The minister Ricasoli, who had the good fortune to associate his name with the union of Venetia to the kingdom of Italy, lived only a few months after the conclusion of peace with Austria. He had decided to reopen negotiations with the Roman court to determine at least those matters which had a purely ecclesiastical character. To this end he sent Tonello to Rome to treat on the business of the vacant episcopal seats. The affair was successful from the point of view of the Italian government; but it was not equally so with regard to that of the interest of the country.
[1867 A.D.]
Encouraged by this success the minister composed a plan of laws in which the relations of the church with the state were regulated upon the principle of the entire independence of the two powers. This hybrid law managed by Ricasoli with the ministers of finance and justice was presented to the chamber on the 17th of January, 1867. Before it was pronounced the country had expressed its discontent by means of the press. The Venetian provinces protested in public reunions, but the government prohibited these meetings. At the elections, however, the abstention of the clericals from the voting brought in a majority of the new chamber for the party opposed to the ecclesiastical law, and the minister, seeing the parliamentary party, sent in his resignation which was accepted.
Then Rattazzi reappeared upon the scene “like the doctor in extremis,” to use the phrase of Princess Rattazzi,[c] the author of his memoir. With him there returned those seditious and equivocal circumventions which again distressed Italy as the work of that fatal man. Borne upon the shields of the party of action which regarded him as its mind, as it had looked upon Garibaldi as its arm, he suddenly prepared for the work. And in the meantime while Sicily was a martyr to cholera and parliament was occupied in the important business of the liquidation of the Ecclesiastical Act, the party of action was agitating for hastening the solution of the Roman question. This question, as aforesaid, entered upon a new phase after the departure of the French from Rome and a short time after the solution of the Venetian question.
THE REVOLT OF GARIBALDI
The first announcement of the new proposals of the party of action was a proclamation from Garibaldi, published in July of 1867, which invited the Romans to rebel and the Italians to hold themselves in readiness to help him. The agitation once created, it was increased and fomented by every means; and as the waves rose the words of the great patriot became more ardent and violent. At Geneva at the council of peace, and at Balgirate before a maddened multitude the hero incited them against “the covey of vipers” which had made its nest at Rome; and on the 16th of September he published an address to Romans in which he promised them the aid of 100,000 youths “who feared they were too many to share the miserable glory of expelling from Italy the mercenaries and jugglers.” The deeds followed the words. At Florence and other places secret preparations were made for an armed expedition into the Roman states and many young men were sent towards the frontier.
What was the government doing meanwhile?
The words of the government were clear, but its deeds were obscure, and in fact the orders given by Rattazzi to the political authorities were so flaccid and vague that it would have been thought they were only a show, and that the minister secretly approved the designs of Garibaldi. What a difference between Cavour and Rattazzi! With Cavour as an ally Garibaldi made an epic, with Rattazzi a double tragedy. Two ways were open to Rattazzi, either to act according to the declaration made in the official diary of the 21st of September, or to act in the opposite way; sooner a war with France than a Mentana. He followed neither the one nor the other course but steered between the two, and brought fresh disaster upon his unhappy country.
When Garibaldi left Florence for Arezzo, to assume command of the volunteers stationed on the borders, the government, which had let him go so far, removed him from command and had him taken to the fortress of Alessandria. But it did nothing to disperse the volunteers who had received from Garibaldi himself the word of command to prosecute the undertaking; and soon afterwards terrified at his ardour the government sent the prisoner free to Caprera, without even exacting a promise to remain quietly there, thinking it was sufficient guarantee to have the island watched by a few warships. Meanwhile a band of Garibaldians of about 200 men entered Viterbo and there instituted a provisionary government under the name of “committee of insurrection.” At the same time two other companies passed the frontier.