In the afternoon all the Papal troops were persuaded to lay down their arms, which, in the case of the foreigners, were given back to them. Next day they were reviewed by General Cadorna. As the Italians presented arms to the retiring host, some of the Antibes Legion shouted at them: 'We are French, we shall meet you again.' The Roman troops were sent to their homes; the foreigners conducted to the [Pg.411] frontier, Charette and other of the French officers went to the battlefields of their prostrate country, and thus it came to pass that the Pope's defenders were found fighting side by side with Garibaldi; they, indeed, only doing their simple duty, but he, acting on an impulse of Quixotic generosity which was repaid—the world knows how!
Cadorna received three pressing requests from the Pope to occupy the Leonine City, and the third he granted. The idea of leaving the part of Rome on which the Vatican stands under the Pope's jurisdiction had been long favoured by a certain class of politicians, and Lanza made a last effort to give it effect by excluding the Leonine City from the plebiscite which was ordered to take place in Rome and in the Roman province on the 2nd of October. It was in vain. The first voting urn to arrive at the Capitol on the appointed day was a glass receptacle borne by a huge Trasteverino, and preceded by a banner inscribed: 'Città Leonina Si.' As the Government had not supplied the inhabitants with an official urn, it occurred to them to provide themselves with an unofficial one in which they duly deposited their votes. The Roman plebiscite yielded the results of 133,681 affirmative and 1507 negative votes.
In December the Italian Parliament met for the last time in the Hall of the Five Hundred. 'Italy,' said the King in the speech from the throne, 'is free and united; it depends on us to make her great and happy.' Of this last session at Florence the principal labour was the Act embodying the Papal guarantees which was intended to safeguard the legitimate independence and decorum of the Holy See on the lines formerly advocated by Cavour. Neither extreme party was satisfied, but it seemed at first not unlikely that the Pope would tacitly acquiesce in the arrangement. The first monthly payment of the national [Pg.412] dotation, calculated to correspond with his civil list, was accepted. But though the influence of Cardinal Antonelli and the Italian prelates had been sufficient to keep the Pope in Rome, the influence of those who wished him to leave it was strong enough to establish at the Vatican the intransigent policy which has been pursued till now.
During the flood of the Tiber which devastated the city that winter, the King of Italy paid a first informal visit to his capital, accompanied only by a few attendants, and bent on bringing help to the suffering population. In July 1872, he made his solemn entry, and at the same time the seat of Government was transferred to the Eternal City.
Victor Emmanuel could say what few men have been able to say of so large a promise: 'I have kept my word.' He gathered up the Italian flag from the dust of Novara, and carried it to the Capitol. In spite of the grandeur of republican tradition in Italy, and the lofty character of the men who represented it during the struggle for unity, a study of these events leaves on the mind the conviction that, at least in our time, the country could neither have been freed from the stranger nor welded into a single body-politic without a symbol which appealed to the imagination, and a centre of gravity which kept the diverse elements together by giving the whole its proper balance. The Liberating Prince whom Machiavelli sought was found in the Savoyard King. 'Quali porte se gli serrerebbono? Quali popoli gli negherebbono la obbedienza? Quale invidia se gli opporrebbe? Quale Italiano gli negherebbe l'ossequio?' To fill the appointed part Victor Emmanuel possessed the supreme qualification, which was patriotism. Though he [Pg.413] came of an ambitious race, not even his enemies could with any seriousness bring to his charge personal ambition, since every step which took him further from the Alps, his fathers' cradle, involved a sacrifice of tastes and habits, and of most that made life congenial. When his work was finished, though he was not old, he had the presentiment that he should not long survive its completion. And so it proved.
In the first days of January 1878, the King was seized with one of those attacks on the lungs which his vigorous constitution had hitherto enabled him to throw off. But in Rome this kind of illness is more fatal than elsewhere, and the doctors were soon obliged to tell him that there was no hope. 'Are we come to that?' he asked; and then directed that the chaplain should be summoned. There was no repetition of the scene at San Rossore; the highest authority had already sanctioned the administration of the Sacraments to the dying King, nay, it is said that the Pope's first impulse was to be himself the bearer of them. At that hour the man got the better of the priest; Francis drove out Dominic. The heart that had been made to pity and the lips that had been formed to bless returned to their natural functions. When the aged Pius heard that all was over, exclaimed: 'He died like a Christian, a Sovereign and an honest man (galantuomo).' Very soon the Pope followed the King to the grave, and so, almost together, these two historical figures disappear.
Six years before, solitary and unsatisfied, Mazzini died at Pisa, his heart gnawed with the desire of the extreme, as the hearts have been of all those who aspired less to change what men do, or even what they believe, than what they are. More deep than political regrets was the pain with which he watched the absorption of human energies, in the [Pg.414] race for wealth, for ease, for material happiness; he discerned that if the egotism of capital led to oppression, the egotism of labour would lead to anarchy. To the end he preached the moral law of which he had been the apostle through life. His last message to his countrymen, written when the pen was falling from his hand, was a warning to Italian workingmen to beware of the false gods of the new socialism. When others saw darkness he saw light; now, Cassandra-like, he saw darkness when others saw light; yet he did not doubt the ultimate triumph of the light, but he no longer thought that his eyes would see it, and he was glad to close them.
Less sad, notwithstanding his physical martyrdom, were Garibaldi's last years. Italy showed him an unforgetting love; when he came to the continent, the same multitudes waited for him as of old, but instead of cheers there was a not less impressive silence now, lest the invalid should be disturbed. Soon after the transfer of the capital he went to Rome to speak in favour of the works by which it was proposed to control the inundations of the Tiber, and it was curious to hear it said on all sides that, of course, the Tiber works must be taken in hand as Garibaldi wished it. Pius IX. summed up the situation wittily in the remark: 'Lately we were two here; now we are three.' The old hero invoked the day when bayonets might be turned into pruning-hooks, but he by no means thought that it had arrived, and in the meanwhile he urged the Italians to look to their defences, and above all, 'to be strong on the sea, like England.' In the matter of government he remained the impenitent advocate of the rule of one honest man—call him Dictator or what you please, so he be one! Garibaldi died at Caprera on the 2nd of June 1882. The play was ended, the actors [ [Pg.415] vanished:
[Greek: Dote kroton, kai pantes hymeis meta charas ktupêsate.]