. Things got constantly
worse, not better. The Austrian rulers in Italy once
offered their subjects some compensation for the loss of
VIII THE PACT OF PLOMBlfeRES 143
nationality in a policy which defended them from the
encroachments of the court of Eome, but the wise
principles introduced by Maria Theresa and Joseph II.
had been cast to the winds. Unless Austria completely
reversed her policy, and became the promoter of con-
stitutional government throughout Italy, nothing could
save her ; the problem would be solved by war or
revolution.
It ought to have been apparent that, as far as Pied-
mont was concerned, the control of the situation had
passed out of the hands of the Government. The youth
of Lombardy was streaming into the country to enlist
either in the army or in the corps of " Hunters of the
Alps," which was now formed. Cavour looked on this
patriotic invasion with delight ; " They may throw me
into the Po," he said, "but I will not stop it." Had he
wished, he could not have stopped the current of popular
excitement at the point it had reached. It was the
knowledge of this, joined to the threatened destruction
of all his hopes, that well-nigh overpowered him when
— at the eleventh hour — in spite of engagements and
treaties. Napoleon seemed to have suddenly decided not
to go to war. Prince Bismarck once declared that he
had never found it possible to tell in advance whether
his plans would succeed ; he could navigate among
political events, but he could not direct them. Since
the meeting at Plombitres, Cavour had undertaken to
direct events, the most perilous game at which a statesman
can play. For a moment ho thought that he had failed.
CHAPTER IX
THE WAR OF 1859 — VILLAFRANCA
On the whole it can be safely assumed that Napoleon's
hark back was real, and was not a move "pour mieux
sauter." He was not pleased at the cool reception given
in Italy to a pamphlet known to have been inspired by
him, in which the old scheme was revived of a federation
of Italian States under the presidency of the Pope. The
Empress was against war — it was said "for fear of a
reverse." Perhaps she thought already what she said
when flying from Paris in 1870 : "En France il ne faut
pas etre malheureux." But more than this fear, anxiety
for the head of the Church made her anti-Italian, and,
with her, the whole clerical party. Nor was this the
limit of the opposition which the proposed war of libera-
tion encountered. Though France did not know of the
secret treaty, she knew enough to understand by this
time where she was being led, and with singular
unanimity she protested. When such different persons
as Guizot, Lamartine, and Proudhon pronounced against
a free Italy, — when no one except the Paris workman
showed the slightest enthusiasm for the war, — it is hardly
surprising if Napoleon, seized with alarm for his dynasty,
CHAP. IS THE WAR OF 1859 YILLAFRANCA 145
was glad of any plausible excuse for a retreat. Such
an excuse was forthcoming in the Russian proposal of
a Congress, which was warmly seconded by England.
Austria accepted the proposal subject to two conditions :
the previous disarmament of Piedmont, and its exclusion
from the Congress. The bearing of the French Ministry
became almost insulting; the Emperor, said WaleAvski,
was not going to rush into a war to favour Sardinia's
ambition ; everything would be peaceably settled by the
Congress, in which Piedmont had not the smallest right
to take part. None of the usual private hints came
from the Tuileries to counteract the effect of these words.
Cavour was plunged in blank despair. He wrote to
Napoleon that they would be driven to some desperate
act, which was answered by a call to Paris; but his
interviews with the Emperor only increased his fears.
He threatened the king's abdication and his own retire-
ment. He would go to America and publish all his
correspondence with Napoleon. He alone was respon-
sible for the course his country had taken, the pledges it
had given, the engagements already performed (by which
he meant the consent wrenched from the king to the
Princess Clotilde's marriage). The responsibility would
be crushing if he became guilty before God and man of
the disasters which menaced his king and his country.
The English Government now proposed that all the
Italian States should be admitted to the Congress, and
that Austria as well as Piedmont should be invited to
disarm. On April 17 Cavour sent a note agreeing to
this plan. It was a tremendous risk ; but it was the
only way to prevent Piedmont from being deserted and
left to its fate. If Austria also consented, all was lost :
L
146 CAVOUR CHAP.
there would be peace. Could the gods l)e trusted to make
her mad "? Cavour's nervous organisation was strained
at a tension tliat nearly snapped the cord. It is
believed that he was on the brink of suicide. On April
19 he shut himself up in his room and gave orders that
no one should be admitted. On being told of this, his
faithful friend, Castelli, who was one of the few persons
not afraid of him, rushed to the Palazzo Cavour, where
his worst fears were confirmed by the old major-domo,
who said, " The Count is alone in his room ; he has burnt
many papers ; he told us to let no one pass ; but for
heaven's sake, go in and see him at whatever cost."
When he went in, Castelli saw a litter of torn-up papers ;
others were burning on the hearth. He said that he
knew no one was to pass and that was why he had
come. Cavour stared at him in silence. Then he went on,
" J\lust I believe that Count Cavour will desert the camp
on the eve of battle ; that he will abandon us all ? " And,
unhinged by excitement and bj' his great afiection for
the man, he burst into tears. Cavour walked round the
room looking like one distraught. Then he stopped
opposite to Castelli and embraced him, saying, " Be
tranquil; we will face it all together." Castelli went
out to reassure those who had brought him the alarming
news. Neither he nor Cavour afterwards alluded to
this strange scene.
At the very moment that Cavour thought he had lost
the game, he had won it. On the same day, Ai)ril 19,
Count Buol, — somewhat, it is said, against his better
judgment, but yielding to the Emperor, who again
yielded to the military party, — sent off a contemptuous
rejoinder to the English proposals. Ignoring all sug-
IX THE WAR OF 1859 VILLAFRANCA 147
gestions, the Austrian Minister said that they would them-
selves call upon Piedmont to disarm. Here, then, was the
famons ade d'agression. Napoleon could not escape now.
The fact that this happened simultaneously with
Sardinia's submission to the will of Europe was a won-
derful piece of luck, which, as Massimo d' Azeglio said,
coidd happen only once in a century. When the
Austrian Government took the irrevocable step, it did
not know yet that the whole onus of breaking the
peace would fall upon it. Nor, it must be remembered,
did it know the text of the treaty between France and
Sardinia, and in view of the French Emperor's recent
conduct it may well have become convinced that no
treaty at all existed. Hence it is probable that Austria
flattered herself that she would only have to deal with
weak Sardinia.
The Chamber of Deputies was convoked on April 23
to confer plenary powers on the king. Many deputies
were so overcome that they wept. Just as the President
of the Chamber announced the vote, a scrap of paper
was handed to Cavour, on which were written the words
in pencil : " They are here ; I have seen them." It was
from a person whom he had instructed to inform him
instantly when the bearers of the Austrian Ultimatum
arrived. They were come; angels of light could not
have been more welcome ! Cavour went hastily out,
while the House broke into deafening cries of " Long
live the king ! " He said to the friend who brought the
rnes-sagc, " I am leaving the last sitting of the last
Piedmontese Chaniljer." The next would represent the
kingdom of Italy.
The Sardinian army to Ix; pl.iccd on a j)eace-footing,
148 CAVOUR CHAP.
the volunteers to be dismissed, an answer of " Yes " or
"No" required within three days — these were the
terms of the Ultimatum. If the answer were not fully
satisfactory His Majesty would resort to force. Cavour
replied that Piedmont had given its adhesion to the
proposals made by England with the approA^al of France,
Prussia and Russia, and had nothing more to say. No
one who saw the statesman's radiant face would have
guessed that less than a week before he had passed
through so frightful a mental crisis. He took leave of
Baron von Kellersberg with graceful courtesy, and then,
turning to those present, he said, " We have made
history ; now let us go to dinner."
The French Ambassador at Vienna notified to Count
Buol that his sovereign would consider the crossing of
the frontier by the Austrian troops equivalent to a
declaration of war.
Lord Malmesbury was so favourably impressed by
Sardinia's docility and so furious with the Austrian
coup de tete that he became in those da3^s quite ardently
Italian, which he assured Massimo d'Azeglio was his
natural state of mind ; and such it may have been, since
cabinet ministers are constantly employed in upholding,
especially in foreign affairs, what they most dislike. He
hoped to stop the runaway Austrian steed by proposing
mediation in lieu of a Congress ; but the result was
only to delay the outbreak of the war for a week, much
to the disadvantage of the Austrians, as it gave the
French time to arrive and the Piedmontese to flood the
country by means of the canals of irrigation, thus pre-
venting a dash at Turin, probably the best chance for
Austria. Baron von Kellersberg and his companion,
IX THE WAR OF 1859 VILLAFEANCA 149
during their brief visit, had done nothing but pity " this
fine toAvn so soon to be given OA^er to the honors of
war." Their solicitude proved superfluous.
For the present the statesman's task was ended. He
had procured for his country a favourable opportunity
for entering upon an inevitable struggle. When
Napoleon said to Cavour on landing at Genoa, " Your
plans are being realised," he was unconsciously fore-
stalling the verdict of posterity. The reason that he
was standing there was because Cavour had so willed it.
In spite of the Emperor's fits of Italian sympathy and
the various circumstances which impelled him towards
helping Italy, he would not have taken the final resolu-
tion had not some one saved him the trouble by taking
it for him. As a French student of history has lately
said, in 1859, as in 1849, there was a Hamlet in the case ;
but Paris, not Turin, was his abode. Napoleon needed
and perhaps desired to be precipitated. Look at it how
we maj-, it must be allowed that he was doing a very
grave thing : he was embarking on a war of no palpable
necessity against the sentiment, as the Empress wrote
to Count Arese, of his own country. A stronger man
than he might have hesitated.
The natural discernment of the Italian masses en-
lightened them as to the magnitude of Cavour's part in
the play, even in the hour when the interest seemed
transferred to the battlefield, and when an emperor
and a king moved among them as liberators. At Milan,
after the victory of Magenta had opened its gates, the
most permanent enthusiasm galheicd round the short,
stout, undistinguished figure in plain clotlies and spec-
tacles — the one decidedly prosaic a[)pcarance in the
150 CAVOUK CHAP.
pomp of war and the glitter of royal state. Victor
Emmanuel said good-tiumouredly that when driving
with his great subject, he felt just like the tenor who
leads the prima donna forward to receive applause.
Success followed success, and this to the popular
imagination is the all-and-all of war. Milan was freed,
though the battle of Magenta was not unlike a drawn
one ; Lombardy was won, though the fight for the
heights of Solferino could hardly have resulted as it did
if the Austrians had not blundered into keeping a large
part of their forces inactive. Would the same fortune
be with the allies to the end? Cavour does not appear
to have asked the question. He watched the war with
no misgivings. It was to him a supreme satisfaction
that the Sardinian army, which he had worked so hard
to prepare, did Italy credit. He took a personal pride
in the romantic exploits of the volunteers, though for
political reasons he carefully concealed that he had been
the first to think of placing them in the field. He made
an indefatigable minister of war (having taken the office
when La Marmora went to the front). The work was
heavy ; the problem of finding even bread enough for
the allied armies was not a simple one. On one occasion
the French Commissariat asked for a hundred thousand
rations to make sure of receiving fifty thousand ; the
officer in charge was surprised to see one hundred and
twenty thousand punctually arrive on the day named.
Cavour's thoughts were not, however, only with the
troops in Lombardy. The whole country was in a fer-
ment, and instead of accelerating events the question
now was to keep pace with them.
When Ferdinand II. died, and a young king, the son
IX THE WAR OF 1859 VILLA FRANCA 151
of a princess of the House of Savoy, ascended the
throne, Cavour invited him to join in the war with
Austria. The invitation has been blamed as insincere
and unpatriotic, but the best Neapolitans seconded it.
Poerio said he was willing to go back to prison if King
Francis would send his army to help Piedmont. Faithful
to his primary object of expelling the Austrians, Cavour
would have taken for an ally any one who had trooi:)S
to give. Moreover, an alliance between Naples and Sar-
dinia meant the final shelving of a scheme which had
caused him anxiety, off and on, for many years : that of a
Muratist restoration. Though he had always recognised
that, were it accepted by the Neapolitans themselves, it
would be impossible for him to oppose it, he understood
that to place a Murat on the throne of Naples would be
to move in the old vicious circle by substituting one
foreign influence for another. There is no doubt that
the idea was attractive to Napoleon. One of his first
cares after he became Emperor had been to find an
accomplished Neapolitan tutor for the young sons of
Prince Murat. About the time of the Paris Congress
emissaries were actively working on behalf of the French
pretender in the kingdom of Naples. The propaganda
was in abeyance duiiug the war, because Russia made it
a condition of her neutrality that the king of Naples
should be let alone, but the simple fact that Napoleon
had undertaken to liJjeratc Italy was a splendid adver-
tisement of the claims of his cousin. These considera-
tions tended to make Cavour hold out his hand to the
young Bourbon king. There is much evidence to show
that the first impulse of Francis was to take it, but the
counter influences aroiuid him were l(jo slnjuic. When
152 CAVOUR CHAP.
he refused, he sealed his own doom, though the time for
the crisis was not yet come.
In Central Italy the crisis came at once. This had
been foreseen by Cavour all along. At Plombieres he
made no secret of his expectation that the defeat of the
Austrians would entail the immediate union of Parma,
Modena, and Eomagna, with Piedmont. Napoleon did
not then seem to object. To him Cavour did not speak
of Tuscany, but he expected that there, too, the actual
government would be overthrown ; what he doubted
was what would happen after. Many well-informed
persons thought that the Grand Duke, who would have
maintained the constitution of 1848 but for the threats
of Austria, would seize the first opportunity of restoring
it. Fortunately Leopold II. looked beneath the surface :
he saw that an Austrian prince in Italy was henceforth
an anachronism. The indignities which he suffered
when his Italian patriotism — possibly quite sincere-
caused him to be disowned by his relations were not
forgotten. He had no heart for a bold stroke, and the
exhortations of the English Government to remain
neutral were hardly needed. If he wavered, it was
only for a moment ; nor did he care to place his son in
the false position he declined for himself. The Grand
Duke left Florence, openly, at two o'clock on April 27,
1859, carrying with liim the personal good wishes of all.
