He resolved to found a new a.s.sociation on broader and simpler lines than the secret societies of the past, which should aim not only at the material freeing of Italy from her present bondage, but at her moral and religious regeneration. To aim at material progress of any kind, without at the same time aiming at a higher moral progress, seemed to Mazzini absurd; to attempt to pull down without attempting to build up seemed to him criminal. Thus he accused the Socialists of subst.i.tuting the progress of humanity"s kitchen for the progress of humanity. He believed that Italy, united and redeemed, was destined to shed through the world the light of a new moral unity, which should end the reign of Scepticism, triumphant among discordant creeds. Mazzini"s religious belief was the motor of his whole being. The Catholicism in which he was outwardly brought up never seems to have touched his inner nature; he went through no spiritual wrench in leaving a faith that was never a reality to him. The same is true of innumerable young Italians, who, when they begin to read and study, drift out of their childhood"s religion without a struggle or a regret. But thought and study brought Mazzini what it rarely brings to these young men--the necessity to find something in which he could believe. He had not long to seek for a basis to his creed, because he was one of the men from the prophets of old to Spinoza, from Spinoza to Gordon, to whom the existence of G.o.d is a matter of experience rather than an object of faith. Starting from this point, he formed his religion out of what he regarded as its inevitable deductions. If G.o.d existed, his creatures must be intended for perfection; if this were the Divine scheme, man"s one business was to carry it out. He considered the idea of duty separated from the idea of G.o.d to be illogical. Either the development of human things depended on a providential law, or it was left to chance and pa.s.sing circ.u.mstance, and to the dexterity of the man who turned these to most account. G.o.d was the sole source of duty; duty the sole law of life. Mazzini did not denounce Catholicism or any other religion as false. He saw in it a stepping-stone to purer comprehension, which would be reached when man"s intellect was sufficiently developed for him to be able to do without symbols.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GIUSEPPE MAZZINI]
The conscience of humanity is the last tribunal. Ideas, as well as inst.i.tutions, change and expand, but certain fundamental principles are fixed. The family would always exist; property would always exist.
The first, "the heart"s fatherland," was the source of the only true happiness, the only joys untainted by grief, which were given to man.
Those who wished to abolish the second were like the savage who cut down the tree in order to gather the fruit. In the future, free a.s.sociation would be the great agent of moral and material progress.
The authority which once rested in popes and emperors now devolved on the people. Instead of "G.o.d and the King," Mazzini proposed the new formula "G.o.d and the People." By the people he understood no caste or cla.s.s, whether high or low, but the universality of men composing the nation. The nation is the sole sovereign; its will, expressed by delegates, must be law to all its citizens.
By degrees certain words acquired more and more a mystical significance in Mazzini"s mind; the very name of Rome, for instance, had for him a sort of talismanic fascination, not unlike that possessed by Jerusalem for the mediaeval Christian. When he spoke of the people or the republic he frequently used those terms in an ideal and visionary sense (as theologians use the Church) rather than in one strictly corresponding with the case of any existing nation, or any hitherto tried form of government. This does not alter the fact that his theories, which have been briefly summarised, are not hard to comprehend, as has been said by those who did not know in what they consisted, nor, taken one by one, are they novel. What was new in the nineteenth century was the appearance of a revolutionary leader, who was before all things a religious and ethical teacher. And though Mazzini never founded the Church of Precursors, of which he dreamt, his influence was as surely due to his belief in his religious mission, as was the influence of Savonarola. The Italians are not a mystical people, but they have always followed mystical leaders. The less men are p.r.o.ne to ideal enthusiasm the more attracted are they by it; Don Quixote, as Heine remarked, always draws Sancho Panza after him.
Mazzini had a natural capacity for organisation, and the a.s.sociation of Young Italy which he founded at Ma.r.s.eilles, the first nucleus being a group of young, penniless refugees, soon obtained an astonishing development. Up to the time of his "Letter to Charles Albert," his exile had been so far voluntary that he might have remained in Piedmont had he agreed to live in one of the smaller towns under the watchful care of the police, but he declined the terms, and the first effect of the "Letter" was a stringent order to arrest him if he recrossed the frontier. He was not surprised at that result. Mazzini"s att.i.tude towards the Sardinian monarchy was perfectly well defined.
Republican himself, even to fanaticism, he placed the question of unity, which for him meant national existence, above the question of the republic. He did not believe that the House of Savoy would unite Italy, but if unity could only be had under what he looked upon as the inauspicious form of monarchy, he would not reject it. He was like the real mother in the judgment of Solomon, who, because she loved her child, was ready to give it up sooner than see it cut in two.
