The French alliance still rested on nothing more substantial than a secret unwritten engagement which Napoleon could repudiate at will. Cavour, who would have made an excellent lawyer, strove his utmost to obtain some more solid bond, for which the marriage-visit of Prince Napoleon offered a favourable opportunity. The connection with one of the oldest royal houses in Europe so flattered the Emperor's vanity that he authorised the bridegroom and General Niel, who accompanied him, to sign a treaty in black and white, binding France to come to the assistance of Piedmont, if that State were the object of an act of aggression on the part of Austria. Possibly, like other people, he thought that no such act of aggression would be made, and that he remained free to escape from the contract if he chose. A military convention was signed at the same time, one of the clauses of which Cavour was fully determined to have cancelled; it stipulated that volunteer corps were to be excluded. He signed the convention, but fought out the point afterwards and gained it, in spite of Napoleon's strenuous resistance. These transactions were intended to be kept absolutely secret, and the French ministers do not seem to have known of them, but somehow the European Courts, and Mazzini, got wind of a treaty having been signed. Different rumours went about: the Prince Consort was informed that Savoy was to go for Lombardy, and Nice for Venetia; others said that Nice was to be the price of the Duchies and Legations. There was a persistent impression that the island of Sardinia was mentioned, which would not merit record but for the general correctness of the other guesses. There is no reference, however, to Sardinia, in the version of the treaty which has since been published, and Cavour indignantly repudiated the idea of ceding this Italian island to France, when the charge of having entertained it was flung at him a year later. Some doubt may linger in the mind as to whether there was not a scheme for giving the Pope Sardinia in return for part or all his territory.
Once again Cavour repeated his demand for yet more money, and this time it was received not, as heretofore, with reluctant submission, but with acclamation. At last people saw what the minister was driving at; only the few who would have disowned the name of Italian voted with the minority. The fifty million francs were quickly subscribed, chiefly in small sums, in Piedmont itself, a triumphant answer to the Paris house of Rothschild, which had declined to render its help. Cavour's speeches on the new loan were, in reality, addressed to Europe, and no one was more skilful in this kind of oratory than he. Without apparent elaboration, each phrase was studied to produce the effect desired. The policy of Piedmont, he said, had never altered since the king received his inheritance on the field of Novara. It was never provocative or revolutionary, but it was national and Italian. Austria was displayed as the peace-breaker, and, as she was pouring troops into Italy and massing them near the Piedmontese frontier, it was easy to exhibit her in that light. After having made Austria look very guilty, Cavour proceeded to lay himself out to conciliate England, whose policy was, at that moment, everything that he wished it not to be; but he was determined not to quarrel. The Earl of Malmesbury kept him informed of the "real state of Italy," of which he was supposed to be profoundly ignorant. The Lombards no longer desired to be united to Piedmont, and a war of liberation would be the signal of the reawakening of all the old jealousies, while republicans, dreamers, pretenders, seekers of revenge, power, riches, would tear up Italy between them. In the House of Lords, Lord Derby declared that the Austrian was the best of good governments, and only sought to improve its Italian provinces. Cavour concealed the irritation which he strongly felt. Lord Derby's speech, he said, did not sound so bad in the original as in the translation, and, after all, England's apparent change of front came from a great virtue, patriotism. She suppressed her natural sympathies, because she believed that patriotic reasons required her to back up Austria. He repeated to the Chamber what he had often said in private, that the English alliance was the one which he had always valued above all others. It was a remarkable thing to say at a moment when he hoped so much more from France than from England. But precisely because he hoped to obtain material assistance from France, he was more than ever anxious to remain on good terms with England. He finely resisted the temptation of saying, "We can do without you." After having got the French into Italy, the next thing to do would be to get them out of it, and he foresaw that England would be useful then. Moreover, angry as he was in his heart, he did not doubt that the "suppressed sympathies" would break out again and prove irresistible. They were even breaking out already, for the arrival of the Neapolitan prisoners caused one of those powerful waves of feeling which, in England, always end by influencing the Government.
Meanwhile, Lord Derby's ministry made Herculean efforts to ward off war, in which, by force of traditions that govern all English parties, they had the opposition entirely with them. They begged Austria to evacuate the Papal Legations, and to leave off interfering with the States of Central Italy. They even asked Cavour to help them, by formulating his views on the best means of peaceably improving the condition of Italy. Cavour answered that at the root of the matter lay the hatred of a foreign yoke. The Austrians in Italy formed, not a government, but a military occupation. They were not established but encamped. Every house, from the humblest home to the most sumptuous palace, was closed against them. In the theatres, public places, streets, there was an absolute separation between them and the people of the country. Things got constantly worse, not better. The Austrian rulers in Italy once offered their subjects some compensation for the loss of nationality in a policy which defended them from the encroachments of the court of Rome, but the wise principles introduced by Maria Theresa and Joseph II. had been cast to the winds. Unless Austria completely reversed her policy, and became the promoter of constitutional government throughout Italy, nothing could save her; the problem would be solved by war or revolution.
It ought to have been apparent that, as far as Piedmont was concerned, the control of the situation had passed out of the hands of the Government. The youth of Lombardy was streaming into the country to enlist either in the army or in the corps of "Hunters of the Alps," which was now formed. Cavour looked on this patriotic invasion with delight; "They may throw me into the Po," he said, "but I will not stop it." Had he wished, he could not have stopped the current of popular excitement at the point it had reached. It was the knowledge of this, joined to the threatened destruction of all his hopes, that well-nigh overpowered him when—at the eleventh hour—in spite of engagements and treaties, Napoleon seemed to have suddenly decided not to go to war. Prince Bismarck once declared that he had never found it possible to tell in advance whether his plans would succeed; he could navigate among political events, but he could not direct them. Since the meeting at Plombières, Cavour had undertaken to direct events, the most perilous game at which a statesman can play. For a moment he thought that he had failed.
On the whole it can be safely assumed that Napoleon's hark back was real, and was not a move "pour mieux sauter." He was not pleased at the cool reception given in Italy to a pamphlet known to have been inspired by him, in which the old scheme was revived of a federation of Italian States under the presidency of the Pope. The Empress was against war—it was said "for fear of a reverse." Perhaps she thought already what she said when flying from Paris in 1870: "En France il ne faut pas être malheureux." But more than this fear, anxiety for the head of the Church made her anti-Italian, and, with her, the whole clerical party. Nor was this the limit of the opposition which the proposed war of liberation encountered. Though France did not know of the secret treaty, she knew enough to understand by this time where she was being led, and with singular unanimity she protested. When such different persons as Guizot; Lamartine, and Proudhon pronounced against a free Italy,—when no one except the Paris workman showed the slightest enthusiasm for the war,—it is hardly surprising if Napoleon, seized with alarm for his dynasty, was glad of any plausible excuse for a retreat. Such an excuse was forthcoming in the Russian proposal of a Congress, which was warmly seconded by England. Austria accepted the proposal subject to two conditions: the previous disarmament of Piedmont, and its exclusion from the Congress. The bearing of the French Ministry became almost insulting; the Emperor, said Walewski, was not going to rush into a war to favour Sardinia's ambition; everything would be peaceably settled by the Congress, in which Piedmont had not the smallest right to take part. None of the usual private hints came from the Tuileries to counteract the effect of these words.
Cavour was plunged in blank despair. He wrote to Napoleon that they would be driven to some desperate act, which was answered by a call to Paris; but his interviews with the Emperor only increased his fears. He threatened the king's abdication and his own retirement. He would go to America and publish all his correspondence with Napoleon. He alone was responsible for the course his country had taken, the pledges it had given, the engagements already performed (by which he meant the consent wrenched from the king to the Princess Clotilde's marriage). The responsibility would be crushing if he became guilty before God and man of the disasters which menaced his king and his country.