The chief boulder in the path of Italian unity was gone,
but for reasons internal and external much would have
to be done before Tuscany became the corner-stone of
New Italy. The Tuscans clung to their autonomy.
Though Victor Emmanuel was in\'ited to assume the
protectorate, it was explained that this was only meant
IX THE WAR OF 1859 VILLAFRANCA 153
to last during the war. The French Emperor thought
that there was an opening for a new kingdom of Etruria
with Prince Napoleon at the head. All sorts of intrigues
were set afoot by all the great powers except England
to re-erect Tuscany as a dam to stem the flood of unity
midway. Cavour was determined to defeat them. It
was against his rule to discuss remote events. He once
said to a novice in public life, "If you want to be a
politician, for mercy's sake do not look more than a
Aveek ahead." Every time, however, that there arose a
present chance of making another step towards unity,
Cavour was eagerly impatient to profit by it. He now
strove with all the energy he possessed to procure the
immediate annexation of Tuscany to Piedmont. The
object was good, but what he did not see was, that the
slightest appearance of wishing to "rush" Tuscany
would so offend the municipal pride and intellectual
exclusiveness of the polished Tuscans, that the seeds
would be laid of a powerful and, perhaps, fatal reaction.
It was at this critical juncture that Baron Bettino
Ricasoli began his year of autocracy. His programme
was : neither fusions nor annexations, but union of the
Italian peoples under the constitutional sceptre of Victor
Emmanuel. It was Tuscany's business, he said, to make
the new kingdom of Italy. He looked upon himself as
providentially appointed to carry that business into'
effect. He was called Minister of the Interior, and he
was, in fact, dictator. When any one tried to overawe
him, his answer was that he had existed for twelve
centuries. He had not wished for foreign help, and he
was not afraid of foreign threats. He often disagreed
with Cavour, and lie was the only uiun who never gave
154 CAVOUR CHAP.
ill to him. When Ricasoli took office he and the re-
publican baker, Dolfi, who was his invaluable auxiliary,
were possibly the only two thorough-going unionists-at-
all-costs in Tuscany ; when he resigned it twelve mouths
later there was not a partisan of autonomy left in the
province. This was the work of the " Iron Baron."
In the other three states, where the first shock to the
power of Austria overturned the Government, there were
no such complicated questions as in Tuscany. Parma
and Modena returned to their allegiance of 1848, and in
Eomagna those who were not in favour of an Italian
kingdom were not autonomists but republicans, who
were willing to sacrifice their own ideal to unity. The
revolution in the States of the Church was foiled at
Ancona, and put down with much bloodshed at Perugia :
it is curious to speculate what would have been the
result if it had spread to the gates of Rome, as without
this check it would have done. Cavour sent L. C.
Farini to Modena, and Massimo d' Azeglio to Bologna,
to take over what was called the "protectorate," and
special commissioners were also appointed at Parma and
Florence, but at Florence the real ruler was Ricasoli.
On July 5 Cavour told Kossuth that European
diplomacy was very anxious to patch up a worthless
peace, but still he had no fears. He did not guess that
they were on the verge of seeing realised Mazzini's
prophecy of six months before : " You will be in the
camp in some corner of Lombardy when the peace which
betrays Venice will be signed without your knowledge."
In proportion as Cavour had placed faith in Napoleon's
promises, so great was his revulsion of feeling when he
learnt that on July 6 General Fleury went to the
IX THE WAR OF 1859 VILLAFRANCA 155
Emperor of Austria's headquarters at Verona with
proposals for a suspension of hostilities. The passionate
nature which was generallj^ kept under such rigorous
control that few suspected its existence for once asserted
itself unrestrained. Those around Cavour were in
apprehension for his life and his reason. In spite of all
that has been said to the contrary, it is probable that
Napoleon's resolution, though not unpremeditated, was
of recent date. When he entered ]\Iilan, he seems to
have really contemplated pushing the war beyond the
Mincio ; there is proof, however, that he was thinking of
peace the day before the battle of Solferino, which dis-
poses of the semi-official story that he changed his mind
under the impression left on him by the scene of carnage
after that battle. Between the beginning and the end
of June, reasons of no sentimental kind accumulated to
make him pause. Events in Central Italy had gone
farther than he looked for, and his private map of the
kingdom of Upper Italy was growing smaller every day.
Why was this ? He cannot have been seized with a
warm interest in the unattractive despotism of the Duke
of Modena, or the chronic anarchy kept down by
Austrian bayonets at Bologna. But it was becoming
apparent that if Modena and Eomagna Avere joined to
the new Italian kingdom, Tuscany would come too, and
this Napoleon had not expected and did not want. He
was clever enough to see that with Tuscany the unity
of Italy was made. A great political genius would have
said. So be it ! Never was there worse policy than that
of helping to free Italy, and then deliberately rooting
out gratitude from her heart. Whatever Napoleon
thought himself, he was alarmed by the news from
156 CAVOUR CHAP.
France ; the Empress and the clerical jDarty ^yere in
despair at the revolution in the Roman States, and the
country was indignant at the prospect of an Italy strong
enough to have a voice of her own in the councils of
Europe.
Besides all this, there was still graver news from
Germany. Six Prussian army corps were ready to
move for the Ehine frontier. The history of Prussian
policy in 1859 has not yet been fully written out, but the
gaps in the narrative are closing up. That policy was
directed by the Prince Regent, and it gives the measure
of the success which would have attended subsequent
efforts if the day had not arrived when he surrendered
himseK body and soul into the hands of a greater man.
So much for the present German Emperor's theory that
the men in the councils of his grandfather only executed
great things because they did their master's will. It is
true that AYilliam I. aimed at the same end as that
which Count Bismarck had already in view, and which
he was destined to achieve — the ousting of Austria from
Germany, as a preliminary to sublimer doings. But
while the Prince Regent would not fight Austria, and
hoped to get rid of lier by political conjuring, the future
Chancellor comprehended that the problem could only
be settled by the argument ferro et igni. Bismarck's
policy in 1859 would have been neutrality, with a
certain leaning towards Napoleon. This advice, given
by every post from St. Petersburg to Berlin, caused him
to be accused of selling his soul to the devil, on which
he dryly remarked that, if it were so, the devil was
Teutonic, not Gallic.
The Prince Regent tried to prevent the Diet from
IX THE WAR OF 1859 — VILLAFRAITCA 157
going to war, because, in a federal war, Prussia's ruler
would only figure as general of the armies of the con-
federation — which meant of Austria. His plan was to
let Austria get into very bad difficulties, and then come
forward singly to save her. By means of this " armed
mediation " he would be able afterwards to dictate what
terms he chose to the much indebted Austrian Emperor.
It looked well on paper, but the armistice of Villafranca
spoilt everything. The Emperor Francis Joseph did not
wish to be "saved." This, and only this, can explain
his readiness to make peace when, from a military point
of view, his situation was far from desperate. No one
knew this better than Napoleon. Before the allied
armies lay the mouse-trap of the Quadrilateral, so much
easier to get into than to get out of. The limelight of
victory could not hide from those who knew the facts
the complete deficiency of organisation and discipline
which the war had revealed in the French army.
According to Prince Napoleon, the men considered their
head and their generals incapable, and had lost all con-
fidence in them. Nevertheless they fought well ; no
troops ever fought better than the French when storming
the heights of Solferino, but on the very day after that
battle, when the Austrians were miles away in full
retreat, an extraordinary, though little known, incident
occurred. On a report spreading from the French out-
posts that the enemy was upon them, there was an
universal sauve qui pent — officers, men, sick and sound,
gendarmes, infantry, cavalry, artillery trains — in one
word, every one made ofl". What would be the efi"ect of
a single defeat on such an army 1
It must always appear strange that none of these
158 CAVOUR CHAT.
things struck Cavour. He only saw the immense,
immeasurable disappointment. When he rushed to the
king's headquarters near Dcsenzano, it was to advise
him to refuse Lombardy and abdicate, or to continue the
war by himself. Cavour had never loved the king, or
done justice to his statesmanlike qualities ; a bitter
scene took place between them, which Victor Emmanuel
closed abruptly. Afterwards he met Prince Napoleon,
who replied to his reproaches, " Mais enfin, do you want
us to sacrifice France and our dynasty to you 1 "
At that juncture it was the king, not the minister, to
whom the task of pilot fell. Cut to the heart as he was,
he kept his temper. He signed the preliminaries " pour
ce qui me concerne," and, as on the morrow of No vara,
he prepared to wait. The terms on which the armistice
was granted seemed like a nightmare : Venice abandoned ;
Tuscany, Romagna, Modena, to be handed back to their
former masters ; the Pope to be made honorary president
of a confederation in which Austria Avas to have a place.
Cavoiu- stood before Italy responsible for the war, and
when he said to M. Pietri in the presence of Kossuth,
" Your Emperor has dishonoured me — yes, dishonoured ! "
he meant the words in their most literal sense. But the
white heat of his passion burnt out the dishonour, and
Cavour, foiled and furious, was the most popular man in
the country. His grief was so genuine that even his
enemies could not call its sincerity in question. In
three days he appeared to have grown ten years older.
His first thought was to go and get killed at Bologna, if,
as was expected, tliere was fighting there. Then, as
always happened with him, he was calmed by the idea
of action : " I will take Solaro de la Margherita by one
IX THE "WAR OF 1859 VILLAFRAXCA 159
hand and Mazzini by tlie other ; I will become a con-
spirator, a revolutionist, but this treaty shall not be
carried out." When he said this, he had resigned office ;
he was simply a private citizen, but all the consciousness
of his power had returned to him. Some delay occurred
in forming a new ministry. Count Arese was first called,
but his position as a personal friend of the Emperor dis-
qualified him for the task. Rattazzi succeeded better,
but during the interregnum of eight or nine days Cavour
was obliged to carry on the Government, and it thus
devolved on him to communicate the official order to the
Special Commissioners to abandon their posts. He
accompanied the order by a private telegram telling
them to stay where they were, and work with all their
might for an Italian solution. Farini telegraphed from
Modena that if the Duke, "trusting to conventions of
which he knew nothing," were to attempt to return, he
should treat him as an enemy to the king and country.
Cavour's answer ran : " The minister is dead ; the friend
applauds your decision." Aurelio Saffi well said that
"in these supreme moments you would have called
Cavour a follower of Mazzini." The world often thinks
that a man is changed when he is revealing what he
really is for the first time. It suited Cavour's purpose
to appear cool and calculating, but patriotism was as
much a passion witli him as with any of the great men
who worked for Italian emancipation.
CHAPTEK X
SAVOY AND NICE
The dissolution of Parliament by Lord Derby in June
led to the return of a Liberal majority and the resump-
tion of power by men who were open advocates of
Italian unity. Kossuth believed to his last day that
this result was due to him, an opinion which English
readers are not likely to share. The gain for Italy was
inestimable. The Whigs had supported Lord Malmes-
bury in his unprofitable efforts as a peacemaker ; but
when the war broke out they had no further reason to
restrain their natural sympathies. Lord Palmerston
especially wished the new kingdom to be strong enough
to be independent of French influences. Had the Con-
servatives remained in office there is no doubt that they
would have supported the plan to constitute Venetia a
separate state under the Archduke Maximilian, which
was regarded with much favour by that Pi-ince's
father-in-law, King Leopold, and hence by the Prince
Consort. The Liberal JNIinistry would have nothing to
do with it. Napoleon hoped, in the first instance, to
shift the onus of stopping the war from himself to the
English Government. He wished the programme of
CHAT. X SAVOY AND NICE 161
Villafranca to emanate from England ; but, as Lord
Palmerston wrote to Lord John Russell, why should
they incur the opprobrium of leaving Italy laden with
Austrian chains and of having betrayed the Italians at
the moment of their brightest hopes 1 In the same
letter (July 6), he pointed out that if a single Austrian
ruler remained in Italy, whatever was the form of his
administration, the excuse and even the fatal necessity
of Austrian interference would remain or return. The}^
were asked to parcel out the peoples of Italy as if
they belonged to them ! The Earl of Malmesbury once
remarked that " on any question affecting Italy Lord
Palmerston had no scruples." Had the Conservative
statesman continued in office six months longer, in spite
of his wish to see Italy happy, the " scruples " of which
he spoke would have probably induced him to try and
force her back under the Austrian yoke. Whether
Cavour's life-work was to succeed or fail depended
henceforth largely on England. " Now it is England's
turn," he said frequently to his relations in Switzerland,
where he went to recover his health and spirits. Soon
all traces of depression disappeared. While Europe
thought that it had assisted at his political funeral, he
was engaged not in thinking how things might be
remedied, but how he was going to remedy them. It
was not the king. Piedmont, Italy, that would prevent
the treaty from being carried out; it was "I." The
road was cut; he would take another. He would
occupy himself witli Naples. People might call him a
revolutionist or wliat they pleased, but tlicy must go on,
and they would go on.
Tliere exists proof that after Villafranca, Cavour ex
M
162 CAVOUR CHAP.
pected Napoleon to demand Savoy and Nice, or at least
Savoy, notwithstanding that Venetia was not freed.
