THE ROMAN QUESTION RENEWED
While parliament was occupied with the financial question, the minister, Menabrea, was working to induce the French government to put in force again the September convention, and to recall her troops from Rome. The Italian minister offered to guarantee to the pope perfect liberty for the exercise of his spiritual power, and to assume for Italy a considerable part of the pontifical debt. In guarantee of the serious nature of his offer, he pointed to the elements of the authority to be henceforth recognised in the kingdom, which would lead to the disappearance of all traces of agitation and to the closing forever of the era of factious revolutions, of conspiracies and of individual initiative. But the French government did not share these rose-coloured visions of the Italian minister, and brought forward information proving the existence of Mazzinian workings in the peninsula. Menabrea, seeing there was nothing more to do, resigned his diplomatic position in the chamber of deputies at the end of March, 1869.
No better effect resulted from another much more important attempt, made this time by the king, Victor Emmanuel. Moved by the desire of re-establishing with Napoleon III the friendly relations interrupted by the events of 1867, and of assuring the preservation of peace in Europe, which the strained relations existing between France and Prussia threatened to disturb, he took the initiative of proposing a triple alliance between Italy, France, and Austria, of which the fundamental condition was the evacuation of Rome by the French troops, and the formal recognition of the principle of non-intervention in Italian affairs. The three contracting powers would then have acted together in all important questions of European politics, guaranteeing reciprocally the integrity of their respective territories and not taking any resolution of general importance without the consent of all. But neither the persuasions of the emperor of Austria nor those of his cousin, Prince Jerome, were able to influence Napoleon’s decision. He held firm to his refusal with regard to the evacuation of Rome, and as this was the fundamental, the whole plan was abortive, and this on the eve of the Franco-Prussian War.
The year 1868 was celebrated by the marriage of the crown prince to his cousin Margaret of Savoy. The fiancée of Prince Humbert, an archduchess of Austria, having died, the minister Menabrea proposed to the king the granddaughter of the duke of Genoa as a wife for his son. The proposal pleased the king and the prince, and on the 22nd of April the marriage was celebrated. The new year opened with painful events, the application of the tax on flour giving rise to tumults and seditious movements which obliged the government to use measures of great severity. In Emilia and Roumania scenes of bloodshed and destruction occurred. General Cadorna, sent to this province to re-establish order, fulfilled his thankless task in such a way as to merit the praise of parliament.
The agitation by which the country was disturbed in 1869, was the work of the Mazzinians. Mazzini had proclaimed from London, “Italy must free herself from a monarchy, since it has shown that it will not and cannot give to Italy, either unity, independence, or liberty.” And the disciples of the prophet speedily translated the republican words into action, raising tumults and discussions in all the principal cities of Italy. As we have seen, the French government had given warning of the Mazzinian sect, deriving from thence a reason for refusing the evacuation of Rome by the French troops. The Mazzinians, to insure success, had endeavoured to corrupt the army, especially making their insidious advances to inferior officers. A few allowed themselves to be drawn into the trap and expiated their perjury with their lives. The case of Corporal Barsanti aroused general interest. He was a young man of twenty, the support and hope of his aged parents, but the minister of war Govone declared that if the army were not to be demoralised an example must be made, and Barsanti was shot August 27th, 1870, in the neighbourhood of Milan. A few days before this execution Mazzini by Govone’s orders had been arrested in Milan and brought under a strong guard to the fortress of Gaeta. With the removal of the chief, the republican agitation died away to give place to another and a very different one, which was that of the restoration of Rome to Italy and the final fall of the pope’s temporal power.