The English Government now proposed that all the Italian States should be admitted to the Congress, and that Austria as well as Piedmont should he invited to disarm. On April 17 Cavour sent a note agreeing to this plan. It was a tremendous risk; but it was the only way to prevent Piedmont from being deserted and left to its fate. If Austria also consented, all was lost: there would be peace. Could the gods be trusted to make her mad? Cavour's nervous organisation was strained at a tension that nearly snapped the cord. It is believed that he was on the brink of suicide. On April 19 he shut himself up in his room and gave orders that no one should be admitted. On being told of this, his faithful friend, Castelli, who was one of the few persons not afraid of him, rushed to the Palazzo Cavour, where his worst fears were confirmed by the old major-domo, who said, "The Count is alone in his room; he has burnt many papers; he told us to let no one pass; but for heaven's sake, go in and see him at whatever cost." When he went in, Castelli saw a litter of torn-up papers; others were burning on the hearth. He said that he knew no one was to pass and that was why he had come. Cavour stared at him in silence. Then he went on, "Must I believe that Count Cavour will desert the camp on the eve of battle; that he will abandon us all?" And, unhinged by excitement and by his great affection for the man, he burst into tears. Cavour walked round the room looking like one distraught. Then he stopped opposite to Castelli and embraced him, saying, "Be tranquil; we will face it all together," Castelli went out to reassure those who had brought him the alarming news. Neither he nor Cavour afterwards alluded to this strange scene.
At the very moment that Cavour thought he had lost the game, he had won it. On the same day, April 19, Count Buol,—somewhat, it is said, against his better judgment, but yielding to the Emperor, who again yielded to the military party,—sent off a contemptuous rejoinder to the English proposals. Ignoring all suggestions, the Austrian Minister said thatthey would themselves call upon Piedmont to disarm. Here, then, was the famousacte d'agression. Napoleon could not escape now.
The fact that this happened simultaneously with Sardinia's submission to the will of Europe was a wonderful piece of luck, which, as Massimo d'Azeglio said, could happen only once in a century. When the Austrian Government took the irrevocable step, it did not know yet that the whole onus of breaking the peace would fall upon it. Nor, it must be remembered, did it know the test of the treaty between France and Sardinia, and in view of the French Emperor's recent conduct it may well have become convinced that no treaty at all existed. Hence it is probable that Austria flattered herself that she would only have to deal with weak Sardinia.
The Chamber of Deputies was convoked on April 23 to confer plenary powers on the king. Many deputies were so overcome that they wept. Just as the President of the Chamber announced the vote, a scrap of paper was handed to Cavour, on which were written the words in pencil: "They are here; I have seen them." It was from a person whom he had instructed to inform him instantly when the bearers of the Austrian Ultimatum arrived. They were come; angels of light could not have been more welcome! Cavour went hastily out, while the House broke into deafening cries of "Long live the king!" He said to the friend who brought the message, "I am leaving the last sitting of the last Piedmontese Chamber." The next would represent the kingdom of Italy.
The Sardinian army to be placed on a peace-footing, the volunteers to be dismissed, an answer of "Yes" or "No" required within three days—these were the terms of the Ultimatum. If the answer were not fully satisfactory His Majesty would resort to force. Cavour replied that Piedmont had given its adhesion to the proposals made by England with the approval of France, Prussia and Russia, and had nothing more to say. No one who saw the statesman's radiant face would have guessed that less than a week before he had passed through so frightful a mental crisis. He took leave of Baron von Kellersberg with graceful courtesy, and then, turning to those present, he said, "We have made history; now let us go to dinner."
The French Ambassador at Vienna notified to Count Buol that his sovereign would consider the crossing of the frontier by the Austrian troops equivalent to a declaration of war.
Lord Malmesbury was so favourably impressed by Sardinia's docility and so furious with the Austriancoup de têtethat he became in those days quite ardently Italian, which he assured Massimo d'Azeglio was his natural state of mind; and such it may have been, since cabinet ministers are constantly employed in upholding, especially in foreign affairs, what they most dislike. He hoped to stop the runaway Austrian steed by proposing mediation in lieu of a Congress; but the result was only to delay the outbreak of the war for a week, much to the disadvantage of the Austrians, as it gave the French time to arrive and the Piedmontese to flood the country by means of the canals of irrigation, thus preventing a dash at Turin, probably the best chance for Austria. Baron von Kellersberg and his companion, during their brief visit, had done nothing but pity "this fine town so soon to be given over to the horrors of war." Their solicitude proved superfluous.
For the present the statesman's task was ended. He had procured for his country a favourable opportunity for entering upon an inevitable struggle. When Napoleon said to Cavour on landing at Genoa, "Your plans are being realised," he was unconsciously forestalling the verdict of posterity. The reason that he was standing there was because Cavour had so willed it. In spite of the Emperor's fits of Italian sympathy and the various circumstances which impelled him towards helping Italy, he would not have taken the final resolution had not some one saved him the trouble by taking it for him. As a French student of history has lately said, in 1859, as in 1849, there was a Hamlet in the case; but Paris, not Turin, was his abode. Napoleon needed and perhaps desired to be precipitated. Look at it how we may, it must be allowed that he was doing a very grave thing: he was embarking on a war of no palpable necessity against the sentiment, as the Empress wrote to Count Arese, of his own country. A stronger man than he might have hesitated.
The natural discernment of the Italian masses enlightened them as to the magnitude of Cavour's part in the play, even in the hour when the interest seemed transferred to the battlefield, and when an emperor and a king moved among them as liberators. At Milan, after the victory of Magenta had opened its gates, the most permanent enthusiasm gathered round the short, stout, undistinguished figure in plain clothes and spectacles—the one decidedly prosaic appearance in the pomp of war and the glitter of royal state. Victor Emmanuel said good-humouredly that when driving with his great subject, he felt just like the tenor who leads the prima donna forward to receive applause.
Success followed success, and this to the popular imagination is the all-and-all of war. Milan was freed, though the battle of Magenta was not unlike a drawn one; Lombardy was won, though the fight for the heights of Solferino could hardly have resulted as it did if the Austrians had not blundered into keeping a large part of their forces inactive. Would the same fortune be with the allies to the end? Cavour does not appear to have asked the question. He watched the war with no misgivings. It was to him a supreme satisfaction that the Sardinian army, which he had worked so hard to prepare, did Italy credit. He took a personal pride in the romantic exploits of the volunteers, though for political reasons he carefully concealed that he had been the first to think of placing them in the field. He made an indefatigable minister of war (having taken the office when La Marmora went to the front). The work was heavy; the problem of finding even bread enough for the allied armies was not a simple one. On one occasion the French Commissariat asked for a hundred thousand rations to make sure of receiving fifty thousand; the officer in charge was surprised to see one hundred and twenty thousand punctually arrive on the day named. Cavour's thoughts were not, however, only with the troops in Lombardy. The whole country was in a ferment, and instead of accelerating events the question now was to keep pace with them.
