CHAPTER VII
THE DOWNFALL OF THRONES
1848-1849
Garibaldi Arrives—Venice under Manin—The Dissolution of the Temporal Power—Republics at Rome and Florence.
While the remnant of the Piedmontese army recrossed the bridge over the Ticino at Pavia, crushed, though not though want of valour, outraged in the person of its King, surely the saddest vanquished host that ever retraced in sorrow the path it had traced in the wildest joy, a few thousand volunteers in Lombardy still refused to lay down their arms or to recognise that, after the capitulation of Milan, all was lost. Valueless as a fact, their defiance of Austria had value as a prophecy, and its prophetic aspect comes more clearly into view when it is seen that the leader of the little band was Garibaldi, while its standard-bearer was Mazzini. These two had lately met for the first time since 1833, when Garibaldi, or 'Borel,' as he was called in the ranks of 'Young Italy,' went to Marseilles to make the acquaintance of the head and brain of the society which he had joined, as has been mentioned, on the banks of the Black Sea.
'When I was young and had only aspirations,' said Garibaldi in London in April 1864, 'I sought out a man who could give me counsel and guide my youthful years; I sought him as the thirsty man seeks water. This man I found; he alone kept alive the sacred fire, he alone watched [Pg.121] while all the world slept; he has always remained my friend, full of love for his country, full of devotion for the cause of freedom: this man is Joseph Mazzini.'
The words spoken then—when the younger patriot was the chosen hero of the greatest of free nations, while the elder, still misunderstood by almost all, was shunned and calumniated, and even called 'the worst enemy of Italy'—gave one fresh proof, had one been wanting, that, though there have been more flawless characters than Garibaldi, never in a human breast beat a more generous heart. Politically, there was nearly as much divergence between Mazzini and Garibaldi as between Mazzini and Cavour; the master thought the pupil lacked ideality, the pupil thought the master lacked practicalness; but they were at one in the love of their land and in the desire to serve her.
On parting with Mazzini in 1833, Garibaldi, then captain of a sailing vessel, went to Genoa and enrolled himself as a common sailor in the Royal Piedmontese Navy. The step, strange in appearance, was certainly taken on Mazzini's advice, and the immediate purpose was doubtless to make converts for 'Young Italy' among the marines. Had Garibaldi been caught when the ruthless persecution of all connected with 'Young Italy' set in, he would have been shot offhand, as were all those who were found dabbling with politics in the army and navy. He escaped just in time, and sailed for South America.
The Gazzetta Piemontese of the 17th of June 1834 published the sentence of death passed upon him, with the rider which declared him exposed to public vengeance 'as an enemy of the State, and liable to all the penalties of a brigand of the first category.' He saw the paper; and it was the first time that he or anyone else had seen the [Pg.122] name of Giuseppe Garibaldi in print; a name of which Victor Emmanuel would one day say that 'it filled the furthest ends of the earth.'
Profitable to Italy, over nearly every page of whose recent history might be written 'out of evil cometh forth good,' was the banishment which threw Garibaldi into his romantic career of the next twelve years between the Amazon and the Plata. Soldier of fortune who did not seek to enrich himself; soldier of freedom who never aimed at power, he always meant to turn to account for his own country the experience gained in the art of war in that distant land, where he rapidly became the centre of a legend, almost the origin of a myth. Antique in simplicity, singleness, superabundance of life, and in a sort of naturalism which is not of to-day; unselfconscious, trustful in others, forgiving, incapable of fear, abounding in compassion, Garibaldi's true place is not in the aggregation of facts which we call history, but in the apotheosis of character which we call the Iliad, the Mahabharata, the Edda, the cycles of Arthur and of Roland, and the Romancero del Cid.
In childhood he rescued a drowning washerwoman; in youth he nursed men dying of cholera; as a veteran soldier he passed the night among the rocks of Caprera hunting for a lamb that was lost. No amount of habit could remove the repugnance he felt at uttering the word 'fire.' Yet this gentle warrior, when his career was closed and he lay chained to his bed of pain, endorsed his memoirs with the Spanish motto: 'La guerra es la verdadera vida del hombre.' War was the veritable life of Garibaldi; war, not conspiracy; war, not politics; war, not, alas! model farming, for which the old chief fancied in his later years that he had discovered in himself a vocation.
