CHAPTER XXXVI
PERTURBED INACTIVITY (1821-1847)
After 1821 followed ten years of outward repose. Times were hard for lovers of independence, but hope and purpose had been let loose, and in dark corners, cloaking themselves as best they could, the friends of freedom groped their way. Openly little was done except by exiles, but indirect aid came from literature, which followed the romantic movement, and loudly asserted the revolutionary ideas. There was Ugo Foscolo, the poet, half Venetian, half Greek, who after the return of the Austrians refused to take the oath of allegiance and fled to England, giving, as was said, "to New Italy a new institution, Exile;" Giovanni Berchet, of Milan, poet and man of letters; Gabriele Rossetti, of the Abruzzi, father of Dante Rossetti, a poet himself; and many others. By far the most distinguished was Alessandro Manzoni, a quiet, dignified Milanese gentleman, who wrote patriotic plays, and the famous romance, "I Promessi Sposi" (The Plighted Lovers). He cheered and comforted his compatriots with the thought that in him they possessed a man of letters whom Europe recognized as the peer of Scott, Byron, and Goethe. Scott praised "I Promessi Sposi" most generously, and Goethe said, "It satisfies us like perfectly ripe fruit."
Greater than Manzoni, though at the time less widely known, was the sad poet, Giacomo Leopardi, indisputably the greatest Italian poet since Tasso, and in the judgment of some men to-day, owing perhaps to greater sympathy with his sentiments, superior to Tasso. Leopardi raised Italian self-respect, as Manzoni did, by proof that the genius of the race still lived. He wrote the most patriotic odes since Petrarch. Of these the poem "To Italy" is perhaps most famous. It begins:—
O my country, I see the walls, the arches,
The columns, the statues, the defenceless towers
Of our forefathers,
But the glory I do not see.
Leopardi's wretchedness, in great measure purely personal, was matched by that of his country. Austrian soldiers, ducal sbirri, and Jesuits did their best to destroy all vigour, life, and freedom. The press was stifled; no allusion to freedom was allowed. In a chorus of Bellini's opera "I Puritani" the word liberty was stricken out by the censor and loyalty substituted; and a singer who forgot the change was sent to prison for three days. Things were best in Tuscany and worst in Naples, where Francis I, a rake, bigot, and coward, practised the utmost cruelty. After an insurrection in a village, twenty-six heads were cut off at his command, and exhibited in cages; and once, when a grandmother besought mercy for her two grandsons who were condemned to death, he bade her choose one. She chose one; the other was shot, and she went mad.
The ten long years of inaction at last passed away, and another wave of exasperated independence and patriotism swept over the peninsula. The French Revolution of 1830 was the proximate cause. This time, while Piedmont and Naples remained quiet, for most of their leaders were in exile or in prison, Parma, Modena, and the Romagna burst into insurrection; but the Austrian soldiers marched in, suppressed the revolt, and reseated duke, duchess, and Pope. The attention of the world, however, had been called to priestly government in the Romagna, and the five great Powers,—England, France, Austria, Prussia, and Russia,—not wishing a hotbed of justifiable revolt on the same Continent with comfortable and privileged ruling classes, wrote a collective note to the Pope in which they insisted on certain reforms as indispensable. The papal Curia made promises, but did nothing, and all Italy relapsed outwardly into the condition in which she had been during the ten years of inaction.
Nevertheless, the forces underneath, plotting and conspiring for freedom, were stronger than before, and here and there indications of this growing sentiment cropped out. In 1831, after the ill-fated, melancholy, distrusting, and distrusted Carlo Alberto had succeeded to the Kingdom of Sardinia, an anonymous letter addressed to him was spread broadcast over Italy. This letter bade him choose between two courses,—either to lead the national movement, or to be basely servile to Austria. "Bend your back under the German (Austrian) whip and be a tyrant—But, if as you read these words your mind runs back to that time when you dared look higher than the lordship of a German fief, and if you hear within a voice that cries 'You were born for something great,' oh, obey that voice; it is the voice of genius, of opportunity, that offers you its hand to mount from century to century as far as immortality; it is the voice of all Italy, who awaits but one word, one single word, to make herself all your own. Give her that word. Put yourself at the head of the nation, and on your banner write Union, Freedom, Independence. Sire, according to your answer, be sure that posterity will pronounce you either the first of Italian Men, or the last of Italian Tyrants. Choose."
Carlo Alberto, melancholy as Hamlet, for the burden put upon him was greater than his strength, continued inactive, distrusted, and distrusting. His only answer was to give sharper orders against conspirators. The writer of the letter was a young Genoese of grave countenance, with a sweet mouth and sad, handsome eyes, Giuseppe Mazzini, aged twenty-six, who had already abandoned law for literature, and literature for his country. Suspected of being a Carbonaro, he had been arrested and put in prison. His father, having asked the reason, was told that "his son was a young man of talents, very fond of solitary walks at night, and habitually silent as to the subject of his meditations, and that the Sardinian government was not fond of young men of talents the subject of whose meditations it did not know." In prison Mazzini became convinced that the true aim of patriots was the unity of all Italy, and that the means should be the people, not the princes. After a few months of imprisonment he was banished. It was then that he wrote the letter.
