MAKERS 
 
 OF 
 
 1ODERN ITALY 
 
 A, R. MARRIOTT 
 
 tlifornia 
 
 ional 
 
 lity
 
 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY
 
 THE 
 
 MAZZINI CAVOUR GARIBALDI 
 
 THREE LECTURES DELIVERED AT OXFORD 
 
 BY 
 
 J. A. R. MARRIOTT, M.A. 
 
 NEW COLLEGE AND WORCESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD 
 LECTURER IN MODERN HISTORY AND POLITICAL ECONOMY 
 
 Hondon 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 AXD NEW YORK 
 1889 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 STACK 
 ANNEX 
 
 fll 9$ 
 
 ' ' ITALIA UNA !' Xow the war-cry rang 
 From Alp to Etna : and her dreams were done, 
 And she herself had wakened into life, 
 And stood full armed and free : and all her sons 
 Knew they were happy to have looked on her, 
 And felt it beautiful to die for her." 
 
 Mas. HAMILTON KING. 
 
 " But Italy, my Italy, 
 
 Can it last this gleam ? 
 Can she live and be strong? 
 
 Or is it another dream 
 Like the rest we have dreamed so long ? " 
 
 E. B. BROWNING.
 
 NOTE 
 
 THESE Lectures were delivered at the Summer Meeting 
 of University Extension Students held in Oxford in 
 August 1889. They are now published at the request of 
 those to whom they were in the first instance addressed. 
 It is obviously impossible to acknowledge fully in the 
 course of a Lecture the obligations which the Lecturer has 
 incurred to those who have traversed parts of the same 
 path. But the names of most of those whose works I 
 have consulted will be found in the Appendix. I take this 
 opportunity of tendering to them my warm acknowledg- 
 ments for much valuable assistance. 
 
 J. A. R MARRIOTT. 
 
 NEW COLLKGE, OXFOUD, 
 
 August 1889.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 LECTURE I. MAZZINI 
 
 Introductory. Scope and Plan of the Lectures. Makers of 
 Modern Italy. The Poets. The Statesmen. The King. 
 
 The condition of Italy, political and social, in 1815. Results 
 of the Napoleonic occupation. Temporary unification. 
 Its permanent effect. The territorial settlement effected 
 by the Congress of Vienna. Its reactionary character. 
 Austria dominant in Italy. The Bourbons. The Papacy. 
 The House of Savoy. Their tortuous but successful 
 diplomacy in the eighteenth century. Their position in 
 1815. Hopelessness of the present. Outlook for the 
 future. Attempt of the Viennese diplomatists to set back 
 the hands of the clock. Its futility. Social condition of 
 Italy after the Restoration. 
 
 The Neapolitan Insurrection (1821). The perfidy of Fer- 
 dinand I. The "Holy Alliance." Government by Con- 
 gresses. Interference of Europe in the affairs of Italy. 
 Conference of Troppau. The Laybach Conference. Lord 
 Castlereagh's protest on behalf of England. , A free hand 
 given to Austria. Restoration of Ferdinand to Naples. 
 Violation of his promises. Failure of insurrection in 
 Piedmont. Abdication of Victor Emmanuel I. Austrian 
 intervention in Piedmont. Triumph of Absolutism.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Mazzini (1805-1872). His early years. Joins the Carbonari. 
 Arrested for conspiracy. Acquitted by Turin Senate. 
 The "July Revolution" in France. Its effect on Italy. 
 Insurrections in Modena, Bologna, the Romagna, etc. 
 Intervention of Austria and France. Accession of Charles 
 Albert to the throne of Piedmont (1831). Mazzini's 
 "Letter to the King by an Italian." Formation of the 
 " Young Italy " party. Mazzini's programme. Mazzini 
 driven from Italy, from France, from Switzerland, finds 
 a home in London, 1837. His continuous influence in 
 Italian politics. Opposition to his views. The iieo- 
 Guelphic party. Their leader Gioberti publishes 11 
 Primato morale et civile degli Italiani (1843). The Pied- 
 montese party. Accession of Pius IX. Hopes of the 
 ueo-Guclphs. Mazzini's " Letter to the Pope." Reforms 
 carried out by Pius IX in the Papal States ; by Duke 
 Leopold in Tuscany ; by Charles Albert in Piedmont 
 (1847-1848). Scientific Congress at Genoa. Agricultural 
 Congress at Casale. Letter from Charles Albert. Signs 
 of the Risorgimetito. 
 
 The Year of Revolution (1848). The expulsion of the 
 Orleans dynasty from France. Revolution in the 
 Austrian Empire. Insurrections in Milan, Palermo, 
 Modena, Parma. Establishment of the Venetian Re- 
 public under Daniel Maniu. Piedmont declares war on 
 Austria (1848). Union of North Italy under Piedmont. 
 Mazzini fighting under Garibaldi. Charles Albert defeated 
 by Radetsky. But renews the war (1849). Crushed at 
 Novara. Abdicates in favour of Victor Emmanuel (March 
 1849). 
 
 Revolution in Rome. Vacillation of the Pope. Assassination 
 of Count Rossi. Flight of Pius IX to Gaeta. Anarchy in 
 Rome. Establishment of the Roman Republic (February 
 1849). Mazzini a Roman Triumvir. Administration of 
 the Triumvirate. Intervention of the French. Their 
 repulses by the Romans. Mission of M. Lesseps. His
 
 CONTENTS xi 
 
 admiration for Mazzini. Perfidy of the French. Fall of 
 Rome. Continued resistance of Venice. Its surrender. 
 The re-establishment of Austrian supremacy and triumph 
 of Absolutism in Italy. 
 
 Mazzini's subsequent career. His share iu the work of 
 Italian unification. His Republican fanaticism. His 
 dislike of diplomacy. Primarily a great moral teacher. 
 The Prophet of Italian independence. 
 
 LECTURE II. CAVOUR . . ... 26 
 
 Condition of Italy in 1849. Failure of the " Year of Revolu- 
 tion." Contrast between the Italy of 1815 and 1849. 
 The Risorgimcnto largely the work of Mazzini. Failure of 
 the Mazzinist policy. Failure of the hopes of the neo- 
 Guelphic party. Gioberti publishes Rinnovamento Civile 
 d' Italia. Gradual concentration of the hopes of Reformers 
 upon the House of Savoy. 
 
 The accession of Victor Emmanuel (1849). Desperate con- 
 dition of affairs. Character of the new King. II Re 
 Galantuomo. Inaugurates reforms in Piedmont amid the 
 general reaction in Italy. Abolition of clerical immuni- 
 ties. Beginnings of the breach with the Papacy. 
 
 Count Cavour joins the Government of Massimo d'Azeglio as 
 Minister of Commerce. The previous career of Cavour, 
 Abandonment of a military career (1831). His efforts to 
 improve the material condition of Piedmont. His travels 
 in France and England. His study of political institu- 
 tions in England. Starts with Cesare Balbo and Santa 
 Rosa the Risorgimento. Becomes representative for Turin 
 in the first Piedmontese Parliament. Succeeds D'Azeglio 
 as Prime Minister (1852). His attitude on political ques- 
 tions ; his views with regard to the temporal power ; his 
 economical reforms.
 
 xii CONTEXTS 
 
 The Crimean "War. Anxiety of Victor Emmanuel and 
 Cavour to join the Western Powers. Opposition of the 
 Cabinet. Conclusion of an alliance with England and 
 France. Momentous character of the step. Cavour takes 
 part in the Congress of Paris as representative of Sar- 
 dinia. The attitude of England and France towards the 
 Italian Question. Importance of the Congress. Cavour's 
 relations with Napoleon III. Widening breach between 
 Austria and Sardinia. Cavour's difficulties with the 
 Clericals and Mazzinists. Orsini's attentat. Interview be- 
 tween Cavour and Napoleon III at Plombieres. Austrian 
 demand for the disarmament of Sardinia. The French 
 alliance. Declaration of war on Austria. Victories of 
 Magenta and Solferino. Sudden armistice at Villafranca. 
 Cavour's desperation. Coolness of the King. 
 
 Results of the war. Lombardy, Tuscany, Parma, Modena, 
 and the Roman Legations annexed by plebiscite to Sar- 
 dinia. Napoleon's bill. Cession of Savoy and Nice to 
 France. Rage of the Mazzinists and Garibaldi. Cavour's 
 defence. How far justified ? Meeting of the first Italian 
 Parliament at Turin. 
 
 Subsequent career of Cavour. His death in 1861. Italy's 
 debt to Cavour. The Statesman of Italian independence. 
 
 LECTURE III. GARIBALDI 54 
 
 Political situation after the Union of North Italy. Diffi- 
 culties ahead. The King and Cavour. Mazzini. Garibaldi. 
 Garibaldi's early life. Engaged in the Mazzinist insurrec- 
 tions of 1834. Exile. Adventurous life in South America, 
 Return to Italy in 1848. Garibaldi and the Volunteers 
 at Milan. The Roman Republic of 1849. Garibaldi and 
 the siege of Rome. Defeat of the Neapolitans at Pales- 
 trina. His wanderings after the fall of Rome. Settles at 
 Caprera, 1854. Summoned by Cavour to a command in
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 1859. The GaribaMini. Their guerilla warfare in the 
 campaign of 1S59. The cession of Nice and Savoy to 
 France. A "stranger in his own land." Breach between 
 Garibaldi and Cavour. 
 
 Insurrection in Sicily (1860). Condition of the Neapolitan 
 kingdoms. Mr. Gladstone's letter to Lord Aberdeen. 
 Intrigues of Mazzini in Sicily. Garibaldi and his 
 "Thousand." Their descent on Sicily. Attitude of 
 Cavour towards the Sicilian Expedition. Diplomatic 
 difficulties. Unjust accusations of the Mazzinists. Gari- 
 baldi Dictator of Sicily and Naples. Cavour desires 
 immediate annexation. Garibaldi's attitude. Pied- 
 montese army despatched to the Roman Marches. Defeat 
 of the Papal troops at Castelfidardo by the Royal army. 
 Defeat of the Neapolitans at the Volturno by the Gari- 
 baldians. Meeting of Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel. 
 Annexation of Naples to the Italian kingdom. Garibaldi 
 retires to Caprera. Appears in the first Italian Parliament 
 at Turin. Scene between Garibaldi and Cavour. Death 
 of Cavour. 
 
 The Roman Question. Garibaldi's determination. Sup- 
 posed connivance of the Government. Conflict between 
 Garibaldi and the King's troops at Aspromonte (1862). 
 Garibaldi a prisoner at Varignano. Garibaldi's visit to 
 England. The Austro-Italian War of 1866. Garibaldi's 
 campaign in the Lakes. Venice annexed to Italy. 
 
 Garibaldi's junction with the Ultra-Republicans. Scheme 
 to establish a Republic at Rome. Arrest of Garibaldi. 
 His escape. His march on Rome. Victory at Monte 
 Rotundo. French assistance sent to the Pope. French 
 victory over the Volunteers at Mentana. Policy of the 
 Italian Government. 
 
 The last act of the drama of Italian unification. The Franco- 
 German War. Rome evacuated by the French ; occupied
 
 xiv CONTENTS 
 
 by the Italian troops. The King and the Pope. The 
 Capital transferred from Florence to Rome. The con- 
 summation of Italian Unity. Italy's debt to the 
 "Robber" King; her debt to the "Brigand." The 
 future of Italy in the European economy. Retrospect 
 and prospect. 
 
 APPENDIX I. AUTHORITIES ... .79 
 
 ,, II. CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE CHIEF 
 EVENTS IN ITALIAN HISTORY, 1815- 
 1870 81
 
 I 
 
 GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 
 
 AUSTRIAN DOMINATION IN ITALY 
 
 IN each of the great and well-defined periods into which 
 the history of Western Europe naturally divides itself, it 
 is not difficult to find some leading idea, some guiding 
 principle, some dominant maxim of statesmanship, or some 
 all-powerful institution which may serve to give a dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic to the age, and in relation to 
 which particular events may be most conveniently regarded. 
 By keeping this dominant principle or institution con- 
 stantly in mind the student is enabled to see in the 
 scattered and apparently miscellaneous events of a parti- 
 cular period a consistency and coherence which they may 
 sometimes seem to lack. By following this method much 
 is gained. Not only is the attention of the student 
 directed to the broader and more important movements 
 of the time, but particular events fall naturally into their 
 true perspective. Thus in the centuries which succeeded 
 the downfall of the older Roman Empire, European 
 politics were dominated by the Holy Catholic Church ; 
 while the social life of the peoples was moulded under 
 the all-absorbing institution of Feudalism a system which 
 was itself the product of the clash of Roman and Teutonic 
 institutions. As we approach the close of the Middle 
 * B
 
 2 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 Ages we find ourselves still in the presence, still to a 
 large extent under the dominating influence, of these 
 great mediaeval institutions. But they are no longer in 
 the plentitude of power. Their meridian is passed ; their 
 commanding influence is undermined ; new forces are 
 pushing their way to the front. But even in their de- 
 cay they are still the axis round which the politics and 
 social life of Western Europe continue to revolve. By the 
 end of the fifteenth century, however, the twofold unity 
 of Church and Empire is definitely broken up, and from 
 its ruins there emerge independent and more or less con- 
 solidated nations, owning no allegiance to the Emperor, and 
 very little to the Pope. For the complete accomplishment 
 of this development two things were necessary : the de- 
 struction of the disruptive power of the great feudal 
 vassals, and the consolidation of the power of the national 
 monarchies. 
 
 In the attainment of national unity some states were, 
 I need not say, very much ahead of others. England, 
 for example, compassed the realisation of her national 
 identity as early as the thirteenth century; France and 
 Spain not until the sixteenth ; while other states, like 
 Germany and Italy, have reached the same goal only 
 within the last few years. Speaking generally, however, 
 the national monarchies of Western Europe attained their 
 zenith towards the end of the seventeenth century. It 
 was then that Louis XIV could say with almost literal 
 truth, L'dtat c'est moi. And what was true of France was 
 true in less degree of other European states. The Mon- 
 archy absorbed into itself all the powers of the state. 
 The ascendancy of the great vassals had been utterly 
 broken through the active assistance, or the passive 
 acquiescence, of the Commons ; and the Crown, having 
 absorbed the powers of the aristocracy, could without diffi- 
 culty overcome the feeble resistance of the third estate. 
 Representative institutions either, as in Spain, lost all 
 vitality or, as in France, were entirely swept away. Thus 
 Europe was prepared for what has been called with much
 
 i GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 3 
 
 felicity the " administrative absolutism " of the eighteenth 
 century. And while monarchs like Frederick "of Prussia, 
 like Joseph II of Austria, or Charles III of Spain, were 
 busy in bestowing on their peoples the blessings of paternal 
 despotism at home, is it possible to define the guiding 
 principle of the international relations of their several 
 states ? I think it is. Speaking broadly, Continental 
 politics were dominated during this period by two 
 forces : the theory of the Balance of Power, and the 
 dynastic interests of the individual kings. But the 
 great social and intellectual upheaval at the end of the 
 eighteenth century an upheaval which found its most 
 striking manifestation in France wrought a tremendous 
 revolution in the ideas of men, and ultimately in the 
 policies of states. The French Revolution to make use 
 of a loose but convenient formula bequeathed to the 
 nineteenth century two great dominating ideas : the idea 
 of the rights of man as man, and the idea of the rights of 
 nationalities as nationalities. The working of these forces 
 in the present century has indeed often been obscured at 
 times so much obscured that some have doubted their 
 existence, but in the main it is true to say that the 
 one has controlled the internal policy, while the other has 
 given the determining bias to the external relations of the 
 several European states. When the philosophic historian 
 of the future comes to write the history of the nineteenth 
 century he will, it may be supposed, mark as the distinguish- 
 ing characteristics of this epoch the acquisition of supreme 
 power by the many for the government of all, and the 
 consolidation of kindred and contiguous states, or rather 
 bundles of states, on the basis of the vital principle of 
 National it >/. 
 
 With the former development I have for the present 
 no concern. It is the purpose of these lectures to examine 
 in such detail as time may allow the most romantic, if 
 not the most important and most striking, exemplification 
 of the latter principle. 
 
 With the great work of Italian unification four names
 
 4 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 will to all time be connected in inseparable association. 
 For the moment I do not speak of the inspiration which 
 the makers of modern Italy derived from the works of 
 Dante and Alfieri, of d'Azeglio and Rossetti and Mauzoni. 
 The extent of their influence defies all common computa- 
 tion. It is my purpose to speak of the work of the men of 
 action, of Mazzini, of Cavour, of Garibaldi ; and not least of 
 him whose coolness and courage, whose temperate zeal and 
 Avhose unswerving honesty, whose clearness of vision and 
 unfailing common-sense, gave consistency and coherence to 
 the lifework of them all. I speak, of course, of Victor 
 Emmanuel, the first King of United Italy. 
 
 And, first, we must ask, what was the material upon 
 which these great builders had to work ? What was 
 the condition of Italy, political and social, after the Revo- 
 lutionary and Napoleonic wars in the opening years of 
 the present century? For long centuries the idea of 
 Italian unity had been buried with the past; even the 
 name of Italy had almost entirely ceased to be whis- 
 pered by men. In the Middle Ages great parts were 
 played on the stage of European politics by the city states 
 of Italy, by Venice and Genoa, by Milan and Florence, 
 by Pisa and by Rome. But of Italy as a whole, as a 
 nation, we hear and know nothing ; it did not exist. " Since 
 the fall of the Roman Empire (if even before it) there 
 never has been a time," as Mr. Forsyth says with almost 
 brutal truth, "when Italy could be called a nation any 
 more than a stack of timber can be called a ship." As we 
 approach more modern times even the republics disappear ; 
 the city states are absorbed into the hands of members of 
 one or other of the two great families which so long con- 
 trolled the fortunes of that "distressful country." Italy 
 becomes simply the battleground of contending nations 
 and intriguing dynasties. During the latter half of the 
 eighteenth century, indeed, Italy enjoyed an unusual calm. 
 It was the calm, however, not of quiet, placid happiness, 
 but of a miserable inertia, of a hopeless torpidity of soul. 
 Cut up into petty princedoms for the cadets of the Houses
 
 I GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 5 
 
 of Hapsburg and of Bourbon, Italy lay beneath their yoke 
 hopeless, emotionless, priest-ridden, and benumbed. 
 
 In the last years of the century this repose was rudely 
 interrupted by the Napoleonic occupation. To Italy 
 Napoleon went in name, and to some extent in fact, as a 
 deliverer. Eventually, it is true, he imposed upon Italy 
 a yoke heavier, it may be, than the yoke of Bourbon or of 
 Hapsburg whom he had displaced, but a yoke not without 
 its salutary effects. To the Italian, as to the other dis- 
 ordered princedoms of continental Europe, Napoleon was 
 no doubt a scourge, a very disagreeable scourge, but on 
 the whole a healthy one. For the corrupted courts 
 which he invaded, for the petty thrones he overturned, 
 it is impossible to feel one iota of respect, one scrap of 
 sympathetic regret. In Italy, at any rate, he did nothing 
 but good. He trampled under foot municipal jealousies 
 and local prejudices ; he reduced the political* divisions of 
 the country from fifteen to three ; he constructed splendid 
 roads and bridges unifying forces of no mean significance. 
 Before his overthrow he had rudely broken up the 
 " ancient fixity of confusions which passed for government, 
 and had aroused no insignificant forces of new social life. 
 The feudal tenure of land, and with it something of the 
 feudal structure of society, had passed away. The French 
 civil code, and a criminal code based upon that of France, 
 had taken the place of a thousand conflicting customs and 
 jurisdictions. Taxation had been made if not light, at 
 least equitable and simple. Justice was regular, and the 
 same for baron and peasant. Brigandage had been extin- 
 guished, and for the first time in many centuries the 
 presence of a rational and uniform administration was 
 felt over the greater part of Italy." 1 At his approach, 
 too, the Jesuits had once more fled, education was placed 
 on a reasonable basis, and the Italians, roused from their 
 frivolous and lounging habits, were taught to think and 
 act like men. But above all, Napoleon, little as he knew it, 
 little as the Italians realised it at the time, was the first for 
 1 C. A. Fyffe, History of Modern Europe, vol. ii. p. 178.
 
 6 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 centuries to evoke if not to create a sense, a consciousness 
 of unity, of nationality, in Italy. As Mazzini himself has 
 said of the Napoleonic occupation : " The intellectual rise, 
 the rapid increase of national prosperity, the burst of 
 fraternisation . . . are facts, especially in the period 
 1805-13, irrevocably committed to history. Notwith- 
 standing our dependence on the French Empire, under 
 political despotism and despite war, the feeling of nation- 
 ality specially incorporated in our brave army elevated 
 our souls, picturing in the distance the oneness of Italy, 
 the object of all our efforts." 
 
