CHAPTER XXXVII
TUMULTUOUS YEARS (1848-1849)
The period of waiting for coming events was short. The whole Continent of Europe was straining like a greyhound in its leash; Italy, from end to end, was on tiptoe with excitement; and the year 1848 came rushing in with swashbuckler fury.
In Italy the revolutionary movement began in Palermo. The people attacked the Bourbon soldiers and drove them out. Their example was followed throughout the island. Across the channel Naples arose and demanded a constitution. The frightened king granted it (January 29). In Piedmont at an assemblage of journalists, the director of a newspaper, "The Risorgimento," declared that the time appropriate to petitions for the banishment of the Jesuits and for the institution of a national guard had passed, and that a constitution should be demanded. The speaker was a stoutish man of thirty-eight, with a square face under a high forehead. He wore spectacles, and under his chin a fringe of beard ran round from ear to ear like a ravelled bonnet string; he looked like a distinguished and amiable professor, except that there was a pinch to his nostrils and a compression to his lips which suggested an arrogant lineage and inherited notions of "Let those take that have the power, and let them keep that can." In fact, Count Camillo Cavour belonged to the old Piedmontese aristocracy. As a lad he served in the engineer corps of the army, then travelled in England (which he admired greatly) and in France, studying all kinds of social matters, from machinery to constitutions. On his estates he was a practical farmer, and he took keen interest in public life. It was at this time that he first became a man of note.
The city of Turin took up Cavour's cry, and the king acceded. The Grand Duke of Tuscany granted a constitution. The Pope was slow to bestir himself, but the news of revolutionary success in Paris quickened his gait, and he too granted a constitution. In the Austrian provinces, Lombardy and Venetia, there were tumults, arrests, cavalry charges, and martial law; then came news of the revolt in Vienna itself and word that the scared Emperor promised a constitution. Venice accepted the promise; but Milan, where a citizen had been killed by the soldiers, broke into rebellion. Carts, carriages, tables, chairs, pianos, bedsteads, were heaped up to defend the streets; sixteen hundred and fifty barricades were erected; men snatched knives, hammers, arquebuses, axes; all took part,—boys, lads, old men, priests. These were the famous Five Days of Milan. Every street, every house was a battleground, and Field Marshal Radetzky, with fourteen thousand men, was driven from the city. Revolt spread through Lombardy. When the news reached Venice the citizens rose, forced the Austrian governors to surrender, and proclaimed anew the Republic of Venice. Daniele Manin was made president.
This glorious news, Venice republican, Milan victorious over Radetzky, flew to Turin. Every liberal went mad with excitement. The centuries of national humiliation seemed past. Now had come the hour for which Piedmont had trained and disciplined itself, for which it had hoped and longed; now should Piedmont uplift Italy and fight its country's battle. Cavour cried that there was but one possible course,—immediate war with Austria. A great crowd in tremulous anxiety thronged before the royal palace. At midnight on March 23, Carlo Alberto stepped out on his balcony and waved a tricolour scarf. Next day a royal proclamation stated that the Piedmontese army would march to the aid of Lombardy and Venice. A shout of joy went up throughout Italy. Modena and Parma cast out their dukes and sent recruits to help. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, even the King of Naples, compelled by necessity, each sent an army. The war was a national crusade.
At first the campaign went well. The Italian allies numbered more than ninety thousand men; and Carlo Alberto, leading the main body, forced the Austrians under Radetzky within the quadrilateral made by the strong fortresses, Verona, Peschiera, Mantua, and Legnano. But the King of Sardinia was no general; he lacked energy, decision, character. While he dawdled, not knowing what to do, Radetzky received reinforcements. This hesitation and delay cooled the first glorious burst of union and freedom. Pius IX felt doubts; what right had the Vicar of Christ to take part in war? Were not Austrians and Italians alike in the sight of God? What had the Universal Church to do with national divisions? And might not Austria become heretic and secede from the papal rule? He said he would not fight. So great, however, were the tumults in Rome that he was forced to face about once again, but his tergiversation gave a fatal blow to the cause. In Naples the watchful Ferdinand, eager for a pretext, took advantage of some street riots to dissolve parliament, and bade his army come home. One general with a few hundred men disobeyed, but the rest turned back.
In the north the old jealousies between the Italian States wedged themselves in and broke the new-made union. Venice, instead of uniting with Piedmont in a joint political confederation, insisted upon remaining an independent republic, and Milan hesitated out of jealousy of Turin. Of these discords and hesitations the octogenarian Radetzky took advantage. Within thirty days the Tuscan army had been destroyed, the papal army made prisoners, and Piedmont was left alone to maintain the Italian cause in the field. In a three days' battle at Custoza (July 23-25) the issue was decided. The beaten Piedmontese were forced to surrender Milan, and to retreat across the river Ticino into their own land, and Austria returned triumphant into full possession of her provinces, except the city of Venice. The little Dukes of Parma and Modena returned also.
Elsewhere the current of events ran equally fast. In Sicily Ferdinand bombarded the revolted city of Messina (hence his nickname Bomba), and forced it to surrender; and in Naples he made a mock of the constitution. Rome was in horrid confusion. Pius IX appointed Pellegrino Rossi prime minister, in hope that his energy and vigour might restore peace and quiet; but Rossi was murdered on the steps of the Cancelleria. Rioters wandered at will about the city. Shots were fired near the papal palace on the Quirinal. The Pope, terribly frightened, fled from the city, and took refuge across the Neapolitan border at Gaeta. He was besought to return, but would not. The revolutionary leaders convoked an assembly of Roman citizens to decide what form of government to adopt, and, though the Pope hurled excommunications at all who should take part, the radicals met (February 5, 1849), declared the Temporal Power at an end, and established the Roman Republic. In Tuscany the republican fire likewise blazed up; the Grand Duke ran after the Pope to Gaeta, and a provisional government was appointed with a triumvirate at its head.