[ [Pg.123] Riding the wild horses and chasing the wild cattle of the Pampas, his eyes covering the immense spaces untrodden by man, this corsair of five-and-twenty drank deep of the innocent pleasures of untamed nature, when not occupied in fighting by land or sea, with equal fortune; or rather, perhaps, with greater fortune and greater proof of inborn genius as commander of the naval campaign of the Paran[=a] than as defender of Monte Video. No adventures were wanting to him; he was even imprisoned and tortured. In South America he found the one woman worthy to bear his name, the lion-hearted Anita, whom he carried off, she consenting, from her father and the man to whom her father had betrothed her. Garibaldi in after years expressed such deep contrition for the act which bore Anita away from the quiet life in store for her, and plunged her into hardships which only ended when she died, that, misinterpreting his remorse, many supposed the man from whom he took her to have been already her husband. It was not so. Shortly before the Church of San Francisco at Monte Video was burnt down (some twenty years ago), the marriage register of Garibaldi and Anita was found in its archives, and a legal copy was made. In it she is described as 'Doña Ana Maria de Jesus, unmarried daughter of Don Benito Rivevio de Silva, of Laguna, in Brazil.' The bridegroom, who during all his American career had scarcely clothes to cover him, parted with his only possession, an old silver watch, to pay the priest's fees. Head of the Italian Legion, he only took the rations of a common soldier, and as candles were not included in the rations, he sat in the dark. Someone reported this to the Government, who sent him a present of £20, half of which he gave to a poor widow.
[ [Pg.124] When the first rumours that something was preparing in Italy reached Monte Video, Garibaldi wrote a letter offering his services to the Pope, still hailed as Champion of Freedom, and soon embarked himself for the Old World, with eighty-five of his best soldiers, among whom was his beloved friend, Francesco Anzani. Giacomo Medici had been despatched a little in advance to confer with Mazzini. At starting, the Legion knew nothing of the revolution in Milan and Venice, or of Charles Albert having taken the field. Great was their wonder, therefore, on reaching Gibraltar, to see hoisted on a Sardinian ship a perfectly new flag, never beheld by them out of dreams—the Italian tricolor.
So Garibaldi returned at forty-one years of age to the country where the sentence of death passed upon him had never been revoked. Before the law he was still 'a brigand of the first category.' Nor was he quite sure that he would not be arrested, and, as a precaution, when he cast anchor in the harbour of his native Nice, he ran up the Monte Videan colours. It was needless. Throngs of people crowded the quays to welcome home the Ligurian captain, who had done great things over sea. Anita was there; she had preceded him to Europe with their three children, Teresita, Menotti and Ricciotti. There, also, was his old mother, who never ceased to be beautiful, the 'Signora Rosa,' as the Nizzards called her. She was almost a woman of the people, but the simple dignity of her life made all treat her as a superior being. To her prayers, while she lived, Garibaldi believed that he owed his safety in so many perils, and after her death the soldiers used to say that on the eve of battles he walked apart communing with her spirit.
From Nice, Garibaldi went to Genoa, where he took a last leave of his friend Anzani, who returned from exile not to fight, as he had hoped, [Pg.125] but to die. The day before he expired, Medici arrived at Genoa; he was very angry with the Chief, in consequence of some disagreement as to the place of landing. Anzani said to him entreatingly: 'Do not be hard, Medici, on Garibaldi; he is a predestined man: a great part of the future of Italy is in his hands.' The counsel from dying lips sank deep into Medici's heart; he often disagreed with Garibaldi, but to his last day he never quarrelled with him again. Long years after, if friction arose between Garibaldi and his King, it was Medici's part to throw oil on the waters.
Garibaldi sought an interview with Charles Albert, and offered him his arms and the arms of his Legion, 'not unused to war.' Pope or prince, little it mattered to him who the saviour of Italy should be. But Charles Albert, though he was polite, merely referred his visitor to his ministers, and the inestimable sword of the hero went begging for a month or more, till the Provisional Government of Milan gave him the command of the few thousand volunteers with whom we saw him at the conclusion of the campaign. The war was over before he had a chance of striking a blow. His indignant cry of defiance could not be long sustained, for Garibaldi never drove men to certain and useless slaughter; when the real position of things became known to him, he led his band over the Swiss confines, and bid them wait for a better and not distant day.