When Ferdinand II died, and a young king, the son of a princess of the House of Savoy, ascended the throne, Cavour invited him to join in the war with Austria. The invitation has been blamed as insincere and unpatriotic, but the best Neapolitans seconded it. Poerio said he was willing to go back to prison if King Francis would send his army to help Piedmont. Faithful to his primary object of expelling the Austrians, Cavour would have taken for an ally any one who had troops to give. Moreover, an alliance between Naples and Sardinia meant the final shelving of a scheme which had caused him anxiety, off and on, for many years: that of a Muratist restoration. Though he had always recognised that, were it accepted by the Neapolitans themselves, it would be impossible for him to oppose it, he understood that to place a Murat on the throne of Naples would be to move in the old vicious circle by substituting one foreign influence for another. There is no doubt that the idea was attractive to Napoleon. One of his first cares after he became Emperor had been to find an accomplished Neapolitan tutor for the young sons of Prince Murat. About the time of the Paris Congress emissaries were actively working on behalf of the French pretender in the kingdom of Naples. The propaganda was in abeyance during the war, because Russia made it a condition of her neutrality that the king of Naples should be let alone, but the simple fact that Napoleon had undertaken to liberate Italy was a splendid advertisement of the claims of his cousin. These considerations tended to make Cavour hold out his hand to the young Bourbon king. There is much evidence to show that the first impulse of Francis was to take it, but the counter influences around him were too strong. When he refused, he sealed his own doom, though the time for the crisis was not yet come.
In Central Italy the crisis came at once. This had been foreseen by Cavour all along. At Plombières he made no secret of his expectation that the defeat of the Austrians would entail the immediate union of Parma, Modena, and Romagna, with Piedmont. Napoleon did not then seem to object. To him Cavour did not speak of Tuscany, but he expected that there, too, the actual government would be overthrown; what he doubted was what would happen after. Many well-informed persons thought that the Grand Duke, who would have maintained the constitution of 1848 but for the threats of Austria, would seize the first opportunity of restoring it. Fortunately Leopold II. looked beneath the surface: he saw that an Austrian prince in Italy was henceforth an anachronism. The indignities which he suffered when his Italian patriotism—possibly quite sincere—caused him to be disowned by his relations were not forgotten. He had no heart for a bold stroke, and the exhortations of the English Government to remain neutral were hardly needed. If he wavered, it was only for a moment; nor did he care to place his son in the false position he declined for himself. The Grand Duke left Florence, openly, at two o'clock on April 27, 1859, carrying with him the personal good wishes of all. The chief boulder in the path of Italian unity was gone, but for reasons internal and external much would have to be done before Tuscany became the corner-stone of New Italy. The Tuscans clung to their autonomy. Though Victor Emmanuel was invited to assume the protectorate, it was explained that this was only meant to last during the war. The French Emperor thought that there was an opening for a new kingdom of Etruria with Prince Napoleon at the head. All sorts of intrigues were set afoot by all the great powers except England to re-erect Tuscany as a dam to stem the flood of unity midway. Cavour was determined to defeat them. It was against his rule to discuss remote events. He once said to a novice in public life, "If you want to be a politician, for mercy's sake do not look more than a week ahead." Every time, however, that there arose a present chance of making another step towards unity, Cavour was eagerly impatient to profit by it. He now strove with all the energy he possessed to procure the immediate annexation of Tuscany to Piedmont. The object was good, but what he did not see was, that the slightest appearance of wishing to "rush" Tuscany would so offend the municipal pride and intellectual exclusiveness of the polished Tuscans, that the seeds would be laid of a powerful and, perhaps, fatal reaction. It was at this critical juncture that Baron Bettino Ricasoli began his year of autocracy. His programme was: neither fusions nor annexations, but union of the Italian peoples under the constitutional sceptre of Victor Emmanuel. It was Tuscany's business, he said, to make the new kingdom of Italy. He looked upon himself as providentially appointed to carry that business into effect. He was called Minister of the Interior, and he was, in fact, dictator. When any one tried to overawe him, his answer was that he had existed for twelve centuries. He had not wished for foreign help, and he was not afraid of foreign threats. He often disagreed with Cavour, and he was the only man who never gave in to him. When Ricasoli took office he and the republican baker, Dolfi, who was his invaluable auxiliary, were possibly the only two thorough-going unionists-at-all-costs in Tuscany; when he resigned it twelve months later there was not a partisan of autonomy left in the province. This was the work of the "Iron Baron."
In the other three states, where the first shock to the power of Austria overturned the Government, there were no such complicated questions as in Tuscany. Parma and Modena returned to their allegiance of 1848, and in Romagna those who were not in favour of an Italian kingdom were not autonomists but republicans, who were willing to sacrifice their own ideal to unity. The revolution in the States of the Church was foiled at Ancona, and put down with much bloodshed at Perugia: it is curious to speculate what would have been the result if it had spread to the gates of Rome, as without this check it would have done. Cavour sent L.C. Farini to Modena, and Massimo d'Azeglio to Bologna, to take over what was called the "protectorate," and special commissioners were also appointed at Parma and Florence, but at Florence the real ruler was Ricasoli.
On July 5 Cavour told Kossuth that European diplomacy was very anxious to patch up a worthless peace, but still he had no fears. He did not guess that they were on the verge of seeing realised Mazzini's prophecy of six months before: "You will be in the camp in some corner of Lombardy when the peace which betrays Venice will be signed without your knowledge." In proportion as Cavour had placed faith in Napoleon's promises, so great was his revulsion of feeling when he learnt that on July 6 General Fleury went to the Emperor of Austria's headquarters at Verona with proposals for a suspension of hostilities. The passionate nature which was generally kept under such rigorous control that few suspected its existence for once asserted itself unrestrained. Those around Cavour were in apprehension for his life and his reason. In spite of all that has been said to the contrary, it is probable that Napoleon's resolution, though not unpremeditated, was of recent date. When he entered Milan, he seems to have really contemplated pushing the war beyond the Mincio; there is proof, however, that he was thinking of peace the day before the battle of Solferino, which disposes of the semi-official story that he changed his mind under the impression left on him by the scene of carnage after that battle. Between the beginning and the end of June, reasons of no sentimental kind accumulated to make him pause. Events in Central Italy had gone farther than he looked for, and his private map of the kingdom of Upper Italy was growing smaller every day. Why was this? He cannot have been seized with a warm interest in the unattractive despotism of the Duke of Modena, or the chronic anarchy kept down by Austrian bayonets at Bologna. But it was becoming apparent that if Modena and Romagna were joined to the new Italian kingdom, Tuscany would come too, and this Napoleon had not expected and did not want. He was clever enough to see that with Tuscany the unity of Italy was made. A great political genius would have said, So be it! Never was there worse policy than that of helping to free Italy, and then deliberately rooting out gratitude from her heart. Whatever Napoleon thought himself, he was alarmed by the news from France; the Empress and the clerical party were in despair at the revolution in the Roman States, and the country was indignant at the prospect of an Italy strong enough to have a voice of her own in the councils of Europe.
Besides all this, there was still graver news from Germany. Six Prussian army corps were ready to move for the Rhine frontier. The history of Prussian policy in 1859 has not yet been fully written out, but the gaps in the narrative are closing up. That policy was directed by the Prince Begent, and it gives the measure of the success which would have attended subsequent efforts if the day had not arrived when he surrendered himself body and soul into the hands of a greater man. So much for the present German Emperor's theory that the men in the councils of his grandfather only executed great things because they did their master's will. It is true that William I. aimed at the same end as that which Count Bismarck had already in view, and which he was destined to achieve—the ousting of Austria from Germany, as a preliminary to sublimer doings. But while the Prince Regent would not fight Austria, and hoped to get rid of her by political conjuring, the future Chancellor comprehended that the problem could only be settled by the argumentferro et igni. Bismarck's policy in 1859 would have been neutrality, with a certain leaning towards Napoleon. This advice, given by every post from St. Petersburg to Berlin, caused him to be accused of selling his soul to the devil, on which he dryly remarked that, if it were so, the devil was Teutonic, not Gallic.
