This is what Bergamo and the other towns did, nor are they to be blamed.
Not so Brescia. Here, where love of liberty was an hereditary instinct from the long connection of Brescia with free Venice, where hatred of the stranger, planted by the ruthless soldiery of Gaston de Foix, had but gone on maturing through three centuries, where the historical t.i.tle of "Valiant," coming down from a remote antiquity, was still no fable; here, with a single mind, the inhabitants resolved upon as desperate a resistance as was ever offered by one little town to a great army.
The Austrian bombardment was begun by the Irish General, Nugent-Lavall, who, dying in the midst of it, left all his fortune to the heroic city which he was attacking. The Austrians, flushed with their victory over Charles Albert"s army of 80,000, were seized with rage at the sight of their power defied by a town of less than half that number of souls. But with that rage was mingled, even in the mind of Haynau, an admiration not to be repressed.
Haynau who was sent to replace Nugent, was already known at Brescia, where he had been appointed military governor after the resumption of Austrian authority in 1848. In order to punish the "persistent opposition manifested to the legitimate Imperial and Royal Government," and as an example to the other towns, he had imposed on the Brescian householders and the landed proprietors of the province a fine of half a million francs.
He now returned, and what he did may be best read in his own report on the operations. "It was then," he wrote, "that began the most murderous fight; a fight prolonged by the insurgents from barricade to barricade, from house to house, with extraordinary obstinacy. I should never have believed that so bad a cause could have been sustained with such perseverance. In spite of this desperate defence, and although the a.s.sault could only be effected in part, and with the help of cannons of heavy calibre, our brave troops with heroic courage, but at the cost of great losses, occupied a first line of houses; but as all my columns could not penetrate into the town at the same time, I ordered the suspension of the attack at nightfall, limiting myself to holding the ground conquered. In spite of that, the combat continued late into the night. On the 1st of April, in the earliest morning light, the tocsin was heard ringing with more fury than ever, and the insurgents reopened fire with an entirely new desperation. Considering the gravity of our losses, as well as the obstinacy and fury of the enemy, it was necessary to adopt a most rigorous measure. I ordered that no prisoners should be taken, but that every person seized with arms in his hand should be immediately put to death, and that the houses from which shots came should be burnt. It is thus that conflagrations, partly caused by the troops, partly by the bombardment, broke out in various parts of the town."
During the ten days" struggle, the citizens did not flinch for a moment. Count Martinengo was the guiding spirit of the defence, and scarcely left the most exposed of the barricades night or day. From the n.o.bles to the poorest of the people, all did their duty. A youth named t.i.to Speri led and animated the populace. The horrors of the repression make one think of the fall of Khartoum. Not even in Hungary, where he went from Brescia to continue his "system," did Haynau so blacken his own and his country"s name as here. In a boys"
school kept by a certain Guidi, the master"s wife, his mother and ten of his pupils were slaughtered. A little hunchback tailor was carried to the barracks to be slowly burnt alive. But stray details do not give the faintest idea of the whole. And for all this, Haynau was in a far higher degree responsible than the actual executants of the vengeance to which he hounded on his ignorant soldiers, maddened with the l.u.s.t of blood.
Such was General Haynau, "whose brave devotion to his master"s service was the veteran"s sole crime," said the _Quarterly Review_ (June 1853), but who was judged otherwise by some in England. Wherefore was he soundly beaten by the brewers in the employment of Messrs Barclay & Perkins; and the nice words of the _Quarterly_ could not undo that beating, redress for which Lord Palmerston blandly advised the complainant to seek "before the common tribunals." He thought it best to neglect the advice, and to leave the country.
Among the curious taxes levied at Brescia during the six months after its fall was one of 500 for "the expenses of the hangman." Count Martinengo escaped after the Austrians were in possession of the town through the courageous a.s.sistance given to him by a few young men of the working cla.s.s. Camozzi"s band of Bergamasques, which started for the relief of the sister city, was driven back with loss.