Apart from personal hereditary instincts and predilections, Mazzini thought that he saw in the glorious memories of the Italian republics a clear indication that the commonwealth was the form of government which ought and would be adopted by the Italy of the future. But, unlike most politicians, he laid down the principle that, after all, when free, the nation must decide for itself. "To what purpose," he asks, "do we constantly speak of the sovereignty of the people, and of our reverence for the national will, if we are to disregard it as soon as it p.r.o.nounces in contradiction to our wishes?"
He did not succeed in making the majority of his countrymen republicans, but he contributed more than any other man towards inspiring the whole country with the desire for unity. Herein lies his great work. Without Mazzini, when would the Italians have got beyond the fallacies of federal republics, leagues of princes, provincial autonomy, insular home-rule, and all the other dreams of independence reft of its only safeguard which possessed the minds of patriots of every party in Italy and of nearly every well-wisher to Italian freedom abroad?
In 1831, most educated Italians did not even wish for unity, and this is still truer of the republicans than of the monarchists. Some, like Manzoni, did wish for it, but, like him, said nothing about it, for fear of being thought madmen. A flash of the true light illuminated the mind of Giro Menotti, but that was extinguished on the scaffold.
Then it was that Mazzini came forward with the news that Italy could _only_ be made free and independent by being united; unity was the ruling tendency of the century, and, as far as Italy went, no Utopia, but a certain conclusion. This was repeated over and over again, wherever there were Italians, over the inhabited globe. By means of sailors, "Young Italy" spread like lightning. Giuseppe Garibaldi was made a member by a sailor on the sh.o.r.es of the Black Sea.
With the ma.s.ses, unity proved the wonder-working word which Confalonieri had said was the one thing needful--a word yet fitter to work wonders than "War to the Stranger." Among the cultivated cla.s.ses, it was much slower in gaining ground, and particularly among statesmen and diplomatists. But in the end it was to convert them all.
""Young Italy,"" writes Mazzini, "closed the period of political sects, and initiated that of educational a.s.sociations." "Great revolutions," he says again, "are the work of principles rather than of bayonets." It was by the diffusion of ideas that "Young Italy"
became a commanding factor in the events of the next thirty years.
The insurrectional attempts planned under its guidance did not succeed, nor was it likely that they should succeed. Devised by exiles, at a distance, they lacked the first elements of success. The earliest of these attempts aimed at an invasion of Savoy; it was hoped that the Sardinian army and people would join the little band of exiles in a movement for the liberation of Lombardy. The revolution of 1821 had evidently suggested this plan to Mazzini, but it was foredoomed to misfortune. The Piedmontese authorities got wind of it, and a hunt followed for the members of "Young Italy"; most severe measures were taken; there were eleven executions, and numberless sentences to long terms of imprisonment. Jacobo Ruffini, the younger brother of the author of _Dr Antonio_, and Mazzini"s most beloved friend, committed suicide in prison, fearing to reveal the names of his a.s.sociates. The apologists for Charles Albert say that if he had not shown the will and ability to deal severely with the conspirators, Austria would have insisted on a military occupation. Whatever were his motives, this is the saddest page of his unhappy reign.
Checked in 1833, the descent on Savoy was actually attempted in 1834, with Mazzini"s consent, though not by his wish. An officer who had won some celebrity in the Polish revolution, General Ramorino, a Savoyard by origin, was given the command. Ramorino was a gambler, who could not be trusted with money, but Mazzini"s suspicion that on this occasion he played the part of traitor is not proved. However that may be, the expedition ended almost as soon as it began. Ramorino crossed the frontier of Savoy at the head of the column, but when he heard that a Polish reinforcement had been stopped on the Lake of Geneva, he retreated into Switzerland, and advised the band to follow him.
After these events, Mazzini could no longer carry on his propaganda in France. He took refuge in England, where a great part of his life was to be pa.s.sed, and of which he spoke, to the last, as his second country. The first period of his residence in England was darkened by the deep distress and discouragement into which the recent events had plunged him; but his faith in the future prevailed, and he went on with his work. His endeavours to help his fellow-exiles reduced him to the last stage of poverty; the day came when he was obliged to p.a.w.n a coat and an old pair of boots. These money difficulties did not afflict him, and by degrees his writings in English periodicals brought some addition to the small quarterly allowance which he received from his mother. It seems strange, though it is easily explained, that it was in London that he first got to know the Italian working cla.s.ses. He was surprised and gladdened by the abundance of good elements which he found in them. No country, indeed, has more reason to hope in her working men than the land whose sons have tunnelled the Alps, cut the most arduous railway lines in America and India, brought up English ships from the deep, laid the caissons (a task of extreme danger) which support the great structure of the Bridge of the Firth of Forth, and left their bones to whiten at Panama. "It is the universal testimony," writes a high American authority, "that no more faithful men have come among us." What was the cause of the slaughter of the Aigues Mortes? That the Italians worked too well.
