Builders of United Italy

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Much of this hope throbbed through the literature that the small Marseilles press scattered throughout Europe, men were in such a state of unrest that the burning words became to them a prophetic writing on the wall. In a hundred ways the contraband pamphlets were smuggled across frontiers, all classes sent assurances of support and aid to the young men in Marseilles, everywhere lodges of “Young Italy” were started, and local editors scattered Mazzini’s doctrines through their immediate territories. Priests, attracted by the strong religious tenor, professional and business men, many of the nobility even joined the new movement. Garibaldi, a young officer in the Genoese merchant service, Gioberti, then a teacher at Vercelli, Ruffini, and his fellow-conspirators working under the very shadow of destruction at Genoa, enrolled under the new standard of “God and the People.” The old members of the Carbonari, the followers of Buonarotti and his “veri Italiani” joined the ranks, within two years “Young Italy” counted its members by the tens of thousands. Not since the era of the great Crusades had there been any simultaneous rising to compare with it.

All men who hoped for the coming of a united Italy looked towards Piedmont as the state by which the first step must be taken. Piedmont had great military traditions. It supported an efficient army, it was so situated that it held the key of entrance into Lombardy, and had the Alps and the Apennines as a base of retreat. In Piedmont there was moreover an intense national feeling, the House of Savoy was deeply rooted in the affections of the people, and almost alone among the Italian sovereignties that House was practically indigenous to the soil. In Charles Albert Piedmont had just received a king who was an intense nationalist, to whom the name of “Italia” was sacred, and who, at certain times, seems to have felt that he was destined to drive the foreigner beyond the Alps. He was no liberal, both his nature and his priestly advisers counseled him against revolutionary measures, he had not the sanguine temper of the leader, he was more the theorist than the actor. Yet with all his temperamental defects the men of the new generation looked on him as a possible saviour, he had given countenance to the Carbonari in his youth, and had led the conspirators of 1821 to believe that he would side with them in any war for Lombard independence. He had not given such aid as they expected, but he was still the one sovereign to whom “Young Italy” could look with any measure of hope. Mazzini was never an ardent believer in monarchies, but now, when his new party was growing with tremendous leaps and bounds, he felt that even the leadership of a king was better than no leadership at all. He was ready at this time to sacrifice republicanism for nationalism; how far he would then have followed a monarchy, if successful, is a difficult question to decide. He was so much in earnest that he could not always critically balance the means and the end.

Early in 1831 Mazzini published his famous letter to Charles Albert. It was the cry of a prophet to a later generation. He pointed out that the King of Piedmont needed no aid from Austria or France. “There is a crown more brilliant and sublime than that of Piedmont, a crown that waits the man who dares to think of it, who dedicates his life to winning it, and scorns to dull the splendor with thoughts of petty tyranny. Sire, have you ever cast an eagle glance upon this Italy, so fair with nature’s smile, crowned by twenty centuries of noble memory, the land of genius, strong in the infinite resources that only want a common purpose, girt round with barriers so impregnable, that it needs but a firm will and a few brave breasts to shelter it from foreign insult? Place yourself at the head of the nation, write on your flag, ‘Union, Liberty, Independence.’ Free Italy from the barbarian, build up the future, be the Napoleon of Italian freedom. Do this and we will gather round you, we will give our lives for you, we will bring the little states of Italy under your flag. Your safety lies on the sword’s point, draw it and throw away the scabbard. But remember, if you do it not, others will do it without you and against you.”

Charles Albert had moments of heroism, but they were only too often followed by moments of overwhelming caution. If he ever read Mazzini’s letter he must have thrilled at the call to save a country he loved with the whole ardor of his nature. After that first thrill had passed he must have realized that the time to take such a supreme step had not come, or that he had not the will to lead it. Once harboring such a doubt the King became a battle-ground for advisers, and when the short fight for control of the King’s mind was won, the reactionaries proved themselves the victors. The unfortunate King allowed others to act against his better judgment; when the fire of revolt next blazed up in Piedmont the government turned a savage face towards the conspirators. The little band of revolutionists was hounded without mercy, terror reigned in Genoa, and the only choice offered the rebels was between betrayal of their friends and execution. Jacopo Ruffini, one of Mazzini’s dearest boyhood friends, killed himself in prison when offered such an alternative. The pendulum swung back, gaining momentum thereby for its coming flight. “Ideas,” wrote Mazzini, “ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs.”

At twenty-eight Mazzini found himself an outcast, hunted at last from France as he had been before from Italy, living in the closest concealment in Switzerland, all his hopes tumbling about him. He tried to organize a band of raiders who should enter Savoy from the Swiss frontier; they were disrupted by treachery and distrust before the first shot was fired. Mazzini’s health broke under the endless strain, there were nights when he never went to bed, days when he had to lie concealed in a goatherd’s hut. At times he seemed to find his only consolation in the white-capped mountains, them he passionately worshiped, the Alps were always nearest to him after Italy. He had very few friends, almost no books; there were no presses now to speak his words to the young hearts of Europe, only occasionally word came to him that his great idea was growing in the outer world.

