CHAPTER XIII
WHAT UNITY COST
1859-1860
Napoleon III. and Cavour—The Cession of Savoy and Nice—Annexations in Central Italy.
Napoleon's hurried journey to Turin on his way back to France was almost a flight. Everywhere his reception was cold in the extreme. He was surprised, he said, at the ingratitude of the Italians. It was still possible to ask for gratitude, as the services rendered had not been paid for; no one spoke yet of the barter of Savoy and Nice. But Napoleon, when he said these words to the Governor of Milan, forgot how the Lombards, in June 1848, absolutely refused to take their freedom at the cost of resigning Venice to Austria. And if Venice was dear to them and to Italy then, how much dearer had she not become since the heroic struggle in which she was the last to yield. The bones of Manin cried aloud for Venetian liberty from his grave of exile.
Venice was the one absorbing thought of the moment; yet there were clauses in the brief preliminaries of peace more fraught with insidious danger than the abandonment of Venice. If the rest of Italy became one and free, it needed no prophet to tell that not the might of twenty Austrias could keep Venetia permanently outside the fold. [Pg.252] But if Italy was to remain divided and enslaved, then, indeed, the indignant question went up to heaven, To what end had so much blood been shed?
When he resolved to cut short the war, Napoleon still had it in his power to go down to history as the supreme benefactor of Italy. He chose instead to become her worst and by far her most dangerous enemy. The preliminaries of peace opened with the words: 'The Emperor of Austria and the Emperor of the French will favour the creation of an Italian Confederation under the honorary presidency of the Holy Father.' Further, it was stated that the Grand Duke of Tuscany and the Duke of Modena would return to their states. Though Napoleon proposed at first to add, 'without foreign armed intervention,' he waived the point (Rome was in his mind) and no such guarantee was inserted. Here, then, was the federative programme which all the personal influence and ingenuity of the French Emperor, all the arts of French diplomacy, were concentrated on maintaining, and which was only defeated by the true patriotism and strong good sense of the Italian populations, and of the men who led them through this, the most critical period in their history.
In England Lord Derby's administration had fallen and the Liberals were again in power. Napoleon was so strangely deluded as to expect to find support in that quarter for his anti-unionist conspiracy. His earliest scheme was that the federative plan should be presented to Europe by Great Britain. Lord John Russell answered: 'We are asked to propose a partition (morcellement) of the peoples of Italy, as if we had the right to dispose of them.' It was a happy circumstance for Italy that her unity had no better friends than in the English Government during those difficult years. Cavour's words soon after Villafranca, 'It is England's turn now,' were not belied.
[ [Pg.253] One thing should have made Napoleon uneasy; a man like Cavour, when his blood is roused, when his nature is fired by the strongest passions that move the human heart, is an awkward adversary. If there was an instant in which the great statesman thought that all was lost, it was but an instant. With the quick rebound of virile characters he recovered his balance and understood his part. It was to fight and conquer.