Not a man in the crowd at Turin dared to anticipate such a result: yet their joy was frantic. Fifty thousand people, arranged in guilds, defiled before the king, who sat like a statue on his bay horse, upright and impassible. Cavour walked in the company of journalists, and all those who had opposed him a few weeks before were there too, with Valerio at their head. They sang their strophe of Mameli's hymn, "Fratelli d'Italia," very badly. Cavour whispered to his neighbour, "We are so many dogs!"
That neighbour, a Milanese named Giuseppe Torelli, has left an interesting description of Cavour's appearance as it was then. He was fresh-coloured, and his blue eyes had not yet lost their brightness, but they were so changeful in expression that it was difficult to fix their distinctive quality. Though rather stout he was not ungainly, as he tended to become later. He stooped a little, and two narrow lines were visible on either side of a mouth, cold and uneffusive; but these lines, by their trembling or contraction, showed the play of inward emotion which the rest of the face concealed. In after days people used to watch them in order to guess his state of mind. It was his large and solid forehead that chiefly gave the idea of power which every one who saw him carried away, despite of the want of dignity in his person and of strongly-marked features in his face. His manners were simple, but distinguished by an unmistakably aristocratic ease and courtesy. He spoke generally low and without emphasis, and always appeared to pay great attention to what was said to him, even by the least important person.
Nothing, on the face of it, could seem more extraordinary than the exclusion of Cavour from office in the momentous year of 1848. But he had no popular party at his back whose cry could overrule the disinclination which the king certainly felt towards making him his Minister. Moreover, his abilities, though now generally recognised, contributed to keeping him in the background: it was felt instinctively that if he got the reins there would be only one driver. He was known to be indifferent to criticism, and while he listened patiently to advice, he rarely took it. He had mortally offended the conservatives by the liberalism of his means, and the liberals by the conservatism of his ends. Count Balbo, on assuming the office of the first Prime Minister under the Statute, not only retired from the directing council of theRisorgimento, but went out of his way to disavow the policy supported in it by Cavour. "The little rascal," he was heard to say, "will end by ruining the splendid edifice raised by the wisdom and moderation of so many estimable men!" The splendid edifice was on the verge of being nearly ruined, but by timidity—which has lost a score of thrones,—not by audacity. The new Cabinet entered upon their duties on March 16. Two days later occurred an event utterly unforeseen—the rising of Milan against the Austrians. It took them unprepared. They had talked so much about war that perhaps they thought it would happen in the next century. When the "now or never" sounded, which does sound sooner or later in all human affairs, they hesitated or suffered the king to hesitate, which came to the same thing. That Charles Albert stood for one instant in doubt when the hour was come desired by him all his life, as he had often stated, and there is no reason to think untruly, is possibly the most serious stain on his memory. There are moments when to reflect is criminal: a man has no right to reflect when his mother is in a burning house. The reflections which held Charles Albert back were two. He was afraid that the Milan revolution would breed a republic, and he was afraid of England and of Russia. England, which during the previous autumn had sent Lord Minto to urge upon the Italian princes a line of policy rightly described by Prince Metternich as inevitably leading to an attack on Austria, now applied the whole force of her diplomacy to stop the ball she had herself set running. The spectacle of Lord Palmerston trying to save or serve Austria, which he detested, in obedience to the atavistic tendencies of the Foreign Office, is a lesson in history. For English politicians of whatever party or private sentiments, Austria was still what Lord Castlereagh called her: "The great hinge on which the fate of Europe must ultimately depend." Sir Ralph Abercromby assured the king that "the least act of aggression" would place his throne in jeopardy. His throne was already in jeopardy, but from the contrary reason. Each minute that passed while the Milanese were fighting their death struggle and he stood inactive threatened to deprive him and his house of that power of progress on which not only their fortune but their existence depended.
The news from Milan reached Turin on March 19; on the 23rd, the last of the Milan days, king and ministry were still hesitating. On that day Cavour printed in theRisorgimentothe most impassioned piece of writing that ever came from his pen. The conservative, the reactionary, once more cried aloud that audacity was prudence, temerity wisdom. The supreme hour of the Savoy dynasty had struck, the hour of strong resolves, on which hangs the fate of empires, the destinies of peoples. Hesitation, doubt, delay, were no more possible: they could only prove fatal. "We, men of calm minds, accustomed to listen more to the dictates of reason than to the impulses of the heart, after deliberately weighing each word we utter, are bound in conscience to declare that only one path is open to the nation, the government, the king: war, immediate war!" It was said, he continued, that Russia and England were on the point of uniting against Italy. In common times such an argument would be conclusive, not now. When Milan was struggling for life, was perhaps getting worsted, at all costs they were bound to fly to the rescue. Duty, brotherhood, policy, commanded it. Woe unto them if they crossed the frontier to find that Milan had fallen.
Russia, through her ambassador, intimated that she would regard the crossing of the Ticino as acasus belli.The threat made less impression at Turin than the warnings of Sir Ralph Abercromby; it was the possibility of English intervention, therefore, that Cavour went on to examine. TheAnglomane"MilordRisorgimento" was less surprised at the current of English official thought than were his radical critics, but would any English minister, he asked, enter on a European war to prevent the liberation of Italy, which was an object sacred in the eyes of the mass of the English people? He believed it to be impossible, but were it so, so be it! England would have against her a mighty coalition, not of princes, as in former days, but of peoples, in the old world and in the new. Victory in such a matricidal strife would be as fatal to the first-born of liberty as defeat.
Thus Cavour was prepared to fight Austria, Russia, and England. The division of parties at that time was in its essence the division of those who were willing to accept a republican solution and those who were not. It does not follow that all the liberals wished for a republic, but they would all have taken office under it. Of this there is little doubt. Cavour never would have become a republican any more than an absolutist minister. But he saw what the other conservatives failed to see, that the dynasty of Savoy could only live if it led.
On March 22, Charles Albert was still assuring the Austrian Ambassador that his intentions were pacific. Next day Cavour's article appeared, and in the evening the king decided for instant war. Only two of the ministers assented at once; the others gave in after a long discussion. War was declared on the 25th. Time lost cannot be recalled; the happy moment had been let go by; Piedmont went not to Lombardy engaged in a dangerous struggle, but to Lombardy victorious. Cavillers said that the king had come to eat the fruits others had gathered. Confidence in the ultimate result reached the point of madness, but with revolution stalking through the streets of Vienna the Austrian eagle seemed to have lost its talons. In May 1848, in Austria itself, Lombardy was looked upon as completely lost, and with it the Southern Tyrol as far as Meran, for no one at that period thought of separating this Italian district from Italy; the most sanguine Austrians only hoped to save Venetia. Radetsky alone expected to save all, because he knew what he could do, and he had judged Sardinian generalship correctly. Charles Albert's staff seemed to have but one idea—to reverse the tactics which had led the first Napoleon to victory on the same ground.