The Prince Regent tried to prevent the Diet from going to war, because, in a federal war, Prussia's ruler would only figure as general of the armies of the confederation—which meant of Austria. His plan was to let Austria get into very bad difficulties, and then come forward singly to save her. By means of this "armed mediation" he would be able afterwards to dictate what terms he chose to the much indebted Austrian Emperor. It looked well on paper, but the armistice of Villafranca spoilt everything. The Emperor Francis Joseph did not wish to be "saved." This, and only this, can explain his readiness to make peace when, from a military point of view, his situation was far from desperate. No one knew this better than Napoleon. Before the allied armies lay the mouse-trap of the Quadrilateral, so much easier to get into than to get out of. The limelight of victory could not hide from those who knew the facts the complete deficiency of organisation and discipline which the war had revealed in the French army. According to Prince Napoleon, the men considered their head and their generals incapable, and had lost all confidence in them. Nevertheless they fought well; no troops ever fought better than the French when storming the heights of Solferino, but on the very day after that battle, when the Austrians were miles away in full retreat, an extraordinary, though little known, incident occurred. On a report spreading from the French outposts that the enemy was upon them, there was an universalsauve qui peut—officers, men, sick and sound, gendarmes, infantry, cavalry, artillery trains—in one word, every one made off. What would be the effect of a single defeat on such an army?
It must always appear strange that none of these things struck Cavour. He only saw the immense, immeasurable disappointment. When he rushed to the king's headquarters near Desenzano, it was to advise him to refuse Lombardy and abdicate, or to continue the war by himself. Cavour had never loved the king, or done justice to his statesmanlike qualities; a bitter scene took place between them, which Victor Emmanuel closed abruptly. Afterwards he met Prince Napoleon, who replied to his reproaches, "Mais enfin, do you want us to sacrifice France and our dynasty to you?"
At that juncture it was the king, not the minister, to whom the task of pilot fell. Cut to the heart as he was, he kept his temper. He signed the preliminaries "pour ce qui me concerne," and, as on the morrow of Novara, he prepared to wait. The terms on which the armistice was granted seemed like a nightmare: Venice abandoned; Tuscany, Romagna, Modena, to be handed back to their former masters; the Pope to be made honorary president of a confederation in which Austria was to have a place. Cavour stood before Italy responsible for the war, and when he said to M. Pietri in the presence of Kossuth, "Your Emperor has dishonoured me—yes, dishonoured!" he meant the words in their most literal sense. But the white heat of his passion burnt out the dishonour, and Cavour, foiled and furious, was the most popular man in the country. His grief was so genuine that even his enemies could not call its sincerity in question. In three days he appeared to have grown ten years older. His first thought was to go and get killed at Bologna, if, as was expected, there was fighting there. Then, as always happened with him, he was calmed by the idea of action: "I will take Solaro de la Margherita by one hand and Mazzini by the other; I will become a conspirator, a revolutionist, but this treaty shall not be carried out." When he said this, he had resigned office; he was simply a private citizen, but all the consciousness of his power had returned to him. Some delay occurred in forming a new ministry. Count Arese was first called, but his position as a personal friend of the Emperor disqualified him for the task. Rattazzi succeeded better, but during the interregnum of eight or nine days Cavour was obliged to carry on the Government, and it thus devolved on him to communicate the official order to the Special Commissioners to abandon their posts. He accompanied the order by a private telegram telling them to stay where they were, and work with all their might for an Italian solution. Farini telegraphed from Modena that if the Duke, "trusting to conventions of which he knew nothing," were to attempt to return, he should treat him as an enemy to the king and country. Cavour's answer ran: "The minister is dead; the friend applauds your decision." Aurelio Saffi well said that "in these supreme moments you would have called Cavour a follower of Mazzini." The world often thinks that a man is changed when he is revealing what he really is for the first time. It suited Cavour's purpose to appear cool and calculating, but patriotism was as much a passion with him as with any of the great men who worked for Italian emancipation.
The dissolution of Parliament by Lord Derby in June led to the return of a Liberal majority and the resumption of power by men who were open advocates of Italian unity. Kossuth believed to his last day that this result was due to him, an opinion which English readers are not likely to share. The gain for Italy was inestimable. The Whigs had supported Lord Malmesbury in his unprofitable efforts as a peacemaker; but when the war broke out they had no further reason to restrain their natural sympathies. Lord Palmerston especially wished the new kingdom to be strong enough to be independent of French influences. Had the Conservatives remained in office there is no doubt that they would have supported the plan to constitute Venetia a separate state under the Archduke Maximilian, which was regarded with much favour by that Prince's father-in-law, King Leopold, and hence by the Prince Consort. The Liberal Ministry would have nothing to do with it. Napoleon hoped, in the first instance, to shift the onus of stopping the war from himself to the English Government. He wished the programme of Villafranca to emanate from England; but, as Lord Palmerston wrote to Lord John Russell, why should they incur the opprobrium of leaving Italy laden with Austrian chains and of having betrayed the Italians at the moment of their brightest hopes? In the same letter (July 6), he pointed out that if a single Austrian ruler remained in Italy, whatever was the form of his administration, the excuse and even the fatal necessity of Austrian interference would remain or return. They were asked to parcel out the peoples of Italy as if they belonged to them! The Earl of Malmesbury once remarked that "on any question affecting Italy Lord Palmerston had no scruples." Had the Conservative statesman continued in office six months longer, in spite of his wish to see Italy happy, the "scruples" of which he spoke would have probably induced him to try and force her back under the Austrian yoke. Whether Cavour's life-work was to succeed or fail depended henceforth largely on England. "Now it is England's turn," he said frequently to his relations in Switzerland, where he went to recover his health and spirits. Soon all traces of depression disappeared. While Europe thought that it had assisted at his political funeral, he was engaged not in thinking how things might be remedied, but how he was going to remedy them. It was not the king, Piedmont, Italy, that would prevent the treaty from being carried out; it was "I." The road was cut; he would take another. He would occupy himself with Naples. People might call him a revolutionist or what they pleased, but they must go on, and they would go on.
There exists proof that after Villafranca, Cavour expected Napoleon to demand Savoy and Nice, or at least Savoy, notwithstanding that Venetia was not freed. The Emperor considered it necessary, however, to go through the form of renouncing the two provinces. He is reported to have said to Victor Emmanuel before leaving for Paris, "Your government will pay me the cost of the war, and we shall think no more about Nice and Savoy. Now we shall see what the Italians can do by themselves." Walewski confirmed this by stating that the simple annexation of Lombardy was not a sufficient motive "for demanding a sacrifice on the part of our ally in the interest of the safety of our frontiers," and in August he formally repeated to Rattazzi that they did not dream of annexing Savoy. Sincere or not, these disclaimers released Victor Emmanuel from the secret bond into which Cavour had persuaded him to enter. The contract was recognised as null. Rattazzi was notoriously opposed to any cession of territory, and had he known how to play his game it is at least open to argument that the House of Savoy might have been spared losing its birthright as the Houses of Orange and Lorraine had lost theirs. But his weak policy landed Italian affairs in a chaos which made Napoleon once more master of the situation.
The populations of Central Italy desired Victor Emmanuel for their king—Was he to accept or refuse? Rattazzi tried to steer between acceptance and refusal. A great many people thought then that acceptance outright would have brought the armed intervention of France or of Austria, or of both combined. The sagacious historian ought not lightly to set aside the current conviction of contemporaries. Those who come after are much better informed as to data, but they fail to catch the atmospheric tendency, the beginning-to-drift, of which witnesses are sensible. The scare was universal. The British Government sent a formal note to France and Austria stating that the employment of Austrian or French forces to repress the clearly expressed will of the people of Central Italy "would not be justifiable towards the government of the Queen." Lord Palmerston made the remark that the French formula of "Italy given to herself" had been transformed into "Italy sold to Austria." He grew every day more distrustful of Napoleon, and more regretful that the only man whom he believed able to cope with him was out of office.
