When the terms of the Austro-Piedmontese armistice were announced in the Chamber at Turin they aroused great indignation, but the king succeeded in convincing the deputies that they were inevitable. The peace negotiations Piedmont after the war. dragged on for several months, involving two changes of ministry, and D’Azeglio became premier. Through Anglo-French mediation Piedmont’s war indemnity was reduced from 230,000,000 to 75,000,000 lire, but the question of the amnesty remained. The king declared himself ready to go to war again if those compromised in the Lombard revolution were not freely pardoned, and at last Austria agreed to amnesty all save a very few, and in August the peace terms were agreed upon. The Chamber, however, refused to ratify them, and it was not until the king’s eloquent appeal from Moncalieri to his people’s loyalty, and after a dissolution and the election of a new parliament, that the treaty was ratified (January 9, 1850). The situation in Piedmont was far from promising, the exchequer was empty, the army disorganized, the country despondent and suspicious of the king. If Piedmont was to be fitted for the part which optimists expected it to play, everything must be built up anew. Legislation had to be entirely reformed, and the bill for abolishing the special jurisdiction for the clergy (foro ecclesiastico) and other medieval privileges aroused the bitter opposition of the Vatican as well as of the Piedmontese clericals. This Cavour. same year (1850) Cavour, who had been in parliament for some time and had in his speech of the 7th of March struck the first note of encouragement after the gloom of Novara, became minister of agriculture, and in 1851 also assumed the portfolio of finance. He ended by dominating the cabinet, but owing to his having negotiated a union of the Right Centre and the Left Centre (the Connubio) in the conviction that the country needed the moderate elements of both parties, he quarrelled with D’Azeglio (who, as an uncompromising conservative, failed to see the value of such a move) and resigned. But D’Azeglio was not equal to the situation, and he, too, resigned in November 1852; whereupon the king appointed Cavour prime minister, a position which with short intervals he held until his death.
The Austrians in the period from 1849 to 1859, known as the decennio della resistenza (decade of resistance), were made to feel that they were in a conquered country where they could have no social intercourse with the people; for no self-respecting Austrian rule after 1849. Lombard or Venetian would even speak to an Austrian. Austria, on the other hand, treated her Italian subjects with great severity. The Italian provinces were the most heavily taxed in the whole empire, and much of the money thus levied was spent either for the benefit of other provinces or to pay for the huge army of occupation and the fortresses in Italy. The promise of a constitution for the empire, made in 1849, was never carried out; the government of Lombardo-Venetia was vested in Field-Marshal Radetzky; and although only very few of the revolutionists were excluded from the amnesty, the carrying of arms or the distribution or possession of revolutionary literature was punished with death. Long terms of imprisonment and the bastinado, the latter even inflicted on women, were the penalties for the least expression of anti-Austrian opinion.
The Lombard republicans had been greatly weakened by the events of 1848, but Mazzini still believed that a bold act by a few revolutionists would make the people rise en masse and expel the Austrians. A conspiracy, planned with the object, among others, of kidnapping the emperor while on a visit to Venice and forcing him to make concessions, was postponed in consequence of the coup d’état by which Louis Napoleon became emperor of the French (1852); but a chance discovery led to a large number of arrests, and the state trials at Mantua, conducted in the most shamelessly inquisitorial manner, resulted in five death sentences, including that of the priest Tazzoli, and many of imprisonment for long terms. Even this did not convince Mazzini of the hopelessness of such attempts, for he was out of touch with Italian public opinion, and he greatly weakened his influence by favouring a crack-brained outbreak at Milan on the 6th of February 1853, which was easily quelled, numbers of the insurgents being executed or imprisoned. Radetzky, not satisfied with this, laid an embargo on the property of many Lombard emigrants who had settled in Piedmont and become naturalized, accusing them of complicity. The Piedmontese government rightly regarded this measure as a violation of the peace treaty of 1850, and Cavour recalled the Piedmontese minister from Vienna, an action which was endorsed by Italian public opinion generally, and won the approval of France and England.
Cavour’s ideal for the present was the expulsion of Austria from Italy and the expansion of Piedmont into a north Italian kingdom; and, although he did not yet think of Italian unity as a question of practical policy, he began to foresee it as a future possibility. But in reorganizing the shattered finances of the state and preparing it for its greater destinies, he had to impose heavy taxes, which led to rioting and involved the minister himself in considerable though temporary unpopularity. His ecclesiastical legislation, too, met with bitter opposition from the Church.
