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

Under these circumstances, Daniele Manin, the lawyer, who had already opposed the Austrian Government about the Lombardo-Venetian railway, came forward to take upon himself the office from which the official members of the Congregation had shrunk. He presented a petition calling on the members of the Venetian Congregation to imitate the example of Nazari, ending his appeal with the words, "It is unjust and injurious to suppose that the Government has granted to this kingdom a sham national representation."

This address of Manin's was sent to the Congregation on December 21st. On the same day Niccolo Tommaseo addressed a letter to Baron von Kübeck, one of the Viennese ministry, asking for permission to print a discourse which he had just delivered at Venice on the Austrian press law. In this discourse he had shown that the Austrian law was in theory more liberal than the Piedmontese law, but that it was not carried out, a fact which he illustrated by the signatures to a petition which was then being circulated in favour of the proper enforcement of the Austrian law. "If this petition be granted," said Tommaseo, "the country will find peace, and Austria an honourable security." He ended with a remarkable warning—"If the movements of the brothers Bandiera alarmed the Austrian Government, how much more will there be danger now that the altar is no longer on the side of the throne?"

Tommaseo had already been marked out by the Government as a dangerous person. He had been the first to introduce Mazzini to the public by securing the publication of his article on Dante which had been refused by the "Antologia," and he had joined with Mazzini in the revolutionary struggle of 1833. It was therefore as a pardoned man that he had been allowed to return to Venice; and the authorities were doubly indignant that he should venture to come forward again. But Manin's attempt to stir up the Venetian Congregation attracted the hostility of the Government more than Tommaseo's petition. He had already protested against a new form of official cruelty—the shutting up of a political prisoner in a lunatic asylum; and Palffy had threatened to let the prisoner out and shut up Manin instead. But it seemed for a time as if his attempt to stir up the Venetian Congregation would fail, for he could get no member to present his petition for him. Nothing daunted, however, he printed it, and sent it himself to the Congregation. This act soon attracted attention, and several provincial governments sent in similar petitions.

Still the Venetian Congregation would not stir; so, on January 8, Manin sent in a second petition, in which he no longer confined himself to vague appeals, but set forth the necessary programme of reform. He demanded that the laws should be published and obeyed, that no obedience should be required to unpublished laws, and that the territories of Lombardy and Venetia should form a separate kingdom, not a province, "still less a mere outlying village of Vienna. We ought to be governed," he said, "according to our character and customs; to have a true national representation, and a moderately free press which could control and enlighten the chiefs of the Government and the representatives of the nation."... "The germs planted by the laws of 1815 had not developed, and only a madman or an archæologist would refer to them as a guide." He then proceeded to demand that the Viceroy of Lombardo-Venetia should be completely independent of all but the Emperor; that the finances and the army should also be separated from the government at Vienna; that the communal governments should be more independent than at present, and that trials should be by jury, and should be oral and public; that the power of the police should be limited, and that a moderate law should be substituted for the existing censorship of the Press; that a civic guard should be granted; that citizens should be made equal before the law; that Jewish disabilities and feudal tenures should be abolished, and that there should be a general revision of the laws.

Manin's petition alarmed the timid spirits of the Congregation; and one of them named Moncenigo sent it to Governor Palffy. Manin had already protested against the appointment of this Moncenigo on the sham Commission of Enquiry which the Viceroy had granted; and no doubt personal irritation combined with political cowardice to prompt Moncenigo's breach of confidence. But, whatever its motives, this act of servility produced a protest from another lawyer, who, while denouncing Moncenigo's act as unworthy of the dignity of a commissioner, alluded to the period of Napoleon's rule as one of greater freedom than had ever been allowed by Austria. The police had in the meantime been preparing a report for the criminal tribunal; and on January 19, 1848, Manin was suddenly seized and carried off to prison on the charge of disturbing the public peace.

