The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 09

by Unknown

THE INSURRECTIONS OF 1820-1821

In 1820 and 1821 the discontents of the people, and the disappointment of many in the educated classes, broke out into insurrection, first at Naples, and then in Piedmont. There were no symptoms of concert, even between the Neapolitans and the Piedmontese; and the plots which arose elsewhere seem to have been produced by causes altogether local. But the immediate encouragement of the Italian revolt was furnished by the revolution in Spain,[28] and by the principle of non-intervention, which the allied sovereigns had adopted in reference to that country. The Italians vainly hoped that the same rule would be followed in their case.

On the 2nd of July, 1820, there broke out a mutiny among the troops. The insurgents were headed by two or three subaltern officers, who were Carbonari; and the whole army, having deserted the king, placed itself under its own generals. The revolt was joined by the people from all the provinces, and a remonstrance was sent to the government, demanding a representative constitution. The old king deposited his power in the hands of the crown prince Francis, as vicar, having first, however, promised to grant the nation their request, and to publish the charter in eight days. Unfortunately, the ultra-party, who were at this stage in possession of all the power, came forward instantly with a demand that the constitution should be that of the Spanish cortes, first published in 1812, and recently reinstituted. The prince-vicar acceded to this proposal.

A new difficulty soon arose. The Sicilians revolted and demanded a separate constitution and parliament, which the government refused to grant. Bloody disturbances took place at Palermo, which the Neapolitans suppressed by sending across an armed force.

The Neapolitan parliament was opened on the 1st of October, 1820, by the king in person, in the large church of the Spirito Santo. In the same month the three crowned heads who formed the Holy Alliance, attended by ministers from most of the other European powers, met at Troppau. The sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia resolved to violate their own late precedents of non-intervention, and to put down the Neapolitan constitution by force of arms. The weak monarch was easily convinced that his promises had been extorted and therefore were not binding, and the Neapolitans did not learn their danger until the Germans, 43,000 strong, were within a few days’ march of the frontier. A skirmish took place near Rieti, on the 7th of March, 1821; and next morning Pépé’s army had melted down to a few hundreds. The war was at an end.

On the 15th of May the king returned to Naples; and the Austrians left him strong garrisons, both on the mainland and in Sicily. The promise of complete amnesty, which had made part of his message to the parliament, was instantly forgotten. Courts-martial and criminal juntas were set down everywhere; a hundred persons at least were executed, among whom were Morelli and Silvati, two of the officers who had headed the first mutiny. Carrascosa and Pépé escaped; and Colletta, and two other generals, were allowed to live under surveillance in remote provinces of Austria.

The Neapolitan constitutionalists had hardly dispersed, when another military insurrection broke out in Piedmont. It was headed by several noblemen and officers of rank, and secretly favoured by Charles Albert, prince of Carignano, a kinsman of the royal family, who later became king of Sardinia.

[1821-1824 A.D.]

On the 10th of March, 1821, several regiments simultaneously mutinied. On the 12th the insurgents seized the citadel of Turin, and on the 13th the king abdicated in favour of his absent brother, Charles Felix, appointing the prince of Carignano regent, who next day took the oaths to the Spanish constitution. On the 16th the new king, Charles Felix, repudiated the acts of the regent; and in the night of the 21st Charles Albert fled to the camp of the Austrians. On the 8th of April the German army joined the royal troops at Novara, and beat the insurgents; the junta dissolved itself on the 9th; and on the 10th the king was in possession of Turin and of the whole country.

While these stormy scenes were acting in the two extremities of the peninsula, no district of Italy remained altogether undisturbed.

Arrests took place in several quarters of the papal state, but most of all in the eastern provinces. In the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom, the government professed to have discovered dangerous plots, as to which we know nothing with certainty except the existence of an association of well-educated and high-principled men at Milan, who laboured in the cause of education by instituting schools, and attempted to aid public enlightenment by a periodical called the Conciliatore, which the Austrians speedily suppressed. Those members of this society who became best known to the world were the counts Porro and Confalonieri, and the poet Silvio Pellico. These with many others were seized, and several were condemned to die. None of them were actually put to death, but whatever may have been the political offences of those unfortunate Milanese who, like him and Pellico, pined or died in the dungeons of Spielberg, it is at least certain that there was no truth whatever in most of the charges which the Austrians at the time allowed their journals to propagate against them.