In the north, Piedmont and Austria renewed the war. On March 23, at Novara, a little town on the Piedmontese side of the Ticino, the deciding battle was fought. The Austrians were completely victorious. King Carlo Alberto asked for a truce. Radetzky's terms were so severe that the king, feeling himself the chief cause of this severity, resolved to be of no further detriment to his country. He abdicated in favour of his son, Vittorio Emanuele II, and went into exile, where he soon died. The young king made peace on harsh terms.
All rational hope for the Italian cause was at an end, but the dismembered parts struggled on. The men of Brescia defended themselves gloriously for days, barricading every alley and making a fort of every house, but they were overpowered; the Austrian general Haynau inflicted atrocities that made his name a byword throughout Europe. His own report says, "I ordered that no prisoner should be taken, but that every person seized with arms in his hands should be immediately put to death, and that the houses from which shots came should be burned."[23] In Sicily the revolutionists resisted in vain, and the king's authority was reëstablished throughout the island. In Naples all liberals were shamefully and most cruelly persecuted. In Tuscany the mild-mannered Tuscans, dismayed at their own radical government, invited the Grand Duke to return; so he came, bringing Austrian soldiers with him.
In Rome still more notable events happened. Mazzini, as member of the revolutionary triumvirate, was at the head of the government. His task was hard, for the Pope had asked the Catholic Powers to restore him, and Spain, Naples, Austria, and France, hastened to obey. France interfered because Louis Napoleon, president of the new republic, wished the support of the French clerical party; nevertheless, he had to proceed cautiously in order not to vex the liberals, and pursued a wavering course. He said he would send an army to defend real liberty, and would let the Romans decide for themselves what they wanted. The French soldiers advanced to the walls of Rome (April 29, 1849); the Roman republicans were naturally suspicious and treated them as enemies. Skirmishes were fought, and the French constrained to retire. Meanwhile, an Austrian army came from the north, the Neapolitans from the south, and the Spaniards landed at the mouth of the Tiber. The French intimated to the Austrians that this was their affair; the Romans, reinforced by Garibaldi and his Legion, drove back the Neapolitans; and the Spaniards retired quietly, thus leaving France to deal with the situation as she deemed best. French reinforcements arrived, and fighting was begun again.
The Italians defended themselves for three weeks; their soldiers, though brave, were raw, many of them mere volunteers, and ineffectual against regular troops. As Mazzini was the hero in council, so Garibaldi was the hero on the field of battle. The last of knight-errants, he was the very incarnation of Romance and Revolution. Bred to the sea, this Savoyard from Nice always retained the jaunty, gallant bearing of a mariner. His countenance (childlike and lionlike),—with its broad, tranquil brow, benign eye, and resolute mouth,—in youth all sparkling, gradually changed with care and disillusion, but he still kept the seaman's mien and the seaman's lightsome eye. He was the beau ideal of a romantic hero. After his unsuccessful raid into Piedmont he had gone to South America, where he lived a wild life of guerilla warfare, fighting like a Paladin on behalf of republican revolutionaries who were struggling for their freedom. All the time he was training a band of Italian adventurers, his Legion, so that they should be ready when their country had need of them. These men rushed to the defence of Rome. Their entry into the city was most picturesque. The gaunt soldiers, wearing red shirts and pointed hats topped with plumes, their legs bare, their beards full-grown, their faces tanned to copper colour, with their long black hair dangling unkempt, looked like so many Fra Diavolos. At their head Garibaldi, in his red shirt, with loose kerchief knotted round his throat, the regular beauty of his noble, leonine face set off by his waving hair, mounted on a milk-white horse, rode like a demi-god.
Besides this Legion, troops of volunteers came from all over Italy. The character of these patriots may be learned from Mazzini's account of the young Genoese poet Goffredo Mameli, who was killed there. "For me, for us exiles of twenty years who have grown old in illusions, he was like a melody of youth, a presentiment of times that we shall not see, in which the instinct of goodness and sacrifice will dwell unconscious in the human soul, and will not be, as virtue is in us, the fruit of long and hard struggles. Of a disposition lovingly yielding, he was only happy when he could abandon himself to those he loved, as a child in his mother's caress; and yet Mameli was unshakably firm in what touched the faith he had embraced. He was handsome, but careless of his appearance, and sensitive as a woman to the charm of flowers and sweet scents. Such was he when I knew him first at Milan in 1848, and we loved each other at once. It was impossible to see him and not love him. Only twenty-two, he joined the extremes rarely found united, a childlike gentleness and the energy of a lion, to be revealed, and which was revealed, in supreme emergencies."
The defence of Rome was vain. Mazzini escaped by means of an English passport, and Garibaldi led a handful of men eastward hoping to reach Venice. The French soldiers marched into the city, and reestablished the Temporal Power of the Pope. Venice alone remained. Daniele Manin, the valiant dictator, maintained a stout defence for four months, but cholera and hunger came to the enemy's aid. On August 24 the city capitulated, and on the 30th Marshal Radetzky heard the Te Deum of Austrian gratitude played in St. Mark's. In all Italy, except Piedmont, the reaction had triumphed; Piedmont alone was left to become the centre of whatever hopes of independence and unity still existed.
FOOTNOTE:
[23] The Liberation of Italy, Evelyn M. Cesaresco, p. 144.