"They talk a great deal in Paris of Cavour's intrigues," he wrote to Lord Cowley. "This seems to me unjust. If they mean that he has worked for the aggrandisement and for the emancipation of Italy from foreign yoke and Austrian domination, this is true, and he will be called a patriot in history. The means he has employed may be good or bad. I do not know what they have been; but the object in view is, I am sure, the good of Italy. The people of the Duchies have as much right to change their sovereigns as the English people, or the French, or the Belgian, or the Swedish. The annexation of the Duchies to Piedmont will be an unfathomable good for Italy at the same time as for France and for Europe. I hope Walewski will not urge the Emperor to make the slavery of Italy thedénoûmentof a drama which had for its first scene the declaration that Italy should be free from Alps to Adriatic. If the Italians are left to themselves all will go well; and when they say that if the French garrison were recalled from Rome all the priests would be assassinated, one can cite the case of Bologna, where the priests have not been molested and where perfect order is maintained." However much Austria might dislike the turn which events had taken in the Centre, it was generally admitted that she would not or could not intervene, even single-handed, without the tacit consent of France, which had still five divisions in Lombardy. The issue, therefore, hung on France. There is no doubt that Napoleon told all the Italians, or presumably Italian sympathisers who came near him, that he "would not allow" the union of Tuscany with Piedmont. He said to Lord Cowley, "The annexation of Tuscany is a real impossibility." He told the Marquis Pepoli that if the annexations crossed the Apennines, unity would be achieved; and he did not want unity: he wanted only independence. Walewski echoed these sentiments, and in his case it is certain that he meant what he said. But did Napoleon mean what he said? Evidence has come to light that all this time he was speaking in an entirely different key whenever his visitor was a reactionist or a clerical. To these he invariably said that he was obliged to let events take their course, though contrary to his interests; because, having given the blood of his soldiers for Italian independence, he could not fire a shot against it. To M. de Falloux he said that he had always been bound to the cause of Italy, and it was impossible for him to turn his guns against her. What becomes, then, of his threats? Might not an Italian minister, relying on the support of England, have ignored them and passed on his way?
Though Rattazzi's timidity prevented Victor Emmanuel from accepting the preferred crowns, the king declared on his own account that if these people who trusted in him were attached, he would break his sword and go into exile rather than leave them to their fate. He wrote to Napoleon that misfortune might turn to fortune, but that the apostasies of princes were irreparable. The Peace of Zurich, signed on November 10, did nothing to relax the strain. It merely referred the settlement of Italy to the usual Napoleonic panacea—a Congress not intended to meet. A Congress would have done nothing for Italy, but neither would it have given Napoleon Savoy and Nice. But the proposal had one important result: it brought Cavour back on the scene. A duel was going on between him and Rattazzi. He was accused, perhaps truly, of moving heaven and earth to upset the ministry, while Rattazzi's friends were spreading abroad every form of abuse and calumny to keep him out of office. When the Congress was announced, the popular demand for the appointment of Cavour as Sardinian plenipotentiary was too strong to be resisted. Rattazzi yielded, and the king, though still remembering with bitter feelings the scene at Villafranca, sacrificed his pride to his patriotism. Cavour did not like the idea of serving under Rattazzi, but he agreed to accept the post in order to prevent an antagonism which would have proved fatal to Italy. Napoleon astutely uttered no word of protest.
The Congress hung fire, and Cavour remained at Leri occupied with his cows and his fields, but secretly chafing at the sight of Italy in a perilous crisis abandoned to men whom he believed incapable. From the moment that he had been called back to the public service, his own return to the premiership could only be a question of time, and he wished that time to be short. The fall of the ministry was inevitable, for it was unpopular on all sides, but no one had foreseen how it would fall. La Marmora, who was the nominal president of the Council (Rattazzi having taken his old post of Home Minister), somehow discovered that a draft of Cavour's letter of acceptance of the appointment of plenipotentiary existed in Sir James Hudson's handwriting. Though it was true that the British Government was most anxious that Cavour should figure in the Congress, if there was one, the fact that Sir James Hudson had written down a copy of the letter as it was composed was only an accident which happened through the intimate relations between them. La Marmora saw it in a different light, and angrily declaring that he would not put up with foreign pressure, he sent in his resignation, which was accepted. Thus in January 1860 Cavour became once more the helmsman of Italian destinies. The new ministry consisted principally of himself, as he held the home and foreign offices, as well as the presidency of the Council.
He was resolved to put an end to the block at all costs, except the reconsignment of populations already free to Austria or Austrians. "Let the people of Central Italy declare themselves what they want, and we will stand by their decisions come what may." This was the rule which he proposed to follow, and which he would have followed even if war had been the consequence. Personally he would have accepted a provisional union of the Central States, such as Farini advocated; but Ricasoli discerned in any temporary division a danger to Italian unity, and induced or rather forced Cavour to renounce the idea. He called Ricasoli an "obstinate mule," but he had the rare gift of seeing that the strong man who opposed him in details was to be preferred to a weak man who was only a puppet.
The substitution of Walewski by Thouvenel at the French Foreign Office, and the Emperor's letter to the Pope advising him to give up the revolted Legations of his own accord, raised many hopes, but those who took these to be the signs of a decided change of policy were mistaken. Napoleon would not yield about Tuscany, and it grew plainer every day that the reason why he held out was in order to sell his consent. M. Thouvenel has distinctly stated that at this period the English ministry were informed of the Emperor's intention to claim Savoy and Nice if Piedmont annexed any more territory. Even before he resumed office, Cavour was convinced that the only way to a settlement was to strike a direct bargain with Napoleon. He viewed the contemplated sacrifice not with less but with more repulsion than he had viewed it at Plombières. The constant harassing of the last six months, which provoked him to say that never would he be again an accessory to bringing a French army into Italy, left an ineffaceable impression on his mind. The cession of the two provinces seemed to him now much less like obliging a friend than satisfying a highwayman. But he was convinced that it was an act of necessity.
As the "might-have-beens" of history can never be determined, it will never be possible to decide with certainty whether Cavour's conviction was right or wrong. Half a year of temporising had prejudiced the position of affairs; it was more difficult to defy Napoleon now than when he broke off the war without fulfilling his promises. A clear-sighted diplomatist, Count Vitzthum, has given it as his opinion that if Cavour had divulged the Secret Treaty of January 1859, by which Savoy and Nice were promised in return for the French alliance, Napoleon would have been so deeply embarrassed that he would have relinquished his claims at once. But such a course would have mortally offended France as well as the Emperor. Cavour did not share the illusion of the Italian democracy that the "great heart" of the French nation was with them. He once said that, if France became a republic, Italy would gain nothing by it—quite the contrary. With so many questions still open, and, above all, the difficult problem of Rome, he feared to turn the smothered animosity of the French people into violent and declared antagonism.
The king offered no fresh opposition; he said sadly that, as the child was gone, the cradle might go too. When the exchange of Savoy for a French alliance was proposed to Charles Albert he wrathfully rejected the idea; and if Victor Emmanuel yielded, it was not that he loved Savoy less but Italy more. It has to be noticed, however, that, though always loyal to their king, the Savoyards had for ten years shown an implacable hostility to Italian aspirations. The case against the cession of Nice was far stronger. General Fanti, the minister of war, threatened to resign, so essential did he hold Nice to the defence of the future kingdom of Italy. The British Government also insisted on its military importance. Nice was a thoroughly Italian town in race and feeling, as no one knew better than Cavour, though he was forced to deny it. According to an account published in theLife of the Prince Consort, and seemingly derived from Sir James Hudson, it would appear that he was still hoping to save Nice, when Count Benedetti arrived from Paris with the announcement that, if the Secret Treaty were not signed in its entirety, the Emperor would withdraw his troops from Lonabardy. Cavour is said to have answered, "The sooner they go the better"—on which Benedetti took from his pocket a letter containing the Emperor's private instructions, and proceeded to say, "Well, I have orders to withdraw the troops, but not to France; they will occupy Bologna and Florence."[1]
[Footnote 1: In 1896 Count Benedetti contributed two articles to theRevue des deux mondeson "Cavour and Bismarck." His only mention of the affair of Savoy and Nice is the casuistical remark that "Cavour kept theengagement concluded at Plombières" (sic).]
