The Revolutionary Movement of 1848-9 in Italy, Austria-Hungary, and Germany / With Some Examination of the Previous Thirty-three Years

by C. Edmund Maurice

It was, perhaps, the greatest proof of this strange fascination that Mazzini, Republican as he was, yet thought it well to yield to the strong feeling of the Liberals of Italy, and to give Charles Albert one more chance of playing the part of a leader.

Mazzini, therefore, addressed to the new King a letter in which he called his attention to the enthusiasm with which his accession was greeted. "There is not a heart in Italy whose pulse did not quicken at the news of your accession. There is not an eye in Europe that is not turned to watch your first steps in the career now open to you." He told him that the Italians were ready to believe that his desertion of their cause was the mere result of circumstances; and that, being at last free to act according to his own tendencies, the new King would carry out the promises that he had first made as a Prince. He warned him that a system of terror would only provoke reprisals; and that a system of partial concessions would not only fail to satisfy the wishes of the people, but would have an arbitrary and capricious character which would increase the existing irritation. "The people are no longer to be quieted by a few concessions. They seek the recognition of those rights of humanity which have been withheld from them for ages. They demand laws and liberty, independence and union. Divided, dismembered, and oppressed, they have neither name nor country. They have heard themselves stigmatised by the foreigner as the Helot Nation. They have seen free men visit their country, and declare it the land of the dead. They have drained the cup of slavery to the dregs; but they have sworn never to fill it again." Mazzini then calls on Charles Albert to put himself more definitely at the head of a movement for Italian Independence, and to become the King of a united Italy. The letter concludes with these words: "Sire, I have spoken to you the truth. The men of freedom await your answer in your deeds. Whatever that answer be, rest assured that posterity will either hail your name as the greatest of men, or the last of Italian tyrants. Take your choice."

Before we consider Charles Albert's answer, we must call to mind, once more, his position. He came to the throne in the very crisis of a conspiracy against his predecessor, and had hardly been able to realize what had been the intention of the conspirators towards himself. The Duke of Modena, who had plotted to remove him from the succession (a proposal discussed at some length in the Congress of Laybach), had just recovered his own Dukedom by Austrian help, and was no doubt watching with eager eyes any false step which his rival might make. Charles Albert, with all his liberal sympathies, was proud of being a prince of the House of Savoy; and he was surrounded by the courtiers of Charles Felix, who must have persuaded him that the dignity and independence of that House could only be maintained by opposition to the movement for reform.

There was, too, another influence which must never be forgotten in estimating the difficulties of Charles Albert. He was a strong Roman Catholic, at a time when the connection between reverence for the Pope and reverence for the Church was, perhaps, closer than it had been at most previous periods of the history of the Papacy. The commonplace tyrannies of Leo XII. and Pius VIII. had not wholly dispelled the halo which the heroic attitude of Pius VII.'s early days had shed round the Papacy; and it seems highly probable that the most puzzling act of Charles Albert's life, his share in the French invasion of Spain, had been due, to a large extent, to that strong religious sentiment which gathered in so peculiar a manner round the kings of Spain. A man influenced by such sentiments could not fail to remark that the most vigorous and determined of the insurgents of 1831 had directed their attacks against the Papacy; and it might well seem to him that a letter which called on him to oppose the Austrian restorers of the papal power was the utterance of an enemy to the religion of the country.

But the fact was, as Mazzini afterwards confessed, that any king who was to undertake the work which he had suggested to Charles Albert must possess at once "genius, Napoleonic energy, and the highest virtue. Genius, in order to conceive the idea of the enterprize and the conditions of victory; energy, not to front its dangers—for to a man of genius they would be few and brief—but to dare to break at once with every tie of family or alliance, and the habits and necessities of any existence distinct and removed from that of the people, and to extricate himself both from the web of diplomacy and the counsels of wicked or cowardly advisers; virtue enough voluntarily to renounce a portion at least of his actual power; for it is only by redeeming them from slavery that a people may be roused to battle and to sacrifice."

If such were the qualities required by any prince who undertook this office, what must have been needed from one who had to contend with a Power which had ten years before helped to crush out the aspirations of his people, and which was just then triumphantly ruling in the centre of Italy? A man of genius might have undertaken the task; Charles Albert was only a man who "would and would not." But, if Charles Albert refused to listen to Mazzini's appeal, he had no alternative but to protest against it; and he did so by banishing Mazzini, under pain of imprisonment if he should return to Italy.

Nevertheless, the letter had produced its effect on the nation. The demand for the unity of Italy had been openly and definitely made, and put forward as a boon to be struggled for by Italians, and not to be conferred by a foreign conqueror. The attention of the youth of Italy was at once attracted to the writer of the letter, and none the less that he was an exile. The personal fascination which he exercised even over casual observers may be gathered from the following letter, which seems to refer to this period. It was written by one of his fellow-exiles, describing his first sight of Mazzini in the rifle ground at Marseilles.

"I went into the ground, and, looking round, saw a young man leaning on his rifle, watching the shooters, and waiting for his turn. He was about 5ft. 8in. high, and slightly made; he was dressed in black Genoa velvet, with a large Republican hat; his long curling black hair, which fell upon his shoulders, the extreme freshness of his clear olive complexion, the chiselled delicacy of his regular and beautiful features, aided by his very youthful look, and sweetness and openness of expression, would have made his appearance almost too feminine, if it had not been for his noble forehead, the power of firmness and decision that was mingled with their gaiety and sweetness in the bright flashes of his dark eyes, and in the varying expression of his mouth, together with his small and beautiful moustache and beard. Altogether, he was at that time the most beautiful being, male or female, that I had ever seen, and I have not since seen his equal. I had read what he had published; I had heard of what he had done and suffered, and the moment I saw him I knew it could be no other than Joseph Mazzini."

It was under such auspices that the Society of Young Italy was founded. The general drift of the principles of that Society has already been sufficiently indicated in the account of Mazzini's meditations in the fortress of Savona. It was to make Italy free, united, Republican, recognizing duty to God and man as the basis of national life, rather than the mere assertion of rights. But the great point which distinguished it from all the other societies which had preceded it was that, instead of trusting to the mysterious effect of symbols, and the power of a few leaders to induce the main body of Italians blindly to accept their orders, it openly proclaimed its creed before the world, and even in the articles of association set forth the full arguments on which it grounded the defence of the special objects which it advocated. And the principles were further to be preached in a journal which was to be called, like the Society, "Giovine Italia."

But while he put forward a definitely Republican programme, Mazzini never fell into the French mistake of thinking that a knot of men, monopolizing power to themselves, can, by merely calling themselves Republicans, make the government of a nation a Republic. While he fully hoped, by education, to induce the Italians to accept a Republican Government, he was quite prepared to admit the possibility of failure in that attempt, and to accept the consequence as a consistent democrat. This is distinctly stated in the first plan of Young Italy.