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

On the other hand, the only official embodiment of popular feeling during the longest period of this rule had been the Town Council of Milan. The Central Congregation which had embodied the Austrian idea of a Lombard Constitution had been deprived of all freedom of utterance; but the Town Council was no doubt considered a more harmless body, and therefore had been allowed a certain amount of freedom. Since 1838 this Council had been presided over by Count Gabrio Casati, who has probably received more praise and more blame than he deserved. He seems to have been a man by no means deficient either in courage or patriotism; and had he continued to exercise his office during a period when passive resistance and formal protests were still useful weapons, he might have left a reputation somewhat like that of Speaker Lenthall or Lord Mayor Beckford in our own History. As it is, he was called on by circumstances to play a part in the struggle against Austria for which he was unfitted; and, while he has received undue praise from those who have accepted him as the embodiment of Milanese heroism, he has, on the other hand, been somewhat too fiercely condemned by those who noted his actual shortcomings, and could not make allowance for the difficulty of his position. During the first years of his office he did his best to bring before Metternich and his colleagues the evils which prevailed in the Government of Lombardy; and when the growth of the Italian movements led to the demonstrations in favour of the Italian Archbishop of Milan, and the solemn funeral to Confalonieri, Casati showed his sympathy with the popular feeling, and protested against the various acts of cruelty which were perpetrated in the suppression of these movements. Indeed, so prominent a part did Casati play in these matters that Sedlnitzky, the head of the Viennese police, wrote to Spaur to tell him to keep his eye on Casati, and to see that on the next occasion a Podestà of better principles was elected.

In October, 1847, Metternich added a new element to the confusion of the Milanese Government by sending a new agent to share the authority of the other rulers of Lombardy. This new emissary was Count Ficquelmont, whose work was of a much more definite character than his official position. This work was, in fact, the carrying out of that part of Menz's programme which had been modelled on the Circus shows of the Emperors of Rome. This was to be effected by the introduction of Fanny Ellsler and other people of a similar character to the pleasure-loving population of Milan. But the mission only succeeded in eliciting new signs of discontent. Ficquelmont and his protegées appear in the collection of Milanese caricatures; and a popular agreement to abstain from theatre-going was so rigorously carried out that, on one evening, only nine tickets were sold for the principal theatre in Milan.

But, before this remarkable abstention had come into force, a new character had been given to the Lombard resistance to Austrian rule. The Central Congregation of Lombardy had suddenly awakened to life; and the grievances under which the country suffered had been placed before their rulers at Vienna with a clearness previously unknown. The author of this sudden change affords one of those curious instances of men who do a great and important work for their country, and then pass suddenly into obscurity before their reputation has spread beyond narrow limits. Giambattista Nazari was a lawyer of Treviglio. All that seems to be known of him previously to his election to the Central Congregation was that he was a man of moderate fortune, with a large family; but both those facts may be taken as adding something to the courage of his public action. Treviglio is a town in the district of Bergamo; the people of that district, presumably with Austrian sanction, had accepted Nazari as their representative, and on December 8 or 9, 1847, he came forward in the Central Congregation to give, for the first time since 1815, free and peaceable expression to the wants of the people of Lombardy.

"Illustrious Congregation," he said, "it does not require much shrewdness to discern that for some time past there have been in this province manifest signs of discontent shown by all classes of citizens, as the rulers themselves ought to have known every time that they have tried to deaden its effects. And from whence does the agitation which has thus been produced arise—an agitation which increases the more they try to restrain it? From whence comes this universal disquiet? From whence this suspicion between governors and governed? The latter have, perhaps, just reasons to complain; and if they have, who ought to present those reasons to the Prince? For my part, I do not see that anyone can be better interpreters of the desires of our country than we; since, even in our private condition, we are sharers of the good and evil which are the fruits of good and evil institutions; and since, moreover, we have the precious office of discovering the needs of the populations and of presenting them at the Imperial Throne. In order, then, that that agreement between ruler and people which alone can secure the quiet of the State may be restored, I am resolved to propose that you should choose as many men as there are provinces in Lombardy, and give them a commission to examine specially into the present conditions of the country; and when they have discovered the causes of discontent, to refer them to the whole Congregation in order to give fitting opportunity for petitions. This I say and advise, from a desire for the public good, from affection for my Prince, and from a sentiment of duty. For as citizen I love my country, as subject I desire that the Emperor should be adored and blessed by all, and as deputy I should think that I had failed to keep my oaths if I did not say what was imposed on me by the duty of not being silent."

On December 11 this protest of Nazari's was presented in due form to the rulers of Milan, and produced from them the sternest rebukes. The awkward point of the protest was that, both in form and substance, it was undoubtedly legal, and could not therefore be wholly disregarded. Accordingly, Rainieri told Spaur that it was desirable that a commission should be appointed; but that, instead of being composed of representatives chosen from the Lombard provinces, it should be limited to those few people who were noted for their zeal and attachment to the Austrian Government. Further, such commissioners were not to assume that discontent existed, nor even to make mention of such discontent in their discussions. At the same time, Nazari was to be told that he had acted irregularly in bringing forward his motion, and Torresani was to be directed to keep a special watch on this dangerous agitator.

Spaur thereupon addressed the Congregation, telling them that the Viceroy had consented to Nazari's proposal, provided that the Congregation limited itself strictly to the powers entrusted to it by the Constitution; and, further, that the Government was occupying itself with the wishes of the Lombard provinces, and that the Viceroy had left to Spaur's decision the appointment of the members of the Commission. Spaur concluded with a rebuke to Nazari for the want of confidence that he had shown in him, as President of the Congregation, in not communicating to him his intended motion. Nazari answered that he had wished to take upon himself the sole responsibility of his act; and that, as to the proposed previous application to Spaur, he would rather be wanting in confidence than respect; for that if he had told Spaur of his intention, and Spaur had tried to persuade him to be silent, he would have been compelled to be rude enough to disobey him.