On March 24, depressed and bowed, Cavour walked up and down the room where the French negotiators sat. At last, taking up the pen, he signed the Secret Treaty. Then suddenly he seemed to recover his spirits, as, turning to M. de Talleyrand, he said, "Maintenant nous sommes complices, n'est ce pas vrai?"
The secrecy was none of his seeking; he had tried hard to induce Napoleon to let the treaty be submitted to Parliament before it was signed, as constitutional usage demanded, but the Emperor was resolved that the Chambers and Europe should know of it only when it was an accomplished fact. He had good reason for the precaution. He knew that there would be an outburst of indignation in England, though he little imagined the after consequences of this to himself. His one idea just then was to make sure of his bargain, not because he cared to enlarge his frontiers, for he was not constitutionally ambitious, but because he hoped, by doing so, to win the gratitude of France. It is useful as a lesson to note that he won nothing of the kind. Nor did Cavour win the goodwill of the French masses as he had hoped. France might have been angry had she not received the two provinces, but she showed real or affected ignorance of their value. For many years the French papers described the county of Nice as a poor, miserable strip of shore, and the duchy of Savoy as a few bare rocks. French people then travelled so little that they may have thought it was true.
As Napoleon was bent on deceiving, Cavour was obliged to deceive too. Sir Robert Peel's denial of the intention of Government to repeal the Corn Laws has been defended on the ground that theCabinethad not taken a definite resolution; if such a defence is of profit, Cavour is entitled to the benefit of it. At any rate he had no choice. Whether or not they had been previously warned, the English Ministry, and especially the Foreign Secretary, now believed the professions of innocence. The Earl of Malmesbury records a suspicion that as far back as January 1859 Napoleon secured some sort of written promise from Lord Palmerston that he would not make difficulties about Nice and Savoy. Such an assurance amounts, of course, to saying, "Go and take it," as in the more recent case of Tunis. The story is not impossible; like Cavour, Lord Palmerston desired so much to see Italy freed that he would have given up a good deal to arrive at the goal. The country resented the deception, as it had every right to do, and the Queen expressed the general feeling when she wrote to Lord John Russell, "We have been made regular dupes." For a moment there seemed a risk of war, but Lord Palmerston never had the slightest intention of going to war, whatever were the inclinations of his colleague at the Foreign Office. Lord John Russell took his revenge on Napoleon when the Emperor wished to proceed to joint action with England on the Danish question; by refusing this proposal he deprived him of the one and only chance of stemming Prussian ambition.
Cavour did not extenuate the gravity of the responsibility which he accepted when he advised the king to sign away national territory without the sanction of Parliament. He said that it was a highly unconstitutional act, which exposed him, were the Chamber of Deputies to disown it, to an indictment for high treason. He counted on losing all his popularity in Piedmont—how could he not expect to lose it when his best hopes for getting the treaty approved rested on the assumption that the new voters from the enfranchised parts of Italy would drown the opposition of his own State to its dismemberment? It has often been asked, Why did he not allow the cession to wear the honest colour of surrender to force? Why, "against his conviction," as he confessed in private, did he declare that Nice was not Italian? Why go through the farce of plebiscites so "arranged" that the result was a foregone conclusion? The answer, satisfactory or not, is easily found: Nice was stated to be not Italian to leave intact the theory of nationality for future use; the plebiscites were resorted to that Napoleon might be obliged to recognise the same method of settling questions elsewhere.
The parliament which represented Piedmont, Lombardy, Parma, Modena, and Romagna, met on April 2, 1860. The frontier lines of six states were effaced. The man who had so largely contributed to this great result stood there to defend his honour, almost his life. Guerrazzi compared him to the Earl of Clarendon—"hard towards the king, truculent to Parliament, who thought in his pride that he could do everything." Cavour retorted: perhaps if Clarendon had been able to show in defence of his conduct many million Englishmen delivered from foreign yoke, several counties added to his master's possessions, Parliament would not have been so pitiless, or Charles II. so ungrateful to the most faithful of his servants. The deputy Guerrazzi, he continued, had read him a lesson in history; it should have been given entire. And he then drew a picture, splendid in its scathing irony, of the unscrupulous alliance of men without principle, of all shades of opinion, only united in self-interest, demagogues, courtiers, reactionists, papists, puritans, without traditions, without ideas, at one in impudent egotism, and in nothing else, who formed the cabal which ruined Clarendon. Every one understood that he was painting his own enemies inside the Chamber and out.
In spite of protests and regrets, the treaty was sanctioned by a larger majority than had been reckoned on. When it came to the point, not a large number of voters was ready to take the tremendous leap in the dark which, among other consequences, must have condemned Cavour, if not to the fate of Stafford, at least to obscurity for the rest of his life. But the ministry came out of the contest, to use Cavour's own words, extraordinarily weakened. "On me and on my colleagues," he had said, "he all the obloquy of the act!" He was to regain his power, and even his popularity, but time itself cannot wholly obliterate the spot upon his name. He knew it well himself. A writer in theQuarterly Review, soon after his death, related that latterly people avoided alluding to Savoy and Nice before him; the subject caused him such evident pain. The same writer makes a very interesting statement which, although there is no other authority for it, must be assumed to rest on accurate information: he says that Cavour hoped, to the last, some day to get the two provinces back.[1]
[Footnote 1: Mr. John Murray has courteously informed me that the writer of the article was the late Sir A.H. Layard.]
In March 1860 Cavour did not foresee what would be the next step—he only felt that it would not be long delayed. Italy, he told the Chamber, was not sound or safe; Italy had still great wounds in her body. "Look beyond the Mincio, look beyond Tuscany, and say if Italy is out of danger!" He interpreted the transaction with Napoleon in the sense that, whatever happened henceforward, he was to have a free hand. Napoleon seemed to think, at the first, that the cession of Nice and Savoy showed a yielding mood; he was mistaken; it shut the door on yielding. Cavour found all sorts of excuses for protracting the date of the official handing over of those provinces, and this helped him in his dealings with the Emperor, whom he compelled to shelve a particularly obnoxious project of introducing Neapolitan troops into the Roman States. Napoleon was induced to promise to withdraw the French in July without calling in others, on condition, however, that all remained quiet. All was not going to remain quiet.
There were no illusions on this point at the Vatican, where no one believed that thestatus quowould last. It seemed to many of the Pope's advisers that, instead of waiting for the blow, it were better to strike one, and declare a holy war for thrones and altars. Cardinal Antonelli, in concert with the dominant party at Naples (which was that of the king's Austrian stepmother), evolved a scheme for recovering Romagna, in which it was hoped that Austria would join, Austrian aid being at all times far more desired than French. But the more ardent spirits were not averse from action even without Austria. The Orleanist general Lamoricière was invited to Rome, and a call was issued which brought an influx of Irish and French volunteers. The French Emperor let Lamoricière go, as he was glad to get him out of the way. The Duke de Persigny told his master that the gallant general would make trouble for him in Italy, and, as Napoleon turned a deaf ear, he suggested that Lamoricière should be ordered to garrison Rome while the French regular troops were sent to protect the frontier. This simple arrangement would have commended itself to any one who was in earnest in wishing to preserve the integrity of what remained of the Papal States; Napoleon seemed to assent, but he allowed the matter to drop.