In those dark days in Switzerland Mazzini suffered most from the thought that he had entailed all his family and friends in his vain sacrifice. His boyhood confidants were dead or in exile, families he loved were scattered over many countries, the few women he knew well were left solitary in their homes. The woman he loved he felt he could not ask to marry him, he had no home to give her, and scarcely knew whether his next day’s food would be forthcoming. He wrote to a friend, “I wanted to do good, but I have always done harm to everybody, and the thought grows and grows until I think I shall go mad. Sometimes I fancy I am hated by those I love most.” In all his letters of this period we catch the note of a spirit torn between pity for sufferings he thinks himself to have caused, and the stern sense of a duty given him by God. They are wonderful letters, the thoughts of a man who could put no limits to his own self-sacrifice nor value too highly the sacrifices of others. In one letter he wrote: “I think over it from morning to night, and ask pardon of my God for having been a conspirator; not that I in the least repent the reasons for it, or recant a single one of my beliefs, which were and are and will be a religion to me, but because I ought to have seen that there are times when a believer should only sacrifice himself to his belief. I have sacrificed everybody.”

A great heroic spirit was trying to justify, not its own aims, but the sorrows it had brought upon others. Mazzini could never have seemed hard and cold, but in those dark days in Switzerland, and in those later to come in London, the gentle, humble spirit of him was pre-eminent. He loved friendship, home life, the arts; he had met his ideal woman; and yet each and every joy life had to offer him he gave up on the altar of his duty. “Duty,” he said, “an arid, bare religion, which does not save my heart a single atom of unhappiness, but still the only one that can save me from suicide;” and again he wrote, “When a man has once said to himself in all seriousness of thought and feeling, I believe in liberty and country and humanity, he is bound to fight for liberty and country and humanity—fight while life lasts, fight always, fight with every weapon, face all from death to ridicule, face hatred and contempt, work on because it is his duty, and for no other reason.”

In 1837 Mazzini gave up the heights of Switzerland for the fogs of London, moved largely to this change by the fact that in England he need no longer live in hiding. He did not look forward with any eagerness to life in England; if the English cared little what political beliefs refugees brought with them, they were not the people to flame with interest in a cause. Byron, Mazzini considered more Italian than English; he could not conceive of poetry as stirring the British blood. He took cheap lodgings, and set himself to writing for support, finding time to keep up his correspondence with members of “Young Italy” scattered over Europe, and also time to look after such Italians in London as were in greater straits than he. The Ruffini family were with him for a time, then misunderstandings separated them, and the last tie that bound him to Genoa was gone. He lived the pathetic life of a literary hack, spending his days working in the British Museum, and his nights writing in his own small room. The one charm he found about London was its fog. “The whole city,” he wrote, “seems under a kind of spell, and reminds me of the witches’ scene in Macbeth or the Brocksberg or the Witch of Endor. The passers-by look like ghosts—one feels almost a ghost oneself.”

The lack of money oppressed him sorely; he would give to every Italian who begged of him on the score of universal brotherhood, gradually his few possessions went their way to the pawnshop. He said that he needed only a place to write and a few pennies to buy cigars. Then by one of those curious chances of fate he met the Carlyles, and his life became a little less cramped and lonely, although perhaps more tempestuous. There are a score of accounts of evenings Mazzini spent with these new friends, the one of whom he admired as a great thinker, the other as a truly noble woman. In time Carlyle tried the gentle Italian sorely; the story goes that the philosopher would rage at all human institutions with the violence of a hurricane and then turn to his guest with the words, “You have not succeeded yet because you have talked too much.” We can picture the boisterous, stormy Englishman thundering at those ideals which the sensitive, passionate Italian was trying to defend. It speaks well for Mazzini that he said of Carlyle, “He is good, good, good; and still, I think in spite of his great reputation, unhappy.” Carlyle’s estimate of Mazzini was that he was “by nature a little lyrical poet.” This opposition of ideas did not, however, keep him from defending his Italian friend when others attacked him. The London Times saw fit to speak slightingly of Mazzini, and Carlyle wrote the editors in noble indignation. “Whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs,” he said, “I can with great freedom testify to all men that he, if I have ever seen such, is a man of genius and virtue, a man of sterling veracity, humanity, and nobleness of mind, one of those rare men, numerable, unfortunately, but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that.” These were glowing words, and thrilled Mazzini as he read them. They were a tribute to Carlyle’s justice, but it is doubtful if he ever really understood the Italian. He would have found it difficult to discover a prophet living in lodgings so near to his own house.

Gradually Mazzini made other English friends, and he worked his way into the pages of the best reviews. In time also his political efforts were revived; he never let any temporary interest dim his goal. He started a society of Italian workmen in London, and edited a paper for them, and opened an evening school where poor Italian boys were taught to read and write and learn something of Italian history. This school was very near his heart, he was always devoted to children.