For a few days such of the townsfolk as had not completely lost their heads, underwent acute anxiety as they gazed at the frowning pile of Sant' Elmo; but finally the officers in command of the garrison decided to capitulate, contrary, in this instance, to the wishes of the soldiery. The royal troops marched out of the city towards Capua on the 11th of September.
Garibaldi's first act had been to hand over the Neapolitan fleet in the bay to Admiral Persano, a solemn reassertion of his loyalty to Victor Emmanuel, whom, in his every utterance, he held up to the people as the best of kings and the father of his country. He instructed his Neapolitan officer, Cosenz, to form a ministry, and [Pg.309] wrote to the Marquis Pallavicini, the prisoner of Spielberg, inviting him to become Pro-Dictator. Had a man of authority like Pallavicini, who also entirely possessed the Dictator's confidence, at once assumed that office, much of the friction which followed might have been spared. But he did not enter into his functions till October, and in the meanwhile the 'dualism' of Sicily broke out in an exaggerated form, each side sincerely believing the other to be on the verge of ruining the country to which they were both sincerely attached. The appointment of Dr Bertani as Secretary of the Dictatorship gave rise to controversies which even now, when the grave has closed over the actors, are hardly at rest. It is time that they should be. Apart from the war about persons, some of them not very wise persons, and apart from the fears entertained at Turin, that the freeing of the Two Sicilies would drift into a republican movement: fears which were invincible, though, as far as they regarded Garibaldi, they were neither just nor generous, the question resolved itself, as was the case in Sicily, into whether the unification of Italy was to go on or whether it was to halt? Garibaldi refused to give up Sicily to the King's government because he intended making it the base for the liberation of Naples. Events had justified him. He now refused to hand over Naples because he intended making it the base for the liberation of Rome. It has been seen that he and he alone prevented an attempt at a landing in the Papal states from being made in the month of August. In deciding, however, that it was expedient to finish one enterprise before beginning another, he did not give up Rome: he merely chose what he thought a safer road to go there. And he now declared without the least concealment that he intended to proclaim Victor Emmanuel King of Italy from the Quirinal.
[ [Pg.310] Would events have justified him again? There was a French garrison in Rome; this, to Cavour, seemed a conclusive answer.
Cavour was engaged on a series of measures, unscrupulous manoeuvres as some have called them, masterpieces of statesmanship as they have been described by others, by which he got back the reins of the Italian team into his own hands. The plan of an annexionist revolution in Naples before Garibaldi arrived had failed. So much discontent was felt at the apparent indifference, or, at least, 'masterly inactivity' of the Sardinian government in presence of the great struggle in the south that Cavour began to be afraid of a revolution breaking out in quite a different quarter, in Victor Emmanuel's own kingdom. It was at this critical juncture that he resolved to invade the Papal states, and take possession of the Province of Umbria and the Marches of Ancona.
The decision was one of extreme boldness. For three months Cavour had been stormed at by all the Foreign Ministers in Turin, excepting Sir James Hudson, but, as he wrote to the Marquis E. D'Azeglio: 'I shall not draw back save before fleets and armies.'
Austria, France, Spain, Russia and Prussia now broke off diplomatic relations with Sardinia. What would be their next act? The danger of Austria intervening was smaller than it then appeared; Austria was too much embarrassed in her own house, and especially in Hungary, for her to covet adventures in Italy. But the French Government did, in the plainest terms, threaten to intervene, and this notwithstanding that the Emperor himself appeared to be convinced by Cavour's argument, that the proposed scheme was the only means of checking the march of revolution, which from Rome might spread to Paris. By announcing one [Pg.311] line of policy in public and another in private, Napoleon left the door open to adopt either one or the other, according to the development of events. In the sequel, the Papal party had a right to say that he lured them to their destruction, as their plan of operations, and in particular the defence of Ancona, was undertaken in the distinct expectation of being supported by the French fleet.
As early as April 1860, the Pope invited the Orleanist General Lamoricière to organise and command the forces for the defence of the Temporal Power, which he had summoned from the four quarters of the Catholic world. 5000 men, more or less, answered the call; they came chiefly from France, Belgium and Ireland. Of his own subjects the Pope had 10,000 under arms. In a proclamation, issued on assuming the command, Lamoricière compared the Italian movement with Islamism, a comparison which aroused intense exasperation in Italy, where the rally of a foreign crusade against the object which was nearest to Italian hearts, and for which so many of the best Italians had suffered and died, could not but call up feelings which in their turn were expressed in no moderate language. It was a fresh illustration of the old truth—that the Papal throne existed only by force of foreign arms, foreign influence. Lamoricière's 'mercenaries' did much harm to the Pope's cause by bringing home this truth once more to the minds of all. That the corps contained some of the bluest blood of France, that there were good young men in it, who thought heaven the sure reward for death in defence of dominions painfully added in the course of centuries by devices not heavenly to the original patrimony of Peter, did not and could not reconcile the Italians to the defiance thrown down to them by a band of strangers in their own country.