The end was come, but woe to the victors.
Following the Italian flag to where it still floated, we pa.s.s from Brescia in the dust to Rome still inviolate, though soon to be a.s.sailed by the bearers of another tricolor. A few days after Novara, the Triumvirate issued a proclamation, in which they said: "The Republic in Rome has to prove to Italy and to Europe that our work is eminently religious, a work of education and of morality; that the accusations of intolerance, anarchy and violent upturning of things are false; that, thanks to the republican principle, united as one family of good men under the eye of G.o.d, and following the impulse of those who are first among us in genius and virtue, we march to the attainment of true order, law and power united." Englishmen who were in Rome at the time attest how well the pledge was kept. Peace and true freedom prevailed under the republican banner as no man remembered them to have prevailed before in Rome. The bitter provocation of the quadruple attack was not followed by revengeful acts on the parts of the government against those who were politically and religiously a.s.sociated with him at whose bidding that attack was made. Nothing like a national party was terrorised or kept under by fear of violence. "That at such a time," writes Henry Lushington, who was not favourable to Mazzini, "not one lawless or evil deed was done would have been rather a miracle than a merit, but on much concurrent testimony it is clear that the efforts of the government to preserve order were incessant, and to a remarkable degree successful." He adds that the streets were far safer for ordinary pa.s.sengers under the Triumvirs than under the Papacy.
Of great help in quieting the pa.s.sions of the lower orders was the people"s tribune, Ciceruacchio, who had not put on black cloth clothes, or asked for the ministry of war, or of fine arts, according to the usual wont of successful tribunes. Ciceruacchio had the sense of humour of the genuine Roman _popolano_, and it never came into his head to make himself ridiculous. His influence had been first acquired by works of charity in the Tiber floods. Being a strong swimmer, he ventured where no one else would go, and had saved many lives. At first a wine-carrier, he made money by letting out conveyances and dealing in forage, but he gave away most of what he made. He opposed the whole force of his popularity to a war of cla.s.ses. "Viva chi c"ia e chi non c"ia quattrini!"[4] was his favourite cry. Once when a young poet read him a sonnet in his honour he stopped him at the line "Thou art greater than all patricians," saying that he would not have that published: "I respect the n.o.bility, and never dream of being higher than they. I am a poor man of the people, and such I will always remain."
When the siege came, Ciceruacchio was invaluable in providing the troops with forage, horses, and even victuals, which he procured by making private sorties on his own account during the night; his intimate knowledge of every path enabling him to go un.o.bserved. He planned the earthworks, at which he laboured with his hands, and when fighting was going on, he shouldered a musket and ran with his two sons, one of them a mere child, to wherever the noise of guns directed him. No picture of Rome in 1849 would be complete without the burly figure and jocund face of Angelo Brunetti.
The republican government found Rome with a mere shadow of an army; the efforts to create one had been too spasmodic to do anything but make confusion worse confounded by changes and experiments soon abandoned. Perseverance and intelligence now had a different result, and the little army, called into existence by the republic, proved admirable in discipline, various and fantastic as were its components.
Towards the end of April, Garibaldi, who had been stationed at Rieti, was ordered to bring his legion to Rome. Those who witnessed the arrival saw one of the strangest scenes ever beheld in the Eternal City. The men wore pointed hats with black, waving plumes; thin and gaunt, their faces dark as copper, with naked legs, long beards and wild dark hair hanging down their backs, they looked like a company of Salvator Rosa"s brigands. Beautiful as a statue amidst his extraordinary host rode the Chief, mounted on a white horse, which he sat like a centaur. "He was quite a show, everyone stopping to look at him," adds the sculptor Gibson, to whom these details are owed.
"Probably," writes another Englishman, "a human face so like a lion, and still retaining the humanity nearest the image of its Maker, was never seen." Garibaldi wore the historic red shirt, and a small cap ornamented with gold.