 But for the moment the good seed was choked by 
 the Restoration of 1815. At that time, as Prince 
 Metternich with cynical truth observed, Italy was merely 
 a geographical expression. It was the purpose of the 
 Viennese diplomatists to restore, as far as might be, 
 the status quo ante Revolution. They hoped to renew in 
 Italy the dynastic m&rcelkment of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury. The states were once more parcelled out among 
 the members of the Bourbon or the Hapsburg House. 
 The Emperor of Austria, Francis II, helped himself to 
 Lombardy and Venice ; Marie Louise, an Austrian Arch- 
 duchess, and sometime consort of the great Napoleon, was 
 installed in the Duchy of Parma ; Tuscany was given to 
 Ferdinand III, also of the Austrian House, and Modern 
 to his son Francis ; Pius VII re-entered upon the temporal 
 domains of the Papacy, while the Bourbons were restored 
 in the person of Ferdinand I. to the throne of Naples and 
 Sicily. The little republic 6*f San Marino, looking sadly 
 forth over the waters of the Adriatic, alone recalled the 
 Italy of the Middle Age an Italy divided but independent. 
 
 Looking, however, no longer to the past but to the future, 
 the most interesting feature of the Restoration still remains 
 to be noticed. At the beginning of the sixteenth century 
 the Dukes of Savoy had acquired Piedmont, and thus suc- 
 ceeded in straddling the Alps. Their geographical position, 
 as the Prince de Ligne has cynically said, did not permit 
 them to behave like honest men. Consequently by rather
 
 I GIUSEPPE MAZZIXI 7 
 
 tortuous, but in the main successful, diplomacy they managed 
 in the eighteenth century to add the Royal Crown of Sardinia 
 to the ducal crowns of Piedmont and Savoy ; and never was 
 a European war concluded, however remote the principal 
 combatants might be, but the House of Savoy were able to 
 acquire several of the towns of Lombardy, stripping it, as the 
 saying goes, like an artichoke, leaf by leaf. Their position 
 was still further strengthened in 1815 by the acquisition 
 of the annihilated republic of Genoa, Such was the Italy 
 of 1815, little better if at all than Metternich's "geo- 
 graphical expression." But for all that the Italy of 1815 
 was not the Italy of the ante-Napoleonic days. Strive as 
 they might, the diplomatists of Vienna could not set back 
 the hands of time, nor even " make things seem as though 
 they had not been." They might, it is true, put back an 
 Austrian here, a Bourbon there ; they might annihilate 
 ancient republics and carve out modern dukedoms ; they 
 might mark out with jealous care dividing lines which had 
 been erased, and they might again set up boundaries 
 which had been broken down ; but they could not erase 
 from the minds of the Italian people the new-born recol- 
 lection of their ancient fame ; they could not stifle, even 
 with the bayonet's point, their newly conceived but none 
 the less passionate longing for the realisation of their 
 national identity. I do not know where you will find 
 more accurate or more eloquent expression of this feeling 
 than in the letter addressed, thirty years afterwards by 
 Mazzini nominally to Sir James Graham, really to the 
 English people. 
 
 " There are over there (in Lombardy) from four to five 
 millions of human creatures gifted with an immortal soul, 
 with powerful faculties, with ardent and generous passions; 
 with aspirations towards free agency, towards the ideal 
 which their fathers had a glimpse of, which nature and 
 tradition point out to them ; towards a national union 
 with other millions of brother souls in order to attain it ; 
 from four to five millions of men desiring only to advance 
 under the eye of God, their only master, towards the
 
 8 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 accomplishment of a social task which they have in com- 
 mon with sixteen or seventeen millions of other men, 
 speaking the same language, treading the same earth, 
 cradled in their infancy in the same maternal songs, 
 strengthened in their youth by the same sun, inspired by 
 the same memories, the same sources of literary genius. 
 Country, liberty, brotherhood, all are wrested from them ; 
 their faculties are mutilated, curbed, chained, within a 
 narrow circle traced for them by men who are strangers 
 to their tendencies, to their wants, to their wishes ; their 
 tradition is broken under the cane of an Austrian corporal ; 
 their immortal soul feudatory to the stupid caprices of a 
 man seated on a throne at Vienna, to the caprices of the 
 Tyrolese agents ; and you go on indifferent, coolly inquir- 
 ing if these men be subject to this or that tariff, if the 
 bread that they eat costs them a halfpenny more or less ! 
 That tariff, whatever it is, is too high ; it is not they who 
 have had the ordering of it; that bread, dear or not, is 
 moistened with tears, for it is the bread of slaves." 
 
 And indeed at that moment the Italian people were 
 little better than slaves beneath the Austrian yoke. For 
 it was Metternich who maintained the petty despots on 
 their thrones, and dictated the policy which they were 
 bound to carry out. The Bourbon Princes and the 
 Austrian Archdukes nominally reigned in their several 
 principalities ; in reality they were simply puppets, the 
 strings of which were pulled invariably from Vienna. 
 The history of the Neapolitan insurrection of 1821 will 
 give you some idea of the extent to which an Austrian 
 domination was imposed even upon the nominally inde- 
 pendent states of Italy. The Bourbon Ferdinand of 
 Naples had, on his restoration in 1815, solemnly pledged 
 his word that he would respect the Constitution drawn up 
 for Sicily by Lord William Bentinck in 1812. In 1816, 
 at the bidding of Prince Metternich, that Constitution was 
 annulled lest the example of Sicily mi^ht serve as a 
 vicious model for the other princedoms of Italy. In 1820 
 a revolution broke out in Spain, and the insurgents sue-
 
 r GIUSEPPE MAZZIN1 9 
 
 ceeded in extorting from the King a liberal Constitution. 
 The excitement spread to Southern Italy. The Neapolitan 
 people, supported by the army, demanded from their King 
 a Constitution on the model of that which had been 
 conceded in Spain. The King granted the demands of the 
 insurgents with apparent eagerness, fervently protesting 
 his gratitude to God, who had permitted him in his old 
 age to do a great good to his kingdom. Some days later 
 the concession was ratified in the most solemn manner. 
 The King having heard mass approached the altar, and in 
 presence of the Court and ministers took his oath to the 
 Constitution. Then fixing his eyes upon the cross he cried : 
 "Omnipotent God, who with infinite penetration lookest 
 into the heart and into the future, if I lie, or if one day I 
 should be faithless to my oath, do Thou at this moment 
 annihilate me." The King having kissed the Gospel, the 
 oath was taken by his sons, and the new Constitution was 
 publicly proclaimed. 
 
 Meanwhile Prince Metternich and his copartners in the 
 Holy Alliance had been looking on with great uneasiness 
 at the development of events in Southern Italy. It was 
 no part of his policy to permit his vassal princes to make 
 liberal concessions to their own subjects, nor indeed to 
 take action in any way without his sanction. Not merely 
 in Xaples, but in many other states, there had already been 
 manifestations of impatience at the policy of simple restora- 
 tion which had been enunciated at the Congress of Vienna. 
 The allied monarchs took alarm and assembled in conference, 
 first at Troppau in Bohemia, and afterwards at Laybach. 
 For this conference King Ferdinand set out in December 
 1820, having once more publicly announced his adherence 
 to the Constitution to which he had sworn with such 
 solemnity. Then comes the denouement of this blasphemous 
 farce. At Troppau and Laybach absolutist sentiments were 
 completely dominant. The English Foreign Minister 
 the much maligned Lord Castlereagh was alone found to 
 protest against the atrocious doctrine that a change of 
 government in any state gave the allied powers the right
 
 10 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 to interfere a doctrine which, as a recent historian has 
 truly said, " would have empowered the Czar to throw the 
 armies of a coalition upon London if the Eeform Bill had 
 been carried by force." As Lord Castlereagh pointed out 
 to the Powers with admirable explicitness, England could 
 never recognise the right of the allied sovereigns to inter- 
 fere in the internal affairs of the several states. But, 
 despite this protest, to Austria was committed the work of 
 quelling the liberal movement in Southern Italy. King 
 Ferdinand had no sooner got beyond the frontier of his 
 own unhappy kingdom than he wrote to his brother 
 sovereigns protesting that the concessions had been wrung 
 from him by force, and that all his recent acts were null 
 and void. The Austrian troops marched on Naples ; 
 the Neapolitan troops ran away ; the King was restored ; 
 the Constitution was torn up ; and the insurgent leaders 
 were either flung into dungeons or promptly hung. Such 
 was the way in which Prince Metternich galled the Italian 
 peoples with the Austrian yoke from end to end of Italy. 
 
 As it was in Naples so it was even in Piedmont, a state 
 less dependent than any other on the nod of Metternich. 
 When the Austrian troops had marched on Naples the 
 liberals of Piedmont, conceiving that the moment had 
 arrived for striking a blow in the cause of Italian independ- 
 ence, united with the malcontents of Lombardy with the 
 object of flinging themselves upon the rear of the Austrian 
 army. In the Northern movement, though it was the 
 work in large measure of the Carbonari, there was nothing 
 of hostility towards the Sardinian Monarchy. " Our hearts 
 are faithful to the King, but we wish to deliver him from 
 perfidious counsels. War against Austria ; a Constitution 
 like that granted in Spain; such are the wishes of the 
 people." But the King Victor Emmanuel, though honestly 
 inclined to concession in a liberal sense, was personally too 
 deeply committed to Prince Metternich and the Austrian 
 policy. In extreme bitterness of soul he laid down his 
 sceptre in favour of his brother, Charles Felix. Meanwhile 
 the Northern Insurrection hopelessly miscarried; the leaders
 
 i GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 11 
 
 were divided ; Charles Felix was away ; one party was 
 inclined to pass him over in favour of his cousin, Charles 
 Albert, Prince of Savoy-Carignano ; another was faithful to 
 the legal King. And while the leaders disputed their 
 followers were paralysed. The whole movement ended in 
 complete collapse. The Austrian yoke was reimposed on 
 Lombardy with tenfold rigour ; the dungeons were crammed 
 with prisoners ; every movement, every action of an Italian 
 native was watched with jealous vigilance, and tortures 
 were applied to extort from the sufferers even the unspoken 
 wishes of the heart. Who can wonder that in those dark 
 days a dull despair fell even on the bravest of Italian 
 patriots ? But yet not on all. 
 
 " Italia ! when thy name was but a name, 
 When to desire thee was a vain desire, 
 When to achieve thee was impossible, 
 When to love thee was madness, when to live 
 For thee was the extravagance of fools, 
 When to die for thee was to fling away 
 Life for a shadow in those darkest days 
 Were some who never swerved, who lived, and strove, 
 And suffered for thee, and attained their end !" 
 
 Of these brave spirits, who, in the dark days before 1848, 
 looked on the sufferings and degradation of their native 
 land in bitterness of soul indeed, but still with passionate 
 and steadfast hope, there was none so sad and yet so 
 steadfast, there was none filled with such lofty purpose 
 and such pure enthusiasm as Joseph Mazzini. 
 
 Born at Genoa in 1805, Mazzini, like Cavour and 
 Garibaldi, was a Sardinian subject. Even in childhood 
 he was impressed with the misery and degradation of his 
 country. In his early schooldays as throughout his life, 
 it was his morbid fancy to wear nothing but black. " In 
 the midst of the noisy tumultuous life of the scholars 
 around me I was," he tells us, " sombre and absorbed, and 
 appeared like one suddenly grown old. I childishly deter- 
 mined to dress always in black, fancying myself in mourn- 
 ing for my country." It was after the failure of 1821
 
 12 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 that Mazzini first became conscious of the mission of his 
 life. While walking one Sunday with his mother and a 
 friend in the streets of Genoa, they were addressed, he 
 tells us in his most interesting autobiography, by a " tall 
 black-bearded man with a severe and energetic countenance, 
 and a fiery glance that I have never since forgotten. He 
 held out a handkerchief towards us, merely saying, ' For 
 the Refugees of Italy.'" The incident, simple as it was, 
 made a profound impression on Mazzini's ardent soul. 
 " The idea of an existing wrong in my own country against 
 which it was a duty to struggle, and the thought that I 
 too must bear my part in that struggle, flashed before my 
 mind on that day for the first time, never again to leave 
 me. The remembrance of those refugees, many of whom 
 became my friends in after life, pursued me wherever I 
 went by day and mingled with my dreams by night I 
 would have given I know not what to follow them. I 
 began collecting names and facts, and studied as best 
 I might the records of that heroic struggle, seeking to 
 fathom the causes of its failure." 
 
 Shortly after the completion of his university career 
 Mazzini joined the ranks of the Carbonari, and thus 
 definitely embarked on a career of political agitation. To 
 him, as to many men of delicate perceptions and refined 
 imagination, such a step was a great sacrifice. He himself 
 spoke of it in after years as his " first great sacrifice." He 
 had looked forward from his childhood to a literary career. 
 "A thousand visions of historical dramas and romances 
 floated before my mental eye artistic images that caressed 
 my spirit as visions of gentle maidens soothe the soul of 
 the lonely-hearted. The natural bias of my mind was very 
 different from that which has been forced upon me by the 
 times in which I have lived and the shame of our degrada- 
 tion." But Mazzini saw, clearly enough, that the literary 
 issues then at stake, as between the Classicists and Romanti- 
 cists, important as they seemed, must be postponed to the 
 solution of the vital political problem. ' Without a 
 country and without liberty we might perhaps produce
 
 i GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 13 
 
 some prophets of art but no vital art. Therefore it was 
 better for us to consecrate our lives to the solution of the 
 problem, Are we to have a country I and turn at once to 
 the political question. If we were successful, the art of 
 Italy would bloom and flourish over our graves." 
 
 Were the Italians to have a country ? That was the 
 problem to the solution of which Mazzini consecrated his 
 life. We may decline, I think we must decline, to approve 
 the means by which Mazzini was compelled at first 
 to work; we may loathe, as he loathed, the midnight 
 machinations of secret societies like the Carbonari ; we 
 may despise the republican fanaticism by which his later 
 work was unhappily disfigured, but we can never question, 
 if we know anything of the man himself, his single-minded 
 patriotism, or the lofty and sustained elevation of his 
 moral teaching. And you must realise, if you would judge 
 him fairly, the conditions under which he had to work. 
 
 " It is death 
 
 To speak the very name of Italy 
 To this Italian people. " 
 
 What wonder, then, that patriotism, which might under 
 happier conditions have found a vent in constitutional 
 agitation, was forced into unhealthy subterranean channels 1 
 No one ever despised or hated such methods more than 
 Mazzini himself. But for the moment he was compelled 
 to work with such tools as were at his command. Shortly 
 after the July Revolution of 1830 Mazzini, having been 
 entrapped by a Government spy into the performance of 
 some trifling commission for the Carbonari, was arrested 
 and imprisoned in the fortress of Savona on the western 
 Eiviera. "The Government were not fond," so his father 
 was informed, "of young men of talent, the subject of 
 whose musings were unknown to them." After six months' 
 imprisonment Mazzini was acquitted of conspiracy, but 
 was nevertheless exiled from Italy. 
 
 Meanwhile the events of the "glorious days of July," 
 as they are grandiloquently termed, had not been without
 
 14 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 their influence in his native land. Under the influence of 
 the Carbonari, insurrections simultaneously broke out in 
 Modena, in Bologna, and in other parts of the Papal states. 
 The new Pope, Gregory XVI, elected to the Papal throne 
 in the midst of the insurrectionary confusion, and alarmed 
 by the declaration of the insurgents that the temporal 
 dominion was at an end, invoked the aid of Austria. 
 Metternich, nothing loath, marched an army into Italy ; 
 the states of the Church were occupied and order was 
 restored. Jealous of Austria's exclusive interference, the 
 French Government despatched a force into Italy and 
 occupied Ancona. The rival forces continued to confront 
 each other in Italy for several years, but without further 
 results of any kind. 
 
 Early in the same year, 1831, Charles Felix had been 
 succeeded on the Sardinian throne by his cousin Charles 
 Albert, a man who in earlier days had coquetted with the 
 Carbonari movement. Mazzini, who was in exile at Mar- 
 seilles, at once addressed to him his memorable " letter to 
 the King." " The people," it declared, " are no longer to 
 be quieted by a few concessions. They seek the recogni- 
 tion of those rights of humanity which have been withheld 
 from them for ages. They demand laws and liberty, inde- 
 pendence and union. Divided, dismembered, and oppressed, 
 they have neither name nor country. They have heard 
 themselves stigmatised by the foreigner as a helot nation. 
 They have seen free men visit their country and declare 
 it the land of the dead. They have drained the cup of 
 slavery to the dregs, but they have sworn never to fill it 
 again." Let the King champion the cause not merely of 
 Piedmont, but of Italy. " All Italy waits for one word 
 one only to make herseUE yours. Proffer this word to her. 
 Place yourself at the head of the nation and write on your 
 banner: 'Union, Liberty, Independence.' Proclaim the 
 liberty of thought. Declare yourself the vindicator, the 
 interpreter of popular rights, the regenerator of all Italy. 
 Liberate her from the barbarians. Build up the future ; 
 give your name to a century ; begin a new era from your
 
 i GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 15 
 
 day. . . . Select the way that accords with the desire of 
 the nation ; maintain it unalterably ; be firm and await 
 your time ; you have the victory in your hands. Sire, on 
 this condition we bind ourselves round you, we proffer you 
 our lives, we will lead to your banner the little states of 
 Italy. We will paint to our brothers the advantages that 
 are born of union ; we will promote national subscriptions, 
 patriotic gifts ; we will preach the word that creates armies. 
 . . . Unite us, Sire, and we shall conquer." 
 
 To this passionate appeal the King was deaf ; his only 
 answer was an order that if Mazzini attempted to cross the 
 frontier into Italy he should be instantly arrested. But, 
 though the King was deaf, the people listened, and flocked 
 in their thousands to join the association which Mazzini 
 had lately founded. This was the famous association of 
 " Young Italy." Ever since his imprisonment at Savona, 
 Mazzini had been pondering over a scheme for establishing 
 an association which should take the place of the secret 
 societies like the Carbonari. He disliked their methods and 
 mistrusted their aims. Their creed was purely negative ; 
 they were the sworn foes of tyranny, the determined 
 opponents of the existing re'gime in Italy. That regime 
 they were resolved to overthrow ; but they looked no 
 farther. In fine, they had no constructive policy. This 
 lack of an inspiring creed, a vivifying faith, Mazzini sought 
 to supply in his association of Young Italy. The Car- 
 bonari movement had hopelessly failed, as it deserved 
 to fail, though not perhaps for the particular reasons to 
 which Mazzini attributed its failure. To Mazzini's think- 
 ing it had leaned too much on the support of the 
 educated, influential classes. "Revolutions," he says, 
 " must be made by the people and for the people. This 
 is our word, it sums up our whole doctrine; it is our 
 science, our religion, our heart's affection." But the Car- 
 bonari were not only too aristocratic, they lacked the 
 machinery for simultaneous and concerted action, and 
 concert and simultaneity are of the essence of successful 
 revolution. They had no programme, no faith, no lofty
 
 16 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 ideal. Thus the first duty of the new Association was to 
 declare war on the existing idolatry of material interests ; 
 to convince the Italian people that " the sole path to victory 
 was through sacrifice, constancy in sacrifice." They must 
 begin with the education of the people. "Italy was 
 materialist, Machiavellian, believing in the initiative of 
 France, and seeking rather to emancipate and ameliorate 
 the condition of the separate states than to constitute 
 herself a nation. The country was regardless of high 
 principles, and ready to accept any form of government, 
 any mode of assistance, or any man brought forward with 
 a promise of relieving her immediate sufferings. On my 
 side I believed . . . that the great problem of the day was 
 a religious problem." Here you see at once the strength 
 and the weakness of the man. His passionate ardour, his 
 unswerving faith, his lofty idealism an idealism which 
 revolted from the use of means other than those which 
 he himself selected. It was on these lines that Mazzini 
 drew up the statutes of the new association. "Young 
 Italy is a brotherhood of Italians who believe in a law of 
 Progress and Duty and are convinced that Italy is destined 
 to become one nation. . . . They join this association in 
 the firm intent of consecrating both thought and action to 
 the great aim of reconstructing Italy as one independent 
 sovereign nation of free men and equals." The means by 
 which the end was to be attained we may smile at the 
 collocation were " education and insurrection to be adopted 
 simultaneously. " 
 
 The expulsion of the hated Austrians was the first 
 prerequisite. Since it was impossible to avoid a war, 
 bloody and inexorable, the sooner it was attempted the 
 better. Such a war must be waged by Italians and for 
 Italy. No reliance must be placed on foreign governments 
 or on the efforts of diplomacy. All thoughts of federalism, 
 of independence without unity, must be laid aside. " Feder- 
 alism would cancel the great mission of Italy in the world." 
 Young Italy, therefore, is Unitarian. "Never," said Mazzini 
 to his followers, " never rise in any other name than that
 
 I GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 17 
 
 of Italy and of all Italy." Mazzini himself was by con- 
 viction a stern republican, and the members of Young Italy 
 were sworn to educate the Italian people in that doctrine. 
 But there was to be no forcing of the deliberate conviction 
 of the people. The ultimate form of government, when 
 once unity had been achieved, was to be left to their own 
 deliberate choice. The republicanism of Mazzini was of 
 the truly liberal sort. " We shall," say the statutes, " we 
 shall bow the head and accept any form of government 
 chosen by universal suffrage, because it is the duty of indi- 
 vidual opinion to give way before the voice of the nation." 
 Such, in rough imperfect outline, was the political pro- 
 gramme of Mazzini carefully elaborated in the statutes of 
 Young Italy. You will find those statutes in the collected 
 edition of his works. 
 
