CHAPTER VII
THE CONGRESS OF PARIS
With the foreboding that this would be the last act of his political life, Cavour started on the mission which he had almost no choice but to assume, in spite of his extreme repugnance for the rôle of diplomatist. A few days after his arrival in Paris he was informed that the Emperor, in concert with England, conceded the point as to placing the representative of Sardinia on the same footing as the others. Though it does not seem to have struck Cavour, the sudden change of intention was evidently an involuntary tribute to himself: how could such a man be treated as an inferior? Only the form was won; the substance remained in doubt. Lord Clarendon hinted to the Piedmontese plenipotentiary that he had "too much tact" to mix in discussions which did not concern him. But Cavour was not discouraged. With his usual quick rebound he was soon thoroughly braced up to the work before him. As he began to see his way, he was rather spurred on than disconcerted by the chorus of dismal predictions which the Congress and his own part in it evoked at home. Almost every notable man in Piedmont contributed his quota of melancholy vaticination, in which the note, "I told you so!" was already audible. Who could plead Italy's cause in a congress in which Austria had a voice? Was there ever such midsummer madness? "But we knew how it would be from the first."
Cavour had said that he hated playing at diplomacy; but some of his smaller, as well as larger gifts, marked him out as a successful diplomatist. He was watchful for little advantages. All who could help the cause were enlisted in its service. Thus he made a convert of a fair Countess, to whose charms Napoleon III was supposed not to be insensible. Paris was full of notabilities whom he sought to turn into useful allies. In a letter to the Marquis Emanuel d'Azeglio (the Sardinian Minister in London) he tells how he even "made up" to Lady Holland's dog with such success that he got it to put its large paws on his new coat! When the Marchioness of Ely arrived to be present on the part of the Queen at the birth of the Prince Imperial, Cavour, knowing her to be the Queen's intimate correspondent, lost no time in paying his court to her; but in this instance an acquaintance begun from political motives ripened into real friendship on both sides. A point which is worth observing is that, as minister, no one ever made less use of what may he called the influence of society than Cavour. He never tried to make himself agreeable at Turin, least of all to the king. For a long time he was considered haughty by those who did not know him, and arbitrary by those who did. But abroad he underwent a change which probably came about from his revealing not less but more of his natural self. "He has that petulance," Massimo d'Azeglio said, "which is exactly what they like in Paris." Abroad he could give this quality freer play than in Italy, where vivacity offends in a serious man. He charmed even those who did not share his opinions. At a dinner given by the Cardinal Archbishop of Paris to all the members of the Congress, he sat next to the Abbé Darboy, one day to succeed to the see and meet a martyr's death in the Commune. The Abbé never forgot his neighbour of that evening, and in 1870, at Rome during the Oecumenical Council, when some one mentioned Cavour's name, he exclaimed, throwing up his hands, "Ah, that was a man in a thousand! He had not the slightest sentiment of hate in his heart."
In the two months which Cavour spent in Paris he perceived very clearly that Walewski and the other French ministers would have to be reckoned more as opponents than friends in the future development of affairs. He found, however, two men who could be trusted to continue his work by incessantly pushing Napoleon III. in an Italian direction; one was Prince Napoleon, the other, Dr. Conneau, a person entirely in the Imperial confidence. Henceforth Dr. Conneau was the secret, and for a long time quite unsuspected, intermediary between Cavour and the Emperor. The idea of establishing this channel of communication first occurred to Count Arese, whose own influence at the Tuileries, though exercised with prudent reserve, was of no slight importance. This Milanese nobleman personified, as it were all the proud hatred of the Lombard aristocracy for an alien yoke. The truest and most disinterested friend of Queen Hortense, Arese remained faithfully attached to her son in good and evil fortune. He would never turn the friendship to account for himself. When Napoleon offered to ask as a personal favour for the removal of the sequestration on his family property, he answered that he preferred to take his chance with the rest. He won the lasting regard of the Empress, though she knew that he influenced Napoleon in a sense contrary to her own political sympathies. The visits of this high-minded gentleman and devoted friend were as welcome at a court crowded with self-seekers and charlatans as they were to be later in the solitude of Chislehurst. Arese was in Paris during the Congress, having been chosen by the king, at Cavour's urgent request, to carry his congratulations to the Emperor on the birth of the Prince Imperial.
