Lady John unfortunately lost her diaries recording events from May, 1859, to January, 1861; but it is known that she was in close sympathy with her husband's policy, and she looked back upon the part he played in the liberation of Italy with almost more pride than upon any other period of his career. Italian patriots and escaped prisoners from the Papal and Neapolitan dungeons found a warm welcome at Pembroke Lodge. She was never tired of listening to their stories, and she felt an enthusiastic ardour for their cause.
PEMBROKE LODGE, May 9, 1859
Farewell visit from Spaventa and Dr. Cesare Braico,[53] who goes to Piedmont Wednesday. Spaventa full of eager but not hopeful talk on Neapolitan prospects, Dr. Braico very quiet, crushed in spirits, but not in spirit.
"For me the illusions of life are past," he said. "I have given the flower of my youth to my country in prison--what remains to me of life is hers."
In answer to some commonplace of mine about hope he replied, "To those who have suffered much the word hope seems a lie.... While I was in prison my mother died--my only tie to life." Said he left England with regret, and should always gratefully remember the sympathy he had found here. Told him I thought there was not enough. "More than in my own country. We passed through four villages on our way to the port after leaving the prison; not one person looked at us or gave us a word of kindness; not a tear was in any eye; not one blessing was uttered." I wondered. I supposed the people (the Neapolitans) were avilis. "More than avilili--sono abbruttati." All these sad words, and many more, in beautiful Italian, would have touched any heart, however shut to the great cause for which he and others have given their earthly happiness, and are about to offer their lives. As I looked at that fine countenance, so determined, so melancholy, and listened to the words that still ring in my ear, I felt that, though he did not say so, he meant to die in battle against tyranny. He gave me some verses, written with a pencil at the moment, to little May, who ran into the room while he was here. Farewell, brave, noble spirit. May God be with thee!
To get clear what Lord John's share was in the creation of Italy, we must remember what hampered him at home and what difficulties he contended with in the councils of Europe.
The Palmerston Cabinet, as far as ability went, was exceptionally strong. Lord Granville, himself a member of it, had failed in his own attempt, because Lord John had stipulated that he should lead the Commons, and that foreign affairs should be in no other hands but Palmerston's; while Palmerston, who was as necessary as Lord John to any strong Whig Government, had declined to serve unless he led the Commons. The motive of Lord John's demand that Palmerston should be Minister for Foreign Affairs is clear; he did not trust Lord Granville where Italy was concerned. He thought extremely well of his qualifications as Foreign Minister--he had previously appointed him his own Foreign Secretary--but Lord Granville had objected shortly before to Lord Clarendon's dispatch to Naples, in which Ferdinand II's misrule had been condemned in terms such as might have preceded intervention. This dispatch had had Lord John's ardent sympathy, while Lord Granville had disapproved of it on the grounds that in diplomacy threatening language should not be addressed to a small State which prudence would have moderated in dealing with a powerful one, and that the whole tenor of the dispatch was calculated to draw on a European war.
It was these views upon Italian questions--namely, that peace was all-important and that little kingdoms, however corrupt and despotic, should not be browbeaten, which made Lord Granville so acceptable to the Court. Throughout the next two years he was the principal agent through whom the Queen and the Prince Consort attempted to mitigate the pro-Italian policy of Lord John and Palmerston. The Cabinet itself was divided on the subject; the "two old gentlemen," as Sidney Herbert called them, were for stretching England's "neutrality" to mean support of every kind short of (and even at the risk of) committing us to intervention; while the rest of the Cabinet, with the important exception of Gladstone, were more or less in favour of abstaining from any demonstration on one side or the other. When Palmerston came into power the matters stood thus: Austria, after losing the battle of Solferino, was securely entrenched within her four strong fortresses of Verona, Mantua, Peschiera, and Legnago, but her Emperor was already disheartened and disgusted by the fighting.
Napoleon, too, on his side was anxious for peace--most anxious, in fact, to extricate himself as soon as possible from the dangerous complications in which his alliance was likely to land him. On the eve of Solferino he had heard that Prussia, ready for war, was concentrating at Coblenz and Cologne, and he knew well there was no army in France capable of much resistance. He began, too, to realize that success pressed home might lead to the formation on the south-east border of France of a new--and perhaps formidable--Italian power; a possibility he had not considered when he planned with Cavour at Plombières their secret alliance against Austria. The war was now becoming unpopular with far-sighted Frenchmen precisely because its success plainly tended towards this issue; and, in addition, the formation of such a kingdom, by implying the confiscation of the Papal territories, was most distasteful to his Catholic subjects, with whom Napoleon already stood badly and wished to stand better. After a brief armistice, he proposed terms of peace to Austria, which were signed at Villafranca on July 9th. They ran as follows:
Lombardy was to be surrendered to France and then handed over to Italy; the Italian States were to be formed into a Federation under the honorary presidency of the Pope (this was intended to soothe French Catholics); Venetia, while remaining under Austrian rule, was to be a member of the Federation, and the Dukes of Tuscany and Modena were to resume their thrones. Napoleon wished to add a further stipulation that neither side should use their armies to secure this latter object, but over this there rose so much haggling that the outcome was only an understanding between the two Emperors (not committed to paper) that Austria would not oppose the establishment of constitutional government in those States, should they themselves desire it, but at the same time she retained by her silence her right to interfere for other reasons; while France on her side asserted that she would neither restore the Dukes by force of arms herself nor--and here lay a point of great importance--allow Austria to interfere should she act upon the right she had reserved.