The Emperor considered it necessarj^, however, to go
through the form of renouncing the two provinces. He
is reported to have said to Victor Emmanuel before
leaving for Paris, " Your government will pay me the
cost of the war, and we shall think no more about Nice
and Savoy. Now we shall see what the Italians can do
by themselves." Walewslci confirmed this by stating
that the simple annexation of Lombardy was not a
sufficient motive "for demanding a sacrifice on the part
of our ally in the interest of the safety of our frontiers,"
and in August he formally repeated to Rattazzi that
they did not dream of annexing Savoy. Sincere or not,
these disclaimers released Victor Emmanuel from the
secret bond into which Cavour had persuaded him to
enter. The contract was recognised as null. Rattazzi
was notoriously opposed to any cession of territory, and
had he known how to play his game it is at least open
to argument that the House of Savoy might have been
spared losing its birthright as the Houses of Orange and
Lorraine had lost theirs. But his weak policy landed
Italian affairs in a chaos which made Napoleon once
more master of the situation.
The populations of Central Italy desired Victor
Emmanuel for their king — Was he to accept or refuse 1
Rattazzi tried to steer between acceptance and refusal.
A great many people thought then that acceptance out-
right would have brought the armed intervention of
France or of Austria, or of both combined. The
sagacious historian ought not lightly to set aside the
qurrent conviction of contemporaries. Those who come
X SAYOY AND NICE 163
after are much better informed as to data, but they fail
to catch the atmospheric tendency, the beginning-to-
drift, of which witnesses are sensible. The scare was
universal. The British Government sent a formal note
to France and Austria stating that the employment of
Austrian or French forces to repress the clearly expressed
will of the people of Central Italy " would not be
justifiable towards the government of the Queen." Lord
Palmerston made the remark that the French formula
of " Italy given to herself " had been transformed into
" Italy sold to Austria." He grew every day more dis-
trustful of Kapoleon, and more regretful that the only
man whom he believed able to cope with him was out
of office.
" They talk a great deal in Paris of Cavour's in-
trigues," he wrote to Lord Cowley. " 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.
The annexation of the Duchies to Piedmont will be an
unfathomable good for Italy at the same time as for
France and for Europe. I hope Walewski will not urge
the Emperor to make the slavery of Italy the denoHment
of a drama which had for its first scene the declaration
that Italy should be free from Alps to Adriatic.
If the Italians are left to themselves all u ill ''i> well :
164 CAVOUR CHAP.
and when they say that if the French garrison were
recalled from Rome all the priests would be assassinated,
one can cite the case of Bologna, whero the priests have
not been molested and where perfect order is nuiintained."
However much Austria might dislike the turn which
events had taken in the Centre, it was generally ad-
mitted that she would not or could not intervene, even
single-handed, without the tacit consent of France,
which had still five divisions in Lombardy. The issue,
therefore, hung on France. There is no doubt that
Napoleon told all the Italians, or presumably Italian
sympathisers who came near him, that he " would not
allow " the union of Tuscany with Piedmont. He said to
Lord Cowley, " The annexation of Tuscany is a real
impossibility." He told the Marquis Pepoli that if the
annexations crossed the Apennines, unity would be
achieved ; and he did not want unity : he wanted only
independence. Walewski echoed these sentiments, and
in his case it is certain that he meant what he said.
But did Napoleon mean what he said 1 Evidence has
come to light that all this time he was speaking in an
entirely different key whenever his visitor was a reac-
tionist or a clerical. To these he invariably said that
he was obliged to let events take their course, though
contrary to his interests ; because, having given the
blood of his soldiers for Italian independence, he could
not fire a shot against it. To M. de Falloux he said that
he had always been bound to the cause of Italy, and it
was impossible for him to turn his guns against her.
What becomes, then, of his threats 1 Might not an
Italian minister, relying on the support of England,
have ignored them and passed on his way ?
s SAVOY AND NICE 165
Though Eattazzis timidity prevented Victor Em-
manuel from accepting the proferred crowns, the king
declared on his own account that if these people who
trusted in him were attached, he would break his
sword and go into exile rather than leave them to their
fate. He wrote to Napoleon that misfortune might
turn to fortune, but that the apostasies of princes were
irreparable. The Peace of Zurich, signed on NoAcmber
10, did nothing to relax the strain. It merely referred
the settlement of Italy to the usual Napoleonic panacea
— a Congress not intended to meet. A Congress would
have done nothing for Italy, but neither would it have
given Napoleon Savoy and Nice. But the proposal had
one important result : it brought Cavour back on the
scene. A duel was going on between him and Eattazzi.
He was accused, perhaps truly, of moving heaven and
earth to upset the ministry, while Eattazzi's friends
were spreading abroad every form of abuse and calumny
to keep him out of office. When the Congress was
announced, the popular demand for the appointment of
Cavour as Sardinian plenipotentiary was too strong to
be resisted. Eattazzi yielded, and the king, though still
remembering with bittci' feelings the scene at Villafranca,
sacrificed his pride to his patriotism. Cavour did not
like the idea of serving under Eattazzi, but he agreed
to accept the post in order to prevent an antagonism
which would have proved fatal to Italy. Napoleon
a.stiitely uttered no word of protest.
The Congress hung fire, and Ca\our remained at
Leri occupied with his cows and his fields, but .sccretlj''
chafing at the sight of Italy in a perilous crisis abandoned
to men whom lie l;clieved incapable. From the moment
166 CAVOUR CfiAP.
that he had been called back to the piiblic service, his
own return to the premiership could only be a question
of time, and he wished that time to be short. The fall
of the ministry was inevitable, for it was unpopular on
all sides, but no one had foreseen how it would fall.
La ]\Iarmora, who was the nominal president of the
Council (Rattazzi having taken his old post of Home
Minister), somehow discovered that a draft of Cavour's
letter of accptance of the appointment of plenipotentiary
existed in Sir James Hudson's handwriting. Though it
was true that the British Government was most anxious
that Cavour should figure in the Congress, if there was
one, the fact that Sir James Hudson had written down
a copy of the letter as it was composed was only an
accident which happened through the intimate relations
between them. La Marmora saw it in a diSerent light,
and angrily declaring that he would not put up with
foreign pressure, he sent in his resignation, which was
accepted. Thus in January 1860 Cavour became once
more the helmsman of Italian destinies. The new
ministry consisted principally of himself, as he held the
home and foreign ofiices, as Avell as the presidency of the
Council.
He was resolved to put an end to the block at all
costs, except the reconsignment of populations already
free to Austria or Austrians. " Let the people of Central
Italy declare themselves what they want, and we will
stand by their decisions come what may." This was the
rule which he proposed to follow, and which he would
have followed even if war had been the consequence.
Personally he would have accepted a provisional union
of the Central States, such as Farini advocated; but
X SAVOY AND NICE 167
Ricasoli discerned in any temporary division a danger
to Italian unit}', and induced or rather forced Cavour to
renounce the idea. He called Ricasoli an "obstinate
mide," but he had the rare gift of seeing that the strong
man who opposed him in details was to be preferred to
a weak man who was only a puppet.
The substitution of Walewski by Thouvenel at the
French Foreign Office, and the Emperor's letter to the
Pope advising him to give up the revolted Legations of
his own accord, raised many hopes, but those who took
these to be the signs of a decided change of policy were
mistaken. Napoleon would not yield about Tuscany,
and it grew plainer every day that the reason why he
held out was in order to sell his consent. M. Thouvenel
has distinctly stated that at this period the English
ministry were informed of the Emperor's intention
to claim Savoy and Nice if Piedmont annexed an}'^ more
territory. Even before he resumed office, Cavour was
conduced that the only way to a settlement was to
strike a direct bargain with Napoleon. He viewed the
contemplated sacrifice not with less but with more
repulsion than he had viewed it at Plorabi^res. The
constant harassing of the last six months, which pro-
voked him to say that never would he be again an
accessory to bringing a French army into Italy, left an
ineffaceable impression on his mind. The cession of the
two provinces seemed to him now much less like oblig-
ing a friend than satisfying a highwayman. But he was
convinced that it was an act of necessity.
As the " might-have-beens " of history can never be
determined, it will never be possible to decide with
certainty whether Cavour's conviction was right or
168 CAVOUR en At.
wrong. 11 a] f a year of temporising had prejudiced the
position of affairs ; it was more difficult to defy Napoleon
now than when he broke off the war without fulfilling
his promises. A clear-sighted diplomatist, Count Vitz-
thum, has given it as his opinion that if Cavour had
divulged the Secret Treaty of January 1859, by which
Savoy and Nice were promised in return for the French
alliance, Napoleon would have been so deeply embar-
rassed that he would have relinquished his claims at
once. But such a course would have mortally offended
France as well as the Emperor. Cavour did not share
the illusion of the Italian democracy that the " great
heart " of the French nation was with them. He once
said that, if France became a republic, Italy would
gain nothing by it — quite the contrary. With so
many questions still open, and, above all, the difficult
problem of Rome, he feared to turn the smothered
animosity of the French people into violent and declared
antagonism.
The king ofi'ered no fresh opposition ; he said sadly
that, as the child was gone, the cradle might go too.
When the exchange of Savoy for a French alliance was
proposed to Charles Albert he wrathfully rejected the
idea ; and if Victor Emmanuel j'ielded, it was not that
he loved Savoy less but Italy more. It has to be noticed,
however, that, though always loyal to their king, the
Savoyards had for ten years shown an implacable hos-
tility to Italian aspirations. The case against the cession
of Nice was far stronger. General Fanti, the minister
of war, threatened to resign, so essential did he hold
Nice to the defence of the future kingdom of Italy.
The British Government also insisted on its military
X SAVOY AND NICE 169
importance. Nice was a thoroughly Itahan town in race
and feeling, as no one knew better than Cavour, though
he was forced to deny it. According to an account
published in the Life of the Prince Consort, and seemingly
derived from Sir James Hvidson, it would appear that
he was still hoping to save Nice, when Count Benedetti
arrived from Paris with the announcement that, if the .
Secret Treaty were not signed in its entirety, the Emperor
would withdraw his troops from Lombardy. Cavour is
said to have ansAvered, " The sooner they go the better "
— on which Benedetti took from his pocket a letter
containing the Emperor's private instructions, and pro-
ceeded to say, "Well, I have orders to withdraw the
troops, but not to France ; they will occupy Bologna
and Florence." ^
On March 24, depressed and bowed, Cavour walked
up and down the room where the French negotiators
sat. At last, taking up the pen, he signed the Secret
Treaty. Then suddenly he seemed to recover his spirits,
as, turning to M. de Talleyrand, he said, " Maintenant
nous sommes complices, n'est ce pas vrai 1 "
The secrecy was none of his seeking ; he had tried
hard to induce Napoleon to let the treaty be submitted
to Parliament before it was signed, as constitutional
usage demanded, but the Emperor was resolved that the
Chambers and Europe should know of it only when it
was an accomplished fact. He had good reason for the
precaution. He knew that there would be an outburst
of indignation in England, though he little imagined the
' Ji) 1896 Count Benedetti contributed two articles to the: Reviie
dcs deux mo I ides on "Cavour and liismarck." His only mention
of the afFiiir of Savoy and Nice is tlie casuistical remark that
"Cavour kept the cii'jagemcnl concluded at I'lombUres" (sic).
170 CAVOUR CHAP.
after consequences of tliis to himself. His one idea just
then was to make sure of his bargain, not because he
cared to enlarge his frontiers, for he was not constitu-
tionally ambitious, but because he hoped, by doing so,
to win the gratitude of France. It is useful as a lesson
to note that he won nothing of the kind. Nor did
Cavour win the goodwill of the French masses as he had
hoped. France might have been angry had she not
received the two provinces, but she showed real or
affected ignorance of their value. For many years the
French papers described the county of Nice as a poor,
miserable strip of shore, and the duchy of Savoy as a
few bare rocks. French people then travelled so little
that they may have thought it was true.
As Napoleon was bent on deceiving, Cavour was
obliged to deceive too. Sir Robert Peel's denial of the
*
intention of Glovernment to repeal the Corn Laws has
been defended on the ground that the Cabinet had not
taken a definite resolution ; if such a defence is of profit,
Cavour is entitled to the benefit of it. At any rate he
had no choice. Whether or not they had been previously
warned, the English Ministry, and especially the Foreign
Secretary, now believed the professions of innocence.
The Earl of Malmesbury records a suspicion that as far
back as January 1859 Napoleon secured some sort of
written promise from Lord Palmerston that he would
not make difficulties about Nice and Savoy. Such an
assurance amounts, of course, to saying, "Go and take
it," as in the more recent case of Tunis. The story is
not impossible ; like Cavour, Lord Palmerston desired so
much to see Italy freed that he would have given up a
good deal to arrive at the goal. The country resented
y. SAVOY AND NICE 1?1
the deception, as it had every right to do, and the Queen
expressed the general feeling when she wrote to Lord
John Eussell, "We have been made regular dupes."
For a moment there seemed a risk of war, but Lord
Palmerston never had the slightest intention of going to
war, whatever were the inclinations of his colleague
at the Foreign Office. Lord John Eussell took his
revenge on Napoleon when the Emperor wished to
proceed to joint action with England on the Danish
question ; by refusing this proposal he deprived him
of the one and only chance of stemming Prussian
ambition.
Cavour did not extenuate the gravity of the responsi-
bility which he accepted when he advised the king to
sign away national territory without the sanction of
Parliament. He said that it was a highly uncon-
stitutional act, which exposed him, were the Chamber of
Deputies to disown it, to an indictment for high treason.
He counted on losing all his popularity in Piedmont —
how could he not expect to lose it when his best hopes
for getting the treaty approved rested on the assumption
that the new voters from the enfranchised parts of Italy
would drown the opposition of his own State to its dis-
memberment 1 It has often been asked, Why did he not
allow the cession to wear the honest colour of surrender
to force? Why, "against his conviction," as he con-
fessed in private, did he declare that Nice was not
Italian'? Why go through the farce of plebiscites so
"arranged" that the result was a foregone conclusion?
The answer, satisfactory or not, is easily found : Nice
was stated to be not Italian to leave intact the thcoiy of
nationality for future use ; the plebiscites were resorted
172 CAVOUR CHAP.
to that Napoleon might be obliged to recognise the
same method of settling questions elsewhere.