 The effect produced by these propaganda was immediate 
 and profound. " From student to student, from youth to 
 youth, confraternity extended with unexampled rapidity, 
 and the same hands that smuggled the paper into Italy 
 brought back such a multitude of names and adhesions as 
 to astonish the little band of fellow-exiles who had under- 
 taken with Mazzini the labour and the risk of the publica- 
 tion. The new association quickly became dominant from 
 end to end of Italy." " It was," says Mazzini, " the triumph 
 of principles ; the bare fact that in so short a space of time 
 a handful of young men, themselves sprung from the 
 people, unknown, without means . . . found themselves 
 thus rapidly at the head of an association sufficiently 
 powerful to concentrate against it the alarmed persecution 
 of seven Governments is, I think, in itself enough to show 
 that the banner they had raised was the banner of truth." 
 The " alarmed persecution of governments " was no empty 
 phrase. In August 1832 Mazzini was decreed an exile 
 from France, though for a whole year or more he con- 
 tinued in Marseilles, eluding the vigilance of the French 
 police. In 1833 he went to Switzerland, whence he took 
 part in the ill-starred and abortive expedition into Savoy. 
 In 1836 even the Swiss Government was prevailed upon 
 
 C
 
 18 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 to deny him further hospitality, and it was not till the 
 following year that he found a home in the only European 
 state which has never refused a home to political exiles. 
 In 1837 he settled in England, which, as he himself has 
 written, "became to me almost as a second country, and 
 in which I found the lasting consolation of affection in 
 a life embittered by delusions and destitute of all joy." 
 From England he continued, amid the trials of deepening 
 poverty, to direct the affairs of his association. But, great 
 as was his influence, even in exile, his countrymen were 
 by no means unanimous in the acceptance of his views. 
 
 Besides those whom we may term the Mazzinisti there 
 were two other influential parties which, while sharing to 
 the full Mazzini's longing for the realisation of Italian 
 unity, sought to attain it by very different means. Of the 
 party which began to look to Piedmont as the destined 
 champion of Italian independence I shall have more to 
 say in my next lecture. The other great party, the neo- 
 Guelphs at this time under the leadership of Gioherti 
 looked to the Papacy to put itself at the head of the 
 national insurrection, and for a moment it seemed as 
 though their hopes might not be altogether ill founded. 
 In 1846 the old Pope Gregory XVI died, and Pio Nono 
 was elected to succeed him. He began his pontificate by 
 the issue of an amnesty, and the inauguration of some long 
 delayed reforms. The neo - Guelphs jumped to the con- 
 clusion that the millennium had already dawned, and 
 hailed the unhappy Pontiff as the Messiah of Italian 
 freedom. "Seldom," as a modern critic has well said, 
 "has history shown a more curious complication of false 
 positions and inextricable dilemmas. . . . The new Pope 
 took from the first a lofty view of his spiritual prerogative, 
 but began his reign without a definite temporal policy. . . . 
 He promised reforms, and was rewarded by calculated 
 acclamations." l Mazzini had as little liking for popes as 
 for kings, but never losing sight for a moment of the great 
 end he had in view, he addressed to the new Pope a letter 
 1 F, H. W. Myers, Essay on Mazzini.
 
 i GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 19 
 
 pointing out to him the great mission which he might 
 fulfil. He did win a fleeting popularity by protesting 
 against the Austrian occupation of Ferrara. But his zeal 
 for internal reform speedily evaporated, if indeed it had 
 ever existed outside the heated imagination of the neo- 
 Guelphic party. In Tuscany, however, and in Piedmont, 
 considerable administrative reforms were carried out by the 
 ruling Princes, to the immense delight of their peoples, but 
 to the infinite chagrin of Metternich. King Ferdinand of 
 Naples, the notorious Bomba, was almost alone in his obstin- 
 ate refusal to grant any sort of concession to his people. 
 
 But every day the irritation was growing, every day 
 the determination of all classes of Italians to realise the 
 unity, and especially the independence, of their country 
 was becoming fiercer and more intense. The general feel- 
 ing manifested itself in a hundred ways. The scientific 
 congress at Genoa, the agricultural congress at Casale, 
 were in reality political gatherings under a thin disguise. 
 At the congress at Casale a letter from Charles Albert of 
 Piedmont to the Count of Castegneto was communicated 
 to the assembled delegates. "Austria," wrote the King, 
 " has sent a note to all the Powers, in which she declares 
 her wish to retain Ferrara, believing she has a right to 
 it. ... If Providence sends us a war of Italian independ- 
 ence I will mount my horse with my sons, I will place 
 myself at the head of an army. . . . What a glorious day 
 it will be in which we can raise the cry of a war for the 
 independence of Italy !" The enthusiasm aroused by this 
 pronouncement was intense; the congress begged the 
 King to place himself at the head of the Italian movement 
 and unsheath at once the sword of independence. 
 
 Such, then, was the condition of affairs in Italy on the 
 eve of the revolutionary year. The agitation for reform 
 was universal, when news arrived that caused the idea of 
 mere constitutional reform to be flung aside, and made 
 men realise that the time had come for striking not only 
 at the petty despots in the Italian princedoms, but at the 
 giant powers by whom their despotisms had been so long
 
 20 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 sustained. In the February of 1848 revolution broke 
 out in Paris ; the Orleans dynasty was overthrown, and 
 the second Republic was proclaimed. In March the revolu- 
 tionary fever reached the core of European absolutism. 
 Convulsions took place in Vienna, so fierce that even the 
 mighty Metternich was shaken from his pedestal and driven 
 forth to share the exile of thousands of his former victims. 
 It seemed, indeed, as though the hour of Italy's deliver- 
 ance had come. Already insurrection had broken out in 
 Sicily, and even Ferdinand had been obliged to concede a 
 Constitution. A month later (llth February 1848) the 
 Grand-duke of Tuscany followed suit, and in March new Con- 
 stitutions, on a parliamentary basis, were promulgated in 
 Piedmont and in Rome. But the news from Vienna awoke 
 aspirations of a more far-reaching kind. The joyous en- 
 thusiasm with which it was received in Italy was simply 
 electric. Before the end of March the Austrians had been 
 compelled to evacuate Milan ; Venice had expelled her 
 foreign rulers, and had re-established the republic under 
 Daniel Manin; the Princes of Modena and Parma, the 
 puppets of Metternich, had fled ; while Charles Albert of 
 Piedmont had placed himself at the head of the national 
 movement and flung defiance at the Austrian Empire. 
 Tuscany was not long behind. The Grand-duke himself 
 published a stirring proclamation to the troops he sent to 
 join the other contingents. " Soldiers ! the holy cause of 
 the independence of Italy is now to be decided on the 
 fields of Lombardy. Already the citizens of Milan have 
 bought with their blood, and by a heroism the like of which 
 history affords but few examples, their liberty. Already 
 the Sardic army moves into the field, led by its magnani- 
 mous King. Sons of Italy, heirs of the glory of their 
 ancestors the Tuscans, cannot, must not remain in shameful 
 ease at such a solemn moment. Fly, then, unite yourselves 
 to the valiant citizens who as volunteers are ranging them- 
 selves under one banner fly to the succour of our Lom- 
 bard brothers !" Even the wretched Bomba was forced for 
 the moment to simulate adherence to the universal move-
 
 i GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 21 
 
 ment. No sooner had the Austrian yoke been flung off 
 tli an all the northern states Parma, Piacenza, Modena, 
 Lombardy, and Venice united themselves with the Sar- 
 dinian kingdom by universal plebiscite. The union of North 
 Italy under the hegemony of Sardinia, the expulsion of the 
 alien, the beginnings of Italian independence, and even of 
 Italian unity, seemed in an instant to have been achieved. 
 
 But the Austrian power was still too strong. Not even 
 the enthusiasm of Garibaldi, nor the ardour of Mazzini, 
 who had hurried back to enrol himself as a volunteer in 
 the Garibaldian legion, could withstand the strategic skill 
 of the veteran Radetsky. Charles Albert was forced to his 
 knees; an armistice was signed, and the Austrian yoke was re- 
 imposed once more on the whole of Northern Italy. Venice 
 alone held out. In the spring of 1849 Charles Albert again 
 renewed the war ; but again he was crushed by Radetsky in 
 the great battle of Novara, on 23d March 1849. On the 
 evening of that fatal day the old King resigned his sceptre 
 to his young son, famous to all time as the creator of 
 Italian unity Victor Emmanuel. 
 
 Meanwhile events had been moving fast in Rome. On 
 the outbreak of the insurrection the Pope declared, after 
 much vacillation, that he would not join the national 
 movement against the Austrian power in Italy ; at the 
 same time he had placed Count Rossi, a man of liberal 
 sympathies, at the head of affairs in Rome. In November 
 Count Rossi was foully assassinated. He had essayed the 
 hopeless task of adhering to a policy of moderation in times 
 of revolution. The Pope in terror fled to Gaeta, where he 
 placed himself under the protection of Ferdinand of Naples. 
 Rome, left without government of any kind, was for the 
 moment a prey to anarchy. But on the 9th of February 
 1849 the Parliament proclaimed the establishment of the 
 Republic. Mazzini, having been elected a member of the 
 Roman Parliament, hurried southwards to do his part in 
 organising the government. His first sight of the sacred 
 city filled his imaginative soul with a new enthusiasm. 
 " Rome," he writes, ' was the dream of my young years,
 
 22 THE MAKEKS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 the generating idea of my mental conception, the keystone 
 of my intellectual edifice, the religion of my soul ; and I 
 entered the city with a deep sense of awe, almost of wor- 
 ship. ... As I passed through the Porta del Popolo I felt 
 an electric thrill run through me, a spring of new life. I 
 shall never see Rome more, but the memory of her will 
 mingle with my dying thought of God, and of my best 
 beloved ; and wheresoever fate may lay my bones, I believe 
 that they will once more know the thrill that ran through 
 me then, on the day when the republican banner shall be 
 planted, in pledge of the unity of our Italy, upon the 
 Vatican and CapitoL" The dream of the prophet is real- 
 ised, but only in part. The banner of Italian unity is 
 floating over Rome to-day, but it is the banner, not of a 
 Mazzinian Republic, but of a liberal and well-ordered 
 monarchy. 
 
 But the Republic of 1849, though shortlived was 
 not inglorious. The Triumvirs, acting with the utmost 
 moderation towards all parties, still laboured assiduously to 
 put Rome in a condition to defend herself. The Pope, 
 meanwhile, was engaged in ceaseless intrigues for the in- 
 tervention of some foreign power by whom his authority 
 might be restored. Eventually the task was undertaken, 
 though not avowed, by France. Louis Napoleon, who had 
 recently become President of the French Republic, seized 
 the opportunity for conciliating at one stroke the affection 
 of the army and the clericals of France. " It was not," says M. 
 Thiers with brutal frankness, "for the sake of Catholicism, 
 it was not for the sake of the Roman people, that we went 
 to Rome ; it was for the sake of France." In face of this 
 new danger the Roman Triumvirate stood firm. But 
 though Oudinot was once repulsed, the Romans could not 
 hold out for long against a siege supported by 35,000 men. 
 On the 3d of July 1849 Rome fell ; the Republic was over- 
 thrown, and the Pope by the arms of France was restored 
 to his temporal power. Venice, under Daniel Manin was 
 still heroically standing out against the Austrians, but 
 in August Venice, too, succumbed, and the triumph of
 
 i GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 23 
 
 Austrian absolutism was complete. Once more the chains 
 of despotism were riveted on the Italian peoples. Once 
 more the timid Princes found courage, under the protection 
 of their powerful patron, to creep back to their tottering 
 thrones. But though to all outward seeming the Austrian 
 rule in Italy was re-established in the plenitude of absolute 
 power, yet in reality the system had received a shock 
 from which it never afterwards recovered. The drama of 
 Italian unity was hurrying on to a denouement destined to 
 destroy not merely Austrian despotism, but at the same 
 time and not less surely the republican ideal of Mazzini. 
 The consideration of this development for the present 
 I postpone. 
 
 Nor is it necessary in this place to dwell on the sub- 
 sequent career of Mazzini. His life mission, little as he 
 knew it, was already fulfilled. To the further solution 
 of the great problem, the importance of which he had 
 been the first to realise, he could contribute nothing. 
 The work must fall to other hands. The lofty idealism 
 of the prophet must give place to the practical sagacity 
 of the statesman. Mazzini lived indeed to see the 
 consummation of Italian unity. But though the good 
 time came for Italy at last, the manner of its coming 
 was as gall and wormwood to the republican fanatic, 
 wrapped as he was in ever deepening gloom as he saw the 
 long-sought goal attained by the efforts of men he hated, 
 and by methods he despised. The truth is, that there was 
 in Mazzini more of the prophet than the statesman. It was 
 his to inspire the workers with something of his own 
 ardent temper, something of his own sustained and lofty 
 zeal, something of his own enthusiasm an enthusiasm 
 always generous and pure, though somewhat rigid and 
 confined. But though he had in full measure the brain to 
 conceive, Mazzini had not the hands to execute a great and 
 enduring political work. To my thinking, indeed, Mazzini 
 is to be accounted great primarily, and above all else in 
 this : that he was in the domain of Politics a great moral 
 teacher; that, however mistaken his own methods, how-
 
 24 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY i 
 
 ever paltry his own immediate or direct achievements, he 
 did set before the statesmen, not of his own time only, nor 
 of his own country only, but of all times, and all countries, 
 an ideal, of necessity imperfect, but at least clear of all 
 sordid and self-seeking aim. 
 
 And yet, idealist as he was, Mazzini was no mere 
 dreamer of vain dreams ; stern in adherence to the repub- 
 lican idea, he was no mere iconoclast, no fulsome preacher 
 to the multitude of rights to be enjoyed without corre- 
 sponding duties faithfully fulfilled. To him democracy 
 was in no sense the rule of lawless mobs ; but as he him- 
 self has put it in the noblest definition of democracy ever 
 given to the world, it is the "progress of all through all 
 under the leading of the best and wisest." To him the 
 sole origin of every right was in a duty fulfilled. " If," 
 he says in the Preface to his Duties of Man, "if you 
 would emancipate yourselves from the arbitrary rule and 
 tyranny of man you must begin by rightly adoring God. 
 And in the world's great battle between the two great 
 principles of Good and Evil, you must openly enrol your- 
 selves beneath the banner of the first and ceaselessly 
 combat the second. ... It was because I saw these two lies 
 Machiavellism and materialism too often clothe them- 
 selves before your eyes with the seductive fascinations of 
 hopes which only the worship of God and truth can realise, 
 that I thought to warn you by this book. I love you too 
 well either to flatter your passions or to caress the golden 
 dreams by which others seek to win your favour. My 
 voice may sound too harsh, and I may too severely insist 
 on proclaiming the necessity of virtue and sacrifice ; but I 
 know, and you too, untainted by false doctrines and un- 
 spoiled by wealth, will soon know also, that the sole origin 
 of every right is in a duty fulfilled." These surely are not 
 the words, these are not the thoughts of a fawning dema- 
 gogue, but of a pure-minded, God-sent prophet, conscious 
 of a lofty purpose, clear as to his mission, self-devoted to 
 the noble task of rescuing his fellow-countrymen from the 
 degrading yoke of alien tyrants ; of emancipating his
 
 i GIUSEPPE MAZZINI 25 
 
 fellow-men throughout the world from the no less ignoble 
 tyranny of selfish passions and of base desires. 
 
 " Wherefore then wast thou 
 Outlaw in every kingdom of the world 
 Except in England ? England, thank thou God 
 For that cold shelter that thou gavest him, 
 For which he blessed thee, giving thee back love 
 For the long years of scornful disregard ! 
 Was he not branded with all calumny, 
 Because he dared to teach the naked truth ? 
 Christ's words were not a book for Sabbath-days, 
 But law of life and judgment of the land ; 
 Not to be chosen, and pieced and dogmatised, 
 But lived up to, the whole and not a part, 
 Alive not dead, one spirit in new forms ; 
 And lived as Christ lived, poor, despised, alone, 
 Apart with God and working miracles, 
 Not on the waves and winds, but on the wills 
 Of men, upon the hearts of multitudes, 
 The hidden germ of fresh humanities, 
 Of live confederations yet unborn, 
 The hidden founts of gathering river floods, 
 To bear one day the music of his name 
 Through lands of harvest to the boundless sea."
 
 II 
 
 CAVOUK 
 
 THE LIBERATION OF NORTH ITALY 
 
 " To all outward seeming the triumph of Austrian absolut- 
 ism was once more complete." Such were the words in 
 which, last time, I summed up the results of the period, 
 the events of which I was endeavouring to trace. Black 
 indeed was the outlook for Italy in 1849 when Victor 
 Emmanuel of Sardinia, in the hopefulness of youth, took 
 up the sceptre which his father in the disappointment of 
 age had flung aside. The " Year of Eevolution," at one 
 time bright with hope for Italy, had come and gone and 
 had left Italy even more hopeless than before. In 
 Northern Italy the Austrian yoke was riveted more firmly 
 than ever on her subject provinces ; the vassal princes, the 
 King of the two Sicilies, the Grand-duke of Tuscany, and 
 all the lesser fry, were restored to their wretched princi- 
 palities, determined to avenge by petty persecution the 
 fright they had sustained the year before. Even Piedmont 
 the hope of liberal Italy lay prostrate for the moment 
 under the crushing defeat of Novara. To all seeming the 
 work of thirty years and more had gone for nothing. 
 Italy was no nearer the goal of unity, the goal of independ- 
 ence, than she had been when, in 1815, the Viennese 
 diplomatists had carved out her dukedoms and parcelled
 
 ii CAVOUR 27 
 
 out her provinces like so many slices, as the saying goes, 
 of a ripe Dutch cheese. She was still dismembered, still 
 divided, still unfree, given over to a despotism that crushed 
 the body and benumbed the soul. "The Pope clutches 
 the soul of the Italian nation ; Austria the body whenever 
 it shows signs of life ; and on every member of that body 
 is enthroned an absolute prince, viceroy in turn under 
 either of these powers." 1 
 
 And yet was the Italy of 1849 in grim reality the Italy 
 of 1815? Had the efforts of Mazzini and his disciples 
 borne no fruit ? Had the blood of thousands of willing 
 martyrs been shed absolutely in vain? We can forgive 
 an Italian of 1849 for thinking that it was so; but we 
 should be hopelessly deceived were we to share the illusion. 
 Look on the contrast for yourselves. The Italians of 
 1815 were willing slaves. Italy itself seemed to lie 
 prostrate and benumbed. Not a sign of life, not an 
 emotion, seemed to stir her torpid soul. But now Italy 
 had at last awakened from the death-sleep of centuries. 
 The insurrectionary movements of 1821, of 1831, of 1848, 
 proved at least that the Italians were conscious of their 
 degradation, that they had begun to dare to hope. Nay 
 more, their aspirations had become articulate. " They 
 desire," said one of them, "they desire to live to live 
 with all the faculties of their being ; to live as God 
 commands ; to Avalk onward with the rest of the world ; to 
 have brethren and not spies around them ; to have in- 
 structors and not masters; to have a home and not a 
 prison " (Mazzini). Most of them had begun to long for 
 freedom, and not a few to long for unity. To say the truth, 
 the desire for unity was far less universal than from the 
 writings of Mazzini you might suppose. Here and there, 
 there were, no doubt, groups of Mazzinist disciples who 
 could rise above the conception of provincial patriotism, 
 and look beyond to the unification of the whole peninsula ; 
 but the universal longing, the pressing need that came 
 home to every one, was not unity but freedom. It was 
 1 Ma/zini.
 
 28 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 only as they gradually began to realise that the one was 
 practically impossible without the other that the broader 
 conception was entertained. Gradually it was borne in 
 upon them that so long as Austria was supreme in Italy, 
 no permanent concession in the direction of constitutional 
 liberties could be wrung from the wretched despots like 
 King Bomba, who moved only in obedience to the strings 
 which Austria pulled. And thus it was that Neapolitans 
 and Tuscans, Romans and Piedmontese, alike began to 
 realise the truth which Mazzini was constantly enforcing, 
 that a war, a " bloody and inexorable " war, with Austria, 
 was the first necessary step towards the permanent 
 acquisition of domestic liberties. 
 
 But more than this, the Italians had for a brief moment, 
 in the spring of 1848, felt upon their brows the breath of 
 liberty. For a moment a vision of the glorious future had 
 been revealed in the spirit to those who might never see 
 it in the flesh. 
 
