When, then, the reforming zeal of Joseph II. was extended to Transylvania, the Roumanians alone hailed it with delight; for, while, in his eagerness for a united Empire, the Emperor tried to sweep away all the special organizations of separate self-government so dear to the ruling races, he introduced sweeping reforms in favour of the serfs. He put forth an Edict, securing to the peasant an amount of liberty not hitherto enjoyed by him. No peasant was to be hindered from marriage, or from studying in other places, or from following different kinds of work; none was to be turned out of his village or land at bidding of the landlord; the power of the landlord to impose new burdens (already restricted by the Urbarium of Maria Theresa) was to be still further limited; and the county officials were to protect the dependant from any oppression of his landlord. The hopes of the Roumanians were naturally raised by this Edict; and many of them believed, when a general conscription followed, that by entering the army they could escape serfdom. The lords, backed by many of the officials, hindered this attempt, and interfered to prevent the carrying out of the Edict. Thereupon the Roumanians rose in insurrection, under two leaders, Hora and Kloska; and all those horrors followed which are naturally connected with an agrarian rising of uncivilized serfs, and the violent suppression of it by hardly more civilized tyrants.
But among the bishops of the Roumanians, to whom they always granted great authority, were some who saw a better way than insurrection for the cure of the sufferings of their countrymen. Having observed that when the three dominant races were protesting against the reforms of Joseph II. they had appealed continually to historic rights, these Roumanian leaders drew up a petition, which was called the "Libellus Wallachorum," and was presented to the Diet of 1791. It was in this document that the Roumanians first put forward that claim to descent from the ancient Romans which has ever since exercised such influence on the imagination of this singular race. The petition further declared that, in the first inroad of the barbarians, the Roumanians had continued to maintain that Christianity which they had learned under the Roman Empire; and that when the Magyars came into the country, the Roumanians had voluntarily accepted the Magyar chief as their leader; that though their name was then changed by the invaders from Roumanians into Wallachs, their independent rights were still secured. They went on to say that even the union of the three ruling races in 1438 had not been intended originally to deprive the Roumanians of their rights; it was not till the seventeenth century that they had been crushed down into their present position. They therefore entreated that they might be restored to all the civil and political rights which they had possessed in the fifteenth century; that the clergy of the Greek Church, to which they belonged, might be placed on an equality with those of other religions; and that, wherever the Roumanians had a majority in any villages, those villages might be called by Roumanian names. The reading of this petition was received by the representatives of the three ruling races, after a brief silence, with fierce protests; only the Saxons thought it necessary to make even vague promises of concession; and those promises were not fulfilled.
But, when this demand had once been put into form, the memory of it lingered on among the Roumanians; and in 1842, during the general wakening of national feeling, they attempted again to make an appeal to the Transylvanian Diet for special recognition. Again they failed; but their leaders did not, therefore, lose heart. Some of them, indeed, were disposed to resort to their old method of insurrection; and a few years later they rose, under the leadership of a woman named Catherine Varga, and for a long time held their own against the Magyar officials. But it is to the suppressor of this movement, rather than to its leader, that the Roumanians look back as their national hero. This was Andreas Schaguna, who, at the time of Catherine Varga's insurrection, was holding the position of Archimandrite. He came down to the village, where the Magyar officials had not dared to penetrate, rebuked the Roumanians for their turbulence, and carried off Catherine Varga from their midst, no one daring to resist. But this, though a striking, was not a characteristic exercise of his authority. He was far from thinking that force was a remedy for the grievances of the Roumanians; and he devoted time and thought to the foundation of schools and the education of the people. This education he carried out, not by mere teaching, but by seeking out and advising those whom he saw fitted for more intellectual occupations, and helping them to become lawyers and doctors. Last, but by no means least, he tried to reduce into a more literary form the Roumanian language.
But it was not only in their own ranks that the Roumanians were now finding champions for their national cause. In 1842 appeared a pamphlet by a Saxon clergyman, named Stephen Roth, in which the writer protested against the attempt of the Magyars to crash out the rival languages in Transylvania; for this, as he pointed out, was a new form of tyranny. In North Hungary, indeed, the movement had been accompanied by an attempt to improve the condition of the peasant; and the Magyar language was held out to him as a new boon to be added to the abolition of feudal dues. But in Transylvania little or nothing had been done by the Magyars to improve the condition of the peasant; and therefore there could be no talk of benefits there. If there were to be one official language in Transylvania, it ought, urged Roth, to be the language of the majority of the population, that is, Roumanian; and though it was undesirable to make this or any other language universal, it was certain that the ruling race would never be able to Magyarize the Roumanians; who might, however, be pacified by greater respect for their dignity as men, completer recognition of their form of Christianity, better means of education, provision for material need, and a freer position. This pamphlet of Roth's was notable, as a sign of sympathy felt by a member of the most cultivated race in Transylvania for the complaints of the most uncivilized one. But it is no reproach to Roth to say that he was thinking, at the time, as much of maintaining the rights of his own race as of redressing the wrongs of the Roumanians. For though the Magyars did not, as yet, venture to lord it over a German People as they did over Slav and Roumanian, they were yet trying, by various underhand methods, to weaken the devotion of the Saxons to their race and language. Roth and his friends tried to counteract this, partly by founding unions for the encouragement of German culture; and also by the more effective way of introducing German immigrants from the old country. A movement of a similar kind had been inaugurated by Maria Theresa about 1731; and for more than forty years it had been carried on with success; the German Protestants, who had been driven out of other countries, finding a natural refuge in the wholly Protestant Saxon settlement of Transylvania. Strange to say, Joseph II. does not seem to have carried on his mother's work; perhaps he had made himself too unpopular in Transylvania to do it with success. But Roth had special friends in the University of Würtemberg; and in spite of the Liberal tendencies of the King of that State, the taxation in that country was specially heavy. When, then, in 1845, Roth went to Würtemberg, so many citizens of that State consented to emigrate to Transylvania in the following year that the Government at Vienna and the Magyars at Pesth became alike alarmed. Ferdinand was persuaded that this was a Protestant invasion, and probably, also, a Communistic attempt. The Magyars, on the other hand, cried out that this was part of an attempt to Germanize Transylvania. Roth defended his cause, and refuted the charge of Protestant propagandism by showing that Roman Catholic families were among the emigrants; while, as to the idea of a Communistic proletariat, many of those who had emigrated were well provided with money, and some had been encouraged by the former impulse given to the movement by the Viennese Government. But a vague prejudice, once excited, is rarely got rid of by mere statements of fact; and the Governments, both at Vienna and Pesth, threw such difficulties in the way of the emigrants, that they had to suffer great misery on their journey; and these sufferings tended (with other grounds of prejudice) to excite much indignation against Roth. Nor would the Magyars, at any rate, feel more friendly to him when they found that an organ of the Croatian patriots at Agram claimed him as an ally against the overbearing demands of the Magyars.
Thus, then, it is clear that, during the period from 1840 to 1846, there was a general awakening both in Germany and Hungary of strong national feelings. In Germany those feelings, gathering round a common language and literature, prepared the way directly for a movement towards freedom; while in Hungary the divisions of races and languages hindered the full benefits of the revival, and gave a handle to the champions of despotism. Yet whether among Magyars, Croats, Roumanians, or Saxons, the movement was in itself a healthy one, tending to newer and more natural life, and weakening the traditions of Viennese officialism.
CHAPTER V.
DESPOTISM RETIRING BEFORE CONSTITUTIONALISM, 1844-DECEMBER, 1847.
The Bandiera insurrection. Its results.—Career of Cesare Balbo, "Le Speranze d'Italia."—Vincenzo Gioberti. "Il Primato degli Italiani."—The insurrection of Rimini. "Ultimi casi di Romagna."—The risings in Galicia.—History of Cracow since 1815.—Causes of the failure of the Galician movement.—The seizure of Cracow. Palmerston's utterances thereon.—Change in Charles Albert's position.—The Ticino treaties.—Mistake of Solaro della Margherita.—"Long live the King of Italy!"—D'Azeglio's policy.—Aurelio Saffi.—Death of Gregory XVI.—State of Roman Government.—Parties in the Conclave.—Election of Pius IX.—His character and career.—The amnesty. Its effect.—Ciceruacchio. His work.—The Congress at Genoa.—Charles Lucien Bonaparte.—Death of Confalonieri.—State of Milan.—Pio Nono's reforms.—The clerical conspiracy.—The occupation of Ferrara. Its effect on Italian feeling.—State of Tuscany.—The Duke of Lucca.—Absorption of Lucca in Tuscany.—The struggle with Modena.—The massacre of Fivizzano.—Occupation of Parma and Modena by Austria.—State of Switzerland.—Position of Bern and Zurich.—The Concordat of Seven.—The refugee question in 1838.—The Aargau monasteries.—The Sonderbund.—The Jesuit question.—Metternich's feelings, real and pretended.—Palmerston's attitude.—Relations between Metternich and Guizot.—The decision of the Swiss Diet.—The Sonderbund war.—Effect of the Federal victory.—The Schleswig-Holstein question.—The official view and the popular view.—Metternich's way out of the difficulty.—Effect of the movement on Germany and Prussia.—State of Europe at outbreak of Sicilian insurrection.
The divisions of opinion, which had been hindering progress in Hungary, had, in the meantime, been growing less prominent in Italy; so that the more active political leaders in the latter country were, for a time at least, aiming at a common programme. Yet this point had only been reached after much suffering and failure. Conspiracies with various objects had been rife in Italy, especially in the Papal States; but, though some passing attention was attracted by the cruelties exercised in their suppression, these risings had left apparently little mark on the country. But an insurrection took place in 1844 which proved a turning-point in Italian politics. The character and circumstances of the leaders excited a sympathy which impressed their memories on the hearts of their countrymen; while the failure of the rising led to a change in the general tactics of the Italian Liberals.
The rising in question was that organized by the brothers Emilio and Attilio Bandiera. These youths were the sons of a Venetian nobleman who was an admiral in the Austrian service, and who had attracted attention in 1831 by violating the terms of the capitulation of Ancona, and attempting to seize the exiles who, under protection of that treaty, were on their way to France. Emilio and Attilio had been compelled, while still boys, to enter the service of Austria; but they soon began to feel a loathing for the foreign rulers of their country; and, while in this state of mind, they came into contact with some of those who were already acting with the Giovine Italia. At last, in 1842, Attilio Bandiera wrote to Mazzini expressing the esteem and love he had learned to feel for him, his desire to co-operate with him, and his belief that the Italian cause was but a part of the cause of humanity.