Under Manin's wise rule, which was directed solely to the preservation of peace within the city, and resistance to the enemy at its gates, Venice remained undaunted by the catastrophes in Lombardy, after all the Venetian terra firma had been restored to Austria. (Even the heroic little mountain fort of Osopo in the Friuli was compelled to capitulate on the 12th of October.) The blockade of the city on the [Pg.126] lagunes did not prevent Venice from acting not only on the defensive but on the offensive; in the sortie of the 27th of October, 2500 Venetians drove the Austrians from Mestre with severe losses, carrying back six captured guns, which the people dragged in triumph to the Doge's palace. A cabin-boy named Zorzi was borne on the shoulders of the soldiers enveloped in the Italian flag; his story was this: the national colours, floating from the mast of the pinnace on which he served, were detached by a ball and dropped into the water; the child sprang in after them, and with a shout of Viva l'Italia, fixed them again at the masthead under a sharp fire. Zorzi was, of course, the small hero of the hour, especially among the women. General Pepe commanded the sortie, with Ulloa, Fontana and Cosenz as his lieutenants; Ugo Bassi, the patriot monk of Bologna, marched at the head of a battalion with the crucifix, the only arms he ever carried, in his hand. The success cost Italy dear, as Alessandro Poerio, poet and patriot, the brother of Baron Carlo Poerio of Naples, lost his life by a wound received at Mestre. But the confidence of Venice in her little army was increased a hundredfold.
The most important event of the autumn of 1848 was the gradual but continuous break-up of the Papal authority in Rome. The meeting of the new Parliament only served to accentuate the want of harmony between the Pope and his ministers; assassinations were frequent; what law there was was administered by the political clubs. In Count Terenzio Mamiani, Pius IX. found a Prime Minister who, for eloquence and patriotism, could hardly be rivalled, but hampered as he was by the opposition he encountered from the Sovereign, and by the absence of any real or solid moderate constitutional party in the Chamber of [Pg.127] Deputies, Mamiani could carry out very few of the improvements he desired to effect, and in August he retired from an impracticable task, to be replaced by men of less note and talent than himself.
Wishing to create fresh complications for the Pope, the Austrians invaded the Legations, regardless of his protests, and after the fall of Milan, General Welden advanced on Bologna, where, however, his forces were so furiously attacked by the inhabitants and the few carabineers who were all the troops in the town, that they were dislodged from the strong position they had taken up on the Montagnola, the hill which forms the public park, and obliged to fly beyond the city walls. Radetsky disapproved of Welden's movements on Bologna, and ordered him not to return to the assault.
Had the Austrians returned and massacred half the population of Bologna, the Pope might have been saved. When Rome heard that the stormy capital of Romagna was up in arms, once more, for a moment, there were united counsels. 'His Holiness,' ran the official proclamation, 'was firmly resolved to repel the Austrian invasion with all the means which his State and the well-regulated enthusiasm of his people could supply.' The Chamber confirmed the ministerial proposal to demand French help against Austria. But all this brave show of energy vanished with the pressing danger, and Bologna, which, by its manly courage, had galvanised the whole bloodless body-politic, now hastened the hour of dissolution by lapsing into a state of deplorable anarchy, the populace using the arms with which they had driven out the Austrians, to establish a reign of murder and pillage. L.C. Farini restored something like order, but the general weakness of the power of government became every day more apparent.