 ' ' ' Italia Una ! ' Now the war-cry rang 
 
 From Alp to Etna : and her dreams were done, 
 And she herself had wakened into life, 
 And stood full armed and free : and all her sons 
 Knew they were happy to have looked on her, 
 And felt it beautiful to die for her. " 
 
 And is this nothing ? Is it nothing in a people's history 
 that, after the sleep of ages, they have wakened into life 1 
 Is it nothing that the soul is free, even though the limbs 
 be still fettered with the chains of degrading despotism ? 
 Nay, were there no other difference between the two 
 epochs there was this Mazzini had lived. The Italy of 
 1849 had seen Mazzini, had listened to his voice, had 
 begun at least to lisp some of the noble lessons that he 
 came to teach. Small blame to them if they could not 
 read, much less understand and fully grasp, the great 
 lesson of the solidarity of all mankind which he strove 
 pre-eminently to enforce ; failing this, they did at any rate 
 learn to understand something of the sacred symbol of
 
 ii CAVOUR 29 
 
 " Nationality ; " they could vow to consecrate their whole 
 vital energy to the attainment of Italian unity. " Life," 
 said the great teacher, " is a mission ; duty, therefore, its 
 highest law. . . . Each of us is bound to purify his own 
 soul as a temple ; to free it from egotism ; to set before 
 himself, with a religious sense of the importance of the 
 study, the problem of his own life ; to search out what is 
 the most striking need of the men by whom he is sur- 
 rounded, and then to interrogate his own faculties and 
 capacity, and resolutely and unceasingly apply them to 
 the satisfaction of the need. . . . Young brothers, when 
 once you have conceived and determined your mission 
 within your soul, let naught arrest your steps. Fulfil it 
 with all your strength ; fulfil it whether blessed by love 
 or visited by hate, whether strengthened by association 
 with others or in the sad solitude that almost always 
 surrounds the martyrs of thought. The path is clear before 
 you; you are cowards, unfaithful to your own future, if, 
 in spite of sorrows and delusions, you do not pursue it to 
 the end." Not a few of the younger men of Italy had 
 grasped this splendid lesson ; they had studied the problem 
 of their lives ; their choice was taken ; their mission was 
 determined ; their path was clear ; they had vowed to 
 pursue it to the end. 
 
 The Italy, then, of 1849 was far other than the Italy 
 of 1815. And the difference was due primarily, and in the 
 main, to the lofty teaching of the great prophet. And yet 
 in no respect was the improved condition of Italy in 1849 
 more marked than in the fact that Mazzini's ideal had been 
 already shattered. Forgive me if I seem to speak a para- 
 dox. It is an eternal truth that life is only possible 
 through death. For modern Italy to live it was necessary 
 that Mazzini's ideal should die. " The Italy of his ideal," 
 as Mr. Fyfie has said, " was a republic, embracing every 
 member of the race, purged of the priestcraft and supersti- 
 tion which had degraded the man to the slave ; indebted 
 to itself alone for its independence, and consolidated by 
 the reign of equal law. The rigidity with which Mazzini
 
 30 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 adhered to his own great project in its completeness, and 
 his impatience of any bargaining away of national rights, 
 excluded him from the work of those practical politicians 
 and men of expedients who in 1859 effected with foreign 
 aid the first step towards Italian union." Mazzini, in 
 fact, as I said last time, had done his work, all the work 
 perhaps which a man of his temperament was capable of 
 accomplishing for Italy. He had given to the practical 
 politicians a goal at which to aim, but a goal which by his 
 means might never have been reached. But it was not 
 only the republican ideal which was shattered. The 
 neo-Guelphic party the party which "looked to a new 
 and glorious Italy regenerated not by philosophic republic- 
 anism or the sword of a temporal monarch but by the 
 moral force of a reformed and reforming Papacy," they 
 too, I say, had been obliged to abandon their ideal. 
 D'Azeglio had seen through this delusion as early as 1847, 
 for in that year he writes from Rome : " I am convinced 
 the magic of Pio Nono will not last. He is an angel, but 
 he is surrounded by demons ; he has a disordered state 
 and corrupt elements, and he will not be able to combat 
 the obstacles." The truth of his prediction was quickly 
 confirmed. Pio Nono was a mild and kindly ecclesiastic, 
 but utterly incapable of putting the Papacy at the head 
 of such a mission as this, even had he realised its splendour 
 or necessity. Gioberti himself, the sometime leader of the 
 neo-Guelphic party, published in 1851 the fiinnovamento, a 
 work in which he publicly proclaimed the abandonment of 
 his former policy and clearly accepted the principle of a 
 Sardinian hegemony as the inevitable basis of Italian inde- 
 pendence. " Except the young Sovereign who rules Pied- 
 mont, I see no one in Italy who could undertake our 
 emancipation. Instead of imitating Pius, Ferdinand, and 
 Leopold, who violated their sworn compacts, he maintains 
 his with religious observance vulgar praise in other times, 
 but to-day not small, being contrary to example." 
 
 Gradually, then, the hopes of all Italian patriots, of all 
 Italian parties, whatever their special predilections previously
 
 II CAVOUR 31 
 
 had been, came to be concentrated on the Sardinian mon- 
 archy ; began to focus themselves on the young Sardinian 
 King. And the traditions of the Sardinian dynasty, of the 
 House of Savoy, were eminently favourable to the part 
 they were called upon to play. We have already seen 
 how they were established by rather dubious diplomacy 
 in their subalpine kingdom. We have seen, too, that 
 whatever of life there was in Italy in the eighteenth 
 century was concentrated in this province. In the insur- 
 rectionary movements of 1821 and 1833 there was little, 
 perhaps, to distinguish the action of the rulers of Piedmont 
 from that of the rest of the Italian Princes. Certainly 
 Mazzini had little reason for distinguishing between the 
 despotism of Naples and that of Piedmont. And yet there 
 was a feeling among Italian liberals, and it was well 
 grounded, that the government of Piedmont differed in 
 kind from that of the other States. The ruler of Piedmont 
 was, at any rate, alone among Italian temporal rulers, a 
 native akin in speech and blood to the people over whom 
 he reigned. But more than that, alone among Italian 
 rulers, Charles Albert of Piedmont had, in the spring of 
 1848, granted a Parliamentary Constitution to his people 
 of his own free will. And above all, he had been the first 
 to unsheath the sword in the holy war of Italian independ- 
 ence, and to make Austria feel that powerful as she was 
 she had to confront in Italy a people determined to be free, 
 determined to be one. 
 
 On his accession to the throne in 1849 Victor Emmanuel 
 was a young man of twenty-nine. The prospect for Pied- 
 mont and for Italy Avas far from bright, yet there was nothing 
 of undignified despair in the attitude which he maintained in 
 the negotiations with Radetsky for a truce with Austria. 
 "Marshal," he said, "sooner than subscribe to such con- 
 ditions I would lose a hundred Crowns. What my father 
 has sworn I will maintain. If you wish a war to the 
 death, be it so ! I will call my nation to arms once more, 
 and you will see of what Piedmont is capable in a general 
 rising. If I fall it shall be without shame. My house
 
 32 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 knows the road of exile but not of dishonour." The firm, 
 determined character of the young King comes out clearly 
 at the outset, and his honesty no less. " What my father 
 has sworn I will maintain." Throughout life he was 
 faithful to the promise. " All our efforts," he declared in 
 the first proclamation he issued to his people, " must be 
 directed to maintain our honour untarnished, to heal the 
 wounds of our country, to consolidate our liberal institu- 
 tions. To this undertaking I conjure all my people, to it 
 I will pledge myself by a solemn oath, and I await from 
 the nation the exchange of help, affection, and confidence." 
 
 From the purpose indicated in this solemn pledge 
 Victor Emmanuel never swerved, and though the outlook 
 was for the time being black enough, there was not a little 
 encouragement, as we have seen, for the man who would 
 look back and mark the path that Italy had traversed in 
 the last few years. Nay, even the immediate past was 
 not devoid of all encouragement. True, the campaign of 
 1849 had ended in unrelieved disaster, but for all that it 
 marked a most important epoch in the history of the 
 Italian movement. "It baptized," as Mr. Symonds has 
 well said, "the cause of Italian independence with the 
 best blood of Piedmont; it gave it a royal martyr, 
 and it pledged the dynasty of Savoy to a progressive 
 policy from which it never afterwards for a single moment 
 deviated." 
 
 Meanwhile, amid the general reaction in Italy, Victor 
 Emmanuel and his Prime Minister, D'Azeglio, set them- 
 selves with steadfast courage to reorganise the Sardinian 
 kingdom and cany out constitutional reforms of far- 
 reaching character. But they had first to deal with 
 domestic disaffection, stirred up in Genoa by the republi- 
 can irreconcilables who still followed Mazzini's lead. 
 Mazzini and his friends did not scruple to impute to the 
 Sardinian Government the basest treachery in connection 
 with the events of the recent war and the still more recent 
 peace. "Better Italy enslaved than handed over to the 
 son of the traitor Carlo Alberto." Mazzini was utterly
 
 il CAVOUU 33 
 
 intractable. Fortunately his work was soon to be taken 
 up by hands more competent than his to carry it through 
 to a reasonable consummation. 
 
 Undeterred by domestic disaffection, D'Azeglio and Victor 
 Emmanuel went steadily forward in the path of reform. 
 Their first difficulty was in connection with ecclesiastical 
 affairs. In the little kingdom of Sardinia there were at that 
 time 41 bishoprics, over 1400 canonries, and 18,000 people 
 who had assumed the monastic habit. In fact, taking the 
 whole population through, one person in every 214 was 
 an ecclesiastic. Now this in itself is comparatively an 
 unimportant matter. But when you recollect that in 
 Sardinia the Church still claimed exclusive jurisdiction 
 over all ecclesiastics; the right of affording asylum to 
 criminals, and all the rest of the anomalous privileges of 
 the mediaeval system, you will understand the magnitude 
 of the difficulty by which the Eeformer was confronted. 
 For a parallel situation in English history you must go 
 back to the time when Henry II was falling foul of Becket 
 by attempting to limit ecclesiastical jurisdictions in the 
 famous Constitutions of Clarendon. Victor Emmanuel, 
 like Henry II, was anxious to reduce all men to an 
 equality before the civil law. The continued existence 
 of the clerical courts in all the plenitude of power, the 
 vast pretensions of the Jesuits to the exclusive control of 
 education and the censorship of domestic morality were, 
 however, utterly inconsistent with this reasonable and 
 laudable ambition. Victor Emmanuel, profoundly anxious 
 to avoid friction between the civil and ecclesiastical authori- 
 ties, despatched to the Pope, in the autumn of 1849, a 
 special envoy Count Siccardi. The Pope firmly declined 
 to sanction any change in the relations between Church 
 and State in Sardinia. " The Holy Father," said the papal 
 representative, " was willing to please the King of Sardinia 
 as far as going into the ante-chamber of the devil, but into 
 his very chamber he would not go." 
 
 Despite this check the King, with the assistance of 
 Siccardi, determined to push on the work of reform ; the 
 
 D
 
 34 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 Foro Ecdesiastico (or chief clerical tribunal) was finally 
 abolished, and the privileges and immunities of the vast 
 army of ecclesiastics were sensibly curtailed. The clerical 
 organs thundered denunciations against the infidel King 
 and his heretic ministers. Luckily for them a famous act 
 of clerical intolerance just at this time immensely strength- 
 ened the hands of both the King and the ministry in dealing 
 with the question. When the Minister of Commerce, Santa 
 Rosa, died shortly after the passing of the Siccardine law, 
 he was refused the last sacrament, though he was ad- 
 mittedly a man of blameless life, and though he died in 
 complete communion with the Roman Church. Nothing 
 could have better served the cause of ecclesiastical reform. 
 
 I have dwelt on this matter in some detail because it 
 was of immense importance on two grounds. In the first 
 place, it marks the beginning of the breach between the 
 Roman Pontiff and the Sardinian King, the man who was 
 destined to be King of Italy, and to establish the seat of 
 government under the shadow of the Vatican itself. The 
 breach thus created is not healed yet, and though the difficult- 
 ies of the situation are gradually diminishing, 1 we still must 
 recollect that for twenty years at least the contest between 
 the Papal and the Civil power constituted the hardest of the 
 problems which the makers of modern Italy were called 
 upon to solve. On another ground the matter is important, 
 since it served to introduce to Italian politics the great 
 statesman whose name is peculiarly associated with this 
 question, Count Camillo di Cavour. 
 
 During the debates on the abolition of ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction Cavour gave strong support to the ministerial 
 policy. It was only by timely reform, as he reminded 
 them, that revolution could be avoided. " Do not think," 
 he said, " that the constitutional throne will be weakened ; 
 it will, on the contrary, be strengthened, and it will im- 
 plant roots so profound in our soil" mark his prophetic 
 words " that when revolution again threatens us, not only 
 
 1 The statement in the text must, I fear be considerably modified 
 in view of recent events.
 
 ii CAVOUR 35 
 
 will the constitutional throne direct it, but that throne 
 will group around itself all the living forces of Italy, and 
 conduct the nation to the destinies which yet await it." 
 
 In the splendour and in the certainty of that destiny 
 Cavour had a profound belief. The important support he 
 had recently given to the Government claimed recognition 
 at their hands, and in 1850 he joined the ministry of 
 D'Azeglio as Minister of Commerce. His commanding in- 
 tellect, his soaring but strictly honourable ambition, his 
 unbending will and slightly domineering temper were 
 already recognised. " Look out what you are doing," said 
 the King to D'Azeglio ; " Cavour will soon be master of 
 you all ; he will dismiss you ; he will never be content 
 till he is Prime Minister himself." 
 
 Born on the 10th of August 1810, Cavour was, like 
 Mazzini, by birth a Piedmontese. His family belonged to 
 the small exclusive aristocracy of Piedmont perhaps the 
 smallest, and certainly the proudest, aristocracy in Europe. 
 One of his sponsors, it is interesting to note, was Pauline 
 Borghese, a sister of the great Napoleon. Thus early did 
 the connection between Cavour and the Bonapartes begin. 
 Like other noble youths, he was educated at the military 
 academy at Turin, and joined the army as an engineer in 
 1828. But the army was little to his taste. He had 
 already begun to realise the abject condition of his native 
 country, and to indulge himself in dreams for its regenera- 
 tion. The events of the French Eevolution of 1830 made 
 a great impression on his mind an impression which he 
 communicated to his comrades with too much freedom 
 to please the authorities at home. In consequence of 
 his indiscretion he was placed under semi-arrest in the 
 Fort de Bard ; and, disgusted with the situation, he resigned 
 his commission in 1831. 
 
 The drift of his political opinions about this time may 
 be gathered from a letter which he addressed to an English 
 friend in December 1829 
 
 " I congratulate you sincerely on the happy change 
 \vhich has taken place in the policy of your Government."
 
 36 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 (Referring, I suppose, to the Catholic Emancipation Act, 
 carried by the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel.) 
 " Whilst all Europe is walking with a firm step in the path 
 of progress, unhappy Italy is borne down perpetually under 
 the same system of civil and religious tyranny. Pity those 
 who, with a soul made to develop the generous principles 
 of civilisation, are compelled to see their country brutal- 
 ised by Austrian bayonets. Tell your countrymen that 
 we are not undeserving of liberty ; that if we have rotten 
 members, we have also men who are worthy to enjoy the 
 blessings of light. Forgive me if I wander, but my soul is 
 weighed down under the weight of indignation and sorrow." 
 Cavour had already begun to take that profound interest 
 in English politics which he maintained till his death. It 
 is interesting to note that from this time onwards he regu- 
 larly took in the Times, the Morning Post, and the Economist. 
 But Cavour was by no means content even with such 
 admirable sources of information as these. He was bent 
 on making a profound study of the political, the social, and 
 above all the economical, questions which were then agitating 
 both England and the Continent. Repeatedly we find him 
 writing to friends in England for corn law statistics, for 
 Government reports, for Parliamentary Blue-books, and so 
 forth a species of interesting literature which is not, I fancy, 
 in much demand even in the most " forward " of free libraries 
 in England. Studies such as these inevitably led him to 
 institute comparisons between the steady and moderated 
 progress of a country like England and the ignoble stagna- 
 tion of his own unhappy fatherland. He followed the reform 
 agitation in England with the closest interest, and hailed 
 the passing of the Bill of 1832 as an emblem of hope for the 
 liberal party throughout Europe even for Italy. " And 
 in the miserable position in which we are placed," he writes, 
 " we need, indeed, a ray of hope. Pressed on the one side 
 by Austrian bayonets, on the other by the furious excom- 
 munications of the Pope, our condition is truly deplorable. 
 Every free exercise of thought, every generous sentiment, 
 is stifled, as if it were a sacrilege or a crime against the
 
 ii CAVOUR 37 
 
 state. We cannot hope to obtain by ourselves any relief 
 from such enormous misfortunes. . . . The voice of Eng- 
 land alone can obtain for the people of the Eomagna a 
 supportable government, somewhat in harmony with the 
 ideas and manners of our age." 
 
 After leaving the army Cavour devoted his energies to 
 agriculture and the management of his ancestral property 
 at L6ri. At the first blush agriculture has small attrac- 
 tions for an active-minded man. "The habitvA of the 
 salon," as Cavour himself writes, "feels a certain repug- 
 nance for works which begin by the analysis of dunghills, and 
 end in the middle of cattle-sheds ; but if he can get over his 
 first repugnance he will find much to attract him." For 
 Cavour himself, who when he started could not distinguish 
 between a turnip and a potato, the experience was of the 
 greatest value. The monotony of the pursuit, moreover, 
 was relieved by periodical travels, in the course of which 
 he visited this country, Ireland, and Scotland. Here he 
 pursued with the most ardent zeal the studies in social and 
 political affairs which had so long engaged him. The con- 
 dition of the poor, the working of the new Poor Law, the 
 industrial wealth, the expanding commerce, and above all 
 the Parliamentary Government of this country, all engaged 
 his serious attention. Night after night the young Italian, 
 destined to become the real founder of Parliamentary 
 Government in Italy, was to be seen in the Strangers' 
 Gallery, following with the utmost interest the debates, 
 and making himself thoroughly conversant with the rules 
 of procedure, the methods of conducting business, and above 
 all, with the niceties of parliamentary tactics in the English 
 House of Commons. To Cavour the experience thus gained 
 was of course of incalculable value in later years. 
 
 Meanwhile he began about 1835 to contribute articles 
 on the English Poor Law, on Communism, on Free Trade, 
 on Railways, and on a number of kindred topics, to various 
 journalsand reviews. Inl843he published in the Bibliothkque 
 Univcrselle de Gentve an article on Ireland, distinguished 
 by all his characteristic sobriety of judgment and sturdy
 
 38 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 common sense. Shortly before this, in 1842, he had taken 
 an active share in the foundation of the Agricultural 
 Society of Piedmont, an association designed not merely 
 for the dissemination of correct ideas on stock-breeding 
 and chemical manures, but also to bring together all the 
 leading men who held liberal opinions in Piedmont. These 
 enlightened leaders had to advance with the utmost caution. 
 In 1847 Cavour, in conjunction with Santa Eosa, Cesare 
 Balbo, and others, founded a new journal, named the 
 Risorgimento, for the purpose of disseminating constitutional 
 ideas of government. The programme of the constitutional 
 party at this time was brief but pregnant : " Independence 
 of Italy, union between the Princes and peoples, progress 
 in the path of reform, and a league between the Italian 
 states." 
 
 In this programme there is, you may notice, a notable 
 omission. It speaks of independence, it speaks of a league 
 between the states, it points to federation ; there is no hint 
 of unity. And, indeed, at this moment Cavour and the 
 Italian liberals were content to let the latter question bide 
 its time. That unity would ultimately be achieved they 
 were assured ; but the first essential was independence. 
 Hence the inveterate hostility with which this party was 
 pursued by the Mazzinist enthusiasts. The Mazzinists 
 regarded all compromise, all temporising, as being in itself 
 a handling of the accursed thing. They never would realise 
 that in politics and in diplomacy the half, as the Greek pro- 
 verb has it, is often better than the whole. No man ever 
 realised this truth more profoundly than Cavour. " Let 
 us," he was wont to say, " do one thing at a time ; let us 
 get rid of the Austrians, and we shall see nous verrons." At 
 the same time he pushed on to the utmost of his power 
 internal reform in Piedmont. "What is the good," he 
 asked, " of reforms which lead to no conclusion and ter- 
 minate nothing? Let us demand a Constitution. Since 
 the Government can be no longer maintained on the bases 
 that have hitherto supported it, let it replace them by 
 others conformable to the spirit of the time, to the progress
 
 ii CAVOUR 39 
 
 of civilisation ; let it replace them before it is too late, 
 before social authority falls into dissolution amid the 
 clamours of the people." Mark well those words ; they 
 would form a fitting text for the whole of Cavour's political 
 career : " Let it replace them before social authority falls 
 into dissolution amid the clamours of the people." Reform, 
 primarily for its own sake ; but, not less, to anticipate, to 
 forestall, to cut the ground from under the feet of destruct- 
 ive revolution. That is the position of a true Liberal ; 
 that is the position of a genuine Conservative. 
 
 The demand was granted; a Constitution or Statuto 
 was conceded, and in 1848 Count Cavour took his seat 
 as member for Turin, in the first Parliament of Piedmont. 
 
 Thanks to the experience he had gained in England, 
 Cavour was from the first the moulder of the Parliamentary 
 system in his own country. But on his first entrance into 
 active political life he was by no means popular. In times 
 of revolutionary excitement wise and moderate men very 
 seldom are. By the ultra-democrats the noisy remnants 
 of the Mazzinist party he was regarded as a reactionary 
 aristocrat ; by his own order, on the other hand, he was 
 shunned as a dangerous revolutionist. But by the rigour 
 and ability with which he supported the Siccardian law for 
 the abolition of clerical jurisdictions he managed to con- 
 ciliate in time the respect of all moderate men. 
 