The origin of the red shirt might have remained in poetic uncertainty had it not been mentioned a few years ago in a volume of reminiscences published by an English naval officer. The men employed in the Saladeros or great slaughtering and salting establishments for cattle in the Argentine provinces wore scarlet woollen shirts; owing to the blockade of Buenos Ayres, a merchant at Monte Video had a quant.i.ty of these on his hands, and as economy was a great object to the government, they bought the lot cheap for their Italian legion, little thinking that they were making the "Camicia Rossa" immortal in song and story.
The coming to Rome of the 1200 legionaries aroused private fears in the hearts of the more timid inhabitants, but Garibaldi knew how to keep his wild followers in hand, and gallant was the service they rendered to Roman liberty.
That liberty was now on the eve of its peril. The preliminaries of the French intervention in Rome are tolerably well known; here it suffices to say that every new contribution to a more precise knowledge of the facts only serves to confirm the charge of dissimulation, or, to use a plainer and far better adapted word, of dishonesty, brought against the French government for their part in the matter. White, indeed, do Austria, Spain and Naples appear--the avowed upholders of priestly despotism--beside the ruler of republican France and his ministers, whose plan it was not to fight the Roman republic: fighting was far from their counsels, but to betray it. It is proved that the restoration of the Temporal Power was the aim of the expedition from the first; it is equally proved that the French sought to get inside Rome by distinct disclaimers of any such intention. "We do not go to Italy," they said, "to impose with our arms a system of government, but to a.s.sure the rights of liberty, and to preserve a legitimate interference in the affairs of the peninsula." They adopted a curious method of a.s.suring the rights of liberty.
The Pope would not have anything to do with the affair. "If you say openly that you are going to give me back my Temporal Power, well and good; if not, I prefer the aid of Austria." So he replied to the flattering tales whispered in his ear, while tales no less flattering were being whispered in the ear of Mazzini. He declined to give the French any guarantees as to his future mode of governing; it cannot be said, therefore, that they were under the delusion that they were restoring a const.i.tutional sovereign.
Efforts have been made to cast the responsibility of the Roman intervention entirely on Louis Napoleon. Even Mazzini favoured that view, but it is impossible to separate the President of the Republic from the 325 deputies who voted the supplies for the expedition on the 2nd of April. Does anyone pretend that they were hoodwinked any more than Ledru Rollin was hoodwinked, or the minority, which, roused by his vigorous speech, voted against the grant? Louis Napoleon was far less Papal in his sentiments than were most of the a.s.senting deputies; his own opinion was more truly represented by the letter which, as a private citizen, he wrote to the "Const.i.tutionnel" in December 1848 than by his subsequent course as President. In this letter he declared that a military demonstration would be perilous even to the interests which it was intended to safeguard. He had but one fixed purpose: to please France, so as to get himself made Emperor. France must be held answerable for the means taken to please her.
General Oudinot landed at Civitavecchia on the 25th of April, his friendly a.s.surances having persuaded the local authorities to oppose no resistance, an unfortunate error, but the last. The correct judgment formed by the Roman Government of the designs of the invaders was considerably a.s.sisted by a French officer, Colonel Leblanc, who was sent to Rome by Oudinot to come to an agreement with Mazzini for the amicable reception of the French, and who, losing his temper, revealed more than he was meant to reveal. His last words, "Les Italiens ne se battent pas," unquestionably expressed the belief of the whole French force, from the general-in-chief to the youngest drummer. They were soon going to have a chance of testing its accuracy.
The Roman a.s.sembly pa.s.sed a vote that "force should be repelled by force." Well-warned, therefore, but with the proverbial _coeur leger_, Oudinot advanced on Rome with 8000 men early on the 30th of April. At eleven o"clock the two columns came in sight of St Peter"s, and soon after, the first which moved towards Porta Angelica was attacked by Colonel Masi. Garibaldi attacked the second column a mile out of Porta San Pancrazio. At the first moment the superior numbers of the French told, and the Italians fell back on Villa Pamphilli, but Colonel Galetti arrived with reinforcements, and before long Garibaldi drove the French from the Pamphilli Gardens and had them in full retreat along the Civitavecchia road. Oudinot was beaten, Rome was victorious.