But the question was soon forgotten in the turmoil caused by the Crimean War. Cavour believed that by taking part in the war his country would gain for itself a military status and a place in the councils of the great Powers, and Crimean War. establish claims on Great Britain and France for the realization of its Italian ambitions. One section of public opinion desired to make Piedmont’s co-operation subject to definite promises by the Powers; but the latter refused to bind themselves, and both Victor Emmanuel and Cavour realized that, even without such promises, participation would give Piedmont a claim. There was also the danger that Austria might join the allies first and Piedmont be left isolated; but there were also strong arguments on the other side, for while the Radical party saw no obvious reason why Piedmont should fight other people’s battles, and therefore opposed the alliance, there was the risk that Austria might join the alliance together with Piedmont, which would have constituted a disastrous situation. Da Italy and the Congress of Paris, 1856. Bormida, the minister for foreign affairs, resigned rather than agree to the proposal, and other statesmen were equally opposed to it. But after long negotiations the treaty of alliance was signed in January 1855, and while Austria remained neutral, a well-equipped Piedmontese force of 15,000 men, under General La Marmora, sailed for the Crimea. Everything turned out as Cavour had hoped. The Piedmontese troops distinguished themselves in the field, gaining the sympathies of the French and English; and at the subsequent congress of Paris (1856), where Cavour himself was Sardinian representative, the Italian question was discussed, and the intolerable oppression of the Italian peoples by Austria and the despots ventilated.
Austria at last began to see that a policy of coercion was useless and dangerous, and made tentative efforts at conciliation. Taxation was somewhat reduced, the censorship was made less severe, political amnesties were granted, humaner officials were appointed and the Congregations (a sort of shadowy consultative assembly) were revived. In 1856 the emperor and empress visited their Italian dominions, but were received with icy coldness; the following year, on the retirement of Radetzky at the age of ninety-three, the archduke Maximilian, an able, cultivated and kind-hearted man, was appointed viceroy. He made desperate efforts to conciliate the population, and succeeded with a few of the nobles, who were led to believe in the possibility of an Italian confederation, including Lombardy and Venetia which would be united to Austria by a personal union alone; but the immense majority of all classes rejected these advances, and came to regard union with Piedmont with increasing favour.[13]
Meanwhile Francis V. of Modena, restored to his duchy by Austrian bayonets, continued to govern according to the traditions of his house. Charles II. of Parma, after having been reinstated by the Austrians, abdicated in favour of his Restored governments after 1849. son Charles III. a drunken libertine and a cruel tyrant (May 1849); the latter was assassinated in 1854, and a regency under his widow, Marie Louise, was instituted during which the government became somewhat more tolerable, although by no means free from political persecution; in 1857 the Austrian troops evacuated the duchy. Leopold of Tuscany suspended the constitution, and in 1852 formally abolished it by order from Vienna; he also concluded a treaty of semi-subjection with Austria and a Concordat with the pope for granting fresh privileges to the Church. His government, however, was not characterized by cruelty like those of his brother despots, and Guerrazzi and the other Liberals of 1849, although tried and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, were merely exiled. Yet the opposition gained recruits among all the ablest and most respectable Tuscans. In Rome, after the restoration of the temporal power by the French troops, the pope paid no attention to Louis Napoleon’s advice to maintain some form of constitution, to grant a general amnesty, and to secularize the administration. He promised, indeed, a consultative council of state, and granted an amnesty from which no less than 25,000 persons were excluded; but on his return to Rome (12th April 1850), after he was quite certain that France had given up all idea of imposing constitutional limitations on him, he re-established his government on the old lines of priestly absolutism, and, devoting himself to religious practices, left political affairs mostly to the astute cardinal Antonelli, who repressed with great severity the political agitation which still continued. At Naples Persecution of Liberals in Naples. a trifling disturbance in September 1849, led to the arrest of a large number of persons connected with the Unità Italiana, a society somewhat similar to the Carbonari. The prisoners included Silvio Spaventa, Luigi Settembrini, Carlo Poerio and many other cultured and worthy citizens. Many condemnations followed, and hundreds of “politicals” were immured in hideous dungeons, a state of things which provoked Gladstone’s famous letters to Lord Aberdeen, in which Bourbon rule was branded for all time as “the negation of God erected into a system of government.” But oppressive, corrupt and inefficient as it was, the government was not confronted by the uncompromising hostility of the whole people; the ignorant priest-ridden masses were either indifferent or of mildly Bourbon sympathies; the opposition was constituted by the educated middle classes and a part of the nobility. The revolutionary attempts of Bentivegna in Sicily (1856) and of the Mazzinian Carlo Pisacane, who landed at Sapri in Calabria with a few followers in 1857, failed from lack of popular support, and the leaders were killed.