[ [Pg.312] Before the opening of hostilities, Victor Emmanuel offered Pius IX. to assume the administration of the Papal states (barring Rome) while leaving the nominal sovereignty to the Pope. Nothing came of the proposal, which was followed by a formal demand for the dissolution of Lamoricière's army, and an intimation that the Sardinian troops would intervene were force used to put down risings within the Papal border. On the 11th of September, symptoms of revolution having meanwhile broken out in the Marches, General Fanti in command of 35,000 men crossed the frontier. Half these forces under Fanti himself were directed on Perugia; the other half under Cialdini marched towards Ancona. The garrisons of Perugia and Spoleto were compelled to surrender, and Lamoricière found his communications cut off, so that he could only reach the last fortress in the power of the Papal troops, Ancona, by fighting his way through Cialdini's division, which by rapid marches had reached the heights of Castelfidardo. His men passed the day of the 17th in religious exercises, and in going to confession; the vicinity of the Holy House of Loreto, brought hither by angels from Bethlehem, filled the young Breton soldiers with transports of religious fervour. Lamoricière had taken from the Santa Casa some of the flags of the victors of Lepanto to wave over his columns. In the battle of the next day the French fought with the gallantry of the Vendéans whose descendants they were, and the Irish behaved as Irishmen generally behave under fire, but the Swiss and Romans mostly fought ill or not at all. Lamoricière excused the conduct of the latter on the ground that they were young troops; it is likely that they had but little eagerness to fire on their fellow-countrymen. Being Italians, and above all being Romans, they [ [Pg.313] assuredly were not sustained by one scrap of the mystical enthusiasm of the French: such a state of mind would have been incomprehensible to them. They knew that so far as dogmas went Victor Emmanuel was as good a Catholic as the Pope. It is surprising that with part of his force demoralised Lamoricière was still able to hold his own for three or four hours. General Pimodan and many of the French officers were killed; Lamoricière could say truly: 'All the best names of France are left on the battlefield.'
After the victory of Castelfidardo, the Sardinian attack was concentrated on Ancona. Admiral Persano brought the squadron from Naples to co-operate with Fanti's land forces, and the fortress capitulated on the 29th of September. The campaign had lasted eighteen days. The Piedmontese held Umbria and the Marches, and a road was thus opened for the army of Victor Emmanuel to march to Naples. During the progress of these events Garibaldi was preparing for the final struggle on the Volturno. He had not yet given up the hope of carrying his victorious arms to the Capitol, and from the Capitol to the Square of St Mark. The whole republican party, and Mazzini himself, who had arrived in Naples, ardently adhered to this programme. Their argument was not without force, risk or no risk, when would there be another opportunity as good as the present? It was very well for Cavour to look forward, as he did to the day of his death, to a pacific solution of the Roman question; Mazzini saw—in which he was far more clear-sighted than Cavour—that such a solution would never take place. His arrival at Naples caused alarm at Turin, both on account of his presumed influence over Garibaldi, the extent of which was much exaggerated, and from the terror his name spread among European [Pg.314] diplomatists. The Dictator was asked to proscribe the man whose latest act had been to give the last 30,000 francs he possessed in the world to the expenses of the Calabrian campaign. He refused to do this. 'How could I have insisted upon sending Mazzini into exile when he has done so much for Italian unity?' he said afterwards to Victor Emmanuel, who agreed that he was right. However, he allowed the Pro-Dictator Pallavicini to write a letter to Mazzini, inviting him to show his generosity by spontaneously leaving Naples in order to remove the unjust fears occasioned by his presence. Mazzini replied, as he had a perfect right to do, that every citizen is entitled to remain in a free country as long as he does not break the laws. And so the incident closed.
While the Party of Action urged Garibaldi not to give up Rome, other influences were brought to bear on him in the opposite sense, and especially that of the English Government, which instructed Admiral Mundy to arrange a 'chance' meeting between the Dictator and the English Minister at Naples, Mr. Elliot, on board the flagship Hannibal. Mr. Elliot pointed out the likelihood of a European war arising from an attack on Venice, and the certainty of French intervention in case of a revolutionary dash on Rome. Garibaldi replied that Rome was an Italian city, and that neither the Emperor nor anyone else had a right to keep him out of it. 'He was evidently,' writes Admiral Mundy in reporting the interview, 'not to be swayed by any dictates of prudence.'