Mazzini wrote for his humble friends the treatise on _The Duties of Man_, in which he told them that he loved them too well to flatter them. Another work that occupied him and consoled him was the rescue and moral improvement of the children employed by organ-grinders, and he was the first to call attention to the white slavery to which many of them were subjected. He opened a school in Hatton Garden, in which he taught, and which he mainly supported for the seven years from 1841 to 1848.
The enterprise of the Brothers Bandiera belongs to the history of "Young Italy," though Mazzini himself had tried to prevent it, believing that it could only end in the sacrifice of all concerned.
Nor, at the last, did the actors in it expect anything else. They had hoped for better things; for a general movement in the South of Italy, or at least for an undertaking on a larger and less irrational basis.
But promises failed, money was not forthcoming, and it was a choice between doing nothing or a piece of heroic folly. Contrary to Mazzini"s entreaties, they chose the second alternative.
Attilio and Emilio Bandiera were sons of the Austrian admiral who, in 1831, arrested Italian fugitives at sea. Placed by their father in the Austrian navy, they renounced every prospect of a brilliant career to enter the service of their down-trodden country. When they deserted, strong efforts were made by the Archduke Rainieri, through their mother, to win them back, but neither the offers of pardon nor the poor woman"s tears and reproaches turned them from their purpose.
Another deserter was with them, Lieutenant Domenico Moro, a youth of great charm of person and disposition, who had been employed with a mixed force of Englishmen and Austrians in the Lebanon, where he formed a warm friendship with Lieutenant, now Admiral, Sir George Wellesley, who still preserves an affectionate remembrance of him.
Nicola Ricciotti, a Roman subject who had devoted all his life to Italy, and Anacarsi Nardi, son of the dictator of Modena, were also of the band, which counted about twenty.
The Bandieras and their companions sailed from Corfu for the coast of Calabria on the 11th of June 1844. "If we fall," they wrote to Mazzini, "tell our countrymen to imitate our example, for life was given to us to be n.o.bly and usefully employed, and the cause for which we shall have fought and died is the purest and holiest that ever warmed the heart of man." It was their last letter. After they landed in Calabria one of their number disappeared; there is every reason to suppose that he went to betray them. They wandered for a few days in the mountains, looking for the insurgent band which they had been falsely told was waiting for them, and then fell into an ambush prepared by the Neapolitan troops. Some died fighting; nine were shot at Cosenza, including the Bandieras, Mori, Ricciotti and Nardi.
Boccheciampi the Corsican, whom they suspected of treason, was brought up to be confronted with them during the trial; when asked if he knew who he was, Nardi replied: "I know no word in my divine Italian language that can fitly describe that man." Boccheciampi was condemned to a nominal imprisonment; when he came out of prison he wrote to a Greek girl of Corfu, to whom he was engaged, to join him at Naples, that they might be married. The girl had been deeply in love with him, and had already given him part of her dowry, but she answered: "A traitor cannot wed a Greek maiden; I bear with me the blessing of my parents; upon you rests the curse of G.o.d."
The martyrdom of the Bandieras made a great impression, especially in England, where the circ.u.mstance came to light that their correspondence with Mazzini had been tampered with in the English Post Office, and that information as to their plans had reached the Austrian and Neapolitan Governments through the British Foreign Office. The affair was brought before the House of Commons by Thomas Duncombe. The Home Secretary repeated a calumny which had appeared many years before in a French newspaper, to the effect that the murder of an Italian in Rodez by two of his fellow-countrymen was the result of an order from the a.s.sociation of Young Italy. Sir James Graham had to apologise afterwards for "the injury inflicted on Mr Mazzini" by this statement, which he was obliged to admit was supported by no evidence, and was contrary to the opinion of the Judge who tried the case.
The _Times_ having observed in a leading article that the gravity of the fact in question, the violation of private correspondence in the Post Office, was not affected by the merits or demerits of Mr Mazzini, of whom it professed to "know nothing," Thomas Carlyle wrote next day a letter containing words which may be quoted as some of the best and truest ever written about the great Italian: "I have had the honour to know Mr Mazzini for a series of years, and, whatever I may think of his practical insight and skill in worldly affairs, I can with great freedom testify that he, if I have ever seen one such, is a man of genius and virtue, one of those rare men, numerable unfortunately but as units in this world, who are worthy to be called martyr souls; who in silence, piously in their daily life, understand and practise what is meant by that." [2]
CHAPTER V
THE POPE LIBERATOR
1844-1847
Events leading to the Election of Pius IX.--The Petty Princes--Charles Albert, Leopold and Ferdinand.