The parliament which represented Piedmont, Lom-
bardy, Parma, Modena, and Eomagna, met on April 2,
1860. The frontier lines of six states were effaced.
The man who had so largely contributed to this great
result stood there to defend his honour, almost his life.
Guerrazzi compared him to the Earl of Clarendon —
"hard towards the king, truculent to Parliament, who
thought in his pride that he could do everything."
Cavour retorted : perhaps if Clarendon had been able to
show in defence of his conduct many million Englishmen
delivered from foreign yoke, several counties added to
his master's possessions, Parliament would not have
been so pitiless, or Charles II. so ungrateful to the most
faithful of his servants. The deputy Guerrazzi, he con-
tinued, had read him a lesson in history ; it should have
been given entire. And he then drew a picture, splendid
in its scathing irony, of the unscrupulous alliance of men
without principle, of all shades of opinion, only united
in self-interest, demagogues, courtiers, reactionists,
papists, puritans, Mdthout traditions, without ideas, at
one in impudent egotism, and in nothing else, who
formed the cabal which ruined Clarendon. Every one
understood that he was painting his own enemies inside
the Chamber and out.
In spite of protests and regrets, the treaty was
sanctioned by a larger majority than had been reckoned
on. When it came to the point, not a large number of
voters was ready to take the tremendous leap in the
dark which, among other consequences, must have con-
demned Cavour, if not to the fate of Stafford, at least
X SAVOY AND NICE 173
to obscurity for the rest of his life. But the ministry
came out of the contest, to use Cavour's own words,
extraordinarily weakened. "On me and on my
colleagues," he had said, "be all the obloquy of the act !"
He was to regain his power, and even his popularity, but
time itself cannot wholly obliterate the spot upon his
name. He knew it well himself. A writer in the
Qtuirterly Review, soon after his death, related that
latterly people avoided alluding to Savoy and Nice
before him ; the subject caused him such evident pain.
The same writer makes a very interesting statement
which, although there is no other authority for it, must
be assumed to rest on accurate information : he says
that Cavour hoped, to the last, some day to get the two
provinces back.^
^ Mr. John Murray has courteously informed me that the writer
of the article was the late Sir A. H. Layard.
CHAPTER XI
THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION
In March 1860 Cavour did not foresee what •would be
the next step — he only felt that it would not be long
delayed. Italy, he told the Chamber, was not sound or
safe ; Italy had still great wounds in her body. "Look
beyond the Mincio, look beyond Tuscany, and say if
Italy is out of danger ! " He interpreted the transaction
with Napoleon in the sense that, whatever happened
henceforward, he was to have a free hand. Napoleon
seemed to think, at the first, that the cession of Nice
and Savoy showed a yielding mood ; he was mistaken ;
it shut the door on yielding. Cavour found all sorts of
excuses for protracting the date of the official handing
over of those provinces, and this helped him in his
dealings with the Emperor, whom he compelled to
shelve a particularly obnoxious project of introducing
Neapolitan troops into the Roman States. Napoleon
was induced to promise to withdraw the French in July
without calling in others, on condition, however, that
all remained quiet. All was not going to remain
quiet.
There were no illusions on this point at the Vatican,
CHAP. XI THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION 175
where no one believed that the status quo would last. It
seemed to many of the Pope's advisers that, instead of
waiting for the blow, it were better to strike one, and
declare a holy war for thrones and altars. Cardinal
Antonelli, in concert with the dominant party at Naples
(which was that of the king's Austrian stepmother),
evolved a scheme for recovering Romagna, in which it
was hoped that Austria would join, Austrian aid being
at all times far more desired than French, But the
more ardent spirits were not averse from action even
without Austria. The Orleanist general Lamorici^re
was invited to Eome, and a call was issued which
brought an influx of Irish and French volunteers. The
French Emperor let Lamoriciere go, as he was glad to
get him out of the way. The Duke de Persigny told
his master that the gallant general would make trouble
for him in Italy, and, as Napoleon turned a deaf ear, he
suggested that Lamoriciere should be ordered to garrison
Rome while the French regular troops were sent to
protect the frontier. This simple arrangement would
have commended itself to any one who was in earnest in
wishing to preserve the integrity of what remained of
the Papal States ; Napoleon seemed to assent, but he
allowed the matter to drop.
It began to be clear that the Neapolitan Government
would soon have too much on its hands at home for it
to indulge in crusades. But the crisis was not hastened
by Cavour, and he was one of the last to believe it
imminent. Towards the end of March he learnt Avith
suqjrise from Sir James Hudson that the reason the
British Fleet had been sent to Naples was that a catas-
trophe was expected. He then asked the Sardinian
176 CAYOUR CHAP.
Minister at the Neapolitan Court whether a Maratist
restoration was still possible, and what chances there
were at Naples for Italian unity ? The Marquis Villa -
marina replied that the French, who once had many
partisans, had lost most of them. As to unity he held
out few hopes ; it was popular in Sicily but not on the
mainland, where the king had a strong following. If
the Marquis had said "large " for " strong" his assertion
would have been accurate. The misgovernment, which
Lord John Eussell had lately described as almost without
a parallel in Europe, was not of a nature to be wholly
vmpopular ; it was national after a fashion ; bribery and
espionage and the persecution of the best citizens may
leave the masses content, and, in fact, at least in the
capital, the hasso popolo was royalist, as was the scarcely
less ignorant nobility. The bulk of the clergy and
the army was also loyal. All this support made the
Bourbon regime look not insecure to those on the spot,
who failed to understand the comj)Iete rottenness of its
foundations.
When a revolutionary movement broke out in Sicily,
Cavour thought of sending secretly a Piedmontese officer,
who fought in the Sicilian insurrection of 1848, to
assume the direction, but he did not do so, perhaps
because he had verj^ little faith in the success of the
attempt. Save for the undoubted fact that Sicily was
already separated in spirit not only from the Bourbon
crown but from any rule which had its seat at Naples,
the insurrection did not begin under promising circum-
stances. There were no signs of a concerted rising on a
large scale, such as had overthrown the Government in
1848, and the authorities disposed of overwhelming
XI THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION 177
means, if they knew how to use them, of crushing a
few guerrilhx bands. Cavoiir was slow to believe the
catastrophe at hand, but he tliought that the time was
come to send the King of Naples a warning, which was
practically an ultimatum. On April 15 Victor Emmanuel
addressed a letter to Francis II., in which he told his
cousin that there was possibly still time to save his
dynasty, but that time was short. Two things must be
done : the first was to restore the Constitution (this even
Eussia was advising) ; the second, that the kings of
Sardinia and Naples should divide Italy between them,
drive out the last Austrian, and constrain the Pope, in
whatever strip of territory was left to him, to govern
on the same liberal basis as themselves. If these things
were not done, and at once, Francis would have the fate
of his relative Charles X., and the King of Sardinia
might be forced to become the chief instrument of his
ruin. It cannot be said that the warning was not
sufficiently explicit.
As the insurrection dragged on, the idea gained
ground in North Italy of sending out reinforcements to
the hard-pressed insurgents. Landings on the southern
coast had an unfortunate history from that of Murat
downwards, but those who play at desperate hazards
cannot be ruled by past experience. Cavour seems to
have lent some material aid to a Sicilian named La
Masa, who was preparing to take a handful of men to
his native island, but it is not true that he either desired
or abetted the expedition of Gari])aldi. A Garibaldian
venture could not be kept quiet; it would raise com-
plications with the Powers, and, besides, what if it failed
and cost Garibaldi his lifel Some people have supposed
N
178 CAVOUR CHAr.
that Cavour sent Garilialdi to Sicily to get rid of liiin at
an awkward moment, for the General was planning a
revolutionary stroke at Nice to resist the annexation.
Though this theory sounds plausible, documentary
evidence is all against it. Cavour had an interview
with the Garibaldian general, Sirtori, to whom he ex-
pressed the conviction that if they went they would be
all taken. Why, it may be asked, did he not stop the
whole affair by placing Garibaldi under lock and key 1
It seems certain that only the king's absolute refusal
prevented this effectual measure from being resorted to.
The king, accompanied by Cavour, was paying a first
visit to Tuscany ; there were rumours of stormy scenes
between them on the subject of the arrest, and Victor
Emmanuel had his way. Whatever was their disagree-
ment, it ceased when the die was cast. It was one of
Cavour's chief merits that he instantly grasped a new
situation. To let the expedition go and then place
obstacles in its way would have been an irreparable
mistake. Admiral Persano inquired whether he was to
stop the steamers carrying the Thousand to Sicily, should
stress of weather drive them into a Sardinian port?
The answer by telegraph ran, "The Ministry decides
for the arrest." Persano rightly judged this to mean
that Cavour decided against it, and he telegraphed back,
"I have understood."
Garibaldi sailed from Quarto late on May 5. Not
Cavour himself had thought worse of the plan than he
when it was first proposed to him, but, with the decision
to go, doubt vanished. " At last," he wrote, " I shall
be back in my element — action placed at the service of
a great idea." No one seems to have pointed out the
XI THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION 179
extraordinary boldness of choosing a fortified town of
18,000 inhabitants as the place of landing. The leaders
of similar expeditions have always selected some quiet
spot where they could land undisturbed, and the coast
of Sicily presents many such spots. If Garibaldi had
done the same he would have failed, for the success of
the Thousand was a success of p'estije. Italian patriots
at home had some uneasy days. Victor Emmanuel,
as he afterwards admitted, was in " a terrible fright " ;
Cavour went about silent and gloomy. A week passed,
and no news came. On May 13, at eleven o'clock at
night, a passer-by in the Via Carlo Alberto, not far
from the Palazzo Cavour, heard some one gaily whistling
the air
" Di qiiella pira ..."
Of a sudden the individual, who was walking very
quickly, vigorously rubbed his hands. The trait re-
vealed the man — it was Cavour ; he had just heard that
Garibaldi, eluding the Neapolitan fleet, had disembarked
with all his men at Marsala. Things were entering a
new and critical phase, and it was not difficult to foretell
that, while the hero would have all the laurels, the
statesman would have all the thorns. This was a small
matter to Cavour : they were again on the high seas, he
said cheerfully, but what was the good of thinking of
peace and quiet till Italy was made 1
The Sardinian Government adopted the policy of
assisting the expedition now as far as they could without
being compromised with the Powers of Europe — but no
farther. This via rn/^dia had the merit of succeeding;
it was, however, severely criticised by friends and foes
at the time. On May 21 Prince Napoleon said in thu
180 CAVOUIi CRAP.
presence of Marshal MacMalion, Prosper MC-rim^e, N. W.
Senior, and others, that Cavour had done too much or
too little ; he should have kept Garibaldi back, or given
him 5000 men; he had thrown on himself and on "my
father-in-law " all the discredit of favouring the enter-
prise, and he would have been no more blamed and
hated if he had given it real support. On higher
grounds Massimo d' Azeglio was horrified at the lack of
straightforwardness in mining the Bourbon edifice from
below instead of declaring war. "Garibaldi has no
minister at Naples, and he has gone to risk his skin,
and long life to him, but we ! ! " Taking this view,
the immaculate Massimo, as governor of Milan, im-
pounded a number of rifles intended for the Thousand,
and so nearly wrecked the aflfair. The King of Naples
naturally applied the same criticism. "Don Peppino,"
he said, "had clean hands, but he was only a blind,
behind which was ranged Piedmont with the Western
Powers, which had vowed the end of his dynasty."
Whether international law was violated or not, there
was no real deception, if the essence of deception is
to deceive, for the Neapolitan Government saw Cavour's
hand everywhere, even where it was not.
Cavour was deterred from declaring war by the fear
of foreign intervention. England was the only Power
which applauded the drama enacting in Sicily. The
cover afforded by English ships to the landing of Gari-
baldi was no doubt a happy accident, but, as Signer
Crispi often repeats to this day, the landing could
hardly have taken place without it. " C'est infame et
de la part des Anglais aussi," the Czar wrote on the
telegram which announced the safe arrival of the
XI THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION 181
"brigands" at Marsala. Cavour was afraid lest Russian
sympathy with the court of Naples should take a more
inconvenient form than angry words. Russia, however,
remained quiescent, though " geography " was stated to
be the only reason. Prussia also discovered that Naples
was some way ofi". Yet there was nothing which the
Prince Regent so disliked as to see kings overthrown,
until he began to do it himself. But the two Northern
Powers (and this was the meaning of the talk about
geography) did not want to act without Austria. The
Austrian Queen Dowager did all she could to obtain
help to save the crown, which she expected would pass
from the Aveakly Francis to her own son, but public
opinion in Austria had long been irritated by the
supineness and corruption of the Neapolitan regime, and
though the Government protested, it did not go to the
rescue. It is a question whether it would not have been
forced to go, if, at the outset, Cavour had declared war.
France joined in the protests of the other Powers, and
Cavour's enemies spread a monstrous rumour that he
was going to give up Genoa to win Napoleon's com-
plaisance. In reply to an anxious inquiry from the
British Government, he declared that under no circum-
stances would he yield another foot of ground.
When Garibaldi visited Admiral Persano's flag-ship
at Palermo, he was received with a salute of nineteen
giuis, which practically recognised his position as dictator,
and Medici's contingent of 3000 men was equipped and
armed by Cavour ; all secrecy as to the relations between
the minister and the Sicilian revolution was, therefore,
at an end. He wished that Sicily sliould be aiuiexed at
once. Though Garibaldi had performed every act hiiicc
182 CAVOUR CHAP.
he landed in Sicily in Victor Emmanuel's name, Cavour
was more and more afraid of the republicans in his
camp. He exaggerated their influence over their leader,
who, in vital matters, was not easy to move, and he did
not believe that, in accordance with Mazzini's instruc-
tions, they were working for unity regardless of the
form of government which might follow. Victor
Emmanuel could sound the depths of Mazzini's
patriotism ; Cavour never could. The two men were
made to misunderstand each other. There are differences
too fundamental for even imagination to bridge over.
