Thus all Italy—unless we count the island kingdoms of Sardinia and Sicily as parts of Italy—was brought under French dominion in one form or another. But of that dominion there were three varieties. ♦Part incorporated with France.♦ The whole western part of the land, from Aosta to Tarracina—unless it is worth while to except the new Lucchese duchy—was formally incorporated with France. ♦Extent of the kingdom of Italy.♦ The north-eastern side, from Bözen to Ascoli, formed a Kingdom of Italy, distinct from France, but held by the same sovereign. And this Kingdom of Italy was further increased to the north by part of those Italian lands which had become Swiss and German. ♦Kingdom of Naples.♦ Southern Italy, the Kingdom of Naples, remained in form an independent kingdom; but it was held by princes who could not be looked on as anything but the humble vassals of their mighty kinsman. Never had Italy been brought more completely under foreign dominion. ♦Revival of the Italian name.♦ Still, in a part at least of the land, the name of Italy, and the shadow of a Kingdom of Italy, had been revived. ♦Its effects.♦ And, as names and shadows are not without influence in human affairs, the mere existence of an Italian state, called by the Italian name, did something. The creation of a sham Italy was no unimportant step towards the creation of a real one.
♦Settlement of, 1814-1815.♦
The settlement of Italy after the fall of Buonaparte was far more strictly a return to the old state of things than the contemporary settlement of Germany. Italy remained a geographical expression. Its states were, as before, independent of one another. ♦No tie between the Italian states.♦ They were practically dependent on a foreign power: but they were in no way bound together, even by the laxest federal tie. ♦The princes restored, but not the commonwealths.♦ The main principle of settlement was that the princes who had lost their dominions should be restored, but that the commonwealths which had been overthrown should not be restored. Only harmless San Marino was allowed to live on. Venice, Lucca, and Genoa remained possessions of princes. ♦Kingdom of Lombardy and Venice.♦ The sovereign of Hungary and Austria, now calling himself ‘Emperor’ of his archduchy, carved out for himself an Italian kingdom which bore the name of the Kingdom of Lombardy and Venice. On the strength of this, the Austrian, like his French predecessor, took upon him to wear the Italian crown. ♦Its extent.♦ The new kingdom consisted of the former Italian possessions of Austria, the duchies of Milan and Mantua, enlarged by the former possessions of Venice, which had become Austrian at Campoformio. The old boundary between Germany and Italy was restored. Trent, Aquileia, Trieste, were again severed from Italy. They remained possessions of the same prince as Milan and Venice, but they formed no part of his Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. On another frontier, where restoration would have had to be made to a commonwealth, the arrangements were less conservative, and the Valtellina remained part of the new kingdom. The Ticino formed, as before, the boundary towards Piedmont. ♦Genoa annexed to Piedmont.♦ The King of Sardinia came again into possession of this last country, enlarged by the former dominions of Genoa. ♦Monaco.♦ This gave him the whole Ligurian seaboard, except where the little principality of Monaco still went on. ♦Tuscany, Parma, Modena, Lucca.♦ Parma, Modena, and Tuscany again became separate duchies. Lucca remained a duchy alongside of them. ♦Lucca annexed to Tuscany.♦ The family arrangements by which these states were handed about to this and that widow do not concern geography; all that need be marked is that, by virtue of one of these compacts, Lucca was in the end added to Tuscany. That grand-duchy was further increased by the addition of the former outlying possessions of the Sicilian crown, including Elba, the island which for a moment was an Empire. ♦The Papal states.♦ The Pope came back to all his old Italian possessions, outlying Benevento included. ♦The Two Sicilies.♦ The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was formed again by the restoration of the Kingdom of Naples to the Bourbon king. Thus was formed the Italy of 1815, an Italy which, save in the sweeping away of its commonwealths, and the consequent extension of Sardinian and Austrian territory, differed geographically but little from the Italy of 1748. But in 1815 there were hopes which had had no being in 1748. Italy was divided on the map; but she had made up her mind to be one.