"This does not surprise us Romans; but it will astonish Paris!" ran a manifesto of the hour; the words are a little childish, but men are apt to be childish when they are deeply moved. And as to the astonishment of Paris, all the words in the world would fail to paint its proportions. Paris was indeed astonished.
Garibaldi had not the chief command of the Roman army, or he would have done more; there was nothing to prevent the Italians from driving Oudinot into the sea. The Triumvirate, when appealed to directly by Garibaldi, refused their sanction, either fearing to leave the capital exposed to the Neapolitans who were advancing, or (and this seems to have been the real reason) still hoping that France would repudiate Oudinot and come to terms. Garibaldi was right on this occasion, and Mazzini was wrong. When you are at war, nothing is so ruinous as to be afraid of damaging the enemy.
The French ministers, bombarded with reproaches by friends and foes, and most uneasy lest their troops in Italy should be destroyed before they could send reinforcements, did disown Oudinot"s march on Rome, and Ferdinand de Lesseps was despatched nominally "to arrange matters in a pacific sense," but actually to gain time.
In a sitting in the French a.s.sembly, a member of the opposition said to the President of the Council: "You are going to reinstate the Pope!" "No, no," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Odilon Barrot. "You are going to do the same as Austria," cried Lamoriciere. "We should be culpable if we did," was the answer. Lesseps" instructions, very vague, for the rest, were given to him in this spirit. That Lesseps acted in good faith has been generally admitted, and was always believed by Mazzini. It was to the interest of the French Government to choose a tool who did not see how far he was a tool. But if Lesseps had no suspicions, if he had not strong suspicions of the real object of his employers, then he was already at this date a man singularly easy to deceive.
The French envoy was commissioned to treat, not with the Triumvirate, but with the Roman a.s.sembly: a piece of insolence which the former would have done well to reply to by sending him about his business.
Lesseps, however, thought that he would gain by speaking in person to Mazzini, and in order that the interview should remain a secret, he decided to go to him alone in the dead of the night and unannounced.
Having made the needful inquiries, he proceeded to the palace of the Consulta, the doors of which seem to have been left open all night; there were guards, but they were asleep, and the French diplomatist traversed the long suite of splendid apartments, opening one into the other without corridors. At last he reached the simply-furnished room where, upon an iron bedstead, Mazzini slept. Lesseps watched him sleeping, fascinated by the beauty of his magnificent head as it lay in repose. He still looked very young, though there was hardly a state in Europe where he was not proscribed. When Lesseps had gazed his full, he called "Mazzini, Mazzini!" The Triumvir awoke, sat up and asked if he had come to a.s.sa.s.sinate him? Lesseps told him his name, and a long conversation followed. One thing, at least, that Lesseps said in this interview was strictly true, namely, that Mazzini must not count on the French republican soldiers objecting to fire on republicans: "The French soldier would burn down the cottage of his mother if ordered by his superiors to do so." The discipline of a great army is proof against politics.
Lesseps was himself in much fear of being a.s.sa.s.sinated. He believed that his footsteps were dogged by three individuals, one of whom was an ex-French convict. He complained to Mazzini, who said that he could do nothing, which probably shows that he gave no credence to the story. Then Lesseps had recourse to Ciceruacchio, "a man of the people who had great influence on the population, and who had organised the revolution." The tribune seems to have quieted his fears and guaranteed his safety.
The French envoy could not help being struck by the tender care taken of his wounded fellow-countrymen by the Princess Belgiojoso and other n.o.ble ladies who attended the hospitals. Of prisoners who were not wounded there were none, as they had been sent back scot-free to their general a few days after the 30th of April. He was struck also by the firm resolve of all cla.s.ses not to restore the Pope. Some liked the existing government, some did not, but all prayed heaven to be henceforth delivered from the rule of an infallible sovereign.