[ [Pg.128] The Pope made a last endeavour to avert the catastrophe by calling to his counsels Count Pellegrino Rossi, a man of unyielding will, who was as much opposed to demagogic as to theocratic government. Rossi, having been compromised when very young in Murat's enterprises, lived long abroad, and attained the highest offices under Louis Philippe, who sent him to Rome to arrange with the Pope the delicate question of the expulsion of the Jesuits from France, which he conducted to an amicable settlement, though one not pleasing to the great Society. Not being one of those who change masters as they change their boots according to the state of the roads, the ambassador retired from the French service when Louis Philippe was dethroned. As minister to the Pope, he made his influence instantly felt; measures were taken to restore order in the finances, discipline in the army, public security in the streets, and method and activity in the Government offices. The tax on ecclesiastical property was enforced; fomenters of anarchy, even though they wore the garb of patriots, and perhaps honestly believed themselves to be such, were vigorously dealt with. If anyone could have given the Temporal Power a new lease of life, it would have been a man so gifted and so devoted as Pellegrino Rossi, but the entire forces, both of subversion and of reaction, were against him, and most of all was against him the fatality of dates. Not at human bidding do the dead arise and walk. The most deeply to be regretted event that happened in the course of the Italian revolution gave his inevitable failure the appearance of a fortuitous accident.
[ [Pg.129] Parliament, which had been prorogued on the 26th of August, was to open on the 15th of November. Anarchy, black and red, was in the air. Though disorders were expected, Rossi made no provision for keeping the space clear round the palace where Parliament met; knots of men, with sinister faces, gathered in all parts of the square. Rossi was warned in the morning that an attempt would be made to assassinate him; he was entreated not to go to the Chamber, to which he replied that it was his duty to be present, and that if people wanted his blood they would have it sooner or later, whether he took precautions or not. Two policemen to keep the passage free when he reached the Chamber would, nevertheless, have saved his life. As he walked from his carriage to the stairs, an unknown individual pushed against him on the right side, and when he turned to see who it was, the assassin plunged a dagger in his throat. He fell, bathed in blood, to expire without uttering a word.
In the Chamber, the deputies proceeded to business; not one raised an indignant protest against a crime which violated the independence of the representatives of the nation. The mere understanding of what liberty means is absolutely wanting in most populations when they first emerge from servitude.
After the craven conduct of the deputies, it is no wonder if the dregs of the people went further, and paraded the streets singing songs in praise of the assassin. The Pope summoned the Presidents of the two Chambers and Marco Minghetti, whom he requested to form a new ministry. But the time for regular proceeding was past; the city was in the hands of the mob, which imposed on the Pope the acceptance of a ministry of nonentities nominated by it. The Swiss Guard fired on the crowd which attempted to gain access to the Quirinal; the crowd, reinforced by the Civic Guard, returned to the attack and fired [Pg.130] against the walls, a stray shot killing Monsignor Palma, who was in one of the rooms. The Pope decided on flight. He left Rome in disguise during the evening of the 25th of November. After gaining the Neapolitan frontier, he took the road to Gaeta. The illusion of the Pope Liberator ended with the Encyclical; the illusion of the Constitutional Pope ended with the flight to Gaeta. Pius IX. was only in a limited degree responsible for his want of success, because the task he had set before him was the quadrature of the circle in politics.
The weight of a less qualified responsibility rests upon him for his subsequent actions. On the 3rd of December Parliament voted a proposal to send a deputation to the Pope, praying him to return to his States. To give the deputation greater authority, the Municipality of Rome proposed that the Syndic, the octogenarian Prince Corsini, should accompany it. It also comprised two ecclesiastics, and thus constituted, it left Rome for Gaeta on the 5th of December. On the borders of the Neapolitan kingdom its passage was barred by the police, and it was obliged to retrace its steps to Terracina. Here the deputation drew up a letter to Cardinal Antonelli (no longer the patriotic minister of the spring), in which an audience with the Sovereign Pontiff was respectfully requested. The answer came that the Pope would not receive the deputation. It was an answer that he was at liberty to make, but it should have meant abdication. If, called back by the will of the Parliament of his own making, the Sovereign deigned not even to receive the bearers of the invitation, in what way did he contemplate resuming the throne? It was only too easy to guess. The Head of Christendom had become a convert of King Ferdinand of Naples, otherwise Bomba. By a path strewn with the sinister flowers of war did Pius IX. meditate returning to his subjects—by that path and no other.