♦The union of Italy comes from Piedmont.♦
The union of Italy was at last to come from one of those corners which in earlier history we have looked on as being hardly Italian at all. It was not Milan or Florence or Rome which was to grow into the new Italy. That function was reserved for a princely house whose beginnings had been Burgundian rather than Italian, whose chief territories had long lain on the Burgundian side of the Alps, but which had gradually put on an Italian character, and which had now become the one national Italian dynasty. The Italian possessions of the Savoyard house, Piedmont, Genoa, and the island of Sardinia, now formed one of the chief Italian states, and the only one whose rule, if still despotic, was not foreign. Savoy, by ceasing to be Savoy, was to become Italy. ♦Movements of 1848.♦ The movements of 1848 in Italy, like those in Germany, led to no lasting changes on the map: but they do so far affect geography that new states were actually founded, if only for a moment. ♦Momentary commonwealths.♦ Rome, Venice, Milan, were actually for a while republics, and the Two Sicilies were for a while separated. In the next year all came back as before. The next lasting change on the map was that which at last restored a real Kingdom of Italy. ♦Campaign of 1859.♦ The joint campaign of France and Sardinia won Lombardy for the Sardinian kingdom. Lombardy was now defined as that part of the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom which lay west of the Mincio, except that Mantua was left out. She was left to Austria. A French scheme for an Italian confederation came to nothing. ♦Union of the smaller states, 1860.♦ Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and Romagna voted their own annexation to Piedmont. The Two Sicilies were won by Garibaldi, and the kingly title of Sardinia was merged in that of the restored Kingdom of Italy. ♦Addition of the Sicilies.♦ This new Italian kingdom was, by the addition of the Sicilies, extended over lands which had never been part of the elder Italian kingdom. But Venetia was still cut off; the Pope kept the lands on each side of Rome, the so-called Patrimony and the Campagna. ♦Cession of Savoy and Nizza to France.♦ But France annexed the lands, strictly Burgundian rather than Italian, of Savoy and Nizza. The Italian kingdom was thus again called into being; but it had not yet come to perfection. Italy had ceased to be a geographical expression; but the Italian frontier still presented some geographical anomalies.
♦Recovery of Venetia, 1866;
of Rome, 1870.♦
The war between Prussia and Austria gave Venetia to Italy; the war between Germany and France allowed Italy to recover Rome. ♦Part of the old kingdom not yet recovered.♦ The two great gaps in her frontier were thus made good; but, to say nothing of the annexations made by France, a large Italian-speaking population, lying within the bounds of the old Italian kingdom, still remains outside its modern revival. Trent, Aquileia, Trieste, Istria, are still parts, not of an Italian kingdom, not of a German kingdom, confederation, or empire, but of an Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Otherwise the Italian kingdom has formed itself, and it has taken its place among the great powers of Europe. Yet the whole peninsula does not form part of the Italian kingdom. ♦San Marino remains free.♦ Surrounded on every side by that kingdom, the commonwealth of San Marino, like Rhodes or Byzantium under the early Cæsars, still keeps its ancient freedom.
§ 5. The Kingdom of Burgundy.
♦Union of Burgundy with Germany and Italy, 1032.♦
The Burgundian Kingdom, which was united with those of Germany and Italy after the death of its last separate king Rudolf the Third, has had a fate unlike that of any other part of Europe. ♦Dying out of the kingdom.♦ Its memory, as a separate state, has gradually died out. ♦Chiefly annexed by France;♦ The greater part of its territory has been swallowed up bit by bit by a neighbouring power, and the small part which has escaped that fate has long lost all trace of its original name or its original political relations. By a long series of annexations, spreading over more than five hundred years, the greater part of the kingdom has gradually been incorporated with France. ♦part Italian;
part Swiss.♦ Of what remains, a small corner forms part of the modern kingdom of Italy, while the rest still keeps its independence in the form of the commonwealths which make up the western cantons of Switzerland. ♦Burgundy represented by Switzerland.♦ These cantons, in fact, are the truest modern representatives of the Burgundian kingdom. ♦Neutrality of Switzerland and Belgium.♦ And it is on the Confederation of which they form a part, interposed as it is between France, Italy, the new German Empire, and the modern Austrian monarchy, as a central state with a guaranteed neutrality, that some trace of the old function of Burgundy, as the middle kingdom, is thrown. This function it shares with the Lotharingian lands at the other end of the Empire, which now form part of the equally neutral kingdom of Belgium, lands which, oddly enough, themselves became Burgundian in another sense.