Whatever was the measure of confidence which Mazzini felt in Lesseps, he was firm as iron on the main point--the non-admittance of the "friendly" French troops into Rome. Lesseps dragged on the negotiations till his government had finished the preparations for sending to Rome a force which should not be much less than twice in number the whole military resources of the republic. Then they recalled him, and, in order not to be bound by anything that he might have said, they set about the rumour that he was mad. Indignant at such treatment, Lesseps left the diplomatic service, and turned his attention to engineering. This was the origin of the Suez Ca.n.a.l.
While all these things were going on, the Austrians moved from Ferrara and Modena towards Bologna, the Spaniards landed at Fiumicino, and 16,000 Neapolitans, commanded by Ferdinand II., encamped near Albano.
Garibaldi was attacked on the 9th of May by the Neapolitan vanguard, which he obliged to fall back. On the 18th, he completely defeated King Ferdinand"s army near Velletri, and the King ordered a general retreat into his own dominions, which was accomplished in haste and confusion.
By the end of May, Oudinot"s forces were increased to over 35,000 men.
The defenders of Rome, under the chief command of General Rosselli, were about 20,000, of whom half were volunteers. Colonel Marnara"s Lombard Legion of Bersaglieri was, in smartness of appearance and perfect discipline, equal to any regular troops; in its ranks were the sons of the best and richest Lombard families, such as Dandolo, Morosini and many others. Medici"s legion was also composed of educated and well-to-do young men. The Bolognese, under the Marquis Melara, had the impetuous daring of their race, and Count Angelo Masina did wonders with his forty lancers. Wherever Garibaldi was--it was always in the hottest places--there were to be seen, at no great distance, the patriot monk, Ugo Ba.s.si, riding upon a fiery horse, and the young poet of Free Italy, Goffredo Mameli, with his slight, boyish figure, and his fair hair floating in the breeze. Nor must we omit from the list of Garibaldi"s bodyguard Forbes, the Englishman, and Anghiar, the devoted negro, who followed his master like a dog.
Oudinot formally disavowed all Lesseps" proceedings from first to last, and announced, on the 1st of June, that he had orders to take Rome as soon as possible. Out of regard, however, for the French residents, he would not begin the attack "till the morning of Monday the 4th." Now, though no one knew it but the French general, that Monday morning began with Sunday"s dawn, when the French attacked Melara"s sleeping battalion at the Roman outposts. It was easy for the French to drive back these 300 men, and to occupy the Villa Corsini ("Villa," in the Roman sense, means a garden) and the position dominating Porta San Pancrazio; but Galetti came up and retook them all, to lose them again by nine o"clock. Then Garibaldi, who was ill, hurried to the scene from his sick-bed, and thrice that day he retook and thrice he lost the contested positions--a brief statement, which represents prodigies of valour, and the oblation of as n.o.ble blood as ever watered the earth of Rome. Melara, Masina, Daverio, Dandolo, Mameli: every schoolboy would know these names if they belonged to ancient, not to modern, history. Bright careers, full of promise, cut short; lives renounced, not only voluntarily, but with joy, and to what end? Not for interest or fame--not even in the hope of winning; but that, erect and crowned with the roses of martyrdom, Rome might send her dying salutation to the world.
At sunset the French had established their possession of all the points outside the Gate of San Pancrazio, except the Vascello, a villa which had been seized from their very teeth by Medici, who held it against all comers. Monte Mario was also in their hands.
Mazzini, whose judgment was obscured by his attribution of the Italian policy of France to Louis Napoleon alone, hoped for a revolution in Paris, but Ledru Rollin"s attempt at agitation completely failed, and the country applauded its government now that the mask was thrown away. The reasons for revolutions in Paris have always been the same; they have to do with something else than the garrotting of sister-republics.
