Only two powers, a spiritual and a worldly, the Jesuits and the Austrians, seemed to stand in the way of attaining Italian unity. Consequently the glowing hatred of the Italians directed itself against both. “Evvivas” for Gioberti, the enemy of the Jesuits, and “Death to the Germans” (Tedeschi) against Austria, mingled with the cries of acclamation for “Pio nono.” Irritation in the commercial dealings between Italians and Austrians in Padua, Milan, and the whole of upper Italy, mockeries, jests, scornful songs, and threats against the “Germans,” associations to repress tobacco and the lottery, in order to diminish the Austrian income, hostile demonstrations, and insulting agreements, increased the bitterness and anger of both nations to such a degree that the Austrian soldier lived in the cities of the Lombardic-Venetian kingdom as in the land of an enemy. Tumults and insulting demonstrations resulted in sanguinary scenes, so that the Austrian government finally declared martial law in Lombardy, in order to be able to put down the excitement and rebellion by force.
[1848 A.D.]
The February revolution of 1848 in Paris, incited those states in which military and revolutionary revolts were already under way to new efforts, and brought the fermentation to an outbreak in other states where the excitement had not yet ripened into action. In Italy the ideas of independence and national unity which had so long appeared in literature came to the surface and aroused the revolutionary spirits. When Charles Albert, king of Sardinia and Piedmont, without an actual declaration of war, sent his army into Milanese territory and drew his sword against Austria, the whole peninsula was seized by the warlike movement. Not only were the Italian governments carried away by the force of public opinion to send troops and to preserve a constitutional attitude; armed troops of volunteers also marched into the field so that the whole land of the Apennines was under arms against Austria.
Soon a double trend of opinion became perceptible; whereas Mazzini and his associates urged a popular war and republican institutions, the more moderate sought to establish national independence under the cross of Savoy, in conjunction with the constitutional king Charles Albert. The latter tendency prevailed after some wavering; in Milan and Venice the union with Piedmont was resolved upon. The princes of Parma and Modena who had allied themselves with Austria had to leave their states; even the grand duke of Tuscany, although giving way to the national and independent impulses, had to surrender his land to democrats and republicans for a short time. The pope also agreed to a constitution and appointed a lay ministry with advanced views; nevertheless the government and the body of popular representatives were to concern themselves only with the worldly and political matters of the papal state.
THE WAR BETWEEN NAPLES AND SICILY
[1848-1850 A.D.]
A state of war of insupportable animosity and irritation reigned over the whole of the Subalpine dual monarchy, when the February revolution of 1848 in Paris threw a firebrand into this inflammable material. In 1847, Metternich is said to have written to the field-marshal Radetzky: “It is not easy to fight larvæ and fantastic shapes and yet this is our ceaseless warfare, ever since the appearance of a liberal pope upon the scene.” These larvæ and fantastic shapes were now to gain body and substance.
In Sicily, where already a provincial government under the leadership of a few heads of the nobility like Ruggiero Settimo, Peter Lanza, Prince of Butera, etc., had taken charge of public affairs in Palermo and other places, negotiations with King Ferdinand, with Lord Minto as an intermediary, led to no agreement. A union of the two kingdoms, which according to the “ultimatum” of the Sicilians could have its only bond in the person of the monarch, was in opposition to Ferdinand’s desire for rule. Accordingly Sicily held to its outspoken independence from Naples and rejected every approach to an understanding with King Ferdinand II.
The Sicilian national representatives, divided into two chambers, elected the popular and respected noble Ruggiero Settimo, as president of the provisory government, and on April 13th adopted the resolution: “The throne of Sicily is declared vacant. Ferdinand Bourbon and his dynasty are forever removed from the Sicilian throne. Sicily shall be governed constitutionally and as soon as its constitution has been revised an Italian prince shall be called to the throne.” When Ferdinand, under the stress of events before Verona and in Rome, allowed himself to be moved by reactionary influence to dissolve the chambers of deputies on the very day of their opening “on account of their assuming illegal authority and exceeding their limits of power,” when he suppressed an uprisal of the militia and of the radicals by his Swiss guards and by the unloosed populace in a barricade battle, and, as Queen Caroline had done fifty years before, gave up the well-to-do population of his capital to the murderous and plundering greed of crowds of lazzaroni, then the cloth which had covered the two kingdoms was completely torn asunder. The frivolous, uneducated, and powerless people of Naples endured the hard yoke of military despotism and of a reactionary camarilla; but Sicily held all the more firmly to the exclusion of the Bourbons and proceeded to elect a new king after the new constitution had been rapidly revised in favour of democratic views. After many proposals, in which foreign influences also had a hand, the highest state authorities, the government, senate, and commune, united in the resolve to call the second son of Charles Albert, Prince Albert Amadeus of Savoy, duke of Genoa, to be the constitutional king of Sicily. But the fate of the beautiful, unfortunate island was not yet fulfilled, the sanguinary drama not yet played out. The news of the election reached the royal camp when the star of the Italian army was already in the descendant.
Charles Albert consequently declined the crown for his son in order not to incense France or England against him. Ferdinand, however, swore to preserve the integrity of his kingdom and took measures to subjugate the island from the citadel of Messina [Sept. 7th-9th], where there was a strong and well-equipped Neapolitan garrison. There now broke out a civil war full of horror, and with scenes of wild barbarity, patriotic heroism, and fanatic passion. General Filangieri, an energetic warrior from the time of Murat, bombarded Messina, so that thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets, many houses were burned, and the greater part of the surviving inhabitants sought safety and protection on the foreign ships in the harbour. From that time on Ferdinand II was designated as “King Bomba.”