The brightest gleam of success which shone on the king of Sardinia's arms was at Goito, in the battle of May 30. It was on that occasion that Cavour's nephew, Augusto di Cavour, was killed. Theenfant terriblegrew up to be a young man of singular promise, on whom Cavour had fixed all his hopes for the future of his name and house. His uncle's last letter of encouragement to do his duty was found on Augusto's body. The blow unnerved Cavour; he was found lying prostrate in an agony of speechless grief. Through his life he kept the blood-stained uniform in which the young officer received his death-wound in a glass case in his bedroom, a piece of enduring sentiment which shows how unlike Cavour was the coldly calculating egotist whose portrait has passed for his.
The story of the years of revolution in Italy is a story of great things and small, like most human records; but, when all is said, the great predominate, for no blunders could efface the readiness for self-sacrifice displayed by the whole people. The experience of these years was bitter, but possibly necessary. It destroyed illusions. It showed, for instance, that in the nineteenth century a free and independent Italy under the hegemony of the Pope belonged to political mythology. Here was a Pope who was, at heart, patriotic, but who drew back at the crucial moment, precisely as Mazzini (almost alone) had predicted. The first threat of a schism was enough to make him wear dust and ashes for his patriotism. The Bourbons of Naples were ascertained to have learnt nothing and unlearnt nothing; perfidy alone could be expected from them. It was proved that the princes of the other states, Piedmont excepted, must gravitate towards Austria even if they did not wish it. All this was useful, if dearly bought, knowledge.
At the first general elections in Piedmont, Cavour failed to obtain a seat. He told the electors in his address that he had always desiredItalia unita e libera, and if "united" did not yet imply "under one king," the phrase was still significant. Two months later he was elected in four divisions; probably the death of his nephew in the interim on the field of battle modified, for the time, his unpopularity. He took his seat for the first college of Turin. He did not make an immediate impression; his short stature, and still more the imperfect accent with which he spoke Italian, were not in his favour. French was allowed in the Sardinian Chamber, but Cavour never opened his lips in it in Parliament. By degrees his speeches became marvels of close reasoning, and they even soared, sometimes, when he was deeply moved, into a kind of eloquence superior to that of rhetoric, but the accent was never such as would satisfy a fastidious ear. The day came, however, when people hung with too much anxiety on the least of his utterances for any one to notice this defect. Cavour sat on the Right, and from the first he horrified his colleagues on the same benches by the enunciation of views which to them were rank heresies. They existed in a state of perpetual uneasiness as to what he might say or do next.
Cavour was not re-elected when Parliament was dissolved in January 1849; he was therefore not in the Chamber during the debates which preceded and followed the last desperate throw of Novara. A letter written by him six days after the battle shows what he thought of those events. The Conservative party, he says, which represented the great majority in the country, had been badly supported by it (an assertion as true now as then). The king threw himself into the arms of demagogues who thought that freedom and independence were to be won by phrases and proclamations. The army had been disheartened, the best officers kept inactive; twelve months' sacrifices of men and money placed them in a worse condition than before the Milan revolution. Self-love might, he concluded, warp his judgment, but he had the intimate conviction that, if he had held the reins of power, he could have saved the country without any effort of genius, and planted the Italian flag on the Styrian Alps. But his friends joined with his foes to keep him out of power, and he had passed his time in deploring faults which it would have been very easy to avoid.
Remembering what Cavour afterwards accomplished, these are words which should not be set lightly aside. Yet it is possible that the complete disaster into which Charles Albert rushed at Novara was the only thing to save the country and to lay the foundations of Italian unity. The king was more eager for war than the most unthinking democrat. Reviled by all parties, he sought the great conciliator, death. "The Italians will never trust me," he exclaimed. "My son, Victor, will be king of Italy, not I." When the death he would have chosen was denied him, he went away, a crownless exile. He could do no more.
It was necessary, as Charles Albert had seen, that the king who was to carry out the destinies of Italy should be trusted. Victor Emmanuel came to the throne with few advantages; he was unpopular, his private friends were said to be reactionaries, his brusque manners offended most people. He had practically no advisers in these critical moments, but the moral courage with which he refused the Austrian offers of lenient terms if he would repudiate the Statute and his father's word, won for him the nation's trust, which he never lost. Cavour, with all his genius, could not have made the kingdom of Italy if the Italians had doubted their king.
The condition of Italy, Cavour said, was worse at the end of the year's struggle than at the beginning. Such was the case, if the present only were looked at. When Austria resumed her sway in Lombardy and Venetia she resumed it by the right of the conqueror, a more intelligible, and in a sense a more legitimate, right than that derived from bargains and treaties in which the population had no voice. The House of Hapsburg was saved in Italy by one loyal servant, Radetsky, and in Hungary by the Ban of Croatia and 200,000 Russians. Besides the regained supremacy in the Lombardo-Veneto, Austria was more predominant in the centre and south than in the palmiest days of the Holy Alliance. A keen observer might have held that she was too predominant to be safe. Talleyrand always said that if Italy were united under Austria she would escape from her, not sooner or later, but in a few years. There was not political unity, but there may almost be said to have been moral unity. Even in Rome, in spite of the French garrison, Austrian influence counted for much more than French. When Victor Emmanuel gave the premiership to Massimo d'Azeglio, Cavour remarked that he was glad of the appointment, and equally so that D'Azeglio had not asked him to be his colleague, because in the actual circumstances it seemed to him difficult or impossible to do any good. D'Azeglio could not have offered Cavour a portfolio without undoing the effect of his own appointment, by which confidence in Victor Emmanuel was confirmed. The king was not sufficiently known for it to be wise to place beside him an unpopular man, a suspectedcodino, the nickname ("pig-tail") given to reactionaries. D'Azeglio, who was really prepared to go far less far than Cavour, was almost loved even by his political enemies, a wonderful phenomenon in Italy. His patriotism had been lately sealed by the severe wound he received at Vicenza. To rigid principles he added attractive and chivalric manners, which smoothed his relations with the young king, who, if brusque himself, did not like brusqueness in others.
Cavour retired, as became his wont, to enjoy the sweetness of rural leisure at Leri: for him the sovereign remedy to political disquietude. The well-cultivated fields, the rich grass lands, in the contemplation of which he took a peaceful but lively satisfaction, restored as usual his mental equilibrium, and brought back the hopefulness of his naturally sanguine temperament. Before long he was exhorting his friends to be of good cheer; while liberty existed in a single corner of the peninsula there was no need to despair; if Piedmont kept her institutions free from despotism and anarchy, these would be the means of working efficaciously for the regeneration of the country. To those who went to see him he said, rubbing his hands (a sure sign that he was regaining his spirits), "We shall begin again, and, profiting by past mistakes, we shall do better next time." Probably he foresaw that "next time" he would have the game in his own hands.
