Garibaldi, however, though he had given Mazzini no hint of his change of mind, had accepted the King's plan. The Duke of Sutherland's yacht took him to Ischia, where he was preparing to sail to the East, when the secret was given to the world; and the King, frightened by the publicity, hastily broke from the plot. Mazzini, though he tried to persuade Garibaldi to visit England again and make his abandoned provincial tour ("Newcastle is the best place"), was justly incensed at him and the King for their want of candour. He suspected, with good reason, that the ministry had fallen in with the Galician scheme, for the sake of getting Garibaldi out of the country and perhaps sending him to his death. He was "sick at heart of the equivocal position," and determined to "go on in a clearer path." Events helped to bring him back to frank hostility towards the government. The September Convention, most dishonouring and impolitic of treaties, was concluded, and it seemed to mark, as in the letter it did, a renunciation of the claims to Rome. He passionately denounced the surrender, the "policy of subterfuge and crooked ways," which threatened to founder Italy. "I prefer half a century of slavery to a national lie," he wrote. He was hoaxed into believing that the government had offered France a large slice of Piedmont to buy her acquiescence in any winning of Venice or Rome. He had a bitter quarrel with Crispi, who was fast sliding down the decline of respectability. Crispi had attacked him in the Chamber, as dividing the country by his republicanism. Mazzini wasted words in retorting on the opportunist, who yesterday had been most intransigent of republicans, and was now parading his new-found faith in the monarchy. He was inclined to break the slender threads, that connected him with the parliamentary Left, "who had laid aside their old democratic ardour to assume the icy demeanour of English members of parliament." But he still hesitated at any complete rupture with the monarchy, so long as any hope remained that the government would attack Austria.

It was doing better than he knew. The outcry at the September Convention had wrecked Minghetti's ministry, and under the brave and honest La Marmora there was some chance of going forward. The negotiations for the Prussian alliance were pushed on, and early in April 1866 the treaty was signed. Mazzini had preached co-operation with Germany in 1851 and 1861, but now he denounced the alliance with "men who represented despotism," an alliance which, he imagined, implied the abandonment of the claims to the Tyrol. He had information, which again was almost certainly inaccurate, as to the arrangement of Biarritz, and "knew from positive information" that Italy had promised to cede Sardinia and part of Piedmont to France, as the price of Napoleon's help. Much, however, as he disliked the diplomacy, still it was a war for Venice, and he urged his followers to join the volunteers. If the war ended in victory, they could then march on to Rome. He had his plan of operations for the war,—to mask the Quadrilateral, and push on with the main body of the army to Vienna, while the volunteers landed in Istria and tried to rouse the Slavs. Whether the plan was original or not, it was almost identical with one, which had been favoured by Ricasoli, now again premier, by Cialdini, one of the two Italian commanders, and probably by Bismarck, and which was rejected, or at least mutilated, only by La Marmora's opposition.

All the world had expected to see the Italians easily victorious. But again, as in 1848, their chance was spoilt by incompetent generalship. The army was defeated at Custozza, the fleet at Lissa; Garibaldi and the volunteers had little of the spirit of 1860, and were paralysed in the Tyrol. Equally unexpectedly, the Prussians on their side had triumphed swiftly and conclusively; and Napoleon, afraid that the unforeseen events would nip his schemes, stepped in with a message that Austria had offered to cede Venetia to himself and that he would hand it over to Italy, if peace were made. It was a bitter and humiliating end,—to lay down arms under the shadow of defeat, to abandon the Tyrol and Istria, to have Venetia not by right of conquest but by the condescension of a detested patron. Mazzini did not know how unwillingly the government had bowed to a fate, which the military position made inevitable. To him it seemed mere pusillanimity, pregnant with "dishonour and ruin." "It is my lot," he sadly wrote, "to consume my last days in the grief, supreme to one who really loves, of seeing the thing, one loves most, inferior to its mission."

Chapter XII
The Last Years
1866-1872. Aetat 61-66

The Republican Alliance—Life at Lugano—Mentana—Republican movement in 1868-70—Intrigue with Bismarck—Imprisonment at Gaeta, and release—Attack on the International—Death.

In his ignorance of the facts, he charged it all to the monarchy. The nation had been sacrificed to the interests of a dynasty. Defeat and dishonour came of the equivocations, that sprang from the "primal falsehood" of royalty. The bad government and coercion (which, in fact, was mild enough), the huge army and civil service and police, the consequent financial chaos—all were its fruit. He disclaimed that it was the republic for its own sake that he wanted now, for its advent was only the question of a few years more or less, and its triumph might be left to time. But dishonour was the "gangrene of a nation," and only the republic could cure that. Only the republic could win Rome, gather Istria and the Tyrol to the fold, and stretch a hand to the struggling nationalities of the East. But, if the republic came, it must be as a great "moralising education, to change men from serfs to citizens, and make them conscious of their mission, their strength and dignity." The republic must not mean revenge, or spoliation, or repudiation of debt, or violent anti-clericalism; and he was already beginning his crusade against Bakounine and the rough socialism, which was making some headway in the country.

