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

by Unknown

THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1831

Pope Leo XII in Pontifical Robes

[1821-1832 A.D.]

The effect produced by those abortive revolutions was very disastrous to Italy. They introduced over the whole country a hateful system of espionage, caused by suspicion in the rulers and dislike in the subjects, which was not soon relaxed, and has still left painful traces. However, the measures of this sort which were adopted, with some which occasionally removed causes of complaint, were effectual in keeping the people tolerably quiet for about ten years. In Sicily a conspiracy broke out in 1822, and in 1828 a weak insurrection at Salerno was suppressed. Tuscany and Lombardy remained tranquil under a mild despotism and thirty thousand Austrian bayonets; but the French Revolution of 1830[29] gave an example which was followed next year by the states of the church, by Modena, and by Parma.

We may be assisted in discovering causes for the insurrection in the papal states, by examining one or two of the principal acts of the government after the death of Pius VII, which took place in 1823. On the 5th of October, 1824, the new pope Leo XII issued a motu-proprio which annihilated at a blow the charter of 1816. The administration both of Leo and his successor, Pius VIII, was conducted in accordance with the spirit thus indicated. The arbitrary proceedings of the police became a universal pest; the administration of criminal justice was again secret, irresponsible, and inhumanly tedious; and, both in that department and in civil causes, the judges were openly charged with general venality. Besides all the old burdens, some new or obsolete ones were imposed, especially the focalico, a tax on every hearth, which weighed very heavily on the peasantry; and the customs were increased exorbitantly, while the government-monopolies were extended.

In Modena, it seemed to have been resolved to sweep away every vestige that the French had left behind them. The old laws of the Este had been re-enacted, but were every day infringed by edicts of the prince, and by special commissions of justice. The taxes were raised to nearly five times their amount under Napoleon; and for the elective functionaries of the communes, the sovereign substituted young noblemen, chosen by himself.

The insurrection began in Modena, where, in the night of the 3rd of February, 1831, a body of conspirators were arrested in the house of Ciro Menotti. The people rose, and the duke fled to Mantua. On the 4th, being just two days after the election of Pope Gregory XVI, Bologna was in open revolt. The rebellion spread over the greater part of the Roman state. At the same time, the ex-empress Marie Louise fled from Parma, which was likewise in tumult. The subjects of the papal provinces declared openly against the temporal sovereignty of the pope, and on the 26th of February, deputies from all the revolted states united in proclaiming a new republic. The allied sovereigns did not lose a day in putting down the insurrection. On the 9th of March the duke of Modena with an Austrian army retook his capital; and, after some resistance, the Germans, before the end of the same month, had restored to the holy see all its possessions. In Modena, Menotti and Borelli, the leaders of the revolt, were hanged, and more than a hundred others were imprisoned for life. In Parma, Marie Louise acted mercifully, and voluntarily redressed some of the grievances of which her subjects, perhaps with less reason than their neighbours, had complained. In the papal states no executions took place, but many men were condemned to imprisonment for longer or shorter periods.

The leading powers of Europe interposed to recommend concessions by the pope to his subjects; and, on the 5th of July, 1831, the holy father issued a motu-proprio, which, for the third time since 1814, altered the administration. It resumed much of the charter of 1816, retaining the division into delegations, and the subdivision of these into districts; but it narrowed greatly the functions of the congregations, which were merely to have a consultative voice. And the new act did not give to the people even that share in election which, as to the communal boards, the decree of Consalvi had bestowed on them.

The subjects of the papal state did not conceal their disappointment at the pretended reforms. In January, 1832, the eastern districts were again in insurrection; and the slaughter of forty inhabitants of Forlì, men, women, and children, drove the people of the country nearly mad. Before the end of the month, the revolt was again suppressed by the Austrian grenadiers. This new interposition, however, at length aroused the French king, Louis Philippe, probably a little ashamed of the part he had already acted. On the 22nd of February, 1832, a French squadron, anchoring off Ancona, landed troops, which seized the town and citadel. Austria and its satellites professed high indignation at this interference; but the act seems to be quite defensible on diplomatic grounds, in the position which France occupied as a guarantee of the papal kingdom. In the kingdom of Naples, Francis, the prince-vicar of 1820, succeeded his father, and ruled feebly but not unkindly for a few years, after which his throne devolved on his son, Ferdinand, then a youth of twenty-one.[d]

Thus the enterprise of 1831, though extensively supported, had been undertaken without any fixed plan and, as we have seen, ended in complete discomfiture. The scattered and persecuted sette [societies], when once more rallied and united, carried on their operations under a new name; and the ill-starred faction, which was destined to mislead and vitiate the national impulse of 1848, assumed the title of Young Italy. “Austria,” says Gualterio, “acquired in this society a new ally.”

[1831 A.D.]

In 1831, a young Genoese, Giuseppe Mazzini [born in 1808], obtained celebrity by the publication of a letter in which he exhorted Charles Albert, who had just succeeded to the throne, to undertake the liberation of Italy. The boldness and self-confidence displayed in this production was admired by the cervelli bollenti of the day; and the exiles and refugees, whose disappointment was recent and who were smarting under persecution, were predisposed towards one whose counsels were uttered with oracular authority, and who cheered them with new and undefined hopes.

Mazzini soon became the acknowledged centre of the new sect, of which the establishment was contemporary with that of “Young France” and “Young Germany,” and which was intended to transform and assimilate those already in existence, and to give them unity of purpose and command.[30][f]