The king had done his part by proving his resolve to uphold the constitution, but all danger for liberty in Piedmont did not cease there. The members of the party which had ruled during the earlier years of Charles Albert's reign did not give themselves up for lost. They cherished the hope of using the constitution to overturn liberty. On the face of things, the moral to be drawn from recent history was for and not against them. They could say that the only patent consequence of the change of system was that the country had been plunged in disaster, that blood and money had been wasted with no other effect than a bankrupt exchequer, a beaten army, trade at a standstill, misery stalking through the land. This party, which was by no means weak, could reckon on the compact support of Savoy, where Italian patriotism was as scarce as true and chivalric attachment to the royal house was abundant. Above all, it had the support of the whole power of the Church, which, through its corporations and religious orders and its army of priests, exercised an influence in Piedmont unparalleled in Austria or in Spain. If the liberal institutions of the country were to be preserved, it was necessary to strike a blow at this party by weakening the arch on which it reposed. Religious toleration had been proclaimed in Piedmont as one of the first reforms, the concession having been obtained from Charles Albert by the Marquis Robert d'Azeglio, a conservative and a profoundly convinced Catholic, but a lover of justice and mercy, who esteemed it the happiest day of his life when, through his interposition, the faithful Vaudois were granted the rights of free citizens. But legislation had not yet touched the extraordinary privileges arrogated to itself by the Church. One of these, theForo ecclesiastico, a special court for the judgment of ecclesiastical offenders against the common law, it was now proposed to abolish. It was a test measure—like throwing down the gauntlet. Cavour had been re-elected when the king dissolved Parliament by what is known as the Proclamation of Moncalieri, and in the debates on theForo ecclesiasticofor the first time he made his power felt in the Chamber. He spoke as one who had long thought out the subject and had chosen his policy: "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and to God the things which are God's."
At this first stage in the long struggle the Roman curia might have settled the matter in a friendly way, but it would not. Cardinal Antonelli replied to a respectful invitation, that "the Holy Father was ready to go to the ante-chamber of the devil's house to please the king of Sardinia, but he really could not go inside." Yet, at the same date, the Archbishop of Paris (Sibour) admitted to a Piedmontese visitor that the Sardinian Government had no option under the new institutions but to establish the equality of all citizens before the law, and in Austria they were laughing at the progressive monarchy in its laborious efforts to obtain reforms carried out in the despotic empire by Joseph II. The reason that Rome refused to treat was that she thought herself strong and Sardinia weak. Writers on this period have too readily assumed that the Church, by the law of its being, must always cry "no compromise!" Of course nothing can be more erroneous. The Church has yielded as many times as it thought itself obliged to yield. What other inference can be deduced from the strange and romantic story of the suppression of the Jesuits? and, to cite only one more instance, from the deposition of bishops for extra-canonical reasons conceded by Pius VII. to the First Consul? The curia thought that Victor Emmanuel would end at Canossa, but he ended instead in the Pantheon. It should be remembered, however, that the quarrel had nothing then to do with the dispute between pope and king on the broader grounds of the possession of Rome. That dispute was still in the darkness of the future. Sardinia had not given even moral support to the Roman Republic.
In Cavour's able speech of March 7, 1850, he observed that his friends, the Liberal Conservatives, feared the erection of the priesthood into a party hostile to the State. Peace was precious, but too heavy sacrifices might be made even to it. He himself trusted that in the long run the priesthood would recognise the necessity to modern society of the union of the two great moral forces, religion and liberty. Europe was threatened with universal revolution; only large and courageous reforms could stem the tide. M. Guizot might have saved the throne of Louis Philippe had he yielded to the demand for electoral reform. Why had there been no revolution in England? Because the Duke of Wellington in 1829, Lord Grey in 1832, and Sir Robert Peel in 1846, understood the exigencies of their epoch, proving themselves thereby to be the first statesmen of the time. Uninfluenced by the furious attacks on him as anAnglomane, Cavour took the first opportunity of reaffirming from his seat in Parliament the admiration for English methods which he had constantly expressed outside. He closed his speech by appealing to Government to persevere in its policy of large and fearless reforms, which, far from weakening the constitutional throne, would so strengthen its roots that not only would Piedmont be enabled to resist the revolutionary storm should it break around its borders, but also "gathering to itself all the living forces in Italy, it would be in a position to lead our mother-country to those high destinies whereunto she is called."
The effect of this peroration was inconceivable. Here was the first word of hope publicly uttered since thedébâcle! People in the galleries who had seen Cavour usually silenced by clamour and howls heard the applause with astonishment, and then joined in it. All the ministers rose to shake hands with the speaker. Any other man would have become popular at once, but against Cavour prejudice was too strong for a fleeting success to remove it. From that day, however, he was listened to. He was no longer aquantité négligeablein the politics of Italy or of Europe.
One of the ministers, Count Pietro di Santa Rosa, died within a few months of the bill on theForobecoming law, and the last sacraments were denied to him because he refused to sign a retractation of the political acts of the cabinet of which he was a member. Cavour was an old friend of Santa Rosa. He was present when he died, and he heard from the Countess the particulars of the distressing scene when the priest in the harshest manner withheld the consolations of religion from the dying man, who was a pious Catholic, but who had the strength of mind even in death not to dishonour himself and his colleagues. Cavour wrote an indignant article in theRisorgimentodenouncing the party spite which could cause such cruel anguish under a religious cloak, and the people of Turin became so much excited that if the further indignity of a refusal of Christian burial had been resorted to, as at first seemed probable, the lives of the priests in the city would hardly have been safe. Everything seemed to point to Cavour as Santa Rosa's successor, but Massimo d'Azeglio felt nervous at taking the final step. He was encouraged to it by General La Marmora, the friend of both, who declared that "Camillo was agran buon diavolo," who would grow more moderate when "with us." Cavour accepted the offered post of Minister of Agriculture and Commerce, but not without making terms. He exacted the retirement of a minister whom he considered incurably timorous, especially in ecclesiastical legislation. The point was yielded, but D'Azeglio said to La Marmora, "We are beginning badly with yourbuon diavolo." The good Massimo got no comfort from the king: "Don't you see that this man will turn you all out?" Victor Emmanuel casually remarked, or rather he made use of a stronger idiom in his native dialect, which would not well bear translation. The king refrained from opposing the appointment, but he did not pretend that he liked it.
About that time Cavour paid a visit to the Piedmontese shore of the Lago Maggiore, where he made the acquaintance of the author of thePromessi Sposi. Perhaps by reason of his poetic instinct Manzoni expected great things of him from the first. "That little man promises very well," he told the poet Berchet. And he opened his heart to Cavour, telling him that dream of Italian unity which he had always cherished, but which, as he said in his old age, he kept a secret for fear of being thought a madman. They looked across the blue line of water; there, on the other side, was Austria. Had Cavour said what he thought, he would have responded, "That is the first stone to move." But he did not enter upon a discussion; he merely murmured, rubbing his hands, "We shall do something!"
To the end Cavour evoked more ready sympathy among men of the other provinces than among the Piedmontese, although these last came to repose the blind trust in him which the Duke of Wellington's soldiers reposed in their leader—a trust born of the conviction that he would lead to victory. Latterly this was Victor Emmanuel's own way of feeling towards Cavour. Sympathy was always lacking.