Had they lived till now, when both are raised on
pedestals in the Italian House of Fame, from which time
shall not remove them, Mazzini would still have been
for Cavour, and Cavour for Mazzini, the evil genius of
his cou.ntry.
The nightmare of Eed Republicanism taking the bit
between its teeth and bolting was not the only terror
that disturbed Cavour's rest. He shuddered at the
establishment of a dictatorial democracy which placed
unlimited poAver in the hands of men of no experience,
with only the lantern of advanced Liberalism to guide
them. He, who had tried to make the Italian cause
look respectable, as well as meritorious, asked himself
what these improvised statesmen would do next ? The
Garibaldian dictatorship has not lacked defenders, and
two of its administrators lived to be prime ministers of
Italy, but it was inevitable that Cavom* should judge it
as he did.
A dualism began between Palermo and Turin, which
would not have reached the point that it did reach, if La
Farina, who was commissioned by Cavour to promote
xr THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION 183
annexatiou, had not launched into a furious personal
warfare with his fellow-Sicilian Crispi, a far stronger
combatant than he. Garibaldi ended by putting La
Farina on board a Sardinian man-of-war, and begging
the admiral to convey him home. The dictator bom-
barded the king's Government with advice, to which
Cavour alludes without irritation : " He writes and re-
writes, and telegraphs night and da}-, urging us with
counsels, warnings, reproaches — I might almost say
menaces." Garibaldi, he goes on to say, has a generous
character, poetic instincts, but his is an untamed nature,
on which certain impressions leave ineffaceable traces ;
he feels the cession of Nice as a personal injury, and he
will never forgive it. The king has a certain influence
over him, but it would be madness to seek to employ it
in favour of the Ministry ; he would lose it, which would
be a great misfortune. Plow few ministers who, like
Cavour, were accustomed to be all-powerful, would have
met unrelenting opposition in this spirit !
The influence of the king was sought by Napoleon to
induce Garibaldi to stop short at Messina, but he can
hardly have been surprised when the General showed no
disposition to serve his sovereign so ill as to obey him.
He then proposed that the French and British admirals
should be instructed to inform Garibaldi that they had
orders to prevent him from crossing the straits. Lord
John Russell replied that, in the opinion of Government,
the Neapolitans should be left to receive or repel Gari-
baldi as they pleased ; nevertheless, if France interfered
alone, they would limit themselves to disapproving and
protesting. But Napoleon did not wish to interfere
alone; the efTect would be to make British iiitlutnco
1S4 CAVOUR (11 A I'.
p<iraniount in Italy, and possibly even to cause >5icily to
crave a British protectorate. In great liaste he assured
the Foreign Secretar}' that his chief desire was to act
about Southern Italy in whatever way was approved by
England. Italy was saved from a great peril in 18G0,
firstly, by English goodwill, and, secondly, by the absence
of any real agreement between the Continental Powers.
Had there been a concert of Europe, the passage of
Garibaldi to Calabria would have been barred.
By this time no one was more determined than
Cavour himself that not a palm of ground should be left
to the Bourbon dynasty, but he still thought it necessary
to save appearances. Thus he met the too late advances
of the Neapolitan Government, not by a refusal to treat,
but b}- proposing a condition with which Francis, as an
obedient son of the Church, could not comply : the
formal recognition of the union of Romagna with Pied-
mont. Strict moralists, like Lanza, would have wished
him to send the ambassadors of the King of Naples
about their business, and to declare war on any pretext,
and so escape from "a hybrid and perilous game."
Cavour looked upon the Neapolitan Government as
doomed, and that by its own fault, its own obstinacy,
its own rejection of the i)lank of safety, which, almost at
the risk of doing a wrong to Italy, he had advised his
king to ofl'er it three months before. He felt no
scruples in accelerating its fall. The means he took
may not have been the best means, but he thought them
good enough in dealing with a system which was a by-
word for bad faith and corruption. He wished that the
end might come before Garibaldi crossed the straits, or,
at least, when he was still far from Naples. Thus a
XI THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION 185
repetition of the Sicilian dictatorship would be impossible.
To wliat measures he resorted is not known with any
accuracy ; he was carrying on a policy without the
knowledge of the king or the cabinet, and no trust-
worthy accoiuit exists of it. What is known is that
Cavour, as a conspirator, failed.
Till the Captain of the Thousand appeared, the people
would not move. They knew nothing of the merits of
a limited monarchy, but they could vibrate to the
electric thrill of a great emotion, such as that which
made their hearts rise and swell when the organ in the
village church pealed forth the airs of Bellini or Donizetti
on a feast day. Garibaldi was the Mahdi of a new dis-
pensation, which was to end earthquakes, the cholera,
poverty, to heal all wounds, dry all tears. Yes, it was
worth while to rise now ! King Francis seems to have
understood the situation ; he sat down to wait for
Destiny in a red shirt. When the liberator was
sufficiently near, he is reported to have called the com-
manders of the National Guard, and to have addressed
them in these words: "As your — -that is, our com-
mon friend, Don Peppe, approaches, my work ends and
yours begins. Keep the peace. I have ordered the
troops that remain to capitulate."
The British Government had all along recommended
Cavour to leave Gai-ilxildi alone to finish the task he had
60 well begun ; he did not take the advice, but in the
end he must have recognised its wisdom. At the very
last moment it might have been possible to get Victor
Eninjanuel's authority proclaimed at Naples before Gari-
baldi entered the city, or, at any rate, Cavour thought
so ; but the attempt would have worn a graceless l<juk
186 CAVOUE CHAP.
at that late hour, and it was not made. Cavour never
forgot the services which Garibaldi had rendered to
Italy; "the greatest," he said, "that a man could
render her." When the dissension between them began,
he might have convoked Parliament and fought out the
battle before the Chamber, but, though he would have
saved his prestige, he would have lost Italy. He pre
ferred to risk his reputation and to save Italy. In order
to make Italy, he believed it to be of vital importance
to keep the hero on good terms with the king. Gari-
baldi was a great moral power, not only in Italy, but in
Europe. If Cavour entered into a struggle with him, he
would have the majority of old diplomatists on his side,
but European public opinion would be against him, and
it would be right. He argued thus with those who
mistook his forbearance for weakness, when it was really
strength.
Cavour seriously thought that among the incon-
venient consequences of Garibaldi's ascendency might be
a war with Austria, forced on the Government by the
victorious condoitiere in the intoxication of success. He
was resolved as a statesman to do what he could to
prevent so great an imprudence. He had assured the
British Government in writing that he had no present
intention of attacking Austria, and in this he was
perfectly sincere. Still he did not shrink from the
possibility. He wrote to Eicasoli : " If we were beaten
by overwhelming force, the cause of Italy would not be
lost ; she would arise from her ruins, as Piedmont arose
from the field of Xovara." To another friend he made
what was, perhaps, the only boast he ever uttered : " I
would answer for the result if I possessed the art of
XI THE SICILIAN EXPEDITION 187
war as I possess the art of politics." For the rest,
he added characteristically, When a course became
the only one, what was the good of counting up its
dangers 1 You ought to find out the way of overcoming
them.
CHAPTER XII
THE KINGDOM OF ITALY
When Garib;ildi entered Naples, Cavour had already
decided on the momentous step of sending the king's
forces into Umbria and the Marches of Ancona. At the
end of August he wrote : "We are touching the su})reme
moment ; with God's help, Italy will be made in three
months." If constitutional monarchy was to triumph it
could no longer stand still ; neither Austrian arms nor
republican propaganda could so jeopardise the scheme of
an Italian kingdom under a prince of the House of
Savoy as the demonstration of facts that the Govern-
ment of Victor Emmanuel had lost the lead. Moreover,
it became daily more probable that, if the king did not
invade the Roman States from the north, Garibaldi
would invade them from the south, and this Cavour was
determined to prevent. If a Garibaldian invasion suc-
ceeded, France would come into the field ; if it failed,
all the great results hitherto accomplished Avould be
compromised. Garibaldi at most could only have
disposed of half his little army of volunteers, and in
Lamoriciere, the conqueror of Abd-el-Kader, he would
have met a stouter antaiionist than the Bourbon generals.
CHAP. XII THE KINGDOM OF ITALY 189
But the party of action urged him towards Rome, cost
what it might, with the impracticahility of men who
expect the walls of cities to fall at the blast of the
trumpet. Every reason, patriotic, political, geographical,
justified Cavour's resolution. It was only by force that
Umbria and the Marches had been retained under the
papal sway in 1859 ; there was not an Italian who did not
look on their liberation as a patriotic duty. The nominal
pretext for the war, as has happened in most of the wars
of this century, only partially touched the point at
issue ; Cavour professed to see a menace in the increase
of the Pope's army, and demanded its disbandment. In
a literal sense, fifteen or twenty thousand men could not
be a menace to Italy. Still it must be doubted if any
state could have tolerated, in what was now its midst,
even this small force, commanded by a foreign general,
composed largely of foreign recruits, and proclaiming
itself the advance guard of reactionary Europe.
Lamoriciere said that wherever the revolution appeared,
it must be knocked on the head as if it were a mad
dog. By " the revolution " he meant Italian unity.
Cavour, the cabinet, and the king were already
labouring under the penalties of excommunication by the
Bull issued in the spring against all who had taken part
in the annexation of Romagna. When Prince Charles
of Lorraine in 1G90 advised the Emperor to withdraw
his claims to Spain and concentrate his energies on
uniting Italy, he ob-scrved that in order to join the
kingdom of Naples with Lombardy, it would be necessary
to reduce the Pope to the sole city of Rome. This most
able statesman of the House of Ilapsburg continued :
" The services of very Itanicd doctors should be obtained
190 CAVOUR CHAP.
to instruct the people, both by word of mouth and by
writing, on the inutility and illusion of excommunications
when it is a question of temporalities, which Jesus
Christ never destined to His Church, and which she
cannot possess without outraging His example and com-
promising His Gospel." Cavour did not seek the learned
doctors, because he knew that the religious side of the
matter, however vital it seemed to the young Breton
noblemen who enlisted under Lamorici^re, left unmoved
the Pope's subjects, who had a mixture of scorn and
hatred for the rule of priests, such as was not felt for
any government in Italy. For the rest, familiarity
lessens the effect of spiritual fulminations, and even of
those not spiritual. For three months Cavour had
sustained the running fire of all except one of the foreign
representatives at Turin ; as he wrote to the Marquis E.
d' Azeglio : "I have the whole corps diplomatique on my
back, Hudson excepted ; I let them have their say and I
go on." He deplored the sad fate of diplomacy, which
always took the most interest in bad causes, and was the
more favourable to a government the worse it was.^ If
ces messieurs protested or departed, they must ; he could
not arrest the current. If he tried, it would carry him
away with it, " which would not be a great evil," but it
would carry away the dynasty also. The Peace of
Villafranca had caused the Italians to conceive an
irresistible desire for unity — events were stronger than
men, and he should only stop before fleets and armies.
It appears that this time Cavoiu- would have acted
1 We are reminded of a remark of Prince Bismarck : " Personne,
pas meme le plus malveillaut democrate, ne se fait une idee de ce
qu'il y a de uullite et de charlatanisme dans cette diploniatie."
XII THE KINGDOM OF ITALY IPl
even without the assent of Napoleon ; it was, however,
evidently of great moment to secure it if possible. The
Emperor was making a tour in the newly acquired
proAance of Savoy when General Cialdini and L. C.
Farini were despatched by Cavour to endeavour to win
him over. The interview, which was held at Chambery,
was kept so secret that its precise date is not now
known. Cavour tried, not for the first time, the effect
of entire frankness. He counted on persuading Napoleon
that their interests were identical : the White Eeaction
and the Red Republic were the enemies of both. He
did not neglect the item that Lamorici^re was disliked
at the Tuileries. With regard to Garibaldi, he repre-
sented that since the cession of Nice no one could manage
him. The end of it was that, if Napoleon did not say
the words "Faites, mais faites vite," which rumour
attriljuted to him, he certainly expressed their substance.
On September 11 the Sardinian army, more than
double as strong as Lamoriciere's, crossed the papal
frontier. With the exception of England and Sweden,
all the Powers recalled their representatives from Turin.
The French Ministry telegraphed to Napoleon, who was
at Marseilles, to ask what they were to do. They got
no answer, and, left to their own inspiration, they in-
formed the Duke de Grammont, the French Ambassador
at Rome, tliat the Emperor's Government "would not
tolerate " the culpable aggression of Sardinia, nnd that
orders were given to embark troops for Ancona. These
misleading assurances encouraged Lamorici^re, but in
any case he would probably have thought it incumbent
on him to make what stand he could. He was defeated
by Ci;ildiiii on the heights of Castclfidardo — "ycstcr-
192 CAVOUR CHAP.
day unknown, to-day immortal," as Mgr. Dupanloup
eloquently exclaimed. Ancona fell to a combined attack
from land and sea. Meanwhile Fanti advanced on
Perugia, and was on the point of entering Viterbo when
a detachment from the French garrison in Home suddenly
occupied the town : one of Napoleon's facing-both-ways
evolutions by which he thought to save the goat and
cabbages of the Italian riddle, but the final result was to
lose both one and the other. Lamoricierc went home,
declaring that he took his defeat less to heart than the
cruel disillusions he had undergone in Rome. Some one
proposed that he should go to the rescue of King
Francis, but he answered that his wish had been to
serve the Pope, not the Neapolitan Bourbons.