Oudinot tightened his cordon; on the 12th of June he invited the city to capitulate. The answer was a refusal; so, with the aid of his excellent artillery, he crept on, his pa.s.sage contested at each step, but not arrested, till, on the 27th, the Villa Savorelli, Garibaldi"s headquarters, fell into the hands of the enemy, and, on the night of the 29th, the French were within the city walls. St Peter"s day is the great feast of Rome, and this time, as usual, the cupola of St Peter"s was illuminated, the Italian flag flying from the highest point. The thunderstorm, which proverbially accompanies the feast, raged during the night; the French sh.e.l.ls flew in all directions; the fight raged fiercer than the storm; Medici held out among the crumbling walls of the Vascello, which had been bombarded for a week; the heroic Manara fell fighting at Villa Spada; Garibaldi, descending into the _melee_, dealt blows right and left: he seemed possessed by some supernatural power. Those around him say that it is impossible that he would have much longer escaped death, but suddenly a message came summoning him to the a.s.sembly--it saved his life. When he appeared at the door of the Chamber, the deputies rose and burst into wild applause. He seemed puzzled, but, looking down upon himself, he read the explanation; he was covered with blood, his clothes were honeycombed by b.a.l.l.s and bayonet thrusts, his sabre was so bent with striking that it would not go more than half into its sheath.
What the a.s.sembly wanted to know was whether the defence could be prolonged; Garibaldi had only to say that it could not. They voted, therefore, the following decree: "In the name of G.o.d and of the People: the Roman Const.i.tuent a.s.sembly discontinues a defence which has become impossible, and remains at its post." At its post it remained till the French soldiers invaded the Capitol, where it sat, when, yielding to brute force, the deputies dispersed.
Mazzini, who would have resisted still, when all resistance was impossible, wandered openly about the city like a man in a dream. He felt as though he were looking on at the funeral of his best-beloved.
How it was that he was not killed or arrested is a mystery. At the end of a week his friends induced him to leave Rome with an English pa.s.sport.
On the 2nd of July, before the French made their official entry, Garibaldi called his soldiers together in the square of the Vatican, and told them that he was going to seek some field where the foreigner could still be fought. Who would might follow him; "I cannot offer you honours or pay; I offer you hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles, death."
Three thousand followed him. Beside her husband rode Anita; not even for the sake of the child soon to come would she stay behind in safety. Ugo Ba.s.si was there; Anghiar was dead, Mameli was dying in a hospital, but there was "the partisan or brigand Forbes," as he was described in a letter of the Austrian general D"Aspre to the French general Oudinot, with a good handful of Garibaldi"s best surviving officers. Ciceruacchio came with his two sons, and offered himself as guide. No one knew what the plan was, or if there was one. Like knights of old in search of adventures, they set out in search of their country"s foes. It was the last desperate venture of men who did not know how to yield.
After wandering hither and thither, and suffering severe hardships, the column reached the republic of San Marino. The brave hospitality of that Rock of freedom prevented Garibaldi from falling into the clutches of the Austrians, who surrounded the republic. He treated with the Regent for the immunity of his followers, who had laid down their arms; and, in the night, he himself escaped with Anita, Ugo Ba.s.si, Forbes, Ciceruacchio and a few others. They hoped to take their swords to Venice, but a storm arose, and the boats on which they embarked were driven out of their course. Some of them were stranded on the sh.o.r.e which bounds the pine-forest of Ravenna, and here, hope being indeed gone, the Chief separated from his companions. Of these, Ugo Ba.s.si, and an officer named Livraghi, were soon captured by the Austrians, who conveyed them to Bologna, where they were shot.
Ciceruacchio and his sons were taken in another place, and shot as soon as taken. The boat which contained Colonel Forbes was caught at sea by an Austrian cruiser: he was kept in Austrian prisons for two months, and was constantly reminded that he would be either shot or hung; but the English Government succeeded in getting him liberated, and he lived to take part in more fortunate fights under Garibaldi"s standard.