At the earlier sittings of the Congress, Cavour kept in the background; his instinct as a man of the world, and that mixture of astuteness and simplicity which he shared with many of his countrymen (even those of no education), guided him in filling a difficult and, in some respects, an embarrassing position. He spoke, when he did speak, in as brief terms as could serve to express his opinion. But this modest attitude only threw into relief his inalienable superiority. He cast about the shadow of future greatness. The representative of the second-rate Power, who sat there only by favour, was to make so much more history than any of his colleagues! Curiously enough the only one of the plenipotentiaries who had a prior acquaintance with Cavour was the Austrian, Count Buol, who was formerly ambassador at Turin. In old days, before 1848, he had played whist with him. "I know M. de Cavour," he said; "I am afraid he will give us de fil à retordre." Cavour carefully avoided, however, unnecessary friction. Loyal to both the allies, he managed to steer between their not always consonant aims while preserving his own independence, by taking what seemed, on the whole, the most liberal side in debated questions. With Count Buol he maintained courteous if formal relations, and he soon made a thorough conquest of Count Orloff, who did not begin by being prepossessed in favour of the minister who alone had caused the Sardinian attack on Russia, but who ended on far better terms with him than with his Austrian colleague, of whom he said to Cavour in a voice meant to be heard, "Count Buol talks exactly as if Austria had taken Sebastopol!"
With regard to Cavour's real business, the fate of Italy, he was obliged to proceed with a restraint which few men would have had the self-control to observe. This was what had been predicted; how, in fact, putting aside Austria, could an Italian patriot speak freely of nationality, of alien dominion, of the rights of peoples, in an assembly of old diplomatists, conservative by the nature of their profession and religiously in awe of treaties by the responsibility of their office? It was only just before the signature of peace that Cavour cautiously launched his bolt in the shape of a note on the situation of affairs in Italy, addressed to the English and French plenipotentiaries. It was conceived on the same lines as the letter to Walewski: the Austrian occupation of the Roman Legations was again made a sort of test question, to which particular weight was attached. One reason why Cavour dwelt so much on this point was that the occupation could be assailed on legal grounds, leaving nationality alone. As, moreover, it was admitted that the Papal Government would fall in Romagna were the Austrians withdrawn, the principle of the destruction of the temporal power of the Pope would be granted from the moment that their departure was declared expedient. While D'Azeglio thought that the separation of Romagna from the States of the Church would be "positively mischievous," Cavour looked upon it in the light of the first step to far greater changes. Many other schemes were floating in his brain for which he worked feverishly in private, though he did not venture to support them officially. The object nearest his heart was the union or rather reunion of Parma and Modena with Piedmont, to which those duchies had annexed themselves spontaneously in 1848. In order to get rid of the Duke of Modena and Duchess of Parma with the consent of Europe, Cavour was desperately anxious to find them—other situations. Every throne that was or could be made vacant was reviewed in turn; Greece, Wallachia, and Moldavia, anywhere out of Italy would do; the Duchess, not a very youthful widow, was to marry this or that prince to obligingly facilitate matters:—abortive projects, which seem absurd now, but Cavour was willing to try everything to gain anything. In weaving these plans Cavour employed the energy of which Prince Napoleon complained that he did not show enough in the Congress, though to have shown more would have led to a rebuff, or, perhaps, to enforced retirement. Still there was one point which, in the Congress, as out of it, he never treated with moderation: this was the sequestration of Lombard estates. When Count Buol spoke of an amnesty including nearly all cases, he replied that he would not renew diplomatic relations with Vienna while one exception remained. In an audience with the Emperor, after Walewski had ingeniously tried to excuse Austria for exercising her "rights" over her ex-subjects, Cavour burst out with the declaration that if he had 150,000 men at his disposal he would make it a casus belli with Austria that very day.