On the 20th the King of Sardinia, at the head of his
army, marched into the kingdom of Naples. For the
Continental Powers it was a new act of aggression ; for
Lord Palmerston, a measure of the highest expediency,
to which he had been urging Cavour with an impatience
hardly exceeded by that of the most ardent Italian
patriot. The goal of Italian unity was now more than
in sight — it was touched. The Rubicon was crossed in
more senses than one. But at this last stage there
ai'ose a danger which Cavour had not seriously appre-
hended. He thought that Austria would not attack,
unless directly provoked by some imprudence of the
extreme party. She had allowed the Grand Duke of
Tuscany and the King of Naples to fall ; why should
she be more concerned for the Pope ^ Austria's concern
for the Pope was, in fact, not very deep, but there were
Austrian politicians who argued that, if Venetia was to
be saved for the empire, the right of Austria to hold it
XII THE KIXGDO:\I OF ITALY 193
must rest on something more solid than a treaty, every
other clause of which had been torn to shreds. Never
could a time return so favourable as the present for
striking a blow at the nascent Italian kingdom. With the
king and the best part of the army in the south, who
was there to oppose them 1 It is true that there was a
feeling, growing and expanding silently, which tended
all the other way : a feeling that enough of German and
Hungarian and Bohemian and Polish blood had been
poured out upon Italian plains; that there was a fate
in the thing, and the fate was contrary to Austria. This
feeling grew and grew till the day when Venice too was
lost, and not a man in Austria could find it in his heart
to cast one sincere look of regret behind at all that
fabric of splendid but ill-fortune-bringing dominion. A
few years were still to pass, however, before that day
came, and all the forces of the old order combined to
press the Emperor to oppose the invading flood while
there was time. Some say that he had actually signed
the order to cross the frontier, but that on second
thoughts he decided first to seek the co-operation of
Russia, probably with a view to keeping France quiet.
When he went to Warsaw in October, he left everything
prepared for war on his return. But Alexander II.,
having thrown overboard his old friends at Naples, did
not want to help the Pope. The Emperor of Austria
was badly received by the people of Warsaw, and this
tended against the alliance. The Prince Regent of
Prussia, who travelled to Warsaw to meet him, definitely
refused to guarantee his Venetian possessions. Lord
John Russell had lately met the Prussian ruler and his
minister, Schleinitz, at Coblentz, and had used all his
194 CAVOUR CHAP.
influence to persuade them to keep Germany out of
Italian concerns. Though the Berlin Government loudly-
protested against the Sardinian attack on papal territory,
there is no doubt that the voice of Prussia at Warsaw
was raised in favour of peace.
At this juncture Napoleon proposed the usual Con-
gress. While he told Cavour that he must not expect
assistance from him, his private language towards the
Northern Powers did not exclude the possibility of
French intervention. A diversion was created by a note
which Lord John Russell addressed to Sir James Hudson,
"the most unprincipled document," as it was called at
Rome, " that had ever been written by the minister of
any civilised court." Lord John defended every act of
Sardinia in the strongest and plainest terms, and people
grew almost more angry with him than with Cavour.
The Italian statesman never quailed through this last
perilous crisis ; " Nous sommes prets," he wrote, " k jouer
le tout pour le tout." There are moments when the
problems of politics, as of life, cease to perplex. By
degrees the storm-clouds rolled away without breaking.
In November Cavour felt himself strong enough to
affirm that the questions of Naples and the Marches
were purely Italian, and that the Powers of Europe had
no business to meddle with them. During the autumn,
amidst other cares, he was seriously preoccupied by a
persistent rumour that his faithful friend. Sir James
Hudson, was to be removed to make room for the ex-
British Minister at Naples, whose occupation was gone
through the fall of the dynasty. It has been denied
that the change was then contemplated ; at any rate it
was not carried out till a later period, and Cavour had
XII THE KINGDOM OF ITALY 195
the comfort of keeping his English fellow-worker near
him till he died.
The Garibaldian epic closed with the battle near the
left bank of the Volturno on October 1. Still Garibaldi
showed no disposition to resign the dictatorship, or to
abandon the designs on Rome which he had postponed,
not renoimced. On his side, Cavour was resolved that a
normal government should be established at Naples, and
that Garibaldi should not go to Rome, but he was no
less resolved that, as far as he could compass it, the giver
of two crowns should be generously treated. Un-
fortunately Fanti, the virtual head of the royal army,
represented the old military prejudice which classed
volunteers with banditti. A violent scene took place
between this general and Cavour ; Fanti wished that the
Garibaldians should be simply sent home with a gx\atuity,
alleging that " the exigencies of the army " were opposed
to the recognition of their grades. Cavour replied that
they were not in Spain, — in Italy the army obeyed. The
ministerial emissaries in the south received instructions
(which they did not invariably execute) to spare no
pains to act in harmony with the dictator. Cavour,
himself, treated him always as a power and an equal.
He took care that he was the first to whom the secret of
the invasion of the Marches was confided. He assured
him that in case of a war with Austria he would be
called upon to play an important part. When the king
started on the march for Naples, Cavour wrote to him
advising that " infinite regard " should be paid to the
leader of the Thousand; "Garibaldi," he added, "has
become my most violent enemy, but I desire for the
good of Italy, and the honour of your Majesty, that he
196 CAVOUR CUAP,
should retire entirely satisfied." To L. C. Farini, who
accompanied the king to Naples, he wrote that the
whole of Europe would condemn them if they sacrificed
to military pedantry men who had given their blood for
Italy. He would bury himself at Leri for the rest of his
life rather than be responsible for an act of such black
ingratitude. In spite of all he could do, however, a
certain grudging spirit hung about the conduct of
Piedmontese oflScialdom toAvards the volunteers and
their chief, but great personal offers were made to Gari-
baldi — the highest military rank, a castle, a ship, the
dowry of a princess for his daughter. All was refused.
Garibaldi asked for the governorship of the Two Sicilies
for a year with unlimited power, and this, in the opinion
of every person of weight in Italy, it was impossible to
grant.
In reviewing Cavour's conduct of affairs at this point,
it is important to dwell on his unwavering fidelity to
constitutional methods. We know now that he was
strongly urged to take an opposite course. Ricasoli
telegraphed to him : " The master stroke would be to
proclaim the dictatorship of the king." The Iron Baron
told Victor Emmanuel to his face that it was humiliating
foi- him to accept half Italy as the gift even of a hero.
It was no time for scruples ; the coup d'dfat would be
legitimised afterwards by universal suffrage ; Garibaldi
himself would approve of the king's dictatorship if it
were accompanied by a thoroughly Italian policy. This
was perfectly true ; as Cavour said, the conception was
really the same as Garibaldi's own : a great revolutionary
dictatorship to be exercised in the name of the king
without the control of a free press, and with no
XII THE KINGDOM OF ITALY 197
individual or parliamentary guarantees. But Cavour
would have none of it. What, he asked, would England
say to a coup dUtat? His hope had always been that
Italy might make herself a nation without passing
through the hands of a Cromwell ; that she might win
independence without sacrificing liberty, and abolish
monarchical absolutism without falling into revolutionary
despotism. From parliament alone could be drawn the
moral force capable of subduing factions.
Not from his fellow-countrymen only, but from some
who believed themselves to be Italy's best friends
abroad, came the prompting of the tempter : more power !
Few ministers in a predicament of such vast diflBculty
would have resisted the evil fascination of those two
words. Cavour heard them unmoved. He told his
various counsellors that they counted too much on his
influence, and were too distrustful of liberty. He had
no confidence in dictatorships, least of all in civil
dictatorships ; with a parliament many things could be
done which would be impossible to absolute power.
The experience of thirteen years convinced him that an
honest and energetic ministry, which had nothing to
fear from the revelations of the tribune, and which was
not of a humour to be intimidated by extreme parties,
gained far more than it lost by parliamentary struggles.
He never felt so weak as when the Chambers were
clo.sed. In a letter to Mme. de Circourt, he said that, if
people succeeded in persuading the Italians that they
needed a dictator, they would choose Garibaldi, not
himself, and they would be right. He summed up the
matter ilius : "I cannot betray my origin, deny the
principles of all my life. I am the son oi liberty, and to
198 CAVOUR CHAP.
it I owe all that I am. If a veil is to be i)lace(l on its
statue, it is not for me to do it."
Meanwhile the edge of the precipice was reached.
The king was marching on, and still the dictator held
the post which he owed to his sword and the popular
will. He openly begged the king to dismiss his minister
(in his idea kings could change their ministers as easily
as dictators). The public challenge could not be
ignored. There was no time to lose, and Cavour lost
none ; his answer was an appeal to parliament. " A
man," he said, " whom the country holds justly dear has
stated that he has no confidence in us. It behoves parlia-
ment to declare whether we shall retire or continue our
work." He invited the deputies to pass a Bill authorising
the king's Government to accept the immediate aimexa-
tion of such provinces of Central and Southern Italy as
manifested by universal suflFrage their desire to become
an integral part of the constitutional monarchy of Victor
Emmanuel. This was voted on October 11. The ma-
jority of Cavour's party did not believe that Garibaldi
would give in to the national mandate ; he knew him
better. On the Kith the dictator called together his
advisers of all shades of opinion. There was a heated
discussion : a solution seemed farther off than ever.
Then, when they had all spoken, the chief rose serenely
and said that, if annexation were the will of the people,
he woidd have annexation ; si faccia I' Italia ! He
decreed the plebiscite, but, having made up his mind, he
did not wait for its verdict. He issued one more ukase :
"that the Two Sicilies form an integral part of Italy,
one and indivisible under the constitutional king, Victor
Emmanuel, and his successors." By a stroke of the pen
XII THE KINGDOM OF ITALY 199
he handed over his conquests as a free gift. It was not
constitutional, still less democratic ; puritan republicans
averted their eyes, so did rigid monarchists, but Cavour
was perfectly content. He had forced Garibaldi's hand
without straining the royal prerogative or the minister's
authority. He had gained his end, and he had not
betrayed freedom. It could be argued now -nith more
force than in 1860 that Garibaldi and Ricasoli were
right in contending that the best government for the
southern populations, only just released from a demoral-
ising yoke, would have been a wise, temporary despotism.
But despotisms have the habit of being neither wise nor
temporary, and, apart from this, the establishment of
any partial or regional rule, which placed the south
under different institutions from the rest of Italy, would
have killed Italian Unity at its birth.
Cavour went on a brief visit to Naples, his name
having been the first to be drawn when the deputies
were chosen who were to take the congratulations of
parliament to the king. Umbria, the Marches, and tlie
kingdoms of Sicily and Naples were joined to the
common family. Much had, indeed, been done, but
there was trouble still at Gaeta, where Napoleon placed
his fleet in such a position as to render an attack from
the sea impossible. It was difficult to decide if dust-
throwing were the object, or if Napoleonic ideas had
taken a new turn. Italy was made, but it might be
unmade. This was what French politicians were con-
stantly repeating. " L'ltalie est une invention de
rEmpereur," said M. Kouhcr. " Rome I'engloutira ! "
predicted M. de Girardin. Italy, declared M. Tiiiers,
was an historiciil parasite wliich lived on its i»ast and
200 CAVOUil CHAP.
could have no future. If all this were so, the waters
would be disturbed again soon, and there might be play
for anglers. The Murat scheme would have a new
chance, were Victor Emmanuel tried and found wanting.
Young Prince Murat confided to his friends that he
expected to be wanted soon at Naples ; " a great bore,"
but he would do his duty and go if required.
Whatever purpose Najjoleon had in view, he was
induced, at last, by the British Government to desist
from prolonging a struggle which could only end in one
way. The French fleet was withdrawn in January
1861, and Gaeta capitulated on February 13. King
Francis began the sad life of exile, which closed a few
years ago at Arco. The true Bourbon takes misfortune
easily ; the pleasures of a mock court are dear to him,
his spirits never fail, nor does his appetite. But
Francis II., the son of a Savoyard mother, never con-
soled himself for the loss of country and crown.
Cavour hoped that with tlie fall of Gaeta the state of
the old Regno would rapidly improve, but another
citadel remained to the reaction — Eome, whence the
campaign against unity continued to be directed. A
veritable terreur blanche, called by one side brigandage,
by the other a holy war, possessed the hills from
Vesuvius to the Sila forest. But though there were
several foreign noblemen who took part in it, not one
Neapolitan of respectability or standing joined the
insurgents. The general elections showed in the south,
as over the whole country, a large majority pledged to
support Cavour. The first act of the new Chamber was to
vote the assumption of the title of King of Italy by Victor
Emmanuel. The king might have assumed the title a
xil THE KINCxDOM OF ITALY 201
year before with more correctness than the Longobard
kings of Italy or the First Consul, but he did well to
wait till none could gainsay his right to it. Some
faddists proposed to substitute " King of the Italians."
Cavour replied that the title of King of Italy was the
consecration of a great fact : the transformation of the
country, whose very existence as a nation was denied,
into the kingdom of Italy. It condensed into one word
the history of the work achieved. On the proclamation
of the new kingdom Cavour resigned office ; Victor
Emmanuel, who was never really at his ease with
Cavour, thought of accepting in earnest what was done
as a matter of form, but Ricasoli dissuaded him from
the idea. The Cavour ministry therefore returned to
office, with a few modifications.