 Hence on the death of Santa Rosa he was, as we have 
 seen, appointed Minister of Commerce and Agriculture. 
 This office gave him the opportunity of putting into 
 practice those sound economical and financial principles 
 which he had imbibed for the most part in this country, 
 and in the truth of which he had so profound a conviction. 
 He pushed on reform apace ; he improved the internal 
 means of communication, removed burdensome restrictions 
 on trade, and concluded commercial treaties with England, 
 France, Belgium, and other pOAvers. His reforms enormously 
 increased the industrial resources of the country, and 
 rendered it more capable of sustaining the arduous part it 
 had to play in the immediate future. But not even the
 
 40 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 wisest can escape the reproach of fools, and after a brief 
 official career marked by exceptional activity Cavour was 
 obliged to retire. He took the opportunity thus afforded 
 him of paying another visit to his friends in England and 
 enlightening the best English opinion on the existing 
 situation in Italy. It was indeed assuming every day a 
 more and more critical complexion. The liberal and reform- 
 ing policy of the Sardinian Government was beginning to 
 excite the indignation of the reactionary powers. Austria 
 and Prussia indeed had the effrontery to suggest to Victor 
 Emmanuel that he would best consult his own interests by 
 imitating the reactionary policy of the vassal courts of 
 Florence and Naples, Modena and Parma. The King, in 
 reply, courteously but firmly intimated to his distinguished 
 advisers that he was master in his own house, that he in 
 no way interfered with what other sovereigns thoiight fit 
 to do, and that he desired on his part perfect liberty of 
 action ! The ecclesiastical situation was not less fraught 
 with difficulty than the political. The debates on the 
 Siccardian law had in fact raised the whole question of the 
 relations of Church and State in Italy a question every- 
 where and always thorny, but rendered in Italy a hundred- 
 fold more difficult by the existence of the Temporal 
 dominions of the Papacy. Such were some of the many 
 problems confronting Cavour when in 1852 he became 
 Prime Minister of Sardinia. As to his immediate policy 
 Cavour was perfectly clear. His programme is thus stated 
 by himself 
 
 "Piedmont must begin by raising herself, by re- 
 establishing in Europe, as well as in Italy, a position 
 and a credit equal to her ambition. Hence there must 
 be a policy unswerving in its aims but flexible and various 
 as to the means employed, embracing the exchequer, mili- 
 tary reorganisation, diplomacy, and religious affairs." 
 
 There are, it has been well said, two qualities essential 
 to a statesman the one is prudence, the other is imprudence. 
 Cavour possessed the two qualities in combination in an 
 exceptional degree. He knew that in the affairs of states,
 
 ii CAVOUR 41 
 
 as in the affairs of individuals, there comes a time when 
 rashness is the height of prudence. 
 
 " He either fears his fate too much, 
 
 Or his deserts are small, 
 That dares not put it to the touch 
 To gain or lose it all." 
 
 Such a crisis had arrived in the history of Sardinia 
 when, in 1854, the western powers embarked on the 
 Crimean War. Realise to yourselves the position of Pied- 
 mont at this most critical juncture. One of many states 
 in Italy, not the oldest, not the largest, not the richest, 
 loaded with debt, prostrate beneath the recent recollec- 
 tion of a crushing military disorder, by no means on the 
 best of terms with its immediate neighbours, and among 
 the European "powers" practically unrecognised this 
 was the State which proposed in 1854 to join the 
 western powers in the defence of the dominions of the 
 Porte. The negotiations were protracted for months. 
 Among his colleagues Cavour stood absolutely alone in 
 advocating this seemingly desperate enterprise. To them 
 the whole scheme was sheer insanity. But the King stood 
 firmly by Cavour. The ministers were permitted to resign, 
 and in January 1855 the memorable treaty was signed by 
 which Sardinia pledged herself to go to the assistance of 
 the western powers with 15,000 (afterwards increased to 
 25,000) men. "It was," says Massari, "a solemn moment 
 for the King, and decided the fate of his country; that 
 treaty was the fortune of Italy. To overcome so many 
 difficulties the genius of Cavour was not enough, there was 
 needed also the firmness of Victor Emmanuel, for without 
 him the treaty would not have been concluded." I have 
 quoted Massari's judgment, for it insists on an important 
 truth, realised to the full by the King's devoted subjects 
 in Italy, but not properly appreciated in England, viz. 
 the immensely important part played at every great 
 crisis in the drama of Italian unification by Victor 
 Emmanuel himself. Here in the Crimean Treaty; again 
 after the Peace of Villafranca ; again in regard to the
 
 42 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 Neapolitan question in 1861, and finally in the extremely 
 delicate and difficult negotiation of 1870 in all these crises 
 it was the courage and firmness and tact of the King himself 
 which surmounted every difficulty and ensured success. 
 
 But in regard to Sardinia's intervention in the Crimea 
 you may fairly ask What was her interest in the quarrel, 
 what right had she to interfere, what could she hope to 
 gain in return for the risks she ran? Cavour himself 
 anticipated the interrogation. In a great speech on the 
 Treaty he showed that in possession of the Bosphorus and 
 Dardanelles Russia would be irresistible in the Mediter- 
 ranean. "But I may be asked," he said, " what matters it 
 to us if Russia has the mastery in the Mediterranean 1 It 
 may be said that that mastery does not belong to Italy nor 
 to Sardinia ; it is now the possession of England and of 
 France ; instead of two masters the Mediterranean will 
 have three. I cannot believe that such sentiments can 
 have an echo in this assembly. They would amount to a 
 giving up of our hopes of the future I How will this treaty 
 avail Italy ? " he concluded. " I will tell you. In the 
 only way in which we or perhaps any one can help Italy 
 in the present condition of Europe. The experience of 
 past years and of past centuries has proved how little con- 
 spiracies, plots, revolutions, and ill- directed movements 
 have profited Italy. So far from doing so, they have 
 proved the greatest calamity which has afflicted this fail- 
 part of Europe ; not only from the vast amount of human 
 misery they have entailed, not only because they have been 
 the cause and the excuse for acts of increasing severity, 
 but especially because these continual conspiracies, these 
 repeated revolutions, these ineffectual risings, have had the 
 effect of lessening the esteem, and even to a certain extent 
 the sympathy, which the other nations of Europe once felt 
 for Italy. Now I believe that the first condition of any 
 improvement in the fate of Italy is that we should restore 
 to her her good name, and so act that all nations, govern- 
 ments, and peoples should render justice to her great quali- 
 ties. And to this end two things are necessary : first, that
 
 n CAVOUR 43 
 
 we should prove to Europe that Italy has sufficient civil 
 virtue to govern herself with order and form herself for 
 liberty, and that she is capable of receiving the most perfect 
 system of government known to us ; and secondly, that we 
 should show that in military virtue we are not inferior to 
 our ancestors. You have already rendered one service to 
 Italy by the conduct you have pursued for seven years, 
 proving in the clearest way to Europe that the Italians are 
 able to govern themselves with wisdom, prudence, and 
 loyalty. It remains for you to render her no less a 
 service, if not even a greater ; it remains for you to show 
 that the sons of Italy can fight like brave men on the fields 
 of glory. And I am persuaded that the laurels which our 
 soldiers will gather in the plains of the East will do more 
 for the future of Italy than all that has been done by those 
 who have thought by declamation and writing to effect her 
 regeneration." 
 
 Never was prudent calculation more exactly fulfilled, 
 never was rash resolve more fully justified. The conduct 
 of the Sardinian contingent in the Crimea not only wiped 
 out the disgrace of Custozza and Novara ; it gave to Sar- 
 dinia for the first time a footing among the " powers " ; 
 above all, it enabled her to take her part on terms of equality 
 in the diplomatic negotiations which resulted in the peace 
 of Paris. 
 
 The congress of Paris, to which Cavour was admitted, 
 despite the protests of Austria, proved to be the turning- 
 point in the fortunes of Sardinia and of Italy. In the 
 English representatives, Lord Cowley and Lord Clarendon, 
 and a still more important matter in the Emperor of 
 the French, Cavour was assured of sympathetic auditors 
 when he was at last permitted to bring the condition of 
 Italy before the congress. For their information he 
 described the condition of the several states in Italy, 
 picturing the misgovernment of Naples especially, in the 
 most repulsive colours. Lord Clarendon in consequence 
 proposed remonstrance with King Ferdinand. But Cavour 
 with characteristic courage, even in the presence of the
 
 44 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 Austrian minister, impatiently brushed away all secondary 
 causes and went straight to the point. The main cause, he 
 said, of the state of things they all agreed in deprecating 
 was Austria. " Austria is the arch-enemy of Italian inde- 
 pendence ; the permanent danger to the only free nation in 
 Italy, the nation I have the honour to represent." Austria, 
 on the other hand, despite the urgency of England and 
 France, declined to hold out any hope of an amelioration 
 of the scandal of her rule in Italy. After the congress, 
 Cavour met Lord Clarendon and put the matter briefly thus : 
 " That which has passed in the congress proves two things : 
 first, that Austria is decided to persist in her system of 
 oppression and violence towards Italy ; secondly, that the 
 forces of diplomacy are impotent to modify that system. 
 See the consequences for Piedmont. With the irritation on 
 one side and the arrogance of Austria on the other, there 
 are but two alternatives to take : reconcile ourselves to 
 Austria and the Pope, or prepare to declare war at the 
 Court of Vienna in a future not far distant. If the first 
 part is preferable, I must on my return to Turin advise my 
 King to call to power the friends of Austria and the Pope. 
 If the second hypothesis is best, my friends and I will not 
 shrink from preparing for a terrible war a war to the 
 death." Lord Clarendon was sympathetic, but Cavour saw 
 clearly that he was likely to get from England little else 
 than moral support.., He therefore prepared to pin his faith 
 to the vanity and ambition of Napoleon III. " What can I 
 do for Italy ? " Napoleon had asked in 1855. Cavour told 
 him frankly that he could do much, and moreover, showed 
 him how it could be done. That interview was the founda- 
 tion of the famous Franco-Sardinian alliance formally con- 
 summated some three years later. 
 
 During the next two years (1856-58) the relations of 
 Austria and Sardinia became every day more strained. It 
 was obvious that the situation could have but one issue. 
 For the moment the good understanding between Italy and 
 France, on which everything depended, was interrupted by 
 the dastardly attempt of Orsini upon the Emperor's life.
 
 ii CAVOUR 45 
 
 The incident had another unfortunate result, as it served to 
 embitter the relations between England and the Continental 
 monarchies. The addresses of congratulation addressed to 
 Napoleon teemed with insulting allusions to this country, 
 whence Orsini had started on his fanatical errand. One 
 such urged that "London, the infamous haunt in which 
 machinations so infernal are planned, should be destroyed 
 for ever." And Napoleon himself spoke of England as a 
 " den of assassins." How far England deserved the appella- 
 tion no one could judge better than Napoleon himself. 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, this untoward incident, 
 Cavour and the Emperor had their famous interview at 
 Plombieres in the summer of 1858. The result of it was 
 for the time a secret, though Victor Emmanuel was heard 
 to say that next year he would be King of Italy or plain 
 M. de Savoie. The speech with which the King opened 
 the Parliamentary session of 1859 pointed in the same 
 direction. The concluding paragraph, which has become 
 memorable in history is said to have been inspired by the 
 Emperor himself. " Our country," said the King, " small 
 in territory, has acquired credit in the councils of Europe, 
 because she is great in the idea she represents in the 
 sympathy that she inspires. This situation is not exempt 
 from perils, for while we respect treaties we are not in- 
 sensible to the cry of anguish (grido di dolore) that comes 
 up to us from many parts of Italy. Strong in concord, 
 confident in our good right, we -await with prudence and 
 resolution the decrees of Divine Providence." The effect 
 of this speech is described by Massari, himself an eye-witness 
 of the excited scene, as simply electric. " At every period," 
 he says, " the speech was interrupted by clamorous applause 
 and cries of Viva il Re / But when he came to the words, 
 Chido di dolore, there was an enthusiasm quite indescrib- 
 able. Senators, deputies, spectators, all sprang to their 
 feet with a bound, and broke into passionate acclamations. 
 The ministers of France, Russia, Prussia, and England 
 were utterly astonished and carried away by the marvellous 
 spectacle. The face of the ambassador of Naples was
 
 46 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 covered with a gloomy pallor. We poor exiles did not 
 even attempt to wipe away the tears that flowed un- 
 restrainedly from our eyes as we frantically clapped our 
 hands in applause of that King who had remembered our 
 sorrows, who had promised us a country. Before the 
 victories, the plebiscites, and the annexations conferred on 
 him the crown of Italy he reigned in our hearts ; he was 
 our King ! " Even after this declaration efforts were made 
 by neutral powers, notably by England, to avert the coming 
 war, but Austria insisted as a preliminary on Sardinian dis- 
 armament. Cavour firmly refused. In March he again met 
 Napoleon in Paris. The terms of the alliance were finally 
 arranged. On the 23d of April the Austrian ultimatum 
 demanding immediate disarmament reached Turin, and 
 within three days the Sardinian army was on the march for 
 Lombardy. "It is done," said Cavour to some friends. 
 "Aleajada est. We have made some history, and now to 
 dinner." 
 
 "People of Italy," so the Royal Proclamation ran, 
 " Austria assails Piedmont because I have maintained the 
 cause of our common country in the councils of Europe, be- 
 cause I was not insensible to your cries of anguish. Thus she 
 now violently breaks the treaties she has never respected. 
 
 " So to-day the right of the nation is complete, and I 
 can with a free conscience fulfil the vow I made on the 
 tomb of my parent by taking up arms to defend my throne, 
 the liberties of my people, the honour of the Italian name. 
 I fight for the right of the whole nation. We confide in 
 God and in our concord ; we confide in the valour of the 
 Italian soldiers, in the alliance of the noble French nation ; 
 we confide in the justice of public opinion. I have no 
 other ambition than to be the first soldier of Italian inde- 
 pendence. Viva I' Italia." 
 
 On the 13th of May the King met at Genoa the 
 Emperor of the French, "his generous ally," who had 
 come to " liberate Italy from the Alps to the Adriatic." 
 The two sovereigns went together to the front. For a 
 month the allies carried all before them ; on the 4th of
 
 ii CAVOUR 47 
 
 June they won the great victory of Magenta ; on the 8th 
 they entered Milan ; and on the 24th they won the double 
 battle of Solferino and San Martino the crowning glory of 
 a brilliant campaign. And then the " magnanimous ally " 
 stopped short. He met the Emperor Francis Joseph at 
 Villafranca, and the terms of an armistice by which Lom- 
 bardy was to be united with Piedmont, while Venice was 
 left to Austria, were arranged. It is a barren task to 
 canvass Napoleon's motives for this extraordinary step. 
 Possibly, as Cavour afterwards believed, it was due more 
 to the impulse of the moment than to any preconceived 
 design. Enough to note the results. To the peoples of 
 the subject provinces, to the Venetians, to the Tuscans, to 
 the Modenese, above all, to the Romagnuoli, who had 
 looked for speedy emancipation from despotic masters, the 
 news came as a calamitous disappointment. Cavour at 
 the moment could attribute it to nothing but treachery, 
 calmly calculated and cruelly practised. Victor Emmanuel, 
 though not less bitterly grieved and disappointed than his 
 ministers, alone retained some measure of composure, some 
 perception of the advantages already secured. 
 
 The anger of Cavour at the Emperor's treachery was 
 unbounded. On learning the news he instantly departed 
 for the Camp, and regardless alike of diplomatic etiquette and 
 ministerial decencies, he showered reproaches indifferently on 
 both the Sovereigns. He besought his master to repudiate the 
 terms and decline to accept Lombardy under these humiliat- 
 ing conditions. On the King's refusal to accept this rash 
 advice he immediately resigned and withdrew to his farms 
 at Leri. This once only in his whole career did his feelings 
 get the better of his judgment, and well may he be for- 
 given. Of his almost superhuman labours in the period 
 just before the war the world, says his biographer Bianchi, 
 will never know. But history in its justice will relate 
 how in the midst of such a boiling over of violent passions, 
 of mortal hatreds, of generous excitement, of storms and 
 worries indescribable, he remained imperturbably serene, 
 calculating the current events, and knowing how to master
 
 48 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 men and things to hit the best opportunity for action. 
 Though he held in his hand the fermenting revolution, 
 never did he once depart from the course of patient 
 moderation which alone could save the Italian question 
 from becoming lacerated by the claws of the Austrian 
 eagle in that last and most difficult period of the negotia- 
 tions. His appetite for work was prodigious. At one 
 and the same time he was President of the Council, Minister 
 of Foreign Affairs, Minister of War, Minister of the 
 Interior. He had a bed in the "War Office, and during the 
 night he walked in his dressing-gown from one department 
 to the other, giving directions as to police regulations, 
 diplomatic correspondence, and preparations for war, in- 
 flaming every one by his example of laboriousness and 
 patriotism. " We have a government, a chamber, a con- 
 stitution," the Piedmontese were wont to say ; " the name 
 for it all is Cavour." No wonder, then, that the break- 
 down of that which was especially his work the French 
 alliance should have prostrated him. 
 
 But the King's judgment at this most agitating crisis 
 was more sound than his. He was grieved to the heart by 
 the turn events had taken, but he saw what Cavour failed 
 to see, that by the victories of 1859 much had been achieved. 
 " The political unity of Italy, since Novara a possibility, 
 has become since Villafranca a necessity." The stain of 
 Novara had been wiped out ; Austria had been driven 
 back behind the Mincio ; Lombardy was united with Pied- 
 mont in a great subalpine kingdom ; and, in the following 
 year Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and the Roman Legations 
 were annexed by universal plebiscite to this new kingdom 
 of North Italy. Cavour recovered his spirits with a 
 rebound, and after a few months' retirement returned to 
 power. But his humiliations were not yet completed ; 
 Napoleon's bill had still to be paid. Even the little he 
 had accomplished he had not done for nothing. The 
 "little account" proved when presented, as sometimes 
 happens in less important bills, to be a very big account. 
 In view of the large accessions to the Sardinian kingdom
 
 n CAVOUR 49 
 
 by the annexation of Tuscany, Bomagna, and other pro- 
 vinces, Napoleon claimed the cession of Savoy. 
 
 The history of this most discreditable transaction a 
 transaction which has left an indelible stain on French 
 diplomacy belongs more properly to my next lecture. 
 Enough to say in this place that the demand was perforce 
 conceded. For all concerned it was a lamentable neces- 
 sity ; ' for the King especially it was " the sacrifice most 
 painful to his heart " to have to surrender to the foreigner 
 " the cradle of his race." The rage of the Mazzinists and 
 of Garibaldi knew no bounds. To them Cavour was a 
 " low intriguer," Napoleon nothing better than a " vulpine 
 knave " ; but all consideration of the justice of these 
 epithets I must postpone. I must postpone also, as be- 
 longing more properly to Garibaldi's life, the last act in 
 Cavour's political career, by which, thanks hardly less to 
 him than to the intrepid volunteer, the kingdom of the 
 South was united to the kingdom of the North, and 
 Italy, her unity all but perfectly achieved, was free in glad 
 reality from the Adriatic to the Alps. 
 
 Cavour's lifework was nearly done. He lived to see 
 his master proclaimed King of Italy an Italy that included 
 every member of the race except the Venetians and the 
 Roman subjects of the Pope. But he saw clearly that 
 even then much still remained to be accomplished. Thanks 
 to the sword of Garibaldi and the enthusiasm which he 
 excited in the South, Naples was annexed to the Northern 
 kingdom. But it had still to be assimilated. The people 
 were lawless, traditionally opposed to government of any 
 sort, restless and troublesome. Yet nothing would persuade 
 Cavour to have recourse to what are called " extraordinary 
 measures." He shrank from the least breach of what he 
 regarded as constitutional government Possibly he was 
 on this point over sensitive. But if he was in error it was 
 the error of a noble nature. Besides, parliamentary institu- 
 tions in Italy those institutions which Cavour had really 
 created were still on their trial. Little wonder that their 
 creator should have shrunk from vitiating the experiment
 
 50 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 by unnecessary interference with its course. " Anybody," 
 he was wont to say, " can govern with a state of siege." 
 The idea of its application to the Sicilies was the haunting 
 nightmare of his last fatal illness. " No state of siege, no 
 state of siege," he was heard repeatedly to murmur. 
 
 The other difficulty which Cavour left unsolved was 
 infinitely greater, infinitely more intricate and permanent, 
 and it was just such a difficulty as to demand for its solu- 
 tion, in especial measure, his exceptional abilities. The 
 difficulty to which, of course, I refer, was that created by 
 the attitude of the Papacy in the question of the Temporal 
 power. I say nothing, for the present, of the hardly less 
 difficult claim of the Church to the exclusive regulation of 
 education. The problem is thus clearly stated by a writer 
 in the Edinburgh Review for July 1861 : "There can be 
 no question that the existence of an effective Italian power 
 must involve a material modification in the condition of 
 th.e Court of Kome. A King of Italy and a Sovereign 
 Pontiff, both ruling, or laying claim to rule, over any 
 considerable portion of Italian territory, are a contradiction 
 pregnant with irreconcilable opposition. . . . The King 
 of Italy can never become the supreme head of a national 
 government so long as the Pope continues to claim temporal 
 and sovereign dominion in the Peninsula, for the authority 
 of the Crown would be exposed to perpetual antagonism 
 within the pale of its own civil jurisdiction. On the other 
 hand, it is also certain that to obtain from the Court of 
 Rome the necessary concessions for obviating such collisions 
 with the royal authority involves what may well appear 
 the hopeless task of modifying the most tenacious and 
 unrelaxing of human constitutions." Even the annexation 
 of the Romagna to the kingdom of Italy in 1860 had not 
 been accomplished without fulminations from the Vatican, 
 which culminated at last in the once dreadful ban of excom- 
 munication. Victor Emmanuel was little inconvenienced 
 by the papal anathemas, but as a loyal and even devoted 
 son of the Church he was deeply hurt. You may read in 
 Miss Godkin's admirable Life the noble, the tender appeal
 
 it CAVOUR 51 
 
 from the King to the Pope, in which he prayed the Holy 
 Father to sanction the act by which the peoples of the 
 Romagna had with absolute spontaneity united themselves 
 to the Italian kingdom, and to give his blessing to the holy 
 work of Italian unification. The appeal was made in 
 vain. 
 