The day is drawing near when the century which witnessed the liberation of Italy will have pa.s.sed away. Already a generation has grown up which can but faintly realise the pa.s.sionate hopes and fears with which the steps that led through defeat to the ultimate victory were watched, not only by Italians, but by thousands who had never set foot in Italy. Never did a series of political events evoke a sympathy so wide and so disinterested, and it may be foretold with confidence that it never will again. Italy rising from the grave was the living romance of myriads of young hearts that were lifted from the common level of trivial interests and selfish ends, from the routine of work or pleasure, both deadening without some diviner spark, by a sustained enthusiasm that can hardly be imagined now. There were, indeed, some who asked what was all this to them? What were the "extraneous Austrian Emperor," or the "old chimera of a Pope" (Carlyle"s designations) to the British taxpayer? Some there were in England who were deeply attached still to the "Great Hinge on which Europe depended," and even to the most clement Spanish Bourbons of Naples, about whom strangely beautiful things are to be read in old numbers of the _Quarterly Review_. But on the whole, English men and women--in mind half Italian, whether they will it or not, from the day they begin to read their own literature from Chaucer to Shakespeare, from Shakespeare to Sh.e.l.ley, from Sh.e.l.ley to Rossetti and Swinburne--were united at that time in warmth of feeling towards struggling Italy as they have been united in no political sentiment relating to another nation, and in few concerning their own country.
It would be vain to expect that the record of Italian vicissitudes during the years when the fate of Italy hung in the balance can awake or renew the spellbound interest caused by the events themselves. The reader of recent history is like the novel reader who begins at the last chapter--he is too familiar with how it all ended to be keenly affected by the development of the plot. Yet it is plain that we are in a better position to appreciate the process of development than was the case when the issue remained uncertain. We can estimate more accurately the difficulties which stood in the way, and judge more impartially the means that were taken to remove them. One outcome of this fuller knowledge is the conviction that patriotism was the monopoly of no single Italian party. The leaders, and still more their henchmen, were in the habit of saying very hard things about each other. It was natural and unavoidable; but there is no excuse now for failing to recognise that there were pure and devoted patriots on the one side as well as on the other--men whose only desire was the salvation of Italy, to effect which no sacrifice seemed too great. Nor were their labours unfruitful, for there was work for all of them to do; and the very diversity of opinion, though unfortunate under some aspects, was not so under all. If no one had raised the question of unity before all things, Italy might be still a geographical expression. If no one had tried to wring concessions from the old governments, their inherent and irremediable vices would never have been proved; and though they might have been overturned, they would have left behind a lasting possibility of ignorant reaction.
The Great Powers had presented to the Court of Rome in 1831 a memorandum, in which various moderate reforms and improvements were proposed as urgently necessary to put an end to the intolerable abuses which were rife in the states of the Church, and, most of all, in Romagna. The abolition of the tribunal of the Holy Office, the inst.i.tution of a Council of State, lay education, and the secularisation of the administration were among the measures recommended. In 1845 a certain Pietro Renzi collected a body of spirited young men at San Marino, and made a dash on Rimini, where he disarmed the small garrison. The other towns were not prepared, and Renzi and his companions were obliged to retire into Tuscany; but the revolution, partial as it had been, raised discussion in consequence of the manifesto issued by its promoters, in which a demand was made for the identical reforms vainly advocated by European diplomacy fourteen years before. If these were granted, the insurgents engaged to lay down their arms. The manifesto was written by Luigi Carlo Farini, who was destined to play a large part in future affairs. It proved to Europe that even the most conservative elements in the nation were driven to revolution by the sheer hopelessness of the dead-lock which the Italian rulers sought by every means to prolong.