The new Chamber represented all Italy, except Rome
and Venice. From Villafranca to his death, Venice was
never out of Cavour's mind. He kept in touch with the
revolutionary forces in Hungary, and Kossuth believed
to the last that, if Cavour had lived, he would have
compassed the liberation of both Hungary and Venetia
within the year 1862. He would have supported Lord
John Russell's plan, which was that Italy should buy
the Herzegovina and give it to Austria in exchange for
Venetia, but, on the whole, he thought that the most
likely solution was war, in which Prussia and Italy were
ranged on the same side. He, almost alone, rated at its
true value the latent military force of Prussia. He had
a knack of calling Prussia "Germany," as he used to
call Piedmont "Italy." He turned off the furious
remonstrances which came like the ])ur(lcn of a song
from licrliii, with the p(jlit(' iciiiaik thai the I'ru.ssiau
202 CAVOUR ciiAr. xii
Government woi;ld be soon very glad to follow his
example. When William I. ascended the throne, he
ignored the rupture of diplomatic relations, and sent La
Marmora to Avhisper into the ear of the new monarch
words of artful flattery. He may have doubted if a
Prussianised Germany would exactly come as a boon
and a blessing to men. In 1848 he prophesied that
Germanism would disturb the European equilibrium,
and that the future German Empire would aim at
becoming a naval power in order to combat and rival
England on the seas. But he saw that the rise of
Prussia meant the decline of Austria, and this was all
that, as an Italian statesman, with Venctia still in chains,
he was bound to consider.
CHAPTER XIII
ROME VOTED THE CAPITAL — CONCLUSION
TiiK Other unsolved question, that of Rome, was the
most thorny, the most complicated, that ever a states-
man had to grapple with. Though Cavour's death
makes it impossible to say what measure of success
would have attended his plans for resolving it, it must
be always interesting to study his attitude in approach-
ing the gi-eatest crux in modern politics.
Cavour did not think of shirking this question
because it was difficult. In fact, he had understood
from the beginning that in it lay the essence of the
whole problem. Chiefly for that reason he brought the
occupations of the Papal States before the Congress of
Paris. In 1856, as in 1861, he looked upon the
Temporal Power as incompatible with the independence
of Italy. It was already a fiction. "The Pope's
domination as sovereign ceased from the day when it
was proved that it could not exist save by a double
foreign occupation." It had ])Ccomc a centre of corrup-
tion, which destroyed moral sense and rendered religious
sentiment null. Without the Temporal Power, many of
the wounds of the Church mitrht be healed. It was
204 CAVOUR cuAP.
useless to cite the old argument of the independence of
the head of the Church ; in face of a donhle occupation
and the Swiss troops, it would be too biticr a mockery.
When Cavour spoke in these terms, Italian Unity
seemed far off. Now that it was accomplished, a new
and potent motive arose for settling the Roman question
once for all. In May 1861 Mr. Disraeli remarked to
Count Vitzthum : " The sooner the inevitable war breaks
out the better. The Italian card-house can never last.
Without Rome there is no Italy. But that the French
will evacuate the Eternal City is highly improbable.
On this point the interests of the Conservative party
coincide with those of Napoleon." There is no better
judge of the drift of political affairs than an out-and-out
opponent. So Prince Metternich always insisted that
the Italians did not want reforms — they wanted national
existence, unity. Mr. Disraeli probably had in mind a
speech delivered in the House of Commons by Lord
John Russell, in wliich the Foreign Secretary recom-
mended as " the best arrangement " the Pope's retention
of Rome with a small surrounding territory. There is
no doubt that a large part of the moderate party in
Italy would have then endorsed this recommendation.
They looked upon Roma capitale as what D' Azeglio called
it — a classical fantasticality. What was the good of
making an old man uncomfortable, upsetting the religious
susceptibilities of Europe, forfeiting the complaisance of
France, in order to pitch the tent of the nation in a
malarious town which was only fit to be a museum ?
Those who only partly comprehended Cavour's character
might have expected to find him favourable to these
opinions, which had a certain specious appearance of
xin EOME VOTED THE CAPITAL 205
practical good sense. But Cavour saw through the
husk to the kernel ; he saw that " without Rome there
was no Italy."
Without Rome Italian Unity was still only a name.
Rome was the symbol, as it was the safeguard of unity.
Without it, Italy would remain 'a conglomeration of
provinces, a union, not a unit — not the great nation
which Cavour had laboured to create. Even as prime
minister of little Piedmont, he had spurned a parochial
policy. He had no notion of a humble, semi-neutralised
Italy, which should have no voice in the world. Cavour
lacked the sense of poetry, of art ; he hated fads, and he
did not believe in the perfectibility of the human species,
but his prose was the prose of the ancient Roman ; it
was the prose of empire. United Italy must be a great
power or nothing. Cavour was practical and prudent,
as he is represented in the portrait commonly drawn of
him, but there was a larger side to his character, which
has been less often discerned. Nor is it to be con-
jectured that the direction Italy has taken, and the
consequent outlay in armaments and ships, would have
been blamed by him, though he would have blamed the
uncontrolled waste of money in all departments, which
is answerable for the present state of the finances. Nor,
again, would Cavour have disapproved of colonial enter-
prises, but he would have taken care to have the meat,
not the bones : Tunis, not Massowah. From the opening
to the close of his career, the thought " I am an Italian
citizen " governed all his acts. Those who accused him
of provincialism, of regionalism, mistook the tastes of
the privati; individual for the convictions of the states-
man. He preferred the Hats and fogs of Leri to the
206 CAVOUR CHAP.
scenery of tlie Bay of Naples ; but in politics he did not
acquire the feelings of an Italian : he was born with
them. It has been said that he aggrandised Piedmont ;
it would be truer to say that he sacrificed it. For years
he drained its resources ; he sent its soldiers to die in the
Crimea ; he exposed *it again and again to the risk of
invasion ; he tore from it two of its fairest provinces.
But there was one thing that he would not do ; he would
not dethrone Turin to begin a new " regionalism " else-
where. At Rome alone the history of the Italian
municipalities would become the history of the Italian
nation.
Cavour deliberately departed from his usual rule of
letting events shape themselves when he pledged him-
self and the monarchy to the policy of making Rome
the capital. In October 1860 he said from his place in
parliament that it was a grave thing for a minister to
pronounce his opinion on the great questions of the
future, but a statesman worthy of the name ought to
have certain fixed points by which he steered his course.
For twelve years their continual object had been national
independence ; henceforth it was " to make the Eternal
City, on which rested twenty-five centuries of glory, the
splendid capital of the Italian kingdom."
On March 25, 1861, Cavour seized a chance oppor-
tunity to repeat and emphasise his views. The question
of Rome was, he said, the gravest ever placed before the
parliament of a free people. It was not only of vital
importance to Italy, but also to two hundred thousand
Catholics in all parts of the globe ; its solution ought to
have not only a political influence, but also a moral and
religious influence. In the previous year he had deemed
xin ROME VOTED THE CAPITAL 207
it wise to speak with reserve, but now that this question
was the principal subject of discussion in all civilised
nations, reserve would not be prudence but pusillanimity.
He proceeded to lay down as an irrefragable fact that
Rome must become the capital of Italy. Only this
could end the discords and differences of the various
parts of the country. The position of the capital was
not decided by reasons of climate or topography, or even
of strategy. The choice of the capital was determined
by great moral reasons, by the voice of national senti-
ment. Cavour rarely introduced his own personality
even into his private letters, much less into his speeches ;
for the last ten years of his life he seemed a living
policy, hardly a man. But in this speech there is a
touch of personal pathos in the passage in which he said
that, for himself, it would be a grievous day when he
had to leave his native Turin with its straight, formal
streets, for Rome and its splendid monuments, for which
he was not artist enough to care. He called upon the
future Italy, established firmly in the Eternal City, to
remember the cradle of her liberties, which had made
such great saciifices for her, and was ready to make this
one too !
They must go to Rome, he continued, but on two
conditions — the first was, concert with France; the
second, that the union of this city with Italy should not
be interpreted by the great mass of Catholics as the
signal for the servitude of the Church. They must go
to Rome without lessening the Pope's real independence,
and without extending the power of the civil authority
over the spiritual. History pnjved that the luiion of
civil and spiritual authority in the same hands was fatal
208 CAVOUR CHAP.
to progress and freedom. The possession of Rome by
Italy must put an end to this union, not begin a new
phase of it by making the Pope a sort of head chaplain
or chief almoner to the Italian state. The Pojie's
spiritual authority would be safer in the charge of
twenty-six millions of free Italians than in that of a
foreign garrison. Whether they went to Rome with or
without the consent of the Pontift', as soon as the fall
of the Temporal Power was proclaimed, the complete
liberty of the Church would be proclaimed also. Might
they not hope that the head of the Church would accept
the offered terms ? Was it impossible to persuade him
that the Temporal Power was no longer a guarantee of
independence, and that its loss would be compensated
by an amount of liberty which the Church had sought
in vain for three centuries, only gathering particles of it
by concordats which conceded the use of spiritual arms
to temporal rulers 1 They were ready to promise the
Holy Father that freedom which he had never obtained
from those who called themselves his allies and devoted
sons. They were ready to assert through every portion
of the king's dominions the great principle of a free
church in a free state.
At Cavour's invitation, parliament voted the choice
of Rome as capital. From that vote there could be no
going back. Eoma cajntale could never again be put
aside as the dream of revolutionists and poets. This
was the last great political act of Cavour's life. Though
he did not think that his life would be a long one, he
thought that he should have time to finish his work
himself. One day, when he had been discussing the
matter with a friend, who saw nothing but difficulties,
xill ROME VOTED THE CAPITAL 209
he placed the inkstand at the top of the table before
which they were sitting, and said, "I see the straight
line to that point ; it is this " (he traced it with his
finger). "Supposing that halfway I encounter an
impediment ; I do not knock my head against it for the
pleasure of breaking it, but neither do I go back. I
look to the right and to the left, and not being able to
follow the straight line, I make a curve. I turn the
obstacle which I cannot attack in front."
What Cavour would have called the straight line to
Rome was a friendly arrangement with the Pope. He
could not have hoped for this, had he been less con-
vinced that the true interests of the Church of Rome
would be served, not injured, by the loss of a sovereignty
which had become an anachronism. It is, of course,
certain that many thought the contrary ; Lord Palmer-
ston believed that the religious position of the papacy
would suffer, and among the advanced party tlie wish to
weaken the spiritual influence of the priests went along
with the wish to abolish their political dominion.
Cavour looked upon religion as a great moralising force,
and he was well assured that the only form of it accept-
able to the Italian people was the Latin form of
Christianity established in Rome. Efforts to s})read
Protestantism in Italy struck him as childish. Freed
from the log of tempoialities, he expected that the
Church would become constantly better fitted to perform
its mission.
Cavour began negotiations with Rome which, at first,
he had reason to think, were favourably enteitainod ;
afterwards tliey were abruptly broken off. Nothing is
more difficult than to penetrate through the wall of
P
210 CAVOUR CHAP.
apparent unanimity which surrounds the Vatican. Some-
times, however, a breach is made, to the scandal of the
faithful. Thus the biographer of Cardinal Manning
revealed the fact that the late Archbishop of West-
minster, who began by wshing the Temporal Power to
be erected into an article of faith, ended by ardently
desiring some kind of tacitly accepted modus vivendi with
the Italian kingdom, such as that which Cavour proposed.
Cardinal Manning was sorry to see the Italians being
driven to atheism and socialism, and so he had the
courage to change his mind. In 1861 he was in the
opposite camp, but there was not wanting then a section
of learned and patriotic ecclesiastics who desired peace.
It was said that their efforts were rendered sterile by
the great organisation which a pope once suppressed,
and which owed its resurrection to a schismatic emperor
and an heretical king. However that may be, the
recollection of what befell Clement XIV. is still a living
force in Eome.
Having failed to conclude a compact with the Vatican,
Cavour turned to France. To make it easier for
Napoleon to withdraw his troops, he was willing to
allow the Temporal Power to stand for a short time — " for
instance, for a year" — after their departure. In the
arrangement subsequently arrived at under the name of
the September Convention, the underlying intention was
to adjourn Roma capUale to the Greek kalends. Cavour
had no such intention, nor would he have agreed to the
transference of the capital to Florence. His plan was
warmly supported by Prince Napoleon, and had he lived
it is probable that it would have been carried out. He
did not despair of an ultimate reconciliation with the
XIII ROME VOTED THE CAPITAL 211
Holy See, though he no longer thought that it would
yield to persuasion alone.
While Cavour was applying himself with feverish
activity to the Roman question, he was harassed by the
state of the Neapolitan provinces, which showed no
improvement. The liquidation of Garibaldi's dictator-
ship was rendered the more difficult by the undiminished
dislike of the military chiefs for the volunteers, whom
they were disposed to treat less favourably than the
Bourbon officers who ran away. Cavour hoped to get
substantial justice done in the end, but meantime he
had to bear the blame for the illiberality which he had
so strenuously opposed. To have told the truth would
have been to throw discredit on the army, and this he
would not do. The subject was brought before the
Chamber of Deputies in a debate opened by Ricasoli,
who spoke in favour of the volunteers, but deprecated
undue importance being assigned to the work of any
private citizen. The true liberator of Italy was the
king under whom they had all worked ; those whose
sphere of action had been widest, as their utility had
been greatest, should feel thankful for so precious a
privilege — few men could say, " I have served my
country well, I have entirely done my duty." Cavour,
who heard Kicasoli speak for the first time, said with
generous approbation, "I have understood to-day what
real eloquence is." But it was not likely that the debate
would continue on this academic plane. Garibahli had
come to Turin in a tit of intense anger at the treatment
of his old comrades, and on rising to defend them he
80on lost control over himself, and launched into furious
invectives against tlie man who had iiuide iiini a foreigner
212 CAVOUR CHAP.
in his native town, and " who was now driving the
country into civil war." Cavour would have borne
patiently anything that Garibaldi could say about Nice,
but at the words " civil war " he became violently
excited. The house trembled lest a scene should take
place, which would be worse for Italy than the loss of a
battle. But Cavour cared too much for Italy to liarm
her. The sense of his first indignant protests was lost
in the general uproar ; afterwards, when he rose to reply
to Garibaldi, he was perfectly calm ; there was not a
trace of resentment on his face. Such self-command
would have been noble in a man whose temperament was
phlegmatic ; in a passionate man like Cavour it was
heroic. He said that an abyss had been created between
himself and General Garibaldi. He had performed
what he believed to be a duty, but it was the most cruel
duty of his life. What he felt made him able to under-
stand what Garibaldi felt. With regard to the volunteers,
had he not himself instituted them in 1859 in the teetli
of all kinds of opposition t. Was it likely that he wished
to treat them ill 1 A few days later Garibaldi wrote a
letter in which he promised Cavour (in effect) plenary
absolution if he would proclaim a dictatorship. He
would then be the first to obey. There was no petty
spite or envy in Garibaldi ; his wild thrusts had been
prompted by "a general honest thought, and common
good to all." He was ready to give his rival unlimited
power.