On taking office Cavour sold his shares in the agricultural and industrial speculations which he had promoted, with the exception of one company, then not in a flourishing state, and likely to collapse if he withdrew his name. He also severed his connection with theRisorgimento, which had cost him much money and made him many enemies, but he believed that the services rendered by it to the cause of orderly liberty were incalculable. He never regretted his years of work in theantro, the wild beasts' den, as the advanced liberals called the office of the journal, a name gaily adopted by himself. As editor of theRisorgimentohe fought his one duel; a scandalous attack on the personal honesty of the writers was made by a Jewish financier in an obscure Nizzard sheet; an encounter with pistols followed in which no one was hurt, but both sides seemed to have aimed in earnest. There is a tragic absurdity in the possible extinction of such a life as Cavour's on so paltry an occasion; yet, in the surroundings in which he moved, he could not have passed over the worthless attack in the silent contempt it deserved without being called a coward. At the conclusion of the duel he walked away, turning his back on his adversary, but no long time elapsed before, as minister, he was taking trouble to obtain for this man some honorific bauble which his vanity coveted.
On taking office, Cavour doubted for a moment his own future, the doubt common to men who reach a position they have waited for too long. In these times, he wrote, politicians were soon used up; probably it would be so with him. But the work of his department dispelled gloomy thoughts: as Minister of Commerce he negotiated treaties with France, England, and Belgium in which a step was made towards realising his favourite theories on free trade. Before long he was also made Minister of the Marine; it was taken for granted that he could do as much work as two or three other men. Though both these offices were secondary, Cavour became insensibly leader of the house. Questions on whatever subject were answered by him, and he was not careful to consult his chief as to the tenor of his replies. Massimo d'Azeglio said with a rueful smile that he was now like Louis Philippe: he ruled, but did not govern. Cavour stated his own opinions, whether they were popular or unpopular, consonant with those of his party or directly opposed to them. A deputy asked Government to interfere with the mode and substance of the teaching in the seminaries. Cavour immediately answered that he would hold such interference to be a most fatal act of absolutism; the person to control the instruction given in the seminaries was the bishop; let bishops play the part of theologians, not of deputies, and let the Government govern, and not play the theologian. Some one pointed out that this was quite at variance with what had been said by the other ministers; Cavour excused himself towards his colleagues, but repeated that the principle was one of supreme importance. He had spoken "less as a minister than as a politician." And he never learnt to speak otherwise until there was a ministry in which (to borrow a once often quoted witticism) all the ministers were called Cavour.
The energy with which Cavour repudiated the idea of interfering with the seminaries is interesting on other grounds. Possibly he was the only continental statesman who ever saw liberty in an Anglo-Saxon light. This is further shown by the policy he advocated in dealing with the Jesuits. He did not like the Society, which he described as a worse scourge to humanity than communism. You must not judge its real nature, he said, by observing it where its position is contested and precarious. Look at it, rather, where it has a loose rein, where it can apply its rules in a logical and consequent manner, where the whole education of youth is in its hands. The result isune génération abâtardie. But the remedy he proposed was not repression. He wished to grant the Jesuits three, four, ten times the liberty they gave to others in the countries under their power. In a free country they could do no harm; they would be always obliged to modify and transform themselves and would never gain a real empire either in the world of politics or intellect The great Pombal, who may be called the Cavour of Portugal, took his conception of a free state from England, like the Italian statesman, but he did not understand that persecution is an unfortunate way of inaugurating liberty. This is what for Cavour was "a principle of supreme importance."
In April 1851 Cavour took the office of Minister of Finance; he had exacted the resignation of his predecessor, Nigra, as the price of his remaining in the Cabinet. The Minister of Public Instruction also resigned owing to disagreements with the now all-powerful member of the Government, and was replaced by a nominee of Cavour's, L.C. Farini, the Romagnol exile, author ofLo Stato Romano, whose appointment was significant from a national point of view, notwithstanding his ultra-conservative opinions. Cavour mentioned that Farini's work had been praised by Mr. Gladstone, "one of the most illustrious statesmen in Europe," at which the Chamber applauded wildly, as Cavour intended it to do. Ever watchful for any sign from abroad which could profit Italy, he was glad of what seemed a chance opportunity to provoke a demonstration in honour of the writer of theLetters to Lord Aberdeenon the Neapolitan prisons, which were just then creating an immense sensation. In Italy Mr. Gladstone was the most popular man of the hour; in France, still calling itself a republic, all parties except the reduced ranks of the advanced liberals were very angry—not with King Bomba, but with his accuser. A harmless cousin of Mr. Gladstone was blackballed in a club in Paris on account of the name he bore. Nobody ever had such a good heart as the king of Naples, Count Walewski went about declaring, in support of which he told Mr. Monckton Milnes that Ferdinand had recently granted his request to pardon three hundred prisoners against whom nothing was proved. "How grateful they must have been," replied the Englishman; "did not they come and thank you for having obtained their deliverance?" Taken off his guard and unconscious of the irony, Walewski made the admission that the three hundred were debarred from the pleasure of paying him a visit because, though pardoned, they were not released!
This little story was related to Lord Palmerston, in whom it fanned the fuel of the indignation roused by Mr. Gladstone'sLetters, of which he had written that "they revealed a system of illegality, injustice, and cruelty which one would not have imagined possible nowadays in Europe." But he employed still stronger language against the Austrians, whose method of reimposing their rule in Lombardy had lost them all their friends in England, for the time at least, and had worked their foes up to the point of fury. Those were the days when they sang at Vienna:
Hat der Teufel einen Sohn,So ist er sicher Palmerston.
Lord Palmerston was coming to a conclusion about Italian matters; it was this: that, great as were the objections to the deliverance of Italy from the Austrians by French aid, yet it would be better for her to be delivered so than not at all. The same conclusion had been reached by Cavour, except that he would not have admitted unending servitude to be the alternative; he was too patriotic and too resourceful for that. He kept in view other contingencies: European complications, the organic disruption of Austria, even at that early date, the foundation of a German empire. But in 1851, as in 1859, the aid of France was the one means of shaking off the Austrian yoke, which was morally certain to succeed For him, however, the French alliance was only a speck in the distance. He did not think, as Lord Palmerston seems to have thought, that a French liberating army might be "very soon" expected in the Lombard plains. When Louis Napoleon swept away the impediments between himself and the Imperial throne, Cavour was less moved by the violence of the act than by the hope that its consequences might be favourable to Italy. The Prince-President tranquilly awaited the eight million votes which should transform him from a political brigand into a legitimised emperor, and Cavour left him to the judgment of his own countrymen. He saw no need to be more severe than they. It is easy to conceive a higher morality, but as yet it has not been applied to politics. As Cavour remarked, "Franklin sought the help of the most despotic monarch in Europe," and the analogies in recent history do not require to be recalled.