 But Cavour, no less loyal than his master to the Church, 
 never doubted that the further change must come with all 
 its necessary consequences ; that the new kingdom of Italy 
 must eventually establish its seat of government in the 
 ancient capital at Rome. "The choice of a capital is 
 determined," he said, "by high moral considerations. It 
 is the sentiment of the people that decides. Rome unites 
 all the conditions, historical, intellectual, moral, which form 
 the capital of a great state. ... It remains to convince 
 the Holy Father that the Church can be independent with- 
 out the temporal power. ' Holy Father,' we will say, ' the 
 Temporal power is for you no longer a guarantee of inde- 
 pendence. Renounce it, and we will give you that liberty 
 which for three centuries you have in vain demanded from 
 the great Catholic powers. . . . We are ready to proclaim 
 in Italy this great principle : The Free Church in the Free 
 State: " 
 
 "We hold," said Cavour, in one of his latest and most 
 famous speeches (26th March 1861), "we hold that the 
 independence and dignity of the supreme Pontiff, as well 
 as the independence of the Church, will be secured by the 
 separation of the two powers, and by a large application of 
 the principles of liberty to the relations between civil and 
 religious society." He next expressed a fervent hope that 
 this change might be brought about by amicable arrange- 
 ment with the Vatican. " But what," he continued, " what 
 if, in circumstances as fatal to the Church as to Italy, the 
 Pope should prove inflexible and persist in rejecting all 
 terms ? Then, gentlemen, we should still not desist from 
 proclaiming loudly the same principles ; we should not 
 desist from declaring that whether or not an understanding 
 precede our entry into the eternal city, Italy will no sooner
 
 52 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY n 
 
 have pronounced the forfeiture of the temporal power than 
 she will emancipate the Church from the State, and secure 
 the liberty of the former on the amplest foundations." 
 
 Most unfortunately, as we shall see next time, it was not 
 to be. Every advance on the part of the Italian Govern- 
 ment was met by the inflexible, unvarying n&n possumus. 
 But this was the dream in the contemplation of which the 
 great statesman of Italian independence went to his eternal 
 rest. Even his iron constitution succumbed at last to the 
 superhuman exertions he had made, to the manifold and 
 harassing anxieties he had undergone, to the alternations 
 of exciting triumph and humiliating failure in which his 
 last few years had been passed. The King was with him 
 to the end. His thoughts, even in delirium, were still with 
 the master he had served so faithfully, still for the country 
 he had loved so well. " I will have no state of siege for 
 the Neapolitans," he cried. "Li lavi, li lavi, li lavi ! " Purify 
 them, purify them, purify them. And then, with his last 
 breath, to the attendant brother, "Frate, Frate, libera chiesa 
 in libero stato." 
 
 Thus Cavour passed away on the 5th of June 1861. 
 Well might the whole Italian people from the King, who 
 had lost not merely his ablest counsellor but his dearest 
 friend, down to the humblest peasant, well might the 
 whole people be plunged in grief almost inconsolable. 
 Well might they mourn for him who had struck off from 
 their limbs the fetters of an alien yoke ; who had guided 
 them safely through the early stages always difficult and 
 thorny of Parliamentary Government ; who had not 
 merely shown them the blessings of freedom, but had 
 taught them how to use their freedom with moderation, 
 with good sense, and lesson most difficult of all to learn 
 with due regard to the liberties of others than them- 
 selves. "Italy a nation is the legacy, the lifework, of 
 Cavour. 1 . . . Others have been devoted to the cause of 
 national liberation. ... He knew how to bring it into the 
 sphere of possibilities ; he made it pure of any factious 
 1 Mazade : Life of Cavoiir.
 
 ii CAVOUR 53 
 
 spirit ; he led it away from barren Utopias, kept it clear of 
 reckless conspiracies, steered straight between revolution 
 and reaction, and gave it an organised force, a flag, a 
 government, and foreign allies." It is no disparagement 
 to Mazzini; it is no disparagement to Garibaldi; to 
 say that neither of them could have done so much for 
 Italy. And yet it may well be doubted whether Cavour 
 himself could have accomplished all he did but for the 
 assistance Avhich indirectly he derived from the labours of 
 men with whom he had nothing in common save an ardent 
 patriotism, a passionate longing for the realisation of the 
 national unity of their Italian fatherland. The Prophet, 
 the Statesman, the Crusader, each was complementary in 
 his lifework to the other. Possessed of Avidely diverse 
 gifts, dissimilar in temper, and generally opposed in policy, 
 but equal in abnegation of all selfish aims, equal in devo- 
 tion to a noble cause, equal in the steadfast courage with 
 which it was pursued, each will have his proper niche in 
 the temple of Italian unity, for each contributed most 
 precious gifts, each freely gave his life and lifework to 
 the building of that imperishable fane.
 
 Ill 
 
 GARIBALDI 
 
 THE UNION OF NORTH AND SOUTH 
 
 IT will be for your convenience, I think, that I should 
 briefly recall the position of affairs after the exciting events 
 of 1859. By the terms of the Peace of Villafranca 
 Lombardy was to be united with Piedmont, but Venice, 
 with the fortresses of the Quadrilateral, was to be re- 
 tained by Austria : the fugitive rulers of the provinces 
 of Central Italy were to be restored, and, in all other 
 respects, the status quo ante 1859 was to be completely 
 re-established. But the diplomatists at Zurich in 1859, 
 like the diplomatists at Vienna in 1815, were counting 
 without their host. "They seemed to think," writes 
 Massari, "that they had only to declare that Leopold 
 of Lorraine should go to Florence, Francis of Este to 
 Modena, the Duchesse de Bourbon to Parma, and the 
 Pope's legates to Bologna, Ferrara, Forte, and Ravenna. 
 But the inhabitants had very different views." On the 
 outbreak of the war these prudent Princes had all aban- 
 doned their several capitals, and had taken refuge either 
 with the Austrian army or abroad. Provisional govern- 
 ments were consequently formed at once in Tuscany, in 
 Modena and Parma, and in the Roman States ; and deputa- 
 tions were sent to offer the allegiance of the several States
 
 in GARIBALDI 55 
 
 to Victor Emmanuel without delay. In the case of Tuscany, 
 Modena and Parma, the matter was comparatively simple, 
 but the action of the Roman Legations at once raised issues 
 of enormous and far-reaching magnitude. Not merely did 
 it raise the question, bristling with difficulties, of the rela- 
 tions of the new Italian kingdom and the temporal power, 
 but it raised it at a time when the Pope and his temporal 
 dominions were under the immediate protection of Italy's 
 "magnanimous ally." The definitive settlement of the 
 whole matter was, however, postponed for the time being 
 to the conclusion of the peace. The preliminaries of peace 
 suggested the formation, outside the enlarged kingdom of 
 Piedmont, of an Italian confederation, under the presidency 
 of the Pope, to which the Austrian provinces and the 
 restored duchies were to belong. 
 
 No doubt, in the opinion of the rulers, such an arrange- 
 ment was neat and satisfactory. Unfortunately it had 
 one defect ; it entirely failed to take account of the 
 wishes of those who were most immediately concerned. 
 The peoples were inflexibly resolved neither to go back 
 under a despotic yoke, nor to remain practically inde- 
 pendent and therefore powerless units, but to become the 
 subjects of Victor Emmanuel, and take their place at 
 once in the new Italian kingdom. " Italy," said Napoleon, 
 in a farewell proclamation to the troops, " Italy henceforth 
 mistress of its destinies, will have only herself to blame if 
 she does not make regular progress in order and liberty." 
 He had made it further understood that he would neither 
 assist in nor permit the forcible restoration of the petty 
 despots of Central Italy to their respective thrones. Now 
 all that the people asked was to be allowed to mould their 
 own destinies in accordance with Napoleon's hint. Each 
 of the three divisions, Tuscany, the Romagna, and Modena 
 and Parma, now united under the title of Emilia, proceeded, 
 therefore, to elect representative assemblies, which in every 
 case unanimously resolved upon union with Piedmont. 
 The King promised to do all he could to procure the 
 sanction of Europe to the scheme which they desired.
 
 56 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY m 
 
 France was willing, on conditions subsequently revealed ; 
 England, under the government of Lord Palmerston, was 
 entirely favourable. But the ways of diplomacy are 
 tedious, and neither Cavour nor the King was anxious 
 in so delicate a matter to act in defiance of its dictates. 
 
 The main obstacles, of course, were Austria and the 
 Pope, the latter being infinitely the more serious of the 
 two. Not even the efforts of the French Emperor, without 
 whose support the Temporal power could not have subsisted 
 for a day, could induce the Vatican to abate one iota of 
 the claims it had so long sustained. Equally in vain were 
 the remonstrances addressed by Victor Emmanuel to the 
 Pope. His message was to the last degree dignified and 
 dutiful. " A devoted son of the Church, I have always 
 nourished," wrote the King, " a sense of sincere attachment, 
 of veneration and respect, towards Holy Church and its 
 august head. It never was, and it is not my intention to 
 fail in my duties as a Catholic prince, or to curtail as far as 
 in me lies those rights and that authority which the Holy 
 See exercises on earth by Divine commission from heaven. 
 But I also have sacred duties to fulfil before God and man, 
 towards my country and towards the people whom Divine 
 Providence has confided to my government. I have always 
 sought to reconcile the duties of a Catholic prince with 
 those of an independent sovereign of a free and civilised 
 nation, both in the internal rule of my States and in my 
 foreign policy. . . . These are dangerous times. It is not 
 for me to indicate the safest way to restore quiet to our 
 country, and to re-establish on a solid basis the prestige 
 and authority of the Holy See in Italy. At the same time 
 I believe it my duty to lay before your Holiness an idea of 
 which I am fully convinced. It is this : that taking into 
 consideration the necessity of the times, the increasing force 
 of the principle of nationality, the irresistible impulse which 
 impels the people of Italy to unite and order themselves in 
 conformity with the model adopted by all civilised nations 
 an impulse which, I believe, demands my frank and loyal 
 concurrence such a state of things might be established
 
 in GARIBALDI 57 
 
 as would reserve to the Church its high dominion, and 
 assure to the supreme Pontiff a glorious post at the head of 
 the Italian nation, while giving the people of the (papal) 
 provinces a share in the benefits that a kingdom, strong 
 and highly national, secures to the greater part of Central 
 Italy." 
 
 But no remonstrance, no petition, no advice could in 
 the least degree shake the Vatican in the stubbornly 
 consistent attitude it had assumed. Denunciations were 
 followed by anathemas, anathemas by excommunication. 
 But when the several peoples had once more pronounced by 
 universal plebiscite in favour of a junction with Piedmont, 
 not Tuscany only nor Emilia, but Bologna also and the 
 other Eoman Legations, were united in irrevocable bonds 
 with the kingdom of North Italy. On the 2d of April 
 1860 the first Italian Parliament, representing a kingdom 
 of 11,000,000 people, assembled at Turin. "The last time 
 I opened Parliament," said the King's speech, " when Italy 
 was sunk in sorrows and the state menaced by great 
 dangers, faith in Divine justice comforted me and augured 
 well for our destinies. In very brief space of time an 
 invasion was repelled, Lombardy liberated by the glorious 
 achievements of the army, Central Italy freed by the 
 marvellous merit of her people ; and to-day I have here 
 assembled around me the representatives of the rights and 
 of the hopes of the nation. ... In turning our attention," 
 he concluded, " to the new order of affairs, we invite all 
 sincere opinions to a noble emulation that we may attain 
 the grand end of the wellbeing of the people and the 
 greatness of the country. It is no longer the Italy of the 
 Romans, nor that of the Middle Ages, it must no longer be 
 the battlefield of ambitious foreigners, but it must rather 
 be the Italy of the Italians." 
 
 But in the midst of the general jubilation which so 
 auspicious an event naturally evoked there was one 
 discordant note. In one of the clauses of the royal 
 speech from which I have already quoted these words 
 occur : " In gratitude to France ; for the good of Italy ;
 
 58 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY HI 
 
 to consolidate the union between two nations that have 
 a common origin, principles, and destinies, and finding 
 it necessary to make some sacrifice, I have made that 
 which has cost my heart dear. Subject to the vote of 
 the people, the approbation of Parliament, and the consent 
 of Switzerland, I have made a treaty for the reunion of 
 Savoy and Nice to France." It was indeed a painful 
 sacrifice. Was it inevitable ? On the whole I am inclined 
 to think it was, and that for two reasons: (1) I am 
 convinced that Cavour and still more Victor Emmanuel 
 would never have made the bitter sacrifice except in 
 deference to inexorable necessity ; (2) it was admittedly the 
 sole condition upon which the " vulpine knave," as Garibaldi 
 was wont to call Napoleon III, would consent to the 
 aggrandisement, as he conceived it, of a neighbouring 
 power. Perhaps too much has been made of this question. 
 The provinces or at least Savoy were in all essentials 
 French; they assented by plebiscite to the change of 
 masters ; Savoy could contribute little to the resources of 
 the new kingdom, and its conduct on more than one 
 occasion had almost justified Cavour's assertion that it was 
 the Ireland of Italy. In the chambers, too, Cavour's 
 majority was unbroken, the treaty being ratified by a 
 majority of 229, more than four-fifths of the whole chamber. 
 
 But there was one man in Italy to whom the cession 
 came as an overpowering blow, the man who by his 
 brilliant achievement in South Italy was just about to 
 rivet upon himself the attention of the world I mean 
 Garibaldi. " You have made me," he cried, " a stranger 
 in the land of my birth." 
 
 Garibaldi, whose career up to this point I must now 
 very briefly trace, was born at Nice in 1807, being, there- 
 fore, two years the junior of Mazzini, and three years older 
 than Cavour. He was destined by his parents, humble but 
 worthy folk, for the priesthood. But he preferred the sea, 
 and for many years he led a roving and adventurous life. 
 Like many of the ardent youths of Italy, he came early 
 under the influence of Mazzini's teaching; joined the
 
 in GARIBALDI 59 
 
 association of "Young Italy," and from that moment 
 consecrated his life with a simple-heartedness worthy of a 
 mediaeval crusader to the service of his country. He was 
 engaged in the abortive expedition to Savoy in 1834, and 
 was condemned to death, but managed to escape to South 
 America. For the next fourteen years he was an exile, 
 engaged for the most part in fighting the battles of 
 Montevideo with the famous " Italian Legion," which he 
 organised and commanded. The experience which he 
 thus acquired of rough, irregular, guerilla warfare was 
 afterwards invaluable. 
 
 In 1847 the news reached him in Montevideo of the 
 great excitement which prevailed in Italy and the earnest 
 expectation of a momentous crisis in the history of his 
 native land. It was the moment, you remember, of the 
 supremacy of the neo-Guelphic party, when the hopes of 
 Italy were for a brief space centred on the Pope. Garibaldi 
 and his colleague Anzani at once wrote to the new Pontiff 
 to tender their allegiance, and to offer him the assistance 
 of their arms. "If then to-day our arms, which are not 
 strangers to fighting, are acceptable to your Holiness, we need 
 not say how willingly we shall offer them in the service of 
 one who has done so much for our country and our Church. 
 We shall count ourselves happy if we can but come to aid 
 Pius IX in his work of redemption. . . . We shall 
 consider ourselves privileged if we are allowed to show 
 our devotedness by offering our blood." That was the 
 temper, the spirit of Garibaldi from the dawn to the close 
 of his career a spirit of simple-minded, pure-hearted, self- 
 sacrificing devotion to his country's cause. No answer 
 reached him from the Pope, but anxious at all risks (for he 
 still lay under sentence of death) to be in the forefront of 
 the fight, he sailed with a band of fifty followers for Rome. 
 
 He landed at Nice, his native city, on the 24th of 
 June in the memorable year 1848, having already learnt 
 at Alicante the exciting events which had taken place, and 
 burning to be in the midst of them. Without delay he 
 offered his services to the King Charles Albert, but the
 
 60 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 offer was coldly received, and Garibaldi, therefore, went on 
 at once to Milan, where he was enthusiastically welcomed 
 by the citizens. From all sides volunteers flocked to the 
 standard of the now famous warrior, and in a very short 
 time he found himself at the head of 30,000 men. With 
 this band, notwithstanding the signature of peace by which 
 Charles Albert gave back Milan to the Austrians, Garibaldi 
 continued a desultory but harassing campaign. 
 
 The appearance of this extraordinary army is thus de- 
 scribed by an eyewitness (quoted by Mr. Bent) : " Picture 
 to yourself an incongruous assemblage of individuals of all 
 descriptions, boys of twelve or fourteen, veteran soldiers 
 attracted by the fame of the celebrated chieftain of 
 Montevideo ; some stimulated by ambition, others seeking 
 for impunity and licence in the confusion of war, yet so 
 restrained by the inflexible severity of their leader that 
 courage and daring alone could find a vent, whilst more 
 lawless passions were curbed beneath his will. The 
 general and his staff all rode on American saddles, wore 
 scarlet blouses with hats of every possible form without 
 distinction of any kind or pretension to military ornament. 
 . . . Garibaldi, if the encampment was far from the 
 scene of danger, would stretch himself under his tent ; if, 
 on the contrary, the enemy were near at hand he remained 
 constantly on horseback giving orders and visiting the 
 outposts. Often, disguised as a peasant, he risked his own 
 safety in daring reconnaissances ; but most frequently, 
 seated on some commanding elevation, he would pass whole 
 hours examining the surrounding country with his telescope. 
 When the general's trumpet gave the signal to prepare for 
 departure lassos secured the horses which had been left to 
 graze in the meadows. The order of march was always 
 arranged on the preceding day, and the corps set out 
 without so much as knowing where the evening would find 
 them. Owing to this patriarchal simplicity, pushed some- 
 times too far, Garibaldi appeared more like the chief of a 
 tribe of Indians than a general ; but at the approach of 
 danger, and in the heat of combat, his presence of mind
 
 in GARIBALDI 61 
 
 was admirable ; and then by the astonishing rapidity of his 
 movements he made up in a great measure for his deficiency 
 in those qualities which are generally supposed to be 
 absolutely essential to a military commander." 
 
 This guerilla warfare, though it failed to improve 
 materially the political situation, succeeded in doing two 
 things : it stimulated to an incredible degree the enthusiasm 
 of the populations from which the volunteers were drawn, 
 and it concentrated that enthusiasm on the intrepid hero 
 who commanded them. Before the opening of the cam- 
 paign of 1849 Charles Albert offered Garibaldi a regular 
 command ; but just about that time news came from Rome 
 which caused Garibaldi to whom as to Mazzini, and to 
 Cavour, Rome represented the embodiment of patriotic 
 aspiration to fly with a band of 1500 followers to her 
 defence. He was immediately entrusted with the defence 
 of the frontier, which was menaced by the King of Naples. 
 
 Upon the strange contortion of events which brought 
 republican France to the assault upon republican Rome I 
 need not dwell ; nor upon the heroism with which Rome 
 was defended by Garibaldi and Mazzini. In May Gari- 
 baldi's legion covered itself with glory in the two defeats 
 it inflicted on the Neapolitans at Palestrina and Velletri. 
 But the heroic struggle was already drawing to a close. 
 " The situation," wrote Garibaldi, " grew more difficult every 
 clay." Just before the French troops, in accordance with the 
 terms of the surrender, were about to enter Rome, Garibaldi 
 himself, accompanied by his heroic wife and with a handful 
 of followers, marched out of Rome, "resolved," as he says, 
 " to take to the country and try our fate again rather than 
 submit to the degradation of laying down our arms before 
 the priest-ridden soldiers of Bonaparte." Dogged first by 
 French and then by Austrian forces Garibaldi's little band 
 crossed the Appenines, and then, after hairbreadth escapes, 
 embarked at Cesenatico, meaning to make their way to 
 Venice, which was still maintaining its unequal struggle 
 with the Austrian forces. In the Adriatic, however, they 
 were confronted by an Austrian squadron which compelled
 
 62 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 them to put back and land near Ravenna. " I leave it to 
 be imagined what was my position at that unhappy moment ; 
 my poor wife dying, the enemy pursuing us inshore with 
 the confidence gained by an easy victory, and the prospect 
 of landing on a coast where in all probability we should 
 find more enemies." Many of the boats were taken, but 
 Garibaldi with his wife and a few followers managed to 
 reach the shore. Still they were pursued ; many of his 
 friends, including Uzo Bassi, were taken, and without a form 
 of trial shot. Garibaldi himself escaped, but not till he had 
 seen his wife expire in his arms. For four years he was a 
 wanderer, but in 1854 he settled down in the island of 
 Caprera, where for years he spent his time labouring as 
 hard as ever he had laboured in his warrior days to turn 
 the barren rock into a smiling garden. 
 