Ma.s.simo d"Azeglio, who was then known only as a painter of talent and a writer of historical novels, first made his mark as a politician by the pamphlet ent.i.tled _Gli ultimi casi di Romagna_, in which his arguments derived force from the fact that, when travelling in the district, he had done all in his power to induce the Liberals to keep within the bounds of legality. But he confessed that, when someone says: "I suffer too much," it is an unsatisfactory answer to retort: "You have not suffered enough." Ma.s.simo d"Azeglio had lived for many years an artist"s life in Rome and the country round, where his aristocratic birth and handsome face made him popular with all cla.s.ses. The transparent integrity of his nature overcame the diffidence usually inspired by strangers among a somewhat suspicious people, and he got to know more thoroughly than any other North Italian the real aspirations of the Pope"s subjects. He listened to their complaints and their plans, and if they asked his advice, he invariably replied: "Let us speak clearly. What is it that you wish and I with you? You wish to have done with priestly rule, and to send the Teutons out of Italy? If you invite them to decamp, they will probably say, "No, thank you!" Therefore you must use force; and where is it to be had? If you have not got it, you must find somebody who has. In Italy who has it, or, to speak more precisely, who has a little of it? Piedmont, because it, at least, enjoys an independent life, and possesses an army and a surplus in the treasury." His friends answered: "What of Charles Albert, of 1821, of 1832?" Now, there was no one who felt less trust in Charles Albert than Ma.s.simo d"Azeglio; he admitted it with something like remorse in later years.
But he believed in his ambition, and he thought it madness to throw away what he regarded as the sole chance of freeing Italy on account of private doubts of the King of Sardinia"s sincerity.
Charles Albert had reigned for fourteen years, and still the mystery which surrounded his character formed as impenetrable a veil as ever.
The popular nickname of _Re Tentenna_ (King Waverer) seemed, in a sense, accepted by him when he said to the Duke d"Aumale in 1843: "I am between the dagger of the Carbonari and the chocolate of the Jesuits." He chose, as bride for his eldest son, an Austrian princess, who, however, had known no country but Italy. His internal policy was not simply stationary, it was retrograde. If his consent was obtained to some progressive measure, he withdrew it at the last moment, or insisted on the introduction of modifications which nullified the whole. His want of stability drove one of his ministers to jump out of a window. In spite of the candid reference to the Jesuit"s cup of chocolate, he allowed the Society of Jesus to dictate its will in Piedmont. Victor Amadeus, the first King of Sardinia, took public education out of the hands of the Jesuits, after receiving the following deathbed communication from one of the Order who was his own confessor: "Deeply sensible of your many favours, I can only show my grat.i.tude by a final piece of advice, but of such importance that perhaps it may suffice to discharge my debt. Never have a Jesuit for confessor. Do not ask me the grounds of this advice, I should not be at liberty to tell them to you." The lesson was forgotten now. Charles Albert was not content to wear a hair-shirt himself; he would have liked to see all his subjects furnished with the same garment. The result was, that Piedmont was not a comfortable place for Liberals to live in, nor a lively place for anyone. Yet there is hardly anything more certain than that all this time the King was constantly dreaming of turning the Austrians out of Italy. His government kept its attention fixed on two points: the improvement of the army, and the acc.u.mulation of a reserve fund to be available in case of war. Drill and thrift, which made the German Empire out of Prussia, if they did not lead straight to equally splendid results south of the Alps, were still what rendered it possible for Piedmont to defy Austria when the time came. In 1840, Charles Albert wrote to his Minister of War: "It is a fine thing to win twenty battles; as for me, I should be content to win ten on behalf of a cause I know of, and to fall in the tenth--then, indeed, I would die blessing the Lord." A year or two later, he unearthed and rea.s.sumed the ancient motto of the House of Savoy: "J"attends mon astre." Nevertheless, to the outward world his intentions remained enigmatical, and it was therefore with extreme surprise that Ma.s.simo d"Azeglio (who, on his return from the Roman states, asked permission to inform the King of the impressions made on him by his travels) received the injunction to tell his Liberal friends "that when the occasion presented itself, his life, the life of his sons, his treasure, and his army would all be spent for the Italian cause."
The fifteen years" pontificate of Gregory XVI. ended on the 1st June of 1846. In spite of the care taken by those around him to keep the aged pontiff in a fool"s paradise with regard to the real state of his dominions, a copy of _The Late Events in Romagna_ fell into his hands, and considerably disturbed his peace of mind. He sent two prelates to look into the condition of the congested provinces, and their tour, though it resulted in nothing else, called forth new protests and supplications from the inhabitants, of which the most noteworthy was an address written by Count Aurelio Saffi, who was destined to pa.s.s many honourable years of exile in England. This address attacked the root of the evil in a pa.s.sage which exposed the unbearable vexations of a government based on espionage. The acknowledged power of an irresponsible police was backed by the secret force of an army of private spies and informers. The sentiment of legality was being stamped out of the public conscience, and with it religion and morality. "Bishops have been heard to preach civil war--a crusade against the Liberals; priests seem to mix themselves in wretched party strife, egging on the mob to vent its worst pa.s.sions. There is not a Catholic country in which the really Christian priest is so rarely found as in the States of the Church."