[ [Pg.131] The Galetti-Sterbini ministry, appointed by the Pope under popular pressure a few days before his departure, remained in charge of affairs, somewhat strengthened by the adhesion of Terenzio Mamiani as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mamiani at first declined to form part of the ministry, but joined it afterwards with self-sacrificing patriotism, in the hope of saving things from going to complete rack and ruin during the interregnum caused by the withdrawal of the Head of the State. He only retired from the ungrateful office when he saw the imminence of a radical change in the form of government, which was not desired by him any more than it had been by Rossi.
The mass of the population of the Roman States had desired such a change ever since the days of Gregory; the temporary enthusiasm for Pius, if it arrested the flow of the stream, did not prevent the waters from accumulating beyond the dyke. One day the dyke would burst, and the waters sweep all before them.
A Constituent Assembly was convoked for the 5th of February 1849. The elections, which took place on the 21st of January, were on this basis: every citizen of more than twenty-one years was allowed to vote; every citizen over twenty-five could become a deputy; the number of deputies was fixed at two hundred; a candidate who received less than 500 votes would not be elected. On the 9th of February, the Constituent Assembly voted the downfall of the Temporal Power (free exercise of his spiritual functions being, at the same time, assured to the Supreme Pontiff), and the establishment of a republican form of government. The Roman Republic was proclaimed from the Capitol.
Ten votes were given against the republic. No government ever came [Pg.132] into existence in a more strictly legal manner. Had it not represented the true will of the people, the last Roman Commonwealth could not have left behind so glorious, albeit brief, a record.
A youthful poet, descendant of the Doges of Genoa, Goffredo Mameli, whose 'Fratelli d'Italia' was the battle-hymn to which Italy marched, wrote these three words to Mazzini: 'Roma, Repubblica, Venite.' So Mazzini came to Rome, which confided her destinies to him, as she had once confided them to the Brescian Arnold and to Cola di Rienzi. Not Arnold—not Rienzi in his nobler days—dreamed a more sublime dream of Roman liberty than did Giuseppe Mazzini, or more nearly wrote down that dream in facts.
Originally the executive power was delegated to a committee, but this was changed to a Triumvirate, the Triumvirs being Armellini, Saffi and Mazzini. Mazzini's mind and will directed the whole.
On the 18th of February, Cardinal Antonelli demanded in the Pope's name the armed intervention of France, Austria, Spain and Naples, 'as in this way alone can order be restored in the States of the Church, and the Holy Father re-established in the exercise of his supreme authority, in compliance with the imperious exigencies of his august and sacred character, the interests of the universal Church, and the peace of nations. In this way he will be enabled to retain the patrimony which he received at his accession, and transmit it in its integrity to his successors.'
The Pope, who could not bring himself to stain his white robes with the blood of the enemies of Italy, called in four armies to shoot down his subjects, because in no other way could he recover his lost throne.
Pius IX. was the twenty-sixth Pontiff who called the foreigner into Italy.
[ [Pg.133] The final conquest of the Pope by the party of universal reaction could only be effected by his isolation from all but one set of influences; this is precisely what happened at Gaeta. There are reasons for thinking that his choice of the hospitality of the King of the Two Sicilies, rather than that of France or Spain or Sardinia, was the result of an intrigue in which Count Spaur, the Bavarian minister who represented the interests of Austria in Rome after that power withdrew her ambassador, played a principal part. Even after Pius arrived at Gaeta, it is said that he talked of it as the first stage of a longer journey. He had never shown any liking for the Neapolitan Bourbons, and the willingness which he expressed to Gioberti to crown Charles Albert King of Italy if his arms were successful, was probably duly appreciated by Ferdinand II. To save the Pope from absorption by the retrograde party, and to avoid the certainty of a foreign invasion, Gioberti, who became Prime Minister of Piedmont in November 1848, was anxious to occupy the Roman states with Sardinian troops immediately after the Pope's flight, when his subjects still recognised his sovereignty. Gioberti resigned because this policy was opposed by Rattazzi and other of his colleagues in the ministry. It would have been a difficult rôle to play; Sardinia, while endeavouring to checkmate the reaction, might have become its instrument. The failure of Gioberti's plan cannot be regretted, but his forecast of what would happen if it were not attempted proved to be correct.