It began to be clear that the Neapolitan Government would soon have too much on its hands at home for it to indulge in crusades. But the crisis was not hastened by Cavour, and he was one of the last to believe it imminent. Towards the end of March he learnt with surprise from Sir James Hudson that the reason the British Fleet had been sent to Naples was that a catastrophe was expected. He then asked the Sardinian Minister at the Neapolitan Court whether a Muratist restoration was still possible, and what chances there were at Naples for Italian unity? The Marquis Villamarina replied that the French, who once had many partisans, had lost most of them. As to unity he held out few hopes; it was popular in Sicily but not on the mainland, where the king had a strong following. If the Marquis had said "large" for "strong" his assertion would have been accurate. The misgovernment, which Lord John Russell had lately described as almost without a parallel in Europe, was not of a nature to be wholly unpopular; it was national after a fashion; bribery and espionage and the persecution of the best citizens may leave the masses content, and, in fact, at least in the capital, thebasso popolowas royalist, as was the scarcely less ignorant nobility. The bulk of the clergy and the army was also loyal. All this support made the Bourbonrégimelook not insecure to those on the spot, who failed to understand the complete rottenness of its foundations.
When a revolutionary movement broke out in Sicily, Cavour thought of sending secretly a Piedmontese officer, who fought in the Sicilian insurrection of 1848, to assume the direction, but he did not do so, perhaps because he had very little faith in the success of the attempt. Save for the undoubted fact that Sicily was already separated in spirit not only from the Bourbon crown but from any rule which had its seat at Naples, the insurrection did not begin under promising circumstances. There were no signs of a concerted rising on a large scale, such as had overthrown the Government in 1848, and the authorities disposed of overwhelming means, if they knew how to use them, of crushing a few guerrilla bands. Cavour was slow to believe the catastrophe at hand, but he thought that the time was come to send the King of Naples a warning, which was practically an ultimatum. On April 15 Victor Emmanuel addressed a letter to Francis II, in which he told his cousin that there was possibly still time to save his dynasty, but that time was short. Two things must be done—the first was to restore the Constitution (this even Russia was advising), the second, that the kings of Sardinia and Naples should divide Italy between them, drive out the last Austrian, and constrain the Pope, in whatever strip of territory was left to him, to govern on the same liberal basis as themselves. If these things were not done, and at once, Francis would have the fate of his relative Charles X, and the King of Sardinia might be forced to become the chief instrument of his ruin. It cannot be said that the warning was not sufficiently explicit.
As the insurrection dragged on, the idea gained ground in North Italy of sending out reinforcements to the hard pressed insurgents. Landings on the southern coast had an unfortunate history from that of Murat downwards, but those who play at desperate hazards cannot be ruled by past experience. Cavour seems to have lent some material aid to a Sicilian named La Masa, who was preparing to take a handful of men to his native island, but it is not true that he either desired or abetted the expedition of Garibaldi. A Garibaldian venture could not be kept quiet, it would raise complications with the Powers, and, besides, what if it failed and cost Garibaldi his life? Some people have supposed that Cavour sent Garibaldi to Sicily to get rid of him at an awkward moment, for the General was planning a revolutionary stroke at Nice to resist the annexation. Though this theory sounds plausible, documentary evidence is all against it. Cavour had an interview with the Garibaldian general, Sirtori, to whom he expressed the conviction that if they went they would be all taken. Why, it may be asked, did he not stop the whole affair by placing Garibaldi under lock and key? It seems certain that only the king's absolute refusal prevented this effectual measure from being resorted to. The king, accompanied by Cavour, was paying a first visit to Tuscany; there were rumours of stormy scenes between them on the subject of the arrest, and Victor Emmanuel had his way. Whatever was their disagreement, it ceased when the die was cast. It was one of Cavour's chief merits that he instantly grasped a new situation. To let the expedition go and then place obstacles in its way would have been an irreparable mistake. Admiral Persano inquired whether he was to stop the steamers carrying the Thousand to Sicily, should stress of weather drive them into a Sardinian port? The answer by telegraph ran, "The Ministry decides for the arrest." Persano rightly judged this to mean that Cavour decided against it, and he telegraphed back, "I have understood."
Garibaldi sailed from Quarto late on May 5. Not Cavour himself had thought worse of the plan than he when it was first proposed to him, but, with the decision to go, doubt vanished. "At last," he wrote, "I shall be back in my element—action placed at the service of a great idea." No one seems to have pointed out the extraordinary boldness of choosing a fortified town of 18,000 inhabitants as the place of landing. The leaders of similar expeditions have always selected some quiet spot where they could land undisturbed, and the coast of Sicily presents many such spots. If Garibaldi had done the same he would have failed, for the success of the Thousand was a success ofprestige. Italian patriots at home had some uneasy days. Victor Emmanuel, as he afterwards admitted, was in "a terrible fright"; Cavour went about silent and gloomy. A week passed, and no news came. On May 13, at eleven o'clock at night, a passer-by in the Via Carlo Alberto, not far from the Palazzo Cavour, heard some one gaily whistling the air
"Di quella pira …"
Of a sudden the individual, who was walking very quickly, vigorously rubbed his hands. The trait revealed the man—it was Cavour; he had just heard that Garibaldi, eluding the Neapolitan fleet, had disembarked with all his men at Marsala. Things were entering a new and critical phase, and it was not difficult to foretell that, while the hero would have all the laurels, the statesman would have all the thorns. This was a small matter to Cavour: they were again on the high seas, he said cheerfully, but what was the good of thinking of peace and quiet till Italy was made?
The Sardinian Government adopted the policy of assisting the expedition now as far as they could without being compromised with the Powers of Europe—but no farther. Thisvia mediahad the merit of succeeding; it was, however, severely criticised by friends and foes at the time. On May 24 Prince Napoleon said in the presence of Marshal MacMahon, Prosper Mérimée, N.W. Senior, and others, that Cavour had done too much or too little; he should have kept Garibaldi back, or given him 5000 men; he had thrown on himself and on "my father-in-law" all the discredit of favouring the enterprise, and he would have been no more blamed and hated if he had given it real support. On higher grounds Massimo d'Azeglio was horrified at the lack of straightforwardness in mining the Bourbon edifice from below instead of declaring war. "Garibaldi has no minister at Naples, and he has gone to risk his skin, and long life to him, but we!!" Taking this view, the immaculate Massimo, as governor of Milan, impounded a number of rifles intended for the Thousand, and so nearly wrecked the affair. The King of Naples naturally applied the same criticism. "Don Peppino," he said, "had clean hands, but he was only a blind, behind which was ranged Piedmont with the Western Powers, which had vowed the end of his dynasty." Whether international law was violated or not, there was no real deception, if the essence of deception is to deceive, for the Neapolitan Government saw Cavour's hand everywhere, even where it was not.
Cavour was deterred from declaring war by the fear of foreign intervention. England was the only Power which applauded the drama enacting in Sicily. The cover afforded by English ships to the landing of Garibaldi was no doubt a happy accident, but, as Signor Crispi often repeats to this day, the landing could hardly have taken place without it. "C'est infâme et de la part des Anglais aussi," the Czar wrote on the telegram which announced the safe arrival of the "brigands" at Marsala. Cavour was afraid lest Russian sympathy with the court of Naples should take a more inconvenient form than angry words. Russia, however, remained quiescent, though "geography" was stated to be the only reason. Prussia also discovered that Naples was some way off. Yet there was nothing which the Prince Regent so disliked as to see kings overthrown, until he began to do it himself. But the two Northern Powers (and this was the meaning of the talk about geography) did not want to act without Austria. The Austrian Queen Dowager did all she could to obtain help to save the crown, which she expected would pass from the weakly Francis to her own son, but public opinion in Austria had long been irritated by the supineness and corruption of the Neapolitanrégime, and though the Government protested, it did not go to the rescue. It is a question whether it would not have been forced to go, if, at the outset, Cavour had declared war. France joined in the protests of the other Powers, and Cavour's enemies spread a monstrous rumour that he was going to give up Genoa to win Napoleon's complaisance. In reply to an anxious inquiry from the British Government, he declared that under no circumstances would he yield another foot of ground.