Meanwhile, Anita was dying in a peasant"s cottage, to which Garibaldi carried her when the strong will and dauntless heart could no longer stand in place of the strength that was finished. This was the 4th of August. Scarcely had she breathed her last breath when Garibaldi, broken down with grief as he was, had to fly from the spot. The Austrians were hunting for him in all directions. All the Roman fugitives were proclaimed outlaws, and the population was forbidden to give them even bread or water. Nevertheless--aided in secret by peasants, priests and all whose help he was obliged to seek--Garibaldi made good his flight from the Adriatic to the Mediterranean, the whole route being overrun by Austrians. When once the western coast was reached, he was able, partly by sea and partly by land, to reach the Piedmontese territory, where his life was safe. Not even there, however, could he rest; he was told, politely but firmly, that his presence was embarra.s.sing, and for the second time he left Europe--first for Tunis and then for the United States.
While the French besieged Rome, the Austrians had not been idle. They took Bologna in May, after eight days" resistance; and in June, after twenty days" attack by sea and land, Ancona fell into their hands. In these towns they pursued means of "pacification" resembling those employed at Brescia. All who possessed what by a fiction could be called arms were summarily slaughtered. At Ancona, a woman of bad character hid a rusty nail in the bed of her husband, whom she wished to get rid of; she then denounced him to the military tribunal, and two hours later an English family, whose house was near the barracks, heard the ring of the volley of musketry which despatched him. Austria had also occupied the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; and when, in July, Leopold II. returned to his state, which had restored him by general consent and without any foreign intervention, he entered Florence between two files of Austrian soldiery, in violation of the article of the Statute to which he had sworn, which stipulated that no foreign occupation should be invited or tolerated. The Grand Duke wrote to the Emperor of Austria, from Gaeta, humbly begging the loan of his arms.
Francis Joseph replied with supreme contempt, that it would have been a better thing if Leopold had never forgotten to whose family he belonged, but he granted the prayer. Such was the way in which the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine, that had done much in Tuscany to win respect if not love, destroyed all its rights to the goodwill of the Tuscan people, and removed what might have been a serious obstacle to Italian unity.
Austria, unable alone to cope with Hungary, committed the immeasurable blunder of calling in the 200,000 Russians who made conquest certain, but the price of whose aid she may still have to pay. Venice, and Venice only, continued to defy her power. Since Novara, the first result of which was the withdrawal of the Sardinian Commissioners, who had taken over the government after the Fusion, Venice had been ruled by Manin on the terms which he himself proposed: "Are you ready," he asked the Venetian a.s.sembly, "to invest the Government with unlimited powers in order to direct the defence and maintain order?" He warned them that he should be obliged to impose upon them enormous sacrifices, but they replied by voting the order of the day: "Venice resists the Austrians at all costs; to this end the President Manin is invested with plenary powers." All the deputies then raised their right hand, and swore to defend the city to the last extremity. They kept their word.
It is hard to say which was the most admirable: Manin"s fidelity to his trust, or the people"s fidelity to him. To keep up the spirits, to maintain the decorum of a besieged city even for a few weeks or a few months, is a task not without difficulty; but when the months run into a second year, when the real pinch of privations has been felt by everyone, not as a sudden twinge, but as a long-drawn-out pain, when the bare necessities of life fail, and a horrible disease, cholera, enters as auxiliary under the enemy"s black-and-yellow, death-and-pestilence flag; then, indeed, the task becomes one which only a born leader of men could perform.
The financial administration of the republic was a model of order and economy. Generous voluntary a.s.sistance was afforded by all cla.s.ses, from the wealthy patrician and the Jewish merchant to the poorest gondolier. Mazzini once said bitterly that it was easier to get his countrymen to give their blood than their money; here they gave both.
The capable manner in which Manin conducted the foreign policy of the republic is also a point that deserves mention, as it won the esteem even of statesmen of the old school, though it was powerless to obtain their help.
The time was gone when France was disposed to do anything for Venice; no one except the Archbishop of Paris, who was afterwards to die by the hand of an a.s.sa.s.sin, said a word for her.