 But the events of 1859 once more brought the chief 
 out of his retirement. Summoned by Cavour to meet him 
 at Turin, Garibaldi, wearing as usual his loose red blouse 
 and slouching hat, attended one morning at the palace and 
 demanded audience of the minister. He refused to give 
 his name, and the servant, alarmed by his uncouth and fierce 
 appearance, declined, as a well-trained servant should, to 
 let him in. Overcome, however, by his persistence, the 
 servant went so far as to consult his master, though warning 
 him against the importunate stranger. " Let him come in," 
 said the minister, " it is probably some poor devil who has 
 a petition to make to me." Such was the first meeting 
 between the great statesman and the great volunteer. 
 During the campaign Garibaldi added enormously to his 
 reputation, and on its sudden, unforeseen conclusion he was 
 hailed as a national deliverer from end to end of Italy. 
 
 We are now in a position to deal with the most splendid 
 episode in Garibaldi's whole career, an episode, indeed, 
 than which none more splendid is to be found in the 
 annals of recorded history. I refer, of course, to the Sicilian 
 expedition and the liberation of South Italy. 
 
 I feel it hopeless to attempt to convey to you even 
 the faintest impression of the hideous yet despicable
 
 in GARIBALDI 63 
 
 tyranny under which the inhabitants of the two Sicilies had 
 groaned for nearly half a century. To make clear to you 
 the reasons for the peculiar detestation with which their 
 present Government was regarded by the inhabitants of 
 Sicily I should have to go back and trace the stages by 
 which they were deprived of constitutional liberties, which 
 they were the first of European nations to achieve. Such 
 a task is altogether beyond the scope of this lecture. I 
 shall content myself therefore by quoting some of the 
 impressions made by this Government upon the mind of 
 an eminently instructed, but at the same time eminently 
 sympathetic observer in the winter of 1850-51. 
 
 After a visit to Naples in that year Mr. Gladstone ad- 
 dressed his famous letter to Lord Aberdeen. Three reasons 
 induced him to take a step admittedly unusual. They are 
 thus stated by himself : " First, that the present practices of 
 the Government of Naples, in reference to real or supposed 
 political offenders, are an outrage upon religion, upon civilis- 
 ation, upon humanity, and upon decency. Secondly, that 
 these practices are certainly and even rapidly doing the 
 work of republicanism in that country ; a political creed 
 which has little natural or habitual root in the character of 
 the people. Thirdly, that, as a member of the Conservative 
 party in one of the great family of European nations, I am 
 compelled to remember that that party stands in virtual and 
 real though perhaps unconscious alliance with all the estab- 
 lished Governments of Europe as such ; and that according 
 to the measure of its influence they suffer more or less of 
 moral detriment from its reverses and derive strength and 
 encouragement from its successes. This principle ... is 
 of great practical importance in reference to the Govern- 
 ment of Naples, which from whatever cause appears to view 
 its own social like its physical position as one under the 
 shadow of a volcano, and which is doing everything in 
 its power from day to day to give reality to its own 
 dangers and fresh intensity together with fresh cause to 
 its fears. 
 
 " It is not," he goes on to say, " it is not mere imper-
 
 64 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 fection, not corruption in low practices, not occasional 
 severity, that I am about to describe ; it is incessant, syste- 
 matic, deliberate violation of the law by the power appointed 
 to watch over and maintain it. It is such violation of 
 human and written law as this, carried on for the purpose 
 of violating every other law, written and eternal, temporal 
 and divine ; it is the wholesale persecution of virtue when 
 united with intelligence, operating upon such a scale that 
 entire classes may with truth be said to be its object ; . . . 
 it is the awful profanation of public religion, by its notorious 
 alliance in the governing powers with the violation of every 
 moral law under the stimulants of fear and vengeance ; it 
 is the perfect prostitution of the judicial office, which has 
 made it, under veils only too threadbare and transparent, 
 the degraded recipient of the vilest and clumsiest forgeries, 
 got up wilfully and deliberately by the immediate advisers 
 of the Crown for the purpose of destroying the peace, the 
 freedom, aye, and even if not by capital sentences the life 
 of men among the most virtuous, upright, intelligent, dis- 
 tinguished, and refined of the whole community ; it is the 
 savage and cowardly system of moral as well as in a lower 
 degree of physical torture through which the sentences ex- 
 tracted from the debased courts of justice are earned into 
 effect. The effect of all this is total inversion of all the 
 moral and social ideas. Law instead of being respected is 
 odious. Force and not affection is the foundation of 
 government. There is no association but a violent 
 antagonism between the idea of freedom and that of order. 
 The governing power, which teaches of itself that it is the 
 image of God upon earth, is clothed in the view of the over- 
 whelming majority of the thinking public with all the vices 
 for its attributes. I have seen and heard the too true ex- 
 pression used, " This is the negation of God erected into a 
 system of government." 
 
 It is impossible to follow in detail the minute evidence 
 upon which the author bases this appalling but not, I 
 think, greatly exaggerated indictment. You may read 
 that evidence, together with an examination of the official
 
 in GARIBALDI 65 
 
 reply put forth in the name of the Neapolitan Government, 
 in the fourth volume of Gleanings of Past Years. 
 
 Such was the condition of affairs in the kingdom of 
 the Sicilies when, in the spring of 1860, Garibaldi heard 
 that the standard of revolt had been raised in Palermo, 
 in Messina, and Catania. He resolved to start at once for 
 Sicily. What was Cavour to do ? It was impossible for 
 the Government to sanction an expedition for the assistance 
 of rebels in arms against a friendly power ; it was equally 
 impossible to stop Garibaldi and detain his followers. In 
 the fever of excitement which the news had created it 
 was more than the newly-won crown of Italy was worth. 
 Cavour took the only course open to him. Garibaldi and 
 his " thousand " were allowed to sail from Genoa, while 
 to the diplomatic world all responsibility for their actions 
 was strenuously disavowed. Nay, so consummate was the 
 acting of Cavour that the Mazzinians have always con- 
 tinued to assert that he spared no pains to frustrate the 
 objects of the expedition. 
 
 Garibaldi waited for no leave. "I know," he wrote 
 on his departure to the King, " that I embark on a perilous 
 enterprise. If we achieve it, I shall be proud to add to 
 your Majesty's crown a new and perhaps more glorious 
 jewel, always on the condition that your Majesty will stand 
 opposed to counsellors who would cede this province to the 
 foreigner as has been done with the city of my birth." 
 Garibaldi was followed by a Sardinian squadron. Its in- 
 structions were brief. " Try to navigate," wrote Cavour 
 to the admiral, "between Garibaldi and the Neapolitan 
 cruisers. I hope you understand me." Admiral Persano's 
 reply was equally laconic. " I believe I understand you ; 
 if I am mistaken, you can send me to prison." 
 
 When it was known that Garibaldi had actually sailed, 
 the excitement in the diplomatic world was immense. 
 England alone, whose sympathies were now thoroughly 
 aroused for the oppressed Sicilians, openly rejoiced at 
 the turn events had taken. Garibaldi luckily was be- 
 yond the reach of diplomatic interference. A horde of 
 
 F
 
 66 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 pirates, "desperadoes," "bandits," "dregs of the human 
 race," such were the least opprobrious of the epithets 
 bestowed on his devoted band. Cavour had to bear the 
 brunt of the attack, but he was not dismayed. " Here 
 things do not go badly," he wrote from Turin to Palermo. 
 "The diplomatists do not molest us too much. Eussia 
 made a fearful hubbub; Prussia, less." Meanwhile Gari- 
 baldi's progress in the south was one series of triumphs. 
 Sicily was conquered in a few days. Thence he crossed to 
 Spartivento; drove Bomba into Gaeta; and on the 7th 
 of September entered Naples. In a few days Garibaldi 
 and his handful of followers had made themselves masters 
 of a kingdom. It is an achievement which stands alone 
 in modern history. No wonder that it took the world by 
 storm : that Garibaldi was regarded rather as the hero of 
 a mythical romance than an ordinary mortal of flesh and 
 blood. But though all that the intrepid leadership of the 
 chief, and the unwavering confidence of followers could 
 do had already been achieved, yet the difficulties were by 
 no means over. Naples and Sicily were without a govern- 
 ment Garibaldi, therefore, was proclaimed dictator. 
 
 Meanwhile Cavour, alarmed at the rapidity with which the 
 Sicilian kingdoms had fallen before the assault of Garibaldi ; 
 alarmed, too, at the growing popularity of the chief; 
 alarmed, above all, at the news that Mazzini was in Naples, 
 Cavour, I say, proposed to his parliament the immediate 
 annexation of the newly-conquered province to the Italian 
 kingdom. " Italy," he wrote to Persano, " must be saved 
 from foreigners, evil principles, and madmen." He feared 
 the influence of Mazzini's fanatical republicanism on the 
 ingenuous mind of Garibaldi ; he feared also that, flushed 
 with their triumph, they would march from Naples straight 
 on Eome. That step, as he well knew, would involve the 
 instant intervention of the Emperor of the French. Such 
 a disaster must be averted at all hazards, but how could it 
 be done ? The Italian parliament had approved of annexa- 
 tion, but would Garibaldi respect the vote ? Garibaldi 
 now demanded a confirmation of his own dictatorship, and
 
 in GARIBALDI 67 
 
 declared that he would not annex the provinces to the 
 Italian kingdom till he could proclaim Victor Emmanuel 
 King of Italy in Rome. Everything was now at stake 
 the lifework of Cavour, the lifework of Mazzini, the life- 
 work of Garibaldi himself. Cavour, in this supreme 
 moment of his great career, was equal to the crisis. By a 
 masterly stroke of policy the control of the movement was 
 taken out of the rash hands of the knight-errants and 
 confirmed in those of sober statesmanship. He decided 
 to despatch a royal army to the Roman marches, and so 
 to anticipate the dreaded move of Garibaldi. "If we do 
 not arrive on the Volturno," he wrote to the Italian 
 ambassadors abroad, " before Garibaldi arrives at La 
 Cattolica, the monarchy is lost. Italy will remain a prey 
 to revolution." Napoleon had given a modified assent to 
 this step. " If Piedmont," he said, " thinks this absolutely 
 necessary to save herself from an abyss of evil, be it 
 so, but it must be done at her own risk and peril." 
 Cavour accepted full responsibility, and early in Septem- 
 ber the Sardinian army was marching south. At Castel- 
 fidardo they met and completely routed the mercenary 
 forces for most part Irish soldiers, commanded by French 
 officers employed by the Pope, and directly afterwards 
 they occupied Ancona. 
 
 At the moment when the royal troops were marching 
 south, the Garibaldians were marching north. " If you are 
 not on your way towards Rome or Venice before three weeks 
 are over your initiative will be at an end." That was Maz- 
 zini's warning to the general, and the advice was sound. 
 Luckily for Cavour, luckily for Italy, aye and luckily for 
 Garibaldi, the King of Naples turned to bay at last and con- 
 fronted him on the northern bank of the Volturno. On the 
 1st of October the battle of the Volturno was fought : the 
 Neapolitans were scattered ; their King took refuge in Gaeta, 
 and so Garibaldi was left face to face with his King 
 Victor Emmanuel. In the mind of the single-hearted hero 
 the brief struggle was past. When he met the King it 
 was to lay down the authority he had perforce assumed ; 
 F 2
 
 68 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 to offer to his master the " new and brilliant jewel " he 
 had promised for his crown. The day before the King's 
 entrance into Naples Garibaldi had issued a farewell pro- 
 clamation to the people. " To-morrow Victor Emmanuel, 
 the elect of the nation, will break down the frontier which 
 has divided us for so many centuries from the rest of the 
 country, and listening to the unanimous voice of this brave 
 people " (referring, of course, to the plebiscite which had 
 just been taken), " will appear amongst us. Let us worthily 
 receive him who is sent by Providence, and scatter in his 
 path, as the pledge of our redemption and our affection, the 
 flowers of concord, to him so grateful, to us so necessary. 
 No more political colours, no more parties, no more dis- 
 cords. Italy one, under the King Galantuomo, who is the 
 symbol of our regeneration and the prosperity of our 
 country." On the 7th of November the King and Garibaldi 
 entered Naples side by side. 
 
 And then, having thus introduced the King to the new 
 kingdom which his sword had won for him, the simple- 
 hearted chief, refusing all decorations, all rewards, went 
 quietly away to his island-home in Caprera, knowing well 
 that for himself, for all concerned, he was safest there. 
 No wonder that the imagination of the world was touched, 
 as it is rarely touched even by the grandest feats of arms, 
 by this act of dignified and simple self-renunciation. 
 
 " Not that three armies thou didst overthrow, 
 Not that three cities ope'd their gates to thee 
 I praise thee, chief ; not for this royalty, 
 Decked with new crowns, that utterly lay low ; 
 For nothing of all thou didst forsake, to go 
 And tend thy vines arnid the Etrurian sea ; 
 Not even that thou didst this that history 
 Retread two thousand selfish years to show 
 Another Cincinnatus ! Rather for this 
 The having lived such a life that even this deed 
 Of stress heroic natural seems, as is 
 Calm night, when glorious day it doth succeed, 
 And we, forewarned by surest auguries, 
 The amazing act with no amazement read."
 
 in GARIBALDI 69 
 
 On the 18th of February 1861 a new parliament, for 
 the first time representative of all parts of Italy except 
 Venice and Rome, assembled at Turin. Its first business 
 was to establish on a legal basis the new kingdom, and to 
 proclaim the King Victor Emmanuel II, by the grace of 
 God and by the will of the nation, King of Italy. Yet 
 with all the triumphant enthusiasm with which the procla- 
 mation was hailed, there still mingled the thought of Venice 
 and of Eome two gaping wounds, still unhealed, in the 
 side of Italy. We have already seen how powerfully the 
 mere idea of Eome acted on the imagination of Mazzini ; 
 how it spurred on Garibaldi, despite all the intricacies of a 
 tedious diplomacy, to win Rome or die ; how it had led 
 Cavour less excitedly but with no less determination to 
 declare that " without Rome for a capital Italy can never 
 be firmly united." One must be Italian, one must feel 
 Southern blood in one's veins, must have been educated in 
 this glorious history under the painted wings of classic 
 poetry, to comprehend all the influences that Rome exercises 
 over the Italian mind. Those who wished to make Italy 
 a monarchy, and afterwards denied her the capital which 
 is hers by nature, did but construct a headless body. 1 
 
 There was no man, no party in Italy, which did not 
 fully realise this truth. Cavour felt it full as strongly 
 as Garibaldi or Mazzini. But there was divergence 
 between them as to means. Cavour was weighted by 
 an official responsibility which the others never felt. 
 He saw difficulties which they did not, and consequently 
 he seemed to the more ardent spirits lacking in the 
 enthusiasm by which all were, in reality, equally inspired. 
 To Garibaldi especially the attitude of Cavour was exas- 
 perating, and a most painful scene in the first Italian 
 parliament was the unfortunate result. On the 18th of 
 April Garibaldi, in a most intemperate speech, attacked the 
 great minister with the utmost bitterness. He declared, as 
 he concluded an impassioned harangue, that it would be for 
 ever impossible for him to clasp the hand of the man who 
 1 Castelar, quoted by Miss Godkiu.
 
 70 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 had sold his country to the foreigner, or to ally himself 
 with a Government whose cold and mischievous hand was 
 trying to foment fratricidal war. Cavour was deeply hurt, 
 but replied with marvellous self-control. "I know," he 
 said, " that between me and the honourable General Gari- 
 baldi there exists a fact which divides us two like an abyss. 
 I believed that I fulfilled a painful duty the most painful 
 I ever accomplished in my life in counselling the King 
 and proposing to parliament to approve the cession of 
 Savoy and Nice to France. By the grief that I then 
 experienced I can understand that which the honourable 
 General Garibaldi must have felt, and if he cannot forgive 
 me this act I will not bear him any grudge for it." At 
 the urgent entreaty of the King himself the two men 
 subsequently met, and a reconciliation was effected. Three 
 months later the great statesman was no more. 
 
 Nothing, however, could shake in the least degree 
 Garibaldi's resolution to make an immediate assault upon 
 Rome. The ministries which followed the death of Cavour 
 undoubtedly bungled ; and rightly or wrongly Garibaldi 
 was led to suppose that the Government would oppose 
 his attack upon Rome in much the same sense that they 
 had opposed his attack upon Sicily. Never had the ripe 
 wisdom of Cavour been more indispensable. It was clearly 
 impossible to allow a subject to defy the Government and 
 act independently in a matter so difficult and delicate as 
 that of Rome. Garibaldi persisted; he was met on the 
 march to Rome by a royal army at Aspromonte, and his 
 volunteers were scattered far and wide. Garibaldi himself 
 was wounded, and carried a state prisoner to Varignano. 
 The wounded chieftain was a terrible embarrassment to a 
 Government already somewhat discredited. Garibaldi was, 
 indeed, as Mr. Bent has said, " the idol of Italy, from the 
 throne to the cottage ; Italians worshipped him, but they 
 did not know what to do with him." The enthusiasm 
 aroused for him, reasoning and unreasoning alike, may be 
 illustrated by an incident related by the same author. His 
 room at Varignano was besieged by ladies of every degree,
 
 in GARIBALDI 71 
 
 anxious for the honour of ministering, in however small a 
 measure, to the illustrious invalid. It was mentioned in 
 one of the English papers that Garibaldi had said that the 
 sound of an English voice did him good. Immediately 
 there was a perfect exodus of English ladies anxious to 
 satisfy his slightest whim. Among them was a worthy 
 old woman from Reading, of quite humble circumstances, 
 who set out with her daughter, with more zeal than know- 
 ledge, for Varignano. Their journey accomplished, they 
 demanded permission to nurse him, to apply the soothing 
 voice for which he had asked. Of course the permission 
 was refused ; the women could not speak a word of the 
 language ; they had spent all their money, and had to be 
 sent home by the Government. Not, however, it is satis- 
 factory to know, before they had spent a few raptured 
 moments in the chamber of the sufferer, and had obtained 
 a lock of hair and an unquestionable autograph. 
 
 After the general amnesty Garibaldi decided to visit 
 England, to try and arouse among the English people a 
 more definite and fruitful enthusiasm on the Roman ques- 
 tion. Seldom, if ever, has such a welcome awaited a foreign 
 visitor to England. I have been told by one who witnessed 
 his landing at Southampton that the poor general's gar- 
 ments were literally torn to ribbons by enthusiastic admirers. 
 The whole English world, official and non-official, quite lost 
 their heads as well as their hearts. But there was one 
 person of some count in Europe who was by no means well 
 pleased at the reception accorded to Garibaldi in this 
 country. How much Napoleon's annoyance had to do with 
 the sudden departure of our guest is one of those diplomatic 
 mysteries which may never be cleared up. Lord Palmerston 
 repudiated the notion of official interference. Anyhow, the 
 whole of his provincial engagements were suddenly aban- 
 doned, and Garibaldi left for home. 
 
 There was work in Italy ready to his hand. In 1865 
 the capital had been transferred from Turin to Florence 
 a stepping-stone to Rome, suggested by the French Govern- 
 ment themselves. In the following year, 1866, Victor
 
 72 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 Emmanuel concluded an alliance with Prussia, then on the 
 eve of her duel with Austria, On the 20th of June Italy 
 declared war on Austria. Both on land and sea Italy was 
 badly beaten, but Austria was so utterly crushed by 
 Prussia in the brief campaign which terminated at Sadowa 
 that she no longer offered any serious obstacle to the 
 abandonment of the Venetian provinces ; and thus at last 
 the foreigner was finally expelled from Italy, and Venice 
 was united with the rest of Italy. 
 
 Meanwhile the Roman question, if not entirely solved, 
 was advancing rapidly towards solution. As early as 1864 
 Victor Emmanuel had come to an understanding with 
 Napoleon in the matter. " Of course," said the French 
 minister, "in the end you will go to Rome. But it is 
 important " (of course on account of the relations of the 
 Government and the Catholic Church at home) " that be- 
 tween our evacuation and your going there, such an inter- 
 val of time and such a series of events should elapse as to 
 prevent people establishing any connection between the 
 two facts ; France must not have any responsibility." In 
 September 1864 accordingly, France concluded a conven- 
 tion by which she agreed to withdraw her troops from 
 Rome, while Victor Emmanuel engaged to respect what 
 remained of the Temporal power. But the progress made 
 or perhaps rather permitted by diplomacy, was too slow for 
 Garibaldi. He had once more fallen under the influence of 
 the extreme republicans, and in 1867 he declared that he 
 would delay no longer in planting the republican banner 
 on the Vatican. Between these hot-headed and fanatical 
 republicans on the one side, the Italian ul tramontanes on 
 another, and the French Emperor on the third, the position 
 of Victor Emmanuel was anything but enviable. 
 