An inferior statesman who, like Cavour, contemplated foreign aid as an ultimate resource, would have lost his interest and slackened his activity in home politics. It was not so with him. Before all other things he placed the necessity of consolidating Piedmont as a constitutional State, and of preparing her morally and materially to take her part in the struggle when it came. If that were not done, a new Bonaparte might indeed cross the Alps in the character of liberator, but a free Italy would be no more the result of his intervention than it had been of his uncle's. Cavour was meditating the stroke of policy which gave him the power to carry out this work of consolidation and preparation. He ruled the ministry, but he did not rule the House and, through it, the country. The Sardinian Chamber of Deputies was composed of the Right Centre, the Extreme Right, the Left Centre, and the Extreme Left. The Extreme Right was loyal to the House of Savoy, but contrary to Italian aspirations; the Extreme Left was strongly Italian, but the degree of its loyalty was hit off in Massimo d'Azeglio'smot"Viva Vittorio, il re provisorio" ("Long live Victor, the provisional king"). There remained the two Centres representing the liberal conservatives and the moderate liberals—"moderate radicals" would be more correct, if the verbal contradiction be permitted. But neither of these single-handed could support a stable and independent government. Every ministry must exist on the sufferance of its opponents, and in terror of the vagaries of the advanced section on its own side. At any critical moment a passing breeze might overthrow it. The only antidote to the recklessness or obstructiveness of extreme parties lay in dissolution; but to dissolve a parliament just elected, as Victor Emmanuel had once been forced to do already, would be a fatal expedient if repeated often. Any student of representative government would suggest the amalgamation of the two Centres as the true remedy, but so great were the difficulties in the way of this, that not half a dozen persons in Piedmont believed it to be possible. Cavour himself thought about it for a year before making the final move The acerbities of Italian party politics are not softened by the good social relations and the general mutual confidence in purity of motive which prevail in England. Hitherto Cavour and the brilliant and plausible leader of the Left Centre had not entertained flattering opinions of each other. Rattazzi thought Cavour an ambitious and aggressive publicist rather than a patriot statesman, and Cavour knew Rattazzi to be the minister who led the country to Novara. But he appreciated his value as a parliamentary ally; he had the qualities in which Cavour himself was most deficient. Urbano Rattazzi (born at Alessandria in 1808) was famous as one of the best speakers at the Piedmontese bar before entering the Chamber. He was a perfect master of Italian; his manners were popular and insinuating. He was richly endowed with all those secondary gifts which often carry a man along faster, though less far, than the highest endowments. If he had not power, he had elasticity; if not judgment, cleverness. He always drifted, which made him always appear the politician up to date. His name was then associated with one catastrophe; before he died it was to be linked with two others, Aspromonte and Mentana; but such was his ability as a leader that he retained a compact following to the last.
Cavour rarely made a man's antecedents a reason for not turning him to account; but there was one point on which he required to be reassured before seeking an understanding with Rattazzi—this was whether his fidelity to the monarchy could be entirely depended on. Cavour's old friend and fellow worker of theRisorgimento, M.A. Castelli, who was acquainted with the leader of the Left, opportunely bore witness to Rattazzi's genuine loyalty, and Cavour hesitated no longer to come to an agreement which every day proved to be more imperative. After theCoup d'état, the Extreme Right, led by the Count de Revel and General Menabrea, adopted the tactics of professing to believe untenable the position of a free State wedged in between the old despotism of Austria and the new one of France. The argument was ingenious and was likely to make converts. It was urgently necessary to form a new political combination which should reduce this party to impotence.
Cavour's compact with Rattazzi was concluded in the first month of 1852, but at first it was kept a profound secret. It was divulged, as it were, accidentally in the course of a debate on a Bill which was intended to moderate the attacks of the press on foreign sovereigns. This was the only form of restriction which Cavour, then and afterwards, was willing to countenance. He held that the excuse for umbrage given to foreign rulers by personal invective published in the newspapers was a danger to the State which no government ought to tolerate. The Extreme Right and Left were immediately up in arms, the first declaring that the Bill did not go far enough, and the second that it went too far. Both affected to consider it the first step to more stringent anti-liberal measures—invoked by one side and abhorred by the other. It was then that Rattazzi made the announcement that although he did not mean to vote for this particular Bill, he intended to support the Ministry through the session which had just begun, if, as he believed, this Bill was an isolated measure, and did not indicate a change of policy. Cavour acknowledged the promise in words which left no doubt that a prior agreement existed between the two leaders. He repudiated the reactionary tendencies of Menabrea and his Savoyards, even, he said ironically, at the risk of so great a misfortune as that of losing the weak support which they had lately bestowed on Government, Count de Revel retorted that the Ministry had divorced the Right and made a marriage (connubio) with the party which drove Charles Albert to his doom and to an exile's death in a foreign land. The alliance between the Centres was henceforth known by the nickname thus conferred on it, which has been repeated since by hundreds who have forgotten its origin.
It is difficult to describe the sensation which this scene created, and no one was more astonished than D'Azeglio, who, with the other ministers, had been kept entirely in the dark. By all ordinary rules Cavour ought to have communicated with his colleagues before revolutionising the parliamentary chessboard. The more sure he felt of their opposition the less easy is it to justify him for taking so grave a step without their knowledge. On public grounds, however (and these were the only grounds on which Cavour ever acted in his political life), it was desirable that theConnubioshould be an accomplished fact before it was exposed to discussion. D'Azeglio was very angry, but he hated scandal, and he refrained from disowning the act of his imperious colleague. He was none the less determined never to sit in the same Cabinet with Rattazzi. One reason he gave for it was characteristic. The leader of the Left had debts, and was not in a hurry to pay them. When Rattazzi, through Cavour's instrumentality, was elected President of the Chamber, D'Azeglio felt again aggrieved. Cavour, who began by treating his chief's antipathy to his new ally as a prejudice to be made fun of, and in the end dispelled, came to understand that it was insuperable. To cut short an impossible situation, he tendered his resignation, on which all the ministers resigned; but as the question was one of personal pique, the king commanded them to remain at their posts. Cavour applauded this decision. For the moment it was better that he, not D'Azeglio, should be sacrificed. They parted without ceasing to be private and political friends. Massimo d'Azeglio's nature was too generous to hear a grudge against the man who was to eclipse him.
Cavour profited by his reconquered liberty to go to France and England, a journey that relieved him of the appearance of wishing to hamper the Cabinet, which was quickly reconstructed without himself and Farini. On the eve of starting he went, as etiquette required, to take leave of the king, who made the not very flattering remark that he thought it would be a long while before he called him to power. Cavour must have smiled behind his spectacles, but he naturally left time to verify or contradict the royal forecast.
