After the wonderful development of the sixteenth century it is amazing to consider this time of deterioration. The day of great men is not altogether past—witness Galileo—but there are no such great poets, historians, artists, as in past generations. Even the events of the political world have small world-historical importance. Italy is the battle-ground of nations; it is a geographical territory but it is scarcely a state. It has no unity, it has no individuality; it has no important autonomous states as a whole that command the attention of the historian. The intellectual sceptre which Italy so long swayed has been passed on to the nations of the north. The ecclesiastical spirit is everywhere dominant.
The burning of Giordano Bruno in the last year of the sixteenth century and the persecution of Galileo for daring to uphold the new Copernican conception of cosmogony are typical features of the epoch. Chronologically the mediæval era is past, but the spirit of mediævalism still pertains in Italy; rather let us say that this unfortunate country has lapsed back into an archaic cast of thought after having led the world for generations.
The historian must note the play and counterplay of outside nations who use the territory of Italy as their chess-board, but as regards the Italian himself the world historian might virtually disregard his existence during many generations. It is only towards the close of the eighteenth century when Italy came under the sway of Napoleon that there came about a reaction from the overbearing policy of this new tyrant; then a desire for liberty began to make itself felt in Italy, and to prepare the way for that struggle of a half century later which was to weld the disunited subject principalities into a unified and autonomous kingdom. But the intimations of this later development could hardly be appreciated by the contemporary observer who saw Italy ground beneath the heel of Napoleon, with no seeming chance of ever escaping from this humiliating position.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
With the overthrow of Napoleon there was but slight betterment in the immediate condition of Italy. An attempt was made by the powers that had overthrown the French usurper to restore the Italian principalities to something like their ante-revolutionary status. But, as has just been noted, the spirit of liberty was taking possession of the land and its long enslaved people began to dream of better things than they had known for centuries. But their efforts to secure the freedom so long renounced were at first only attempts; one petty rebellion after another seemed to come to nothing. But, at last, under the guidance of such leaders as Mazzini, Cavour, Garibaldi, and Victor Emmanuel, the seemingly impossible was accomplished: outside influences were subordinated; the papal power over secular affairs was restricted and at last virtually overthrown; and for the first time in something like fourteen centuries the geographical territory of Italy came politically under the sway of a single ruler who owed no allegiance to alien lands: the dream of the visionaries was accomplished: an Italian kingdom ruled by an Italian king took the place of the enslaved, disunited principalities of the earlier centuries.
True, this achievement was not the culmination that some of the most ardent patriots, with Mazzini at their head, had dreamed of. The aim of that leader, as of many another, had been to achieve not a monarchical but a republican unity. In their enthusiastic estimate the monarchical form of government was obsolescent. Their enthusiasm harked back to the days when Venice and Florence had carried out with so much success the precepts of democracy. Their imagination was fired also by the example of that newer republic of the West, whose free institutions have inspired so much of emulation and so much of hatred in the minds of different classes of people among the older governments of Europe. But if the dreams of these enthusiasts were not to be realised, it sufficed for the more conservative reformers that the constitutional monarchy, embodying many of the precepts and principles of democracy, had at last brought Italy under the sway of a single sceptre.
FOOTNOTES
[1] [An Introduction to the History of Western Europe.]
[2] Quoted by Von Reumont, Lorenzo de’ Medici il magnifico.