In the meantime the Milanese movement had been assuming a more serious character. Demonstrations at the theatre, or abstentions from it, songs and other public expressions of opinion, were continually alarming the authorities. That separation, too, between the altar and the throne, to which Tommaseo had called attention, was even more marked in Milan than in Venice; and Radetzky a little later ordered his soldiers not to attend the sermons or the confessional of the Milanese clergy, "since they are our enemies." But this ferocious commander was resolved at all hazards to drive the Milanese to extremities; and he soon found an opportunity for carrying out his plans. One of the most universal forms of protest against the Government in Lombardy was the determined abstention from tobacco on the ground that it was a Government monopoly. This protest began on January 1, 1848, and it seemed at first as if it would be allowed to pass without remark. But Radetzky, in spite of the advice of Torresani, ordered his soldiers to appear in public, smoking. This order was carried out on January 2, 1848. In some parts of the town this demonstration provoked nothing but a few hisses from the crowd; but in one part, where the police and soldiers had collected in large numbers and many citizens had gathered to watch the smokers, the soldiers suddenly turned upon the crowd with their bayonets and charged them. Casati remonstrated with Torresani, but could get no redress, and was even himself assaulted by the police when he appealed to them.

This, however, was merely the preliminary of Radetzky's proceedings. The following afternoon a much larger force of soldiers appeared in Milan, and every one of them was smoking. The crowd gathered as before, and was, as usual, largely composed of boys. Suddenly two of the sergeants gave a signal, and the soldiers, drawing their swords, rushed upon the crowd, wounding many boys seriously and killing an old man of seventy-four. The crowd fled at the attack; but the soldiers followed them, breaking into the shops in which they took refuge, destroying what they found there, and killing or wounding those whom they came across. In one place they broke into an inn, gave the hostess several severe wounds in the head, besides beating violently a little girl of four years old.

Throughout the city these scenes of barbarity continued during the greater part of the day, and naturally aroused the most tremendous indignation. Similar smoking demonstrations took place in Brescia, Cremona, and Mantua; but in these places they seem to have passed off without a riot. In Pavia and Padua, on the other hand, the smokers came into collision with the students, who fought with their bare fists against the soldiers' swords. In Milan the indignation was not confined to the opponents of Austria. Monsignore Oppizzoni, who was on the whole a supporter of the Government, headed a deputation to the Viceroy in which he used these words:—"Your Highness, I am old, and have seen many things. I saw the profanation of the Jacobins and the cruelty of the Russians; but I never saw nor heard of before such atrocious acts as have happened in the days just past."

Companies of ladies met at the Casa Borromeo to collect funds for the wounded. In all the principal cities of Lombardy funeral rites were performed for those who had died in the riots; and the people refused to walk in the Corso Francesco, which had been the scene of the principal massacre, and went instead to another street, which they renamed the Corso Pio Nono. Even some of those who had served the Austrian Government raised a protest against these atrocities. Count Guicciardini, for such a protest, was deprived of his office; while the Councillor, Angelo Decio, declared that he would resign if the Government would not put a restraint on the undisciplined soldiers. The Viceroy, taken aback at this sudden outburst of indignation, promised reforms and dismissed some of the troops from Milan.

But the saner members of the Austrian Government had completely lost hold of affairs, and Radetzky had become the sole ruler of Milan. He harangued his troops in one of those bombastic addresses whose absurdity seemed to take even a deeper root in men's minds than the atrocity of his acts. "Let us not," he said, "be forced to open the wings of the Austrian eagle which have never yet been clipped." This calm ignoring of Austerlitz and Marengo specially tickled the fancy of the Milanese; more particularly as Radetzky was credited, whether justly or unjustly, with having played a somewhat ignominious part in the latter battle. A few utterly inadequate and trivial reforms were won from Metternich by the spectacle of the Sicilian revolution, the growing popularity of the Pope, and the Neapolitan Constitution. On January 18 it was proposed that the Viceroy should transfer himself from Milan to Verona; that he should be surrounded by persons better informed than his subordinates were; that the Government of Milan should be made more strong; and that some of the members of the Central Congregation of Milan should be summoned to Vienna. How absurdly unlike these concessions were to the real wishes and needs of the Lombard people it is scarcely necessary to point out; but, had the concessions been far more important, they would have been utterly worthless while they were accompanied by the closing of the clubs, the arrest of suspected persons, and, above all, while Radetzky still ruled Milan.