Leopold, the philosopher prince, awaited there, busied in learning the art of governing men and putting in practice new theories of political economy, the moment to mount the imperial throne of Austria, where his destiny was not to leave him long. He was the Germanicus of Germany, and philosophy could alone display him to the world, after having lent him for a few years to Italy.
Piedmont, whose frontiers reached to the heart of France by the Alpine valleys, and on the other side the walls of Genoa and the Austrian possessions on the Po, was governed by the house of Savoy, one of the most ancient of the royal lines in Europe. This military monarchy had its intrenched camp, rather than its capital, in Turin. The plains it occupied in Italy had been, and were destined to be, the field of battle for Austria and France; and her positions were the keys of Italy.
This population, accustomed to war, was necessarily constantly under arms to defend itself, or to unite with that one of the two powers whose rivalry could alone assure its independence. Thus, military disposition was its strength; its weakness lay in having half its possessions in Italy, half in France. The whole of Savoy is French in language, descent, and manners; and at any great commotion Savoy must detach itself from Italy, and fall on this side of its own accord. The Alps are too essential a frontier to two people to belong to only one; for if their south side looks to Italy, their north looks to France. The snow, the sun, and the torrents have thus willed this division of the Alps between two nations. Policy does not long prevail against nature, and the house of Savoy was not sufficiently powerful to preserve the neutrality of the valleys of the Alps and the roads of Italy; and though it increase in power in Italy, yet it must be worsted in a struggle against France. The court of Turin was doubly allied to the house of France by the marriage of the Comte d'Artois and the Comte de Provence, brothers of Louis XVI., with two princesses of the house of Savoy. The clergy had more influence at this court than at any other in Italy; and hated instinctively all revolutions, because they threatened its political influence. From religious feeling—from family feeling—from political feeling, Savoy was destined to become the first scene of conspiracy against the French Revolution.
IX.
There was yet another in the north, and that was Sweden; but there it was neither a superstitious attachment to Catholicism, nor family feeling, nor even national interest, that excited the hostility of a king against the Revolution; it was a more noble sentiment—the disinterested glory of combating for the cause of kings; and, above all, for a queen whose beauty and whose misfortunes had won the heart of Gustavus III., in which blazed the last spark of that chivalrous feeling that vowed to avenge the cause of ladies, to assist the oppressed, and succour the right. Extinguished in the south, it burnt, for the last time, in the north, and in the breast of a king. Gustavus III. had in his policy something of the adventurous genius of Charles XII., for the Sweden of the race of Wasa is the land of heroes. Heroism, when disproportioned to genius and its resources, resembles folly: there was a mixture of heroism and folly in the projects of Gustavus against France; and yet this folly was noble, as its cause—and great, as his own courage. Fortune had accustomed Gustavus to desperate and bold enterprises; and success had taught him to believe nothing impossible. Twice he had made a revolution in his kingdom, twice he had striven single-handed against the gigantic power of Russia, and had he been seconded by Prussia, Austria, and Turkey, Russia would have found a rampart against her in the north. The first time, abandoned by his troops, in his tent by his revolted generals, he had escaped, and alone, made an appeal to his brave Dalecarlians. His eloquence, and his magnanimous bearing had caused a new army to spring from the earth. He had punished traitors, rallied cowards, concluded the war, and returned triumphant to Stockholm, borne on the shoulders of his people, wrought up to a pitch of enthusiasm. The second time, seeing his country torn by the anarchical predominance of the nobility, he had resolved, in the depths of his own palace, on the overthrow of the constitution. United in feeling with the bourgeoisie and the people, he had led on his troops, sword in hand; imprisoned the senate in its chamber; dethroned the nobility, and acquired for royalty the prerogatives it required in order to defend and govern the country. In three days, and before one drop of blood had been shed, Sweden under his sword had become a monarchy. Gustavus's confidence in his own boldness was confirmed. The monarchical feeling in him was strengthened by all the hatred which he bore to the privileges of the orders he had overturned. The cause of the king was identified with his own.
He had embraced with enthusiasm that of Louis XVI. Peace, which he had concluded with Russia, allowed him to direct his attention and his forces towards France. His military genius dreamed of a triumphant expedition to the banks of the Seine. It was there that he desired to acquire glory. He had visited Paris in his youth; under the name of the Count de Haga he had partaken of the hospitalities of Versailles. Marie Antoinette, then in the brilliancy of her youth and beauty, now appeared humiliated, and a captive in the hands of a pitiless people. To deliver this woman, restore the throne, to make himself at once feared and blessed by this capital, seemed to him one of those adventures formerly sought by crowned chevaliers. His finances alone opposed the execution of this bold design. He negotiated a loan with the court of Spain, attached to him the French emigrants renowned for their military talents, requested plans from the Marquis de Bouillé, solicited the courts of St. Petersburg and Berlin to unite with him in this crusade of kings. He asked of England nothing but neutrality. Russia encouraged him; Austria temporised; Spain trembled; England looked on. Each new shock of the Revolution at Paris found Europe undecided and always behind-hand in counsels and resolutions. Monarchical Europe, hesitating and divided, did not know what it had to fear, nor what it ought to do.
Such was the political situation of cabinets with respect to France. But as to ideas, the feelings of the people were different.
The movement of intelligence and philosophy at Paris was responded to by the agitation of the rest of Europe, and especially in America. Spain, under M. d'Aranda, was become alive to the general feeling; the Jesuits had disappeared; the Inquisition had extinguished its fires; the Spanish nobility blushed for the sacred theocracy of its monks. Voltaire had correspondents at Cadiz and at Madrid. The forbidden produce of our ideas was favoured even by those whose charge was to exclude it. Our books crossed the snows of the Pyrenees. Fanaticism, tracked by the light to its last den, felt Spain escaping from it. The excess of a tyranny long undergone, prepared ardent minds for the excess of liberty.
In Italy, and even at Rome, the sombre Catholicism of the middle age was lighted up by the reflections of time. It played even with the dangerous arms which philosophy was about to turn against it. It seemed to consider itself as a weakened institution, which ought to have its long duration pardoned in consequence of its complaisance towards princes and the age. Benedict XIV. (Lambertini) received from Voltaire the dedication of "Mahomet." The Cardinals Passionei and Quirini, in their correspondence with Ferney[6],—Rome, in its bulls, preached tolerance for dissenters, and obedience to princes. The pope disavowed and reformed the company of Jesus: he soothed the spirit of the age. Clement XIV. (Ganganelli) shortly after secularised the Jesuits, confiscated their possessions, and imprisoned their superior, Ricci, in the castle of Saint Angelo, the Bastille of papacy. Severe only towards exaggerated zealots, he enchanted the Christian world by the evangelical sweetness, the grace of his understanding, and the poignancy of his wit; but pleasantry is the first step to the profanation of dogmata. The crowd of strangers and English whom his affability attracted to Italy and retained at Rome, caused, with the circulation of gold and science, the inflowing of scepticism and indifference, which destroy creeds before they sap institutions.
Naples, under a corrupt court, left fanaticism to the populace. Florence, under a philosophical prince, was an experimental colony of modern doctrines. The poet Alfieri, that Tyrtæus of Italian liberty, produced there his revolutionary dramas, and there sowed his maxims against the two-fold tyranny of popes and kings in every theatre in Italy.