[67] Cavour’s invasion of the Papal States was inevitable, though the pretext was flimsy. His subtle justification will be found in his masterly despatch of the 12th of October, reviewing the affairs of Italy, in which he dwelt on the advantage of substituting for the discredited dynasties, an Italian Kingdom that would “rob revolutionary passions of a theatre where previously most insane enterprises had chances, if not of success, at least of exciting the sympathies of all generously-minded men.” In a word, his case was that Sardinian intervention could alone prevent the national movement from degenerating into sheer anarchy. Fear, lest Garibaldi might be induced by Mazzini’s partisans, who had surrounded him, to set up a Republic, led the European Courts to condone by passive acquiescence a despatch which postulated the inherent right of a people to depose an hereditary monarch. France withdrew her Minister from Turin by way of formally discountenancing the invasion, which, however, had been secretly arranged at an interview between Napoleon and Cavour at Chambéry. England alone avowed her approval of Cavour’s policy, in a despatch which Lord John Russell sent to Sir J. Hudson on the 27th of October, but of which he kept the Queen and his colleagues in ignorance. The feeling of the country being with Lord John, the Queen and Lord Palmerston did not find it expedient to resent the affront. The truth is, that Lord John had previously written a despatch (31st August) menacing Sardinia if she attacked Austria in Venetia, and admitting the right of Austria to hold Venetia, which had enraged the Radicals. So by way of conciliating them he wrote the despatch of the 17th of October, recanting the absolutist doctrines he had promulgated in August. But personally, Lord John was notoriously a partisan of the national movement in Italy. “Sir J. Hudson,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “told me that Lord John virtually encouraged the King (Victor Emmanuel) to invade Naples, by asking his aide-de-camp at Richmond whether the King was not afraid. This was quite enough to send Victor Emmanuel anywhere.”—Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. II., p. 237.
[68] See the Queen’s letter to Lord Palmerston (3rd June) quoted in Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CII.
[69] Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 263.
[70] Another part of Napoleon’s scheme at Baden was to suggest the partition of Turkey by way of compensating Austria for the loss of Venetia, an old idea of Talleyrand’s. Russia, however, objected to the Danubian provinces of Turkey being given to Austria, so the proposal was not made. The whole scheme would have thus been—the annexation of Rhenish territory to France, of the northern German States to Prussia, of the Danubian provinces to Austria, and of Venetia to Italy.
[71] This letter (which was published) was written without the knowledge of the French Ministry. It was prompted by certain suspicions which had been expressed as to the Emperor’s good faith in interfering again in the Eastern Question. In June Europe was shocked to learn that the Druses, who were Moslems, had massacred thousands of the Christian Maronites in the Lebanon. The Turks had abetted these atrocities, their defence being that the Maronites were meditating a rebellion. On the 9th of July Moslem fanatics, aided by Turkish troops, also butchered the people in the Christian quarter of Damascus—3,500 males being slaughtered. The Consulates of France, Austria, Russia, Holland, Belgium, and Greece were sacked, their inmates finding a refuge in the house of Abd-el-Kader. Fuad Pasha, the Imperial Ottoman Commissioner, punished the guilty parties, but the French Emperor also insisted on sending out troops to keep order in the country. This proposal was jealously regarded by England, but it was agreed to after much negotiation—France furnishing 6,000 men, and the other Powers as many more up to 6,000 as might be necessary, six months being fixed as the term of the occupation. The Emperor resented our suspicions as to his motives in occupying Syria, and in his celebrated letter to Persigny defends their disinterestedness.
[72] “It is high time,” wrote the Prince Consort to the Prince Regent of Prussia. “It seems to me one of his chief difficulties consists in the fundamental difference between his and the people’s way of looking at things. He proposes to make concessions as acts of grace; they, on the other hand, ask to have a legal status, and institutions not dependent on the good-or ill-will of the Sovereign. They had most of them Documentary Rights, as they were called, in the Middle Ages, and as the Revolution of 1848 had overthrown everything, the Emperor was wrong, when it had been put down, not to return to a state of things based on law and right, instead of, as it were, legitimising the Revolution by proclaiming himself as its heir.”—Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CIV. Lowe’s Life of Bismarck, Vol. I., p. 264, contains a curious letter of Prince Bismarck’s on this interview, showing how utterly misinformed he was as to its purport.
[73] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. CVI.
[74] The English Historical Review, No. 6, April, 1887, pp. 296-298.
[75] The English Historical Review, No. 6, April 1887, p. 297.
[76] Mr. John Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXIX.