At the Berlin Congress eight years later, Prince Bismarck pressed the same views upon Count Corti, the Italian delegate. He would have been glad to see the Italians go to Tunis, but Count Corti ingenuously replied: 'You want to make us quarrel with France.' Meanwhile the Englishman who represented France and the Englishman who represented England were discussing the same subject, and out of their discussion arose the French occupation of Tunis. Disquieting rumours got about at once, but they were dispelled. 'No French Government would be so rash,' said Gambetta, 'as to make Italy the irreconcilable foe of France.' M. Waddington declared that he was personally opposed to the acquisition of Tunis, and gave his word of honour that nothing would be done without the full consent of Italy. What was done and how it was done is known to all. And so it happens that a great French naval station is in course of construction almost within sight of Sicily and of Malta.
In the document communicated by Bismarck to Mazzini, there is a curious inclusion of Trieste among Italian seaports which seems to indicate that he was still not averse from a rectification of the Italian north-east frontier. Whence it may be supposed that he expected to find Austria ranged on the part of France in the struggle for the Rhine bank. To explain how it was that this did not happen, we must leave the Chancellor and the Revolutionist, and see what at the same time was going on between Napoleon on the one side and Austria and Italy on the other.
[ [Pg.400] The French Emperor was not so infatuated as to court the risk of making war on Prussia single-handed if he could avoid it. He hoped for a triple alliance of France, Austria and Italy, or, if that could not be compassed, a dual alliance of France with either of these Powers. Now, wisely or unwisely, both the Italian and Austrian Governments were far from rejecting these proposals off-hand. The secret negotiations lasted from 1868 till June 1869. They took the shape of informal letters between the King of Italy and Napoleon, and of private communications with Count Beust through Prince Metternich, the Austrian Ambassador in Paris, who was the intimate friend and confidant of the Emperor and Empress. General Menabrea was not let into the secret till later. With regard to Victor Emmanuel, there is no doubt that he wished with all his heart to be able to do a good turn to his Imperial ally of 1859 if the occasion presented itself. Some men see their wives even to old age as they saw them when they were young and fair. The first print on the retina of the mental vision was so strong that no later impression can change or efface it. This hallucination is not confined to the marital relationship, and Victor Emmanuel never left off seeing Napoleon in one sole light: as the friend of Solferino. It may be that he perceived what the Italians did not perceive: that the obligation was owed to Napoleon alone, while all France had a part in the subsequent injuries. At any rate the idea of refusing the Emperor's appeal was repugnant in the extreme to the Italian King, who personally would have strained any point rather than give that refusal.
The King, however, and General Menabrea, who was finally admitted into the conspiracy, could not be blind to the fact that an unpopular war might create so great an agitation in the country that the dynasty itself would be in danger. A war for France while the French were in [Pg.401] Rome would have raised one storm of indignation from Palermo to Turin. So their ultimatum was this: Rome capital of Italy, or no alliance.
There remained Austria, but if Napoleon ever hoped to conclude a separate treaty with her, he was to discover his mistake. From the moment that Austria resigned the Iron Crown, the symbol of her Italian power, she acted towards Italy with a loyalty that has few parallels in history. And she, too, replied to Napoleon: Rome capital of Italy, or no alliance.
The Vatican has never forgiven this to Austria. At the present hour, while republican France with her open antagonism to all religion, is the favoured daughter of the Church, Austria, the only country in Europe except Spain where the Roman Catholic cultus retains all its original pomp and almost all its mediæval privileges, meets from the Vatican a studied plan of opposition, the object of which can only be to bring her Government to a deadlock. From France the Pope still hopes for aid in the recovery of his temporalities; from Austria he knows that he will never receive it. So much have politics and so little has religion to do now, as in all ages, with the motives that govern the Holy See.
Ahi, Costantin, di quanto mal fu matre
Non la tua conversion, ma quella dote
Che da te prese il primo ricco patre!
The years 1868 and 1869 passed uneventfully for Italy. In the former year Prince Humbert married his cousin Margherita of Savoy. He was previously engaged to the Archduchess Matilda, the only daughter of the Victor of Custoza, but the young Princess met with a terrible death just when the betrothal was about to be announced. No one [Pg.402] worthier to receive from Adelaide of Burgundy the lovely title of Queen of Italy could have been found than the Princess Margaret, who inherited the sunny charm which had endeared her father, the Duke of Genoa, to all who knew him.
In the autumn of 1869 another domestic event, the severe illness of Victor Emmanuel, gave rise to an incident which made a deep impression in Italy, and attached the nation by one link more to the King of its choice. The illness which seized Victor Emmanuel at his hunting-box of San Rossore, in a malarious part of Tuscany, proved so serious that his life was despaired of. A priest was called to hear the King's last confession, and to administer the Sacraments for the dying. After hearing the confession, the priest said he could not give absolution unless Victor Emmanuel signed a solemn retractation of all the acts performed during his reign that were contrary to the interests of the Church. The King answered, without a moment's hesitation, that he died a Christian and a Catholic, and that if he had wronged anyone he sincerely repented and asked pardon of God, but the signature demanded was a political act, and if the priest wished to talk politics his ministers were in the next room. Thither the ecclesiastic retired, but he very soon returned, and administered the rite without more ado. What had passed was this: General Menabrea, with a decision for which he cannot be too much praised, threatened the priest with instant arrest unless he surrendered his pretensions. Only those who know the extraordinary terror inspired in an Italian Catholic by the prospect of dying unshriven can appreciate the merit of the King, whose faith was childlike, in standing as firm in the presence of supernatural arms as he stood before the Austrian guns.
Menabrea's administration was then upon the eve of falling. The cause [Pg.403] was one of those financial crises that were symptomatic of a mischief which has been growing from then till now, when some critics think they see in it the fatal upas tree of Italy. The process of transforming a country where everything was wanting—roads, railways, lines of navigation, schools, water, lighting, sanitary provisions, and the other hundred thousand requirements of modern life—into the Italy of to-day, where all these things have made leaps almost incredible to those who knew her in her former state, has proved costly without example. During the whole period it has been necessary to spend in ever-increasing ratio on the army and navy, and this expenditure, though emphatically not the chief, has yet been a concomitant cause of financial trouble. The point cannot be inquired into here of how far greater wisdom and higher character in Italian public servants might have limited the evil and reconciled progress with economy; but it may be said that if the path entered upon by the man who took charge of the exchequer after Menabrea's fall, Quintino Sella, had been rigorously followed by his successors, the present situation would not be what it is.