The decline of Mazzini’s influence was accompanied by the rise of a new movement in favour of Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel, inspired by the Milanese marquis Giorgio Pallavicini, who had spent 14 years in the Spielberg, New Unionist movement. and by Manin, living in exile in Paris, both of them ex-republicans who had become monarchists. The propaganda was organized by the Sicilian La Farina by means of the Società Nazionale. All who accepted the motto “Unity, Independence and Victor Emmanuel” were admitted into the society. Many of the republicans and Mazzinians joined it, but Mazzini himself regarded it with no sympathy. In the Austrian provinces and in the duchies it carried all before it, and gained many adherents in the Legations, Rome and Naples, although in the latter regions the autonomist feeling was still strong even among the Liberals. In Piedmont itself it was at first less successful; and Cavour, although he aspired ultimately to a united Italy with Rome as the capital,[14] openly professed no ambition beyond the expulsion of Austria and the formation of a North Italian kingdom. But he gave secret encouragement to the movement, and ended by practically directing its activity through La Farina. The king, too, was in close sympathy with the society’s aims, but for the present it was necessary to hide this attitude from the eyes of the Powers, whose sympathy Cavour could only hope to gain by professing hostility to everything that savoured of revolution. Both the king and his minister realized that Piedmont alone, even with the help of the National Society, could not expel Austria from Italy without foreign assistance. Piedmontese finances had been strained to breaking-point to organize an army obviously intended for other than merely defensive purposes. Cavour now set himself to the task of isolating Austria and securing an alliance for her expulsion. A British alliance would have been preferable, but the British government was too much concerned with the preservation of Napoleon III. and Italy. European peace. The emperor Napoleon, almost alone among Frenchmen, had genuine Italian sympathies. But were he to intervene in Italy, the intervention would not only have to be successful; it would have to bring tangible advantages to France. Hence his hesitations and vacillations, which Cavour steadily worked to overcome. Suddenly on the 14th of January 1858 Napoleon’s life was attempted by Felice Orsini (q.v.) a Mazzinian Romagnol, who believed that Napoleon was the chief obstacle to the success of the revolution in Italy. The attempt failed and its author was caught and executed, but while it appeared at first to destroy Napoleon’s Italian sympathies and led to a sharp interchange of notes between Paris and Turin, the emperor was really impressed by the attempt and by Orsini’s letter from prison exhorting him to intervene in Italy. He realized how deep the Italian feeling for independence must be, and that a refusal to act now might result in further attempts on his life, as indeed Orsini’s letter stated. Consequently negotiations with Cavour were resumed, and a meeting with him was arranged to take place at Plombières (20th and 21st of July 1858). There it was agreed that France should supply 200,000 men and Piedmont 100,000 for the expulsion of the Austrians from Italy, that Piedmont should be expanded into a kingdom of North Italy, that central Italy should form a separate kingdom, on the throne of which the emperor contemplated placing one of his own relatives, and Naples another, possibly under Lucien Murat; the pope, while retaining only the “Patrimony of St Peter” (the Roman province), would be president of the Italian confederation. In exchange for French assistance Piedmont would cede Savoy and perhaps Nice to France; and a marriage between Victor Emmanuel’s daughter Clothilde and Jerome Bonaparte, to which Napoleon attached great importance, although not made a definite condition, was also discussed. No written agreement, however, was signed.