When Garibaldi visited Admiral Persano's flag-ship at Palermo, he was received with a salute of nineteen guns, which practically recognised his position as dictator, and Medici's contingent of 3000 men was equipped and armed by Cavour; all secrecy as to the relations between the minister and the Sicilian revolution was, therefore, at an end. He wished that Sicily should be annexed at once. Though Garibaldi had performed every act since he landed in Sicily in Victor Emmanuel's name, Cavour was more and more afraid of the republicans in his camp. He exaggerated their influence over their leader, who, in vital matters, was not easy to move, and he did not believe that, in accordance with Mazzini's instructions, they were working for unity regardless of the form of government which might follow. Victor Emmanuel could sound the depths of Mazzini's patriotism; Cavour never could. The two men were made to misunderstand each other. There are differences too fundamental for even imagination to bridge over. Had they lived till now, when both are raised on pedestals in the Italian House of Fame, from which time shall not remove them, Mazzini would still have been for Cavour, and Cavour for Mazzini, the evil genius of his country.
The nightmare of Red Republicanism taking the bit between its teeth and bolting was not the only terror that disturbed Cavour's rest. He shuddered at the establishment of a dictatorial democracy which placed unlimited power in the hands of men of no experience, with only the lantern of advanced Liberalism to guide them. He, who had tried to make the Italian cause look respectable, as well as meritorious, asked himself what these improvised statesmen would do next? The Garibaldian dictatorship has not lacked defenders, and two of its administrators lived to be prime ministers of Italy, but it was inevitable that Cavour should judge it as he did.
A dualism began between Palermo and Turin, which would not have reached the point that it did reach, if La Farina, who was commissioned by Cavour to promote annexation, had not launched into a furious personal warfare with his fellow-Sicilian Crispi, a far stronger combatant than he. Garibaldi ended by putting La Farina on board a Sardinian man-of-war, and begging the admiral to convey him home. The dictator bombarded the king's Government with advice, to which Cavour alludes without irritation: "He writes and rewrites, and telegraphs night and day, urging us with counsels, warnings, reproaches—I might almost say menaces." Garibaldi, he goes on to say, has a generous character, poetic instincts, but his is an untamed nature, on which certain impressions leave ineffaceable traces; he feels the cession of Nice as a personal injury, and he will never forgive it. The king has a certain influence over him, but it would be madness to seek to employ it in favour of the Ministry; he would lose it, which would be a great misfortune. How few ministers who, like Cavour, were accustomed to be all-powerful, would have met unrelenting opposition in this spirit!
The influence of the king was sought by Napoleon to induce Garibaldi to stop short at Messina, but he can hardly have been surprised when the General showed no disposition to serve his sovereign so ill as to obey him. He then proposed that the French and British admirals should be instructed to inform Garibaldi that they had orders to prevent him from crossing the straits. Lord John Russell replied that, in the opinion of Government, the Neapolitans should be left to receive or repel Garibaldi as they pleased; nevertheless, if France interfered alone, they would limit themselves to disapproving and protesting. But Napoleon did not wish to interfere alone; the effect would be to make British influence paramount in Italy, and possibly even to cause Sicily to crave a British protectorate. In great haste he assured the Foreign Secretary that his chief desire was to act about Southern Italy in whatever way was approved by England. Italy was saved from a great peril in 1860, firstly, by English goodwill, and, secondly, by the absence of any real agreement between the Continental Powers. Had there been a concert of Europe, the passage of Garibaldi to Calabria would have been barred.
By this time no one was more determined than Cavour himself that not a palm of ground should be left to the Bourbon dynasty, but he still thought it necessary to save appearances. Thus he met the too late advances of the Neapolitan Government, not by a refusal to treat, but by proposing a condition with which Francis, as an obedient son of the Church, could not comply: the formal recognition of the union of Romagna with Piedmont. Strict moralists, like Lanza, would have wished him to send the ambassadors of the King of Naples about their business, and to declare war on any pretext, and so escape from "a hybrid and perilous game." Cavour looked upon the Neapolitan Government as doomed, and that by its own fault, its own obstinacy, its own rejection of the plank of safety, which, almost at the risk of doing a wrong to Italy, he had advised his king to offer it three months before. He felt no scruples in accelerating its fall. The means he took may not have been the best means, but he thought them good enough in dealing with a system which was a by-word for bad faith and corruption. He wished that the end might come before Garibaldi crossed the straits, or, at least, when he was still far from Naples. Thus a repetition of the Sicilian dictatorship would be impossible. To what measures he resorted is not known with any accuracy; he was carrying on a policy without the knowledge of the king or the cabinet, and no trustworthy account exists of it. What is known is that Cavour, as a conspirator, failed.
Till the Captain of the Thousand appeared, the people would not move. They knew nothing of the merits of a limited monarchy, but they could vibrate to the electric thrill of a great emotion, such as that which made their hearts rise and swell when the organ in the village church pealed forth the airs of Bellini or Donizetti on a feast day. Garibaldi was the Mahdi of a new dispensation, which was to end earthquakes, the cholera, poverty, to heal all wounds, dry all tears. Yes, it was worth while to rise now! King Francis seems to have understood the situation; he sat down to wait for Destiny in a red shirt. When the liberator was sufficiently near, he is reported to have called the commanders of the National Guard, and to have addressed them in these words: "As your—that is, our common friend, Don Peppe, approaches, my work ends and yours begins. Keep the peace. I have ordered the troops that remain to capitulate."
The British Government had all along recommended Cavour to leave Garibaldi alone to finish the task he had so well begun; he did not take the advice, but in the end he must have recognised its wisdom. At the very last moment it might have been possible to get Victor Emmanuel's authority proclaimed at Naples before Garibaldi entered the city, or, at any rate, Cavour thought so; but the attempt would have worn a graceless look at that late hour, and it was not made. Cavour never forgot the services which Garibaldi had rendered to Italy; "the greatest," he said, "that a man could render her." When the dissension between them began, he might have convoked Parliament and fought out the battle before the Chamber, but, though he would have saved hisprestige, he would have lost Italy. He preferred to risk his reputation and to save Italy. In order to make Italy, he believed it to be of vital importance to keep the hero on good terms with the king. Garibaldi was a great moral power, not only in Italy, but in Europe. If Cavour entered into a struggle with him, he would have the majority of old diplomatists on his side, but European public opinion would be against him, and it would be right. He argued thus with those who mistook his forbearance for weakness, when it was really strength.
Cavour seriously thought that among the inconvenient consequences of Garibaldi's ascendency might be a war with Austria, forced on the Government by the victoriouscondottierein the intoxication of success. He was resolved as a statesman to do what he could to prevent so great an imprudence. He had assured the British Government in writing that he had no present intention of attacking Austria, and in this he was perfectly sincere. Still he did not shrink from the possibility. He wrote to Ricasoli: "If we were beaten by overwhelming force, the cause of Italy would not be lost; she would arise from her ruins, as Piedmont arose from the field of Novara." To another friend he made what was, perhaps, the only boast he ever uttered: "I would answer for the result if I possessed the art of war as I possess the art of politics." For the rest, he added characteristically, When a course became the only one, what was the good of counting up its dangers? You ought to find out the way of overcoming them.