The comedy of the cession of Venice to Napoleon was enacted between General Le Boeuf and General Alemann, the Austrian military commandant. Among other formalities, the French delegate went the round of the museums and galleries to see that everything was in its place. Suddenly he came upon a most suspicious blank. 'A picture is [Pg.380] missing here,' he said. 'It is, blandly assented the Austrian officer. 'Well, but it must be sent back immediately—where is it?' 'In the Louvre.'
At last Austrians and French departed, and Italy shook off her mourning, for however it had come about, the great object which had cost so much blood, so many tears, was attained; the stranger was gone! Out of 642,000 votes, only 69 were recorded against the union of Venetia with the Italian kingdom. When the plebiscite was presented to the King, he said: 'This is the greatest day of my life: Italy is made, though not complete.' On the 7th of November he entered Venice, and of all the pageants that greeted him in the hundred cities of Italy, the welcome of the Bride of the Adriatic was, if not the most imposing, certainly the fairest to see. More touching, however, than the glorious beauty of the Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal in their rich adornment, was the universal decoration of the poorest quarters, which were all flagged and festooned so thickly that little could be seen of the stones of Venice. One poor cobbler, however, living at the end of a blind alley, had no flag, no garland to deck his abode: he had therefore pasted three strips of coloured paper, red, white and green, over his door, inscribing on the middle strip these words, which in their sublime simplicity merit to be rescued from oblivion: 'O mia cara Italia, voglio ma non posso fare più per te.'
The Iron Crown of the Lombard Kings of Italy, which the Austrians had taken away in 1859, was brought back and restored to the Cathedral of Monza. Less presumptuous than Napoleon, Victor Emmanuel never placed the mystical fillet upon his head, but it was carried after his coffin to the Pantheon.
CHAPTER XIX
THE LAST CRUSADE
1867
The French leave Rome—Garibaldi's Arrest and Escape—The Second French Intervention—Monte Rotondo—Mentana.
The words of Victor Emmanuel to the Venetian Deputation contained a riddle easy to solve: what was meant by the 'completion' of Italy was the establishment of her capital on the Tiber. In most minds there was an intense belief in the inevitability of the union of Rome with the rest of Italy, but no one saw how it was to be brought about. What soothsayer foretold Sédan?
In the first period after the war, domestic difficulties fixed the attention of the Italian Government on the present rather than on the future. An insurrection at Palermo assumed threatening proportions owing to the smallness of the garrison, and might have had still more serious consequences but for the courage and presence of mind shown by the Syndic, the young Marquis di Rudini. Crime and poverty, republican hankerings, the irritation of the priesthood at recent legislation, and most of all, the feeling that little had been done since 1860 to realise the millennium then promised, contributed to the outbreak which was quelled when troops arrived from the mainland, but the ministers were blamed for not having taken better precautions against its occurrence. Another stumbling-block lay in the path of Ricasoli, [Pg.382] namely, the application of the law for the suppression of religious houses, and the expropriation of ecclesiastical property. After an unsuccessful endeavour to cope with it, he dissolved the Chamber, but the new Parliament proved no more willing to support his measures, which were of the nature of a compromise, than the old one, and he finally resigned office. He was succeeded by Urban Rattazzi, under whose administration a measure was passed which, though drastic in appearance, has not prevented the re-establishment of a great many convents of which the property was bought in under the name of private individuals. Every Catholic country has seen the necessity sooner or later of putting a check to the increase of monasticism, but it may be a matter of regret that in Italy, the toleration granted to the learned community of Monte Cassino was not extended to more of the historic monasteries. The abstention of the Clerical party from the voting urns deprived them of an influence which, on such points as these, they might have exercised legitimately and perhaps beneficially. To that abstention, the disequilibrium of Italian political life, from first to last, is largely due.