Cavour went abroad with the full intention of preparing for the day when his voice would be that of Piedmont, if not of Italy. He attached importance to personal relations, which helped him to keep in touch with European politics and politicians, and he was anxious to find out how theConnubiowas regarded by foreigners, among whom, till lately, Rattazzi had been looked upon as a revolutionary firebrand. But thinking men abroad understood the reasons which had dictated the coalition. In London Cavour met with a friendly reception from Lord Malmesbury, who was then Foreign Minister, and who assured him that the English Government would be glad to see him back in office. With characteristic presence of mind he framed his answer to provoke a more definite pronouncement. He could not, he said, return to office alone or abandon the party he had been at so much pains to create. "Naturally," answered Lord Malmesbury, "you cannot return to power without your friends." Reassured as to the sentiments of one great political party, Cavour approached the other in the person of Lord Palmerston, than whom he never had a firmer political friend or more sincere admirer. Lord Palmerston saw the larger meaning of the experiment of freedom in Piedmont, and he was one of the first to see it. If that experiment succeeded, the Italian tyrannies were doomed; how, he did not discern, but the fact was apparent to him. He heard, therefore, with much interest what Cavour had to tell him of the gradual taking root of constitutional government in the Sardinian kingdom, and he promised him the moral support, not of one party or another, but of England, "in pledge of which," he added, "we have sent you our best diplomatist." This allusion was to Mr. (afterwards Sir James) Hudson, whom Lord Palmerston had called back from the Brazils in the spring of the year, because by a singular intuition he guessed him to be the very man to help the Italian cause. It was intended to send him to Florence, but when he reached the Foreign Office, which Lord Palmerston had just vacated, he received instructions to go to Turin, a fortunate change of plan. No two men were ever better fitted to work together than Cavour and Sir James Hudson. Without ceasing to be particularly English and strictly loyal to the interests of his own country, the British Minister at Turin served Italy as few of her sons have been able to do. Beneath a rather cold exterior he concealed the warmest of hearts, and he had the power of attaching people to him, so that they never forgot him. It is greatly to be regretted that he left no record of the stirring years of his mission, which coincided with the rise and ascendency of Cavour.
Enchanted with the country, and "moreAnglomanethan ever," Cavour left England for Paris, where he laid himself out to conciliate political men of all shades, from Morny to Thiers, who advised him to be patient and not to lose heart: "If, after giving you vipers for breakfast, you have another dish served up for dinner, never mind"—such was the diet of politicians. What Cavour once called "his powerful intellectual organisation" made an immediate impression on the Prince President, as he was still styled. Louis Napoleon cultivated an impassible exterior, but at bottom his character was emotional, and, like all emotional persons, he was susceptible to the magnetism of a stronger brain and will. Cavour summoned Rattazzi to Paris to present him to the future Caesar. "Whether we like it or not," he wrote at this time, "our destinies depend on France; we must be her partner in the great game which will be played sooner or later in Europe." A few weeks later Napoleon declared at Bordeaux that "the empire was peace," but like all intelligent onlookers Cavour received the statement with incredulity. Possibly the only person who believed in it was the speaker—for the moment; he may have thought that "bread and games" was a formula by which he could rule France, or rather Paris, but he was soon to find it insufficient.
Cavour sought out several of the Italian exiles who were leading a life of privation and obscurity in Paris, one of whom was Manin, the Dictator of Venice. With him Cavour expressed himself "very much satisfied, though his sentiments were rather too Venetian": sentiments which Manin sacrificed—a last act of abnegation—when he finally gave his support to Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel, carrying with him two-thirds of the republican party, who could brave the charge of changed allegiance if so incorruptible a patriot led the way. Cavour also saw Gioberti, "always the same child of genius, who would have been a great man had he had common sense." Gioberti, however, had made a great stride towards common sense, for instead of dreaming of liberating popes, he was now imagining a renovating statesman, and he had inscribed Cavour's name under his new portrait. In a book published in Paris, Gioberti drew the Cavour of the future with a penetration and a sureness of touch which would make a reader, who did not know the date, suppose that the words were written ten years later. Men of great talent, he said, rarely threw aside the chance of becoming famous; rather did they snatch it with avidity; and what fame more splendid could now be won than that of the minister of the Italian prince who should re-make the country? He fixed his hopes on Cavour, because he alone understood that in human society civilisation is everything, all the rest, without it, nothing. "He knows that statutes, parliaments, newspapers, all the appurtenances of free governments, even if they are of use to individuals, are miserable shams to the commonalty if they fail to help forward social progress." He was willing to forgive him the generous error of treating a province as if it were a nation, when he compared it with the pettiness of those who treated the nation as if it were a province. He invoked some great and solemn act ofItalianitàon his part, which should pledge him irrevocably to the national cause. Cavour was too little influenced by others for it to be safe to say that this was one of the prophecies which tend to their own fulfilment; still it is worth noticing that he read the passage and was struck by it.
Cavour had scarcely returned to Piedmont when a ministerial crisis occurred through the rejection by the Senate of a far from stringent Bill for permitting civil marriage, which had passed in the Chamber of Deputies. The situation was further complicated by the state of mind into which the king had been driven by the remonstrances of his wife and mother, both near their end, and by the answer which he received from Rome in reply to a direct appeal to settle matters amicably, the Pope having said, in effect, that he was not going to help him to legalise concubinage in his dominions. D'Azeglio, harassed on all sides and ill through the reopening of his wound, resigned office, and advised the king to send for Cavour. "The other one, whom you know, is diabolically active, and fit in body and soul, and then, he enjoys it so much!" he wrote to a friend, with the pathetic wonder of the artist, romancist, andgrand seigneur, who had never been able to make out what there was to enjoy in politics. Victor Emmanuel followed his advice, but he allowed Cavour to see that he hoped that the new ministry would make up the quarrel with Rome. Cavour knew that only one path could lead to peace—surrender. Though anxious for office he declined to take it on these terms, and he recommended the king to call Count Balbo to his counsels; but Balbo, persuaded that a ministry only supported by the Extreme Right could not stand even for a few weeks, in his turn suggested the recall of D'Azeglio. Here the saving good sense of the king interposed; little as he liked Cavour he recognised that he was the only man possible, and he charged him, without conditions, with the formation of a ministry. D'Azeglio had fallen on a point on which Cavour was for and not against him; his successor desired to show that there would be no violent change of policy, and he therefore reconstructed the Cabinet as it was before, except for the change of head. He reserved for himself the Presidency of the Council and the Ministry of Finance. Rattazzi, who still occupied the Speaker's chair, was willing to wait for the present for a seat in the Cabinet, especially when he heard that the king, who was at first very hostile to theConnubio, had quite expected him to take office.
So thegran ministero, as it was called, entered upon its functions: great by reason of its chief, who infused his own life and vigour into what was before a weak administration. Cavour was a born man of business; he hated disorder in everything—except, indeed, dress, in which his carelessness was proverbial. He had not the common belief that, muddle them how you may, there will always be a providence which looks after the affairs of the State and prevents the collapse that would attend a private commercial enterprise conducted on the same system. He took in hand the financial renewal of Piedmont in the same spirit in which, when he had only just reached maturity, he volunteered to restore his father's dilapidated fortune. It was for this that he chose the Ministry of Finance: Piedmont, as he saw, could never sustain a national and Italian policy abroad without having first set its own house in order. He started with two principles: taxation must be increased and the resources of the country must be so developed as to enable it to pay its way without sinking into hopeless stagnation. It was a disappointment to some to see Cavour devoting himself with more ardour to putting on new taxes than to producing any of those decorative schemes for hastening the millennium which are expected from a new and ambitious minister. But, though ambitious, he cared for the substance, power—not for the shadow, popularity.