Peace was signed on March 30. A supplementary sitting was held on April 8, when the President, Count Walewski, by express order of the Emperor, and to the astonishment of all present, proposed for discussion the French and Austrian occupations of the Roman States and the conduct of the king of Naples (his own favourite monarch) as likely to provoke grave complications and to compromise the peace of Europe. This was a victory for Cavour, as it was the direct result of his "note," but he was afraid that the discussion of the Roman question would be kept within the narrowest limits in consequence of its affecting France as well as Austria. Walewski wished so to limit it; he was embarrassed by the analogy of the French in Rome, and by the fear of saying something unflattering of the Pope. But Napoleon would not have risked the discussion at all had he shared his minister's sensitiveness. The truth was, that he was always looking out for an excuse which would serve with the clerical party in France for recalling his troops from Rome. He was thinking then of withdrawing them so as to oblige Austria to withdraw her forces from the Legations. It does not appear that Cavour guessed this. In his own speech he glided over the presence of the French, in Rome as lightly as he could, merely saying that his Government "desired" the complete evacuation of the Roman States; but his reserve was not imitated by Lord Clarendon, nor could Napoleon have expected that it would be. When some one asked Lord Palmerston for a definition of the difference between "occupation" and "business," he answered on the spur of the moment—"There is a French occupation of Rome, but they have no business there;" and this witticism correctly represented English opinion on the subject. It was natural, therefore, that the British plenipotentiary should make no distinction between the French in Rome and the Austrians at Bologna: he denounced both occupations as equally to be condemned and equally calculated to disturb the balance of power, but at the root of the matter was the abominable misgovernment, which made it impossible to leave the Pope to his subjects without fear of revolution. The papal administration was the opprobrium of Europe. As to the king of Naples, if he did not soon mend his ways and listen to the advice of the Powers, it would become their duty to enforce it by arguments of a kind which he could not refuse to obey. An extraordinary sensation was created by the speech of which this is a bald summary; it might have been spoken, Cavour said, "by an Italian radical," and the vehemence with which it was delivered doubled its effect. Lord Clarendon, who, at the beginning of the Congress, was nervous as to what Cavour might do, had been worked up to such a pitch of indignation by the private conversations of his outwardly discreet colleague that he himself threw diplomatic reserve to the winds. Walewski, dreadfully uncomfortable about the Pope, tried to bring the discussion back within politer bounds; Buol was stiffly indignant; Orloff, indifferent about the Pope, was on tenter-hooks as to Russia's friend, the king of Naples; the Prussian plenipotentiary said that he had no instructions; the Grand Vizier was the only person who remained quite calm. Cavour's concluding speech was dignified and prudent; his real comment on the proceedings was the remark which he made to every one after the sitting was over: "You see there is only one solution—the cannon!"
On April 11 he called on Lord Clarendon with the intention of driving home this inference. Two things, he said, resulted from what had passed: firstly, that Austria was resolved to make no concession; secondly, that Italy had nothing to expect from diplomacy. This being so, the position of Sardinia became extremely difficult: either she must make it up with the Pope and with Austria, or she must prepare, with prudence, for war with Austria. In the first alternative he should retire, to make place for the retrogrades; in the second he wished to be sure that his views were not in opposition to those of "our best ally," England. Lord Clarendon "furiously caressed his chin," but he seemed by no means surprised "You are perfectly right," he said, "only it must not be talked about." Cavour then said that war did not alarm him, and, when once begun, they were determined that it should be to the knife (using the English phrase); he added that, however short a time it lasted, England would be obliged to help them. Lord Clarendon, taking his hand from his chin, replied, "Certainly, with all our hearts."
When, after Cavour's death, the text of this conversation was printed, Lord Clarendon denied in the House of Lords having ever encouraged Piedmont to go to war with Austria. Nevertheless, it is impossible that Cavour, who wrote his account of the interview directly after it occurred, could have been mistaken about the words which may well have escaped from the memory of the speaker in an interval of six years. With regard to the sense, the sequel proved that Lord Clarendon did not attach the official value to what he said which, for a moment, Cavour hoped to find in it. Lord Clarendon's speech before the Congress gives evidence of a state of mind wrought to the utmost excitement by the tale of Italy's sufferings, and it is not surprising if, speaking as a private individual, he used still stronger expressions of sympathy. Nor is it surprising that Cavour attributed more weight to these expressions than they merited. Up till now, he had never counted on more than moral support from England; he admitted to himself that the English alliance, which he would have infinitely preferred to any other, was a dream. But the thought now flashed on him that it might become a reality. He decided to pay a short visit to England, which was useful, because it dispelled illusions, always dangerous in politics. In the damp air of the Thames, Lord Clarendon seemed no longer the same enthusiast, and Lord Palmerston pleaded the excuse of a domestic affliction for seeing very little of Cavour. The Queen was kind as ever, but the momentary hope conceived in Paris vanished. One after-consequence of this visit was Lord Lyndhurst's motion, which nearly caused an estrangement between the British and Sardinian Governments. Cavour had taken too literally the assurance that on the subject of Italy there was no division of parties. The warmly Italian speech of the veteran conservative statesman which had been inspired by him was not meant to embarrass the ministry, but that was its effect, and it was natural that they should feel some resentment. Fortunately the cloud soon passed away, and if Cavour imagined to gain anything from flirtations with the Tory party he was undeceived by the violently pro-Austrian speech delivered by Mr. Disraeli in July. The sincere goodwill of individuals such as Lord Lyndhurst and Lord Stanhope (who invented the phrase "Italy for the Italians," so often repeated later) did not represent the then prevailing sentiment of the party as a whole.