On the 1st of January 1859, Napoleon astounded the diplomatic world by remarking to Baron Hübner, the Austrian ambassador, at the New Year’s reception at the Tuileries, that he regretted that relations between France and Austria were “not so good as they had been”; and at the opening of the Piedmontese parliament on the 10th Victor Emmanuel pronounced the memorable words that he could not be insensible to the cry of pain (il grido di dolore) which reached him from all parts of Italy. Yet after these warlike declarations and after the signing of a military convention at Turin, the king agreeing to all the conditions proposed by Napoleon, the latter suddenly became pacific again, and adopted the Russian suggestion that Italian affairs should be settled by a congress. Austria agreed on condition that Piedmont should disarm and should not be admitted to the congress. Lord Malmesbury urged the Sardinian government to yield; but Cavour refused to disarm, or to accept the principle of a congress, unless Piedmont were admitted to it on equal terms with the other Powers. As neither the Sardinian nor the Austrian government seemed disposed to yield, the idea of a congress had to be abandoned. Lord Malmesbury now proposed that all three Powers should disarm simultaneously and that, as suggested by Austria, the precedent of Laibach should be followed and all the Italian states invited to plead their cause at the bar of the Great Powers. To this course Napoleon consented, to the despair of King Victor Emmanuel and Cavour, who saw in this a proof that he wished to back out of his engagement and make war impossible. When war seemed imminent volunteers from all parts of Italy, especially from Lombardy, had come pouring into Piedmont to enrol themselves in the army or in the specially raised volunteer corps (the command of which was given to Garibaldi), and “to go to Piedmont” became a test of patriotism throughout the country. Urged by a peremptory message from Napoleon, Cavour saw the necessity of bowing to the will of Europe, of disbanding the volunteers and reducing the army to a peace footing. The situation, however, was saved by a false move on the part of Austria. At Vienna the war party was in the ascendant; the convention for disarmament had been signed, but so far from its being carried out, the reserves were actually called out on the 12th of April; and on the 23rd, before Cavour’s decision was known at Vienna, an Austrian ultimatum reached Turin, summoning Piedmont to disarm within three days on pain of invasion. Cavour was filled with joy at the turn affairs had taken, for Italian war of 1859. Austria now appeared as the aggressor. On the 29th Francis Joseph declared war, and the next day his troops crossed the Ticino, a move which was followed, as Napoleon had stated it would be, by a French declaration of war. The military events of the Italian war of 1859 are described under [Italian Wars]. The actions of Montebello (May 20), Palestro (May 31) and Melegnano (June 8) and the battles of Magenta (June 4) and Solferino (June 24) all went against the Austrians. Garibaldi’s volunteers raised the standard of insurrection and held the field in the region of the Italian lakes. After Solferino the allies prepared to besiege the Quadrilateral. Then Napoleon suddenly drew back, unwilling, for many reasons, to continue the campaign. Firstly, he doubted whether the allies were strong enough to attack the Quadrilateral, for he saw the defects of his own army’s organization; secondly, he began to fear intervention by Prussia, whose attitude appeared menacing; thirdly, although really anxious to expel the Austrians from Italy, he did not wish to create a too powerful Italian state at the foot of the Alps, which, besides constituting a potential danger to France, might threaten the pope’s temporal power, and Napoleon believed that he could not stand without the clerical vote; fourthly, the war had been declared against the wishes of the great majority of Frenchmen and was even now far from popular. Consequently, to the surprise of all Europe, while the allied forces were drawn up ready for battle, Napoleon, without consulting Victor Emmanuel, sent General Fleury on the 6th of July to Francis Joseph to ask for an armistice, which was agreed to. The king was now informed, and on the 8th Generals Vaillant, Della Rocca and Hess met at Villafranca and arranged an armistice until the 15th of August. But the king and Cavour were terribly upset by Armistice of Villafranca. this move, which meant peace without Venetia; Cavour hurried to the king’s headquarters at Monzambano and in excited, almost disrespectful, language implored him not to agree to peace and to continue the war alone, relying on the Piedmontese army and a general Italian revolution. But Victor Emmanuel on this occasion proved the greater statesman of the two; he understood that, hard as it was, he must content himself with Lombardy for the present, lest all be lost. On the 11th the two emperors met at Villafranca, where they agreed that Lombardy should be ceded to Piedmont, and Venetia retained by Austria but governed by Liberal methods; that the rulers of Tuscany, Parma and Modena, who had been again deposed, should be restored, the Papal States reformed, the Legations given a separate administration and the pope made president of an Italian confederation including Austria as mistress of Venetia. It was a revival of the old impossible federal idea, which would have left Italy divided and dominated by Austria and France. Victor Emmanuel regretfully signed the peace preliminaries, adding, however, pour ce qui me concerne (which meant that he made no undertaking with regard to central Italy), and Cavour resigned office.