If there had been no other reason for the compact with the moderate liberals, the necessity for fresh taxation would have been a sufficing one. The Extreme Right and Left proposed to meet the existing difficulties by cutting down expenditure, but, if sound in theory, in practice this policy would have reduced Piedmont to complete impotence. While a part of the Left Centre voted with the extremists, it was only by the greatest efforts that a grant of £100,000 was obtained for the fortifications of Casale, which had been declared by the war minister, La Marmora, to be absolutely necessary for the defence of the State. The radical deputy Brofferio said that States wanted no other defence than the breasts of their citizens. From the Chamber, as then constituted, there was little hope of obtaining the imposition of new burdens, in part designed to meet Sardinian liabilities, but in part also to render possible the reorganisation of the army, which was urgently required if the future was not to witness disasters worse than those already experienced. Prince Metternich had said that, even if Piedmont were so troublesome as to persist in her liberal infatuation, she would have to keep quiet, at a moderate computation, for twenty years—just the time which it took her king to unite Italy. The two campaigns of 1848-1849 and the war indemnity had cost about 300,000,000 frs. The annual expenditure was doubled. Added to this, the one source of wealth, agriculture, was almost ruined by the oidium disease which destroyed the vines, and by harvests so bad that the like had not been seen since the celebrated scarcity which followed the wars of Napoleon. As Cavour saved his father's property not by burying the last talent in a safe place but by laying it out in bold improvements, so now he did not fear to spend largely and even lavishly, not only on the army, but also on public works. He completed the railway system and employed what Brofferio called "a portentous activity" in extending the roads, canals, and all the means of communication which could stimulate industry. It must be remembered that Piedmont was then lamentably backward; a long obscurantistrégime, succeeded by war and havoc, had left her destitute of all the accessories of modern life. This was changed as if by the wand of the magician. In his first budget, Cavour put on new taxes to the amount of 14,000,000 frs., one being the so-called tax on patents, or on the exercise of trades and professions, which excited much adverse criticism. At the same time he reduced the salt tax and initiated several free-trade measures, to be ultimately crowned by the abolition of the corn laws. On the whole, however, his line of policy was not such as would recommend itself to the crowd, and in October 1853 a furious mob attacked the Palazzo Cavour, repeating the old cry that the minister was a monopolist who robbed the poor of their bread. Luckily the doors were barred, but next day Cavour was threatened as he walked along the streets. Just then the Ministry of Justice fell vacant, and it was offered to Rattazzi, who, to his credit be it said, did not hesitate to take office at a time when the head of the Government was the target of unscrupulous abuse, and it was even thought that his life was in danger. Rattazzi was afterwards transferred to the Home Ministry, which he held till theConnubiobroke up, more on personal than on political grounds, in 1858.
Though Cavour's alliance with Rattazzi was not eternal, it lasted till it had served its purpose. By help of it he imposed his will on king and country until he was strong enough to impose it by force of his own commanding influence. He always considered theConnubioone of the wisest acts of his political life. It is not uncommon to hear it still denounced in Italy as the origin of the political demoralisation, the mixing up of private and public interests, the lack of fixed principles; which later times have witnessed. If the fact were admitted, it would not show that Cavour could have governed in any other way. Had the country trusted him from the first it would have been different, but the country did not trust him. Even after the combination of the two Centres, whenever there was a general election it was doubtful if the Government would obtain a working majority. The accusation of corruption was frequently made against the Ministry in general and Rattazzi in particular, since it was he who presided over the electoral campaigns. Of corruption in the literal sense there was probably little, but constituencies were led to believe that it would be to their advantage to return the ministerial candidate. On one occasion Rattazzi tried to prove that such hints did not constitute "interference." Cavour got up in the course of the same debate and not only acknowledged the "interference," but said that without it constitutional government in Piedmont would collapse. His biographers have preferred to be silent on this subject, but he would have despised a reserve which conceals historical facts. The apathy of one section of the electors, the fads and jealousies of another, the feverish longing to pull down whomsoever was in power, inherited from a great revolutionary crisis, the indefatigable propaganda of clerical wire-pullers, all tended to the formation of parliaments so composed as to bring government to a standstill. The result of a protracted interruption might be the fall of the constitution itself, or it might be civil war. Cavour took the means open to him to prevent it, and, whether he was right or wrong, his career cannot be judged if the difficulties with which he had to cope are kept out of sight.
Piedmont needed some years, not of rest, but of active and consecutive labour before it could enter the lists again as armed champion of Italian independence. The disastrous issue of the last conflicts had been attributed to every cause except that which was most accountable for it: a badly led and badly organised army. The "We are betrayed" theory was caught up alike by republicans and conservatives, who accused each other of ruining the country rather than give the victory to the rival faction. Whatever grain of truth there was in these taunts, the military inefficiency of the forces which Charles Albert led across the Ticino in March 1848 remained the main reason why Radetsky was able to get back Lombardy and Venetia for his master. This Cavour knew, and he was anxious not to precipitate matters till La Marmora, to whom he privately gavecarte blanche, could say that his work was done. He began treating Austria with more consideration than she had received from Massimo d'Azeglio, who was a bad hand at dissembling. Count Buol was gratified, almost grateful. But these relatively harmonious relations did not last long. In February 1853 there was an abortive attempt at revolution in Milan, of which not one person in a thousand knew anything till it was suppressed. It was the premature and ill-advised explosion of a conspiracy by which Mazzini hoped to repeat the miracle of 1848: the ejection of a strong military power by a blast of popular fury. But miracles are not made to order, though Mazzini never came to believe it. As a reprisal for this disturbance, the Austrian Government, not content with executions and bastinadoes, decreed the sequestration of the lands of those Lombard emigrants who had become naturalised in Piedmont. Cavour charged Austria with a breach of international law and recalled the Sardinian minister from Vienna. It was risking war, but he knew that even for the weakest state there are some things worse than war. It was reversing the policy of prudence with which he had set out, but when prudence meant cowardice, Cavour always cast it to the winds. The outcry in all Europe against the sequestration decree deterred the Austrian Government from treating the Sardinian protest as acasus belli. Liberal public opinion everywhere approved of Cavour's course, and in France and England increased confidence was felt in him by those in authority. Governments like to deal with a strong man who knows when not to fear.
Only such a man would have conceived the idea which was now taking concrete form in Cavour's mind. This was the plan of an armed alliance with the Western Powers on the outbreak of the war, which as early as November 1853 well-informed persons looked upon as henceforth inevitable. Cavour would never have been a Chauvinist, but he was not by nature a believer in neutrality. He was constitutionally inclined to think that in all serious contingencies to act is safer than not to act. The world is divided between men of this mould and their opposites. La Marmora told him that the army, which had made incredible progress considering the state in which it was a short time before, could place in the field a force for which no country would have reason to blush. If not a great general, the Piedmontese Minister of War might fairly be called a first-class organiser. For the rest, Cavour believed that the ultimate school of any army is war. Above all, he believed that this was the hour for a great resolve or agran rifiuto. If the House of Savoy stood still with folded arms it might retire into the ranks of small ruling families, which leave the rearrangement of maps to their betters. It was secretly reported to Cavour that Napoleon III. was beginning to drop enigmatical remarks about Italian affairs, and it was these reports that finally decided him to strain every nerve to make his audacious design a reality.