He had promised that if he resumed his republican agitation, he would announce it frankly beforehand, and he did so now. Henceforth he gave it all his failing strength. Hopeless as their cause probably was at the best, the republicans had a strength now, which they had not had for fifteen years. The shame of Custozza and Lissa lay heavy on the nation, and the disillusioning had shaken faith in men and institutions. The sense of national dishonour maddened; civil war was often on men's lips; the King's prestige was foundering under the load of private vice and military failure. There was a mass of sullen, unformulated discontent, ready to find its way into socialist or republican channels. And though men were slow to follow Mazzini into his conspiracies, his long years of self-sacrificing labour, the mystery that wrapped the exile and conspirator, had given him a vast, almost mythical fascination for his countrymen. Forty thousand persons had signed the petition for his amnesty. Messina elected him time after time for its deputy, to have the election quashed as often by the Moderates in the Chamber. There was an angry feeling everywhere at the senseless intolerance, and the deputies of the Left did their best to bring the majority to reason. "While you are still in time," said a recent premier of Italy, "prevent Mazzini from having to close his eyes in a foreign land."

When at last he was amnestied at the beginning of the war, he refused to accept it as an act of grace or take his seat as deputy, and returned to Lugano. Much of his time henceforth was spent there with his friends, Giuseppe Nathan and his wife Sarah, "the best Italian friend I have, one of the best women I know," who nursed him in the attacks of illness, which came with ever greater frequency. Here he would watch "the beautiful calm-lulling lake, the beautiful, solemn, hopeful-death-teaching sunsets." When he was well, he kept to the habits of his English life, writing all day, delighting his friends in the evening with his brilliant talk. His conspiracies often took him to Genoa, where he lived in hiding in the house of a working family, from whose windows in the Salita di Oregina he had a superb view of the city and the Riviera. He nearly betrayed himself once by shouting from his window at a boy who was torturing a grasshopper. He kept in close touch with his English friends and English life. At Lugano he regularly read "the good, dry Spectator and the would-be wicked, never concluding Saturday Review." He made a custom of always returning to England to spend New Year's Day with the Stansfelds or others of their family, crossing the Alps in mid-winter at the peril of his health. He had painfully aged. His face had sunk and wore a deathly pallor; the thick, black hair was thin and grey. William Lloyd Garrison, seeing him after an interval of twenty-one years, sadly noted the change, though "the same dark, lustrous eyes" remained, "the same classical features, the same grand intellect, the same lofty and indomitable spirit, the same combination of true modesty and heroic assertion, of exceeding benignity and inspirational power." Work told heavily upon him now. Writing made him giddy, and his characters begin to lose their firmness. He was "living as if in a whirlwind, something like Paolo without Francesca, tired, worn out, longing for rest." But he would not slacken. "I am bound to those, whom I have organised for a purpose. I must, before I die, proclaim the republic in Italy."

While he was organising his "Republican Alliance," losing himself in the huge work of detail which all came to so little, the impatience in Italy was breaking down the precautions of the government. Ricasoli had been driven from office by his own maladroitness and Garibaldi's wild, aimless opposition. Rattazzi, the intriguer of 1862, came back to power, and began the double play, that was only too likely to lead to another Aspromonte. There is no need here to analyse the obscure and sordid story of his balancings between the Italian democrats and France. Garibaldi was impatient to win Rome, and cared comparatively little now whether it were in the name of monarchy or republic. His plan was to lead a raid, with or without the connivance of the government, into the small territory that still belonged to the Pope, meet and defeat the Papal mercenaries, and enter Rome. With Mazzini the republic was now a more vital thing than Unity. Only from a republican Rome could Italy perform her civilising mission to the world. "If Rome is to be annexed like the rest," he wrote, "I would rather it belonged to the Pope another three years." He disliked Garibaldi's scheme; he was not sanguine of its success; if it did succeed, it meant that the monarchy would go to Rome and the Pope stay there. He wished to see the Romans rise themselves and pronounce for a republic, confident that, if they did so, Italy would echo the republican cry, and the Pope would have to go. Sometimes, however, despairing of his own party, he was willing to compromise; and when at last Garibaldi started on his raid, and the government backed him, risking hostilities with France rather than have civil war, he forgot everything else in the hope of winning Rome, and urged his followers to join the raiders. Probably, if he had not been prostrated by illness, he would have gone himself. When Garibaldi's incapacity was only too apparent, and the French troops landed again for the defence of Rome, he saw that the volunteers were advancing into a trap, and implored Garibaldi to retire to Naples, raise the flag of revolution, and collect forces for another and more hopeful attack. Garibaldi, marching obstinately to defeat, was in no temper to listen to anybody, to Mazzini least of all. The mischief-makers had persuaded him that Mazzini was tampering with his men. There was no particle of truth in it, but the conviction entered Garibaldi's mind and never left it, while Mazzini lived.