/ 1^ / ^ 7- ,v \^;f.> 3'5-Z.? M5- jToifigii .^tntfijiufu CATOUR f^^/55^0 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 eable. 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 thably 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 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 Sary 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'. p5icily 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 lirth 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. THE END Printed by U. & II. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. dforeion Statesmen Series. Edited by J. B. BuRV, M.A., Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge. Crown 87'<7. 2S. 6d. each. CHARLES THE GREAT. By Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., Author of Italy and He?- Invaders, etc. \Ready. PHILIP AUGUSTUS. By Rev. W. H. HUTTOX, Fellow and Tutor of St. John's College, Oxford. {Ready. WILLIAM THE SILENT. By Frederic Harrison. \Ready. PHILIP THE SECOND OF SPAIN. By Colonel Martin Hume. [Ready. RICHELIEU. By R. Lodge, Professor of History in the University of Edinburgh. {Ready. MARIA THERESA. By Dr. J. Franck Bright, D.D. [Ready. JOSEPH II. By Dr. J. Franck Bright, D.D. [Ready. MIRABEAU. By p. F. WiLLERT, Fellow of Exeter College, <»xf"'-nl. [Ready. COSIMO DE MEDICI. By Miss K. D. Ewart. [Ready. CAVOUR. By the Countess Martinexgo Cksaresco.' [ Ready. MAZARIN. By Arthur Hassall, Student and Tutor of ' iiii-^t (luirrh, Oxford. [Ready. CATHERINE II. By J. B. Bury, Regius Professor of Miiiein History in the University of Cambridge. MACMILLAN AND CO., Lru., LONDON. jenalieb ilDen of Bction Series* Crown 8vo. Cloth. With Portraits. 2s. 6d. each. CAMPBELL (COLIN). By ARCHIBALD FORBES. CLIVE. By Sir CHARLES WILSON. COOK (Captain). By Sir WALTER BESANT. DAMPIER. By W. CLARK RUSSELL DRAKE. By JULIAN CORBETT. DUNDONALD. By the Hon. J. W. FORTESCUE. GORDON (General). By Sir W. BUTLER. HASTINGS (Warren). 15y Sir A. LYALL. HAVELOCK (Sir Henry). By A. FORBES. HENRY V. By the Rev. A. J. CHURCH. LAWRENCE (Lord). By Sir RICHARD TEMPLE. LIVINGSTONE. By THOMAS HUGHES. MONK. By JULIAN CORBETT. MONTROSE. By MOWBRAY MORRIS. NAPIER (Sir Charles). By Sir W. BUTLER. NELSON. By Prof. J. K. LAUGHTON. PETERBOROUGH. By W. STEBBING. RODNEY. By DAVID HANNAY. STRAFFORD. By H. D. TRAILL. WARWICK, the King- Maker By C. W. OMAN. WELLINGTON. Hy GEORGE HOOPER. WOLFE. By A. G. BRADLEY. . ^Twelve jEnglieb Statesmen* Crown 8vo. 2s, 6d. each. *^* A Series of Short Biographies , not designed to be a complete roll of famous Statesmen, but to present in historic order the lives and work of those leading actors in our affairs who by their direct influence have left an abiding mark on the policy, the institutions, and the position of Great Britain among States. WILLIAM THE CON- QUEROR. By EDWARD A. FREE- MAN, D.C.L., LL.D., late Regius Professor of Modem History in the University of Oxford. HENRY II. By Mrs. J. R. GREEN. EDWARD I. By T. F. TOUT, M.A., Professor of History, The Owens College, Man- chester. HENRY VII. By JAMES GAIRDNER. CARDINAL WOLSEY. By Bishop CR EI GHTON, D.D., late Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical His- tory in the University of Cambridge. ELIZABETH. By E. S. BEESLY, M.A., Profe.-:.sot of Modem History, University College, London. OLIVER CROMWELL. By FREDERIC HARRISON. WILLIAM III. By H. D. TRAILL. WALPOLE. By JOHN MORLEY. CHATHAM. By JOHN MORLEY. [In preparation PITT. By L«rd ROSEBERY. PEEL. By J. R. THURSFIELD, M.A., late Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON. 000 85W73 2