Builders of United Italy

by Rupert Sargent Holland

With this fundamental need firmly fixed in his mind Mazzini gave what spare hours fell to the lot of a young Italian lawyer to the work of writing to the independent journals. At first he leaned to the side of caution, realizing how strict was the censorship of the Italian press, but gradually he contrived to slip bolder and more inflammatory messages into circulation under the censor’s nose. He spoke of a new party that should arise in a short time, and called it “Young Italy,” he expressed deep sympathy with political exiles, he turned his literary criticisms into studies of national development. Ultimately one of the papers for which he wrote, the “Indicatore Livornese,” became too daring, and was ended by the authorities. Mazzini then aimed higher, and gained credit with the “Antologia,” the Edinburgh Review of Italy, by a series of articles on the historical drama.

Meanwhile he was still studying the problem of giving a new religion to the youth of Italy. He had joined the Society of the Carbonari, and was learning that the plots and counter-plots of an unwieldy secret society would accomplish no good end. There was too much ritual, too little effort. The Carbonari had no definite plan, they were entirely at the mercy of any chance leader of disaffection, each member only knew one or two other members. Of a sudden the Revolution of July in France fired liberals throughout Europe, Mazzini and his young friends in Genoa immediately began active preparations for a military uprising. Lead was being cast into bullets when the police of Genoa intervened and Mazzini was placed under arrest. He had been suspected of revolutionary sentiments for some time. The Governor of Genoa told Giuseppe’s father that he considered the son “was gifted with some talent, and too fond of walking by himself at night absorbed in thought. What on earth has he at his age to think about? We don’t like young people thinking without our knowing the subject of their thoughts.”

Mazzini was taken to the fortress of Savona, and there imprisoned to await his trial. The commander of the fortress allowed the young prisoner to keep his Bible, Tacitus, and Byron. From these hours of solitary confinement sprang the youth’s passionate regard for the English poet, a man whose writings he later vehemently held were only to be classed with Dante as an inspiration to Italians.

The government could prove nothing definite against him, but he was thought too dangerous a man to be at large, and so was finally given his choice between nominal imprisonment in a small town and exile. France was throbbing with a new democracy, Paris was the center of revolutionary propaganda, and so Mazzini chose exile there. Early in 1831 he parted from his family at Savona and started north. He felt that he had come to the parting of the ways, and that henceforth his life was to be absolutely given to the cause. For the first time he saw the Alps, and his nature, always strongly susceptible to heroic scenery, was deeply stirred. He watched the sunrise from Mont Cenis and wrote, “The first ray of light trembling on the horizon, vague and pale, like a timid, uncertain hope, then the long line of fire cutting the blue heaven, firm and decided as a promise;” here was the poet soul free at last to speak its message.

With the date of this first exile begins Mazzini’s call to “Young Italy.” He had recognized that his countrymen must waken to a new religion, that their souls must be touched rather than their ambitions. The youth of Italy would feel the call more strongly than the middle-aged. “Place,” he said, “the young at the head of the insurgent masses; you do not know what strength is latent in those young bands, what magic influence the voice of the young has on the crowd; you will find in them a host of apostles for the new religion. But youth lives on movement, grows great in enthusiasm and faith. Consecrate them with a lofty mission, inflame them with emulation and praise; spread through their ranks the word of fire, the word of inspiration; speak to them of country, of glory, of power, of great memories.” “All great national movements,” he wrote later, “begin with the unknown men of the people, without influence except for the faith and will that counts not time or difficulties.” Mazzini was not diffident with regard to his own youthful powers, nor was Cavour, five years Mazzini’s junior, who wrote to a friend at this time prophesying that he would one morning wake up Prime Minister of Italy.

The most important feature of “Young Italy” was its religion, the Carbonari had had none. Men were now told that they had a mission given them by God, and that what had been before a mere personal right had become a sacred duty. The second feature was the liberation of the poor, a need which all former revolutionists had seemed to overlook. The French Revolution had had no such substructure, the poets and dramatists had idealized national rather than social liberty, but Mazzini saw that the time had come for a further step, that Austria was not the only enemy his people had to fear. He wrote, “I see the people pass before my eyes in the livery of wretchedness and political subjection, ragged and hungry, painfully gathering the crumbs that wealth tosses insultingly to it, or lost and wandering in riot and the intoxication of a brutish, angry, savage joy; and I remember that these brutalized faces bear the finger-print of God, the mark of the same mission as my own. I lift myself to the vision of the future and behold the people rising in its majesty, brothers in one faith, one bond of equality and love, one ideal of citizen virtue that ever grows in beauty and might; the people of the future, unspoilt by luxury, ungoaded by wretchedness, awed by the consciousness of its rights and duties, and in the presence of that vision my heart beats with anguish for the present and glorying for the future.” Mazzini gave “Young Italy” as its watchword “God and the People.”

There can be no question but that “Young Italy” was strong where the Carbonari had been weak, but both movements had of necessity many of the same defects. Government espionage forced the new movement like its predecessors to choose the devious courses of a secret society. The restlessness of the age caused the new movement to take each fitful start as a momentous signal. The strength of Austria was not underestimated, but the weakness of the disunited Italian states was. Diplomacy was disregarded; it was only many years later that Mazzini the prophet learned the value of Cavour the statesman. “Young Italy” was launched in a troublous sea, destined to encounter many storms, but fated ultimately to spread abroad the seeds of the hope that was to awaken republicans throughout all European countries.

Mazzini no sooner arrived in Lyons than he found himself in the center of plots. The French government, still fresh from the days of July, was in two minds; first they aided a band of Italian refugees who were planning a raid into Savoy, then they faced about and scattered the conspirators. Another plan was for a trip to Corsica, there to gather arms to aid the insurgents in Romagna, but the funds for this attempt were lacking. Mazzini gave up immediate action for the moment, and locating at Marseilles started with a few youthful friends to organize his great concerted movement. They had nothing but youth and audacity. A contemporary (probably Enrico Mayer) described Mazzini at this time as “about 5 feet 8 inches high, and slightly made; he was dressed in black Genoa velvet, with a large ‘republican’ hat; his long, curling black hair, which fell upon his shoulders, the extreme freshness of his clear olive complexion, the chiseled delicacy of his regular and beautiful features, aided by his very youthful look and sweetness and openness of expression, would have made his appearance almost too feminine, if it had not been for his noble forehead, the power of firmness and decision that was mingled with their gaiety and sweetness in the bright flashes of his dark eyes and in the varying expression of his mouth, together with his small and beautiful mustachios and beard. Altogether he was at that time the most beautiful being, male or female, that I had ever seen, and I have not since seen his equal.”

Mazzini was proud of these early days when he looked back upon them later. He wrote, “We had no office, no helpers. All day, and a great part of the night, we were buried in our work, writing articles and letters, getting information from travelers, enlisting seamen, folding papers, fastening envelopes, dividing our time between literary and manual work. La Cecilia was compositor; Lamberti corrected the proofs; another of us made himself literally porter, to save the expense of distributing papers. We lived as equals and brothers; we had but one thought, one hope, one ideal to reverence. The foreign republicans loved and admired us for our tenacity and unflagging industry; we were often in real want, but we were light-hearted in a way, and smiling because we believed in the future.” It was Mazzini’s period of boundless hope.