In the meantime the motion had created the greatest enthusiasm, and many Milanese hastened to pay their respects to Nazari; four thousand visiting cards were left on him, and petitions flocked in from various places in support of his movement. In the Provincial Congregation of Milan, indeed, the supporters of Nazari encountered the same kind of official obstruction which their leader had met with in the Central Congregation of Lombardy, for the President refused to join his colleagues in signing the petition. Thereupon the members of that body threatened to resign; and the Viceroy, who had just declared Nazari's protest irregular, urged the President to yield. But the movement had spread far into the provinces. Many of the provincial towns had their own causes of grievance against the centralizers of Vienna. Pavia had been deprived of its arsenal; Brescia had been compelled to close its armourers' shops, Bergamo its ironmongeries; Cremona had lost one trade, Salo another; Como and other towns had lost their linen trade. Everywhere there had been signs of the sucking out of the strength of the country by the Central Government at Vienna. Nazari's protest, therefore, naturally attracted sympathy far beyond Milanese circles; and amongst other petitions came one from the old Lombard capital of Pavia asking that it might be specially represented on the Commission proposed by Nazari, and suggesting special reforms needed in Lombardy and Venetia.

But by far the most remarkable of the Lombard petitions produced by Nazari's protest was one which was apparently signed by the Lombards irrespective of their provincial divisions. In this the petitioners call upon the Central Congregation to keep alive the courage which had been shown by Nazari's protest. They remind the deputies of the promises previously made by the Austrian Government, and the breach of them. They declare that "The Lombards were formerly distracted by discordant hopes, but are now almost miraculously unanimous in their desires;" and they call on the deputies "to speak out the whole truth, to proclaim that they have faith in God, and that they leave to others the infamy of lying."... They call upon them "To declare the abuses of the Tribunals which are concealed by secret bribery; the arrogance of the police, the puerile corrections of the censorship; but above all to proclaim the great truth of nationality, to demand a federal union, and to remind Austria of her proclamation of April 16, 1815, in which she promised to conform the institutions of Lombardy to the character of the Italians. Ten million Italians are now united by an agreement between princes and people, defended by a flourishing army, and sanctioned by the authority of the Pope." The petitioners then proceed to call attention to the success of Hungary in its Constitutional struggle; and they point out that, while Austria had held out hopes of a special representation for Lombardy and Venetia, she had, in fact, drawn the power more and more to Vienna, while the Press had been subjected to the most petty persecutions. "An invisible network of information, conjectures, suspicions, has surrounded all the citizens. The Government is arbitrary both by ignorance and violence. It is only the representatives of the people who can explain that; and they must show that all these evils spring from the first great falsehood of a people that has not the life of a people, of a kingdom that has not the life of a kingdom. Lombardy is governed by foreign laws and foreign persons. It is taxed for the benefit of Austrian industries, while a barrier of customs duties separates it from Italy."

It is worth noting that now, for the first time, the leaders of Italian political movements began to consider the special grievances of the poor. As Mazzini had roused the working men to care for the liberty and unity of their country, so a common suffering had gradually taught the wealthier leaders to care for the troubles of their poorer neighbours; and these petitions enumerate a number of taxes which specially weighed on the poor. The tax on salt was the material burden most generally felt; while the lottery, with its deliberate encouragement of the spirit of gambling, increased the moral loathing of the Lombards for the Austrian rule. But the crushing out of national feeling and intellectual life were still the two main complaints of these petitioners; and, besides the more general proofs of these mentioned above, the petitioners dwelt with great emphasis on the conscription which carried off the youth of the country for eight years. And they finally demand that the representatives of the people should ask for "A complete and irrevocable separation in every branch of the administration; that they should be governed by a person, not by a foreign people;" and that "their own nationality, history, language, and brotherhood with other Italians should not be considered as crime and rebellion." They finally close with the words, "To-day you can still speak of peace. The future is in the hands of the God of Justice."

The petition of Nazari had, as already mentioned, produced effects in the Lombard provinces; but it had also called out sympathy, though a little more slowly, in the neighbouring province of Venetia. There the hand of Austria seemed to have weighed more heavily than even in Milan. Perhaps the absence of old traditions of internal freedom, and the terrible corruption which had hastened the fall of its independence, may have had something to do with the silence of Venice. Perhaps, too, the sense of the singular baseness of the crime, by which they had become possessed of the Venetian district, may have goaded the Austrians into greater tyranny than even that which they exercised in their other dominions. But, whatever was the cause, there seems to be no doubt, as one of the historians of the time puts it, that Venice was then reckoned "the least sturdy city in the kingdom, and the one least disposed to movement." But even Venice could not be shut out from the influence of the Italian spirit, and the first sign of awakening life was called out, curiously enough, by a Buonaparte. The Prince of Canino, who had already succeeded in turning Scientific Congresses at Genoa and Milan into opportunities for political demonstrations, had come, in September, 1847, to Venice to preside in the Geological Section of the Congress. There he had introduced a discourse on Pius IX., which was received with loud applause; and when the Austrian police compelled him to leave the State, people followed him on his road with cheers of sympathy. But the spark which Charles Buonaparte had lighted required other hands to keep it alive; and it appeared that there was no one in the Venetian Congregation bold enough to take up the part which had been played at Milan by Nazari.