If Gregory XVI. was not without reasons for disquietude in his last hours, he could take comfort in the fact that he had succeeded in keeping railways out of all parts of his dominions. Gas and suspension bridges were also cla.s.sed as works of the Evil One, and vigorously tabooed. Among the Pope"s subjects there was a young prelate who had never been able to make out what there was subversive to theology in a steam-engine, or why the safety of the Papal government should depend on its opposing every form of material improvement, although in discussing these subjects he generally ended by saying: "After all I am no politician, and I may be mistaken." This prelate was Cardinal Mastai-Ferretti, Bishop of Imola. Born in 1792 at Sinigaglia, of a good though rather needy family, Count Giovanni Maria Mastai was piously brought up by his mother, who dedicated him at an early age to the Virgin, to whom she believed that she owed his recovery from an illness which had been p.r.o.nounced fatal. Roman Catholic writers connect the promulgation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception with this incident of childhood. After entering the priesthood, young Mastai devoted most of his energies to active charity, and remained, as he said, "no politician," being singularly ignorant of the world and of public affairs, though full of amiable wishes that everyone should be happy. Some years spent in missionary work in South America failed to enlarge his practical knowledge, the limits of which he was the first to recognise--a fact that tended to make him all his life the instrument, not of his own will, but of the wills of men whom he honestly thought cleverer and more experienced than himself. His chief friends in his Romagnol diocese, friends on the intimate basis of social equality and common provincial interests, were sound patriots, though not revolutionists, and the future Pio Nono involuntarily adopted their ideas and sympathies. He saw with his eyes certain abuses so glaring that they admitted of no two opinions, and these helped to convince him of the truth of his friends" arguments in favour of a completely new order of things. One such abuse was the encouragement given by government to the Society of the Centurioni, the latest evolution of the Calderai; the Centurions, recruited among roughs and peasants, were set upon the respectable middle cla.s.ses, over which they tyrannised by secret accusations or open violence: it was well understood that anyone called a Liberal, or Freemason, or Carbonaro could be beaten or killed without inquiries being made.
The Bishop of Imola was frequently in the house of the Count and Countess Pasolini, who kept their friend well supplied with the new books on Italian affairs; thus he read not only D"Azeglio"s _Cast di Romagna_, but also Cesare Balbo"s _Le Speranze d"Italia,_ which propounded a plan for an Italian federation, and Gioberti"s _Primato morale e civile degli Italiani_, in which this plan was elaborately developed. Gioberti indicated the Supreme Pontiff as the natural head of the Italian Union, and the King of Sardinia as Italy"s natural deliverer from foreign domination. The eternal fitness of things, and the history of many centuries, proved the Pope to be the proper paramount civil authority in Italy, "which is the capital of Europe, because Rome is the religious metropolis of the world." An ex-member of "Young Italy," a Piedmontese by birth, a priest by ordination, Gioberti"s profession of faith was derived from these three sources, and it attracted thousands of Italians by its apparent reconciliation of the interests of the papacy, and of the Sardinian monarchy, with the most advanced views of the newest school. History, to which Gioberti appealed, might have told him that a reversal of the law of gravity was as likely to happen as the performance by the papacy of the mission he proposed to it; but men believe what they wish to believe, and his work found, as has been said, thousands of admirers, among whom none was more sincere than Cardinal Mastai. The day on which Count Pasolini gave him a copy of _Il Primato_ he created that great, and under some aspects pathetic illusion, the reforming Pope.
The Conclave opened on the 14th of June 1846. During the Bishop of Imola"s journey to Rome a white pigeon had perched several times on his carriage. The story became known; people said the same thing had occurred to a coming Pope on former occasions, and the augury was accepted with joy and satisfaction. He was, in fact, elected after the Conclave had lasted only two days, while the Conclave which elected his predecessor lasted sixty-four. The brevity of that to which Pius IX. owed the tiara was looked upon by the populace as something miraculous, but it was the result of the well-considered determination of the Italian Cardinals not to allow time for Austrian intrigues to obtain the election of a Pope who would be ruled from Vienna. When the new Pope appeared on the balcony of the Quirinal to give his first benediction, the people, carried away by his youthful yet majestic bearing, and by the hopes which already centred in him, broke into frantic cries of: "We have a Pope! He loves us! He is our Father!" If they had cried: "We have a new heaven and a new earth," they would but have expressed the delirium which, starting from Rome, spread throughout Italy.
