Francis Joseph may have guessed what was coming when he read the reports of Victor Emmanuel’s speech at the opening of his Parliament, in January, 1859, containing the pregnant declaration that, “while respecting treaties, we cannot disregard the cry of grief which rises to us from so many parts of Italy.” His guesses must have become certainties when, at the New Year’s reception of the corps diplomatique, Napoleon remarked, with chilly politeness, to Hübner, now Austrian Ambassador, in the hearing of all the other Ambassadors:—
“I regret that our relations with your Government are not so good as they have been; but I beg you to assure your Emperor that my personal sentiments towards him have undergone no change.”
A double-edged saying; for his feelings were hardly likely to be friendly towards the originator of the scheme for snubbing him as “Sir” instead of saluting him as “Brother.” In any case it was a saying which meant war; and war was not long delayed. Francis Joseph, in fact, anticipated the inevitable by summoning Sardinia to disarm within three days; but Sardinia refused to disarm, and the French came over the Alps, beat Francis Joseph at Magenta and Solferino, and turned him out of Lombardy, though allowing him to retain Venetia.
That was the beginning of the end; and the event contains an important moral,—the moral that the one permanent peril to European peace arises out of the hatred invariably felt for persons of German nationality by the races subjected to their rule.
The trouble with the German, whether of the North or of the South, is always this: that he regards himself as a heaven-sent ruler of men, but can, as a matter of fact, only govern in a state of siege. He can win battles, and organise a civil service; but he can neither conciliate nor assimilate his subjects. The German Empire is sometimes compared (by Germans) to the Roman Empire; but the difference between the two things is wide. The Romans, when they conquered the world, made it contentedly Roman. The French, similarly, when they took over Savoy from Italy, made it contentedly French. But no German dependency is ever contentedly German. Alsace is not; nor is Schleswig-Holstein, or Prussian Poland. In all these places, the German, in his jack-boots, strides about among a people who find his language barbarous, his culture ridiculous, and himself an odious interloper. And it has been the same thing in Austrian Italy, where, even to this day, the few Italians who remain “unredeemed” refuse so much as to join the Austrian Alpine Club, but have preferred to form a smaller Alpine Club of their own.
In the days of which we are speaking, Austria ruled Lombardy and Venetia as subject provinces. At the same time, other Habsburgs reigned in Modena and Tuscany, while the abominable Bomba of Naples was the Empress Elizabeth’s brother-in-law. Not in his own provinces only, but throughout Italy, popular representation was roughly refused. Italy, it was held, was “a geographical expression,” and must behave as such. If it did not, then leading Italian citizens must be hanged; and, if there were any difficulty in getting evidence to hang them on, it must be obtained by torture.
It is a fact, incredible as it may seem, that the Austrians used, in the ‘fifties, to torture their Italian subjects in prison. It is a fact that they flogged, and sometimes executed, Italian civilians for “failing in outward respect” towards the Austrian soldiery. It is a fact that they flogged women for the comments which they passed on such proceedings. It is a fact that they shot a butcher, found in possession of a butcher’s knife, for carrying forbidden arms, and a lunatic for going through the motions of drill in a public thoroughfare. It is a fact, finally, that, exasperated at the manner in which every official Austrian institution was boycotted, they notified the public that “if anybody by criminal political obstinacy persisted in not frequenting the theatre, such conduct would be regarded as the silent demonstration of a criminal disposition, which merited to be sought out and punished.” The policy was as childish as it was savage, and as savage as it was childish. Gladstone had it in mind when he made his famous remark that nowhere on the map of Europe could one lay one’s finger and say: “Here Austria has done good.” His mistake lay not in offering that criticism, but in afterwards apologising for having offered it. What the Italians themselves thought of the matter is best shown by the written declaration which one of their victims handed in to his judges after his condemnation to death:—
“I declare” (he said) “that, rather than deny the sacred principles on which the cause of Italian liberty and independence repose, rather than adhere to the rapacious policy of Austria, rather than sanction its claims by any act which might seem to concede them, or by any submission to its authority, I, Pietro Fortunato Calvi, once officer of the Austrian Army, and late Colonel of the Italian Army during the War of Independence, now condemned to death for the crime of high treason, go joyfully to this death, declaring from the scaffold that what I have done I have done knowingly, and that I would be ready to do it again in order to drive the Austrians out of the States which they have infamously usurped.”
His judges asked him, in their arrogance, whether he would ask the pardon of the Austrians for his disloyalty to them. His reply was that he desired neither their pardon nor any other favour:
“I hate, and will always hate, the Austrians, until the end of my life, for all the ill they have done to Italy.”