In exile he began the task of rousing the Italian people throughout the peninsula to the need of common effort for a common end. He organized a secret society, and named it Young Italy. Its purpose was to make Italy free, united, and republican. The first article of its constitution read: "This society is instituted for the destruction, now become indispensable, of all the governments of the peninsula, and for the union of all Italy in a single state under republican government." The new society spread rapidly, and was, perhaps, the greatest individual cause of final success.
Mazzini was a master conspirator, a very St. Paul of the Risorgimento. His whole life was a passionate renunciation of all the pleasures and comforts for which most men live, and a passionate dedication of himself to his ideals. He is a striking illustration of the saying, The man whose heart is lifted up within him shall not find the path smooth before him, but the just shall live by his faith. His ideals soared higher and higher; not content with hope for Italy, he made plans for helping all Europe. He became an object of suspicion all over the Continent, and was driven from country to country, till he finally went to England, but he never ceased to preach and teach, to urge and encourage, to plot and counterplot. He believed in sacrifice, both of himself and of others, and instigated desperate uprisings. One of these, a wild invasion of Piedmont which came to nothing, is memorable because among the list of those who were subsequently proscribed for participation in it was a young seaman, a native of Nice, then a part of Savoy, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Mazzini himself stayed in England, where the cruelest accusations were made against him. He endured slander, malice, poverty, outward failure, still steadfast at his task. He says, "I have not for an instant thought that unhappiness may influence our actions." He knew Carlyle, who bore witness in his favour: "I have had the honour to know Mr. Mazzini for a series of years, and whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who, in silence, piously in their daily life understand and practise what is meant by that."
While Young Italy and the Carbonari worked in secret, literature continued to carry on the task of arousing enthusiasm for national achievements and national ideals. The patient piety of Silvio Pellico's "Le Mie Prigioni" was a most effective denunciation of Austrian tyranny; the plays of Giovan Battista Niccolini, of Florence, on subjects famous for Italian patriotism, were stirring appeals against despotism, civil and ecclesiastical; the romantic novels of Massimo d'Azeglio, of Piedmont, the patriot painter and statesman, reminded youth of the great days of old; other novels, passionate and patriotic, by Tommaso Grossi, of Belluno, and by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi, of Leghorn, did likewise. These romances so pitifully uninteresting to-day did much; but a book of a different character had in its way a still more brilliant career. Vincenzo Gioberti, of Turin, began life by taking orders; he became patriotic, was suspected, imprisoned, exiled; in exile he studied, taught, and thought. In 1843 he published in Brussels "Il primato morale e civile degli Italiani" (The Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians), a book that rehearsed the old glory of Italy and pointed out new ways by which that ancient glory might be renewed. Gioberti advocated a confederation of the Italian States (excluding the Austrian provinces) with the Pope at its head. The book had tremendous success; its ideas were accepted and became a party creed; and Gioberti is entitled to rank as one of the factors in the Risorgimento. Oddly enough, as it seems to us now, his plan was on the verge of execution.
At this time Gregory XVI was Pope, a reactionary man, devoted to ecclesiastical history, and, according to his detractors, to Orvietan wine. He showed the extreme of papal incapacity for civil administration; in the papal cities was squalor, in the country brigandage, in both dense ignorance. But on Gregory's death Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti, an amiable, smiling, charming, handsome, liberal-minded cardinal, who had applauded Gioberti, became Pius IX (July, 1846). Within a month or two Pius granted amnesty to political prisoners, appointed a commission to study the necessary reforms in his states; permitted, tacitly at least, liberty of the press; announced a Council of State to consist of lay members; and authorized the organization of a civic guard. He was hailed with enthusiasm throughout the peninsula. Here was Gioberti's ideal Pope. Here was the man to lead the Italian Guelfs and drive the Barbarians from Italy.
That the ecclesiastical head of organized conservatism, the great bulwark of authority, the maintainer of ancient things, should be hailed as a saviour by men desiring independence, freedom, and war, needs a word of further explanation. In this period of decadence and servitude, while Austrian officers played the peacock on every piazza from Milan to Naples, Italians could remember that an Italian Pope was head of the greatest corporate body in the world, that tribute was paid into his treasury from every country in Europe, that kings treated him with deference, and that from East and West hundreds of servant bishops came to the foot of his throne. These thoughts, coupled with inapplicable memories and desperate hopes, led men to regard Pius IX as the predestined leader of the liberal movement; and shouts of "Hurrah for Italy, the Pope, and the Constitution!" were heard throughout the peninsula.
Hope, too, arose in Piedmont. King Carlo Alberto received Massimo d'Azeglio in audience (1845), and bade his astonished subject tell his friends that when the occasion should present itself, his own life, his sons' lives, his treasure, and his army would all be spent for the Italian cause. A year later the king withstood Austria in a dispute over customs; and a little later still, at an agrarian congress a member rose and read a letter from the king which ended, "If ever God shall give us grace to be able to undertake a war of independence, no one but me shall command the army. Oh, what a glorious day will that be when we shall be able to utter the cry of national independence!"
Thus encouraged by king and Pope, patriots, from Piedmont to Sicily, waited in tremulous expectation for the coming of great events.