On the night of the 6th of December 1846, the whole line of the Apennines from Liguria to Calabria was illuminated. A hundred years before, a stone thrown by the child Balilla had given the signal for the expulsion of the Austrians from Genoa: this was the memory flashed from height to height by countless beacons, but while celebrating the past, they were the fiery heralds of a greater revolution.
The upheaval of Europe did not become a fact, however, for another year. Meantime, the Roman States attracted more attention than any other part of the peninsula, from the curiosity awakened by the progress of the experiment of which they were the scene. It is not doubtful that at the first moment Pius IX. was under the impression that the problem he had taken in hand was eminently simple. A little goodwill on the part of everybody, an amnesty to heal old sores, and a few administrative reforms, ought, he thought, to set everything right. Such was not the opinion of intelligent onlookers who were students of politics--especially if they were foreigners, and could therefore keep their heads moderately cool in the prevailing excitement. The wave of a wand may seem to effect marvels, but long and silent causes prepare the way for each event. Now what had been going on for years in the Roman States was not the process of gradual growth, but the process of rapid disintegration. The Temporal Power of the Popes had died without anyone noticing it, and there was nothing left but a body in the course of dissolution. Every foreigner in Rome during the reign of Gregory XVI. bore witness that his government depended for its existence absolutely on the Swiss Guards. In 1845, Count Rossi told Guizot that without the Swiss regiments the government in the Legations and the Marches "would be overthrown in the twinkling of an eye." The British agent in Rome, writing during the Conclave, bore this out by the statement, which applied not to one portion of the Roman states, but to all, that "the government could not stand without the protection of Austria and the immediate presence of the Swiss." On the accession of Pius IX., the props, such as they were, which had prevented an earlier collapse of the Temporal Power, were either removed or rendered useless. The Swiss might as well have been disbanded at once as retained merely to be a bone of contention between the new government and the people, since it was understood that a vigorous use of their services would never be resorted to; while Austrian protection was transferred from the Pope to the disaffected party in the Church, which consisted in a large proportion of the cardinals and of the inferior clergy who were afraid that, with the reform of abuses, they would lose their influence over the lower cla.s.s of their flocks. The English diplomatic agents in Italy also firmly believed that Austria coupled with her support of the ultramontane malcontents the direct encouragement of the disorderly elements of the population. To resist all these contrary forces, Pius IX. had only a popularity which, though for the time immense, was founded almost completely on imagination. "It was," said Mr Petre, "the name and known views of Pius, rather than his acts, which aroused so much interest." If for "known views" be subst.i.tuted "supposed views," the remark exactly describes the situation.
Popularity is very well, but a government cannot long subsist on the single fact of the popularity of the sovereign. When the Roman mob began to cry: "Viva Pio Nono _solo_," the fate of the experiment was sealed. Real control slipped from the hands that nominally wielded it.
"The influence," Mr Petre wrote to Sir George Hamilton, "of one individual of the lower cla.s.s, Angelo Brunetti, hardly known but by his nickname of Ciceruacchio, has for the last month kept the peace of the city more than any power possessed by the authorities, from the command which he exerts over the populace." It was Ciceruacchio who preserved order when in July 1847 the air was full of rumours of a vast reactionary plot, which aimed at carrying off the Pope, and putting things back as they were under Gregory. That such a plot was ever conceived, or, at anyrate, that it received the sanction of the high personages whose names were mentioned in connection with it, is generally doubted now; but it was believed in by many of the representatives of foreign Powers then in Italy. The public mind in Rome was violently disturbed. Austria made the excitement the excuse for occupying the town of Ferrara, where, by the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of Vienna, she had only the right to garrison the fortress. This aggression called forth a strong remonstrance from the Pope"s Secretary of State, Cardinal Ferretti; and though a compromise was arrived at through the mediation of Lord Palmerston, the feeling against Austria grew more and more exasperated in the Roman states, and the Pope consented, not, it seemed, much against the grain, to preparations being taken in hand with a view to the possible eventuality of war.
At this date the Italian question was better apprehended at Vienna than in any other part of Europe. A man of Prince Metternich"s talents does not devote a long life to statecraft without learning to distinguish the real drift of political currents. While Lord Palmerston still felt sure that reforms, and nothing but reforms, were what Italy wanted, Prince Metternich saw that two real forces were at work from the Alps to the Straits of Messina, and two only: desire for union, hatred of Austria. Nor was it his fault if the English Cabinet or the rest of the world remained unenlightened. Besides enlarging on this truth in frequent diplomatic communications, he caused it to be continually dwelt upon in the Vienna _Observer_, the organ of the Austrian Government, which printed ill.u.s.trative quotations from the writings of Mazzini, of whom it said that "he has the one merit of despising hypocrisy, and proceeding firmly and directly to his true end. Persons who are versed in history will know that this is exactly the same end as that at which Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi formerly aimed. The only difference is, that the revolutionary dream has in the course of centuries gained in self-reliance and confidence." It may truly be affirmed after this that Metternich "had the one merit of despising hypocrisy." Exactly the same end as Arnold of Brescia and Cola di Rienzi--who better could have described the scheme of Italian redemption?
