True to his rôle of mystification, one week after the shot fired on the 1st of January, Napoleon inserted an official statement in the Moniteur to the effect that, although public opinion had been agitated by alarming rumours, there was nothing in the foreign relations of France to justify the fears these rumours tended to create. He continued on this tack, with more or less consistency, to the very verge of the outbreak of hostilities. 'The Empire was peace,' as it was always announced to be in the intervals when it was not war; there was no more harmless dove in Europe than the person enthroned in the Tuileries. These assurances were given more credence than they deserved by the Conservative Cabinet then in power in England, and the British ministers believed to the last that war would be averted, to which end they strained every nerve. Besides the wish felt by every English government to preserve European peace, there was at this juncture, not only in the Cabinet, but in the country, so much fear of Napoleon's ambition and restlessness, that for the time being, [Pg.223] sympathy with Italy was relegated to a second place.
Meanwhile there was no want of plainness in the language employed in Piedmont. In opening the second session of the sixth Sardinian Parliament, Victor Emmanuel pronounced, on 10th January, the historic phrase declaring that he could not remain insensible to the cry of grief, il grido di dolore, that reached him from all parts of Italy. Every corner of the fair country where the Si sounds was electrified. The words, as has since become known, were introduced into the speech by the King himself. As Cavour had foreseen, Austria played into his hands. To Lord Malmesbury's appeal to evacuate the Roman Legations, and to use Austrian influence with the Italian princes in procuring the concession of necessary reforms, Count Buol replied in terms that were the reverse of obliging: 'We do not mean to abdicate our right of intervention, and if we are called upon to help the Italian sovereigns with our arms, we shall do so. We shall not recommend their governments to undertake any reforms. France plays the part of protectress of nationalities; we are, and shall be, protectors of dynastic rights.' Finally, England proposed a congress with a view to general disarmament. Piedmont, counting on the madness of her adversary, risked agreement with this plan. Austria gave a peremptory refusal to have anything to do with it.
Cavour now asked Parliament to vote a war loan of £2,000,000, which was passed by a majority of 81 out of 151 votes. No foreign banker would undertake to negotiate the loan, but it was twice covered by Italian buyers, nearly all small capitalists, who put their money into it as a patriotic duty. Amongst the few deputies who opposed the loan was the old apostle of retrogression, Count Solaro della Margherita, who raised his solitary voice against the tide of revolution; and the Savoyard the Marquis Costa de Beauregard whose speech was pathetic [Pg.224] from the melancholy foreboding which pervaded it that the making of Italy meant the unmaking of Savoy. Speaking in the name of his fellow-countrymen, the Marquis reconfirmed the profound love of Savoy for her Royal House and her total lack of solidarity with the aspirations of Italy. With time the Savoyards might have learnt to be Italians as their king had learnt to be an Italian king. Or they might not. Possibly the best solution would have been to join Savoy to the Swiss Confederation, though the martial instincts of the race were not favourable to their Conversion into peaceful Helvetic citizens. From one point of view, that of military defence, the retention of the province was of infinitely more moment to the future Italy than to little Piedmont. Sardinia could keep the peace with France for an indefinite period; Italy cannot. What is true of Savoy is far more true of Nice. To have it in foreign keeping is to have a very partially reformed burglar inside your house.
'Notre roi,' said an old ragged fisherman of the Lac de Bourget to the writer of this book,—'Notre roi nous a vendus.' Not willingly did Victor Emmanuel incur that charge, in which the rebound from love to hate was so clearly heard; not willingly did he give up Maurienne, cradle of his race, Hautecombe, grave of his fathers. It was the greatest sacrifice, he said, that Italy could have asked of him. Nor is there any reason to doubt his word. But it is incorrect to suppose, as many have supposed, that Cavour promised at Plombières to give up Savoy (Nice he did not promise) without the King's knowledge. Before he went there, he had brought Victor Emmanuel over to his own belief, justified or not, that without a bait Napoleon could not be got to [Pg.225] move. Directly after the interview, he wrote a full account of it to the King, in which he said: 'When the future fate of Italy was arranged, the Emperor asked me what France would have, and if your Majesty would cede Savoy and the county of Nice?' To which Cavour answered 'Yes' as to Savoy, but objected that Nice was essentially Italian. The Emperor twirled his moustache several times, and only said that these were secondary questions, about which there would be time to think later.
Austria was always appealing to the right of treaties and the right of nations; not, as it happened, with much reason, for she had ridden or tried to ride rough-shod through as many treaties and through quite as many rights as most European Powers. In 1816 she was so determined to possess herself of Alessandria and the Upper Novarese that Lord Castlereagh advised Piedmont to join the Austrian Confederation, as then and only then the Emperor might withdraw his pretensions to this large slice of territory of a Prince with whom he was at peace. If he did withdraw them, it was not from respect for the treaties which, a year before, had confirmed the King of Sardinia's rights as an independent sovereign, but from respect for the untoward results to himself which he was afraid, on reflection, might arise from enforcing his claims with the bayonet. But people forget; and it was of vital consequence that virtuous Austria should figure in the coming conflict not as the victim of aggression but as the aggressor. On all sides it was said that the Austrian Government would never commit an error of such magnitude; only Cavour thought the contrary. 'I shall force her to declare war against us,' he told Mr Odo Russell in December 1858. When asked by the incredulous diplomatist at what date he expected to [Pg.226] perform so great a feat, Cavour quietly answered: 'In the first week of May.' War was actually declared a few days sooner.
For months Austria had been pouring troops into Italy, a large portion of which were massed on the frontier line of the Ticino. Who shall count the number of the men brought to fight and die in the Italian plains between 1848 and 1866 to sustain for that short time the weight of a condemned despotism? The supply was inexhaustible; they came from the Hungarian steppes, from the green valleys of Styria, from the mountains of Tyrol, from the woodlands of the Banat and of Bohemia; a blind million battling for a chimera. They came, and how many did not return?
Austria's final refusal to adhere to the Congress scheme meant, of course, war, and Cavour called the Chamber and demanded a vote conferring upon Government the power to take such prompt measures as the situation required. 'We trust,' he said, 'that the Chamber will not hesitate to sanction the proposal to invest the King with plenary powers. Who could be a better guardian of our liberty? Who more worthy of the faith of the nation? He it is whose name a ten years' reign had made synonymous with honour and loyalty; who has always held high the tricolor standard of Italy, who now prepares to unsheath his sword for freedom and independence.'
When Cavour walked out of the Chamber after the vote had been taken, he said: 'I am leaving the last sitting of the Piedmontese Parliament, the next will be that of the Kingdom of Italy.' At that moment, if ever in his career, the great minister who had fought so long a fight against incalculable obstacles learnt what it is to taste the sweetness of triumph.