Lord William Bentinck attempted a protest in the English House of Commons against a second destruction of Sicilian independence; but Castlereagh defeated the motion, and Sicily fell back under Neapolitan rule.
Metternich specially devoted himself to restoring order in Lombardy. He established an Aulic Council at Vienna to superintend the affairs in that province, so as to crush out still further any local independence. At the same time a special committee was formed at Milan to enquire into the conspiracy. Several leading conspirators were arrested. One tried to save his friends by confessing his own fault; but the confession was used as a new clue by the police. Confalonieri was urged to save himself by flight; but he answered, "I will not retire in face of the storm which I wish to confront. Let what God will become of me!" He was soon after arrested; and, after being kept in doubt of his fate for nearly two years, he was condemned to death. His case excited sympathy even in Vienna, where the Empress interceded for his life; and at last, after long entreaty, his sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life in the fortress of Spielberg. There Metternich in vain tried to extort from him the betrayal of his fellow-conspirators. But the crafty statesman little knew the result of this treatment. One of those who suffered imprisonment about the same time describes the effect of Confalonieri's influence by contrasting him with the head of the Austrian police in Lombardy. "Confalonieri and Salvotti seemed to represent, in the eyes of the Milanese, the angel of Liberty and the demon of Slavery, striving not more for the success of their respective causes than for the triumph of their individual personalities. About Confalonieri gathered the prayers of honest people, of men of feeling hearts, who saw in him an unfortunate persecuted being whom adversity clothed with all the lustre of devotion and courage."
This passage strikingly exhibits that noble, but illogical, popular instinct which so often confuses the hero and martyr with the mere victim of unjust oppression. Confalonieri had undoubtedly organized an insurrection, and his arrest and imprisonment might fairly be justified by the ordinary rights of self-defence which exist in every Government. Yet the instinct of horror and pity for this imprisonment had a truth deeper than logic. Under the system of government then prevailing, the prison or the scaffold was the natural place for such men; but the pity of it was that a system of government should prevail which logically necessitated the imprisonment of Confalonieri and the triumph of Metternich. And it was a sign of the deep folly of the latter that he called the attention of the public to this fact, and provided the cause of Italian unity with its first prominent martyr. The stories of Confalonieri's imprisonment spread from mouth to mouth, and were preserved as tender memorials. It was told, for instance, how, when his wife had visited him, he had tried to preserve the cushion on which her tears had fallen, and how the guards had insisted on taking it from him; how his friends had devised a plan for his escape, and he had refused to avail himself of it because his fellow-prisoners would not be able to escape with him; and lastly, of the continual pressure which had been brought to bear upon him to reveal the secrets of his fellow-conspirators, and his steady refusal to purchase health and liberty by their betrayal.
The defeat which despotism had sustained by the imprisonment, and still more by the persecutions, of Confalonieri would hereafter be plain. At present Metternich might think that he had conquered in Lombardy; but elsewhere he could not feel sure of victory, for there came to him at this time two unmistakeable warnings that he was no longer to be allowed to reign undisturbed in Europe.
Even at that very Congress of Laybach which succeeded in crushing out the independence of Naples, the question of Greece, which could not be so easily disposed of, came before the Powers, and puzzled considerably the mind of Metternich. The pietistic maunderings of Alexander might be made use of in defence of the rights of Roman Catholic kings, but he could not be persuaded that the principles of the Christian religion justified him in supporting the tyranny of the Turks over Christian populations. He had indeed abandoned the Wallachian leader, Alexander Ypsilanti, when he discovered that the rising in Wallachia was simultaneous with the risings in Naples and Piedmont; but the Greeks could not so easily be persuaded that their patron, the Czar of Russia, had deserted their cause.
The Hetairiai of Wallachia and Greece had done the same work which the Carbonari had accomplished in Spain and Italy; and on April 4, 1821, the Greeks suddenly rose at Patras and massacred the whole Turkish population. In three months the southern part of Greece was free; and by January, 1822, a Provisional Government had been formed, with Alexander Mavrocordatos at its head.
Religious feeling, classical sentiment, and the loathing of the barbarous rule of the Turks combined to rouse in Europe an amount of sympathy which Metternich could not afford to disregard. He admitted the right of Alexander of Russia to sympathise with the Greeks, both on the ground of Christian sentiment and on the pretext of rights granted by previous treaties with Turkey; and he even intervened diplomatically to secure concessions from the Porte to its Christian subjects.
But, though he felt the danger of the precedent which even this amount of concession to the revolutionary spirit would cause, Metternich yet believed that, by timely compromise and judicious diplomacy, he could bring back Alexander to sounder principles. The influence of Capo d'Istria was indeed an antagonistic power in the Court of St. Petersburg; but, on the other hand, Tatischeff, the rival minister at the Russian Court, seems to have been a mere tool of Metternich, and could be used effectively for the interests of Austria.
So successfully did this diplomacy work, in Metternich's opinion, that on May 31, 1822, he writes exultingly in his memoirs, that he has "broken the work of Peter the Great, strengthened the Porte against Russia, and substituted Austrian and English influence for Russian in Eastern Europe." So he wrote in May; in August of the same year "that upright and enlightened statesman," Lord Londonderry, committed suicide. Then George Canning became Minister for Foreign Affairs, and hastened to cut the knot which linked the interests of Austria with those of England.
The change in England's policy soon became evident. No doubt the feeling of dislike to Metternich had been gradually growing in that country. Its representatives had held aloof even from the Congress of Laybach; and when, in 1822, the Powers met again at Verona to encourage the French Cabinet in their attempt to restore Ferdinand of Spain, England entered a decided protest against the proceedings of the Congress. Nor did the protest remain a barren one. The invasion of Spain by the French was followed by the recognition of the independence of the Spanish colonies by England; and when the absolutist movement threatened to spread to Portugal, Canning despatched troops to protect the freedom and independence of that country.