By the king's wish, Cavour and Garibaldi met and
exchanged a few courteous, if not cordial, words.
Cavour ignored the scene in the Chamber ; he had
already said that for liim it had never happened. It
XIII CONCLUSION 213
was their last meeting. The wear and tear of public
life as it was lived by Cavour must have been enormous ;
it meant the concentration, not only of the mental and
physical powers, but also of the nervous and emotional
faculties, on a single object. He had not the relaxation
of athletic or literary tastes, or the repose of a cheerful
domestic life. Latterly he even gave up going to the
theatre in order to dose undisturbed. A doctor warned
him not to work after dinner, and to take frequent
holidays in the mountains; he neglected both rules.
He was inclined to despise rest. He used to say :
" When I want a thing to be done quickly, I always go
to a busy man : the unoccupied man never has any
time." He, himself, did not know how to be idle ; yet
he was painfully conscious of overwork and brain-fag.
He told his friend Castelli that he was tormented by
sleeplessness, but still more by certain ideas which
assailed him at night, and which he could not get rid of.
He got up and walked about the room, but all was
useless ; "I am no longer master of my head." When
Parliament was open, he never missed a sitting, and he
left nothing to subordinates in the several departments
in his charge. While his mental processes remained
clear and orderly, the brain, when not governed by the
will, did its tasks as a tired slave does them ; thus he
was surrounded by a mass of confused papers and docu-
ments, amongst which he sometimes had to seek for
days for the one required at the moment.
In the last half of May he was noticed to be
unwontedly irritable and impatient of contradiction.
The deVjates Vjored him ; on the last day that he sat in
his accustomed place, he said that, when Italy was made,
214 CAVOUR CHAP.
he would bring in a Bill to abolish all the chairs of
rhetoric. That evening he was taken ill with fever ;
his own physician was absent, and he dictated a treat-
ment to the doctor who was called in, which he thought
would make his illness a short one. He was bled five
times in four days. On the fourth day he summoned a
cabinet council to his bedside ; the ministers, sharing his
own opinion that he was better, allowed it to be pro-
longed for several hours. When they went out, an old
friend came in and read death in his face. Other
doctors were consulted, and the treatment was changed.
It was too late. From the first the chance of recovery
was small, owing to the mental tension at which Cavour
had lived for months ; whatever chance there was had
been thrown away. He knew people when he first saw
them, but then fell back into lethargy or delirium.
Suddenly he said : "The king must be told."
When the case became evidently desperate, the
family sent for a monk, named Fra Giacomo, who had
promised Cavour during the cholera epidemic of 1854
that the refusal of the sacraments to Santa Rosa should
not be repeated in his own extremity. An excited
crowd gathered round the palace. One workman said :
" If the priests refuse, a word and we will finish them
all." But Fra Giacomo kept his promise. " I know the
Count," he said (for many years he had dispensed his
private charities) ; "a clasp of the hand will be
sufficient." On the evening of the same day, June 5,
the king ascended the secret staircase leading to Cavour's
bedroom, which had been so often mounted before dawn
by too compromising visitors. Cavour exclaimed on
seeing him : "0 Maesta ! " but the recognition seemed
XIII CONCLUSION 215
not to last. " These Neapolitans, they must be cleansed,"
he said, interrupting the sovereign's kind commonplaces
of a hope that was not. Then he ordered that his
secretary, Artom, should be ready to transact business
Avith him at five next morning ; " there was no time to
lose." Cavour's biographers have repeated statements
as to precepts and injunctions spoken by him in his last
hours. But he was continually delirious ; all that could
be understood was that his wandering mind was running
on what had been the life of his life, Italy. In the
early dawn of the 6th, he imagined that he was making
a ministerial statement from his place in the Chamber of
Deputies ; his voice sounded clear and distinct, but
ideas, names, words, were incoherently mixed together.
At four o'clock he became silent, and very soon life was
pronounced to be extinct.
One Sunday in June, a year before, Cavour spent
some hours in the ancestral castle at Santena, which he
so rarely visited. On that occasion he said to the village
syndic: "Here I wish my bones to rest." The wish
was respected, the king yielding to it his own desire to
give his great minister a royal burial at the Superga.
Cavour had the old sentiment that it was well for a man
to be buried where his fathers were buried, and to die in
their faith. At all times it would have been repugnant
to him to pose as a sceptic, most of all on his deathbed.
Once, when he was reminded in the Campo Santo at
Pisa that he was standing on holy earth brought from
Palestine, he said, smiling, " Perhaps they will make a
saint of me some day." He died a Catholic, and, instead
of launching its cen.sures against Fra Giacomo, the Church
might have wiitteu " ancor questo " among its triumphs.
216 CAVOUR CHAP.
For the rest, with minds such as Cavour's, religion is
not the mystical elevation of the soul towards God, but
the intellectual assent to the ruling of a superior will,
and religious forms are, in substance, symbols of that
assent. The essence of Cavour's theology and morality
is expressed in two sayings of Epictetus. One is, that
as to piety to the gods, the chief thing is to have right
opinions about them ; to think that they exist, and that
they administer the all well and justly. The other is : For
this is your duty, to act well the part that is given to you.
"Cavour," said Lord Palmerston in the classic home
of constitutional liberty, the British House of Commons,
" left a name ' to point a moral and adorn a tale.' " The
moral was, that a man of transcendent talent, indomitable
industry, inextinguishable patriotism, could overcome
difficulties which seemed insurmountable, and confer the
greatest, the most inestimable benefits on his country.
The tale with which his memory would be associated
was the most extraordinary, the most romantic, in the
annals of the world. A people which seemed dead had
arisen to new and vigorous life, breaking the spell which
bound it, and showing itself worthy of a new and
splendid destiny. The man whose name would go down
to posterity linked with such events might have died
too soon for the hopes of his fellow-citizens, not for his
fame and his glory.
After thirty-seven years nothing need be taken away
from this high eulogy, and something can be added.
The completion of the national edifice within a decade of
Cavour's death was still, in a sense, his work, as the con-
solidation of the United States after the death of
Lincoln was still moulded by his vanished hand.
XIII CONCLUSION 217
If it be true that the world's history is the world's
judgment, it is no less true that the history of the state
is the judgment of the statesman. Cavour would not
have asked to be tried by any other criterion. He
achieved a great result. He doubted if ideals of per-
fection could be reached, or whether, if reached, they
would not be found, like mountain tops, to afford no
abiding place for the foot of man. Perhaps he forgot
too much that from the ice and snow of the mountain
comes the river which fertilises the land. But, if he
deprecated the pursuit of what he deemed the impossible,
he condemned as criminal the neglect of the attainable.
The charge of cynicism was unjust ; Cavour was at
heart an optimist; he never doubted that life was
immensely worth living, that the fields open to human
energy were splendid and beneficent. He hated shams,
and he hated all forms of caste-feeling. He was one of
the few continental statesmen who never exaggerated
the power for good of government ; he looked upon the
private citizen who plods at his business, gives his
children a good education, and has a reserve of savings
in the funds, as the mainstay of the state.
No life of Cavour has been written since the publica-
tion of his correspondence, and of a mass of documents
wliich throw light on his career. It has seemed more
useful, therefore, within the prescribed limits, to
endeavour to show what he did, and how he did it, than
to give much space to the larger considerations which
the Italian movement suggests. Of the ultimate issue
of the events with which he was concerned it is too
soon to speak. These events stand in close relation to
the struggle beLwccn tlie civil and ecclesiastical powers,
218 CAVOUR CHAP.
which dates back to the first assumption of political
prerogatives by the Bisliops of Rome. Cavour did not
suffer his sovereign to eat humble pie like King John, or
to go to Canossa like Henry IV., but neither did he
ever entertain the wish to turn persecutor as Pombal
was, perhaps, forced to do, or to browbeat the head of
the Church as the first Napoleon took a pleasure in
doing. He aimed at keeping the two powers separate,
but each supreme in its own province.
Content you with monopolising heaven,
And let this little hanging ball alone ;
For, give ye but a foot of conscience there,
And you, like Archimedes, toss the globe.
The Italian revolution was bound up, also, with the
principle of nationalities, which is still at work in South-
Eastern Europe, and with the tendency towards unity
which led to the refounding of the German Empire.
Students who care for historical parallels will always
seek to draw a comparison between Cavour and the
great man who guided the new destinies of Germany.
The points of resemblance are striking, but they are
soon exhausted. Each undertook to free his country
from extraneous influence, and to give it the strength
which can only spring from union, and each was con-
fident in his own power to succeed ; either Cavour or
Bismarck might have said with the younger Pitt : " I
know that I can save the country, and I know no other
man can." The points of disparity are inexhaustible.
Prince Bismarck never threw off the aristocratico-military
leanings with which he began life. He aimed at creating
a strong military empire, in which the first and last
duty of parliament was to vote supplies. Though the
XIII CONCLUSION 219
revolutionary tide set in towards unity still more in
Germany than in Italy, he preferred to wait till he could
do without a popular movement as an auxiliary. He did
not admire the mysticism of King Frederick William TV.,
but he fully approved when that monarch, " the son of
twenty-four electors and kings," declared that he Avould
never accept the "iron collar" offered him by revolution
"of an Imperial crown unblessed by G-od." Bismarck
started Avith the immeasurable advantage that his side
was the strongest. Cavour had to solve the problem of
how a state of five millions could outwit an empire of
thirty-seven millions. All along, the German population
of Prussia was far more numerous than that of Austria,
and she had allies that cost her nothing. Napoleon, as
Cavour pointed out, fought for Prussia in Lombardy as
much as for Piedmont. If Bismarck foresaw unification
with more certainty than Cavour foresaw unity, it must be
remembered that, while Cavour was held back by doubts
as to whether the whole country desired unity, such
doubts caused no trouble to Bismarck, since he was
ready to adopt a short way with dissidents.
When Prince Bismarck once said that he was more
Prussian than German, he revealed the weak side of
his stupendous achievement. Prussia has not become
Germany. The empire is a great defensive league in
which only one participant is entirely satisfied with his
position. In Italy a kingdom has grown up in which
Piedmont, even to the extent of ingratitude, is forgotten.
If moral fusion is still incomplete, political fusion has,
at least, atlvanced so far that the present institutions
and the nation must sUind or fall together. The
monarchy was made for the country, not the country for
220 CAVOUR OHA.P. XIII
the monarchy. An acute Frenchman remarked during
the Franco-German War, that Prince Bismarck had
taken Cavour's conception without what made it really
great — liberty. Possibly that word may still prove of
better omen to the rel>irth of a nation than " Blood and
Iron."
CHIEF AUTHORITIES
Artom I. and A. Blanc. II Conte di Cavour in Parlamento.
Florence, 1868.
Bersezio, V. II regno di Vittorio Emanuele II. ; Trenf anni
di vita italiana. Turin, 1878-95. 8 vols.
Bert, A. Nouvelles lettres in/dites de Cavour. Turin, 1 889.
Berti, D. II Conte di Cavour avanti al 1848. Rome, 1886.
Bianchi, N. La politique du Gomte Camille de Cavour.
Turin, 1885.
Bonghi, R. Ritratti contemporanei : Cavour, Bismarck, Thiers.
Milan, 1879.
Buzziconi, G. Bibliografia Cavouriana. Turin, 1898.
Cavour, C. Opere politico-economiche del Conte Camillo di
Cavour. Cuneo, 1855.
Discorsi parlamentari del Conte Camillo di Cavour.
Published by order of the Chamber of Deputies.
Turin, 1863-72. 8 vols.
Chiala, L. II Conte di Cavour. Kicordi di Michelangelo
Castelli, editi per cura di L. Chiala. Turin, 1886.
Lettere edite ed inedite di Camillo Cavour. Turin, 1883-
87. 7 vols.
Dicey, E. Memoir of Cavour. London, 1861.
La Rive (De), W. Le Comte de Cavour. Re'dtn et souvenirs.
Paris, 1862.
La Varenne (De), C. Lettres incites du Comte de Cavour au
Cfmimandeur Urhain Rattazzi. Paris, 1862.
Mariotti, F. La sapienza politica del Conte di Cavour e del
Principi'. di Bismarck. Turin, 1886.
Marriott, F. The Makers of Modern Italy. Ldinlun, 1889.
Massari, G. II Conte di Cavour. 'iuriii, 1873.
222 CAVOUR
Mazade (De), C. Le Comte de Cavour. Paris, 1877.
Nigra, C. Le Comte de Cavour et la Comtesse de Circourt.
Turin, 1894.
Reumont (Von.), A. ' Charakterhilder aus der neuern Geschichte
Italiens. Leipzig, 1886.
Reyntiens, M. N. Bismarck et Cavour. Bruxelles, 1875.
Tlvaroni, C. Storia critica del risorgimento d! Italia. Turin,
1888-97. 9 vols.
Treitschke (Von), H. " Cavour," in Historische und politische
Aufsatze. Leipzig, 1871.
Zanichelli, D. Gli scritti del Conte di Cavour. Bologna,
1892.
Also the Memoirs and Correspondence of Ricasoli, La P'arina,
Kossuth, Minghetti, D' Azeglio, Lanza, Arese, Delia
Rocca.
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