It will be well now to turn to the events which brought Italy into line with the Central Powers and thus laid the foundation of the Triple Alliance of to-day.
The complex and uninteresting annals of Italy after the completion of her unity do not concern us here. The men whose achievements had ennobled the struggle for independence passed away in quick succession after the capture of Rome for the national cause. Mazzini died in March 1872 at Pisa, mourning that united Italy was so largely the outcome of foreign help and monarchical bargainings. Garibaldi spent his last years in fulminating against the Government of Victor Emmanuel. The soldier-king himself passed away in January 1878, and his relentless opponent, Pius IX., expired a month later. The accession of Umberto I. and the election of Leo XIII. promised at first to assuage the feud between the Vatican and the Quirinal, but neither the tact of the new sovereign nor the personal suavity of the Pope brought about any real change. Italy remained a prey to the schism between Church and State. A further cause of weakness was the unfitness of many parts of the Peninsula for constitutional rule. Naples and the South were a century behind the North in all that made for civic efficiency, the taint of favouritism and corruption having spread from the governing circles to all classes of society. Clearly the time of wooing had been too short and feverish to lead up to a placid married life.
During this period of debt and disenchantment came news of a slight inflicted by the Latin sister of the North. France had seized Tunis, a land on which Italian patriots looked as theirs by reversion, whereas the exigencies of statecraft assigned it to the French. It seems that during the Congress of Berlin (June-July 1878) Bismarck and Lord Salisbury unofficially dropped suggestions that their Governments would raise no objections to the occupation of Tunis by France. According to de Blowitz, Bismarck there took an early opportunity of seeing Lord Beaconsfield and of pointing out the folly of England quarrelling with Russia, when she might arrange matters more peaceably and profitably with her. England, said he, should let Russia have Constantinople and take Egypt in exchange; "France would not prove inexorable--besides, one might give her Tunis or Syria[254]." Another Congress story is to the effect that Lord Salisbury, on hearing of the annoyance felt in France at England's control over Cyprus, said to M. Waddington at Berlin: "Do what you like with Tunis; England will raise no objections." A little later, the two Governments came to a written understanding that France might occupy Tunis at a convenient opportunity.
The seizure of Tunis by France aroused all the more annoyance in Italy owing to the manner of its accomplishment. On May 11, 1881, when a large expedition was being prepared in her southern ports, M. Barthélémy de St. Hilaire disclaimed all idea of annexation, and asserted that the sole aim of France was the chastisement of a troublesome border tribe, the Kroumirs; but on the entry of the "red breeches" into Kairwan and the collapse of the Moslem resistance, the official assurance proved to be as unsubstantial as the inroads of the Kroumirs. Despite the protests that came from Rome and Constantinople, France virtually annexed that land, though the Sultan's representative, the Bey, still retains the shadow of authority[255].
In vain did King Umberto's ministers appeal to Berlin for help against France. They received the reply that the affair had been virtually settled at the time of the Berlin Congress[256]. The resentment produced by these events in Italy led to the fall of the Cairoli Ministry, which had been too credulous of French assurances; and Depretis took the helm of State. Seeing that Bismarck had confessed his share in encouraging France to take Tunis, Italy's rapprochement to Germany might seem to be unnatural. It was so. In truth, her alliance with the Central Powers was based, not on good-will to them, but on resentment against France. The Italian Nationalists saw in Austria the former oppressor, and still raised the cry of Italia irredenta for the recovery of the Italian districts of Tyrol, Istria, and Dalmatia. In January 1880, we find Bismarck writing: "Italy must not be numbered to-day among the peace-loving and conservative Powers, who must reckon with this fact. . . . We have much more ground to fear that Italy will join our adversaries than to hope that she will unite with us, seeing that we have no more inducements to offer her[257]."
This frame of mind changed after the French acquisition of Tunis.
Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes
should have been the feeling of MM. Waddington and Ferry when Bismarck encouraged them to undertake that easiest but most expensive of conquests. The nineteenth century offers, perhaps, no more successful example of Macchiavellian statecraft. The estrangement of France and Italy postponed at any rate for a whole generation, possibly for the present age, that war of revenge in which up to the spring of 1881 the French might easily have gained the help of Italy. Thenceforth they had to reckon on her hostility. The irony of the situation was enhanced by the fact that the Tunis affair, with the recriminations to which it led, served to bring to power at Paris the very man who could best have marshalled the French people against Germany.