In the course of the summer of 1847, the Prince said more than once to the British Amba.s.sador: "The Emperor is determined not to lose his Italian dominions." It was no idle boast, the speaker felt confident, that the troops in Lombardy and Venetia could keep those provinces from taking an active part in the "revolution" which he declared to be already complete over all central Italy, though the word revolution had never yet been mentioned. Nor was it only in the Austrian army that he trusted; Metternich was persuaded that neither in Lombardy nor in Venetia was there any fear of a really popular and, therefore, formidable movement. He believed that Austria"s only enemy was the aristocracy. He even threw out hints that if the Austrian Government condescended to do so, it could raise a social or peasants" war of the country people against their masters. This is the policy which has been elaborately followed by the Russians in Poland. The Austrians pointed to their virtue in not resorting to it; but some tentative experiments in such a direction had not given results of a kind to encourage them to go on. The Italian peasant, though ignorant, had a far quicker innate intelligence than his unfortunate Polish brother.
He did not dislike his masters, who treated him at least with easy familiarity, and he detested foreigners--those foreigners, no matter of what nation, who for two thousand years had brought the everlasting curse of war upon his fields. The conscription, which carried off his sons for eight years into distant lands, of which he could not p.r.o.nounce the name, was alone enough to alienate him from the Austrian Government. In hoping to find a friend in the Italian peasant, Metternich reckoned without his host. On the other hand, he was strictly correct in his estimate of the patriotism of the aristocracy.
The fact always seemed to the Prince a violation of eternal laws.
According to him, the fore-ordained disaffected in every country were drawn from the middle cla.s.ses. What business had n.o.blemen with ancient names and fine estates to prefer Spielberg to their beautiful palaces and fairy-like villas on the Lombard lakes? Was it on purpose to spite the best of governments, and the one most favourable to the aristocratic principle, which had always held out paternal hands to them? Could anything be imagined more aggravating?
This feature in Italian liberation has been kept mostly in the background. Democratic chroniclers were satisfied to ignore it, and to the men themselves their enormous sacrifices seemed so natural that they were very willing to let them pa.s.s out of mind. It is in the works of those who, while sympathising with Italy, are not Italians, that the best record of it is to be found; nowhere better than in a recent book by a French writer, M. Paul Bourget, in which occurs the following just and eloquent tribute: "We must say in praise of the aristocracy on this side of the Alps that the best soldiers of independence were n.o.bles. If Italy owes the final success to the superior capabilities of Victor Emmanuel and Cavour, and to the agitating power of the General of the Thousand, it is well not to forget the struggles sustained for years by gentlemen whose example did so much to raise partisans among the humble. These aristocrats, pa.s.sionate for liberty, have (like our own of the eighteenth century) done more for the people than the people itself. The veritable history of this _Risorgimento_ would be in great part that of the Italian n.o.bility in which the heroic blood of feudal chiefs revolted against the oppressions and, above all, the perpetual humiliation, born of the presence of the stranger."
When Prince Metternich looked beyond the borders of those provinces which he said that his Sovereign did not intend to lose, he saw sooner than most people that a ball was set rolling which would not stop half way down the hill. The one element in the situation which came as a surprise to him, was that introduced by Pius IX. "A liberal Pope is an impossible being!" he exclaimed. Nevertheless this impossible being was a reality which had to be dealt with. He hoped all along, however, that Pius would fall a victim to the Frankenstein he had called into existence, and his only real anxiety lay where it had always lain--on the side of Piedmont. "Charles Albert ought to let us know," he wrote to the Austrian Minister at Turin, "whether his reign has been only a mask under which was hidden the Prince of Carignano, who ascended the throne through the order of succession re-established in his favour by the Emperor Francis." Considering all things, the endeavour to make it appear that the King was indebted for his crown to Austria was somewhat venturesome. Charles Albert, Metternich went on to say, had to choose between two systems, the system now in force, or "the cra.s.sest revolution." He wrote again: "The King is sliding back upon the path which he enters for the second time in his life, _and which he will never really quit_." Words of a bitter enemy, but juster than the "Esecrato o Carignano," hurled for a quarter of a century at Charles Albert by those who only saw in him a traitor.