Builders of United Italy

by Rupert Sargent Holland

Given this true, straightforward nature, we find that from his boyhood he had above everything desired a free united Italy, with Rome as its capital. The name Rome never failed to thrill him. So long as the master-hand of Cavour was ready to guide him Garibaldi proceeded gloriously forward, the crusader who could lead men into battle and fill them with a great enthusiasm. Cavour could fight against the Mazzinian theories of a republic, he had to fight hard to keep the soldier in the straight path, particularly in those early days in Naples, but he succeeded, and saw Garibaldi proudly deliver Naples and Sicily into the care of his King. How great was Cavour’s steering hand we find in later years; without that powerful mind to control him, Garibaldi fell under the influence of many different types of men, and his simple confiding nature found it easy to trust each seeming friend in turn. The very virtue of his nature acted against him then, he became a tool for men to use, his great name a flag for any new quixotic idea. It was only when he was fighting that he was his own commander, at other times he was ever ready to sink his own opinions in those of others. The latter part of his life was therefore continually stormy, he had not the art to weather varying changes in national sentiment.

Almost as easy to estimate as his character were his achievements. They were superlatively great for Italy. Nobody can tell whether Cavour’s diplomacy alone would ever have won the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Garibaldi started from Genoa on an expedition that seemed doomed to disaster, but which, successfully begun, carried all opposition before it. It is true that the army of Francis II. was poor, and that the battles, with the exception of Calatafimi in Sicily, are not to be classed as great conflicts, but Garibaldi did much more than win battles, he roused the people to a pitch of fighting spirit they had never known before. The fame of the Thousand spread across Europe, and with it rose European admiration and interest in the Italian cause. Foreigners joined his army, and when the great general met Victor Emmanuel and gave over the two crowns he had won the eyes of the whole world were focused on the sovereign and the hero. The glory of that expedition could not fade, whatever Garibaldi did later could not efface the memory of those great days; even the governments that found him rebelling against the laws and treaties they had made could not but thrill at the recollection of the days of 1860 and 1861. The red shirt became an oriflamme to lovers of liberty in all lands, the Garibaldian hymn set hearts to dancing with pride and exultation, the simple soldier with his dramatic effects of life and bearing became an Italian national hero with all the mythical charm of a Cid Campeador or a William Tell. He will take a place in Italian legendary history that was empty until his day.

This atmosphere of romance that surrounded him was of his nature. He wrote two books, one, “The Rule of the Monk,” which appeared after his imprisonment at Varignano, the other, “The Thousand,” after the Vosges campaign. They were both extravagant, artificial, as wildly eventful as any novels ever penned. Yet in a sense they catch the flavor of his own career. When he describes the monks he pictures them as they actually seemed to him, agents of the power which had so hounded him after the siege of Rome, and which had executed his friend Ugo Bassi. When he writes of “The Thousand” he shows his followers as men capable of any heroism, and the expedition becomes one series of marvellous adventures. He saw that intensely dramatic side of the struggle, and he became the symbol of that dramatic element in the eyes of the world. His country needed that symbol, the glory of a crusader was as essential to Italian redemption as the soul-stirring fanaticism of a Mazzini, the statecraft of a Cavour, or the kingship of a Victor Emmanuel. He was the living personification of the great fight for liberty; that was his contribution to the cause.

[VICTOR EMMANUEL, THE KING]

Few royal families in Europe possess as proud a record as the House of Savoy. Legend carries their race as Princes back to 998, when an exiled noble of Saxon birth settled in Burgundy, and ultimately built a family stronghold at the pass of Moriana on the frontier of Savoy. This prince was known as Humbert of the White Hand. He was followed by a series of fighting, ambitious, able descendants, who gradually carved for themselves the Dukedom of Savoy, and married into the most powerful of contemporary royal families. Their small state was so centrally placed that it early became a storm-center, and for centuries the Dukes were famous as warrior-adventurers, fighting now under the banner of the Empire, now under that of Spain or of France. Happily the Dukes of Savoy shared little of the tyrannical natures of their neighbors, they were not altogether saintly, but they were surprisingly merciful and just in an age famous for cruel bigotry. Emmanuel Philibert, better known as “Testa di Ferro,” or “Head of Iron,” one of the most popular of Piedmont’s heroes, became a great favorite with the Emperor Charles V., was a general of renown, and secured firm possession of his Savoy lands. From his time the position of the family became more assured.

In 1703, Victor Amadeus, fifteenth Duke of Savoy, assumed the title of King of Sicily, as a result of a treaty following his defense of Turin and overturning of the Bourbon power in Italy. Shortly thereafter Sicily was exchanged for Sardinia and certain territories adjoining his frontiers, and the title of the head of the house of Savoy became King of Sardinia.

Victor Emmanuel I. of Sardinia, who succeeded his brother Charles Emmanuel IV., was a brave, thoroughly good-hearted man, whose nature was, however, absolutely mediæval. He was much under the influence of Austria, to whose Emperor he had given a promise that he would never grant his people a free constitution. He finally abdicated in favor of his brother Charles Felix, a man of a much narrower nature, who did all in his power to check the free-thinking sentiments rapidly spreading through his people as a result of the Revolution in France. When he died in 1831 the elder branch of the House of Savoy came to an end, but fortunately there was a distantly related younger branch, known as the Princes of Carignano and Savoy. The seventh Prince of this line, Charles Albert, born in 1798, had married a daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and had been a great favorite with Victor Emmanuel I. On the death of that King he had acted for a short time as regent for Charles Felix, and had then served in the war between France and Spain, winning a great reputation for bravery. When Charles Felix died he succeeded him as King of Sardinia in 1831.

Charles Albert was one of the most interesting characters of the early Nineteenth Century, a man of the noblest character, burning with the desire to free Italy from the foreigner, but always suspicious that he was not the man to do it. This suspicion was continually played upon by the clerical party at the court of Turin, and with the result that the King, as firm a Roman Catholic as his ancestors, and by nature devout almost to mysticism, was the continual battle-field of the warring sentiments of love of liberty and love of the Church. During the reign of Victor Emmanuel I. the liberal party in Piedmont looked upon Charles Albert as their natural leader. He often spoke of his desire to see Italy united, and made little concealment of his hostility to Austria and the Bourbon princes. Yet, when he was actually invited to lead the Piedmont “Federates” as they were called, whose object was simply the confederation of Italy, he could not make up his mind to accept. As Santa Rosa, the leader of the party, said, “He both would, and would not.”

Victor Emmanuel I., bound by his promise to the house of Austria, had yet seen that his people were bent on reforms, and rather than break his word and grant a constitution he had abdicated in favor of Charles Felix. Immediately the liberals had besieged the regent, Charles Albert, with petitions and a show of force which could not be denied. He had then proclaimed the constitution, accompanying it with this declaration: “Our respect and submission to his majesty Charles Felix, to whom the throne belongs, would have hindered us making any fundamental change in the laws of the realm until the sovereign’s intentions were known; but as the force of circumstances is manifest, and we desire to render to the new King his people safe, uninjured, and happy, and not in a civil war, having maturely considered everything, and with the advice of our council, we have decided, in the hope that his majesty, moved by the same considerations, will give his approval, that the constitution of Spain shall be promulgated.”