Russia had broken off diplomatic relations with Sardinia in 1848, and when Victor Emmanuel communicated the death of his father to the Powers, the only one which returned no response was the empire of the Czar. It would be absurd to adduce this lack of courtesy as an excuse for war; still it gave a slightly better complexion to an attack which the Russian Government was justified in calling "extraordinarily gratuitous." Cavour had one person of great importance on his side, the king. In January 1854 he broached the subject with the tentative inquiry, "Does it not seem to your Majesty that we might find some way of taking part in the war of the Western Powers with Russia?" To which Victor Emmanuel answered simply, "If I cannot go myself I will send my brother." But it is not too much to say that the whole country was against him. The old Savoyard party opposed the war tooth and nail, and from the "Little Piedmont" point of view it was perfectly right. The radicals, headed by Brofferio, denounced it as "economically reckless, militarily a folly, politically a crime." Most of the Lombard emigration thought ill of it, and the heads of the army were lukewarm or contrary; this was not the war they wanted. The Tuscan romancist Guerrazzi wrote, with unpardonable levity, that republicans ought to rejoice because this was the final disillusion given to Italians by monarchy, limited or not. One republican, however, Manin, saw in the Italian tricolor displayed with the French and English flags in Paris the first ray of hope that had gladdened his eyes since he left Venice, and Poerio; when he heard of the alliance in his dungeon, "felt his chain grow lighter." It seemed as if those who had suffered most for Italy had a clearness of vision denied to the rest.
What, if persisted in, would have been the most serious obstacle was the opposition of Rattazzi, but he was won over to assent, if not to approval, by Giuseppe Lanza, a new figure on the parliamentary scene, who had lately been elected Vice-President of the Chamber. Lanza (who was destined to be Prime Minister when the Italians went to Rome) was then only slightly acquainted with Cavour; from being independent, his favourable opinion carried more weight. With Rattazzi's adhesion the majority of the Centres was secured. It was not an enthusiastic majority, but it quieted its forebodings by the argument which was beginning to take hold of people's minds: that Cavour must be let do as he chose. Hardly any one liked him, but to see him stand there, absolutely unhesitating and sure, among the politicians of Buts and Ifs, began to generate the belief that he was a man of fate who must be allowed to go his way.
It is easy to be wise after the event, and it may seem strange now that the alliance with the Western Powers found so few, so very few cordial supporters. But Cavour himself called the risks which attended it "enormous." The great question for Sardinia was what Austria would do. If she did nothing, the pros and cons were perhaps evenly balanced; if she joined Russia, the pros would be strengthened; if she joined the allies, the situation for Sardinia would be grave indeed. The republicans were already calling the war an alliance with Austria. Were the description verified, it was hard to see how the utmost genius or skill could draw aught but evil from so unnatural a union.
The first invitation to Sardinia to co-operate came separately from England, which had vetoed a monstrous proposal on the part of Austria to occupy Alessandria, in order, in any case, to prevent Piedmont from attacking her during the war. Lord Clarendon instructed Sir James Hudson to represent to Cavour that Austria's fears would be set at rest if a portion of the Sardinian army were sent to the East. The chief English motive was really the conviction that numbers were urgently required if the war was to succeed, and also the desire to lessen the large numerical superiority of the French. In the first instance Cavour replied that although he had been all along in favour of participating in the war, his Cabinet was too much against the idea for him to take any immediate action. But the subject was revived. An alliance with Piedmont was popular in England, where the Government was in an Italian mood, having been made terribly angry by the King of Naples' prohibition of the sale of mules for transport purposes in the East. In December 1854 Cavour was formally invited to send a corps which would enter the English service and receive its pay from the British Exchequer. He would rather have sent it on these terms than not at all, but the scheme met with such unqualified condemnation from La Marmora and General Dadormida, the Foreign Minister, that it was set aside as not becoming to the dignity of an independent nation. Meanwhile something had occurred which reinforced the arguments of those who were against sending troops at all. After hedging for a year, Austria signed a treaty couched in vague terms, but which appeared to debar her, at any rate, from taking sides with Russia—Italy's most flattering prospect. Napoleon III. expected much more from it than this; he thought that Austria was too much compromised to avoid throwing in her cause with the allies. It must be said of Napoleon that among the men responsible for the Crimean War he alone aimed at an object which, from a political, let alone moral view, could justify it. He did not think that it would be enough to obtain a few restrictions, not worth the paper on which they were written, and the prospect of a new lease of life to Turkish despotism. He certainly had one paltry object of his own; he wished to gratify his subjects by military glory. He began to suspect the hollowness of the testimony of the plebiscite; the French people did not like him, and never would like him. A war would please the populace and the army; it would also make him look much more like a real Napoleon. But when he had decided to go to war, he hoped to do something worth doing. He thought (to use his own words) "that no peace would be satisfactory which did not resuscitate Poland." There, and nowhere else, were the wings of the Russian eagle to be clipped. Moreover, the entire French nation, which cared so little for Italy, would have applauded the deliverance of Poland. On the Polish question the ultramontane would have embraced the socialist. France was never so united as in the sympathy which she then felt for Poland, except in that which she now feels for Russia. But Napoleon did not think that he could resuscitate Poland without Austrian assistance. At the close of 1854 he made sure of getting it.
Cavour clung to his project. Probably his penetrating mind guessed that Austria could not fight Russia, which had saved her from destruction in 1849. There now arose a demand for some guarantee which should give Piedmont, if she took part in the war, at least the certainty of a moral advantage. The king remarked to the French Ambassador that all this wrangling about conditions was folly "If we ally ourselves promptly and frankly, we shall gain a great deal more" Doubtless Cavour thought the same, but to satisfy the country it was necessary to demand, if nothing else, a promise from the Western Powers that they would put pressure on Austria to raise the sequestrations on the property of the Lombard exiles. But the Powers, which were courting Austria, refused to make any such promise, on which the Foreign Minister, General Dadormida, resigned, notwithstanding that the Lombard emigrants generously begged the Government not to think of them. Cavour offered the Foreign Office and the Presidency of the Council to D'Azeglio; under whom he would have consented to serve, but D'Azeglio declined to enter the Ministry, whilst engaging not to oppose its policy Cavour then took the Foreign Office himself, and at eight o'clock on the evening of the same day, January 10, 1855, the protocol of the offensive and defensive alliance of Sardinia with France and England was, at last, signed.
Wilting of the Crimean War in after days, Louis Kossuth observed that never did a statesman throw down a more hazardous and daring stake than Cavour when he insisted on clenching the alliance after he had found out that it must be done without any conditions or guarantees. Cicero'sPartem fortuna sibi vindicatapplies to diplomacy as well as to war, "but the stroke was very bold and very dangerous."