Soon after the arrival of his exalted guest, King Ferdinand with his family, a great number of priests, and a strong escort, moved his residence from the capital to Gaeta. The modified Constitution, substituted for the first charter after the events of the 15th of May, was still nominally in force; Parliament had met during the summer, [Pg.134] but the King solved the riddle of governing through his ministers, on purely retrograde principles, without paying more heed to the representatives of the nations than to the benches on which they sat. Prorogued on the 5th of September, Parliament was to have met on the 30th of November, but when that date approached, it was prorogued again to the 1st of February. 'Our misery has reached such a climax,' wrote Baron Carlo Poerio, 'that it is enough to drive us mad. Every faculty of the soul revolts against the ferocious reactionary movement, the more disgraceful from its execrable hypocrisy. We are governed by an oligarchy; the only article maintained is that respecting the taxes. The laws have ceased to exist; the Statute is buried; a licentious soldiery rules over everything, and the press is constantly employed to asperse honest men. The lives of the deputies are menaced. Another night of St Bartholomew is threatened to all who will not sell body and soul.' Ferdinand only waited till he had recovered substantial hold over Sicily to do away with even the fiction of parliamentary government. Messina had fallen in September, though not till half the city was in flames, the barbarous cruelties practised on the inhabitants after the surrender exciting the indignation of the English and French admirals who witnessed the bombardment. This was the first step to the subjection of Sicily, but not till after Syracuse and Catania fell did the King feel that there was no further cause for anxiety—the taking of the capital becoming a mere question of time. He was so much pleased at the fall of Catania that he had a mock representation of the siege performed at Gaeta in presence of the Pope and of half the sacred college.
On the 13th of March Prince Torelli handed the President of the [Pg.135] Neapolitan Chamber of Deputies a sealed packet which contained a royal decree dissolving Parliament. Naples was once more under an irresponsible despotism. The lazzaroni of both the lower and higher classes, if by lazzaroni may be understood the born allies of ignorance, idleness and bigotry, rejoiced and were glad. Nor were they few. Unlike the Austrians in the north, Ferdinand had his party; the 'fidelity of his subjects' of which he boasted, was not purely mythical. Whether, considering its basis, it was much to boast of, need not be discussed.
In March, the happy family at Gaeta was increased by a new arrival. Had he been better advised, Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, would have never gone to breathe that malarious atmosphere. He had played no conjuror's tricks with his promises to his people; Austrian though he was, he had really acted the part of an Italian prince, and there was nothing to show that he had not acted it sincerely. But a persistent bad luck attended his efforts. Though the ministers appointed by him included men as distinguished as the Marquis Gino Capponi, Baron Ricasoli and Prince Corsini, they failed in winning a strong popular support. Leghorn, where the population, unlike that of the rest of Tuscany, is by nature turbulent, broke into open revolution. In the last crisis, the Grand Duke entrusted the government to the extreme Liberals, Montanelli the professor, and Guerrazzi the novelist; both were honourable men, and Guerrazzi was thought by many to be a man of genius. The vigorous rhetoric of his Assedio di Firenze had warmed the patriotism of many young hearts. But, as statesmen, the only talent they showed was for upsetting any régime with which they were connected.
[ [Pg.136] The Grand Duke was asked to convoke a Constituent Assembly, following the example of Rome. If every part of Italy were to do the same, the constitution and form of government of the whole country could be settled by a convention of the various assemblies. The idea was worthy of respect because it pointed to unity; but in view of the existing situation, Tuscany's solitary adhesion would hardly have helped the nation, while it was accompanied by serious risks to the state. The Grand Duke seemed about to yield to the proposal, but, on receiving a strong protest from the Pope, he refused to do so on the ground that it would expose himself and his subjects to the terrors of ecclesiastical censure. He still remained in Tuscany, near Viareggio, till he was informed that a band of Leghornese had set out with the intention of capturing his person. Then he left for Gaeta on board the English ship Bull Dog. The republic had been already proclaimed at Florence, with Montanelli and Guerrazzi as its chief administrators. It succeeded in pleasing no one. Civil war was more than once at the threshhold of Florence, for the peasants rose in armed resistance to the new government. In less than two months the restoration of the Grand. Ducal authority was accomplished almost of itself. Unfortunately, the Grand Duke who was to come back was not the same man as he who went away. The air of Gaeta did its work.