 In the autumn of 1867 Garibaldi was suddenly arrested 
 by the Government, but released on condition that he 
 would remain quietly at Caprera. But meanwhile the 
 volunteers under Menotti Garibaldi (the great chief's son) 
 had advanced into the Papal States. The old warrior was 
 burning to be with them. On the 14th of October he
 
 in GARIBALDI 73 
 
 effected his escape from Caprera, and managed eventually 
 to join his son in the Romagna. Together they advanced 
 on Rome, and won, after tremendous fighting, the great 
 victory at Monte Rotundo. Meanwhile an army of occu- 
 pation sent by the Government from Florence had crossed 
 the Roman frontier, and a French force had landed on the 
 coast. Garibaldi's position was already critical, but his 
 resolution was unbroken. " The Government of Florence," 
 he said, in a proclamation to the volunteers, " has invaded 
 the Roman territory, already won by us with precious 
 blood from the enemies of Italy ; we ought to receive our 
 brothers in arms with love, and aid them in driving out 
 of Rome the mercenary sustainers of tyranny ; but if base 
 deeds, the continuation of the vile convention of September, 
 in mean consort with Jesuitism, shall urge us to lay down 
 our arms in obedience to the order of the 2d December, 
 then will I let the world know that I alone, a Roman 
 general, with full power, elected by the universal suffrage 
 of the only legal Government in Rome, that of the republic, 
 have the right to maintain myself in arms in this the terri- 
 tory subject to my jurisdiction ; and then, if any of these 
 my volunteers, champions of liberty and Italian unity, wish 
 to have Rome as the capital of Italy, fulfilling the vote 
 of parliament and the nation, they must not put down 
 their arms until Italy shall have acquired liberty of con- 
 science and worship, built upon the ruin of Jesuitism, and 
 until the soldiers of tyrants shall be banished from our 
 land." 
 
 The position taken up by Garibaldi is perfectly intelligible. 
 Rome we must have, if possible, by legal process, in con- 
 junction with the royal arms ; but if they will stand aside, 
 even if they will oppose, none the less Rome must be an- 
 nexed to Italy. Unfortunately Garibaldi had left out of 
 account the French force despatched by Napoleon III to 
 defend the Temporal dominions of the Pope, a force which 
 even at this moment was advancing to the attack. The 
 two armies met near the little village of Montana, ill 
 matched in every respect. The volunteers, numerous in-
 
 74 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 deed but ill disciplined and badly armed, brought together, 
 held together simply by the magic of a name, the French, 
 admirably disciplined, armed with the fatal chassepots, fight- 
 ing the battle of their ancient Church. The Garibaldians 
 were terribly defeated. Victor Emmanuel grieved bitterly, 
 like a true, warm-hearted father for the fate of his mis- 
 guided but generous-hearted sons. " Ah, those chassepots ! " 
 he would exclaim sometimes ; " they have mortally wounded 
 my heart as father and as king ; I feel as if the balls had 
 torn my flesh here. It is one of the greatest griefs I have 
 ever known." Torn by anguish, he still maintained an 
 attitude of unshaken dignity alike towards the French and 
 towards his own rebellious sons. To the Emperor of the 
 French he wrote an ardent appeal begging him to break 
 with the Clericals and put himself at the head of the Liberal 
 party in Europe, at the same time warning him that the 
 old feeling of gratitude towards the French in Italy had 
 quite disappeared. " The late events have suffocated every 
 remembrance of gratitude in the heart of Italy. It is no 
 longer in the power of the Government to maintain the 
 alliance with France. The chassepot gun at Montana has 
 given it a mortal blow." At the same time the rebels were 
 visited with condign punishment. Garibaldi himself was 
 arrested, but after a brief imprisonment at Varignano was 
 permitted to retire once more to Caprera. A prisoner so 
 big as Garibaldi is always an embarrassment to gaolers. 
 
 But the last act in the great drama, the slow develop- 
 ment of which you have with so much patience watched, was 
 near at hand. In 1870 the Franco-German War broke out. 
 The contest, involving as it did the most momentous 
 consequences, was as brief as it was decisive. The French, 
 of course, could no longer maintain their position as cham- 
 pions of the Temporal power. Once more, therefore, the 
 King of Italy attempted, with all the earnestness and with 
 all the tenderness at his command, to induce the Pope to 
 come to terms and accept the position, at once dignified 
 and independent, which the Italian Government was 
 anxious to secure to him.
 
 in GARIBALDI 75 
 
 " Most Blessed Father With the affection of a son, with 
 the faith of a Catholic, with the soul of an Italian, I address 
 myself now, as on former occasions, to the heart of your 
 Holiness. 
 
 "A flood of dangers threatens Europe. Profiting by 
 the war which desolates the centre of the Continent, the 
 cosmopolitan revolutionary party increases in boldness and 
 audacity, and is planning, especially in that part of Italy 
 ruled by your Holiness, the direst offences against the 
 Monarchy and the Papacy. I know that the greatness of 
 your soul will not be less than the greatness of events ; 
 but I, being a Catholic King and Italian, and as such 
 guardian, by the disposition of Providence and the national 
 will, of the destinies of all the Italians, I feel it my duty 
 to take, in the face of Europe and Catholicity, the respon- 
 sibility of maintaining order in the peninsula and the 
 safety of the Holy See. . . . Permit me, your Holiness, 
 again to say that the present moment is a solemn one for 
 Italy and the Church. Let the Popehood add efficacy to 
 the spirit of inextinguishable benevolence in your soul 
 towards this land, which is also your country, and the senti- 
 ments of conciliation which I have always studied to trans- 
 late into acts, that satisfying the national aspirations, the 
 head of Catholicity, surrounded by the devotion of the 
 Italian people, should preserve on the banks of the Tiber 
 a glorious seat, independent of every human sovereignty. 
 Your Holiness, by liberating Eome from foreign troops, will 
 take from her the constant danger of being the battle-ground 
 of subversive parties. You will accomplish a marvellous 
 work, restore peace to the Church, and show Europe, 
 aghast at the horrors of war, how one can win great battles 
 and obtain immortal victories by an act of justice, by one 
 sole word of affection." 
 
 But the Pope still unflinchingly adhered to the position 
 he had taken up. "I cannot," he wrote (llth September 
 1870), "admit the demands of your letter nor accept the 
 principles contained therein. I address myself to God and 
 place my cause in His hands, for it is entirely His. I pray
 
 76 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 Him to concede abundant grace to your Majesty, deliver 
 you from every peril, and render you a participator in all 
 the mercies of which you may have need." However one 
 may sympathise with the natural ambition of the new-born 
 Italian nation to have its capital in Rome ; however clearly 
 we may realise, and it were the supremest folly to ignore, 
 the insuperable difficulties which the papal claims involved ; 
 however much we may concur in the justice of the national 
 demand, it is at the same time impossible, and I hope not 
 wholly inconsistent, not to feel a real admiration for the 
 inflexible determination, for the unbroken consistency which 
 maintained in all their integrity the claims of that sovereignty 
 compared with which, as Macaulay says, the " proudest royal 
 houses are but of yesterday ; " that sovereignty which 
 "was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot 
 in Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when 
 Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols 
 were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca." 
 
 But, however much of sympathy we may feel for the 
 fallen Pontiff, our reason compels us to approve the King. 
 A feint of resistance was made, but on the 20th of September 
 the royal troops entered Rome, and the Tricolour was 
 mounted on the palace of the Capitol. So soon as might 
 be a plebiscite was taken. The numbers are significant 
 for the King, 40,788, for the Pope 46. But though the 
 work was thus accomplished in the autumn of 1870, it was 
 not until 2d June 1871 that the King made his triumphal 
 entry into the capital of Italy. 1 " The work," said the King 
 in the first speech he addressed to the parliament in Rome, 
 " the work to which we consecrated our lives is accomplished. 
 After long trials Italy is restored to herself and to Rome. 
 Here where our people scattered for so many centuries, find 
 
 1 The King had already paid a private visit to Rome at the end of 
 the previous year (1870). A terrible inundation of the Tiber had taken 
 place, and the King at once set off for Rome to demonstrate his sym- 
 pathy with the distress of his new subjects. His conduct at this time 
 won him the respect and affection of many of those who. had been the 
 staunchest adherents of the Temporal Power.
 
 in GARIBALDI 77 
 
 themselves for the first time reassembled in the majesty of 
 their representatives, here where we recognise the home of 
 our thoughts, everything speaks to us of grandeur, but at 
 the same time everything reminds us of our duties. . . . We 
 have arisen in the name of liberty, and in liberty and order 
 we ought to seek the secret of strength and conciliation. . . . 
 The future opens before us rich in happy promise ; it is for 
 us to respond to the favours of Providence by showing our- 
 selves worthy to represent amongst the great nations of 
 the earth the glorious part of Italy and of Rome." 
 
 My purpose is fulfilled. The work of Italian unification 
 is now complete. Look back for one instant on the road 
 that we have come, on the steps by which the goal has 
 been attained. See the Italy of the ante-Napoleonic days, 
 hopeless, inert, benumbed ; without one generous impulse, 
 without one hope, without one thought of the possibility 
 of better things to come. See the Italy of 1815, moulded 
 by the whims of the Viennese diplomatists ; moulded on 
 the effete and worn-out principles of the hardened, faithless 
 eighteenth century ; divided, dismembered, distraught ; its 
 peoples bandied to and fro ; its provinces distributed ; 
 here an Austrian, there a Bourbon, but all equally degraded 
 beneath the ignoble yoke of alien tyranny. Then look 
 on Italy in the thirty years' agony before the year of 
 revolution ; her noblest sons in exile ; her bravest patriots 
 fretting out their souls in Austrian dungeons ; her poets 
 silenced and her art in chains. See the brief but splendid 
 awakening of 1848; Italy free ; Italy at one when " the war- 
 cry rang from Alp to Etna;" when "her sons knew they 
 were happy to have looked on her, and felt it beautiful to 
 die for her." And then mark the era of diplomacy and 
 statesmanship. Shall I essay the graceless task of appraising 
 the comparative value of the work which, under the calm and 
 even inspiration, under the temperate guiding of the King, 
 the Statesman, Prophet, and Crusader, achieved for her who 
 had the happiness to call them sons 1 The task has been 
 once for all accomplished by a living pen. " Cavour had 
 the genius of statesmanship a practical sense of what
 
 78 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY in 
 
 could be done, combined with rare dexterity in doing it, 
 fine diplomatic and parliamentary tact, and noble courage 
 in the hour of need. Without the enthusiasm amounting 
 to the passion of a new religion which Mazzini inspired, 
 without Garibaldi's brilliant achievements and the idolatry 
 excited by this pure-hearted hero in the breasts of all who 
 fought with him and felt his sacred fire, there is little 
 doubt that Cavour would not have found the creation of 
 united Italy possible. But if Cavour had not been there 
 to win the confidence, support, and sympathy of Europe, if 
 he had not been recognised as a man whose work was solid 
 and whose sense was just in all emergencies, Mazzini's 
 efforts would have run to waste in questionable insurrec- 
 tions, and Garibaldi's feats of arms must have added but 
 one chapter more to the history of unproductive patriotism. 
 While, therefore, we recognise the part played by each of 
 these great men in the liberation of their country, and 
 while we willingly ignore their differences and disputes, it 
 is Cavour whom we must honour with the title of the 
 maker of Italian unity." 
 
 Italy is free ; Italy is one. We have followed in 
 these last days her progress towards unity and free- 
 dom; we have been watchers, as Mazzini finely says, 
 "over a mystery of dawning life, over the cradle of a 
 people." In the presence of that mystery scepticism and 
 unfaith as to the future are impossible ; we have looked 
 back honestly, we may look forward calmly calm in the 
 assurance that there is in store for Italy a future, not, be 
 sure, without its trials, but at least not unworthy of the 
 traditions of her far-distant past ; not unworthy of the 
 splendid achievements in times more recent of her several 
 but divided states ; not unworthy of the sons whose widely 
 differing but convergent efforts have combined to make her 
 one.
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 AUTHORITIES 
 1. GENERAL WORKS. 
 
 Mr. Probyn's History of Italy (Cassells) contains a concise but 
 readable account of the history of the Italian movement from 
 1815 to 1870. A still shorter sketch may be found in Mac- 
 kenzie's Nineteenth Century, or in A Century of Continental 
 History, by Mr. Rose. 
 
 Mr. Fyffe's History of Modern Europe, vol. ii., gives a good 
 account of the movement down to 1848. 
 
 Gallenga's two works, History of Piedmont, 3 vols., and Italy 
 Present and Future, 2 vols., may also be consulted, together 
 with the same author's (sub nom, Mariotti) Italy Past and 
 Present, 2 vols., and Italy in 1848, 1 vol. 
 
 The Articles in the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica on 
 " Italy" (by J. A. Symonds)and on "Mazzini"and "Cavour" are 
 admirably done, and may with great advantage be consulted. 
 
 Those who desire fuller and further information will find it in the 
 following works : 
 
 Cesare Balbo : Sommario. 
 
 Quinet : Revolutions d'ltalie. 
 
 Reuchlin : Geschichte Italiens. 
 
 Colletta : History of Naples. 
 
 Romanin : History of Venice. 
 
 Homer : A Century of Despotism in Naples and Sicily. 
 
 Nolan : The War in Italy (1859). 
 
 Rimini : The Truth respecting Italy and Piedmont (1862). 
 
 S. W. Fullom : Rome under Pius IX. 
 
 Victor Emmanuel, King of Sardinia: results of 
 his rule, by an Eyeuritness.
 
 80 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY 
 
 Bersezio : / Contemporanei Italiani. 
 
 D'Azeglio : / Miei Ricordi. 
 
 Orsini : Austrian Prisons. 
 
 Silvio Pellico : Le Hie Prigioni. 
 
 Correspondence relating to the Affairs of Italy, Presented to 
 
 Parliament, 1849. 
 Correspondence, etc. 1860. 
 
 Mr. Swinburne's poems, " The Song of Italy " and " Super Flumina 
 Babylonia," and Mrs. Hamilton King's poem, "The Disciples," written 
 at the request of Mazzini, should be read by all those who seek to 
 realise the enthusiasm excited for the cause of Italian independence in 
 England. 
 
 2. SPECIAL WORKS. 
 
 (a) VICTOR EMMANUEL : 
 
 Massari : La Vita ed il Eegno di Vittorio Emanuele. 
 Godkin : Life of Victor Emmanuel. 2 vols. (Macmillan.) 
 Dicey : Essay on Victor Emmanuel. 1 vol. 
 
 (/3) MAZZINI : 
 
 Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini. 6 vols. Smith, 
 Elder and Co., 1864-70. 
 
 This work, which is in part autobiographical, is essential to a 
 thorough understanding of Mazzini's career. 
 
 There is a good selection from his Essays published in the Camelot 
 Classics Series (W. Scott), edited by W. Clarke ; but two of the most 
 important Essays, viz. Thoughts on Democracy and the Duties of Man, 
 are not included in this edition. They are appended, however, to 
 Madame E. A. Venturi's Joseph Mazzini, a Memoir (H. S. King). 
 References may also be made to Mr. Myers's Modern Essays; to 
 Mazzini, by Jules de Breval (Vizetelly, 1853) ; and to Un Roi et un 
 Conspirateur, by Augusts Boullier (Libraire Plon, 1885). 
 
 (7) CAVOUR : 
 
 Massari's Life of Cavour is the most elaborate biography, 
 but in default students may consult Mazade's Life of 
 Count Cavour (Chapman and Hall, 1877) ; or Reminis- 
 cences of the Life and Character of Count Cavour, by 
 William de la Rive, translated by Edward Romilly 
 (Longmans, 1862) ; or Mr. Edward Dicey's Memoir of 
 Cavour (Macmillan, 1861) ; or Hayward's Essay on 
 Cavour in his European Statesmen.
 
 APPENDIX 81 
 
 (5) GARIBALDI : 
 
 Autobiography of Garibaldi, edited by Werner, 3 vols., 
 recently published, is by far the best account of Gari- 
 baldi's career ; but reference may also be made to Mr. 
 Theodore Bent's Garibaldi; to Col. Chambers's Gari- 
 baldi and Italian Unity; or to Recollections of Garibaldi, 
 by Elpis Melena (translated). 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE CHIEF EVENTS 
 IX ITALIAN HISTORY 
 
 1815-1870 
 
 1796-1814. The Napoleonic occupation of Italy. 
 
 1796. Transpadane and Cispadane Republics established. 
 
 1797. Cisalpine Republic. 
 
 1798. Roman Republic. 
 1802. The Italian Republic. 
 
 1805. The Kingdom of Italy established by Napoleon Bonaparte. 
 
 1806. Joseph Bonaparte proclaimed King of Naples. 
 
 1815. The Second Peace of Paris Redistribution of Italian 
 
 provinces. 
 1815-1859. Austrian domination ill Italy. 
 
 1820. Insurrection in Naples. 
 
 1821. The Lay bach Conference. 
 Insurrection in Piedmont. 
 
 Abdication of Victor Emmanuel I. in favour of Charles 
 
 Felix. 
 1821-1829. The Greek insurrection. 
 
 1823. French intervention in favour of Absolutism in Spain. 
 
 1824. Death of Ferdinand I., King of the Two Sicilies. 
 Accession of Francis I. 
 
 1827. Mazzini (1805-1872) joins the Carbonari. 
 
 1830. The " July Revolution" in France.
 
 82 THE MAKERS OF MODERN ITALY 
 
 1830. Mazziui arrested for conspiracy and imprisoned, subsequently 
 
 exiled. 
 
 Accession of Ferdinand II ("Bomba") to the throne of the 
 Two Sicilies. 
 
 1831. Insurrections in Modena, Bologna, etc. 
 Mazzini organises "Young Italy." 
 Accession of Charles Albert in Piedmont. 
 Austrian occupation of Roniagna. 
 
 1832. French occupation of Ancona. 
 Mazzini exiled from France. 
 
 1833. Failure of Mazziui's attack on Savoy. 
 
 1836. Mazzini exiled from Switzerland. 
 
 1837. Mazzini arrives in London. 
 
 1843. Vincenzo Gioberti publishes H Primato morale ct civile degli 
 Italiani. 
 
 1846. Election of Pio Nono in succession to Gregory XVI. 
 Scientific Congress at Genoa. 
 
 1847. Reforms of Pio Nono, Duke Leopold of Tuscany, and Charles 
 
 Albert of Piedmont. 
 Agricultural Congress at Casale. Charles Albert's letter. 
 
 1848. Insurrections in Sicily and Naples. 
 
 Constitutions granted to the Two Sicilies, Piedmont, and Tus- 
 cany, by their respective rulers (February). 
 
 Revolution in Paris (February 24). Fall of Louis Philippe. 
 The Second Republic. 
 
 March Revolutions in Germany. 
 
 Constitution granted to the Papal States. 
 
 Revolt of Lombardy and Venice against Austria. 
 
 Risings in Parma and Modena. 
 
 Establishment of Venetian Republic under Daniel Manin. 
 
 Charles Albert of Piedmont declares war on Austria. 
 
 Victory of Radetsky at Custoza. 
 
 Assassination of Count Rossi at Rome. 
 
 Flight of the Pope to Ferdinand of Naples at Gaeta. 
 
 1849. Revolt of Hungary against Francis Joseph. 
 Charles Albert renews the war against Austria. 
 Defeat of the Sardinians at Novara (March 23). 
 Abdication and death of Charles Albert. 
 Accession of Victor Emmanuel II. 
 Establishment of the Roman Republic. 
 Mazzini a Roman Triumvir. 
 
 Rome occupied by the French (July).
 
 APPENDIX 83 
 
 1849. Venice retaken by the Austrians (August). 
 Absolutist reaction in Italy. 
 
 Massimo d'Azeglio becomes Prime Minister of Piedmont. 
 Reforms of Victor Emmanuel. 
 
 1850. Cavour (1810-1861) becomes Minister of Commerce. 
 
 1851. Coup d'etat of Louis Napoleon in France. 
 
 1852. Cavour succeeds D'Azeglio as Prime Minister of Piedmont. 
 His Reforms. 
 
 1853. Attempted Mazzinist insurrection in Milan. 
 
 1854. The Crimean War. 
 
 1855. Intervention of Sardinia in the Crimean War. 
 
 1856. Cavour takes part in the Congress of Paris. 
 
 1857. The Societa Nazionale formed under presidency of Gari- 
 
 baldi. 
 Mont Cenis Tunnel begun. 
 
 1858. Orsini's attempt to assassinate Napoleon III. 
 Interview between Cavour and Napoleon at Plombieres. 
 Austria demands the disarmament of Sardinia. 
 
 1859. Victor Emmanuel's speech to the Piedmontese Parliament. 
 France and Sardinia declare war on Austria. 
 
 Victories of Magenta and Solferino. 
 Peace of Villafranca. 
 Lombardy united to Piedmont. 
 
 1860. Tuscany, Parma, Modena, and the Roman Legations united to 
 
 Piedmont by plebiscite. 
 Savoy and Nice ceded to France. 
 Meeting of the first Italian Parliament (April 2). 
 Insurrection in Sicily. 
 Garibaldi's Conquest of the Two Sicilies. 
 The King's troops enter the Marches. 
 Annexation of Naples. 
 
 1861. Victor Emmanuel declared King of Italy. 
 Death of Cavour (June 5). 
 
 1862. Garibaldi's Insurrection. 
 
 Defeat of the Garibaldians at Aspromonte. 
 1864. Transference of the Capital from Turin to Florence. 
 
 Gradual withdrawal of French troops from Rome begins. 
 1866. Austro- Prussian War. 
 
 Italy declares War on Austria. 
 
 Austrian victories at Lissa and Custoza. 
 
 Venice annexed to the Italian Kingdom. 
 
 Withdrawal of the French Garrison from Rome,
 
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